Frederick the Second

by Ernst Kantorowicz

  The fortified zone of the northern land boundary prevented egress as effectively as ingress. All boundaries of the kingdom could now be watched. Thanks to an ingenious and skilful harbour administration, Frederick was able to bolt and bar all the ports of Sicily, so that all communication—economic, political or intellectual—with the outer world could at will be completely cut off. The Emperor controlled, as it were, a gigantic dam, or a castle with a hundred well-guarded gates, and could regulate all external relations. With a word he could transform the whole kingdom into a fortress, or economically into one “closed trading centre.” Sicily thus approximated to a walled-in medieval town, and Frederick II’s much admired economic policy is most easily understood if it is conceived as a medieval town-administration extended to a whole kingdom. The Italian communes had been before Frederick, in fiscal matters, monopolies, currency and finance, and in many administrative details too: the yearly tenure of office, the justiciar a stranger in his own district, the initiation of the successor by his predecessor in office; all these things they had introduced in various forms. It must, moreover, be remembered that the communes had long since ceased to be simple towns surrounded by a wall. Cities like Milan, Cremona, Piacenza, Ravenna, embraced landed property as large as a dukedom. The Lombard cities taught Frederick much of his municipal technique, as in other spheres the Church had taught him. He learned eagerly, not least eagerly from his foes.

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  We need here only dwell on the principles underlying the Sicilian constitution. Its prime characteristic is the overriding of all private interests by the interest of the State. The Emperor’s phrase: “Sicily is the mother of tyrants” recalls the history of Dionysius of Syracuse, whose procedure in-his day evoked not less amazement than Frederick II’s. The complete fiscal independence of the one was as great as that of the other, and the principle of centralisation grew more and more marked in the course of Frederick’s reign. One of the first measures to attract attention was the Emperor’s creation in 1231 of State Monopolies. Norman and Byzantine precedents may have had weight with him, but the idea was not foreign to his own policy of utilising to the utmost all crown rights and royal prerogatives. A monopoly of salt, steel, and iron is readily deducible from royal mountain-rights. Hemp and tar monopolies had no doubt some other pretext—the needs of the imperial fleet were here decisive. The right of dyeing was of old a crown prerogative and was now converted into a monopoly; only the silk monopoly is a clear case of borrowing from Byzantine models. The working of the monopoly is most clearly seen in the case of salt—which remains a state monopoly to this day. Some of the salt mines were under state management, some were in the hands of private people who had to deliver the salt to the revenue department. On a certain day the entire trade in salt was transferred to the State. In every centre suitable people were entrusted with the selling of it, a uniform price was fixed for the whole kingdom: wholesale four times, retail six times the purchase price. The same method was applied to iron and steel, while the silk and dye monopolies were handed over to the Jews. The manufacture of silk had originally been a prerogative of the Byzantine emperors: King Roger having taken a number of silk weavers prisoners—among them many Jews—in Thebes, Corinth, and Athens, brought them to Palermo and introduced it into Sicily. Here the royal “tirâz” (silk manufacture) won world-wide fame. Frederick entrusted the trade in raw silk to the Jews of Trani. No one else was allowed to purchase silk, and they were obliged to make a profit of at least one-third on the re-sale, for that was the tax they had to pay the exchequer. The manufacture of the silk was also in their hands, and the existing state dyeworks, together with many new ones which Frederick built, were handed over to them.

  In the domain of economics, Frederick’s greatest organising triumph was his magnificent customs system. The name of his customs officials, “doana,” points to the Arab origin (diwan) of the system. The state warehouses, “fondachi,” which were particularly important for the levy of frontier customs were also of Arab origin. Frederick had reduced to a minimum internal customs and tolls, which only benefited individual nobles or towns, and in their stead had increased the frontier customs and manipulated them in a way that created a standard for the whole western world. The customs revenues no longer enriched the insignificant middleman, the seaport or trading town; they flowed into the coffers of the State. In all seaports and on all highroads of the northern frontier, Frederick II established state warehouses. Everyone, whether native or foreign, who wanted to import goods by sea or land into this closed kingdom, had to store them in the State magazine, where they were sold under the supervision of imperial officials.

  The import duty which, apart from some special trade contracts with foreign powers, amounted to 3 per cent of the value, fell on the seller, the slightly higher warehouse fee on the buyer. When customs duty and storage fees had once been paid the goods could, on production of the voucher, be transferred by sea or land to any other place in Sicily without further payment.

  The export procedure was similar. The warehouse charges were the same, but the export duty varied for the different products and the tariff sometimes fluctuated. For exports were regulated according to the needs of the country itself and in war time all export of weapons, horses, mules, and cattle might be forbidden.

  Warehouses, which also served as inns for the merchants, had long been traditional in the East. Venetians, Pisans, Genoese, and later Florentines also had all, for instance, their own fondachi in Alexandria. Before Frederick’s day these were common in all Italian seaports; the famous Fondaco dei Tedeschi in the Rialto was first recorded in a document of 1228. In inland Italy they were still almost unknown at the end of the thirteenth century. It almost seems as if these fondachi reappeared in the merchants’ quarters of the German Hansa, which began to spread in the second half of the century in close connection with the Order of Teutonic Knights. At first these warehouses were the private property of foreign traders. Frederick made them state property throughout the kingdom, and compelled all merchants to use the state magazines by forbidding all sale of goods outside them. The merchants, moreover, were practically compelled to put up in these state inns, for the charge for bed, light and fuel, was included in the heavy warehouse fee. When this system was first introduced, the existing warehouses were insufficient and the merchants had to seek lodgings elsewhere. They were nevertheless compelled to pay the full fee, and their lodging bill was paid by the State. The system had the advantage of permitting the supervision of all imports and exports. Everything was exactly registered and had to be accounted for at regular intervals, the lower officials reporting to the provincial treasurer and he to the Court of Exchequer. Several copies of all customs-ledgers and warehouse-ledgers had to be kept. The customs officer, the magister doanae, was a different person from the warehouse master, the fundicarius, and so one constituted a check on the other. Further, all wares had to be weighed on the state balances at a considerable fee, or measured, in the case of cloth, etc., by the state measure. After anchor dues, landing dues, and harbour dues there were many other minor fees to pay.

  The exchange, the baths, the slaughter-houses, the weights and measures, all belonged to the State. As Frederick had unified the coinage by his golden Augustales, he also established units of weight and measure, thus bringing order out of confusion. His aim in everything was simplification and practical convenience, as is obvious from his new regulation of markets and fairs. He decided to get rid of the distraction, overlapping and confusion, created by the clashing of dates and the like. Fairs were held each month in a different province. They began in the Abruzzi in the north; they proceeded to Campania, the Principato, the Capitanata, Apulia, the Basilicata, they ended in Calabria. No fairs were held for a couple of months in the winter, during which time the merchants could replenish their stocks and travel north again to begin the year’s circuit once more in the Spring.

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  The rigorous customs system admitted practically no privilege
s or exceptions; only the Emperor himself and the Revenue Department were exempt. This had most practical importance in relation to the export of food stuffs, of which Sicily produced a superfluity. The Emperor was not only free from export duties, he was also the largest landed proprietor in the kingdom, and consequently the greatest corn producer. He had first the Crown lands, farmed by himself, which were frequently organised by Cistercian monks, who no doubt also worked them, the final supervision only being in the hands of imperial procurators. In less fertile districts sheep-farming was extensively carried on. The harvests both of wool and corn under this skilled administration must have yielded immense profits. The Emperor was himself an agricultural expert. He once amazed the Italians in Lombardy by investigating the type of soil and then advising them whether to sow corn or beans or some other crop. He tried every sort of experiment with new crops: he made plantations of henna and indigo, improved date groves, or encouraged the use of sugar cane in Palermo by establishing sugar refineries. He gave instructions for the prevention of pests. When a plague of caterpillars threatened the harvest he gave orders that every inhabitant should furnish daily a certain measure of caterpillars. He had more faith in this method, he said, than in the efficacy of the prayers of the priests as they perambulated the stricken fields. He admitted that harvests might suffer from the weather, but he saw the major danger in the laziness of the population. He therefore gave orders that any landless person who was willing to work should be given land at the expense of any who had land lying idle.

  Such measures must greatly have increased the productiveness of his own estates, but he did not draw corn solely from his crown lands. He also received a twelfth of the products of the Demanium and a tax in kind on all corn destined for export was paid to the Treasury unless a money payment was made instead. No private person could compete with the quantity of State corn, especially as the Crown with its immense money resources could buy up private supplies. And the Emperor was not only able to export his corn free of tax, but to load it up on his own ships of the imperial fleet. Hence arose a virtual, though veiled, monopoly in corn, for the State possessed every means of crippling competition. One example may be quoted to show how Frederick exploited these possibilities. He was waging war in Northern Italy when the news came that there was a famine in Tunis and that Genoese merchants were buying corn with Tunisian money in the Sicilian ports. The Emperor forthwith despatched his Arabic-speaking court philosopher, Master Theodore, from Pisa, as ambassador to Tunis, and at the same time gave orders to close all Sicilian ports, to let no private vessel sail, and to load with the utmost haste 50,000 loads of corn on the imperial fleet. The corn was to come from the imperial granaries or to be bought from private owners and immediately shipped to Tunis. Not till after the imperial fleet had sailed was any private boat free to proceed with her lading and quit Sicilian harbours. The imperial fleet reached Africa safely. The State made about £75,000. The record of this transaction happens to have come down to us.

  Such dealings as these recall the mercantile theories of Colbert, but there lies a world of difference between the calm, state-rationalism of the later capitalistic centuries, and the passionate adventures of the Hohenstaufen, whose measures were always the immediate product of some actual State necessity. In this matter of the Tunisian corn, the Emperor had at first refused to interfere; but his coffers were empty, he was himself deeply in debt to the Romans and his war with the Pope was at its height; so he had no option but to seize the opportunity.

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  Frederick’s collection of direct revenue was always by extraordinary taxes. Though in later years he raised them annually, they were always explained afresh as due to the present imminens necessitas of the State. Imperial finance operations were always dictated by a present need, they never served for the mere accumulation of wealth. The moment his position improved, the Emperor reduced the taxes or pretermitted the collection of them altogether. Frederick had no lack of shrewd commercial instinct, but he did not use it systematically to amass riches.

  The Emperor busied himself in these years in opening foreign markets by means of commercial treaties. We have already noticed the commercial link with Tunis. Abu Zakaria Yahya, hitherto the representative of the Sultan of the Almohades, established a kingdom of his own in 1228 which embraced Tunis, Tripoli and a part of Morocco, and founded the dynasty of the Hafsids. Three years later, in 1231, Frederick II concluded a commercial treaty with Abu Zakaria for ten years, which fixed their reciprocal customs duties at 10 per cent, and guaranteed protection to each other’s merchants. Following the precedent set by the sea towns, the Emperor appointed his own Sicilian consuls for Tunis: this was the first time in history that a Western monarchy maintained a permanent representative overseas. The first imperial consul in Tunis was a Saracen, Henricus Abbas, after him a Christian, Peter Capuanus from Amalfi. Embassies to Tunis were frequent. Each side endeavoured to gratify the other, and the Emperor drew supplies for himself from Tunis, not only of Barbary horses, hunting leopards and baggage camels, but also at times of Tunisian warriors to supplement his Saracen body-guard. In return the imperial ships undertook, on occasion, to carry Tunisian envoys to Spain. Sicilian officials were sent as the Emperor’s messengers to the Khalif of Granada, the “Commander of the Faithful.” No doubt Muhammadan Spain proved at times a valuable market for Sicilian corn.

  While still in Syria, Frederick had concluded a commercial agreement with his friend al Kamil, Sultan of Egypt. He did not succeed in negotiating complete freedom from customs dues for Sicilian merchants in the harbours of Alexandria and Rosetta—which he appears to have aimed at—but trade with Egypt remained vigorous. An imperial ship, the “Half World,” aroused the greatest excitement amongst the Egyptians by its enormous size when it sailed into the port of Alexandria with a crew of three hundred men. It is said that Frederick II stood in direct communication with India through his agents travelling by way of Egypt. We have no means of verifying the assertion, but it transpires in another connection that Frederick was extremely well-informed about India. The fascination which the word East Indies was later to exercise on the explorers is here foreshadowed. It was only a few decades after the end of the Hohenstaufen period that Marco Polo heralded the joyous age of discovery which shattered to fragments the Roman-Mediterranean world.

  Meanwhile the revenue department of Sicily fulfilled its purpose. Whatever was to be extracted from the rich country was appropriated by the imperial official. Before the outbreak of the great war, Frederick II was reckoned the wealthiest monarch of Europe since the days of Charlemagne. The Emperor’s principle was well understood: Germany’s business was to keep him supplied with fighters and Sicily’s to find the funds. The war was being waged against the financially most prosperous powers of the known world: the Church and the Italian towns. It has been the fashion to admire Frederick’s economic system, but at the same time to reproach him with having been guilty of exploitation by unduly increasing his demands during the war years. But every ruler of Frederick’s stature has exploited the resources of the world, and the Sicilian kingdom, which, in return, enjoyed uninterrupted peace, could not expect to be immune. Without such exploitation—to the very limit of exhaustion—nothing really great has ever been accomplished. Consider France during, and after, the Napoleonic Wars.

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  Frederick II’s new constitution, opening with the imperial Proœmium, had gently descended from the sublimest spiritual heights and settled on the land of Sicily, seizing the country in its iron grasp. Uniform administration, uniform law, uniform finance: the constitution of the State was complete. The way was paved for the Sicilians to feel themselves one unified people, to realise their cohesion as a nation; but the goal was not yet reached. Except in a very few points the laws scarcely touched the elementary unities which make the inhabitants of a country feel themselves one and bind them into a nation: the essentials are: community of speech, of blood, of history and of festivals. These common elements
were lacking in the Sicilian welter of peoples more than in most other countries. Happily for the Emperor, the other countries of Europe had scarcely yet begun to be conscious of the existence of these natural ties. For centuries it had been the Church’s aim to stifle these natural forces, to displace folk-customs by the rites of the Church, local history by Holy Scripture, native festivals by the Church’s feasts, while for every intellectual utterance the sacred Latin was preferred to the vernacular, and the blood of the race was of less account than the Blood of the Redeemer. The awakening of national consciousness in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the emancipation of the people’s natural instincts from the spiritual bonds of the Church.

  Frederick II in his capacity as Emperor dared not sever the ecclesiastical fetters that held the people in bondage, for the Church was the guarantor of his position and of the existence of the Roman Empire. On the other hand, he awakened and stimulated the “national” impulses more than anyone before him, and in Sicily he not only called out latent forces and feelings, but set about creating them in his chosen people and welding that people into a nation.

  With his coming a new epoch began for Sicily. Frederick continually emphasised the fact: again and again in his Book of Laws he calls himself (with deliberate intent) “the New King.” With him the Sicilian race-mixture begins to be a people with a history of its own. In a remarkable document of this time Frederick summarises the History of Sicily for his faithful subjects and conjures up the past, with the present intention of making the Sicilians conscious of their common history. Under the Greeks and Romans, Sicily had suffered great injustice, because the country was divided up and rent asunder. The Normans were the first to create a unity: “Since when this noble country… under the firm and heroic settlement of our ancestors rose to be called a KINGDOM and the inhabitants learned to love their kingdom and their throne of royal dignity.” The zenith of Sicilian history came when “Divine Providence, in its wisdom, granted in our day this great happiness to your king, whom you had nourished with the milk of your love and weaned at your breast, that he should scale the heights of the Roman Empire.” They were now living under the rule of the Sicilian Hohenstaufen, “this offshoot of a new stem,” who had grown up amongst the native born of the kingdom. … The valour of the Sicilians would grow ever greater under their Emperor, “for already in the early days of that heroic age our ancestors’ noble plantations bore ample fruit.” In such terms the Emperor spurred on his faithful to fight against the Lombard faithlessness: they should follow the example of their ancestors who conquered distant peoples and “feared not to face the dangers of the sea nor the buffetings of fate on land.”