Freddi Two: An Emperor of Many Parts
He was called ‘the Stupor Mundi’ or the ‘wonder of the world.’
Who am I talking about? Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire (which was an empire at the time that he held the position. It also was at least partly Italian, and…can any empire really be holy? Seems a big ask.)
He was crowned formally King of the Romans, though better known as the King of Germany, in 1212. He became Holy Roman Emperor (again, actually an empire and based in Sicily) in 1220.
His death in 1250 kicked off the Great Interregnum, a period of 19 years when the Empire and Germany had no central leader, though his son Charles was Emperor until 1254.
This position as the last emperor before the Habsburgs would be important enough, but it isn’t what makes him memorable. He was a character, fully earning his title ‘Stupor Mundi’ in both good and bad ways.
The Crusader
Emperor Frederick II eventually headed the 6th Crusade. This is considered relatively successful, since he did actually get Egypt out of the deal.
It worked mostly through diplomacy. As part of his negotiations, he sent a geometry problem to the sultan. It’s the ultimate power nerd move: I can number better than you.
Hindsight, however, suggests this didn’t work. The sultan’s relatives took Egypt back in 1243. He had also irritated his fellow crusaders by letting Muslims keep the Dome of the Rock and installing his personally loyal followers in places of power.
He was reigning during the Eastern Crusades, when an organizations like the Templars, conquered Estonia and Prussia. However, those weren’t really his wars. He was busy beating the Lombards and facing down two civil wars in Germany. (He was forced to sign a document that gave the high lords of Germany power to mint their own coins and veto his laws as the result of one of these wars. You see how he was busy.)
The Excommunicate
Some wit said that Emperor Frederick and Pope Innocent IV agreed that Europe should be under one leader. They just disagreed about who this leader should be. This may be why he was excommunicated so many times.
The first time was because, despite having promised to go on Crusade when he was crowned King of the Germans, he skipped out on the doomed Fifth Crusade of 1217 to 1222.
Well, he had other important business to attend to, and, anyway, he started the 6th Crusade. This crusading was illegal because he was still excommunicated, so Pope Gregory IV excommunicated him again.
It didn’t take. Greg had to lift the excommunication in 1230 for political reasons.
His final excommunication was in 1245, when Pope Innocent IV declared him legally deposed.
See, a cardinal in Viterbo had instigated a rebellion and Freddi put that city under siege. Innocent managed to broker a deal that was immediately broken and led to the papal clerics making a run for it. The cardinal that started it all, Raneiri Cappocci (a villainous name if there ever was one) went on a smear campaign against Fred as they were deciding what to do with this.
All this led to Innocent decidedly turning against Fred. In fact, Innocent was so pissed off with him that he spent years exterminating Frederick’s entire line.
The Scientist
His big accomplishment was writing De Arte Vanadi cum Avibus. This was a treaty on falconry which drew heavily on Arabic sources and added his own observations and corrections about gyrfalcons.
His court also produced a compendium of medicinal cures, legislated to disconnect doctors from pharmacies, and outlawed trial by ordeal (if you remember my trials blogpost.)
He was rumored to have also done some experiments. These, however, I have some questions about. The famous one involved putting two infants on a deserted island with nursemaids who were forbidden to speak to them. This was supposed to reveal the ‘natural’ language that was first spoken by Adam, but the children reputedly died before they could speak.
Another experiment that he is accused of making is shutting up a person in a casket to watch for the soul escaping. This claim was made by an itinerant Franciscan monk named Salimbene di Adam in his ‘Chronica,’ a history of Italy from 1167 to 1282.
Reputedly, ‘Chronica’ is generally reliable. Sal is reluctantly admiring of Frederick, and his claim is in line with our boy’s interest in science. He was known to do things like sew shut a falcon’s eyes to discover if they could find meat by smell or put copper rings through fish gills to discover how they breathed.
But the monk also wrote a full pamphlet to blacken Fred’s character in 1248, shortly after Fred’s third excommunication.
The Chronica stops when it does because he wrote it in 1287, a solid 30 years after Fred’s death. He also said of our boy, “Of faith in God he had none; he was crafty, wily, avaricious, lustful, malicious, wrathful…”
So…citation needed about the island and coffin thing.
The Husband
Our boy Freddi burned through three wives, but the love of his life was his mistress, Blanche or Bianca.
Well, kind of. There were other mistresses. But Bianca Lancia started a relationship with him in 1225 and bore him three children. Matthew of Paris claimed Fred married her on her deathbed (she died in 1248,) and her oldest son Manfred was made king of Sicily by Fred’s decree.
His first wife, Constance of Aragon, was gone by the time he was crowned emperor. To get some stability at home and some of that sweet Crusader State land, he married Isabella II of Jerusalem. She died giving birth to Conrad. This was after Freddi had dispossessed his new father-in-law of his lands, and he was rumored to treat Isabella shabbily, so Isabella’s dad had two reasons to join Fred’s enemies.
Never mind, Fred got a third wife, Isabella of England, who he kept sequestered from her own brother for six years while she gave birth to four children. The oldest two died before their first birthday.
Sources:
File:Frederick II and eagle.jpg — Wikipedia
https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/timeline_1200.html
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor — Wikipedia
The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong — The Constant (constantpodcast.com) ‘The Forbidden Experiment’ 4/5/2022
Codex of Medicine of Frederick II « Facsimile edition (facsimilefinder.com)
Frederick II — The “Wonder of the World” | SciHi Blog
History of the Germans “The Court of Frederick II”