Frederick II

Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen dynasty ruled Sicily from 1198 and the Holy Roman Empire from 1220 until his death in 1250, holding lands that stretched from Germany through much of Italy to Sicily. Restless, learned and ruthless, he spent much of his life at war with the papacy, which excommunicated him repeatedly and denounced him as a forerunner of the Antichrist. Admirers called him Stupor Mundi, the "wonder of the world".

Frederick was born at Jesi, near Ancona, on 26 December 1194, the son of the emperor Henry VI and Constance, heiress of the Norman kings of Sicily; his paternal grandfather was Frederick Barbarossa. His father died in 1197, and the boy was crowned King of Sicily at Palermo in May 1198, aged three. His mother died later that year, leaving Pope Innocent III as his guardian. Rival regents fought over the kingdom and its king until he was declared of age in 1208.

Germany was then torn between rival kings. When the emperor Otto IV invaded southern Italy, the pope backed Frederick, who was elected German king by a rebel faction in 1211 and crowned at Mainz in December 1212. Otto's defeat by the French at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214 sealed Frederick's success, and he was crowned again at Aachen in 1215. He won over the German princes, especially the bishops, with generous privileges, and on 20 November 1220 Pope Honorius III crowned him emperor in Rome.

Frederick's real power base was the south. From 1220 he reclaimed royal lands and castles seized during his minority, crushed defiant barons, and rebuilt the Sicilian fleet. He deported the island's rebellious Muslims to Lucera on the mainland, where they kept their religion and supplied him with loyal soldiers. In 1224 he founded the University of Naples, and in 1231 he issued the Constitutions of Melfi, a law code that placed justice in the hands of trained lay officials answering to the crown. His court drew scholars from Christian and Muslim lands alike, and its poets helped shape written Italian. He himself wrote a treatise on falconry.

Frederick had promised to go on crusade but kept postponing it. In 1225 he married Isabella II, heiress of Jerusalem. When illness forced him back after setting out in 1227, Pope Gregory IX excommunicated him. He sailed anyway in 1228 and, rather than fight, negotiated with the Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil. A treaty of February 1229 restored Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth to the Christians for ten years, with the Muslim holy places left under Muslim control. Gregory meanwhile sent an army into Sicily, which Frederick drove out on his return; peace and absolution followed in 1230.

In 1235 Frederick deposed his rebellious son Henry and issued a public peace for Germany at Mainz. In November 1237 he crushed the Lombard League of northern Italian cities at Cortenuova, but his demand for total surrender stiffened resistance, and he failed to take Brescia. Gregory excommunicated him again in 1239, and Frederick's forces pressed towards Rome until the pope's death in 1241. Innocent IV fled to Lyon, where a council declared Frederick deposed in 1245. Other monarchs, including Louis IX, refused to back the deposition. Frederick answered with harsh repression, brutally punishing a conspiracy against his life in 1246. His camp outside Parma was sacked in 1248, and his son Enzo was captured by the Bolognese in 1249.

His fortunes were recovering when he died of dysentery at Castel Fiorentino in Apulia on 13 December 1250. He was buried in a porphyry tomb in Palermo Cathedral. His dynasty did not long survive him. His son Conrad died in 1254, Germany entered a long interregnum, and the papacy called in Charles of Anjou, whose invasion ended with the death of Frederick's son Manfred in battle in 1266, and who executed his grandson Conradin in 1268.

Our 1200 map shows the empire and Sicily during his childhood, still separate realms; by the 1279 map, both had passed out of Hohenstaufen hands.