Frederick II of Germany Hohenstaufen ^{1 2}

   Another name for Frederick was Friedrich II.

  General Notes:

Holy Roman emperor (1220–50) and German king (1212–20), king of Sicily (1197–1250), and king of Jerusalem (1229–50), son of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI and of Constance, heiress of Sicily.

Rivalry for the German Crown

In 1196, Henry VI secured the election as German king, or emperor-elect, for his infant son Frederick. When Henry died (1197), his brother, Philip of Swabia, was unable to hold the German magnates to this election, but in Sicily Constance secured Frederick's investiture as king from Pope Innocent III. Prior to her death (1198) Constance named the pope as Frederick's guardian; as a child, however, he passed from one Sicilian faction to another.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Otto of Brunswick (Otto IV) and Philip of Swabia were elected rival kings. Otto finally prevailed and was crowned emperor (1209) at Rome, but immediately alienated the pope by attempting to reassert imperial control in Italy. His invasion of Apulia (1210) led Innocent to promote Frederick's coronation (1212) at Mainz as German king, even though this meant putting a Hohenstaufen on the imperial throne. After Otto's defeat at Bouvines (1214) by Frederick's French ally King Philip II, Frederick was recrowned (1215) at Aachen and took the Cross (i.e., pledged to lead a Crusade).

Beginning of Reign in Sicily

Despite his promises to Pope Innocent III that when crowned Holy Roman emperor he would separate Sicily from the empire by establishing a regency there for his infant son Henry, he reversed these arrangements in 1220. Promising Pope Honorius III to start on his crusade in the following year, he secured Henry's election as German king, and thus his position as imperial successor, shortly before his own imperial coronation at Rome (22 Nov 1220). This action seemed to insure the union of Sicily and the empire. Under Frederick, however, no such union was effected; Henry governed, first under a regency, in Germany, and Frederick governed Italy and Sicily, which became the seat of his empire.

After his coronation Frederick returned to Sicily, towards which he was drawn by his Norman parentage on the mother's side, while the character of his own German people did not attract his sympathies. He had grown up in Sicily where Norman, Greek, and Mohammedan civilization had intermingled, at once strengthening and repelling one another. While in Germany, the success of Frederick's early rule (1212–20) was due largely to his lavishness with imperial lands and rights. In his Sicilian kingdom, which included S Italy, he pursued the reverse of his German policy; he suppressed the barons, transported the Saracens to a colony on the mainland, recovered alienated lands, and began his legislative reforms. In 1224 he founded the university at Naples.

King of Jerusalem

Having married (1225) Yolande (Isabella or Iolanthe), heiress of Jerusalem and daughter of John of Brienne, he claimed the crown of Jerusalem, but again postponed his departure on crusade. He further offended the pope by reasserting at the Diet of Cremona (1226) the imperial claim to Lombardy. The Lombard League was immediately revived, but open conflict did not break out until 1236. On the insistent demand of the new pope Gregory IX, and under pain of excommunication, Frederick embarked on a crusade (Sept., 1227), but a malignant fever destroyed a great part of his army and prostrated the king himself. Nevertheless Gregory IX declared Frederick excommunicated (29 Sept., 1227).

In 1228 he finally embarked. His “crusade,” actually a state visit, was a diplomatic victory. At Jaffa he made a treaty by which Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem were surrendered to the Christians, with the Mosque of Omar being left to the Muslims. On 17 March, 1229, he crowned himself King of Jerusalem. On 10 June, 1229, he landed at Brindisi on his return. During the emperor's absence the curia had taken vigorous measures against him. Frederick's energetic action after his return forced the pope to recognize the emperor's success in the East and to release him from excommunication. The treaty of San Germano (20 July, 1230), in spite of many concessions made by the Emperor, was in reality an evidence of papal defeat.

Conflict in Germany and Italy

He then turned to strengthening his Sicilian domains in preparation for the inevitable conflict with the Lombard League. Among his achievements in Sicily were his Liber Augustalis (1231), a new body of laws that were the most constructive of the era. In Germany, Frederick attempted to insure support for his Italian policy by granting the princes practically absolute authority within their territories. This policy led to a conflict with his son Henry, who objected to Frederick's virtual renunciation of his imperial rights in Germany. In 1234 Henry rebelled with the aid of the German towns, but Frederick easily deposed and imprisoned (1235) his son. Henry died in 1242. About this time Frederick married Elizabeth of England (at Worms), and in 1235 held a brilliant diet at Mainz, where he promulgated the famous Laws of the Empire, a landmark in the development of the empire and its constitutions. New measures for the maintenance of peace were enacted, the right of private feuds was greatly restricted, and an imperial court with its own seal was constituted, thereby establishing a base for the future national law.

In 1236 Frederick began a successful campaign against the Lombard cities, but in March, 1239, Pope Gregory IX joined the Lombards and excommunicated the emperor. Frederick issued a circular against the pope and seized most of the Papal States; in May, 1241, he captured a number of prelates en route from Genoa to a general council in Rome, and he was threatening Rome when Gregory died. While emperor and pope were thus at swords' points, Europe was threatened (1241) by a Mongol invasion under Batu Khan. The Mongols withdrew in 1242.

After the election (1243) of Pope Innocent IV, Frederick offered sweeping concessions to the pope and his allies, but the pope fled (1244) to Lyons, deposed Frederick at the Council of Lyons (1245), and gave the emperor's foes the privileges of Crusaders. The election (1246) of an antiking to Conrad IV, Frederick's younger son, plunged Germany into civil war. The war in Italy turned in Frederick's favor in 1250, but in December he died of dysentery.

Character and Legacy

Frederick II was one of the most arresting figures of the Middle Ages. He called himself “lord of the world”; his contemporaries either praised him as stupor mundi [wonder of the world] or reviled him as anti-Christ. Norman and German in ancestry but essentially a Sicilian, Frederick always felt a stranger in Germany. He spent most of his time in Italy and Sicily, where his legal reforms set up an efficient administration. This system he tried, with some success, to transfer to Germany.

Himself an expert trader engaging in far-flung business affairs, Frederick encouraged commerce and soon expanded it to Spain, Morocco, and Egypt. Agriculture and industry were likewise fostered. Towns, though at first somewhat curbed, enjoyed a more generous treatment in the later years of his reign, and many developed into important trade centers.

Frederick was also a gifted artist and scientist. A poet himself, he was surrounded by Provençal troubadours and German minnesingers. He patronized science and philosophy and interested himself in medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology. His De arte venandi cum avibus, on hawking as well as the anatomy and life of birds, was the first modern ornithology. Frederick's personality was a curious mixture of German-Christian and Byzantine-Muslim influences. Although Christian, he maintained a harem; though he was frequently at odds with the papacy, he ruthlessly persecuted heretics; though sensitive to art and poetry, he could be extremely cruel.

The intense struggle between Frederick and the papacy led to the ruin of the house of Hohenstaufen and severely damaged papal prestige. With his rule the great days of the German empire ended and the rise of states in Italy began. The interregnum ended only with the election (1273) of Rudolf I of Hapsburg.

For some time fortune alternately smiled and frowned on Frederick in Italy, buit, after completing all his preparations for a decisive battle, he died at Florentina in Apulia, and was buried at Palermo. In German legend he continued to live as the emperor fated to return and reform both Church and State. In more recent times, however, he has had to yield his place in popular legend to Frederick Barbarossa, a figure more in harmony with German sentiment.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Acceded: Holy Roman Emperor, 1220.

Frederick married Constance of Aragon, daughter of Alphonso II the Chaste of Aragón and Sancha of Castile, in Feb 1210. (Constance of Aragon was born before 1183 and died on 23 Jun 1222.)

Frederick next married Yolande of Brienne, daughter of John of Brienne and Maria of Montferrat, in 1225. (Yolande of Brienne was born in 1212 and died on 30 Apr 1228.)

Frederick had children with Bianca Lancia.

  Marriage Notes:

Frederick's illegitimate son Manfred, King of Sicily, was born in 1231 of Bianca, the daughter of Count Bonifacio Lancia. According to some accounts, Frederick married Bianca on his deathbed, in order to make Manfred's birth legitimate, but there is no consensus on this. ³

Frederick next married Isabella of England, daughter of John I Lackland of England and Isabella of Angoulême Taillefer, on 20 Jul 1235 in Worms Cathedral, Germany. (Isabella of England was born in 1214 in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England and died on 1 Dec 1241 in Foggia, Naples.)

  Marriage Notes:

Sources differ over which Isabel Frederick married, some say Isabella daughter of John I Lackland of England and some say daughter of John of Brienne King of Jerusalem and Emperor of Constantinople. It is probable that Frederick first married Constance of Hungary (1210), then Yolande (Isabella or Iolanthe), heiress of Jerusalem (1225), and finally Isabella (Elizabeth) of England (1235).

Elizabeth and Frederick had four children:
Hohenstaufens, Jordan of Germany, b. 1236 (died the same year).
Hohenstaufens, Margaret of Germany, b. 1237
Hohenstaufens, Agnes of Germany, b. 1237
Hohenstaufens, Henry of Germany, King of Jerusalem, b. 18 JAN 1238