Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

That was super fun.

And then, of course, Frederick II, and then leading into the original Pope Fights, which chronologically is the last one, but it's okay.

Yeah.

I feel like the story came together really nicely in the way that a good megacomp does.

Frederick II.

Or should I say Emperor Frederick II.

King of Sicily, King of Germany, and soon to be King of Jerusalem.

So say whatever you have to say about me.

John, you take care of this.

I'll just be king from like a thousand miles away.

So they assume if they can marry off John's daughter to Emperor Frederick, that Frederick's just going to leave the territory alone and just let John be the boss.

So Frederick's like, this is a great idea.

His decision in favour of Henry was probably an honest one, but he was misled by the very different relations of the French and English kings to their nobles, who in France maintained lawlessness and violence, while in England they were struggling for law and order.

Throughout the struggles between the Popes and the Emperor Frederick II, louis would not be induced to assist in a persecution of the emperor which he considered unjust nor permit one of his sons to accept the kingdom of apulia and sicily when the pope declared that friedrich had forfeited it he could not however prevent his brother charles count of anjou from accepting it for Charles had married Beatrice, heiress of the imperial fief of Provence, and being thus independent of his brother Louis, was able to establish a branch of the French royal family on the throne at Naples.

The reign of Saint Louis was a time of much progress and improvement.

There were great scholars and thinkers at all the universities.

While all the chief powers in Europe agreed to the so-called pragmatic sanction, by which Charles decreed that Maria Theresa should inherit Austria and Hungary, and the other hereditary states on her father's death, to the exclusion of the daughters of his elder brother Joseph.

When Charles VI died, however, in 1740, a great European war began on this matter.

Frederick II of Prussia would neither allow Maria Theresa's claim to the hereditary states, nor join in electing her husband to the empire.

and france took part against her sending marshal billel to support the elector of bavaria who had been chosen emperor george the second of england held with maria theresa and gained a victory over the french at dettingen in seventeen forty four Louis XV then joined his army, and the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745 was one of the rare victories of France over England.

huge it's huge

as part of a extension of power by uh emperor frederick ii But the most Sicilian thing about it is in 1669, there was a massive explosion and lava flow from the Etna volcano.

And the volcano flowed all the way here.

What is it? 40 miles, 50 miles? I don't know how far it is.

Right.

And one of the popes, Gregory IX, ordered an invasion of Frederick II's kingdom of Sicily while Frederick was away on his Holy Land expedition.

Right, that's really nice.

He's going to do the religious bit.

It is built on top of a hill, hence the name Castel del Monte, because it is a castle-looking like structure situated on a mount about 540 meters or about 1,800 feet above sea level.

It was built during the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and you may remember Frederick II, who of course was known as the Stupor Mundi, as the wonder of the world, because he is this extraordinary... figure from the Middle Ages, perhaps the most celebrated of all.

He was the Holy Roman Emperor, he was the King of Sicily, he was the King of Jerusalem, he was what today we would call a Renaissance man.

And remember, Frederick, who was the son of Constans of Sicily.

And Constans and I don't want to get too deep into the family tree, was the sister of King William I, the second king, I mean, qualify that actually, the second Norman king of Sicily, and Constance's husband was the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI.

That is how Frederick II came to be both Holy Roman Emperor and at the same time, the King of Sicily.

Now, there is indeed a document that survives, which refers to the Castel del Monte and Frederick II, who ordered a governor of this particular area of Puglia, the Capatinata.

Remember we talked about how Puglia was divided up into three different areas, the Capatinata, which is the northern part, the Terre di Bari, and the Terre di Otranto.

His family, you know, his brothers are soldiers

in Frederick II's military.

And he himself thought of himself as a son of aristocrat and as belonging, like my job is to defend strongholds.

And that's actually true.

He goes down there.

At age 19, he discovers this new religious community with two lonely representatives in Naples.

The rest had been kicked out by Frederick II.

The two lonely representatives of this new movement called the Dominicans.

Yeah.

And which gets applied to the Holy Roman emperors, Frederick I, Barbarossa, and Frederick II.

Okay.

And the third possibility? A

When he called out the name of the knight, the knight who was prepared reacted immediately by drawing his sword and chasing the Revenant, who fled back to his grave.

The knight then cut off the dead man's head, and that resolved the matter.

Of course, the revenant author, like the revenants Charlemagne, Barbarossa, and Frederick II, will only come back to punish the enemies of their people.

They are the good versions of the revenant, but more commonly, revenants are wicked.

As a consequence of the close commercial relations early existing between England and the Rhenish-Westphalian towns, the merchants of Cologne were the first to possess a guild hall in London and to form a Hansa with the right of admitting other German merchants on payment of a fee.

The Charter of twelve twenty-six, however, by which Emperor Frederick II created Lübeck a free imperial town, expressly declared that Lübeck citizens trading in England should be free from the dues imposed by the merchants of Cologne and should enjoy equal rights and privileges.

In twelve sixty-six and twelve sixty-seven, the merchants of Hamburg and Lübeck received from Henry III the right to establish their own Hansas in London, like that of Cologne.

The situation thus created led by twelve eighty-two to the coalescence of the rival associations in the Guildhall of the Germans.