Thank you very much for such a kind introduction and thank you very much for inviting me here

to share my work with you.

So actually I have known this institute for many years.

I think it's a fascinating idea to combine the East Asian study and medieval study by

analyzing the faith and the eschatology.

Actually to be honest, as a Chinese I was more or less influenced by the Confucianism.

And the book of changes, which is Yijing, is one of the canon for the Confucianism.

But actually till now I had to admit I know very little about this book.

So and also eschatology, I always think it is a very difficult and serious topic for

me to understand.

And I always think this topic is far more complicated than what we have studied.

But as Professor Halbers had just introduced, I'm working on the Pope Gregory IX, a 13th

century pope, and specifically on his biography in the Courier.

So this pope was the first in the history to put a political conflict with the unpair

into an eschatological level.

So the eschatology is also a very important aspect for my dissertation.

I know in this room many of you are specialized in the study of the faith and of eschatology

and also of papacy.

So I would truly welcome and appreciate your comments and criticism on my work.

So this is the title of my lecture.

I think it's quite long and maybe you could be confused about it.

A pope, a saint, and a foreigner of the Antichrist, are these three figures or just one figure?

And what are the relationships between each other?

So because I'm measuring in the medieval papal history, so I would like to analyze the eschatological

interpretations of these three figures in the context and in the sources of the papacy.

This is the outline of my presentation.

And firstly, I will give a short introduction of the use of eschatology in the medieval

history by analyzing a classic case that is the conflict between the pope and the unpair.

And specifically, that is a propagandistic quarrel between the Roman church and the emperor,

Frederick II, after his excommunication in the year 1239.

And then I will move to my questions and also I will have an overlook of the sources which

I used.

And for the main part, the part two, I will examine three figures in the eschatological

context by the Roman courier under the pope Gregory IX.

And then I will come to a conclusion.

So the conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman emperor, Frederick II, is one of

the classic cases of the use of eschatology in the medieval politics.

From this map, maybe we could understand what had happened.

Frederick II is the son of Henry VI, the Holy Roman emperor, and Constans, the king of

Sicily.

Frederick became the king of Sicily in the year 1198 because of his inheritance from

his mother Constans.

And then in 1212, he was elected and crowned as the king of Germany.

And eight years later, he was crowned by the pope who known as the third in Rome as Holy

Roman Emperor.

And from 1220, Frederick quickly consolidated his power in the kingdom of Sicily.

And then in the year 1227, he was excommunicated by the pope Gregory IX at the very beginning

of his pontificate because Frederick failed to undertake the crusade he had promised.

But maybe we will see later that was not the real reason and deep concern of the Roman

Church.