Cultural depictions of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, also called Stupor mundi (Wonder of the World), was a notable European ruler who left a controversial political and cultural legacy.

Kantorowicz praises Frederick as a genius, who created the "first western bureaucracy", an "intellectual order within the state" that acted like "an effective weapon in his fight with the Church—bound together from its birth by sacred ties in the priestly-Christian spirit of the age, and uplifted to the triumphant cult of the Deity Justitia.

[5] For the famous 19th century English historian Edward Augustus Freeman, in genius and accomplishments, Frederick II was “surely the greatest prince who ever wore a crown”, superior to Alexander, Constantine or Charlemagne, who failed to grasp nothing in the “compass of the political or intellectual world of his age”.

[12] In 1992, David Abulafia wrote a revisionist work which argues that Frederick was not a rationalist or an early free-thinker, but a medieval ruler concerned with dynastic goals and also a "victim of his dual inheritance", who was forced to act in his own defense in front of popes who were determined to destroy his power.

"[14] Dorothea Weltecke notes that despite Abulafia's effort to destroy what he saw as German mystification of a "medieval emperor", most historians today still see Frederick as a man who transcended his time and shared our values of secularism, tolerance and rationalism.

Weltecke opines that Frederick's diverse style of ruling in his different lands and his ability to adapt make it difficult to present in a coherent manner his politics, let alone his personality, that in his time, already provoked either "profound adoration or vehement rejection".

Regarding his role in Arabic-Christian transfer of knowledge though, Weltecke writes that the Medieval Christian culture was not a monolithic entity unanimously hostile to Muslims, thus it was not necessary for Frederick to possess a hybrid personality to be the competent diplomat and promoter of science he was.

Other forces in Latin states sought Muslim cooperation against Frederick, while other religious and secular figures like Alfonso IX of León also played a role in the emergence of universities and the transfer of knowledge from the Islamic world.

By the 1240s the crown was almost as rich in fiscal resources, towns, castles, enfeoffed retinues, monasteries, ecclesiastical advocacies, manors, tolls, and all other rights, revenues, and jurisdictions as it had ever been at any time since the death of Henry VI.

Pietro Giannone's great work Istoria civile del Regno di Napoli (1723) praised Frederick for being an "advocate of jurisdictionalism, centralizer and enlightened despot", as opposed to the past Spanish viceroyalty and the contemporary Emperor Charles VI.

Ludovico Antonio Muratori, in his Annali d'Italia (1743–1749), publicized the figure of Frederick as a ruler with “a big heart, great intellectual power and prudence, as well as a love of belles-lettres, which he was the first to bring into his Reich and spread there, in addition to his sense of justice, which was why he was able to develop many optimal regulations, finally his knowledge of different languages...".

Un mito medievale nella cultura di massa by the Italian journalist Marco Brando addresses the matter of contemporary mythologization surrounding Frederick II.

L'età federiciana in terra di Brindisi by historian Antonio Mario Caputo reads:[26] A man of controversial actions, he was a multifaceted personality, so complex as to raise passionate criticism or exaltation among opposing factions.

He had no doubts about the morality of the emperor, calling him without moderate terms, "nonbeliever, cunning, shrewd, lustful, wicked", and again: "a virulent and accursed man, schismatic, heretic and epicurean".

On the other hand, on the Ghibelline side, there was the exhilarating paean of the English monk Matthew Paris: "Among the princes of the earth, Federico is the greatest, stupor mundi and the miraculous transformer".

The judgment of Giovanni Villani seems balanced in his Chronicle: "he was a man of great valor, wise in scripture and natural wisdom, he knew Latin and the vernacular, German and French, Greek and Saracen.

His character, certainly, was with multiple contradictions: crusader in the Holy Land and simultaneously a friend of the Sultan of Egypt, anointed by the Lord and sympathizer of doctrines with the odor of heresy, absolute king in Sicily and feudal princeps in Germany.

A complete and modern man Federico [...], who, if he had lived in our days, as well as arousing controversy and dissension, would have received mostly favors and would have been praised beyond measure [...].In 2005, after an initiative by the Treccani, an encyclopaedia dedicated solely to Frederick II, named Enciclopedia fridericiana, was composed by a committee headed by Ortensio Zecchino.

Through the mist of calumny and fable it is but dimly that the truth of the man can be discerned, and the outlines that appear serve to quicken rather than appease the curiosity with which we regard one of the most extraordinary personages in history.

A sensualist, yet also a warrior and a politician; a profound lawgiver and an impassioned poet; in his youth fired by crusading fervour, in later life persecuting heretics while himself accused of blasphemy and unbelief; of winning manners and ardently beloved by his followers, but with the stain of more than one cruel deed upon his name, he was the marvel of his own generation, and succeeding ages looked back with awe, not unmingled with pity, upon the inscrutable figure of the last Emperor who had braved all the terrors of the Church and died beneath her ban, the last who had ruled from the sands of the ocean to the shores of the Sicilian sea.

The undying hatred of the Papacy threw round his memory a lurid light; him and him alone of all the imperial line, Dante, the worshipper of the Empire, must perforce deliver to the flames of hell.Commenting on Olaf B. Rader's work Friedrich II.

Beck, 2010), Georg Vogeler notes that explaining a person's actions in terms of regional cultural imprint is hardly a stable method, and stereotypes run counter to each other, too: Theo Broekmann's theory (that Rader relies upon) about the contemporary societies is that the ruler could settle power conflicts north of the Alps with ritual subjugation, while in the south he needed to exert his power consistently and strictly; meanwhile, Petrarch's interpretation of the situation is that Italians showed mercy, while German mistook it for weakness.

Despite Legnano, Barbarossa later was able to advance his goals a lot with (quiet and unheroic) diplomacy and statesmanship, while in the long term, Frederick II's opponents recovered while the emperor suffered more personal trauma.

An anecdote from the Church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois recounted: "[...] three centuries earlier, that a priest astonished his congregation — and afterwards, when the incident was reported, the whole of Europe — by his mode of pronouncing the excommunication decreed by Pope Innocent IV against the Emperor Frederick II.

[52][53] Kantorowicz recounts a German legend: "In 1497 a carp was caught in a pond at Heilbronn, in whose gills, under the skin, a copper ring was fastened, with a Greek inscription which stated that Frederick II, with his own hand, had released this fish."

[65] There were also links between Sicilian poetry and German minnesang, which in turn was inspired by the troubadours or trouvères brought to the court of Barbarossa by Frederick's grandmother Beatrix of Burgundy.

[71] In the poem, the emperor spurned "plans which had sprung up in him", "tender recollections" and "deep inner chiming" to focus on the "frightened fledgling falcon's sake, whose blood and worries he taxed himself relentlessly to grasp."

(Translation by Edward Snow)Dobyns remarks that the poem also reflects Rilke, who put aside his ambitions and family to focus on poetry, that drops upon the reader like the falcon on the heron.