Historical Background of Dante 69
him. Yet it was one thing to declare Frederick deposed
and another thing to take his kingdoms away from him.
For five years after the Council of Lyons till his death in
1250 Frederick held his own. But after his death the rival
forces which the Popes called into the field brought death
and destruction to all Frederick’s descendants, and his pos-
sessions both in Germany and Italy passed into other hands.
In Italy the chief agent of the Popes’ wrath was Charles
of Anjou, the able brother of the great and glorious St.
Louis of France, the last of the crusading kings. The
summoning of Charles marked a turning-point in the his-
tory both of the papacy and Italy. Before this act, for
nearly three hundred years the German kings had exercised
a predominant influence in Italian affairs. From now on,
for many a year, French influence was to be all powerful
in the peninsula. The young French monarchy, compact
and aggressive, a new force in a new age, was ready to play
a leading part on the stage from which the German king-
ship, defeated in Italy and torn by anarchic feudalism at
home, was retiring. The German kings were still to claim
the Imperial title, but with no resources to rely on at home
they were never again able to exercise any effective control
over Italian affairs. The forces of the new day were with
France, and henceforth the empire was to be but a name,
and Italian unity a dream. Yet while this fact is apparent
to us as we look back into the past, it was hidden from the
men of that day who lived through the transition and to
whom and to whose fathers the empire had been a name to
conjure with. It is not strange, therefore, that even Dante’s
all-penetrating mind should have failed to divine the future,
and that he should have clung passionately to the hope of
a revival of the empire.
But to return briefly to Charles of Anjou and the story