he had sent his own son Enzio with a great number of galleys; and using many other galleys that had been deliberately prepared long in advance, he laid traps against them on the Tuscan coast, that he might the more forcefully be able to vomit out his preconceived venom, and caused them to be captured with audacious sacrilege. Some prelates and other people were drowned during this capture, several also were slain and others put to flight, by hostile pursuit; as for the rest, having been stripped of all their possessions, they were ignominiously led from place to place within the kingdom of Sicily; and there they were delivered to dreadful prisons, some of whom, wasted and worn down by filth and hunger, wretchedly expired. With good cause, moreover, a suspicion of heretical depravity has arisen against him, since, after he had incurred the sentence of excommunication, published by the aforementioned J[ohn], bishop of Sabina, and Cardinal Thomas (and when the said Pope G[regory] had bound him with the chain of anathema), and after the capture of the cardinals of the Roman Church, prelates, clergy and others while they were travelling * also various times to the Apostolic See, he disdained and still does despise the keys of the Church; having the Divine mysteries celebrated for him—or rather profaned as far as he can—and has resolutely asserted, as it has been said in what has gone before, that he does not fear the sentences of the aforementioned G[regory]. He is, furthermore, bound together in an execrable alliance with the Saracens. He has often sent envoys and presents to them, and in turn received the same from them with honour and merriment. He embraces their customs, and keeps them with him as his day-to-day servants. Also according to their custom, he has not been ashamed to appoint eunuchs as guards for his wives (who are descendants of a royal lineage); chiefly eunuchs whom, as it is seriously said, he himself has had castrated. And what is more loathsome, when he formerly lived overseas, having made an agreement, nay rather a conspiracy, with the Sultan, he allowed the name of Mahomet to be publicly proclaimed in the temple of the Lord day and night. And recently, after the Sultan of Babylon [Cairo] had personally and by means of his own men inflicted serious losses and untold injuries to the Holy Land and its Christian inhabitants, he caused the Sultan’s envoys, as it is reported, to be honourably received and magnificently entertained throughout the kingdom of Sicily, with praises for the prestige of the same Sultan. Also taking advantage of the pernicious and horrendous services of other infidels against the faithful, and taking care to be united with those who, damnably holding the Apostolic See in contempt, are separated from the unity of the Church; and having scorned the Christian religion, he caused (by certain report) the duke of Bavaria, of illustrious memory, one devoted to the Roman Church, to be killed by assassins. And he has bestowed his daughter as a wife to Vatatzes, an enemy of God and the Church, one solemnly separated, together with his collaborators, counsellors and allies, from the communion of the faithful by sentence of excommunication. Indeed, rejecting the conduct and manners of Catholic princes, disregarding salvation and reputation, he has no inclination towards works of piety. Furthermore (to say nothing of his abominable excesses), since he has learned to oppress, he does not care in mercy to relieve the oppressed, not reaching out with his hand, as befits a prince, to bestow alms; and since he has aimed at the destruction of churches, and has ground down both religious and ecclesiastical persons with continual affliction, he has been seen to have built neither churches, nor monasteries, nor hospitals, nor other pious places. Surely these are not trifling but substantial grounds for suspicion of heresy against him, since the civil law declares that those who even on slight grounds shall have been found to have deviated from the judgment and path of the Catholic religion are to be included in the classification of heretics, and ought to submit to the sentences pronounced against them? Besides these things, the kingdom of Sicily, which is the special patrimony of St Peter, and which he, the said prince, was holding in fee from the Apostolic See, has now been reduced by him to such abasement and servitude, both among