Frederick the Second

by Ernst Kantorowicz

  Henry had been well aware of the danger threatening the Empire: of that his last will and testament is overwhelming proof. It recommends surrender on all sides and the renunciation of even valid claims. In the Empire itself it was all too well known what Henry’s death at this inopportune moment must mean: his work was still incomplete, his successor a three-year old child. The parties of reaction, which had hitherto been prevented by the Emperor’s power and rapidity of action, now prepared for the inevitable counter-blow. It would have been bound to come even if Henry had lived; but now that the only person competent to oppose them was dead, the forces of opposition, Princes and Pope, hurled themselves into a vacuum, in which they could unhindered work their devastating will. Some weeks before the Emperor’s death, Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick, the one a Staufen and the other a Welf,* had become kings in Germany, while at the same moment Innocent III—in his own way the greatest and most successful of all the Popes—mounted the throne of St. Peter, as the true heir of world-wide empire. During these days some people on the Moselle were terrified by an apparition: they had seen Dietrich of Bern, mounted on his immense black war-horse, coming to foretell mourning and disaster to the Roman empire.

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  While these events were happening the three-year old son of the Emperor Henry was still in Foligno. Philip of Swabia, the Emperor’s brother, was to have fetched the boy thence and escorted him to Germany for his coronation. But when Philip had got as far as Montefiascone near Viterbo he received the news of the Emperor’s death. The immediate revolt of all Italy against imperial authority, and more particularly against the hated Germans, compelled him to return at full speed across the Alps, leaving his mission unfulfilled. He had difficulty in hewing his way through to Germany. The few days’ delay which prevented the completion of the task that the Emperor had entrusted to him was destined to be of fateful consequence to the whole future of Frederick II. Firstly, because he thus remained in Italy and grew up in the southern kingdom of his mother, instead of in his father’s Swabian home. Secondly—and this was more serious—he thus forfeited, through his absence from Germany, the German crown to which he had already been elected. Quite apart from these events in the north, and their consequences, Frederick’s own mother did her best to baulk her son of the German throne.

  Soon after the death of the Emperor Henry, Constance had the child fetched from Foligno by an Apulian count and brought to Sicily. Dressed in widow’s weeds she awaited her son in Palermo. There were grave accusatory rumours against the Empress current at the time: some said she had poisoned her husband, and it was a matter of common knowledge that she had no love for Germans. The suspicion of murder was unjust, but the hatred for Germans ascribed to her was genuine enough; she shared it with her Sicilian fellow-countrymen and with the Italians oppressed by the Roman Curia. The foundations of this hate were the same then as they have always been: the arrogance “allied with unwisdom” of the Germans alienated the Mediterranean peoples, as did their “obstinacy and self-assertiveness.” Their physical strength and their savagery moreover terrified the Southerners, the discords prevailing amongst themselves brought them scorn and contempt. For rulers of the world they appeared “crude, coarse and uncivilised,” while their yet unpolished language seemed to the Romans “like the barking of dogs and the croaking of frogs.” But the main factor in this hate was fear: fear of the inrush “of the winter and the storm into the rose-gardens of Sicily.” This fear was not allayed by the savagely cruel treatment meted out to the Sicilians by Henry VI. Perhaps Innocent with his biblical phraseology hit on the right description of the German visitation of those days when he wrote: “Because the people of Sicily and the other inhabitants of this kingdom have grown effeminate in sloth, and undisciplined through too much peace, and, boasting themselves of their wealth, have given themselves over to the unbridled lusts of the body, their stink has gone up to heaven and the multitude of their sins has delivered them into the hands of the oppressor.”

  Innocent spoke thus out of no friendliness to the Germans. The hate of Germans that flamed up throughout Italy on the death of the Emperor had been carefully nurtured beforehand by the Curia, had been given the air of a national pan-Italian movement and utilised as a means to shake off the imperial yoke in the south in favour of a papal Italy. In resonant periods Innocent III had taken pains to stir up and foster this hate: “The wrath of the North wind whistles through the mountains with a new quaking of the earth, it drives through the level plains of Apulia, whirling dust into the eyes of wanderers and country-dwellers.” Thus he wrote about the German, Henry VI, whom Dante also designated “that loud blast which blew the second over Swabia’s realm.”

  A reaction of this sort against the tyranny of Henry VI was of course inevitable. The importance of the movement in Sicily was enhanced by the fact that the Empress Constance took part in it. Her motives were probably personal, for Henry had made a terrific clearance amongst all related to the old Norman royal house and had banished the survivors to Germany. On his death Constance immediately resumed the sovereignty of her hereditary domain, in accordance both with the Emperor’s instructions and with the right she herself possessed as Norman Queen. But the new ruler of Sicily was Norman Queen only: not widowed Empress; and the first act of her reign was to banish from her kingdom the Emperor’s interpreter, Markward of Anweiler, and with him all other German notables, a considerable number of whom held fief and office in the Norman territory. The pretext was that they might prove dangerous to the peace and quiet of the kingdom, especially Markward, who had not been slow to propose himself as vicegerent. Her next step was to imprison the Sicilian Chancellor, Walter of Palear, Bishop of Troia, who had been from of old an opponent of the Norman dynasty and a willing tool of the German Emperor. The intervention of the Pope was necessary to effect the liberation of the Bishop-Chancellor and his re-instatement in his former offices. Anti-German feeling in the south was so acute that the first German crusaders who were returning, all unsuspecting, from the Holy Land were surprised and plundered by the excited Sicilians, and after that the home-coming pilgrims had to avoid the harbours of this dangerously inhospitable kingdom. Curiously, the German princes who were on the Crusade, when they received in Acre the news of their Emperor’s death, reconfirmed the choice of Frederick as King of the Romans.

  Constance, however, deliberately shut her eyes to all this. Her hate of Germany reinforced the maternal anxiety which heroes’ mothers are wont to suffer from: in the German crown she saw a never-ending series of future perils and struggles for her son. She would as far as possible ward off such a danger from him. Frederick should be king of the wealthy Sicily, and in the southern Land of Dreams he would quietly forget the imperial dignity of his fathers. A few months after the boy’s arrival in Palermo she had him crowned King of Sicily. The solemn rite was celebrated on Whit Sunday 1198, with a pomp and ceremony borrowed from the Byzantine court, while in accordance with ancient custom the people greeted their newly-crowned king with the cry—which may still be read on every crucifix in southern Italy—“Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.” It is significant to note that this is also the motto engraved on Frederick’s early seals. From that day Constance omitted from all official documents of the young king the title that had previously figured there: Rex Romanorum. From henceforth Frederick of Hohenstaufen was to content himself with the many titles borne by the reges felices of Norman stock. He was to be, body and soul, the son of the Sicilian Constance only, and to be kept aloof from all the fatal, unknown consequences in which the dangerous Hohenstaufen blood of his father might involve him. One is reminded of the childhood of Achilles or of Parzival.

  The plans of the Roman Curia re-inforced in many points the wishes of the Empress. They shared a strong aversion from the Germans, they shared the desire to strengthen Frederick in his hereditary possessions, and to confine him strictly to them. Sicily was a fief of the Roman Church, and the Pope was unfeignedly delighted to se
e a four-year-old king on the throne and the kingdom thrown open to papal influence for years to come. It was a matter of life and death to the Church that the imperial throne should be withheld from the boy. When the empire and Sicily were united in one hand the States of the Church were surrounded on every side by the imperial territories, and after its recent experiences under Henry VI the Papal Curia had no wish to be again exposed to this intolerable constriction. This was the only consideration that weighed with the Pope in formulating his imperial policy. Hence, in defiance of right and justice, Innocent III supported the Welf pretender against Philip of Swabia, so as to avoid the threatened union of the Empire and the Sicilian Kingdom under any Hohenstaufen.

  Constance was in sore need of the Pope’s support, so it was well that her wishes in regard to Frederick were in unison with his. Largely thanks to Constance’s anti-German attitude, the Kingdom of Sicily had soon fallen into a state of chaos. Henry VI’s partisans, more especially the Germans, who would in other circumstances have stood by her, were the most embittered and dangerous enemies of the Empress and her son. She was powerless to enforce her decree of banishment against them, and for ten years they successfully defied it and brought down endless wars upon the country. The Pope was the only friend whose alliance could help the Empress, and Innocent III sold his friendship dear enough. Constance was obliged to seek as a favour from the Curia what the Emperor Henry had always refused, and to implore the Pope to become the feudal overlord of Sicily. Before this feudal protection was accorded her she had to accept a Concordat which put an end to the unique independence of the Sicilian Church and most of the ecclesiastical privileges of the Sicilian kings. Constance did her best to stand out, but she found she had no option but to comply, and ere long a further step was necessary: a year after Henry’s death she herself lay dying, and in her will she appointed the Pope regent of the kingdom and guardian of her son. Innocent was to be reimbursed for all expenses, and in addition to receive annually the sum of 30,000 tarens.† Constance thought she had thus put her son under good protection. She handed over the immediate care of Frederick and the kingdom to the royal party, the “Household Officers” of the old Norman officialdom, which at the time of her death consisted of four archbishops, with Walter of Palear, Bishop of Troia, at their head as Chancellor. On his mother’s death in November 1198 Henry’s son became therefore a ward of the Pope and of the Church, and the Sicilian kingdom fell into the care of bishops. For the time being Frederick’s German crown was lost.

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  The Sicilian scion of the Hohenstaufen was soon forgotten in Germany in the midst of the rival pretensions of Welf and Staufen to the throne, of battles, disturbances and wild happenings. At first his name used to crop up occasionally when someone happened to remember that beside the two would-be kings, Philip the Swabian and Otto the Welf, there was a third pretender whose claim to the imperial crown might carry weight: the boy whose home was in the far-off south. On the whole, however, the friends of the Hohenstaufens, who might perhaps have espoused the cause of Frederick, simply drifted into the ranks of his uncle, Philip of Swabia. Philip was at first prepared, as “according to law and nature it was seemly,” to undertake the direction of the Empire only as regent in the name and during the minority of his young nephew. But at such a critical moment the German princes wanted a man, not a child, on the throne, and they almost unanimously repudiated their choice of a short year before. The Archbishop, Adolf of Cologne, moreover, put himself at the head of an opposition hostile to the Staufens. In these circumstances Philip after some hesitation yielded to the pressure of his adherents and declared himself willing to wear the crown and thus secure it at least for his house. Walther von der Vogelweide was present at the coronation in Magdeburg, and records how he saw the “sweet young man,” as that handsome and luckless prince proceeded “under the crown” to the Cathedral, accompanied by the no less beautiful and no less unfortunate Irene, his queen and well-beloved consort. The poet sings with what grace and dignity the prince wore the golden circlet:

  With measured step and kingly grace he came,

  Behind him moved his high-born dame:

  Rose without thorn, dove without gall was she. …

  The many and varied endowments of the Hohenstaufen family had been divided in curiously contrasting fashion between the brothers Henry VI and Philip of Swabia. The former embodied all their stern severity and autocratic strength, the latter all their graciousness and generosity. In contrast to the rest of his house Philip united his attractive qualities to a perfectly genuine piety. He had indeed been originally destined for the Church, and might often be found sitting among the choir boys singing the Hours and the Responsories. No milder, gentler prince had ever swayed the sceptre of Germany’s destinies; he was too gentle and too mild for such a time. During Philip’s joint rule of ten years he was never once able to lay down his arms. This man who was born for times of peace was fated to undertake campaign after campaign. Immediately after his election the Rhenish party of opposition, led by Otto of Brunswick, became active and secured the support of the Papal Curia, which most unjustly sided against Philip and excommunicated him.

  This is not the place to pursue in detail the feuds of Welf and Waibling. After Innocent III, in his pettifogging Deliberatio super facto imperii, had declared himself against the Hohenstaufens in general and in particular against the Sicilian boy, not even the name of Frederick played any further part in the matter. In skilful special pleading the wily Pope weighs the pros and cons of Frederick’s elevation to the Roman Kingship. In the first place, he points out, the claim seems specious enough, for Frederick had been duly elected, and almost all the princes had sworn loyalty to him and many had actually taken the oath of fealty. Nevertheless the election was in fact invalid, because it had taken place on the assumption that Frederick at the time of his accession would be of legal age: but this reasonable anticipation had not been fulfilled. Moreover, at the time when Frederick had been elected he was still unbaptised. He had even been chosen under the Greek name of Constantine. Secondly, the Pope continued, it might well appear unseemly that the Pope should rob his ward of his just dues, instead of being his helpful guardian. But he, Pope Innocent, had been appointed guardian, not to secure the Imperium for Frederick, but to defend his maternal inheritance of Sicily. Finally, he would remind his readers of the warning words of Scripture: “Woe to the land whose king is a child.” Having thus disposed of these two possible objections to Frederick’s deposition—his due election, and a guardian’s duty—Innocent weighs the consequences that would follow the boy’s recognition. With extraordinary clearsightedness the Pope foresees the whole trend of his ward’s future career. “If once the boy reaches years of understanding and perceives that he has been robbed of his honours as Emperor by the Roman Church, he will assuredly refuse her reverence and will oppose her by every means in his power, he will free Sicily from feudal fetters and deny the wonted homage to Rome.” Innocent foresaw precisely what was in fact in store for the Roman Church and yet he chose to act against his knowledge. His arguments were irrefutable, and when he was driven to speak against his own convictions he could only do so at the sacrifice of truth. He then proceeded to show that there was nothing to be feared from the boy’s vengeance, for it was not he, the Pope, but Philip of Swabia who had snatched from him the Empire and the Dukedom of Swabia. Were King Philip to presume to go further and send his vassals to take Sicily the Church would stand by her ward with all her powers.

  This decision of the Pope quashed all conceivable German support of Frederick’s claims: he had vanished from the political and diplomatic horizon of Germany for many years to come. For decades past, nay, longer, everything Sicilian had worn a halo of romance in German eyes, and his German contemporaries cherished a vision of a fairy prince living in distant Sicily. Since the wanderings of the old Germanic peoples Sicily had exercised on the imaginations of men a peculiar fascination. The further the Northern invaders penetrated s
outh into regions of ever-increasing wealth and luxuriance the nearer they seemed to approach the Garden of Eden: a dream-fulfilment of an Earthly Paradise. The very beginning of the Germanic epoch had seen the figure of the lion-like young king, Alaric of the Western Goths, who with scanty knowledge but the sure instinct of an animal had fought his way towards the southern Paradise where he was to find his grave. The end of the same Germanic age provided a fitting parallel in that young Conrad of Hohenstaufen who lost his life in Sicily. The fate of the Germans seemed bound up with the south of Italy. In one way or another almost all the medieval Emperors had sought to win it, until the luck turned and Barbarossa’s scheming obtained it for his son Henry as his bride’s dower.

  The possession of the southern world wrought a fateful change in Germany herself: for the Crusading Knight the Magic Hoard had flitted southward from the Rhine to Sicily. And around the Treasure played the heroic myths of Rome and Greece—which now began to form a part of German culture—driving out Burgundian kings and Hunnish warriors. Bishop Conrad of Hildesheim, who accompanied the Emperor to Sicily as his chancellor, brought back tales in plenty to tell the Provost of his church at home about the marvels of Sicily. He had seen the Fountain of Pegasus, the Home of the Muses, and Naples was full of the wonders of the magician Vergil who had enclosed the city in a glass flagon. The Bishop had sailed—not without anxiety—between Scylla and Charybdis, and in Taormina he had gazed on the house of Daedalus, remembering the fate of Icarus, and the Minotaur born of Pasiphaë. He had seen the Well of Arethusa which first revealed to sorrowing Ceres the rape of Proserpine, he had seen the river Alpheus which rises in Arabia, and Etna he had seen—which he made the occasion of weaving into his narrative the myths of Vulcan, smith to Jupiter, and the legend of the Blessed Agatha. Granted that the learned Bishop saw in his travels nothing that he had not already read in the Roman poets, yet the journey had localised the myths for him and impressed them much more vividly on his mind, especially as he most reverently sought out all the places and marvels of which the poets sang. Proudly he wrote to the Provost: “You do not need to pass the boundaries of our own empire, you do not need to quit the realm of the German people to see all that the poets have spent so much time and art in describing.”