THE SWABIANS AND FREDERICK II

"STUPOR MUNDI" (“Wonder of the World”)

1194 - 1266

Catania – Enna

After the death of Henry VI, Constance of Hauteville and Pope Innocent III ruled Sicily, being the heir, Frederick, still a child. Born in Jesi on the 26th November 1194, Frederick II Hoenstaufen (King of Sicily, Duke of Apulia and Prince of Capua at the age of four) became King of Germany, Italy and Sicily in 1215 and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by Honorius III on November 22, 1220 after several internal fights between the Germanic lords, who had obtained the election of Otto IV supported by the Pope, when he was a child. Otto was then excommunicated in 1210 for disloyalty towards the Church. Frederick grew up among the people, not in the royal palaces but in the streets of Palermo, at that time a crossroad or a settling place for many peoples; he learnt to know and deal with other civilizations, learning their languages (apparently he spoke seventeen languages when he was an adult, so that he dealt personally with the other kings or rulers for each delicate political question and problem posed the other rulers). He was open to arts and science (he supported the Medical School of Salerno) and to the study of many disciplines (treaty of falconry); he succeeded in conjugating the needs of the many peoples he ruled, avoiding (if possible) was using his great diplomacywhenever possible. As a wise legislator he managed to regulate legally the relationships between the Pope and the laic power as well as to promulgate laws that defined state rights against the feudal ones (he created the University of Naples in 1224 and promulgated the Constitutions of Melfi in 1231, also known as Liber Augustalis). He did not go to the crusades, as promised to the Church, but in 1228 (excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX)  he went to the Middle-East and diplomatically succeeded in having the dominion of Jerusalem and of the Holy sites for ten years from the Sultan of Egypt. From this started the crusade of Gregory IX against the Kingdom of Sicily stemmed form this together with his second excommunication. For this reason he retired in Apulia, where he died a few years later. Frederick II of Swabia, named Stupor mundi (“wonder of the world”) for his many skills, was like a lighthouse, a predictor of times, and thanks to him, Sicily reached the apogee of its splendour. There he restored the weakened State powers (repression of Muslims, sent to Lucera; abolition of the towns’ autonomies and the ecclesiastic and feudal privileges; limitation of the Genovese ans Pisan monopoles). Arts and literature flourished and the basic elements of the Italian stemmed in his court originally (Sicilian School – Jacopo da Lentini, considered by Dante Alighieri the precursor of the “Dolce Stil Novo”). Architecture discovered new elements. He promoted sciences and, though he aimed at an imperial European policy, he did not forget the Normans’ Mediterranean plans (trade agreements with the African sultans, pretension of the Kingdom of Jerusalem). A serious crisis followed his death (December 13 1250, Apulia - Castello di Fiorentino): after the failed attempt of a personal lordship (Pietro Ruffo) and that of the Curia for the administration of a federation of free municipalities, in 1258 Manfred (illegitimate son of Frederick II and Bianca Lancia, his fourth wife after Constance of Aragon, Yolande of Brienne and Isabel of England) appointed himself king under his father’s direction, waiting for his brother Conrad to come back. Manfred was violently succeeded by Charles I of Anjou in 1266 called by the French Pope Clement IV (battle of Benevento). The very young grandson of Frederick II, Conradin of Swabia, who marched down to Italy leading an army of 3000 men defending the rights of his progeny, was beheaded in 1268 at the age of 15 by the Angevins  in Piazza del Mercato in Naples. His death put an end to the Hohenstaufen dynasty and since then, according to the legend, his grandfather, Frederick II is expected to wake up from the long sleep he had taken in the womb of Mount Etna, although his remains are kept in the Cathedral of Palermo next to those of Roger II, Henry VI, Constance of Hauteville and Constance II, his first wife.