Everything about Frederick Ii Holy Roman Emperor totally explained
Frederick II (
December 26,
1194 –
December 13,
1250), of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty, was a
pretender to the title of
King of the Romans from 1212 and unopposed holder of that monarchy from 1215. As such, he was
King of Germany,
of Italy, and
of Burgundy. He was also
King of Sicily from his mother's inheritance. He was
Holy Roman Emperor (
Emperor of the Romans) from his papal coronation in 1220 until his death. His original title was
King of Sicily, which he held as Frederick I from 1198 to his death. His other royal titles, accrued for a brief period of his life, were
King of Cyprus and
Jerusalem by virtue of marriage and his connection with the
Sixth Crusade.
He was raised and lived most of his life in Sicily, his mother,
Constance, being the daughter of
Roger II of Sicily. His empire was frequently at war with the
Papal States, so it's unsurprising that he was
excommunicated twice and often vilified in chronicles of the time.
Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him the
Antichrist. After his death the idea of his second coming where he'd rule a 1,000-year
reich took hold, possibly in part because of this.
He was known in his own time as Stupor mundi ("wonder of the world") and was said to speak six languages: Latin, Sicilian, German, French, Greek and Arabic. By contemporary standards, Frederick was a ruler very much ahead of his time, being an avid patron of
science and the
arts.
He was patron of the
Sicilian School of
poetry. His royal court in
Palermo, from around 1220 to his death, saw the first use of a literary form of an
Italo-Romance language,
Sicilian. The poetry that emanated from the school predates the use of the
Tuscan idiom as the preferred language of the
Italian peninsula by at least a century. The school and its poetry were well known to
Dante and his peers and had a significant influence on the literary form of what was eventually to become the modern
Italian language.
He founded the
University of Naples in 1224.
Life
Early years
Born in
Jesi, near
Ancona, Frederick was the son of the emperor
Henry VI. Some chronicles say that his mother, the forty-year-old
Constance, gave birth to him in a public square in order to forestall any doubt about his origin. Frederick was baptised in
Assisi.
In 1196 at
Frankfurt am Main the child Frederick was elected
King of the Germans. His rights in Germany were disputed by Henry's brother
Philip of Swabia and
Otto of Brunswick. At the death of his father in 1197, the two-year-old Frederick was in Italy travelling towards Germany when the bad news reached his guardian, Conrad of Spoleto. Frederick was hastily brought back to Constance in Palermo, Sicily.
His mother,
Constance of Sicily, had been in her own right queen of Sicily; she'd Frederick crowned King of Sicily and established herself as
Regent. In Frederick's name she dissolved Sicily's ties to the Empire, sending home his German counsellors (notably
Markward of Anweiler and Gualtiero da Pagliara), and renouncing his claims to the German kingship and empire.
Upon Constance's death in 1198,
Pope Innocent III succeeded as Frederick's guardian until he was of age. Frederick was crowned King of Sicily on
May 17,
1198.
Emperor
Otto of Brunswick was crowned Holy Emperor by Pope Innocent III in 1209. In September 1211 at the
Diet of Nuremberg Frederick was elected
in absentia as German King by a rebellious faction backed by Innocent, who had fallen out with Otto and excommunicated him; he was again elected in 1212 and crowned
December 9,
1212 in
Mainz; yet another coronation ceremony took place in 1215. Frederick's authority in Germany remained tenuous, and he was recognized only in southern Germany; in northern Germany, the center of
Guelph power, Otto continued to hold the reins of royal and imperial power despite excommunication. But Otto's decisive military defeat at
Bouvines forced him to withdraw to the Guelph hereditary lands where, virtually without supporters, he was murdered in 1218. The German princes, supported by Innocent III, again elected Frederick king of Germany in 1215, and the pope crowned him king in
Aachen on
July 23,
1215. It was not, however, until another five years had passed, and only after further negotiations between Frederick, Innocent III, and
Honorius III—who succeeded to the papacy after Innocent's death in 1216—that Frederick was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by Honorius III on
November 22,
1220. At the same time his oldest son
Henry took the title of King of the Romans.
Unlike most Holy Roman emperors, Frederick spent little of his life in Germany. After his coronation in 1220, he remained either in the Kingdom of Sicily or on
Crusade until 1236, when he made his last journey to Germany. (At this time, the Kingdom of Sicily, with its capital at
Palermo, extended onto the Italian mainland to include most of southern Italy.) He returned to Italy in 1237 and stayed there for the remaining thirteen years of his life, represented in Germany by his son
Conrad.
In the Kingdom of Sicily, he built on the reform of the laws begun at the
Assizes of Ariano in 1140 by his grandfather
Roger II. His initiative in this direction was visible as early as the
Assizes of Capua (1220) but came to fruition in his promulgation of the
Constitutions of Melfi (1231, also known as
Liber Augustalis), a collection of laws for his realm that was remarkable for its time and was a source of inspiration for a long time after. It made the Kingdom of Sicily an
absolutist monarchy, the first centralized
state in Europe to emerge from
feudalism; it also set a precedent for the primacy of written law. With relatively small modifications, the
Liber Augustalis remained the basis of Sicilian law until 1819.
During this period, he also built the
Castel del Monte and in 1224 created the
University of Naples: now called
Università Federico II, it remained the sole atheneum of Southern Italy for centuries.
The Sixth Crusade
At the time he was crowned Emperor, Frederick promised to go on
crusade; however, problems of stability within the empire delayed his departure and it wasn't until 1225, when, by proxy, Frederick married
Yolande of Jerusalem, heiress to the
Kingdom of Jerusalem, that his departure was assured. Frederick immediately saw to it that his new father-in-law
John of Brienne, the current king of Jerusalem, was dispossessed and his rights transferred to the emperor. Despite his new capacity as King of Jerusalem, Frederick continued to take his time in setting off, and in 1227, Frederick was excommunicated by
Pope Gregory IX for failing to honor his crusading pledge. In fact, Frederick had left for the Holy Land but was forced to return when he was struck down by an epidemic that broke out in his camp before departing. Even the master of the
Teutonic Knights,
Hermann of Salza, recommended that he return to the mainland to recuperate. Many contemporary chroniclers doubted the sincerity of Frederick's illness, stating that he'd deliberately delayed for selfish reasons, and this attitude can in part be explained by their pro-papal stance.
Roger of Wendover, a chronicler of the time, wrote ‘he went to the Mediterranean sea, and embarked with a small retinue; but after pretending to make for the holy land for three days, he said that he was seized with a sudden illness…this conduct of the emperor redounded much to his disgrace, and to the injury of the whole business of the crusade,’(‘Roger of Wendover’, Christian Society and the Crusades, ed Peters (Philadelphia 1971)).
He eventually embarked on the crusade the following year (1228), which was looked on by the Pope as a provocation, since the church couldn't take any part in the honor of the crusade, resulting in a second excommunication. By this time the crusading army had dwindled to a meagre force. Knowing that he couldn't take
Jerusalem by force of arms, Frederick negotiated along the lines of a previous agreement he'd intended to broker with the Egyptian sultan,
Al-Kamil. The treaty resulted in the
restitution of Jerusalem,
Nazareth, and
Bethlehem to the Kingdom, though there are disagreements as to the extent of the territory returned. The
Ayyubid ruler of the region, who was nervous about possible war with his relatives who ruled
Syria and
Mesopotamia, wished to avoid further trouble from the Christians, at least until his domestic rivals were subdued.
The crusade ended in a
truce and in Frederick's
coronation as
King of Jerusalem on
March 18,
1229— although this was technically improper, as Frederick's wife Yolande, the heiress, had died in the meantime, leaving their infant son
Conrad as rightful heir to the kingdom. There is also disagreement as to whether the 'coronation' was a coronation at all, as a letter written by Frederick to
Henry III of England suggests that the crown he placed on his own head was in fact the imperial crown of the Romans. In any case,
Gerald of Lausanne, the
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, didn't attend the ceremony, indeed, the next day the
Bishop of Caesarea arrived to place the city under interdict on his orders. Frederick's further attempts to rule over the Kingdom of Jerusalem were met by resistance on the part of the barons, led by
John of Ibelin, Lord of Beirut. In the mid-1230s, Frederick's viceroy was forced to leave
Acre, the
capital, and in 1244, Jerusalem itself was lost again to a new Muslim offensive.
Whilst Frederick's seeming bloodless victory in recovering Jerusalem for the cross brought him great prestige in some European circles, his decision to complete the crusade while excommunicated provoked Church hostility. Although in 1231 the Pope lifted Frederick's excommunication at the
Peace of San Germano, this decision was taken for a variety of reasons related to the political situation in Europe. Of Frederick's crusade,
Philip of Novara, a chronicler of the period, said "The emperor left Acre [afterthe conclusion of the truce]; hated, cursed, and vilified." (
The History of Philip of Novara, Christian Society and the Crusades, ed Peters. Philadelphia, 1971). Overall the success of this crusade, arguably the first successful one since the
First Crusade, was adversely affected by the manner in which Frederick carried out negotiations without the support of the church.
The itinerant
Joachimite preachers and many radical
Franciscans, the
Spirituals supported Frederick. They saw him as the
Antichrist, cleaning the Church from riches and the clergy. (Joachimite eschatology was different from most Christian eschatology, seeing the
AntiChrist as good rather than evil).
Against the excommunication on his lands, the preachers condemned the Pope, ministered sacraments and absolutions.
Brother Arnold in
Swabia proclaimed the
Second Coming for 1260. Frederick would then confiscate the riches of Rome and distribute them among the poor, the "only true Christians".
The war against the Pope and the Italian Guelphs
While he may have temporarily made his peace with the pope, Frederick found the German princes another matter. In 1231, Frederick's son Henry (who was born 1211 in Sicily, son of Frederick's first wife Constance of Aragon) claimed the crown for himself and allied with the
Lombard League. The rebellion failed, though not utterly; Henry was imprisoned in 1235, and replaced in his royal title by his brother Conrad, already the King of Jerusalem; Frederick won a decisive
battle in Cortenuova over the Lombard League in 1237.
Frederick celebrated it with a triumph in
Cremona in the manner of an
ancient Roman emperor, with the captured
carroccio (later sent to the commune of Rome) and an elephant. He rejected any suit for peace, even from
Milan which had sent a great sum of money. This demand of total surrender spurred further resistance from Milan,
Brescia,
Bologna and
Piacenza, and in October 1238 he was forced to raise the
siege of Brescia, in the course of which his enemies had tried unsuccessfully to capture him.
Frederick received the news of his excommunication by Gregory IX in the first months of 1239 while his court was in
Padova. The emperor responded by expelling the
Minorites and the preachers from Lombardy, and electing his son
Enzio as Imperial vicar for Northern Italy. Enzio soon annexed the
Romagna,
Marche and the
Duchy of Spoleto, nominally part of the
Papal States. The father announced he was to destroy the
Republic of Venice, which had sent some ships against Sicily. In December of that year Frederick marched over
Toscana, entered triumphantly into
Foligno and then in
Viterbo, whence he aimed to finally conquer Rome, in order to restore the ancient splendours of the Empire. The siege, however, was ineffective, and Frederick returned to Southern Italy, sacking
Benevento (a papal possession). Peace negotiations came to nothing.
In the meantime the
Ghibelline city of
Ferrara had fallen, and Frederick swept his way northwards capturing
Ravenna and, after
another long siege,
Faenza. The people of
Forlì (which kept its Ghibelline stance even after the collapse of
Hohenstaufen power) offered their loyal support during the capture of the rival city: as a sign of gratitude, they were granted an augmentation of the communal coat-of-arms with the Hohenstaufen eagle, together with other privileges. This episode shows how the independent cities used the rivalry between Empire and Pope as a mean to obtain the maximum advantage for themselves.
The Pope called a council, but Ghibelline
Pisa thwarted it, capturing cardinals and prelates on a ship sailing from
Genoa to Rome. Frederick thought that this time the way into Rome was opened, and he again directed his forces against the Pope, leaving behind him a ruined and burning
Umbria. Frederick destroyed
Grottaferrata preparing to invade Rome. Then, on
August 22,
1241, Gregory died. Frederick, showing that his war wasn't directed against the Church of Rome but against the Pope, drew back his troops and freed two cardinals from the jail of
Capua. Nothing changed, however, in the relationship between Papacy and Empire, as Roman troops assaulted the Imperial garrison in
Tivoli and the Emperor soon reached Rome. This back-and-forth situation was repeated again in 1242 and 1243.
His last and fiercest opponent, Innocent IV
A new pope,
Innocent IV, was elected on
June 25,
1243. He was a member of a noble Imperial family and had some relatives in Frederick's camp, so the Emperor was initially happy with his election. Innocent, however, was to become his fiercest enemy. Negotiations began in the summer of 1243, but the situation changed as
Viterbo rebelled, instigated by the intriguing Cardinal
Ranieri of Viterbo. Frederick couldn't afford to lose his main stronghold near Rome, and
besieged the city. Many authorities state that the Emperor's star began its descent with this move. Innocent convinced him to withdraw his troops, but Ranieri nonetheless had the Imperial garrison slaughtered on
November 13. Frederick was enraged. The new Pope was a master diplomat, and Frederick signed a peace treaty, which was soon broken. Innocent showed his true Guelph face, and, together with most of the Cardinals, fled via Genoese galleys to the
Ligurian republic, arriving on
July 7. His aim was to reach
Lyon, where a new council was held beginning
June 24,
1245. One month later, Innocent IV declared Frederick to be deposed as emperor, characterising him as a "friend of Babylon's sultan", "of Saracen customs", "provided with a harem guarded by eunuchs" like the schismatic emperor of
Byzantium and, in sum, a "heretic". The Pope backed
Heinrich Raspe, landgrave of
Thuringia as his rival for the imperial crown and set in motion a plot to kill Frederick and Enzio, with the support of his (the pope's) brother-in-law Orlando de Rossi, another friend of Frederick's.
The plotters, however, were unmasked by the count of
Caserta. The vengeance was terrible: the city of
Altavilla, where they'd found shelter, was razed, and the guilty were blinded, mutilated and burnt alive or hanged. An attempt to invade the Kingdom of Sicily, under the command of Ranieri, was halted at
Spello by Marino of Eboli, Imperial vicar of Spoleto.
Innocent also sent a flow of money to Germany to cut off Frederick's power at its source. The archbishops of
Köln and
Mainz also declared Frederick deposed, and in May 1246 a new king was chosen in the person of Heinrich Raspe. On
August 5 1246 Heinrich, thanks to the Pope's money, managed to defeat an army of Conrad, son of Frederick, near
Frankfurt. But Frederick strengthened his position in Southern Germany, acquiring the
Duchy of Austria, whose duke had died without heirs, and one year later Heinrich died as well. The new
anti-king was
William II, Count of Holland.
Between February and March 1247 Frederick settled the situation in Italy by means of the diet of
Terni, naming his relatives or friends as vicars of the various lands. He married his son Manfred to the daughter of
Amedeo di Savoia and secured the submission of the marquis of
Monferrato. On his part, Innocent asked protection from the King of France,
Louis IX; but the king was a friend of the Emperor and believed in his desire for peace. A papal army under the command of
Ottaviano degli Ubaldini never reached Lombardy, and the Emperor, accompanied by a massive army, held the next diet in
Turin.
The Battle of Parma and the end
An unexpected event was to change the situation dramatically. In June 1247 the important Lombard city of Parma expelled the Imperial functionaries and sided with the Guelphs. Enzio wasn't in the city and could do nothing more than ask for help from his father, who came back to lay siege to the rebels, together with his friend
Ezzelino III da Romano, tyrant of
Verona. The besieged languished as the Emperor waited for them to surrender from starvation. He had a wooden city, which he called "Vittoria", built around the walls, where he kept his treasure and the harem and menagerie, and from where he could attend his favourite hunting expeditions. On
February 18,
1248, during one of these absences, the camp was suddenly assaulted and taken, and in the ensuing
Battle of Parma the Imperial side was routed. Frederick lost the Imperial treasure and with it any hope of maintaining the impetus of his struggle against the rebellious communes and against the pope, who began plans for a crusade against Sicily. Frederick soon recovered and rebuilt an army, but this defeat encouraged resistance in many cities that could no longer bear the fiscal burden of his regime: Romagna, Marche and Spoleto were lost.
In February 1249 Frederick fired his advisor and prime minister, the famous jurist and poet
Pier delle Vigne on charges of speculation and embezzlement. Some historians suggest that Pier was planning to betray the Emperor, who, according to
Matthew of Paris, cried when he discovered the plot. Pier, blinded and in chains, died in Pisa, possibly by suicide. Even more shocking for Frederick was the capture of his son
Enzio of Sardinia by the
Bolognese at the
Battle of Fossalta, in May of the same year. Only twenty-three at the time, he was held in a palace in Bologna, where he remained captive until his death in 1272. Frederick lost another son, Richard of
Chieti. The struggle continued: the Empire lost
Como and
Modena, but regained
Ravenna. An army sent to invade the Kingdom of Sicily under the command of Cardinal Pietro Capocci was crushed in the Marche at the
Battle of Cingoli in 1250. In the first month of that year the indomitable Ranieri of Viterbo died and the Imperial
condottieri again reconquered Romagna, Marche and Spoleto, and Conrad, King of the Romans scored several victories in Germany against William of Holland.
Frederick didn't take part in of any of these campaigns. He had been ill and probably felt himself tired. Despite the betrayals and the setbacks he'd faced in his last years, Frederick died peacefully, wearing the habit of a
Cistercian monk, on
December 13, 1250 in
Castel Fiorentino near
Lucera, in
Puglia, after an attack of
dysentery. At the time of his death, his preeminent position in Europe was challenged but not lost: his testament left his legitimate son
Conrad IV the Imperial and Sicilian crowns. Manfred received the principate of
Taranto and the government of the Kingdom, Henry the Kingdom of
Arles or that of
Jerusalem, while the son of
Henry VII was entrusted with the Duchy of Austria and the Marquisate of
Styria. Frederick's will stipulated that all the lands he'd taken from the Church were to be returned to it, all the prisoners freed, and the taxes reduced, provided this didn't damage the Empire's prestige.
However, upon Conrad's death a mere four years later, the Hohenstaufen dynasty fell from power and an
interregnum began, lasting until 1273, one year after the last Hohenstaufen, Enzio, had died in his prison. During this time, a legend developed that Frederick was
not truly dead but merely sleeping in the
Kyffhäuser Mountains and would one day awaken to reestablish his empire. Over time, this legend largely transferred itself to his grandfather,
Frederick I, also known as
Barbarossa ("Redbeard").
His
sarcophagus (made of red
porphyry) lies in the
cathedral of Palermo beside those of his parents (Henry VI and Constance) as well as his grandfather, the
Norman king
Roger II of Sicily. A bust of Frederick sits in the
Walhalla temple built by
Ludwig I of Bavaria.
Personality
His contemporaries called Frederick
stupor mundi, the "wonder" — or, more precisely, the "astonishment" — "of the world"; the majority of his contemporaries, subscribing to medieval religious orthodoxy, under which the doctrines promulgated by the Church were supposed to be uniform and universal, were, indeed astonished — and sometimes repelled — by the pronounced individuality of the Hohenstaufen emperor, his temperamental stubbornness, and his unorthodox, nearly unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
Frederick II was a religious
sceptic. He is said to have denounced
Moses,
Jesus, and
Muhammad as all being
frauds and deceivers of mankind. He delighted in uttering
blasphemies and making mocking remarks directed toward Christian
sacraments and beliefs. Frederick's religious scepticism was unusual for the era in which he lived, and to his contemporaries, highly shocking and scandalous.
In
Palermo, where the three-year-old boy was brought after his mother's death, he was said to have grown up like a street youth. The only benefit from Innocent III's guardianship was that at fourteen years of age he married a twenty-five-year-old widow named Constance, the daughter of the king of
Aragon. Both seem to have been happy with the arrangement, and Constance soon bore a son, Henry.
At his coronation, he may have worn the red silk mantle that had been crafted during the reign of Roger II. It bore an Arabic inscription indicating that the robe dated from the year 528 in the Muslim calendar, and incorporated a generic benediction, wishing its wearer "vast prosperity, great generosity and high splendor, fame and magnificent endowments, and the fulfillment of his wishes and hopes. May his days and nights go in pleasure without end or change". This coronation robe can be found today in the
Schatzkammer of the
Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Rather than exterminate the
Saracens of Sicily, he allowed them to settle on the mainland and build mosques. Not least, he enlisted them in his — Christian — army and even into his personal bodyguards. As Muslim soldiers, they'd the advantage of immunity from papal excommunication. For these reasons, among others, Frederick II is listed as a representative member of the sixth region of
Dante's Inferno, The Heretics who are burned in tombs.
A further example of how much Frederick differed from his contemporaries was the conduct of his Crusade in the Holy Land. Outside
Jerusalem, with the power to take it, he parlayed five months with the
Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt
al-Kamil about the surrender of the city. The Sultan summoned him into Jerusalem and entertained him in the most lavish fashion. When the muezzin, out of consideration for Frederick, failed to make the morning call to prayer, the emperor declared: "I stayed overnight in Jerusalem, in order to overhear the prayer call of the Muslims and their worthy God". The Saracens had a good opinion of him, so it was no surprise that after five months Jerusalem was handed over to him, taking advantage of the war difficulties of al-Kamil. The fact that this was regarded in the Arab as in the Christian world as
high treason didn't matter to him. When certain members of the Knights Templar wrote al-Kamil a letter and offered to destroy Frederick if he lent them aid, al-Kamil handed the letter over to Frederick. As the Patriarch of Jerusalem refused to crown him king, he set the crown on his own head.
Besides his great tolerance (which, however, didn't apply to Christian
heretics), Frederick had an unlimited thirst for knowledge and learning. To the horror of his contemporaries, he simply didn't believe things that couldn't be explained by reason. He forbade
trials by ordeal in the firm conviction that in a duel the stronger would always win, whether or not he was guilty. Many of his laws continue to influence modern attitudes, such as his prohibition on physicians acting as their own pharmacists. This was a blow to the charlatanism under which physicians diagnosed dubious maladies in order to sell useless, even dangerous "cures".
Frederick inherited a love of
falconry from his Norman ancestors. According to one source, Frederick replied to a letter in which the
Mongol Khan invited him to "surrender" that he'd do so provided only that he be permitted to become the Khan's hawker. He maintained up to fifty hawkers at a time in his court, and in his letters he requested Arctic
gyrfalcons from
Lübeck and even from
Greenland. He commissioned his Syrian astrologer Theodor to translate the treatise
De arte venandi cum avibus, by the
Arab Moamyn, and he corrected or rewrote it himself during the interminable siege of Faenza. One of the two existing versions was modified by his son
Manfred, also a keen falconer.
Frederick loved exotic animals in general: his mobile zoo, with which he impressed the cold cities of Northern Italy and Europe, included hounds, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, lynxes, leopards and exotic birds.
He was also alleged to have carried out a
Language deprivation experiment, having young infants
raised without human interaction in an attempt to determine if there was a
natural language that they might demonstrate once their voices matured. It is claimed he was seeking to discover what language would have been imparted unto
Adam and Eve by God. The experiments were recorded by the monk
Salimbene di Adam (who despised Frederick) in his
Chronicles, who wrote that Frederick bade
"foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them; for he'd have learnt whether they'd speak the Hebrew language (which had been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they'd been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children couldn't live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments."
Frederick was also interested in the stars, and his court was host to many astrologers and astronomers. He often sent letters to the leading scholars of the time (not only in Europe) asking for solutions to questions of science, mathematics and physics.
A Damascene chronicler,
Sibt ibn al-Jawzi, left a physical description of Frederick based on the testimony of those who had seen the emperor in person in Jerusalem: "The Emperor was covered with red hair, was bald and myopic. Had he been a slave, he wouldn't have fetched 200 dirhams at market." Frederick's eyes were described variously as blue, or "green like those of a serpent".
Law reforms
His 1241
Edict of Salerno (sometimes called
Constitution of Salerno) made the first legally fixed separation of the occupations of
physician and
apothecary. Physicians were forbidden to double as
pharmacists and the prices of various medicinal remedies were fixed. This became a model for regulation of the practice of pharmacy throughout Europe.
He wasn't able to extend his legal reforms beyond Sicily to the Empire. In 1232, he was forced by the German
princes to promulgate the
Statutum in favorem principum ("statute in favor of princes"). It was a charter of
aristocratic liberties for German princes at the expense of the lesser
nobility and
commoners. The princes gained whole power of jurisdiction, and the power to strike their own coins. The emperor lost his right to establish new cities, castles and mints over their territories. The
Statutum severely weakened central authority in Germany. From 1232 the vassals of the emperor had a veto over imperial legislative decisions. Every new law established by the emperor had to be approved by the princes.
Summary/Legacy
Frederick II was considered one of the foremost European Christian monarchs of the Middle Ages. This reputation was present even in Frederick's era, even though many of his contemporaries, because of his lifelong interest in Islam, saw in him "the Hammer of Christianity", or at the very least a dissenter from Christendom. Many modern medievalists view this notion of Frederick as an anti-Christian as false, holding that Frederick understood himself as a Christian monarch in the sense of a
Byzantine emperor, thus as God's
Viceroy on earth. Other scholars view him as holding all religion in contempt, citing his rationalism and penchant for blasphemy. Whatever his personal feelings toward religion, certainly submission to the pope didn't enter into the matter. This was in line with the Hohenstaufen
Kaiseridee, the ideology claiming the Holy Roman Emperor to be the legitimate successor to the
Roman emperors.
Modern treatments (that is, 20th and 21st century literature) of Frederick vary from sober evaluation (
Wolfgang Stürner) to hero worship (
Ernst Kantorowicz). However, all agree on Frederick II's significance as Holy Roman Emperor, even if some of his actions (such as his politics with respect to Germany) remain quite dubious. In the judgment of British historian Geoffrey Barraclough, for instance, Frederick's extensive concessions to German princes -- which he made in the hopes of securing his base for his Italian projects -- undid the political achievements of his predecessors and set German unity back for centuries.
Parentage and Issue
Ancestors
Issue
Frederick, a notorious womanizer, left several children, legitimate and illegitimate:
Legitimate Issue
—First wife:
Constance of Aragon (b. 1179 - d.
23 June 1222).
Marriage:
15 August 1209,
Place:
Messina,
Sicily.
Issue:
—Second wife:
Yolande of Jerusalem (b. 1212 - d.
25 April 1228).
Marriage:
9 November 1225,
Place:
Brindisi,
Apulia.
Issue:
Margareta (b. November 1226 - d. August 1227).
Conrad IV (b. 25 April 1228 - d. 21 May 1254).
—Third wife: Isabella of England (b. 1214 - d. 1 December 1241).
Marriage: 15 July 1235,
Place: Worms, Germany.
Issue:
Jordan (b. Spring 1236 and d. 1236).; this child was given the baptismal name Jordanus as he was baptized with water brought for that purpose from the Jordan river;
Agnes (b and d. 1237).
Henry (b. 18 January 1238 - d. May 1254).
Margaret (b. 1 December 1241 - d. 8 August 1270), married Albert, Landgrave of Thuringia, later Margrave of Meissen.
Frederick had a relationship with Bianca Lancia (ca.1200/10-1230/46), possibly starting around 1225 (see her page for discussion of dating problems). One source states that it lasted 20 years. She bore him three children:
Constance (Anna) (b. 1230 - d. April 1307), married John III Ducas Vatatzes.
Manfred (b. 1232 - killed in battle, Benevento, 26 February 1266), first Regent, later King of Sicily.
Violante (b. 1233 - d. 1264), married Count Riccardo di Caserta.
Matthew of Paris relates the story of a marriage in articulo mortis (on her deathbed) between them when Bianca was dying, but this marriage was never canonized by the Church. Nevertheless, Bianca's children were apparently regarded by Frederick as legitimate, evidenced by his daughter Constance's marriage to the Nicaen Emperor, and his own will, were he appointed Manfred as Prince of Taranto and Regent of Sicily.
Mistresses and Illegitimate Issue
—N, Sicilian Countess. According to Medlands
, she was the first known mistress of Frederick II, by this time King of Sicily. Her exact parentage is unknown, but the Thomas Tusci Gesta Imperatorum et Pontificum stated she was a nobili comitissa quo in regno Sicilie erat heres.
Issue:
Frederick of Pettorana, who fled to Spain with his wife and children in 1238/1240.
—Adelheid (Adelaide) of Urslingen (b. ca. 1184 - d. ca. 1222?). Her relationship with Frederick II took place during the time he stayed in Germany (between 1215–1220). According to some sources, she was related to the Hohenburg family under the name Alayta of Vohburg (it: Alayta di Marano); but the most accepted theory stated she was the daughter of Conrad of Urslingen, Count of Assis and Duke of Spoleto.
Issue:
Enzio of Sardinia (b. 1215 - d. 1272).
—N, from the family of the Dukes of Spoleto. This relatioship is only exposed in Medlands (see above for the entry). Other sources (included Medlands!) also stated Catarina was a full sister of Enzio and, in consequence, also daughter of Adelaide of Urslingen.
Issue:
Catarina of Marano (b. 1216/18 - d. 1272), who married firstly with NN and secondly with Giacomo del Carreto, marchess of Noli and Finale.
—Matilda or Maria, from Antioch. According to the website www.sardimpex.it, this woman was a daughter (maybe illegitimate) of Prince Bohemond III of Antioch.
Issue:
Frederick of Antioch (b. 1221 - killed in battle, Foggia, 1256).
—Manna, sister of the Archbishop of Messina.
Issue:
Richard of Chieti (b. 1225 - killed in battle, Fossalta, 26 May 1249).
—Richina (Ruthina) of Beilstein-Wolfsöden (b. ca. 1205 - d. 1236). According to Medlands (who take the information from Europäische Stammtafeln), she was the wife of Count Gottfried of Löwenstein and daughter of some Count Berthold of Beilstein by his wife Adelaide of Bonfeld. Sardimpex.it stated she was the mother of Margaret, but, by the other hand, Medlands not state if she was mother of any children of Frederick II.
Issue:
Margaret of Swabia (b. 1230 - d. 1298), married Thomas of Aquino, count of Acerra.
—Unknown mistress or mistresses:
Issue:
Selvaggia (b. 1223 - d. 1244), married Ezzelino III da Romano, Podestà of Verona.
Blanchefleur (b. 1226 - d. 1279), Dominican nun in Motargis, France.
Gerhard (d. after 1255).
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Frederick Ii Holy Roman Emperor'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://frederick_ii__holy_roman_emperor.totallyexplained.com">Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
