Observations on the Dead Emperor Collected from Annals and Laws

Albert of Strasbourg, in Urstisius, Part II, p. 104. Yet before he was consigned to the flames, he was forced by tortures to speak the truth. Thus Botho, in the Brunswick Chronicle for the year 1286: In that year, when Emperor Frederick had been in Swabia for thirty years, a fellow came forward and said he was Emperor Frederick and that he had not died, but had been a pilgrim, and he said so many tokens that Landgrave Dietrich and Frederick of Thuringia, and other people as well, believed him. He sent for Duke Henry of Brunswick, to whom he told the sign that he had his daughter's daughter, so that they believed in part that he truly was Emperor Frederick. But Emperor Rudolph grabbed him and questioned him with torture; then he confessed that he was a poor man, and was named Tile Kolup, and had been at Emperor Frederick’s court, etc. This torture seems to have been applied beyond the custom of the Germans, as they rarely, in ancient times or even in the Middle Ages—as the Sachsenspiegel Saxon Mirror and Schwabenspiegel Swabian Mirror remain silent on the matter—vexed free men with interrogations. Perhaps the constitution of Roman law validated itself to the Emperor, so that no dignity in the crime of maiestas treason might be exempt from torture; Law 3 and 4, Code, Ad Legem Iuliam Maiestatis On the Julian Law of Treason; Paul, Receptae Sententiae Received Opinions, Book V, title 29; or that poor man was a magician, if it is permitted to believe Aventinus in his Annals of Bavaria, Book VII, who calls this same person Frederick Stuphius and says he was skilled in evoking spirits and capable of compelling the inhabitants of the underworld. But in truth, ever since public purgations ceased, the clergy subjected heretics and magicians to torture and punished those who confessed to the crime with the penalty of fire. Thomas, on title Digest, De Quaestionibus On Interrogations, p. 371 et seq.

The killing of Emperors most severely avenged.

But such is the condition of men that they often depart from life before their day. Likewise, Kings are sometimes taken away by untimely...