314 



FREDERIC H. 



of the Two Sicilies. No sovereign of the middle 

 ages, with the exception of Charlemagne and Alfred, 

 was of so great historical importance; mid few were 

 so distinguished by their personal character, and by 

 such a remarkable series of adventures. His long 

 reign, from 1209 to 1250, belongs to the mosl 

 remarkable period of the middle ages. He lived at 

 a period when men like Gregory VII. and Innocent 

 III. had raised the hierarchy to a degree of import- 

 ance almost incredible ; when, by the establishment 

 of the orders of knighthood (for the purpose oi 

 fighting against the infidels, and of extending the 

 papal jurisdiction), of the mendicant orders, and o) 

 the inquisition, the formidable pillars of the eccle- 

 siastical structure were erected ; when, by means oi 

 the crusades, the people of Europe were first brought 

 into a closer connexion by a common feeling, 

 imbodied in the sign of the cross ; when, after many 

 individual voices had been raised in vain, though not 

 forgotten, the Protestantism of the middle ages 

 made itself heard through the Waldenses and the 

 Albigenses ; when chivalry, ennobled by religion, 

 obtained a higher character and a consistent organ- 

 ization ; when the class of free citizens was gradually 

 rising from its long degradation, and was supported 

 in Germany by Frederic, against the aristocracy, 

 although opposed by him in Upper Italy, as contri- 

 buting to the power of the pope, and when the cities 

 strengthened themselves against external dangers 

 by great confederacies, and completed and confirmed 

 their internal organization by the establishment of 

 corporations ; when, in opposition to the system of 

 violence in which the right of the strongest is the 

 strongest right, the first public peace was proclaimed 

 in the German language, and the secret tribunal of 

 the Feme (q. v.) began its first scarcely-perceptible 

 workings; when the first universities aroused the 

 spirit of inquiry and examination ; when the songs of 

 the Provencals had found a home in Germany and 

 Italy, and were sung by emperors and kings : 

 these were the times in which the great Frederic of 

 Hohenstaufen lived and acted. 



Without being tall, Frederic was well formed, of 

 a fair complexion, with a fine forehead, and a nose 

 resembling the antique, and a gentle and kind ex- 

 pression of the eye and mouth. He inherited the 

 chief virtues of his highly distinguished family ; was 

 brave, bold, and generous, and possessed great 

 talents, highly cultivated. He understood all the 

 languages of his subjects Greek, Latin, Italian, 

 German, French, and Arabic. He was severe and 

 passionate, mild or liberal, as circumstances required ; 

 gay, cheerful, and lively, as his feelings dictated. 

 As his body had been strengthened and rendered 

 graceful by chivalrous exercises, so his mind, not- 

 withstanding the neglect of his education, had 

 been developed by its own vigour, and obtained, 

 in the school of adversity, a versatility of power rarely 

 found in those born to the purple, and an energy of 

 purpose which sustained him in situations in which 

 others would have been reduced to despair. All this 

 strength of body and mind was necessary for a man, 

 who was obliged to repress a powerful aristocracy in 

 Germany, a powerful democracy in Upper Italy, a 

 powerful hierarchy in Central Italy, and to reconcile 

 and unite in closer union, in his southern territories, 

 the hostile elements of six nations; who, for forty 

 years, opposed by secular and spiritual arms, by 

 rivals, excommunications and interdicts, victorious or 

 vanquished, endured the rebellion of a son, the 

 treachery of his dearest friend, and the loss of his 

 favourite child. 



Frederic remained under the guardianship of Inno- 

 rent III. till 1209, when he took upon himself the 

 government of Lower Italy and Sicily. 



was divided by the factions of the great barons, 

 favoured by the heads of the church, at the 

 time when Frederic, at fifteen years ot age, without 

 counsel or direction, took the reins of govern- 

 ment. After promising to conduct a crusade, he was 

 crowned as German king, at A ix-la-Chapellc, in 1215. 

 The possession of the German and Sicilian crowns 

 gave Frederic the hope that he should be able to 

 make himself master of all Italy, subdue Lombardy, 

 and reduce the spiritual monarch in Rome to the 

 dignity of the first bishop in Christendom. But he 

 mistook the spirit of his times, which was very far 

 behind his enlightened views. He slowly prepared 

 the execution of this great plan, with a prudence pro- 

 portioned to its importance. He caused his eldest 

 son, Henry, to be chosen king of Rome, in 1220, and 

 appeased the new pope, Honorius III. (chosen in 

 1216). who was offended at this measure, by the 

 pretence that the crusade, which he was about to 

 undertake, rendered it necessary, and by the assur- 

 ance that he would never attempt to unite Sicily with 

 the empire. He then went to Rome, without paying 

 any regard to the refusal of the Milanese to allow 

 him to assume the iron crown, received the imperial 

 crown in 1220, and returned as emperor to his 

 hereditary dominions, which he had left in a sUte 

 little better than that of a fugitive. Here he began 

 to make preparations for the crusade. 



Although Frederic was obliged to treat the here- 

 tics in the empire with severity, and even declared 

 their children, to the second generation, incapable of 

 office or honour, unless they denounced their parents, 

 yet he introduced the Saracens from Sicily into his 

 Italian territories, allowed them the free exercise of 

 their religion, and thus made them his most useful 

 and faithful subjects. His new code of laws was 

 designed to unite the interests of church and state, 

 and to reconcile the nobility and clergy, the cities 

 and the peasants. It was also necessary to adapt it 

 to the character of people so different from each 

 other as the Romans, Greeks, Germans, Arabians, 

 Normans, Jews, and French, while, at the same time, 

 it should respect, as much as possible, the existing 

 institutions. Frederic founded a university in Naples, 

 the paradise of the ancient world, in 1224, which 

 leaves many later institutions of a similar kind far 

 behind it. The famous medical school at Salerno 

 was put in a flourishing condition. Elegant litera- 

 ture shone forth in the court of Frederic, and Frederic 

 himself may be counted among the authors of the 



ire refined Tuscan poetry. The fine arts, under his 

 patronage, had their Nicola, Masuccio and Tommaso 

 da Stephani, and the collections of art at Capua and 

 Naples, the treasures of which were increased by ex- 

 cavations at Augusta in Sicily, were founded. 



In 1227, Frederic undertook a crusade, which was 

 frustrated by a contagious disease and the sickness 

 of the emperor, so that the fleet returned without 

 reaching its destination. This excited the anger of 

 the pope, Gregory IX., who excommunicated the 

 emperor, and put his dominions under an interdict. 

 In 1228, Frederic set out on a new crusade. But 

 Gregory commanded the patriarch of Jerusalem and 

 Jie three orders of knights to oppose all the 

 emperor's designs, and caused the dominions of 

 Frederic to be devastated by his own troops, under 

 John of Brienne. Frederic, nevertheless, accom- 

 plished what no one since the noble Godfrey 

 [1099) had been able to obtain. By a treaty with 

 darnel, sultan of Egypt, he obtained a truce of ten 

 years, the cession of Jerusalem, of the holy places, 

 )f the whole country between Joppa, Bethlehem, 

 S T azareth, and Acre, and of the important ports of 

 Tyre, and Sidon. All Christendom rejoiced, but the 

 envy of the patriarch and the knights was kindled. 



