Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick II was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and King of Jerusalem from 1225. He was the son of Emperor Henry VI of the Hohenstaufen dynasty and Queen Constance I of Sicily of the Hauteville dynasty.
Frederick was one of the most brilliant and powerful figures of the Middle Ages and ruled a vast area, beginning with Sicily and stretching through Italy all the way north to Germany. Viewing himself as a direct successor to the Roman emperors of antiquity, he was Emperor of the Romans from his papal coronation in 1220 until his death; he was also a claimant 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. At the age of three, he was crowned King of Sicily as co-ruler with his mother, Constance, Queen of Sicily, the daughter of Roger II of Sicily. His other royal title was King of Jerusalem by virtue of marriage and his connection with the Sixth Crusade. Frequently at war with the papacy, which was hemmed in between Frederick's lands in northern Italy and his Kingdom of Sicily to the south, he was "excommunicated four times between 1227 and his own death in 1250", and was often vilified in pro-papal chronicles of the time and after. Pope Innocent IV went so far as to declare him preambulus Antichristi.
For his many-sided activities, dynamic personality and talents Frederick II has been called the greatest of all the German emperors, perhaps even of all medieval rulers. In the Kingdom of Sicily and much of Italy, Frederick built upon the work of his Norman predecessors and forged an early absolutist state bound together by an efficient secular bureaucracy. He was known by the appellation Stupor mundi, enjoying a reputation as a Renaissance man avant la lettre and polymath even today: a visionary statesman, an inspired naturalist, scholar, mathematician, architect, poet and composer. Frederick also reportedly spoke six languages: Latin, Sicilian, Middle High German, Old French, Greek, and Arabic. As an avid patron of science and the arts, he played a major role in promoting literature through the Sicilian School of poetry. His magnificent Sicilian imperial-royal court in Palermo, beginning around 1220, was the cultural and intellectual hub of the early 13th century and saw the first use of a literary form of an Italo-Romance language, Sicilian. The poetry that emanated from the school had a significant influence on literature and on what was to become the modern Italian language. He was also the first monarch to formally outlaw trial by ordeal, which had come to be viewed as superstitious.
Though still in a strong position at his death, Frederick's line did not long survive, and the House of Hohenstaufen came to an end. Furthermore, the Holy Roman Empire entered a long period of decline during the Great Interregnum. His complex political and cultural legacy has continued to attract fierce debate and fascination to this day.
Birth and naming
Born in Jesi, near Ancona, Italy, on 26 December 1194, Frederick was the son of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI and Queen Constance I of Sicily. He was known as the puer Apuliae. Frederick was baptised in Assisi, in the church of San Rufino. At birth, his mother named him Constantine. This name, a masculine form of his mother's name, served to identify him closely with both his Norman heritage and his imperial heritage. It was still his name at the time of his election as King of the Romans. He was only given his grandfathers' names, becoming Frederick Roger, at his baptism when he was two years old. This dual name served the same purpose as Constantine: emphasising his dual heritage.Frederick's birth was accompanied by gossip and rumour on account of his mother's advanced age. According to Albert of Stade and Salimbene, he was not the son of Henry and Constance but was presented to Henry as his own after a faked pregnancy. His real father was variously described as a butcher of Jesi, a physician, a miller or a falconer. Frederick's birth was also associated with a prophecy of Merlin. According to Andrea Dandolo, writing at some distance but probably recording contemporary gossip, Henry doubted reports of his wife's pregnancy and was only convinced by consulting Joachim of Fiore, who confirmed that Frederick was his son by interpretation of Merlin's prophecy and the Erythraean Sibyl. A later legend claims that Constance gave birth in the public square of Jesi to silence doubters. Constance took unusual measures to prove her pregnancy and its legitimacy and Roger of Howden reports that she swore on the gospels before a papal legate that Frederick was her son by Henry. It is probable that these public acts of affirmation on account of her age gave rise to some false rumours.
In the spring of 1195, a few months after her husband Henry had been crowned king of Sicily and not long after the birth of her son, Empress Constance continued her journey to Palermo. After the unexpected death of his wife's nephew Tancred of Lecce, Henry had hurried over to assume power and to have himself crowned king. Frederick was entrusted to the care of the duchess of Spoleto, whose husband, Conrad I of Urslingen, had been named duke by Frederick Barbarossa. The young Frederick stayed in Foligno, a place located in papal territory and so under papal jurisdiction, until the death of his father, on 28 September 1197.
Minority
In 1196 at Frankfurt am Main the infant Frederick was elected King of the Romans and thus heir to his father's imperial crown. His rights in Germany were to end up disputed by Henry's brother Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick. At the death of his father Henry VI in 1197, Frederick was in Italy, travelling towards Germany, when the bad news reached his guardian, Conrad of Spoleto. Frederick was hastily brought back to his mother Constance in Palermo, Sicily, where he was crowned King of Sicily on 17 May 1198, at just three years of age. Originally his title had been Romanorum et Sicilie rex, but in 1198, after Constance found out that Philip of Swabia had been recognized by the Staufer supporters in Germany, she had her son renounce the title King of the Romans. She probably agreed with Philip that Frederick's prospects in Germany were hopeless. The decision strengthened Frederick's position in Sicily as this satisfied both Philip of Swabia and the Pope, who did not like the idea of a ruler who had authority in both Sicily and the North Alpine realm.Constance of Sicily was in her own right queen of Sicily, and she established herself as regent. Constance sided with the Pope who preferred that Sicily and the Germans were under separate governments. She renounced the authority over the Sicilian state church to the papal side, but only as Sicilian queen and not as empress, seemingly with the intention of keeping options open for Frederick. Upon Constance's death in 1198, Pope Innocent III succeeded as Frederick's guardian. Frederick's tutor during this period was Cencio, who would become Pope Honorius III. Markward of Annweiler, with the support of Henry's brother, Philip of Swabia, reclaimed the regency for himself and soon after invaded the Kingdom of Sicily. In 1200, with the help of Genoese ships, he landed in Sicily and one year later seized the young Frederick. He thus ruled Sicily until 1202, when he was succeeded by another German captain, William of Capparone, who kept Frederick under his control in the royal palace of Palermo until 1206. Frederick was subsequently under tutor Walter of Palearia, until, in 1208, he was declared of age. At that time he spoke five languages, Greek, Arabic, Latin, Provençal and Sicilian. His first task was to reassert his power over Sicily and southern Italy, where local barons and adventurers had usurped most of the authority. Pope Innocent was in search of a diplomatic match for his protege Frederick, to enable him successful future alliances. Eventually Constance of Aragon, a widow of the late King of Hungary and double his age was found.
Frederick’s childhood was turbulent as he passed through the hands of a collection of self-serving, scheming regents while the Sicilian nobility grabbed much of the royal demesne and wealth. Some chroniclers report that the young king was so destitute that he had to seek shelter among the citizens of Palermo. Frederick had no stable intimate relationships apart from, perhaps, the few of his personal household. However, the young king quickly grew to be a formidable and fiercely individualistic personality. He seems to have been highly precocious and insatiably inquisitive, impatient of restraint, with coarse manners, and already convinced of his own sense of royalty. Even in his younger years, Frederick was an avid reader and passionately interested in nature and the study of the universe. Some reports have him freely wandering the streets of cosmopolitan Palermo, talking and arguing with all manner of people, and always devouring knowledge.
Securing the Imperial Crown
had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Innocent III in October 1209. In southern Italy, Otto became the champion of those noblemen and barons who feared Frederick's increasingly strong measures to check their power, such as the dismissal of the pro-noble Walter of Palearia. The new emperor invaded Italy, where he reached Calabria without meeting much resistance.In response, Innocent sided against Otto, and in September 1211 at the Diet of Nuremberg Frederick was elected in absentia as German King by a rebellious faction backed by the pope. Innocent also excommunicated Otto, who was forced to return to Germany. Frederick sailed to Gaeta with a small following. He agreed with the pope on a future separation between the Sicilian and Imperial titles and named his wife Constance as regent. Passing through Lombardy and Engadin, he reached Konstanz in September 1212, preceding Otto by a few hours.
Frederick was crowned king on 9 December 1212 in Mainz. Frederick's authority in Germany remained tenuous, and he was recognized only in southern Germany. In the region of northern Germany, the centre of Guelph power, Otto continued to hold the reins of royal and imperial power despite his excommunication. Otto's decisive military defeat at the Bouvines forced him to withdraw to the Guelph hereditary lands where, virtually without supporters, he died in 1218.
The German princes, supported by Innocent III, again elected Frederick king of Germany in 1215, and he was crowned king in Aachen in mid-July 1215 by one of the three German archbishops. Frederick then astonished the crowd by taking the cross and calling upon the nobles present to do the same. It was not 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 22 November 1220. At the same time, Frederick's oldest son Henry took the title of King of the Romans.
Unlike most Holy Roman emperors, Frederick spent few years in Germany. In 1218, he helped King Philip II of France and Odo III, Duke of Burgundy, to bring an end to the War of Succession in Champagne by invading Lorraine, capturing and burning Nancy, capturing Theobald I, Duke of Lorraine and forcing him to withdraw his support from Erard of Brienne-Ramerupt. After his coronation in 1220, Frederick remained either in the Kingdom of Sicily or on Crusade until 1235, when he made his last journey to Germany. He returned to Italy in 1237 and stayed there for the remaining thirteen years of his life, represented in Germany by his son Conrad.