Gone Medieval - Emperor Frederick II: Scourge of the Papacy

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

One of the most important of Holy Roman Emperors, Frederick II was revered and reviled in equal measures.  He was a scholar, an architect, a poet, a scientist and a composer. Yet rumours swirled that he was a pagan, a sensualist who kept a harem, even secretly a Muslim, who was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church numerous times.In this explainer episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega tells the compelling story of one of her favourite historical figures; a ruler who fought for recognition, both on the battlefield and in the court of public perception.Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Jane and produced by Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘MEDIEVAL’ You can take part in our listener survey here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. In the 13th century, a man appeared on the European stage who was equally revered and reviled. Speaking six languages, he was a scholar, an architect, a poet, a dedicated natural philosopher, which we would now call a scientist, and a composer. Depending on who you asked, he was either the stupor Mundi, the astonishment of the world, Or the preambulist Antichristi, the predecessor of Antichrist.

Rumors swirled that he was a pagan, an epicure, a sensualist who kept a harem, or secretly a Muslim. Gossip notwithstanding what he was without a shadow of a doubt, was one of the most important Holy Roman emperors the world has ever seen. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, and today on Gone Medieval from History Hit, we will be considering one of my favorite historical figures of all time. the Emperor Frederick II, Renaissance man, and political player par excellence. Frederick II was born in the Italian town of Lesse on the 26th of December 1194, becoming the heir apparent to both Sicily and the Holy Roman Empire.

The road to his recognition was by no means a smooth one, however, and was fought for on the battlefield as well as in the court of public perception. You see, Frederick was the son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry the 6th, and it had always been intended that he would have a Sicilian son. Ten years earlier, Henry's father had begun negotiations to engage the young man to Constance of Sicily, the aunt of King William of Sicily, who was nevertheless his only heir, as William's marriage had remained childless. Constance's life up to this point had been awed, even for a noble woman. At almost 30 years old, she had been confined to a nunnery since childhood

because it had been predicted that her marriage would destroy Sicily. As a result, she'd been whisked away to ensure her celadacy and the safety of the kingdom until a sensible marriage offer could be brokered. An imperial marriage proposal was as good as one could get at the time, and Constance was duly taken from the nunnery and on to the political stage of Europe, with a wedding to Henry on the 27th of January 1186 in Milan. Henry understood that his marriage was a way of folding Sicily into the considerable, imperial lands, which at this point stretched from the lowlands on the North Sea, down

through northern Italy bordering the papal states. But so did a lot of other people. Many others were eyeing the same throne, and they felt like the Imperial Crown had quite enough land already, thank you. The Sicilian nobility instead chose to elect Tancred of Leca as King, necessitating a military intervention from Henry. The initial campaign went poorly, with Constance being captured by Tancred and Henry fleeing back north.

The Pope himself, Celestine III, had to step in and negotiate Constance's release. But that necessitated a papal acknowledgement of Sicily as Tangred's. Henry and his men refused to concede to this and kidnapped Constance back as she was being transported to Rome to be protected by the Pope. Thus, things looked pretty bad for Henry and Constance's designs on Sicily. But then Henry had a stroke of luck when Richard the Lionheart was captured by Duke Leopold I of Austria on his way back from the Third Crusade.

Richard had been in alliance with Tankrad of Lege and Henry took this personally, holding him for ransom for the literally kingly son of 150,000 silver marks. Richard and his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, managed to raise the amount, plus a further interest payment, and Richard was released after giving an oath of allegiance

to Henry. With that kind of considerable money in his pocket, Henry once again set his sights south towards Sicily, where in February 1194, Tancred had conveniently died, leaving his young son William III on the throne. Henry and Constance more or less strolled back into Palermo, where the locals had little taste for more warfare, particularly on behalf of a child. And on the 25th of December of that year, Henry was crowned the King of Sicily. Frederick was born the next day and Christian Constantine, a name which reflected his heritage. He was son of the Norman conquerors of Sicily and an emperor apparent like Constantine the Great before him. However, if Henry had been fighting for the young Frederick's inheritance, Constance would have to fight for his acceptance as a legitimate heir.

Because of her comparatively advanced age and the general misogyny of European society, there were rumors that Frederick couldn't possibly be Henry's actual son. It was recorded by the 12th century English chronicler, Roger of Houdin, that Constance swore before a papal legate on the Gospels that Henry was her son's father. In the 14th century, his birth was still considered so unusual that the Doge of Venice, Andrea Dandolo, claimed that Henry was so worried about Frederick's legitimacy, that he had consulted the mystic theologian Jocchem of Fiore regarding it. Allegedly, Jokkim, in third, had consulted prophecies of Merlin and an ancient Sybil to reissue.

sure Henry. These stories are, of course, just that. However, they give us a good indication of how unusual the circumstances of Frederick's birth were and how lasting his legacy was. Here was a man who would inspire gossip for centuries. Once Constance was strong enough to travel in this spring, she duly headed to Palermo to rejoin her husband in the land of her birth. Frederick, meanwhile, was left in the papal states at Fulignon and braised by the Dutch. as a spoletto, as was the style at the time. He was soon crowned King of the Romans, the title which makes it clear that one is the heir to the Holy Roman Empire, the next year at only two years of age. The following year, his father Henry died, and he was thus sent to his mother in Palermo

to be crowned the King of Sicily on the 17th of May 1198. He was three years old. By this time, however, even if Frederick had been crowned King of the Roman, Romans, the political tide was turning against him. After all, a three-year-old was hardly a promising Holy Roman Emperor. Further, many weren't thrilled by the idea of an emperor who also controlled Sicily. The papacy in particular was uncomfortable about having the papal states in what was essentially a Holy Roman imperial sandwich. To shore up an easy ascent to the Sicilian throne, Constance thus allowed Frederick's claim to the imperial throne to lapse and set herself up as Frederick's regent there. Soon, however, Constance would die as well.

This meant Frederick once again needed a new guardian. Into this boyd stepped the Pope himself. But this wasn't just any Pope. It was the great reformer Innocent III, who had spent his papal career setting the church up as a legalistic juggernaut that we recognized from the high and late medieval period. Frederick was assigned a tutor named Sensio, who would later become Pope Honoreus,

third. This sort of attention shows that the papacy understood that even if Frederick wasn't currently the Holy Roman Emperor, he had a real claim to the title, and there was a possibility that he would indeed come to take the throne at some point. With him under the care of the papacy, they hoped to instill in him pro-papacy values and raise a well-educated, pious young man. The well-educated part certainly came true, and soon Frederick could chat. away not only in Sicilian, but Greek, Arabic, Latin, and Provencal. In 1208, Frederick succeeded to the Sicilian throne outright, and Pope Innocent III went off to find a suitable bride for his young protege. The bride in question was the much more mature Constance of Aragon, now a widow

after the death of her first husband, the King of Hungary. But soon all would not be well on the Italian Peninsula. The new Holy Roman Emperor, Otto of Brunswick, had been crowned by Innocent the 3rd in 1209. Otto was incredibly wary of the young Frederick and feared that he could at any time rise against both Otto himself as well as the lower nobility in general. Otto thus began a campaign into Italy with the intention of bringing war to Frederick's doorstep. He got as far as Calabria, the boot of Italy's heel. But by then he had enraged the paper. The only thing that Innocent the Third had wanted was to make sure there weren't imperial troops in his backyard, and look where things had got. In retaliation, in September 1211, the Emperor Otto was excommunicated at the Diet of Nuremberg.

If, as we discussed in our Holy Roman Empire explainer, the point of the Holy Roman Emperor was to act as the theoretical military wing of the Church, then being excommunicated officially meant that you were no longer emperor. No one can be excommunicated and holy after all. So Otto was, as far as the papacy was concerned, dethroned. As such, a new emperor had to be elected in his place. The Pope's protege, Frederick. To keep the Pope's suite, Frederick promised to keep the imperial titles separate to that of the Sicilian king. He left his wife as regent in Palermo and headed north for an imperial coronation.

He was thus crowned again, as King of the Romans, on 9th of December 1212 in Mainz. And then, in July 1215, he was crowned the king of the Germans in Charlemagne's imperial city, Aachen. But Frederick was not yet the emperor, and that required a whole separate coronation, preferably in Rome, preferably by the Pope.

So Frederick had a plan to keep the papacy sweet. After receiving the crown of Germany, he announced that he would be taking the cross and going on crusade, and he challenged all the nobles present to do the same. This was fairly ingenious, but it also meant that the Pope actually, you know, expected him to go on crusade.

And soon enough, there was one for Frederick to participate in, the Fifth Crusade, which was called in 1217. The Fifth Crusade was yet another attempt to retake the Holy Land and particularly Jerusalem, but this time via Egypt. There, the papal-legged Pelagius was busily negotiating with the Sultan Al-Kamil. Al-Kamil had proposed to restore the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem if the papacy would call all of the knights then swarming Egypt back to Europe.

However, Pelagius was certain that Frederick would arrive at any moment with a huge army, and he continued to stall instead of agreeing. Pelagius would end up waiting in vain, as Frederick simply sent a number of forces under the command of the Duke of Bavaria in his stead. But as far as Frederick was coming, concerned he had bigger fish to fry. He was involved in all sorts of political intrigue in Europe, including intervening on the side of the French crown in the War of Succession in 1218.

He couldn't very well be expected to drop everything and take off to Egypt, now could he? The papacy didn't love this, but nevertheless, in 1220, Frederick was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by his ex-tutor who had by now ascended to the papal throne. It's likely that Honorese figured that if Henry had promised a crusade at his coronation as king of the Germans, he would be guilted into action after a papal coronation. This did not happen, and Frederick remained firmly in Sicily. The crusading forces were absolutely routed and lost their tollhold in Dometea and Egypt in 1221, without, of course, retaking Jerusalem. Frederick thus became an easy scapegoat for this failure and was directly blamed

by pretty much everyone who cared enough to keep up. But Frederick was fairly unfazed by this. He was busy in Sicily where he kept one of the most significant centers of learning in Europe. He employed both Muslim and Jewish intellectuals as well as Christians to translate Greek and Arabic works. His court was home to a number of poets as well. It was their works that are the first ever recorded in Sicilian, and these would go on to influence the very development of the Italian language itself

and have a great influence on the poet Dante a few decades. decades later. But Frederick wasn't just a literary nerd, he was also a sportsman, and he wrote the first ever work on falconry, which he called De Arti Venanandi comavibus, or the art of hunting with birds. The book was influenced by Aristotle as well as Arabic works, and was full of careful observations of and experiments with birds. His court maintained as many as 50 falconers at one time, and he ordered falcons imported from as far away as Greenland. He also collected exotic animals more generally and had a menagerie which included cheetahs and elephant and giraffes. But not everything that Frederick got up to was benign.

He was also, allegedly, a keen experimenter on humans. According to the 13th century Franciscan chronicler Salim Benning, Frederick had become interested in whether humans had a natural language bestowed on Adam and Eve from God. To learn about this, he took a... a number of orphan children. According to Salimbenny, bidding foster mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children,

but in no wise to prattle or speak with them, for he would have learned whether they would speak the Hebrew language, which had been the first, or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain,

for the children could not live without clappings of the hands and gestures and gladness, of countenance and blandishments. In other words, they died. Frederick's scientific temperament and disregard for human life was further illustrated in a series of experiments to determine whether man really had a soul.

He was an Epicurean, wherefore, partly of himself and partly through his wise men, he sought out all that he could find in Holy Scripture, which might make for the proof that there was no other life after death. allegedly to do so. He enclosed a living man in a cask that he might die there, wishing thereby to show that the soul perished utterly, as if he might say the word of Isaiah,

let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. Apparently the idea here was that the soul would have to fly out through a gap in the cask upon the man's death to escape. If it did not, it was proof that there was not, in fact, an afterlife. Of course, Salam Béna himself admits that perhaps he is an untrustworthy narrator on Frederick's exploits, admitting, I have seen him and once I loved him, and to be brief, if he had been rightly Catholic and had loved God and his church, he would have had few emperors his equal in the world. In other words, if he had been a devout Christian with not an ounce of skepticism, perhaps reports like this would not have circumstances. Of course, when I say devout Christian, I don't mean to imply that Frederick was the heretic that Salambeni makes him out to be.

Really, Salambenny's problem with Frederick wasn't that he wasn't Christian. It was that he wasn't the right kind of Christian. The right kind of Christian would be one who was subservient to the papacy and hopping on a boat to Egypt the minute the Pope said so. However, this doesn't really mean much in terms of what Frederick's personal belief was. and it says a lot more about his intention as emperor. Frederick, like his father and grandfather before him, upheld the policy of Kaysa idea. For him, the office of the emperor was absolutely not dependent on how the Pope felt about him at any given time. Instead, the Emperor was more or less God's viceroy or representative on Earth.

This was a position shared by the Eastern Roman emperors over in Constantinople, and had a long history which he was determined to continue. Thus, one can understand why Frederick wasn't interested in sucking up to the papacy. Would it be nice to do some things that advanced Christendom? Yes. Did that mean that you left town just because the Pope told you to? Absolutely not. And you certainly couldn't do so at the drop of the hat if there was politicking to be done in your own backyard.

Further, like any Roman emperor before him, Frederick had to be prepared to represent an act on behalf of the people. people as a whole. He kept a deliberately diverse court, which included courtiers from across the imperial lands, as well as individuals like his treasury custodian Johannes Morris. As his name indicates, Johannes was a black man and a son of a Saracen slave who was freed and eventually climbed the ranks of Frederick's court to become Grand Chamberlain of Sicily. This willingness to consort with people from varying backgrounds and religions was to Frederick a pragmatic way to run a diverse empire from a capital on an island in the Mediterranean.

It was to the church, who wanted a more easily cowed imperial representative, a suspect position. Why was Frederick hanging out with Muslim and Jewish people and consulting them? Ideal rulers should be like Louis the 9th of France, who would come to power a few decades after Frederick, and eventually became a saint. Louis went out of his way to persecute the Jewish community in France and gave a lot of money to the church as a part of it. That was the sort of thing that got a king made a saint, not making friends and hanging out with infidels. However, even the hypercritical church had to admit that it wasn't all bad.

Frederick also did things they liked, like when he established the University of Naples in 1224, the world's oldest state university. Even if a university was created by a secular ruler, the church still had to admit that expanding the ranks of the educated was a pretty cool thing. Frederick also supported a number of prominent scholars, keeping up a lively correspondence on what we would now call scientific and mathematical questions. He also directly patronized several astronomers and astrologers, which at the time were pretty much the same thing,

including the famous Michael Scott and Guido Bonatti, the latter of whom advised the emperor directly. Thus, the reports we have of what Frederick got up to at court may be exaggerated. When your major witnesses come from a hostile church, they have to be taken with a grain of salt. It's possible that he did monstrous things in the name of science, but it's probably equally likely that such stories survive to us as part of a smear campaign more generally. Despite his busy time at court and general disinterest in all things, papal, there would eventually be a reason for Frederick to go on the sixth crusade. Power.

In 1225, Frederick married Isabella the second of Jerusalem, following the death of his first wife. Isabella, as her name implies, was heiress to the kingdom of Jerusalem, and soon Frederick had seen to it that all the rights of his father-in-law, John O'Brien, had been transferred to Frederick himself. Now he had a reason to seek the Holy Land. Thus, he set sail on August of 1227, and was immediately struck ill by an epidemic of something or another. Hammond of Salza, a Teutonic knight, advised him that he must return back to his kingdom to

recuperate, and Frederick did so. This did not go down well with the papacy at all, and many, including the contemporary chronicle Roger of Wendover, reported that he had been merely... Pretending to make for the Holy Land, and this conduct of the Emperor redounded much to his disgrace to the injury of the whole business at the Crusade. He was thus excommunicated on the 29th of September 1227 by Pope Gregory the 9th. And yet, the following year, in June 1228, Frederick was on the move again, sailing for the east and eventually arriving at Accra in September.

You would think that the BBC would have been delighted, but because Frederick had been excommunicated, technically he wasn't allowed to go on a crusade because he wasn't a Christian. Frederick was undeterred, however, and managed to negotiate with Sultan al-Kamil for the return of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem. As a part of this deal, it was stipulated that the dome of Iraq and Al-Axomosk would remain expressly under Muslim control, evidence once again of Frederick's pragmatic nature and friendly interest in Muslim people and religion. This was a great bit of statescraft. And the church hated it. Particularly, the Templars and Crusaders on the ground in the east,

who argued that this was simply a way for Frederick to gain more power and had nothing to do with retaking the entire holy land for the church. And, to be fair, they were probably right. Frederick wasted no time in having himself crowned king of Jerusalem, though by now his wife had died, and technically their infant's son was the rightful king, not Frederick himself. Nevertheless, he was crowned, and Frederick immediately sailed back to Sicily. It was a complex situation.

On the one hand, this was the only even marginally successful crusade for quite some time. On the other, it had been undertaken by a man who was excommunicated, didn't fulfill the church's goals, and left Frederick's supporters at war with the local nobility in the Levant, leading to a civil war which we now refer to as the War of the Lombards. By 1244, these gains would be lost once again, and Jerusalem would return to Muslim control. As miffed as the church may have been, it would soon find a reason to make up to Frederick. While he had been away, his regent, Reynolds of Spoletto, had engaged in some light attacking of the nearby Duchy of Spoletto next door to the papal states. In retaliation, the church attacked southern Italy.

Frederick hastened back to Italy in June 1229, recovering all the lands that the papacy had taken. but judiciously avoiding attacking the papal states themselves. The papacy basically had to admit it had messed up, and in July 1230, Frederick's excommunication was lifted. This piece would not last long, however. Frederick was constantly having issues with rebel cities in the northern Italian area of Lombardy, home to such important cities as Milan,

and he wanted to suppress these. But to the papacy, this was simply too close for comfort for the emperor to be parading around. The church pushed Frederick to handle the matter diplomatically rather than by war. Frederick, however, preferred all-out war, and he marched on Milan, Brescia, Bologna, and Piacenza. For his trouble, he was excommunicated. Again, by Pope Gregory 9th in 1239. In retaliation, he kicked all of the Franciscans and Dominicans out of Lombardy

and put his son Enzo in charge of northern Italy, where, he began to attack the papal states. Meanwhile, Frederick set his sights on destroying Venice who had sent ships against Sicily during all the chaos. Matters came to a head in 1241, with Frederick gathering an army to march on Rome itself. Gregory, however, managed to put a stop to this attack by dying. Frederick, magnanimous in his continued life,

said that he hadn't been mad at the papacy per se, just Gregory. he pulled his troops back and returned to Sicily. Soon, though, the papacy would have a reason to seek the intervention of Frederick when a new threat approached Christendom, a Mongol invasion of Hungary under Batu Khan. The Hungarian king, Bella IV, called for aid to Frederick directly, and Frencric ignored it, as Bella had sided with the papacy over Frederick.

The papacy objected, saying that the Holy Roman Emperor existed to protect Christendom. Frederick countered that he was only supposed to defend the empire on this side of the Alps. Instead, Frederick ordered his vassals in Bohemia, Austria, and Swabia to avoid direct conflict with the Mongols and bring in food stocks and ensure the populace as a whole was well armed. Meanwhile, Batu Khan wrote to Frederick demanding his submission. Frederick wrote back, saying that if the Khan took all of Europe, he should employ Frederick as a falconer because he had real talent in the area. Still, all flippancy aside,

he wrote to his brother-in-law, Henry III of England, suggesting that they, along with the King of France, might actually need to launch a crusade if things got too sticky. Despite the worries and recriminations, all the worry was eventually for naught, as the Mongols simply left. Batu Khan had received word of the death of the great Khan Ogadai. As a result, a Kuraltai, or Count,

had been called. And as a potential candidate for Great Khan, Batu needed to be in Karokorum. So, he and his troops returned to the steps in the spring of 1242, solving the problem. This was just as well, because Frederick would continue to have other issues. He was soon embroiled in a conflict with yet another Pope, Pope Innocent IV, who once again excommunicated the emperor, saying that he was of Saracen Kusuf. the friend of Babylon Sultan, and provided with a harem guarded by eunuchs. Now, all of these things might actually have been true, but as far as Frederick was concerned, innocent didn't have to be rude about it. Once again, armies were called up, cities were besieged,

and by February 1248, Frederick had lost control of the important imperial city of Parma. In addition, other important imperial cities like Spoleto, Romagna, and Marshal, were soon uncooperative, as they felt they could no longer afford the costs of Frederick's constant war. More to the point, this was also an opportunity for them to get out from under the imperial thumb and save some money for themselves. Meanwhile, his son Enzo, his representative in the north of Italy, was captured in Bologna and never again to be released. The empire lost Como, and then Modena, but soon regained the city of Ravenna. And through it all, Frederick was in bed and gravely ill.

He would die on the 13th of December, 1250, in Castle Fiorentino in Apulia after a bout of dysentery, wearing the robe of a Cistercian monk. So, apparently, he was not so much of a disbeliever as many accounts would have. Clearly, he was preparing his body at the very least to meet in eternity with God. As a part of this, he had announced that all pages of him. Maple lands must be returned to the church. All prisoners he held must be freed, and all taxes should be reduced. All of this is somewhat indicative of some last-minute moral calculus and beth hedging. Clearly, even Frederick thought that some of his policies may have gone too far, and he wanted to

be sure that he wouldn't be punished for them after his death. His lands passed to his legitimate sons. And there was a lot to distribute, even when not taking into account Frederick's several illegitimate sons. His son Conrad received the imperial and Sicilian crowns, Manfred, the principality of Toronto, and responsibility for Sicily while his brother was reigning in the German lands. His son Henry received Arles and Jerusalem. Only four years later, Frederick's son Conrad would die, leading to a period of imperial instability called the Great Interregnum. In this void, legends began to circulate stating that Frederick was not dead, but asleep under the Kiefhousa mountains, and would return to restore the glory of the empire. Clearly then, there was incredible affection for Frederick at the secular level that the negative accounts which survived to us belie.

Frederick may have been the bane of the church, but imperial subjects counted him as a consummate leader, the sort of man who could be looked to in times of instability, and around whom myths could be built. This is hardly the sort of story that indicates a deep-seated and universal unhappiness with a ruler. Ultimately, we will never know what went on at Frederick II's court, and certainly not what was going on in his head. It's possible that he was a lay-about falcon enthusiast who enjoyed casual sex and gruesome experiments done on hapless human victims. Alternatively, he might simply have been a monarch tired of papal meddling, who enjoyed intellectual person. suits and a diverse group of peers which made the papacy uncomfortable. It's likely that the truth is somewhere in between. He was probably a human with frailties like any other, to whom lounging in a bathhouse

surrounded by beautiful people was preferable to a dull and grinding life on doomed crusades. He just got really, really bad press for it. One way or another, he was the sort of man who inspired fascination and breathless gossip. which this podcast is adding to almost 800 years after his death. Fair play, Frederick. Fair play. Thank you all for listening to me talk about one of my favorite people today on Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you're interested in learning more about Holy Roman imperial intrigue and who isn't,

you might enjoy our explainer on the Holy Roman Empire or our episode on the Habsburgs if you haven't already listened. And if you like the show, don't forget to rate, review it, and tell your friends about it. it. If you fancy suggesting an episode, you can drop us a line at gone medieval at historyhit.com. And trust me, if you have Holy Roman questions, I am always up for tackling them. Otherwise, my co-host Matt Lewis will be back on the Gone Medieval Throne on Friday. And as always, I'll see you next Tuesday. Until next time.