Reports like these provided material and colour for German phantasy to paint pictures of the Sicilian kingdom which Wolfram of Eschenbach chose to be the site of his magic castle of Klingsor. And even in the North men could see much with their own eyes: in the year after Frederick’s birth and Henry’s conquest of Sicily a caravan of 150 mules appeared in Germany laden with gold and silks, gems and precious stones, on its way to the imperial castle of Trifels; and people heard that this was only a fraction of the riches that the Emperor had plundered from the royal citadel of Palermo. The treasure was far from exhausted. For a messenger of the Empress overtook the Emperor after his return to Germany, announcing that the lost treasure of King Roger had been found. It had been concealed behind a secret door and a woman servant had betrayed the clue.
So the Sicilian kingdom had become to the German mind a distant land of wonders, and Frederick II was living his childhood in the midst of it. Others had come to know that the wrath of the Sicilians against Henry VI was so fierce that a certain bishop had carried the child off and was bringing him up in secrecy for fear the inhabitants should find and slay him. The child indeed had persecutions and wonderful escapes enough, and the actual happenings in Palermo in the ancient royal fortress of Castellamare where Frederick passed his childhood were more unreal and fantastic than all that legend could invent.
When the Empress Constance died, the four-year-old boy Frederick II was left alone in the world without a relation or real friend of any kind. The few surviving relations on his mother’s side had been banished by Henry VI and were hostile to the Staufen boy, and the only surviving Hohenstaufen, King Philip, was so busy fighting in the north that he could do practically nothing for his nephew. Frederick had no lack of nominal friends, men who without exception exploited the royal name and dignity for their own ends, first among these Pope Innocent III, guardian of the King. It cannot be denied that during the ten years of fighting and confusion in and around Sicily Innocent spared neither pains nor money to defend his ward’s kingdom. But the papal legates who always accompanied troops sent to Sicily were despatched to protect rather the Papal feudal state than the interests of the boy king. Innocent’s decision in the matter of the German succession, and his attitude to the French count Walter of Brienne, showed clearly how much less the fate of his ward weighed with him than his own far-reaching intrigues. This Count Walter was the son-in-law of the illegitimate Tancred, the last of the Norman kings, and he soon put in an appearance to claim the provinces of Lecce and Taranto. A really conscientious guardian would have considered it too risky to permit the return to Sicily of any member of the exiled Norman dynasty, yet Innocent, without any overwhelming necessity, decided the feudal questions in the Frenchman’s favour, though it is true he exacted extensive guarantees from Walter for the personal safety of Frederick. Pope Innocent badly wanted the French count just then; the fate of the boy prince was secondary. Not of course that the Pope would dream of robbing him of his rights! But it mattered little whether Frederick II or a scion of the Norman dynasty ruled in Sicily, provided the danger was averted of a fusion of Sicily and the Empire, and provided that Church influence in the kingdom was in no wise curtailed. Pope Innocent III dealt only in practical politics. Therein lay his greatness. We can well understand that Frederick II in later days thought of his papal guardian with wrath and bitterness, though in fact nothing but the Pope’s regency had saved the kingdom for him. On the human side Innocent kept entirely aloof from his ward. He kept up an interest in the boy’s affairs as far as he could, he sent legates to look after him, felt anxiety for his dangers, praised his progress and expressed unfeigned pleasure at his escape from enemy hands, but he saw him for the first and last time when the lad was seventeen, for he had never carried out, or never completely carried out, any of his many projected journeys to Sicily.
The other man to whom Constance had committed her child was the Sicilian chancellor, Walter of Palear. He remained for many years—though sometimes with interruptions of a year or so—in the immediate entourage of the King as head of the household officers and de facto Regent of Sicily. But what has been said of the Pope applies even more forcibly to the Chancellor: he also utilised his power for his own ends, with this difference that his ends were not of the same world-shaking quality as the Pope’s. His chief preoccupation was to maintain as undisputed as possible his position as sole regent of the kingdom, to retain undivided control of the King’s revenues and possessions, and to squander these freely for the benefit of himself, his family and his adherents. Politically he had been a supporter of the Emperor Henry and consequently an opponent of the Norman dynasty, hence the hostility which the Empress had felt for him. In spite of this she retained him as Chancellor from a natural reluctance to feel that so powerful a man was her son’s enemy. Walter of Palear remained faithful to his Hohenstaufen allegiance, partly because it seemed useful and partly because any modification of his attitude might have lessened his independence as regent. There is nothing to show that he occupied himself much with the boy, and Frederick’s later treatment of him makes this improbable. The most we can say is that he was apparently never actively unfriendly.
Though the Chancellor remained personally a defender of the dynasty of Henry VI, his external politics were extremely adaptable. He had first and foremost to protect the young King’s interests—and his own—against the Germans, whom Constance had unfortunately banished and converted into enemies of herself and her son. The Chancellor, as a partisan of Henry’s, might have come to terms with them, but their leader, Markward of Anweiler, maintained that the Emperor had appointed him to be Administrator of Sicily. There was, no doubt, some truth in this contention. He certainly kept in touch with Philip of Swabia and was presumably often acting under his instructions. These relations with Philip were enough to bring down on him the enmity of the Pope, while his claims to the regency of Sicily earned him the hatred of Walter of Palear. Pope and Chancellor were not long in taking measures together against Markward and the Germans. Markward had no use for Frederick II. The “supposititious son” of Constance—as Henry’s former interpreter chose to designate the boy, affecting to give credence to current rumour—stood in the way of a union between Sicily and the German Imperium of Philip of Swabia, and all Markward’s efforts were directed to the achievement of this union: as far as he was not merely pursuing his own private interest. The papal party reported that he had even attempted the child’s life.
The general position of affairs in Sicily was further complicated by the appearance of the aforementioned Walter of Brienne. The Pope had supported his claims to the duchies of Lecce and Taranto and forthwith made use of him and his French knights in the fight against the Germans. The Pope’s support of the son-in-law of the Norman Tancred alienated at once the Sicilian Chancellor. As the sworn foe of the Norman dynasty Walter of Palear looked with justifiable misgiving on the arrival of the French count. On the first convenient opportunity therefore he left the Pope in the lurch and went over to the German side. The subterfuges of all parties, differences of opinion amongst the officers of the household, treacheries, and the force of arms ultimately resulted in delivering the capital of Palermo with the royal fortress and the royal child into the hands of Markward of Anweiler, and on his death into the hands of other faction leaders, his successors, such as William Capparone and Diepold of Schweinspeunt. Many years passed before Walter of Palear, having made friends again with the Pope on the sudden death of the Count of Brienne, was able once more to re-enter Palermo.
It would be a waste of time to enter in detail into the squabbles, intrigues, hostilities and alliances of the ten years’ Regency. The tangle is almost inextricable, for behind the four main actors—Pope, Chancellor, Markward and Walter of Brienne—there were innumerable subordinate characters who attached themselves now to this party and now to that, according as they hoped best to promote their own separate interests. First there were the Saracens from the inner highlands of Sicily. As Musl
ims they had nothing to hope from a papal rule and were therefore hostile to the papal ward. For the most part they leaned to the German side, though the Pope exerted himself to secure their armed assistance. The general anarchy offered a golden opportunity to the hill Saracens to plunder the whole country right up to the walls of the towns—the town Saracens in the main remained neutral—and even to occupy it from time to time. The Barons of the Sicilian mainland‡ formed another group whose alliance was much desired and sought after. Their policy was simple: they had nothing to gain from law and order, so they threw in their lot with whichever party appeared likely to promote the continuance of disorder. The people of Pisa were another factor. They held on principle with the Germans, for it was their established tradition to support the Empire, but on the other hand they had many trade interests in Sicily, and this again roused up the Genoese against them. Ultimately, after many and varied quarrels, the two sea states contrived to establish themselves in every nook and cranny of the Sicilian coast.
Though in his childhood the boy Frederick appeared the mere plaything of those forces which as a man he mastered and directed, he was even then being educated by destiny for the supreme power. In the small island of Sicily all the powers of East and West were represented; on the island and in Apulia they tossed and tumbled and weltered, at the dictates of the most primitive impulses, surging through and over each other like the waves of primeval chaos: Henry VI’s Germans, Brienne’s Frenchmen, Sicilians, Apulians, Saracens, Pisans, Genoese—with here and there a papal legate and Italian troops, and finally even Spanish knights superadded. These parties had only one thought in common: to pursue their own most obvious advantage, and to enrich themselves at the expense of the helpless King, who thus became the focus of all their struggles. The goal above all others to aim at was to get possession of the King’s person, for this child denoted for the de facto victor and ruler the legal basis of his arbitrary power. Much like the royal seal of Sicily Frederick was therefore tossed from hand to hand, a valuable but indifferent piece of property, exploited by each in turn, persecuted by the majority, often in danger of death: “a lamb amongst ravening wolves,” as the chronicler has it.
*
Such was the atmosphere in which Frederick grew up: amid the clash of weapons, sometimes in bodily danger, and for years in actual want. In the early days, as long as Walter of Palear was still at hand, things may have been comparatively bearable, but when Frederick at seven fell into the hands of Markward, with his companions and hangers-on, a wild and dreary time began. The circumstances that accompanied the conquest of the royal fortress and the change of regency were ominous enough. They are full also of significance, for Frederick on this occasion shows himself for the first time as a man—of seven—in action. Markward took possession of the capital in 1201. A treacherous chamberlain betrayed the King’s castle, with the King, to the invaders. In this moment of danger the King, with his tutor, William Franciscus, withdrew to the innermost precincts of the palace. Again the guard betrayed the King and revealed his hiding-place. The treachery of the bodyguard and the boy King’s helplessness precluded any attempt at defence: Frederick suddenly saw his pursuers enter the room. As they sought to seize him—to fetter him it might be—the young King, in spite of the hopelessness of the struggle, sprang at the intruders, full of loathing at the thought of being touched by dastard hands, and fiercely smote the hand that dared to lay a finger on the Anointed of the Lord. Seeing himself overpowered, he unlaced his royal tunic, rent his clothing wrathfully to ribbons, and with sharp nails tore his flesh: an outburst of childish but profound and savage wrath against the insulters of his royal dignity. Such at least is the interpretation put on this scene by the correspondent who describes it to the Pope; the writer adds: “a worthy omen for the future ruler who cannot be false to his own nobility, who with royal instinct feels himself, like Mount Sinai, outraged by the touch of a beast of prey.”
From this time forward no one in the fortress seems to have bothered his head about the boy. The royal property had been so shockingly squandered that the child was often literally in want of the barest necessaries till the compassionate citizens of Palermo took pity on him and found him food. One fed him for a week, another for a month, each according to his circumstances. He was a handsome boy whose clear bright glance already caused remark, and the people were probably glad to see him amongst them. At eight and nine years old the young King wandered about without let or hindrance, and strolled unchecked through the narrow streets and markets and gardens of the semi-African capital at the foot of the Pellegrino. An amazing variety of peoples, religions and customs jostled each other before his eyes: mosques with their minarets, synagogues with their cupolas stood cheek by jowl with Norman churches and cathedrals, which again had been adorned by Byzantine masters with gold mosaics, their rafters supported by Greek columns on which Saracen craftsmen had carved in Kufic script the name of Allah. Round the town lay the pleasure palaces and fountains of Norman Kings in the exotic gardens and animal preserves of the Conca d’Oro, the delights of which had inspired the Arab poets. In the market-places the people went about their business in many-coloured confusion: Normans and Italians, Saracens, Jews and Greeks. The lively boy was driven back on all these for company and soon learned the customs and the speech of all these tribes and races. Did any wise Imâm play the part of Chiron to the lonely child? Did some unknown tutor teach the future ruler of men to observe, to know, to use, the forces of Earth and Nature? We do not know. We are certain only that his education was unique and radically different from any that ever fell to the lot of a royal child. Later, men marvelled at his knowledge of the habits of man and beast and plant as profoundly as they trembled at his actual approach.
Frederick was not brought up, as his father for instance had been, by a learned chaplain of the type of Godfrey of Viterbo, nor reared like many another prince by world-shy monks in the seclusion of a cloister. Amazed by his comprehensive knowledge, his astounding exotic erudition, men have sought diligently to trace the real teacher of this great Hohenstaufen—research has not revealed his Aristotle. And with reason. The teacher never existed whom he would not have surpassed and disillusioned, and the school of a mere fencing-master would not long have satisfied him. Frederick II is a typically self-taught man: he had no one to thank for his education: what he was, he was suâ virtute. Quite possibly he learnt the elements from that Magister William Franciscus who has once been mentioned in attendance on him as a seven-year-old child, and is on record as still with him in 1208. Quite possibly one or another of the papal legates may have taken an interest in him and taught him the necessary amount of Scripture. Quite possibly he received irregular instruction now and then in other things, but he never enjoyed a systematic education. His later learning bears all the marks of being not the product of “school” but of life itself. He was compelled from his tenderest years to absorb directly, without extraneous aid and from every source, the strength he needed. This differentiated his knowledge both in its content and in its application from that of his contemporaries. Stern necessity was his first tutor, and she—to quote the Pope’s expression—“taught him the eloquence of grief and of complaint at an age when other children scarcely lisp aright.” His next instructors were the market-places and streets of Palermo: Life itself. He laid the foundations of his wisdom in those wanderings which made him the friend of every man.
The vital importance of the fact that Frederick spent his childhood in Sicily has never been ignored. The Romano-Germanic mixture in his race inheritance, Swabian-Burgundian on his father’s side, Norman-Lorraine on his mother’s, guaranteed a certain mental and spiritual universality of gifts. These gifts Sicily fostered. Here in Palermo three great cultural systems existed side by side, in tangible reality: Antiquity, the East, the Church. Not merely the breath and spirit, but the languages, rites and customs, and the human atmosphere of those three worlds were familiar to the child from babyhood. Pope Innocent once wrote: “His
hereditary land, rich and noble beyond the other kingdoms of the world is the port and navel of them all.” The phrase might be read almost in its literal sense. Sicily was the navel of the new world that was here to come to birth.
The rule of Markward of Anweiler and his successors lasted five years, and five years lasted also the free unfettered vagabondage of the young Sicilian king. When, at the beginning of 1207, Walter of Palear resumed the charge of his protégé, the Chancellor and his following must have been surprised at the maturity of the twelve-year-old prince. His conduct and manners they found “awkward and unseemly,” but this they attributed to the “rude company” he had been accustomed to and to no fault of his own nature, and they were only distressed to think that “his too widespread intercourse with all and sundry, and the public comment thereby provoked” might diminish the due reverence of the Sicilians for their King. His royal bearing and autocratic dignity were immediately remarked; his complete unreceptiveness to reproof was no less manifest. “He will follow only the dictates of his own will,” they said. The boy possessed immense strength of will, which had been left entirely untamed. Only Frederick himself, and Frederick’s own intelligence, and stern necessity at times, had ever curbed it; hence no doubt the unruliness of the boy, and the iron determination of the later Emperor that brooked no opposition. At twelve Frederick wanted to dispense with all regencies and guardianships. It was “disgraceful” to his boyish pride to be a ward, and to be treated as a boy and not a king. He already compelled respect from those who saw him, and it was clear that unconditional obedience would soon be the order of the day. This self-confidence of his, not artificially stimulated, but an entirely natural growth, made it possible for him to take liberties which, people sometimes thought, often overstepped the measure of what is allowed a king. On the other hand his entourage could not deny the complete assurance of his behaviour; they had to admit that the young king had an unerring instinct for the true and the false, an opinion of his own, and an eagle eye to discern the nature of the men around him. His inborn kingliness and the nobility of his race enabled him, as Innocent once wrote, “to tread firmly on both feet.” During the years of his unrestricted wanderings Frederick had thoroughly exercised his body. He was only of medium height, but even as a boy nimble and untiring. He had powerful limbs which gave him great natural endurance in every sort of physical exertion. He was skilful and efficient in handling any and every type of weapon. Even in the early days he was a good archer and a passionately keen horseman with a particular love of well-bred horses, as indeed we should naturally expect, remembering the famous huntsman he afterwards became. He was particularly skilful in fencing with the sword, and his opponents must sometimes have had a tough time of it, for with his fiery temper he easily worked himself into a passion during a fight. What struck people especially was that he “never passed a day quietly in continuous activity.” If he had had exercise during the day the twelve-year-old boy would work late into the night to extend his knowledge. His favourite reading was history—probably Roman history—the tale of wars and deeds of arms. He thus showed already the unresting activity and zeal common to men of his quality which often made the Emperor seem more than human. He was able nevertheless to preserve the power of quiet reflection.
Frederick the Second Page 5
