Frederick was born: December 26, 1194, Jesi, Ancona, Papal States. His father was Henry VI, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire,  and mother was Constance, heiress to the Norman southern kingdom of the Hauteville dynasty. He will eventually assume the titles of: King of Sicily, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Jerusalem, and Stupor Mundi (Wonder of the World.) He died Dec. 13, 1250, Castel Fiorentino, Apulia, Kingdom of Sicily   (Miniature from the Book of Falcons by Frederick II. Bibliotheca Palatina, Vatican Library)

Overview

After some  intrigue provoked by Tancred, a bastard grandson of Roger II, Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor and son of the great Barbarossa, was crowned King of Sicily by right of marriage at Palermo Cathedral on Christmas day 1194.

When the Emperor Henry VI  Hohenstaufen died in 1197, he was survived by his widow and young son. Frederick presented Pope Innocent III with  a problem: the papacy had a policy aimed at preventing the same power from controlling both Germany and the South of Italy (the Kingdom of Two Sicilies). The danger was that the Church  would be squeezed between the Hammer (Germany) and the Anvil (Two Sicilies), an awkward position. Frederick was heir to Two Sicilies and was a leading candidate of the powerful Hohenstaufen family to inherit his father's German Empire.

Innocent set the power of the Church against the Hohenstaufens and threw his support to Otto of Brunswick.   However, in 1215, an allied army of French and Hohenstaufen supporters defeated the supporters of Otto of Brunswick. Otto died, and Frederick became not only king of Two Sicilies but undisputed ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. Innocent III had managed to turn the potential threat of the Hammer and Anvil into a real danger to the Papacy.

 Frederick was  raised in the cosmopolitan city of Palermo, the largest city in Europe and  magnificently endowed by the Normans.  Palermo maintained trade and travel relations with the entire Mediterranean world and  was comprised of a variegated population. Founded by the Phoenicians in the 7th century it became the base of the Carthaginians in Sicily, until it was conquered by the Romans in 254 B.C. The Byzantine general Belisaruis wrested the city from the Ostrogoths  in 535 A.D. Until its conquest by the Saracens in 830, Palermo remained Byzantine. When Frederick's ancestors, the Normans, conquered Sicily in 1072 there were hundreds of mosques in the Muslim city. The Catholic Normans adopted the orderly administrative system of the Arabs; although many Arabs moved to North Africa, some remained. One of Frederick's tutors was the cadi, or judge, of the Muslim community in Palermo, which  accounts, in part, for Frederick's command of Arabic and respect for Arabic culture.

Frederick created a secular government, a feat without parallel in the middle ages, with a written constitution that guaranteed the rights of his subjects, be they Christian, Arab, or Jew, and the religious freedom that went along with it correspond to  the Norman tradition of law of administration.

In the same spirit, he founded and endowed the University of Naples in 1224 for the study of the sciences. The university graduated scientifically educated civil servants trained in Roman law  for administrative functions in government and was instrumental in promoting the development of Roman law and representative institutions in southern Italy. Moreover, he took care that its faculty included Christians, Muslims and Jews, and that all of these languages were taught, together with the laws and literature of these cultures. Equally remarkable considering the times was Frederick's edict ordering religious toleration for Christians, Muslims and Jews throughout his realm.

His first of three wives was Constance of Aragon. She died in 1222. He married Isabella in 1225. She brought him the crown of Jerusalem as a dowry. She died in childbirth in 1228. His third wife was Bianca Lancia of Piedmont.

Frederick gave away imperial power to the German nobles, ensuring that the German empire would be stalemated by internal dissension and would remain leaderless as long as he was emperor. Frederick married the heiress to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the rulers of which had recent been driven from the Holy Land by the  Muslim leader, Saladin. With the urging of the Papacy, Frederick launched the Sixth Crusade,  as soon as he arrived in the Levant, he undertook negotiations with local Muslim and concluded a treaty with  favorable terms. He controled Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and other centers of Christian worship. Jerusalem enjoyed religious toleration for Muslims, Christians and Jews. Although the treaty was not a permanent commitment, Frederick  crowned himself King of Jerusalem in 1229.  However,  an invasion of Two Sicilies by papal  troops prevented him from settling down in the Holy Land; Frederick hurried back  to protect his kingdom in Italy. The military matter was settled  quickly; by 1230 Frederick had defeated Pope Gregory's troops.

Personality

Frederick's character was marked by contradictions, perhaps  the result of an insecure and emotionally barren childhood.  He possessed superior intelligence (he was fluent in a number of languages)  and a keen sense of reality, but tolerance and intolerance went hand in hand.  Imbalance and inner discord pervaded his personality and stained his achievements.

Court Culture

Roger II (1095-1154) built on his father's Byzantine/Arab government of Sicily and established a  court at Palermo. There he spent his last 15 years in the most intellectual court of Europe, surrounded by the leading thinkers of the time. Sicily was the only land where scholars could study both Greek and Arabic. Although Frederick inherited this tradition, his court was itinerant; partly because the imperial lands of Germany and northern Italy were traditionally ruled by an itinerant emperor and partly because the demands of war kept him on the move. Naples and Messina became important administrative centers, but Frederick preferred to repose at  his hunting lodges in Apulia. He kept a harem, (guarded by black eunuchs), dancing girls, an Arab chef and a menagerie of elephants, lions and camels, but the accepted image of a court with Frederick battering with Arab, Greek, Jewish, and Latin men of genius is not supported by the evidence. Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa provided Frederick's court with a copy of his Liber Abaci in 1228, but Leonardo was not part of the court. Michael Scot, the dominating figure among Frederick's scientists spent most of his time in Toledo. The major cultural advances of the time were made by Jews, Muslims, and Christians translating Greek and Arab texts in Spain. Frederick's court, although not the center of this cultural revival, was aware of the results. Jacob Anatoli, who worked with Michael Scot at Frederick's court was a refuge from Spain. Anatoli's works included a translation of  Ptolemy's Almagest.. The Almagest had already been translated into Latin from Greek in Norman Sicily about 1160, but Anatoli worked from an Arabic text, which came with commentaries of other philosophers, such as Apollonios and Averroes. The commentaries assisted the court intellectuals  in comprehending the Almagest.

Frederick's  own work De arte venandi cum avibus, a standard work on falconry, based  on his own experimental research, is still admired today.

Building

Frederick was a tireless builder; his fortresses, citadels, and palaces  number more than 200, but there are only a few churches. He had to recon with opponents who threatened from both the sea and on land. He conducted a war on several fronts, including one at home against the power of the feudal aristocracy. In planning chain of citadels on the Adriatic, the eastern coast of Sicily, and also in the interior, he had to enlarge existing castles and fortresses (some dating  back to early Norman, Byzantine, and even Islamic periods.) as well as  build new ones.

One new building, the Castle del Monte,  is the center of this study. The castle will be taken as a metaphor for the reign of Fredrick II and the intellectual  and cultural life of the society in which he lived.