Sec. 16.--_How Henry of Suabia was made Emperor by the Church, and how Constance, queen of Sicily, was given him to wife._ [Sidenote: 1192 A.D.] [Sidenote: Par. iii. 109-120.] Henry of Suabia, son of the great Frederick, as we said before, whilst his father was alive, had been elected king of the Romans; and when he returned from over seas, and had ordered his government in Germany, he passed into Italy and came to Rome at the request of Pope Clement, and was received with honour by the Romans, forasmuch as he restored to them the city of Tusculum and its territory, which had rebelled against the Romans; which city was all destroyed and laid waste by the Romans, and was never afterwards rebuilt. And when the said Henry was come to Rome he found that the said Pope Clement was dead, which had sent for him; and Pope Celestine, a native of Rome, had been elected by the cardinals, so that the said Henry was present at his consecration, which took place on Easter Day of the Resurrection, in April, in the year of Christ 1192; and he lived as Pope six years and eight months and eleven days. And when Celestine had become Pope, on the second day after his consecration, he crowned the said Henry emperor. And before the said Henry departed from Germany, the Church was at variance with Tancred, king of Sicily and of Apulia (son to the other Tancred, which was sister's son to Robert Guiscard, as we made mention in the chapter wherein we treated of the said Robert), by reason that he did not, as he should, faithfully pay tribute to the Church, and that he presented bishops and archbishops to benefices at his pleasure to the shame of the Pope and of the Church; wherefore the said Pope Clement treated with the archbishop of Palermo to take away the kingdom of Sicily and Apulia from the said Tancred, and gave order to the said archbishop that Constance, sister of King William and rightful heiress of the realm of Sicily, which was a nun in Palermo, as we afore made mention, and was already more than fifty years old, should leave the convent, and he gave her dispensation that she might return to the world and enter into matrimony; and the said archbishop caused her secretly to depart from Sicily and come to Rome, and the Church gave her to wife to the said Emperor Henry, whence a little while after was born the Emperor Frederick II., which brought such persecutions upon the Church, as we will tell hereafter in treating of him. And it was not without Divine occasioning and judgment that such a baneful heir must needs be the issue, being born of a holy nun, and she more than fifty-two years old, when it is almost impossible for a woman to bear a child; so that he was born of two contradictions--against spiritual laws, and, in a sense, against natural laws. And we find, when the Empress Constance was pregnant with Frederick, there was doubt in Sicily and throughout all the realm of Apulia whether, by