Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

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.

Personality

In Frederick II we encounter one of the most remarkable personalities in world history. His contemporaries called him 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.

Related Topics:
Sceptic - Moses - Jesus - Muhammad - Frauds - Blasphemies - Sacraments

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Even his birth was remarkable. 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.

Related Topics:
Palermo - Arab - Jew - Aragon - Spain

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Later, it appeared opportune to the pope to support Frederick as a legitimate king to support against the Emperor Otto — whom up to that time the pope had supported. 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. After a difficult passage over the Alps (the Brenner Pass was occupied by enemy troops), he came to Konstanz. The city was preparing to receive Otto and would not allow the new aspirant to the imperial title to remain in the city. However, after a solemn reading of the pope's Bull of Excommunication, the gates of the city were opened for him. Otto, who meanwhile had waited in Überlingen for the ferry, came three weeks later before the city gates and was turned away. Frederick conquered the realm by means of generous promises and donations, without spilling a drop of blood. Otto died some years later, a lonely man in the Harzburg, while Frederick would be crowned Emperor in Rome by the pope. In his coronation, too, he showed how unusual he was. At his coronation he carried a brand-new, red coronation robe with a strange ornamentation at the edge. In reality it was an Arabic inscription, which indicated that this robe dated from the year 528, not by the Christian but by Muslim calendar! About this was an Arab benediction: "May the Emperor be received well, may he enjoy 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.

Related Topics:
Guelph - Alps - Brenner Pass - Konstanz - Überlingen - Harzburg - Kunsthistorisches Museum

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A further example of how much he differed from his contemporaries was his Crusade in the Holy Land. Outside Jerusalem, with the power to take it, he parlayed five months with the Egyptian Sultan el-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 loved him, so it was no surprise that after five months Jerusalem was handed over to him. The fact that this was regarded in the Arab as in the Christian world as high treason 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.

Related Topics:
Jerusalem - Egypt - Sultan - High treason

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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. Also, it can be forgotten amidst the general enthusiasm over his book on falconry releases frequently that he also wrote a scientific book about birds or that 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".

Related Topics:
Heretic - Trials by ordeal

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~