THE WESTERN MEDITERRA.NEA="i KINGDOMS 1200-1">00CONCLUSION
The reigns of Frederick II and of Manfred proved clearly that
the involvement of the ruler of southern Italy in the affairs
of northern and central Italy was not simply an irrational
obsession of the papacy. Whether or not the Hohenstaufen
seriously proposed to absorb the papal lands in central Italy
into their domains, the presence in Tuscany and Lombardy
of factions which constantly appealed to Frederick and Man-
fred, or alternatively to the papacy, resulted in a succession
of conflicts which no higher power seemed able to control.
Each side was thus sucked into a struggle which in fact
did little to serve its basic interests. The roots of the Guelf--
Ghibelline rivalries certainly lay in internal issues, not so
much concerned with major political questions but with the
territorial and economic rivalries between aristocratic clans
which traditionally governed the north Italian towns. Yet
by looking for patrons in Rome or southern Italy, or even
further afield, the faction leaders destabilised Italy and cre-
ated an atmosphere of deep suspicion between pope and
emperor. The potential for cooperation between the papacy
and the Hohenstaufen had been revealed under Pope Hon-
orius III in the years around 1220; the potential for a war of
words was revealed when Gregory IX berated Frederick II for
failing to fulfil such promises as his crusade vows, and this was
the beginning of a propaganda war which became louder as
the century progressed; the potential for armed conflict was
shown in the Lombard war of the 1240s and the involvement
of Manfred in the tortuous web of Tuscan politics.
The reputation of the Sicilian rulers as wealthy managers
of a well-organised kingdom aroused as much fear as the
image of Frederick or Manfred as 'baptised sultans', or, to
use a more modern phrase, oriental despots. The papacy
had an interest in the weakening of the centralised power
structures within the Regno, as was shown by Innocent IV's
encouragement to the south Italian towns to throw off the
Hohenstaufen tyrants and to become free cities under papal
suzerainty. In particular, the popes resented the enormous
power of the Sicilian kings over their own subjects, when,
after all, the king of Sicily held his own kingdom from the
see of St Peter. If the pope could not control his greatest