FREDERICK II
(December 26, 1194–December 13, 1250)
King of Sicily, Roman emperor, king of Jerusalem, Fred-
erick was born on December 26, 1194, in Jesi (Ancona),
the eldest child of Emperor Henry VI Hohenstaufen and
Constance (daughter of Roger II and heiress to Sicily).
Baptized Frederick Roger (after his grandfathers), his
name signaled his two heritages, namely, rule over the
empire and the Italian regno (reign) and their fateful
fusion. The German princes elected him king of the
Romans (1196), and he was crowned king of Sicily
(1198) after his father’s death. North of the Alps, the
competing royal elections of Otto (IV) of Brunswick and
Frederick’s uncle, Philip of Swabia, plunged Germany
into dynastic civil war. Before her own death, Constance
named Pope Innocent III guardian over the four year old
and regent of the kingdom.
As the young orphan grew into manhood, political
disorder engulfed the regno. The child-king became a
pawn of feuding native and German aristocratic factions
while other outside parties pursued their own interest at
the expense of the royal power. Childhood in cosmo-
politan Palermo—scene of an intermingling of Arab,
Norman, Italian, and Greek cultural impulses—favored
Frederick’s intellectual alertness, mental and emotional
precocity, and polygon talents. His cheerfulness, ami-
ability, and calculation were balanced by the capacity
for mistrust, coldness, cruelty, misanthropy, a demonic
temperament, and a general lack of scruples.
In June 1208, the murder of Frederick’s uncle Philip
paved the way for Otto’s accession to royal power in
Germany. Six months later Frederick attained his major-
ity according to Sicilian law. A marriage was arranged
by the pope to Constance of Aragon, sister of King Peter
II; it brought Frederick the Aragonese military support
that enabled him to bolster his political position in the
kingdom before new danger arose. In return for various
promises, including an undertaking not to interfere in
Sicilian affairs, Otto IV secured imperial coronation at
Pope Innocents hands in 1209. But the new emperor’s
repudiation of his promise and his invasion of the king-
dom triggered excommunication by the pope and papal
support for a Hohenstaufen candidacy for the German
and imperial crowns. In 1211 a group of German princes
opposed to Otto met in Nuremberg and elected Frederick
king of the Romans. In early 1212 Frederick decided to
accept this election. Now he solidifi ed the pope’s support
by confi rming his mother’s concessions regarding the
Sicilian church; he also protected the dynasty’s future
by having his infant son, Henry, crowned co-king of
Sicily.
During Autumn 1212 Frederick embarked on an un-
expected and adventurous trip over the Alps to southwest
Germany. Pro-Hohenstaufen princes, bishops, and towns
now rallied to the support of the seemingly wondrous
“boy of Apulia”; money and diplomatic support also
came from Philip of France. Next Frederick moved
north, where he was elected king of the Romans (for the
third time) in Frankfurt and crowned in Mainz. During
1213 Frederick solidifi ed his political and military posi-
tion against Otto and confi rmed various concessions to
the papacy and the German ecclesiastical princes. Otto
now staked his future chances on an invasion of northern
France, but Philip II won a decisive victory over him at
Bouvines (1214). The chastened Welf withdrew to his
Saxon strongholds, where he died in May 1218.
Now crowned king of the Romans a second time at
Aachen (1215), an enthusiastic Frederick made a fate-
ful vow to go on crusade to recover the Holy Places.
A year later he renewed another commitment by for-
mally promising Pope Innocent that he would turn
the government of Sicily over to his young son Henry
by right after he himself received the imperial crown.
Innocent’s death in 1216 was followed by the election
of Honorius III, a decidedly less stern pope. In 1220
Frederick engineered Henry VIII’s election as co-king
of the Romans, thus assuring the union of Sicily and the
empire that Innocent had feared. Frederick disingenu-
ously informed Honorius that the election had occurred
at the wish of the princes; in fact, the purchase price was
not inconsiderable: to secure electoral support from the
ecclesiastical princes Frederick promulgated the Con-
foederatio or Privilegium cum principibus ecclesiasticis,
which contained the renunciation (at least in theory)
of many royal rights in ecclesiastical territories. That
same year Honorius crowned Frederick emperor in St.
Peter’s basilica.
For much of the next decade Frederick maintained
his strong political position; despite his prior promises,
the union of the imperial and Sicilian crowns meant
a potential encirclement of the papacy. And now his
attention could be turned to the regno for a fi ve-year
period of consolidation: the strengthening of fortifi ca-
tions and harbor facilities, establishment of a large war
fl eet and merchant navy, and restriction of the trading
and extraterritorial privileges hitherto held by Pisan
and Genoese merchants. In 1220 at Capua he promul-
gated assizes that included a requirement that all royal
privileges granted since 1189 must be reviewed before
given any further credence. In this manner, Frederick
could recoup some royal rights and properties lost
through usurpation or ill-advised concession. He also
suppressed a Muslim revolt in Sicily and resettled many
defeated Saracens in Lucera, where they established a
Muslim enclave that in time became a center of royal
support. To further the training of civil servants for a
burgeoning royal bureaucracy, Frederick also founded
the University of Naples.
His commitment to depart on crusade was postponed
repeatedly as Frederick consolidated control over theFREDERICK II