Frederic II of the Holy roman Empire

Frederic II of Hohenstaufen (December 26th 1194 with Iesi close to Ancône - † December 13rd 1250 with Fiorentino close to San Severo) reigned on the Saint Germanic Roman Empire of 1220 with 1250. Its reign was marked by the conflicts with the papacy and it was excommunicated twice. The pope Gregoire IX went even until calling it the Antéchrist.

Last emperor of the dynasty of Hohenstaufen, it became legendary. From its contemporaries, it accepted nickname of Stupor Mundi (the Amazement of the world), so much so that one awaited his return after his death. Its personal myth merged then with that of his/her grandfather Frederic Barberousse. Frederic II had received a multi-cultural education and spoke nine languages: Latin, the Greek, the sicilian, Arabic, the Norman one, German, Hebrew, Yiddish and the Slavic one. He accommodated scientists of the whole world at his court, carried a great interest to sciences and with arts, had a menagerie. Impassioned by the Eastern culture, it would have maintained a harem.

A sicilian childhood

He was the son of the emperor Henri VI and Constance of Hauteville, itself girl of Roger II of Hauteville, first Norman king of Sicily. Its birth took place as a public, under a tent drawn up on the principal place of Iesi. The childbirth threatened to turn to the drama when one called upon two Arab doctors who saved the mother and the child. Henri VI died in 1197 and the empress died in 1198 whereas Frederic II was yet only one child. He was only king of Sicily but its kingdom was under the supervision of the pope Innocent III until its majority.

Othon IV was crowned Germanic Roman Emperor by Innocent III in 1209 but when Othon IV lost the favor of sovereign pontiff, this last supported with the Diète of Empire of Nuremberg of 1211 the election of Frederic as king of Germanie and excommunicated Othon IV. But this title of king d' Allemagne, who was a precondition to the imperial crown, did not mean anything as long as Othon IV remained emperor, until its defeat with the Bataille Bouvines in 1214.

Empire

The German princes, supported by Innocent III, elected again Frederic king d' Allemagne in 1215 and the pope to even carried the crown him to Aachen whereas he arrived to his majority. But it still took some time before the pope agreed to grant the Empire to him, for the only condition that the Royaume of Sicily and the Germanic Empire were not plain.

The pope Honorius III crowned finally Frederic II emperor in Rome in 1220. That was to be the end of the agreement between the Empire and Papacy since Frederic II did not intend to separate his two heritages, maternal Sicily and paternal Germany.

The crusade

Frederic was excommunicated by Gregoire IX in 1227 not to have honoured his promise to launch the Sixth crusade. He left the following year whereas its excommunication was not raised. Its short crusade ended in negotiations and by a show of battle with the sultan Malik Al-Kamel “the Perfect one”, with which bonds of friendship had been woven, and in an agreement, the Traité of Jaffa. It did not recover the town of Jerusalem but obtained a right of access with the holy places and was crowned king de Jérusalem the March 18th 1229.

The fight with papacy

In 1231, it promulgated famous the Constitutions of Melfi or Liber Augustalis , a collection of the laws of its kingdom which was to unify the complex laws of the Empire, subjected to the regalities multiple that had the princes and other kinglets of the Saint Worsens. The purpose of this collection was another, under cover of a standardization of the politico-legal systems, only to prevent the seizure of the small lords on the cities and their trade associations. This collection enables him to push back out of the limits of the cities while authorizing the contacts between the leagues of craftsmen and the ugly customers, in order to reinforce their development for being better opposed to the feudal desideratas local kinglets.

The conflict between Frederic and the pope Gregoire IX then Innocent IV began again. The Italian cities of Lombardy which took party for Frederic set up the group known as of the Gibelins and the more cities which were opposed to the imperial capacity and were combined to the pope was the Guelfes (sometimes the opposition between the factions of the guelfes and gibelins crossed the same city according to political alliances).

As of the years 1237 - 1238 it follows closely the businesses in Provence by naming a viceroy to Arles, then in 1240 while requiring of the count Raymond VII of Toulouse to intervene militarily against the count Raimond Bérenger IV of Provence and Jean Baussan, the archbishop of Arles.

In 1244, Innocent IV flees Rome and announces the deposition of the emperor to the Ier council of Lyon, granting even to those which would leave in war against him the statute crusaders. The bishops voter S then proclaimed in 1246 emperor Henri Raspon. Frederic II died into 1250 before to have seen the conclusion of the civil war which tore Germany and Sicily.

Fauconnery

He wrote a handbook of Fauconnerie, Of arte venandi cum avibus ( Of art to drive out by means of the birds ) whose foreword contains a praise of the experiment against the theories of the school. The work largely overflows the simple fauconnery and contains also a part on the anatomy of the birds. Thus the various positions of the wings during the flight are remarkably described. The illustrations located in the margins are of a great quality for the time. This book, because of the opinions of Frederic II, is put at the index by the Church and reappears only at the end of the 16th century. The ornithologists will discover of it the interest only at the 18th century.

A broad open-minded

The emperor showed throughout his reign of a broad open-minded and an indisputable avant-gardism.

One will first of all note his attitude during the crusades where it could be interested in the Arab culture and recognize its size and its refinement. He in particular tried to reconcile the two parties (crusaders and Jihad) in order to found a durable peace and a peaceful cohabitation. In the price of many efforts, it failed to achieve this goal but a crisis interns with the empire recalled it in Europe, not leaving him time to complete its work and he had to be satisfied with a truce.

Then, in 1241, Frederic II promulgated an edict authorizing the dissection of human corpses, being thus opposed to the Church which will hasten to cancel the edict with its death. Previously, as of XIe century, at the famous school of Salerno for example, the anatomy was taught according to that of the pig, or according to the diagrams establish by Galien in IIe century… Indeed, since the IIIe front century J. - C., time when the Greek doctors and anatomists Erasistrate and Hérophile had known their hour of glory, no professor of medicine had dissected human corpse, because the religion prohibited the mutilation of the bodies. The lifting of this interdict by the edict made it possible Italian Mondino in Bologna to improve certain notions of the human anatomy.

Assessment

Frederic had been educated by a Moslem judge in Palermo. He was a patron of sciences and he managed his State in a radically new way, from where its nicknames of “Amazement of the world” and " extraordinary transformer of the choses" (Mathieu of Paris).

It made indignant its time while getting dressed sometimes in Eastern behavior and it had even a harem to imitate the Moslem princes . He even wrote that he envied that caliphs were at the same time the spiritual and terrestrial leaders.

He set up a centralized system of administration in Sicily and tried to generalize it (with less success) in the German States, where he had to grant more and more independence the local princes as its conflict in Lombardy worsened.

The descendants of Frederic, his son legitimates Conrad IV, the son of this last Conradin and his/her illegitimate son Manfred did not reach the Empire. The Royaume of Sicily was also removed to them by the pope, who installed there Charles of Anjou. It was the end of the House of Hohenstaufen de Souabe, which left room with the Habsbourg and the rise of the Italian cities.

However the line remained indirectly in Sicily, through the grandsons of Manfred, children of his daughter Constance and Pierre III of Aragon-Catalonia, namely Jacques Ier of Sicily, then his/her brother Frederic II of Sicily and finally the descendants of this one, Pierre II, wire of the precedent, Louis Ier, wire of the precedent, Frederic III, brother of the precedent, Marie Ière, girl of the precedent (Maison of Barcelona-Aragon in Sicily).

Descendants of Frederic II

  • First wife: Constancy, infante of Aragon (1179-1222), girl of the king Alphonse II of Aragon
    • Henri II (1211-1242) duke of Souabe (1211-1242)
  • Second wife: Isabelle (Yolande) of Brienne, queen of Jerusalem (1212-1228)
    • Conrad IV, king of the Romans and Jerusalem (1228-1254)
  • Third wife: Isabelle of England (1214-1241), girl of the king Jean of England.
    • Marguerite de Hohenstaufen (1237-1280), married Albrecht, duke of Saxony
    • Three other boys who died young
  • illegitimate Enfants of Bianca Lancia which could have married the emperor in secrecy
  • illegitimate Enfant of Adelaide
    • Henri (Enzio), king de Sardaigne (1216-1272)
  • illegitimate Enfant of Mathilde
  • Other children illegitimate
    • Gerhard
    • Selvaggia (dead in 1224), married Ezzelino III da Romano, podestat of Vérone
    • Marguerite (dead in 1298), which married the count d' Acerre
    • Catherine (dead in 1272)
    • Blanchefleur (dead in 1279)
    • Richard, count de Chieti (death in 1249)
    • Frederic

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