Innocent IV issues Eger Cui Lenia against Frederick II

1245

From exile in Lyon, the pope launched a propaganda war against the Hohenstaufen emperor, accusing him of heresy, blasphemy, and consorting with Saracens. The pope's agents fanned rebellion across Italy and Germany, demonstrating that a pope without armies could still wound an emperor with ink. The pamphlet war between papacy and empire produced some of the most sophisticated political rhetoric of the medieval period.