Ruggero de Amicis

Ruggero de Amicis (also d'Amico or d'Amici) was a Sicilian high administrator and diplomat under the Emperor Frederick II.

[2] In 1239, at the start of the war with the papacy, Ruggero was appointed justiciar of the island of Sicily "across the river Salso", that is, its western half.

He is recorded for the first time as justiciar on 10 October 1239, when the emperor informed him that all the Sicilian members of the court had been ordered to return to Sicily.

On 18 November, he ordered him to arrest two priests and a monk accused of murdering the prior of Saint Peter's at Campogrosso [it].

[2] He granted an exemption, however, to a certain Thomas Ferentini of Palermo, a son-in-law of Bishop Aldoin of Cefalù, whose other relatives were exiled.

[2][6] In February 1240, Frederick ordered Ruggero to ensure that the diplomatic mission to the Emirate of Tunis, which was sailing from Palermo, had the required number of men and that any ill member was replaced.

[2] In May 1240, Frederick placed Ruggero in charge of the entire island of Sicily and the Calabrian peninsula with the title "captain and master justiciar".

The same position in the kingdom north of Calabria had already been created in October 1239 for Andrea di Cicala and the powers of the captain expanded at the diet held in Foggia on 8 April 1240.

[2][3] Towards the end of 1241, Ruggero was picked to lead an embassy to the new sultan of Egypt, al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ, whose father, al-Kāmil, had recently died.

[2] Ruggero and another envoy travelled to Alexandria aboard the ship Mezzomondo (in Arabic, Niṣf al-Dunyā, lit.

[2][9][10] They brought sumptuous gifts and were received with pomp by the sultan in Cairo, but no source relates the results of their negotiations.

[9][11] According to the History of the Patriarchs, the envoys, with permission, toured the country before coming to Cairo, visiting Faiyum and the Egyptian pyramids, and crossing the Nile at Giza.

His son Corrado returned from exile only after 1266, during the reign of King Charles I, who made him a knight in 1269 and restored to him his father's fiefs.

[14] The modern editor of the Sicilian school, Bruno Panvini, accepts Dolze cominciamento as a work of Ruggero, although it is more commonly attributed to Giacomo da Lentini.

Another poem attributed to Ruggero in one manuscript, Lo mio core che si stava,[15] contains what may be internal confirmation.