Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/303

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OF CELEBRATED WOMEN.
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headed them. Henry having dismissed his troops, no longer thought necessary for his bloody purposes, and sent them to pursue their expedition to the Holy Land, was obliged to submit to his wife, and to the conditions which she was pleased to impose on him in favour of the Sicilians. He died at Messina, soon after this treaty, 1197, and, as it was supposed, of poison administered by the empress, who saw the ruin of her country hatching in his perfidious and vindictive heart.

After his death, Constantia remained in Sicily, where all was peace, as regent and guardian to her infant son, Frederic II. who had been crowned king of that island, by the consent of pope Celestine III. But she also had her troubles. On the death of Celestine, another investiture being necessary, Innocent III. his successor, demanded that Constantia should renounce several ecclesiastical privileges the kings of Sicily had been accustomed to possess, in the name of her son, and do liege, pure and simple homage for Sicily. But before any thing relative to this affair was settled, the empress died, leaving the regency to the pope; so that he was enabled to prescribe what conditions he pleased to young Frederic. Perhaps thinking it better to leave those matters to him, than to deprive her son of his protection, and subject the island again to disunion and anarchy.

Modern History.


CORINNA.

There were three of that name, all skilled in letters. The last lived at the time, and is supposed to have been the favourite of Ovid; but the most famous was of Tanagra, in Bœotia, who, in no less than five trials, conquered the great poet, Pindar. Her glory seems to

have