He
centralized, in a manner hitherto unknown in the West, the whole
judicial and political administration. No office was henceforth to be
filled by popular election, under penalty of the devastation of the
offending district and of the enslavement of its inhabitants. The
taxes, based on a comprehensive assessment, and distributed in
accordance with Mohammedan usages, were collected by those cruel and
vexatious methods without which, it is true, it is impossible to obtain
any money from Orientals. Here, in short, we find, not a people, but
simply a disciplined multitude of subjects; who were forbidden, for
example, to marry out of the country without special permission, and
under no circumstances were allowed to study abroad. The University of
Naples was the first we know of to restrict the freedom of study, while
the East, in these respects at all events, left its youth unfettered.
It was after the examples of Mohammedan rules that Frederick traded on
his own account in all parts of the Mediterranean, reserving to himself
the monopoly of many commodities, and restricting in various ways the
commerce of his subjects. The Fatimite Caliphs, with all their esoteric
unbelief, were, at least in their earlier history, tolerant of all the
differences in the religious faith of their people; Frederick, on the
other hand, crowned his system of government by a religious
inquisition, which will seem the more reprehensible when we remember
that in the persons of the heretics he was persecuting the
representatives of a free municipal life.
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