Through streets like these the Emperor Henry VI rode to Palermo cathedral, where he would be crowned as King of Sicily.
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THE EMPERORS
HENRY VI’S ITALIAN CLAIMS
Henry VI, son and successor of Frederick I Barbarossa, had a claim on Italy as no Ger,man ruler before him had possessed, for he had married the Norman-Sicilian princess Constance in 1286. When King William II of Sicily died in 1189, Constance was the only one with a hereditary right to the throne. The Sicilian nobility, however, not wanting a German on the throne, elected Tancred a half-brother of King William, as king (1189-1194). The Kingdom of Sicily also included South Italy.
In December 1190 Henry VI crossed the Alps and was crowned as emperor in Rome; on April 29, 1191, he invaded the Sicilian kingdom. During the siege of Naples a malaria epidemic broke out in the German army, through which, it is said, 90 % of the soldiers died. The emperor himself fell ill and was on the brink of death. He had to be carried in a chair to the abbey of Monte Cassino, where he slowly recovered. The siege and plans to conquer Sicily had to be abandoned. Henry was back in Germany in December 1191, where the Welf problem awaited him. (see for this the Staufer era I).
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RICHARD COEUR DE LION AND HENRY VI
Richard I Cœur de Lion was King of England 1189-1199. He was an impetuous and often imprudent man. Henry VI and he were no great friends, because Richard had supported Henry the Lion Welf against the emperor. In 1192 Richard went on crusade to the Holy Land; when his troops entered the captured Acre, he saw the banner of Leopold V, Duke of Austria, already floating from one of the big buildings. Hot-tempered as he was, he took this as an attack on his honour, for he claimed that he was the first to enter the city. He ordered a soldier to go up the building and haul the flag down; he then threw it in the mud and trampled on it. Thus he made Leopold into an implacable enemy.
In October 1192 Richard left Acre and sailed to Sicily, where he was entertained by King Tancred. For the return journey, either through France or through Germany, he had the choice between the block and the gallows, for both the French king and Henry VI were his enemies. Via Algiers he reached Corfu, and sailed from there on a pirate ship to Venice, with a very small retinue. Shortly before reaching Venice, a storm wrecked the ship, but Richard came safely ashore. He crossed the Alps and succeeded in reaching Görz in Austria.
He was now in the danger zone, on Leopold’s territory. He disguised himself and let his hair and beard grow. Undetected he reached the vicinity of Vienna, accompanied by only one servant. There he took lodgings in an inn in the village of Erdberg. He sent his man to Vienna in order to buy food; the young man aroused suspicion, because he paid with Byzantine coins. He was arrested, but explained this by saying that his master was a wealthy merchant and was set free. He implored Richard to depart immediately, but in vain. During a second visit some saw how fine his gloves were. Arrested again, he was put on the rack; he confessed who his master was. Viennese citizens went to the king’s inn, but the proud man would not give up himself to ordinary citizens. The duke himself had to come; Leopold came, received Richard’s sword, and interned him in the castle of Dürrenstein on the Danube on December 21, 1192.This incredible news resounded throughout the whole empire. Nobody could rejoice more than Henry VI. He ordered Duke Leopold to surrender the king to him, for “it is not proper that a king should be held by a duke”. Leopold literally sold his prisoner to the emperor for an enormous sum in silver coins. When the news reached England in February 1193, two abbots were immediately dispatched to Germany. They met the king in Ochsenburg on the Main, while he was being escorted to the emperor’s court. They found him to be in good spirits, hilarem et affabilem, and accompanied him to Speyer, where the court resided.
The emperor and the captive king had a personal interview in Speyer; it was not private, for the hall was thronged with persons of quality wanting to witness this. Richard stood unbroken at the steps of the imperial throne; in all probability, he, the great and famous hero, the man with a `lion’s heart’, considered the man on the throne, younger than he was, as a worthless fellow, who had never taken part in a crusade and had always failed as a warrior.
Nevertheless, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Henry VI, presented his demands to Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England. He accused Richard of conspiring with King Tancred against him, of having pocketed all the booty of the crusade, and of having insulted the Austrian duke. Richard defended himself vigorously’. No proofs had been brought forward, he said. He asked for a public process in which he could prove his innocence. He then sank on his knee before the throne. Henry descended from his throne, embraced his enemy and kissed him. He would do all the could to help him. Tears were in the eyes of all.
On March 25 a treaty was concluded. Richard had to pay a ransom of one hundred thousand marks in silver; he must also put fifty galleys at the emperor’s disposal for the time of one year (probably for an attack on Sicily). Until the ransom would have been paid, the king stayed in the castle of Trifels, but not in close custody; he was allowed to move about freely. Yet, Henry also demanded that Richard would become his vassal. Seeing no way out, the king consented. As a sign of this, he gave his royal hat to the emperor, upon which he was invested as King of England. All England combed its purses to collect the enormous sum of ransom. When it was paid, Richard returned to England and was enthroned again as king in Winchester cathedral on April 17, 1194.
It is not probable that he considered his oath as vassalage as null and void. An oath is an oath, and an oath of vassalage more than any other. And after all, the emperor was the highest sovereign in Europe; there was nothing dishonourable in being his vassal. Yet, when all is said and done, in practice it meant nothing.
Primary Sources
HENRY VI KING OF SICILY
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Through streets like these the Emperor Henry VI rode to Palermo cathedral, where he would be crowned as King of Sicily.
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In February 1194 Tancred, the last Norman king of Sicily, died, leaving only a minor son, William III. Henry VI believed to have a claim on the Sicilian throne through his wife Constance, daughter of Roger II, King of Sicily. In May 1194 he began, taking his wife with him, his second expedition to Italy. In August he was in Rome and occupied Apulia and Calabria in September and October without meeting resistance. Already on September 1, imperial troops landed near Messina and occupied it. Henry himself arrived there at the end of October.
On November 12 the German army entered Palermo, the capital. The house were decked out with flowers and foliage; from their balconies, hung with tapestries, the citizens saw the long rows of tall northern warriors marching through their streets, with in their midst the emperor, serious and proud. From the towers the German banners flew. Then Henry entered the royal palace. There were negotiations with the Norman royal party, which resulted in the return of the royal family to Palermo. The boy-king William abdicated by handing his crown and his treasury to Henry. Thus ended Norman rule over Sicily. On Christmas Day Henry VI and Constance were crowned as king and queen of Sicily in Palermo cathedral. Henry was so proud of his new dignity that he attended Mass every day with the crown on his head.
Henry was at the peak of his power now. He was the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, King of Germany, of Burgundy, of Lombardy, and of Sicily, the suzerain of the Kings of England and Bohemia, and the Protector of the Roman Church. To crown it all, his wife Constance, who was already forty years old, gave him the long desired son, one day after the coronation: he would become the Emperor Frederick II.
Primary Sources
HENRY’S DEATH
Henry died on September 28, 1197, in Palermo, only thirty-two years old, and was buried I the cathedral. His designated successor was his son Frederick, at that moment not yet three years old.
TWO PARTIES IN GERMANY
The Staufer party was led by an uncle of prince Frederick, Duke Philip of Swabia; he wanted Frederick to be acknowledged as King of Germany, with him as regent. The anti-Staufer party, consisting of the princes of the German south-west and of the old Welf party, would have the third son of Henry the Lion, Otto as king.
On March 8, 1198. Philip of Swabia was elected as king, whereas the other part chose Otto (IV) on June. Civil war was inevitable. Soon the two parties were fighting each other, with Otto IV mainly controlling the West and Philip the East.
Secondary Sources
POPE INNOCENT III
Cardinal Lothar of Segni was elected as Pope on January 8, 1198; as Pope Innocent III he ruled the Church from 1198 to 1216. He was one of the most powerful Popes of the Middle Ages. He conceived of himself as the arbiter in the German question, but took his time to come to a decision. In 1201 he decided that Otto IV was more fit to rule the empire than Philip and wrote to him that he was ready to crown him as emperor.
Was this Pope a power politician, a medieval Bismarck? That would mean grossly misjudging him. He used his power and influence, but this does not mean that he was a power politician. His power was by no means limitless, which is proved by the fact that he was unable to help Otto effectively. To all the Popes of this period, Gregory VII, Urban II, Paschal II, Alexander III, and Innocent III, two things were of paramount importance: the independence of the Church and the unity of Europe. Medieval Popes felt themselves to be responsible for this ideal: they were the guarantees of European unity. Its decisive sign, the imperial crown, was in their hands, they could give to whom they saw fit. The more the Kaiseridee was on the wane, the more the pontiffs found this responsibility weighing upon them.
Secondary Sources
OTTO IV EMPEROR
Philip of Swabia was murdered on June 21, 1208. In this way the German civil war came to an
unexpected end. It freed Innocent III of the problem for whom he must opt: With Germany safely
in his hands, Otto IV travelled to Rome and was crowned as emperor by the Pope on October 3, 1209.
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INNOCENT’S BREACH WITH OTTO
The new emperor did not return to Germany, but began a southward attack in the autumn of 1210. He first occupied some papal possessions and then invaded the Norman kingdom in South Italy. Although he occupied the whole of South Italy, his attempts on Sicily failed. Since this kingdom was a fief of the Holy See and since had occupied some papal territories, the Pope came the conclusion that there was no great difference between a Welf and a Staufer: he excommunicated Otto on March 21, 1211, because he had violated the rights of the Church. From now on Innocent vested his hopes in the seventeen-year old son of the Emperor Henry VI, Frederick II.
FREDERICK II Primary Source
Born on December 26, 1194, at Jesi in South Italy, Frederick II lost both his parents before he was four years old. His birth was surrounded by mysteries. It was rumoured that he was an illegitimate child, because his mother Constance was supposed to be too old to conceive. Some said that he was the son of a butcher in Jesi. And others knew for certain that he was a son of the devil himself. All these stories have their origin in the fact that Frederick was such an exceptional that he did not fit into any medieval pattern.
Secondary Sources
Frederick II was very intelligent, eager to learn, and disposing of an amazing erudition.He read a lot of history, even until deep in the night. He was not big, but robust and well-built. He knew that he was a king and wanted to be treated as such. He could speak many languages and seems even to have mastered Arabic and to have been acquainted with Islam. He used to travel with a Saracen body-guard; his servants were Ethiopians. A whole menagerie accompanied him: camels, dromedaries, apes, and wild beasts, like leopards. He was not a very religious person. The chronicler Salimbene states categorically: “As to faith in God, he had none.” However, he used to depict himself as a true and faithful son of the Church, always fulfilling his religious obligations. On the other hand, he was very `modern’ in that he found it hard to accept dogmas that could not be rationally proved.
Frederick was a famous lover. He had no lack of beautiful women who were pleased to share his bed. He had illegitimate sons, Enzo, later King of Sardinia, Frederick of Antioch, of whom it was rumoured that his mother was a Muslim woman, another natural son Manfred, and two natural daughters Selvaggia and Violante. His first wife, married when he was still a minor, was a Spanish lady, Constance, twenty-five years old and already a widow. Their son Henry was born in 1211. When Constance died in 1222, Frederick wanted to marry Yolanda, the only daughter of John of Brienne. King of Jerusalem; this union would give a claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He married the thirteen-year-old girl; he seems to have been very unhappy with him. She died in childbed in 1228, when she was hardly sixteen years old. Her son was Conrad (IV). In 1235 Frederick married for the third time, the reputedly very beautiful English princess Isabella, sister of King Henry II of England; she gave him a son, also called Henry in 1238 (the first Henry had been repudiated by his father).
MASTER OF GERMANY
An invitation of the German opposition to Otto IV to come to Germany reached him in May 1211; he saw a call from on high in this. He had his little son Henry crowned as King of Sicily with Constance as his regent and sailed from Palermo in March 1212. On the 17th he was marooned in Gaeta for a month, for imperial ships were cruising at sea to catch him. In April he arrived in Rome, poor as a beggar, but his guardian Pope Innocent III gave him a considerable sum of money. Genoese ships were hired; on May 1 he arrived in Genoa and once again received a great sum of money. The journey through Lombardy with its many anti-Staufer towns was hazardous. On July 20 he was in Pavia and on the 28th in Cremona. Escorted by Pavese and Cremonese horsemen, he rode all night, but was stopped at the banks of the river Lambro by a Milanese detachment. A pitched fight with dead and wounded followed. Frederick escaped being caught by forcing his horse to swim over the Lambro; the Milanese jeered that he “had washed his trousers in the Lambro’. It is said that his hatred of Milan Dated from this day. He recuperated in Cremona and left this town only on August 20 to travel via Mantua to Verona (August 25) and from there to the Alps. The journey through Lombardy had cost him four months. He made his way over the Alps along dangerous and inhospitable tracks in order to avoid the well-guarded passes. In Chur in Switzerland he was friendly received; an escort of three hundred horsemen conducted him to Konstanz, where the bishop after some hesitation allowed to come in.
Otto IV hastened back from Italy to Germany, only to see his support crumble away. Princes and towns rallied to the grandson of the famous Barbarossa; his march to the north began to resemble a triumphal procession. Otto was unable to stop him. In the first days of December 1212 he was in Frankfurt, where he was elected as King of the Romans on December 5. Nine months after having left Palermo the infans Apuliae, the child from Apulia, had what he wanted. In Frankfurt he was crowned, but on July 25, 1215, he was crowned again, this time in Aachen, where he seated himself on Charlemagne’s throne. After a few years of desultory campaigning Otto IV died in on May 19, 1218.
THE IMPERIAL CROWN
On November 22, 1220, Pope Honorius III crowned him as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in St.Peter’s in Rome.
THE CRUSADER
It was one of the core tasks of every emperor to take the cross and go on crusade. Frederick repeatedly promised to depart to the Holy Land, but he had always a reason to postpone his departure, for which Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241), a man of the same tough fibre as Innocent III, excommunicated him in September 1227. The claim Frederick had to Jerusalem was through his second wife, Yolande, who was a daughter of John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem. For this reason Frederick styled himself ‘King of Jerusalem’. In July 1228 he arrived in Palestine, without an army. After protracted negotiations with the sultan of Egypt al-Kamil (the Egyptians then being the masters of Jerusalem), the Treaty of Jaffa was concluded (February12, 1229): Jerusalem was ceded to the Christians, together with the strip of land between this city and Bethlehem (but not Hebron). On March 17, 1229, Frederick was crowned as King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He soon left Palestine, never to return.
Secondary Literature
Palermo cathedral, where Frederick II and his father Henry VI lie buried.
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FREDERICK II AS A CHRISTIAN
Frederick was a baptized son of the Church and died fortified with its Last Rites. He never denied that the Pope was the spiritual overlord. Yet he was not a devote, religious man, inveterate womaniser as he was. He certainly did not accept the great dogmatic tenets of the Church as literally true; he interpreted them, as we call it today, in a liberal manner. If he did not downright reject some of them. It is often stated that the emperor wrote a book, called De tribus impostoribus, on the three deceivers, these three being Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, but this is pure legend.
FREDERICK’S DEATH
Frederick II died on December 13, 1250, in Apulia of dysentery. He was buried in Palermo cathedral in a great red porphyry sarcophagus, that can still be seen in a side chapel.
THE STAUFER HERITAGE
There was only one legitimate son, Conrad IV, crowned as King of Germany in 1237. After his father’s death he hastened south to make sure of the rebellious Sicily. He died already of malaria in May 1254, without having become King of Sicily and still less having been crowned as emperor. He and his wife Elisabeth of Wittelsbach had only one son, Conradino, the only five years old. Conrad had a illegitimate half-brother, Manfred, son of Bianca Lancia. This adventurer succeeded in making himself King of Sicily in 1258. Pope Urban IV, however, offered the crown of Sicily to a Frenchman, Charles I of Anjou. Manfred fell fighting him in the Battle of Benevento on February 26, 1266. Charles became King of Sicily. He interned Manfred’s Greek wife Helena of Epirus and their five children. Helena was set free after five years and her daughter Beagtrice after eighteen years, but the three sons all died after decades in prison. They were chained to the wall and gradually lost the use of their reason.
In 1267 the then fifteen-year-old Conradino left Germany,and went south, hoping to win the crown of Sicily. Charles defeated him in the Battle of Tagliacozzo on August 23, 1268. The fleeing Conradino was caught and delivered to Charles. He was condemned as a rebel and beheaded on the market square of Naples on October 29, 1269. In his very last moment, standing on the scaffold, he threw his glove to the onlookers. With this gesture of defiance the history of the Staufer ends.