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January Meme: Problematic Emperor Favourite
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mildred_of_midgard wanted to know why the other Frederick II (i.e. the medieval Emperor, not the Prussian King) is a problematic favourite of mine. So, let's hear it for il re Federico, the Sicilian-Norman-German whom I would not have wanted to be married to for the world. Frederick II (1194 – 1250) of Hohenstaufen: stupor mundi, as his contemporaries called him, the amazement of the world (both in the good and bad sense), when they didn’t call him Antichrist (he was excommunicated four times). Nietzsche called him “the first European”, not just due to his multinational origin (son of the German Emperor Henry VI and the Norman Constance d’Hauteville, raised in Sicily and absorbing its Sicilian-Norman-Greek-Saracen culture). You can also call him a Renaissance personality in medieval times, both in the good and the bad sense of the term. Frederick had a keen scientific mind; his book about falconry is also an empirical study of birds in general, and he did what practically no one else would have dared to, go against Aristotle (THE authority for scholars) based on his own observations. (Correctly, too, as we know today.) He was the first ruler to outlaw trials by combat because of their irrationality. His laws, the Constitutions of Melfi, were the most modern laws of the world back then (and remained so for a few centuries more); they included, btw, protection for prostitutes (they specifically said that raping a prostitute was as much a crime as raping wives and maidens was). When, during his second time in the German territories (he was only there twice, spending most of his life in Italy where he was born), a typical medieval display of Antijudaism happened and Jews were accused of having murdered a Christian child (i.e. a case of the infamous blood libel), Frederick when the whole affair was brought before him stunned his Christian subjects by how he handled this. Now, there were of course also other medieval monarchs protecting Jews. (Not nearly enough, and they usually did it in their own economical interests, but still.) What's special about Frederick and a reason why he's one of my fave is that he didn't just decide in the Jews' favor by waving his monarchical hand. He actually wanted to do someything systematic about this that would set a precedence and hopefully avoid any more of this murderous nonsense. So he called an assembly of scholars together (Christian, Jewish converts to Christianity, and Jewish alike) who were well read in Jewish law and thus qualified to investigate whether Jewish law even allowed for any human sacrifices. When, unsurprisingly, this ended in the conclusion that it did not, Frederick made it illegal to use this accusation against Jews in his realms. (Sadly, this ruling did not survive him for long.) He also was the only Crusader who didn’t fight a single battle but concluded his particular Crusade successfully based on negotiations alone. (It helped he was fluent in Arabic, which came with the Sicilian childhood.) (The only ones trying to kill him during his time in Palestine were some Templars, which the Sultan Malik al Kamil warned him about in time.) (He also was excommunicated while doing this - the first time of several occasions.) While we're talking about Frederick's against-the-odds campaigns, there is of course the very first one, when he's still a 16 years old teenager, and is up against seasoned warrior Otto IV. from the opposing House of Welf; this involves making it across the Alps with just a few companions and much pluck (and good propaganda) and arriving literally three hours before Otto did at Lake Constance, meaning he got served the meal prepared for Otto after managing to convince the Constance locals that he, not Otto, is the rightful King. Later, he was really lucky that Otto was related to the Plantaganets and had to support Uncle John on the field, which means Frederick got France on his side (not having an army of your own yet, it helps when the French king conveniently beats up your enemy as part of his beating up his enemy. But luck will only get you so far; you have to use it.
So much for the bright side. But don’t enlist Frederick for social justice, either. He was absolutely ruthless. Those Constitutions of Melfi were modern for their time also because they were laws for an absolute monarchy, and if you went up against him as a ruler, there was no mercy. (He also seems to have inherited a bit of the infamous Hohenstaufen temper; on one notorious occasion, he literally kicked a surrendering opponent when the guy was down.) The fact he was constantly accused of heresy and atheism by the Popes he clashed with doesn’t mean he wasn’t using the heresy charge as a convenient tool against unruly subjects in the German territories himself. And sure, he was a pioneer in writing love poetry in the Volgare, i.e. the Sicilian version of Italian, as opposed to Latin. But if you had the bad luck of being married to him and weren’t his first wife (whom he married when he was 14 and she was 25, the only one who was crowned alongside him, and whom he later buried in an oddly touching gesture wearing not the crown of Sicilian queens, but that of Sicilian kings, i.e. his own crown), you lived in a harem (literally, he had one, Muslim style) and weren’t even allowed to see your visiting brother, as wife No.3, Isabella of England, found out when her brother Richard of Cornwall visited. And we’ll never know whether or not some of the papal accusations re: his experiments (such as the one where supposedly he picked two condemned prisoners, had them both eat, had one of them exercise physically, had both of them killed and dissected in order to find out the differences) weren't true. Oh, and Frederick as a father: great of you're one of the illegitimate children and/or one of the younger legitimate ones. Not so great if you're the oldest, Henry, end up rebelling and are locked up for life as a result, whereupon you commit suicide.
All of which means that it's just as easy to be appalled by Frederick as being drawn to him today. (In short, much like his contemporaries.) . Let me leave you with my favourite Frederick anecdote: when the Great Khan Batu sent messages demanding European rulers to surrender to him or die, and promising that if they did surrender he’d find offices at court for them (this was during the biggest expansion of a the Mongol Empire, when they had already reached the Danube, so no, he wasn’t kidding), Frederick quipped back that if needs must he did have some skills as a falconer.
The other days
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