the imperial title hereditary. He failed in this, but he did
manage to have Frederick elected king of the Romans
in December 1196. In 1197, Henry returned to Sicily.
Constance spent Easter with him in Palermo, where
he renewed a far-reaching revocation of privileges. A
revolt against Henry ensued, but the emperor crushed it
by July. Some German sources suggest that Constance
played a role in the conspiracy against Henry, but he
apparently did not act on reports of her complicity.
Henry and Constance continued to live together and to
issue diplomas jointly.
Henry died in Messina on 28 September 1197.
Constance quickly secured the kingdom. She hastened
to Palermo, where she deposed the chancellor and
recovered the royal seals; she recalled Frederick from
Foligno; and she expelled from the kingdom the Ger-
man barons who had been most closely associated with
Henry. Constance negotiated an accord with the Roman
curia for the coronation of Frederick and the burial of
Henry, who had been excommunicate when he died. To
obtain the cooperation of Pope Innocent III, she con-
ceded Frederick’s imperial title. Henry’s funeral took
place in Palermo in early May 1198, and Frederick was
crowned on 17 May. Constance continued to use her
imperial title but issued diplomas jointly with Frederick
after his coronation.
Constance was an active ruler, and her position was
secure, but she negotiated with Innocent to defi ne the
feudal status of the kingdom and later to obtain papal
protection for Frederick after her death. Innocent forced
her to relinquish traditional royal rights over church
councils, legates, appeals, and elections.
She retained only the right to approve a bishop-elect
before he could occupy his see. The pope sent a cardinal
to receive her homage and confer vassalage, but she died
before he arrived. Frederick does not seem to have felt
bound by her concessions to the papacy until he renewed
them in 1212.
On 25 November 1198, Constance wrote her last
testament. She commended Frederick to the protection
of the pope as regent and guardian and directed her sub-
jects to swear fi delity to the pope. She died on 27 ot 28
November and was buried in the cathedral of Palermo,
next to Henry VI, on 29 November. The papal regency
notwithstanding, her death initiated a period of violence
and chaos in the kingdom of Sicily that persisted until
Frederick reached his majority in 1208.
The legend that Constance had once been a nun
developed in the thirteenth century and was used by
papal polemicists in anti-Hohenstaufen propaganda.
Constance was said to have been raised in monastic
solitude and to have taken religious vows, only to be
torn from the contemplative life to marry Henry. Dante
immortalized her legend in Paradiso (3.113). Later,
several religious communities claimed her, some as ab-
bess. By the fi fteenth century, San Salvatore in Palermo
seems to have won the competition to claim Constance
as a member.
See also Frederick I Barbarossa; Frederick II,
Henry VI; Innocent III, PopeFurther Reading
Kölzer, Theo. “Costanza d’Altavilla.” In Dizionario biografi co
degli Italiani. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana,
1960–.
––––. Die Staufer im Süden: Sizilien und das Reich. Sigmaringem:
J. Thorbecke, 1996.
Matthew, Donald. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser: Die Urkunden
der Kaiserin Konstanze, ed. Theo Kölzer. Monumenta Ger-
maniae Historica, 11(3). Hannover: Hahn, 1990.
John LomaxCYNEWULF
(fl. early 9th–late 10th century?)
One of the two named Anglo-Saxon poets (the other is
Cædmon). His identity is unknown, although he wove
his name into the epilogues of four poems; his dates are
undetermined, although he probably did not write before
750 nor after the late 10th century, his provenance is
uncertain, although dialect features of his poems indi-
cate that he was either Mercian or Northumbrian; and
his corpus has been limited in the last half-century to
the four poems that bear his signature and appear in the
Exeter Book (Christ II, Juliana) and the Vercelli Book
(The Fates of the Apostles, Elene).Identity and Language
Cynewulf uses runic letters to incorporate his name into
his poems, spelling it CYNWULF in The Fates of the
Apostles and Christ II, CYNEWULF in Juliana and
Elene, and making it an integral part of his message as
he asks for his audience’s prayers. In three epilogues he
exploits the fact that runes stand both for letters and for
things or concepts such as “need” (the N rune is named
nyd, “need, necessity”) and “joy” (the W rune stands
for wynn, “joy”). Only in Juliana, where he groups the
letters CYN, EWU, and LF, does Cynewulf seem to use
runes solely as letters. Scholars are uncertain about how
to interpret the signatures just as they are about how to
assess their historical signifi cance. It has been argued
that Cynewulf’s signing his work merely conforms with
an ancient Germanic practice of signing art objects in
runes, that it refl ects a vogue among contemporary Latin
writers for using acrostics, and that it may signal a shift
in Anglo-Saxon society from orality to literacy. It may
also indicate a move away from the traditional view ofCONSTANCE