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Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Historical figures

                    Frederick II
    King of Sicily, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem,
   King of the Romans, King of Germany
   and Holy Roman Emperor
   Reign       December 9, 1212 – December 13, 1250
   Coronation  September 3, 1198
   Born        December 26, 1194
               Jesi, Marche, Italy
   Died        December 13, 1250
               Castel Fiorentino, Puglia, Italy
   Buried      Cathedral of Palermo
   Consort     various
   Issue       Conrad IV of Germany
   Royal House Hohenstaufen
   Father      Henry VI
   Mother      Constance of Sicily

   Frederick II ( December 26, 1194 – December 13, 1250), of the
   Hohenstaufen dynasty, was a pretender to the title of King of the
   Romans from 1212 and unopposed holder of that monarchy from 1215. As
   such, he was King of Germany, and of Italy, and of Burgundy. He was
   Holy Roman Emperor from his papal coronation in 1220 until his death.
   His original title was King of Sicily, which he held as Frederick I
   from 1198 to death. His other royal titles, accrued for a brief period
   of his life, were King of Cyprus and Jerusalem by virtue of marriage
   and his connection with the Crusades.

   He was raised and lived most of his life in Sicily, his mother,
   Constance, being the daughter of Roger II of Sicily. His empire was
   frequently at war with the Papal States, so it is unsurprising that he
   was excommunicated twice and often vilified in chronicles of the time.
   Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him the Antichrist. After his
   death the idea of his second coming where he would rule a 1000-year
   reich took hold, possibly in part because of this.

   He was known in his own time as Stupor mundi ("wonder of the world"),
   and was said to speak nine languages and be literate in seven
   [Armstrong 2001, p. 415] (at a time when some monarchs and nobles were
   not literate at all). Frederick was a very modern ruler for his times,
   being a patron of science and the arts.

   He was patron of the Sicilian School of poetry. His royal court in
   Palermo, from around 1220 to his death, saw the first use of a literary
   form of an Italo-Romance language, Sicilian. The poetry that emanated
   from the school predates the use of the Tuscan idiom as the preferred
   language of the Italian peninsula by at least a century. The school and
   its poetry were well known to Dante and his peers and had a significant
   influence on the literary form of what was eventually to become the
   modern Italian.

   He founded the University of Naples in 1224.

Life

Early years

   Born in Jesi, near Ancona, Frederick was the son of the emperor Henry
   VI. Some chronicles say that his mother, the forty-year-old Constance,
   gave birth to him in a public square in order to forestall any doubt
   about his origin. Frederick was baptised in Assisi.
   The birth of Frederick II
   Enlarge
   The birth of Frederick II

   In 1196 at Frankfurt am Main the child Frederick was elected to become
   King of the Germans. His rights in Germany were disputed by Henry's
   brother Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. At the death of his father in
   1197, the two-year-old Frederick was in Italy travelling towards
   Germany when the bad news reached his guardian, Conrad of Spoleto.
   Frederick was hastily brought back to Constance in Palermo.

   His mother, Constance of Sicily, had been in her own right queen of
   Sicily; she had Frederick crowned King of Sicily and established
   herself as Regent. In Frederick's name she dissolved Sicily's ties to
   the Empire, sending home his German counsellors (notably Markward of
   Anweiler and Gualtiero da Pagliara), and renouncing his claims to the
   German kingship and empire.

   Upon Constance's death in 1198, Pope Innocent III succeeded as
   Frederick's guardian until he was of age. Frederick was crowned King of
   Sicily on May 17, 1198.

Emperor

   Otto of Brunswick was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Innocent III
   in 1209. In September 1211 at the Diet of Nuremberg Frederick was
   elected in absentia as German King by a rebellious faction backed by
   Innocent, who had fallen out with Otto and excommunicated him; he was
   again elected in 1212 and crowned December 9, 1212 in Mainz; yet
   another coronation ceremony took place in 1215. Frederick's authority
   in Germany remained tenuous, and he was recognized only in southern
   Germany: in northern Germany, the centre of Guelph power, Otto
   continued to hold the reins of royal and imperial power despite
   excommunication. But Otto's decisive military defeat at Bouvines forced
   him to withdraw to the Guelph hereditary lands, where he died,
   virtually without supporters, in 1218. (See also Guelphs and
   Ghibellines). The German princes, supported by Innocent III, again
   elected Frederick king of Germany in 1215, and the pope crowned him
   king in Aachen on July 23, 1215. It was not, however, until another
   five years had passed, and only after further negotiations between
   Frederick, Innocent III, and Honorius III—who succeeded to the papacy
   after Innocent's death in 1216—that Frederick was crowned Holy Roman
   Emperor in Rome by Honorius III on November 22, 1220. At the same time
   his oldest son Henry took the title of King of the Romans.

   Unlike most Holy Roman emperors, Frederick spent little of his life in
   Germany. After his coronation in 1220, he remained either in the
   Kingdom of Sicily or on Crusade until 1236, when he made his last
   journey to Germany. (At this time, the Kingdom of Sicily, with its
   capital at Palermo, extended onto the Italian mainland to include most
   of southern Italy.) He returned to Italy in 1237 and stayed there for
   the remaining thirteen years of his life, represented in Germany by his
   son Conrad.

   In the Kingdom of Sicily, he built on the reform of the laws begun at
   the Assizes of Ariano in 1140 by his grandfather Roger II. His
   initiative in this direction was visible as early as the Assizes of
   Capua (1220) but came to fruition in his promulgation of the
   Constitutions of Melfi ( 1231, also known as Liber Augustalis), a
   collection of laws for his realm that was remarkable for its time and
   was a source of inspiration for a long time after. It made the Kingdom
   of Sicily an absolutist monarchy, the first centralized state in Europe
   to emerge from feudalism; it also set a precedent for the primacy of
   written law. With relatively small modifications, the Liber Augustalis
   remained the basis of Sicilian law until 1819.

   During this period, he also built the Castel del Monte and in 1224
   created the University of Naples: now called Università Federico II, it
   remained the sole atheneum of Southern Italy for centuries.

The Crusade

   At the time he was crowned Emperor, Frederick promised to go on
   crusade. In preparation for his crusade, Frederick in 1225 married
   Yolande of Jerusalem, heiress to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and
   immediately took steps to assume control of the Kingdom from his new
   father-in-law, John of Brienne. However, he continued to take his time
   in setting off, and in 1227, Frederick was excommunicated by Pope
   Gregory IX for failing to honour his crusading pledge - perhaps
   unfairly, at this point, as his plans had been delayed by an epidemic,
   from which he himself had fallen ill. Many contemporary chroniclers
   doubted the sincerity of Frederick's illness, stating that he had
   deliberately delayed for selfish reasons, and this attitude can in part
   be explained by their pro-papal stance. Roger of Wendover, a chronicler
   of the time, wrote ‘he went to the Mediterranean sea, and embarked with
   a small retinue; but after pretending to make for the holy land for
   three days, he said that he was seized with a sudden illness…this
   conduct of the emperor redounded much to his disgrace, and to the
   injury of the whole business of the crusade,’(‘Roger of Wendover’,
   Christian Society and the Crusades, ed Peters (Philadelphia 1971)).

   He eventually embarked on the crusade the following year ( 1228), which
   was looked on by the Pope as a provocation, since the church could not
   take any part in the honour of the crusade, resulting in a second
   excommunication. Frederick did not attempt to take Jerusalem by force
   of arms. Instead, he negotiated restitution of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and
   Bethlehem to the Kingdom with sultan Al-Kamil, the Ayyubid ruler of the
   region, who was nervous about possible war with his relatives who ruled
   Syria and Mesopotamia and wished to avoid further trouble from the
   Christians.
   Frederick II (left) meets al-Kamil (right).
   Enlarge
   Frederick II (left) meets al-Kamil (right).

   The crusade ended in a truce and in Frederick's coronation as King of
   Jerusalem on March 18, 1229 — although this was technically improper,
   as Frederick's wife Yolande, the heiress, had died in the meantime,
   leaving their infant son Conrad as rightful heir to the kingdom.
   Frederick's further attempts to rule over the Kingdom of Jerusalem were
   met by resistance on the part of the barons, led by John of Ibelin,
   Lord of Beirut. In the mid-1230s, Frederick's viceroy was forced to
   leave Acre, the capital, and in 1244, Jerusalem itself was lost again
   to a new Muslim offensive.

   Whilst Frederick's seeming bloodless victory in recovering Jerusalem
   for the cross brought him great prestige in some European circles, his
   decision to complete the crusade while excommunicated provoked Church
   hostility. Although in 1231 the Pope lifted Frederick's excommunication
   at the Peace of San Germano, this decision was taken for a variety of
   reasons related to the political situation in Europe. Of Frederick's
   crusade, Philip of Novara, a chronicler of the period, said "The
   emperor left Acre [after the conclusion of the truce]; hated, cursed,
   and vilified." (The History of Philip of Novara, Christian Society and
   the Crusades, ed Peters. Philadelphia, 1971). Overall the success of
   this crusade, the first successful one after the failures of the fourth
   and fifth crusades, was adversely affected by the manner in which
   Frederick carried out negotiations without the support of the church.

The war against the Pope and the Italian Guelphs

   While he may have temporarily made his peace with the pope, Frederick
   found the German princes another matter. In 1231, Frederick's son Henry
   (who was born 1211 in Sicily, son of Frederick's first wife Constance
   of Aragon) claimed the crown for himself and allied with the Lombard
   League. The rebellion failed, though not utterly; Henry was imprisoned
   in 1235, and replaced in his royal title by his brother Conrad, already
   the King of Jerusalem; Frederick won a decisive battle in Cortenuova
   over the Lombard League in 1237.

   Frederick celebrated it with a triumph in Cremona in the manner of an
   ancient Roman emperor, with the captured carroccio (later sent to the
   commune of Rome) and an elephant. He rejected any suit for peace, even
   from Milan which had sent a great sum of money. This demand of total
   surrender spurred further resistance from Milan, Brescia, Bologna and
   Piacenza, and in October 1238 he was forced to raise the siege of
   Brescia, in the course of which his enemies had tried unsuccessfully to
   capture him.

   Frederick received the news of his excommunication by Gregory IX in the
   first months of 1239 while his court was in Padova. The emperor
   responded by expelling the Minorites and the preachers from Lombardy,
   and electing his son Enzio as Imperial vicar for Northern Italy. Enzio
   soon annexed the Romagna, Marche and the Duchy of Spoleto, nominally
   part of the Papal States. The father announced he was to destroy the
   Republic of Venice, which had sent some ships against Sicily. In
   December of that year Frederick marched over Toscana, entered
   triumphantly into Foligno and then in Viterbo, whence he aimed to
   finally conquer Rome, in order to restore the ancient splendours of the
   Empire. The siege, however, was ineffective, and Frederick returned to
   Southern Italy, sacking Benevento (a papal possession). Peace
   negotiations came to nothing.

   In the meantime the Ghibelline city of Ferrara had fallen, and
   Frederick swept his way northwards capturing Ravenna and, after another
   long siege, Faenza. The people of Forlì (which kept its Ghibelline
   stance even after the collapse of Hohenstaufen power) offered their
   loyal support during the capture of the rival city: as a sign of
   gratitude, they were granted an augmentation of the communal
   coat-of-arms with the Hohenstaufen eagle, together with other
   privileges. This episode shows how the independent cities used the
   rivalry between Empire and Pope as a mean to obtain the maximum
   advantage for themselves.

   The Pope called a council, but Ghibelline Pisa thwarted it, capturing
   cardinals and prelates on a ship sailing from Genoa to Rome. Frederick
   thought that this time the way into Rome was opened, and he again
   directed his forces against the Pope, leaving behind him a ruined and
   burning Umbria. Frederick destroyed Grottaferrata preparing to invade
   Rome. Then, on August 22, 1240, Gregory died. Frederick, showing that
   his war was not directed against the Church of Rome but against the
   Pope, drew back his troops and freed two cardinals from the jail of
   Capua. Nothing changed, however, in the relationship between Papacy and
   Empire, as Roman troops assaulted the Imperial garrison in Tivoli and
   the Emperor soon reached Rome. This back-and-forth situation was
   repeated again in 1242 and 1243.

His last and fiercest opponent, Innocent IV

   A new pope, Innocent IV, was elected on June 25, 1243. He was a member
   of a noble Imperial family and had some relatives in Frederick's camp,
   so the Emperor was initially happy with his election. Innocent instead
   was to become his fiercest enemy. Negotiations began in the summer of
   1243, but the situation changed as Viterbo rebelled, instigated by the
   intriguing Cardinal Ranieri of Viterbo. Frederick could not afford to
   lose his main stronghold near Rome, and besieged the city. Many
   authorities state that the Emperor's star began its descent with this
   move. Innocent convinced him to withdraw his troops, but Ranieri
   nonetheless had the Imperial garrison slaughtered on November 13.
   Frederick was enraged. The new Pope was a master diplomat, and
   Frederick signed a peace treaty, which was soon broken. Innocent showed
   his true Guelph face, and, together with most of the Cardinals, fled
   via Genoese galleys to the Ligurian republic, arriving on July 7. His
   aim was to reach Lyon, where a new coucil was held beginning June 24,
   1245. One month later, Innocent IV declared Frederick to be deposed as
   emperor, characterising him as a "friend of Babylon's sultan", "of
   Saracen customs", "provided with a harem guarded by eunuchs" like the
   schismatic emperor of Byzantium and, in sum, a "heretic". The Pope
   backed Heinrich Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia as his rival for the
   imperial crown and set in motion a plot to kill Frederick and Enzio,
   with the support of his (the pope's) brother-in-law Orlando de Rossi,
   another friend of Frederick's.

   The plotters, however, were unmasked by the count of Caserta. The
   vengeance was terrible: the city of Altavilla, where they had found
   shelter, was razed, and the guilty were blinded, mutilated and burnt
   alive or hanged. An attempt to invade the Kingdom of Sicily, under the
   command of Ranieri, was halted at Spello by Marino of Eboli, Imperial
   vicar of Spoleto.
   Frederick II's troops paid with leather coins, from Chigi Codex,
   Vatican Library
   Enlarge
   Frederick II's troops paid with leather coins, from Chigi Codex,
   Vatican Library

   Innocent also sent a flow of money to Germany to cut off Frederick's
   power at its source. The archbishops of Köln and Mainz also declared
   Frederick deposed, and in May 1246 a new king was chosen in the person
   of Heinrich Raspe. On August 5 Heinrich, thanks to the Pope's money,
   managed to defeat an army of Conrad, son of Frederick, near Frankfurt.
   But Frederick strengthened his position in Southern Germany, acquiring
   the Duchy of Austria, whose duke had died without heirs, and one year
   later Heinrich died as well. The new anti-king was William II, Count of
   Holland.

   Between February and March 1247 Frederick settled the situation in
   Italy by means of the diet of Terni, naming his relatives or friends as
   vicars of the various lands. He married his son Manfred to the daughter
   of Amedeo di Savoia and secured the submission of the marquis of
   Monferrato. On his part, Innocent asked protection from the King of
   France, Louis IX; but the king was a friend of the Emperor and believed
   in his desire for peace. A papal army under the command of Ottaviano
   degli Ubaldini never reached Lombardy, and the Emperor, accompanied by
   a massive army, held the next diet in Turin.
   The unexpected sally of the Ghibelline cavalry from Parma against
   Vittoria, from an ancient manuscript
   Enlarge
   The unexpected sally of the Ghibelline cavalry from Parma against
   Vittoria, from an ancient manuscript

The Battle of Parma and the end

   An unexpected event was to change the situation dramatically. In June
   1247 the important Lombard city of Parma expelled the Imperial
   functionaries and sided with the Guelphs. Enzio was not in the city and
   could do nothing more than ask for help from his father, who came back
   to lay siege to the rebels, together with his friend Ezzelino III da
   Romano, tyrant of Verona. The besieged languished as the Emperor waited
   for them to surrender from starvation. He had a wooden city, which he
   called "Vittoria", built around the walls, where he kept his treasure
   and the harem and menagerie, and from where he could attend his
   favourite hunting expeditions. On February 18, 1248, during one of
   these absences, the camp was suddenly assaulted and taken, and in the
   ensuing Battle of Parma the Imperial side was routed. Frederick lost
   the Imperial treasure and with it any hope of maintaining the impetus
   of his struggle against the rebellious communes and against the pope,
   who began plans for a crusade against Sicily. Frederick soon recovered
   and rebuilt an army, but this defeat encouraged resistance in many
   cities that could no longer bear the fiscal burden of his regime:
   Romagna, Marche and Spoleto were lost.

   In February 1249 Frederick fired his advisor and prime minister, the
   famous jurist and poet Pier delle Vigne on charges of speculation and
   embezzlement. Some historians suggest that Pier was planning to betray
   the Emperor, who, according to Matthew of Paris, cried when he
   discovered the plot. Pier, blinded and in chains, died in Pisa,
   possibly by suicide. (Even more shocking for Frederick was the capture
   of his son Enzio of Sardinia by the Bolognese at the Battle of
   Fossalta, in the May of the same year. Only twenty-three at the time,
   he was held in a palace in Bologna, where he remained captive until his
   death in 1272. Frederick lost another son, Richard of Chieti. The
   struggle continued: the Empire lost Como and Modena, but regained
   Ravenna. An army sent to invade the Kingdom of Sicily under the command
   of Cardinal Pietro Capocci was crushed in the Marche at the Battle of
   Cingoli in 1250. In the first month of that year the indomitable
   Ranieri of Viterbo died and the Imperial condottieri again reconquered
   Romagna, Marche and Spoleto, and Conrad, King of the Romans scored
   several victories in Germany against William of Holland.
   The sarcophagus of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen in the Cathedral of
   Palermo.
   Enlarge
   The sarcophagus of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen in the Cathedral of
   Palermo.

   Frederick did not take part in of any of these campaigns. He had been
   ill and probably felt himself tired. Despite the betrayals and the
   setbacks he had faced in his last years, Frederick died peacefully,
   wearing the habit of a Cistercian monk, on December 13, 1250 in Castel
   Fiorentino near Lucera, in Puglia, after an attack of dysentery. At the
   time of his death, his preeminent position in Europe was challenged but
   not lost: his testament left his legitimate son Conrad IV the Imperial
   and Sicilian crowns. Manfred received the principate of Taranto and the
   government of the Kingdom, Henry the Kingdom of Arles or that of
   Jerusalem, while the son of Henry VII was entrusted with the Duchy of
   Austria and the Marquisate of Styria. Frederick's will stipulated that
   all the lands he had taken from the Church were to be returned to it,
   all the prisoners freed, and the taxes reduced, provided this did not
   damage the Empire's prestige.

   However, upon Conrad's death a mere four years later, the Hohenstaufen
   dynasty fell from power and an interregnum began, lasting until 1273,
   one year after the last Hohenstaufen, Enzio, had died in his prison.
   During this time, a legend developed that Frederick was not truly dead
   but merely sleeping in the Kyffhaeuser Mountains and would one day
   awaken to reestablish his empire. Over time, this legend largely
   transferred itself to his grandfather, Frederick I, also known as
   Barbarossa ("Redbeard").

   His sarcophagus (made of red porphyry) lies in the cathedral of Palermo
   beside those of his parents (Henry VI and Constance) as well as his
   grandfather, the Norman king Roger II of Sicily. A bust of Frederick
   sits in the Walhalla temple built by Ludwig I of Bavaria.

Personality

   His contemporaries called Frederick stupor mundi, the "wonder" — or,
   more precisely, the "astonishment" — "of the world"; the majority of
   his contemporaries, subscribing to medieval religious orthodoxy, under
   which the doctrines promulgated by the Church were supposed to be
   uniform and universal, were, indeed astonished — and sometimes repelled
   — by the pronounced individuality of the Hohenstaufen emperor, his
   temperamental stubbornness, and his unorthodox, nearly unquenchable
   thirst for knowledge.

   Frederick II was a religious sceptic. He is said to have denounced
   Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as all being frauds and deceivers of
   mankind. He delighted in uttering blasphemies and making mocking
   remarks directed toward Christian sacraments and beliefs. Frederick's
   religious scepticism was unusual for the era in which he lived, and to
   his contemporaries, highly shocking and scandalous.

   In Palermo, where the three-year-old boy was brought after his mother's
   death, he was said to have grown up like a street youth. The only
   benefit from Innocent III's guardianship was that at fourteen years of
   age he married a twenty-five-year-old widow named Constance, the
   daughter of the king of Aragon. Both seem to have been happy with the
   arrangement, and Constance soon bore a son, Henry.

   At his coronation, he showed how unusual he was. He wore a brand-new,
   red coronation robe with a strange ornamentation at the edge. This was
   an Arabic inscription indicating that the robe dated from the year 528
   in the Muslim calendar; it incorporated the Arab benediction: "May the
   Emperor be received well, may he enjoy vast prosperity, great
   generosity and high splendor, fame and magnificent endowments, and the
   fulfillment of his wishes and hopes. May his days and nights go in
   pleasure without end or change". This coronation robe can be found
   today in the Schatzkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

   Rather than exterminate the Saracens of Sicily, he allowed them to
   settle on the mainland and build mosques. Not least, he enlisted them
   in his - Christian - army and even into his personal bodyguards. As
   Muslim soldiers, they had the advantage of immunity from papal
   excommunication. For these reasons, among others, Frederick II is
   listed as a representative member of the sixth region of Dante's
   Inferno, The Heretics who are burned in tombs.

   A further example of how much Frederick differed from his
   contemporaries was the conduct of his Crusade in the Holy Land. Outside
   Jerusalem, with the power to take it, he parlayed five months with the
   Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt al-Kamil about the surrender of the city. The
   Sultan summoned him into Jerusalem and entertained him in the most
   lavish fashion. When the muezzin, out of consideration for Frederick,
   failed to make the morning call to prayer, the emperor declared: "I
   stayed overnight in Jerusalem, in order to overhear the prayer call of
   the Muslims and their worthy God". The Saracens had a good opinion of
   him, so it was no surprise that after five months Jerusalem was handed
   over to him, taking advantage of the war difficulties of al-Kamil. The
   fact that this was regarded in the Arab as in the Christian world as
   high treason did not matter to him. As the Patriarch of Jerusalem
   refused to crown him king, he set the crown on his own head.

   Besides his great tolerance (which, however, did not apply to Christian
   heretics), Frederick had an unlimited thirst for knowledge and
   learning. To the horror of his contemporaries, he simply did not
   believe things that could not be explained by reason. He forbade trials
   by ordeal in the firm conviction that in a duel the stronger would
   always win, whether or not he was guilty. Many of his laws continue to
   influence modern attitudes, such as his prohibition on physicians
   acting as their own pharmacists. This was a blow to the charlatanism
   under which physicians diagnosed dubious maladies in order to sell
   useless, even dangerous "cures".
   An image from an old copy of De arte venandi cum avibus.
   Enlarge
   An image from an old copy of De arte venandi cum avibus.

   Frederick inherited a love of falconry from his Norman ancestors.
   According to a source, Frederick replied to a letter in which the
   Mongol Khan invited him to "surrender" that he would do so provided
   only that he be permitted to become the Khan's hawker. He maintained up
   to fifty hawkers at a time in his court, and in his letters he
   requested Arctic gyrfalcons from Lübeck and even from Greenland. He
   commissioned his Syrian astrologer Theodor to translate the treatise De
   arte venandi cum avibus, by the Arab Moamyn, and he corrected or
   rewrote it himself during the interminable siege of Faenza. One of the
   two existing versions was modified by his son Manfred, also a keen
   falconer.

   Frederick loved exotic animals in general: his mobile zoo, with which
   he impressed the cold cities of Northern Italy and Europe, included
   hounds, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, lynxes, leopards and exotic
   birds.

   Frederick was also interested in the stars, and his court was host to
   many astrologers and astronomers. He often sent letters to the leading
   scholars of the time (not only in Europe) asking for solutions to
   questions of science, mathematics and physics.

   A Damascene chronicler, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi, left a physical description
   of Frederick based on the testimony of those who had seen the emperor
   in person in Jerusalem: "The Emperor was covered with red hair, was
   bald and myopic. Had he been a slave, he would not have fetched 200
   dirhams at market." Frederick's eyes were described variously as blue,
   or "green like those of a serpent".

Law reforms

   His 1241 Edict of Salerno (sometimes called "Constitution of Salerno")
   made the first legally fixed separation of the occupations of physician
   and apothecary. Physicians were forbidden to double as pharmacists and
   the prices of various medicinal remedies were fixed. This became a
   model for regulation of the practice of pharmacy throughout Europe.

   He was not able to extend his legal reforms beyond Sicily to the
   Empire. In 1232, he was forced by the German princes to promulgate the
   Statutum in favorem principum ("statute in favour of princes"). It was
   a charter of aristocratic liberties for German princes at the expense
   of the lesser nobility and commoners. The princes gained whole power of
   jurisdiction, and the power to strike their own coins. The emperor lost
   his right to establish new cities, castles and mints over their
   territories. The Statutum severely weakened central authority in
   Germany. From 1232 the vassals of the emperor had a veto over imperial
   legislative decisions. Every new law established by the emperor had to
   be approved by the princes.

Summary

   Frederick II was considered singular among the European Christian
   monarchs of the Middle Ages. This was observed even in his own time,
   although many of his contemporaries, because of his lifelong interest
   in Islam, saw in him "the Hammer of Christianity", or at the very least
   a dissenter from Christendom. Many modern medievalists view this as
   false, holding that Frederick understood himself as a Christian monarch
   in the sense of a Byzantine emperor, thus as God's Viceroy on earth.
   Other scholars view him as holding all religion in contempt, citing his
   rationalism and penchant for blasphemy. Whatever his personal feelings
   toward religion, certainly submission to the pope did not enter into
   the matter. This was in line with the Hohenstaufen Kaiseridee, the
   ideology claiming the Holy Roman Emperor to be the legitimate successor
   to the Roman emperors.

   Modern treatments of Frederick vary from sober evaluation (Stürner) to
   hero worship ( Ernst Kantorowicz). However, all agree on Frederick II's
   significance as Holy Roman Emperor, even if some of his actions (such
   as his politics with respect to Germany) remain quite dubious.

Parentage and children

     * Parents
          + Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (son of Frederick I, Holy Roman
            Emperor and Beatrix of Burgundy)
          + Constance of Sicily (daughter of Roger II of Sicily and
            Beatrice of Rethel)
     * Children
          + With Constance of Aragon:
               o Henry (VII) of Germany
          + With Yolande of Jerusalem:
               o unnamed daughter (Margaret?), died young
               o Conrad IV of Germany:
          + With Isabella of England
               o Margaret of Sicily, margravine of Meissen
               o Henry Charles of Sicily
               o Frederick of Sicily (possibly he was the sillborn child
                 who Isabella gave birth after she died)
               o Carl Otto (Jordanus?) of Sicily
               o Agnes of Sicily (her existance is not proved)
          + With Bianca Lancia:
               o Manfred of Sicily
               o Constance (Anna) of Sicily, married John III Ducas
                 Vatatzes
               o Violante of Sicily, married Riccardo di Caserta
          + With Adelheid Enzio:
               o Enzio of Sardinia
          + With Richina of Wolfs'oden:
               o Margaret of Swabia
          + With Matilda of Antioch:
               o Frederich of Antioch
          + With unknown:
               o Selvaggia
               o Conrad of Antioch
               o Richard of Theate
               o Catarina of Marano
               o Blanchefleur
               o Gerhard
               o Frederick of Pettorana

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