Download PDF | (Oxford Paperbacks) David Abulafia - Frederick II_ A Medieval Emperor -Oxford University Press, USA (1992).
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PREFACE
Frederick II is one of a small band of medieval rulers who possesses modern admirers. His wide cultural tastes, his apparent tolerance of Jews and Muslims, his defiance of the popes have earned him an exceptional reputation. He is portrayed as a genius, thinking the thoughts of later generations, seeking to create a new, secular, world order. Even if none of this were true, the fact that he has been seen in this light would entitle him to the close attention of historians and readers of history books. As a matter of fact, this book contends that rather little of his reputation is soundly based.
His involvement in a series of struggles with the popes attracted to him legends about his behaviour, or magnified aspects of his behaviour out of proportion to reality. He was an ideal target for gossips. Few other medieval rulers corresponded with the sages of Judaism and Islam; no other Holy Roman Emperor wore his crown in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; no contemporary could match in efficiency and tightness of control the bureaucratic machine of Frederick’s Sicilian realm. And it is basically true that after his death the Holy Roman Empire experienced a long recession from which it hardly emerged until Charles V imposed his rule on Germany as well as Spain in the early sixteenth century. A common problem for both emperors was that of managing a double inheritance, German and Mediterranean; and in many respects Frederick II accomplished the task with less difficulty than his stolid Habsburg successor.
Thus the reign of Frederick II marks a major stage in the transformation of Europe from a community of Latin Christians under the headship of two competing universal powers, pope and emperor, to a Europe of nation-states, in which the Roman Emperor counted for much less. In some respects Frederick’s other major territory, the smaller but better-controlled kingdom of Sicily (often called the regno, the kingdom), is the place to begin any study of the emergence of the nation-state; its inhabitants were far from being a ‘nation’ in any sense of the term, but the centralized methods of government adopted in Sicily were as important in the development of the nation-state as were the gradually evolving notions of ethnic, cultural or linguistic unity that Sicily acquired more slowly than most other European kingdoms. Frederick ruled both a universal empire and a territorial monarchy, and he ruled them in very different ways, with no intention (contrary to frequent assumption) of integrating them into a monolithic Roman autocracy stretching from the borders of Denmark through Italy to Sicily.
A monarch whose rule extended over lands that now form all or part of reunited Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France (southern Burgundy and Provence), Italy, Malta, Cyprus, Israel and Lebanon, who launched the Teutonic knights on the conquest of what later became the Baltic States, who even won influence on the coasts of Tunisia, demands from his biographer a range of expertise beyond that which I can offer. My own research interests, in the Sicilian kingdom, in the crusades and the Latin East, in the society and politics of the north Italian cities, do not qualify me to pass judgement on his activities in Germany, nor on the cultural life of his court. Yet I have not hesitated to come to some surprising conclusions about the latter topic. As for Germany, my only claim is that I have integrated what is known about Frederick’s policies there into a wider picture of his aims in Italy and the Latin East. Given the relative lack of attention to Frederick’s last fifteen or so years, I have concentrated much of my own original research on the period from about 1235 to 1250, plus a certain amount of research on Frederick’s childhood and on his crusade. In particular, I have studied in detail the papal registers preserved in the Secret Archive of the Vatican and the unique register of Frederick II’s documents, from 1239-40; in each case I have returned to what remains of the manuscripts, rather than relying on incomplete or faulty editions.
But I do not claim to have discovered a large amount of new factual information about Frederick: most of the sources, except the register of 1239-40, have been gutted time and again by learned Germans in search of their most enigmatic emperor. For this reason I have made the difficult decision to sacrifice notes in favour of a longer text; I know well that Ernst Kantorowicz was condemned for acting the same way when in 1927 he published a biography of Frederick, but it has to be said that my interpretation of the reign stands at a far remove from his own. The Erganzungsband, or supplement, to Kantorowicz’s book, and the notes in the Jahrbticher of the German empire will, in any case, provide a permanent place of reference to scholars who wish to follow up those points in my text where no source is cited.
For the intention of this book is to provide an overall interpretation of his reign, not to quibble over the details of (for instance) what happened at the battle of Cortenuova. On these issues there are solid factual guides, such as Winkelmann’s laborious and anaesthetic studies of the early part of the reign, or van Cleve’s massive biography, where the interpretation is simply wrong on large and small points, but where the course of events is explained soberly and clearly. For the basic outline of Frederick’s life is not in doubt, except among those historians who, altogether regrettably, make a parade of fine but inconsequential scholarship. I would insist that enough is now known about the events of Frederick’s life to make a re-assessment of his aims possible; what is strange is that I have found it possible to come to very different conclusions to, say, van Cleve or Haskins while very often using the evidence they have presented in defence of their argument. Thus some of what I say consists of a deconstruction of van Cleve or Kantorowicz, rather than an attempt to return entirely to all the sources and compile from scratch an entirely new account of his life. For, when it is a matter of the facts only, that is not necessary. What is needed is a view of the emperor’s intentions and achievements.
This means placing Frederick in a wider context than has so far been tried. To isolate him from his Norman background is to enlarge him out of scale; I have therefore thought it essential to include a lengthy opening chapter offering my view of the Norman creation of the kingdom of Sicily, making constant reference to problems the Normans experienced in common with Frederick II. Roger II, Frederick’s grandfather, dominates not just the first chapter; his shadow is cast throughout the book. In any case, there are no existing surveys of the Norman kingdom of Sicily dealing thematically with the topics I try to describe in this chapter. Equally, I have outlined the German background to Frederick II, looking in the second chapter at Frederick Barbarossa and his son Henry VI, the father of Frederick II; here not merely the political problems of Germany but also the reasons for German involvement in Lombardy, Tuscany and the crusading movement have to be discussed, if sense is to be made of Frederick II’s career. And, moving to the end of the book, I felt it essential to trace the fortunes of the Hohenstaufen beyond Frederick’s death in 1250, which marks an almost insignificant moment in a struggle that had gained full momentum by then: his disappearance did not lead the pope to call off his hounds, and the struggle between Frederick’s house and the papacy really culminated in the events of 1282 known as the Sicilian Vespers.
It was the whole dynasty, as the popes and their allies said outright, that had to be annihilated. Such a perspective makes it clear that Frederick II did not die defeated by the papacy; the position in 1250 was at best (from the papal viewpoint) a stalemate. To finish suddenly in 1250 is to ignore the paramount obsessions of the protagonists: a concern with the survival or extinction of a dynasty, a concern that all medieval rulers, all secular lords, shared. And the problem of dynastic survival mattered all the more to a German emperor, for his princes fought to retain their power to elect their ruler just as the ruler sought to establish a principle of hereditary succession. Another theme in the final chapter is the later reputation of Frederick II, whose name as late as 1500 still conjured dreams of a new era of mankind.
Frederick’s adversaries deserve a good deal of space, too. I have not set out to write a denunciation of the medieval popes. But (like Frederick) I remain deeply suspicious of religious leaders who bend the truth to serve what they believe to be a higher end. The thirteenth-century papacy did become obsessed with the Hohenstaufen threat; I am unconvinced that such a threat really existed. So too in Lombardy and in the Latin East assumptions were made by Frederick’s foes that were at least on occasion based on a misreading of the emperor’s intentions. Since Frederick was both fallible and inconsistent, it is no matter for surprise that his enemies believed reports about his behaviour that, taken selectively, appeared to present him as a destroyer of communal liberties or of the wealth and power of the Roman Church.
But, in essence, Frederick saw himself as the prince of peace, the upholder of justitia, that is to say, the principle of moral righteousness that should underlie all good government; and even beyond that he had a single-minded ambition that gave shape to his policies: the preservation of his dynasty and of its lands.
II
It is a pleasure to thank Sir John Plumb for his initial invitation to write this book; Peter Carson of Penguin Books has shown great patience with revised deadlines; the late R. C. (‘Otto’) Smail was a constant source of encouragement and of good sense and I much regret that he was never able to read any of the manuscript; Christopher Brooke has read the entire text and has provided me with copious and very welcome comments; John Gillingham and Jonathan Riley-Smith have shown much kind interest at seminars in England, as has James M. Powell in the United States. Michael Clanchy first urged me to write what could have been — maybe for the better — a much shorter book on Frederick.
Sir Steven Runciman’s magnificent account of the Sicilian Vespers, and Viscount Norwich’s lively histories of Norman Sicily, were among the first books to draw me to the island’s history; and this book may perhaps claim vo fill the gap between those works. Philip Grierson has been a particular source of help with Frederick’s magnificent coinage. Some ideas were tried out at one of the delightful (for the speaker, at least) Antiquary lectures in honour of Denys Hay at the University of Edinburgh, and at a seminar of the Institute for Advanced Study of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem organized by Benjamin Kedar and presided over by Joshua Prawer. I particularly wish to thank David Jacoby for extending an invitation to spend several months at the Department of History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and thereby allowing me plenty of time to think about how I might approach the theme of this book, as well as providing a chance to visit the crusader sites in Israel known to Frederick II.
On these visits, Sylvia Schein was a particularly able cicerone. Space prevents individual mention of all the historians, at each Israeli university, who showed limitless hospitality. From Jerusalem I moved on to Rome, and there had the benefit of residence in the British School at Rome, thanks in part to a grant from the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters of the School and in part to a grant from the British Academy. Luciana Valentini was, as ever, endlessly helpful in the library of the British School. But my main aim was to spend each day in the Secret Archive of the Vatican reading Innocent IV’s documents, and here Mgr Charles Burns was a model of consideration and good company. On an earlier visit to Italy I was able to consult the photographs of the destroyed register of Frederick II of 1239-40, owing to the kind help of Professoressa Jole Mazzoleni of the Archivio di Stato di Napoli. Graham Loud, Jeremy Johns, Norman Housley, Larry Epstein and Henri Bresc have generously shared with me their scholarly interest in Sicily and southern Italy. Georgina Morley and Judith Flanders at Penguin Books have given every help in seeing this book through the press.
I first heard of Frederick II, as far as I can remember, as a pupil at St Paul’s School, and my guide to his reign was Colin Davies, now of Charterhouse, followed later by Hugh Mead and Peter Thomson. Without their early inspiration and encouragement, I much doubt whether there would be this book. To the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge I should like to express fulsome thanks for the stimulating ambience and the outstanding research facilities that the college provides. Mrs Edna Pilmer typed much of the text in college, and the provision by the college of a magnificent word-processor enabled me to work further on the text.
Anna Sapir Abulafia has accompanied me on my journeys to Italy, the Middle East and elsewhere (not least to Frederick s birthplace at Jesi); her own skills as a medieval historian saved time in the archives of Naples; she has been the first to read and comment upon what I have written. To her the book is dedicated with my love.
D.S.H.A.
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge 26 December 1986: 792nd anniversary of the birth of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen.
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
The appearance of a paperback edition of this book has given me the chance to correct some misprints and minor errors of fact, bringing the English version into line with the Italian translation (Einaudi, Turin, 1990). Those in search of fuller annotation can now be guided to the following detailed studies by me which are being published around the time of this edition: “The end of Muslim Sicily’, in James M. Powell ed., Muslims under Latin rule: a comparative perspective, (Princeton University Press, 1990), 103-33; ‘Ethnic variety and its implications; Frederick II’s relations with Jews and Muslims’, Intellectual Life at the Court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen. A Symposium. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, delivered at the meeting from 18-20 January 1990 and subsequent publication in the National Gallery’s Studies in the History of Art, ed. William Tronzo; ‘Monarchs and minorities in the late medieval western Mediterranean: Lucera and its analogues’, to appear in Scott L. Waugh, ed., Christendom and its Discontents, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles; ‘Lo Stato e la vita economica nel Regno di Sicilia sotto Federico IP, Frederick II and the Mediterranean World. Theory and Practice of Government. First International Workshop on Frederick II, delivered at the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture, Erice, Sicily, 18-24 September 1989 (Sellerio Editore, Palermo, 1992), 289-311; ‘The Kingdom of Sicily and the Origins of the Political Crusades’, to appear in Societd, I stituzioni, S pirtualita nell’Euro pa medievale. Scritti in onore di Cinzio Violante. Relevant annotation will also be found in the following articles which preceded the publication of this book, and which have also appeared in my volume of collected studies on Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100-1400 (London, 1987): “The Crown and the Economy under Roger II and his successors’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, xxxvii, 1-14; ‘Maometto e Carlomagno: le due aree monetarie dell’oro e dell’argento’, Economia naturale, economia monetaria, ed. R. Romano and U. Tucci, Annali della Storia d’Italia, vol. vi, (Turin: Einaudi, 1983), 223-270; ‘Kantorowicz and Frederick II’, History, lxii (1977), 193-210; ‘Henry Count of Malta and his Mediterranean Activities, 1203-1230’, Medieval Malta: studies on Malta before the Knights, ed. A.T. Luttrell (Supplementary Monograph of the British School at Rome, London, 1975), 104-25.
THE NORMAN INHERITANCE
I
When in the thirteenth century the Holy Roman Emperor appeared arrayed in crown and vestments, on the great festivals of the Church, he wore tunic and dalmatic of Sicilian silk, red shoes and stockings, also of Sicilian silk, and red gloves studded with pearls. His mantle was deep red in colour, embroidered in gold with the figure of a lion pouncing on a camel (repeated symmetrically); and around the edge was an inscription in Arabic, declaring that this mantle had been made in 1133-4 for the most glorious King Roger, in his city of Palermo. And the crowns too were objects of unrivalled splendour: the imperial crown, worn in Germany and northern Italy, or in Rome, and handed down from the Saxon emperors of the late tenth century, was a circlet adorned with enamel plates and mounted with an intricate arch, above a small cloth mitre; but the crown worn in Sicily and southern Italy was of a type made fashionable by the Byzantine emperors, entirely closed, whether of embroidered cloth or of precious metal, with long jewelled pendants — half an orb, to symbolize the temporal dominion of the ruler.
These textiles and crowns are not simply items of beauty and splendour. They are a visible expression of a monarchy that drew on Greek, Latin and even Arab ideas of rulership to elevate the king to a position far above his subjects. It was a monarchy whose ultimate model lay in the universal Christian Roman empire of Constantine and Justinian. Yet the fullest expression of these ideas of rulership obtained not in a territory that regarded itself as an integral part of a universal empire, but in a territorial kingdom, a newly created monarchy whose very survival was threatened by the German and Byzantine emperors: the kingdom of Sicily. Even when, in 1194, this kingdom was conquered by the German emperor, it remained a separate entity, not united with the empire, but a personal and special possession of the emperor qua king of Sicily. The question of the relative status of empire and Sicilian kingdom was to plague the politics of the thirteenth century; and the most vigorous exponent of the idea of the special identity of the Sicilian kingdom was Frederick II.
Those coronation vestments represented part of the confusion. It seems Frederick wore them as emperor, yet they were the ancient coronation robes of the kings of Sicily. They were made in Sicily, by the silk-workers installed in the royal palaces; by workers who were Arabs, or Greek Jews kidnapped by his grandfather Roger II of Sicily. The red silk, perhaps the same colour as the Byzantine ‘purple’ long coveted in the west, spoke for the Roman descent of the power wielded by the ruler: these were the colours worn by Byzantine emperors, by popes and those who claimed universal or absolute authority. The tunic, dalmatic and mitre spoke for the view that the consecrated king was rex et sacerdos, king and priest, elevated by his unction into a status above that of the common man, mediating (like a priest) between God and man, reflecting the majesty of God on earth. A famous mosaic in Palermo shows the first Sicilian king, Roger II, being crowned by Christ; the identity of features between the king and Christ is no coincidence, for the king is seen to be Christ’s deputy on earth,
But the crowned heads of Latin Europe had rivals in their claim to act as God’s deputy. The papacy possessed a special relationship with those very kings of Sicily who asserted the direct descent of royal power from Christ. The Norman kings of Sicily were papal vassals, holding their royal authority (in papal eyes) from the pope, though they received some compensation in the form of a much-disputed grant from the papacy of the right to manage the affairs of the Sicilian Church without close reference to Rome. And the Holy Roman Emperors had long been embroiled in conflict with the papacy over papal claims to universal authority, involving also the right to admonish, correct and even depose sinful rulers; the clash between Pope Gregory VII and King Henry IV of Germany, at the end of the eleventh century, was still vividly remembered in the thirteenth. In the earty thirteenth century the contradictions between different claims to authority resulted in the most violent of all the clashes between secular and spiritual power: the reign of Frederick II, king of Sicily and Holy Roman Emperor, saw the intensification of an already bitter conflict, and extended the struggle downwards from the courts of Europe to the town halls of Lombardy and Tuscany.
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