THE ORIGINS OF THE SICILIAN KINGDOMneither Edmund nor Conradin but Manfred. The assumption
that it was the barons -with perhaps a sprinkling of leading
townsmen -who elected the king obviously contradicted the
papal view that the ruler of Sicily was a papal vassal and must
be confirmed in office or even chosen by the Holy See. It
will be seen that the choice of a king by a 'parliament' of
barons remained an important weapon to native Sicilians.
With Manfred the methods of rule and policies of Fred-
erick II acquired new vigour. It seemed in the years around
1260 that Frederick's hopes had been redeemed. Within the
kingdom, urban liberties were rapidly revoked. The port of
Manfredonia, founded by him, was to remain an important
centre of the grain trade of the Adriatic long after he died.
Manfred took advantage of papal inanition north of Rome
as well as in southern Italy. He could not hope to settle the
internal rivalries of the north Italian towns, as past Hohen-
staufen had dreamed of doing; he gave armed support to
the pro-Hohenstaufen Ghibelline faction of Siena in 1260,
when at the battle of Montaperti they and their Tuscan allies
defeated a league of pro-papal Guelfs. As his authority in Italy
grew, Manfred leaned increasingly towards the Ghibelline
towns, claiming overlordship as far north as Alessandria in
Piedmont. Although he could not match Frederick II, in
the sense that he possessed no rights in Germany, he had
effectively acquired the influence in central and northern
Italy which his father had exercised. If anything, in fact, his
influence was greater, because he had the backing of a solid
Ghibelline grouping which took advantage of the weakness
of the late thirteenth-century papacy to extend its network
of alliances deep into Tuscany. Manfred, though a bastard,
acquired the seal of respectability when his daughters made
good marriages: that between his daughter Helena and
Michael II, Despot of Epiros brought the Hohenstaufen as
dowry the island of Corfu, as well as Durazzo, Avlona and
'1-
Butrint on the Albanian coast. ' Another daughter, Con-
stance (carrying a venerable Hohenstaufen family name,
redolent of empire) was betrothed in 1258 to the future King
Peter III of Aragon. This marriage alliance was to rock the
Mediterranean, and it is now necessary to look at the anteced-
ents of Peter the Great in order to see why.
37, D.M. Nicol, The Despotate of J<,piros (Oxford, 1958), pp. 166-82.