Frederick II (26 December 1194 – 13 December 1250), was one of the most powerful
Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the
House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany, and even to Jerusalem, were enormous; however, his enemies, especially the
popes, prevailed, and his dynasty collapsed soon after his death. Historians have searched for superlatives to describe him, as in the case of Professor Donald Detwiler, who wrote:
A man of extraordinary culture, energy, and ability – called by a contemporary chronicler
stupor mundi (the wonder of the world), by Nietzsche the first European, and by many historians the first modern ruler – Frederick established in Sicily and southern Italy something very much like a modern, centrally governed kingdom with an efficient bureaucracy.
[1]Viewing himself as a direct successor to the
Roman Emperors of Antiquity,
[2] 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 a co-ruler with his mother,
Constance of Hauteville, 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.
He was frequently at war with the Papacy, hemmed in between Frederick's lands in northern Italy and his
Kingdom of Sicily (the
Regno) to the south, and thus he was
excommunicated four times and often vilified in pro-papal chronicles of the time and since.
Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him the
Antichrist.
Speaking six languages (Latin, Sicilian, German, French, Greek and Arabic
[3]), Frederick was an avid patron of science and the arts. He played a major role in promoting literature through the
Sicilian School of poetry. His Sicilian royal court in
Palermo, from around 1220 to his death, 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. The school and its poetry were saluted by
Dante and his peers and predate by at least a century the use of the Tuscan idiom as the elite literary language of Italy.
[4]After his death, his line quickly died out and the
House of Hohenstaufen came to an end.