Frederick of Antioch
Contemporary anti-imperial propaganda alleged that Frederick was the product of the emperor's liaison with a Muslim woman in Palestine, but it is almost certain that the child was born in southern Italy, where he spent his youth.
Besides Poli, he held allodial and feudal land at Anticoli Corrado, Arsoli, Camerata Nuova, Guadagnolo, Roviano and Saracinesco.
Through his marriage Frederick came to possess important castles and rights along the Via Valeria, an ancient route connecting the Kingdom of Sicily and the Papal States.
Frederick's ambit was central Italy, and he was appointed imperial vicar general in the March of Ancona in late 1244 or early 1245, when he could not have been much more than twenty years old.
[3] Thereafter until the end of 1250 his vicariate was limited to Tuscany and excluded the Papal territory, which was placed under the vicar Galvano Lancia, father-in-law of Frederick's son Conrad.
He conscripted soldiers—including Bolognese students and merchants of the Guelph party—and levied taxes from all the cities of Tuscany, most notably Siena, to which he temporarily transferred the silver mines of Montieri as partial compensation for his exactions.
[1] In Florence, the chief city of Tuscany, internal conflict between the Guelph and Ghibelline parties allowed the emperor to install Frederick as imperial podestà there (February 1246).
His appointment was understood by Vita da Cortona, the biographer of Florentine holy woman Umiliana de' Cerchi, as a fulfillment of her prophecy about the coming of a tyrant.
At a meet of the court in Foggia, Conrad confirmed Frederick's possession of the county of Albe and conferred on him those of Celano and Loreto Aprutino.
In 1247, Pope Innocent had restored Count Thomas of Celano and his son Roger to the lands the emperor had confiscated from them, and after the latter's death in 1250 they re-occupied them.
Loreto Aprutino had been bestowed by the emperor on Count Thomas II of Aquino, but the latter went over to the Guelf side after Pope Innocent confirmed his possessions in June 1251.
In September a treaty was signed giving the Pope authority in Apulia, but in October, while accompanying Innocent into his new domains, Manfredi and Frederick escaped.
[1] On 12 November, Innocent, referring to Frederick as "our faithful man" (fidelis noster), restored to him the counties of Albe, Celano and Loreto.
[7][8] Frederick was also the patron of Orfinus of Lodi, a judge who composed a 1,600-line poem, De regimine et sapientia potestatis, on the office of podestà.
