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Frederick II ( December 26 , 1194 – December 13 , 1250 ), Holy Roman Emperor of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, was Pretender to the title of King Of The Romans from 1212 , unopposed holder of that monarchy from 1215 , and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 until his death in 1250 . He was also King of Sicily , from 1198 to 1250 , where he was raised and lived most of his life (his mother, Constance Of Sicily , was the daughter of Roger II Of Sicily ). He is also referred to as Frederick I of Sicily. His empire was frequently at war with the Papal States , so it is not surprising that he was Excommunicated twice. Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him the Anti-Christ . After his death the idea of his second coming where he would rule a 1000-year Reich took hold, possibly in part because of this. Said to speak nine from Forlì ) and having fairly advanced views on Economics . He abolished state Monopolies , internal Tolls , and import regulations within his empire. He was patron of the Sicilian School of Poetry , where in his royal court in Palermo , from around 1220 to his death, we witness 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 lingua franca 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 . He was known in his own time as the ''Stupor mundi'' ("wonder of the world"). Frederick wrote, or rewrote, a manual on the art of '' ("On the art of hunting with birds"), of which many illustrated copies survive from the 13th and 14th Centuries . LIFE Early years Born in Jesi , near Ancona , Frederick was the son of the emperor Henry VI . Some old chronicles say he was born in a public square of the city of Jesi, in northern Italy, while his father was entering triumphantly into Palermo. Frederick was baptised in Assisi . In 1196 at Frankfurt Am Main the child Frederick had already been elected to become King Of The Germans . At the death of his father in 1197 , the two-year-old Frederick was in Italy in voyage towards Germany, and when the bad news reached his guardian, Conrad of Spoleto, he was hastily brought back to Palermo to Constance. It was a good move, as Henry's empire dissolved, and its monarchy was disputed by Henry's brother Philip Of Swabia and Otto IV . His mother, Constance Of Sicily , had been in her own right queen of Sicily; she had 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, , 1198 , being only three years of age, and received some of his early formal education in Rome . He was to remember forever, however, the time spent in his early years in the court of Palermo, where Arab , German , Latin , Byzantine , Norman , Provencal and even Jewish influences combined. ''See also Personality '' Emperor power, Otto continued to hold the reins of royal and imperial power despite excommunication. Otto's decisive military loss at Bouvines lost him the practical means to hold onto kingship and emperorship, and he withdrew to the Guelph hereditary lands to die, virtually without supporters, in 1218 . (''See also Guelphs And Ghibellines ''). 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 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 13 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 , it remained the sole atheneum of Southern Italy for centuries. of the Golden Charter Of Bern .]] After the death of the last Duke of Zähringen , Frederick explicitly or implicitly granted the status of Imperial Free City to Berne . The corresponding Golden Charter Of Bern of 1218, though, has now come to be regarded as a forgery. In 1224 Frederick II confirmed the inhabitants of ''Terra Prussia'' Prussian Land, etc as ''Reichsfreie'' under authority of the emperor, the empire and the church only and exempted them from service to or jurisdiction of any local dukes. Later in 1224 the pope authorized bishop William Of Modena as Legate in Prussia etc. In 1226, by means of the Golden Bull Of Rimini he confirmed the legitimacy of rule by the Teutonic Knights under their headmaster Hermann Von Salza over the Prussia n lands east of the Vistula including Prussian Culmerland ( Chelmno Land ). The Crusade At the time he was crowned Emperor, Frederick had promised to go on Crusade . In preparation for his crusade, Frederick had, in 1225 , married Yolande Of Jerusalem , heiress to the Kingdom Of Jerusalem , and immediately taken steps to take control of the Kingdom from his new father-in-law, John Of Brienne . However, he 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 - perhaps unfairly, at this point, as his plans had been delayed by an epidemic. Frederick himself had fallen ill as a result of this epidemic, this being the main reason for his delay. Many contemporary chroniclers doubted the sincerity of Frederick's illness, stating that he had deliberately delayed for selfish resons, 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 seen on by the pope as a rude provocation, since the church could not take any part in the honor for the crusade, resulting in a second excommunication. Frederick did not attempt to take Jerusalem by force of arms. Instead, he negotiated Restitution of Jerusalem, Nazareth , and Bethlehem to the Kingdom with sultan Al-Kamil , the Ayyubid ruler of the region, who was nervous about possible war with his relatives who ruled Syria and Mesopotamia and wished to avoid further trouble from the Christians. 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. 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 . By the mid-1230s, Frederick's viceroy had been forced to leave Acre , the Capital , and by 1244 , Jerusalem itself had been 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 whilst excommunicate raised hostility from Church circles. Although in 1231 the pope rescinded Frederick's excommunication at the Peace Of San Germano , this decision was taken for a variety of reasons also related to the political situation in Europe. Of Frederick's crusade, Philip of Novara, a chronicler of the period, said "The emperor left Acre the 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, the first successful one after the failures of the fourth and fifth crusades, was adversely affected by the manner in which Frederick carried out negotiations without the support of the church. The war against the Pope and the Italian Guelphs While he may have temporarily made his peace with the pope, the lesser German princes were 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 replied expelling the Minorite s 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 vain, 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 had 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 again directed his forces against the Pope, trailing behind him a ruined and burning Umbria . Frederick destroyed Grottaferrata preparing to invade Rome. But on August 22 , 1240 , Gregory died. Frederick, showing that his war was not 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 repeated again in 1242 and 1243 . Though unfruitful, these expeditions around Rome permitted Frederick to capture treasures from the church of the cities he passed through, and gave him the opportunity to enjoy the pleasant nature of hills, lakes and woods of the Latium . His last and fiercest opponent, Innocent IV A new pope, 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, who was a friend of Frederick's as well. The conjurers, however, were unmasked by the count of , where they had found shelter, was razed, and the guilty were blinded, mutilated and burnt alive or hung. 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 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 titular 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. Marrying his son Manfred to the daughter of Amedeo Di Savoia and securing the submission of the marquis of Monferrato , Frederick also gained control of the passages of the Eastern Alps, clearing the route to Lyon, where he hoped finally to settle the long-standing dispute with the Pope. 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 was not 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 the besieged surrendered of starvation. He had a true wooden city built around the walls, pompously called ''Vittoria'' ("Victory"). Here Frederick kept the treasure with the harem and the menagerie, and from its pavilions he could attend his favourite hunting expeditions. On February 18 , 1248 , during one of these absences the camp was suddenly assaulted and conquered, and in the ensuing Battle Of Parma the Imperial side was routed. Frederick lost the Imperial treasure and, with it, any hope to keep up his struggle against the rebellious communes, as well as the triumphant Pope, who began plans for a crusade against Sicily. Though he soon recovered and rebuilt an army, this defeat spurred the rebellious feeling of many cities that could no longer bear his fiscal and monarchic regime: Romagna, Marche and Spoleto were lost. On February and Modena , but regained Ravenna and another 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 did not take part of any of these campaigns. He had been ill and probably felt himself tired. Despite the betrayals and the ill happenings he had faced in his last years, Frederick died peacefully on 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 the Duchy of Austria and the Marquisate of Styria . His will was that all the lands he had taken from the Church were to be returned to it, all the prisoners freed, and the taxes reduced, provided this not damaged the Empire's pride. 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 slept in the Kyffhaeuser 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 . HEIRS .]] All the heirs of Frederick met unlucky fates.
In 1284 Frederick's ghost resurfaced in the form of a very convincing ''false Frederick'', the impostor Tile Kolup , who impersonated the emperor with such expert knowledge and an amazing similarity that many of those who had known the true Frederick fell for him. Kolup was captured and executed, but rumors persist to this day that Kolup had been another illegitimate son of Frederick II. 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 — not seldom repelled — by the highly developed individual consciousness of the Hohenstaufen emperor, his temperamental stubbornness and his unorthodox, nearly unstoppable 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 most unusual for the era in which he lived, and to his contemporaries, highly shocking and scandalous. In his period in Jerusalem, this behaviour was much to the dislike of the Muslims too, who grew mistrustful of a Christian which was not a Christian. Even his birth was remarkable. According to chronicles from the era, in order to stanch any doubt about his origin, the already 40-year old Constance gave birth to the child publicly in a marketplace. After Henry VI, his father, died at 31, Frederick came under the guardianship of the pope, which the latter, however, neglected him on the basis of power-politics. In Palermo , where the three-year-old boy was brought after his mother's death, he grew up like a street youth. On his own, he roamed a city which swarmed with adventurers and pirates, beggars and jugglers, Arab and Jewish merchants. The only benefit from Innocent III was that at 14 years of age he married a 25-year-old widow named Constance, the daughter of the king of Aragon in what is now Spain . As it happened, both seemed reasonably happy with the arrangement, and Constance soon bore a son, Henry. Later, it appeared opportune to Innocent III to support Frederick as a legitimate king, in order to counter the Emperor Otto — whom up to that time the pope had supported. In 1212 he brought him to Rome, gave him a round of instruction in things political, and sent him, provided with a bull of excommunication against the Guelph Otto, in the direction of Germany. The voyage seemed difficult, as the sea was roamed by the ships of Pisa , as usual faithful to the official emperor, and the road north to Rome were commanded by imperial garrisons. But in that period of his life a kind of mystic and prophetical luck seemed to illuminate every step made by the young king. Frederick managed to reach in Vienna. This was typical of him: while he was being crowned by the Pope to be the highest defender of the Christian faith, his coat referred to the history of Islam. And not only that. He did not exterminate the Saracens of Sicily with fire and sword; on the contrary, he allowed them to settle on the mainland and even to build mosques. Not least, he enlisted them in his - Christian - army and even into his personal bodyguards. As these were Muslim soldiers, they were immune from papal excommunication. These among others are reasons that 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 he differed from his contemporaries was his Crusade in the Holy Land. Outside did not matter to him one whit. As the Patriarch of Jerusalem refused to crown him king, he set the crown on his own head. Besides his great tolerance (which, however, did not apply to Christian Heretics ), he had an unlimited thirst for knowledge and learning. To the horror of his contemporaries, he simply did not believe things that could not be explained by reason. So he forbade Trials By Ordeal on the firm conviction that in a duel the stronger would always win, whether he was guilty or not. Many of his laws continue to affect life down to the present day, such as the prohibition on physicians acting as their own pharmacists. This was a blow at the charlatanism under which physicians diagnosed dubious maladies and also at the same time in order to sell a useless, even dangerous "cure". Frederick's greatest passion were animals, and falcons in particular. He inherited his love for falconry from his Norman ancestors. According to a source, Frederick replied to a letter in which the Mongol khan invited him to submit that he was keen to do it, provided he was permitted to become the khan's hawker. He mantained up to 50 hawkers a time for his court, and in his letters he requested the acquiring of Arctic he sent the Egyptian sultan a rare White Bear , in exchange for a planetary worth 20,000 marks: Frederick was in fact attracted by stars, and his court was full of astrologers and astronomers. He often issued letters to the main 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 , leaves 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 would not have fetched 200 dirhams at market.''" His 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 was not 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 Commoner s. 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'' extremely weakened central authority in Germany for ages. 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 Frederick II was considered singular among the European Christian monarchs of the Middle Ages. This was observed even in his own time, although 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 as false, and hold that Frederick understood himself as a Christian monarch in the sense of a . Modern treatments of Frederick vary from sober evaluation (Stürner) to hero worship ( Ernst Kantorowicz ). However, all in all, agreement prevails over the special significance of Frederick II as Holy Roman Emperor, even if some of his actions (such as his politics with respect to Germany) remain quite dubious. 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In addition, this article uses material from the in the German-language Wikipedia, which, in turn, gives the following references; the notes are theirs.
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