Near the town of Andria in Puglia rising from a rock that makes it visible for miles stands entirely on its own a stone  structure we call the Castel del Monte. Its ground plan is unique, and like many other of the Emperor’s buildings it was probably sketched by Frederick himself: a regular octagon of yellowish limestone; its smooth perfectly-fitting blocks showing no joins and producing the effect of a monolith : at each of the eight corners a squat octagonal tower the height of the wall; two storeys identical in height, each containing eight large equal rooms, in the shape of a trapeze; an octagonal central courtyard adorned with antique sculptures and imitations of the antique, in the centre of which a large octagonal basin served as bath. Every fraction of the structure displays the mental make-up of the Hohenstaufen court: oriental massiveness of the whole, a portal foreshadowing the Renaissance, Gothic windows and rooms with groined and vaulted roofs. The defiant gloom of the tiny-windowed rooms was mitigated by the furnishings; the floors were of mosaic, the walls covered with sheets of reddish breccia or white marble, the groined vaults supported on pilasters with Corinthian capitals, or by delicate clustered columns of white marble. Majesty and grace were fused in one.

Of all that remains of Frederick II nothing epitomises the personality of the great emperor more than this building, which may have been a fortification or a hunting lodge or an enormous marble crown celebrating the concept of universal imperial power.

In this and the following episode we will look not at the emperor’s deeds but how he lived and what he did away from the world of power politics that made the English Chronicler Matthew Paris call him Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 83 – The Court of Frederick II

Near the town of Andria in Puglia rising from a rock that makes it visible for miles stands entirely on its own a stone  structure we call the Castel del Monte. Its ground plan is unique, and like many other of the Emperor’s buildings it was probably sketched by Frederick himself: a regular octagon of yellowish limestone; its smooth perfectly-fitting blocks showing no joins and producing the effect of a monolith : at each of the eight corners a squat octagonal tower the height of the wall; two storeys identical in height, each containing eight large equal rooms, in the shape of a trapeze; an octagonal central courtyard adorned with antique sculptures and imitations of the antique, in the centre of which a large octagonal basin served as bath. Every fraction of the structure displays the mental make-up of the Hohenstaufen court: oriental massiveness of the whole, a portal foreshadowing the Renaissance, Gothic windows and rooms with groined and vaulted roofs. The defiant gloom of the tiny-windowed rooms was mitigated by the furnishings; the floors were of mosaic, the walls covered with sheets of reddish breccia or white marble, the groined vaults supported on pilasters with Corinthian capitals, or by delicate clustered columns of white marble. Majesty and grace were fused in one.

Of all that remains of Frederick II nothing epitomises the personality of the great emperor more than this building, which may have been a fortification or a hunting lodge or an enormous marble crown celebrating the concept of universal imperial power.

In this and the following episode we will look not at the emperor’s deeds but how he lived and what he did away from the world of power politics that made the English Chronicler Matthew Paris call him Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World.

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Achyuth, Raz and Kurt who have already signed up.

I thought we start with what he looked like. And immediately the problems begin. There are as always with Frederick two narratives. The arab chronicler Sibt ibn al-Jawzi describes him as of reddish skin, bold and short sighted and adds that if he had been sold as a slave, he would not brought in more than 200 Dirham. Such biased descriptions are not uncommon during the time.

However, there seems to have been something about his height or lack thereof. Otto IV in one of his pamphlets declared that since Frederick was extremely small and hence either still a child or a dwarf, he was unsuited to rule in either case. Walther von der Vogelweide, now in service of Frederick turns the argument on its head and described Otto IV as physical large but mentally a gnome, whilst Frederick on its inner merits rose to be a giant. Not something you write about a man of medium or large stature.

So, he was short. How short? His son the unfortunate king Henry was found to have been just 1.66m or five foot four. Frederick’s bones are unfortunately jumbled up with king peter of Aragon and an unnamed lady, so we do not know for sure. Best guess is he was not much taller than his son. That was small even by the standards of the time. Charlemagne was 1.82 and Konrad well over 6 foot.

As for the reddish complexion, that is confirmed by many other chroniclers. It should not be surprising. His grandfather Barbarossa was famously ginger, as were some of his Norman ancestors. It is interesting how prevalent red hair was amongst royalty during the Middle Ages. Red hair had been associated with status and honour since the time of the ancient Greeks. Roman aristocratic ladies would die their tresses strawberry blond and a ginger mane became a sign of royal rank amongst the Merovingians. Hence it is not inconceivable that chroniclers would ascribe red hair to almost any ruler whose locks displayed even the slightest tinge of ginger.

But let us then assume he was short ginger.

He was likely physically fit. He spent his life criss-crossing his vast empire on horseback and was a commensurate hunter. Though he so far managed to achieve most of his successes without much deployment of military force, he was, like all rulers at the time expected to fight personally in battle, which meant he must have been constantly training.

His face was described even by the otherwise very critical Salimbene di Parma as beautiful and well proportioned. There are several images produced during or close to his lifetime, in particular the figure of the emperor above the gate of Capua and several images in illuminated manuscripts.

All show the emperor clean shaven like a Roman ruler of antiquity, so not wearing the kind of beard his grandfather and father had sported. His face is symmetrical as one would expect from a depiction created at or near his own court. What is striking about all his depictions is the openness of the face, the intelligent and curious expression that lurks behind the façade of imperial haughtiness. even though these were not meant to be portraits in the modern sense, they did however still convey something of the actual person.

So how did this not very tall, physically lean, attractive ginger live?

Let’s start with the where he did live. Like all his predecessors he spent most of his time moving from one location to the next. That was necessary largely because few locations could feed the entirety of the court apparatus for any extended period of time. We know from a partially preserved register of documents that his court comprised of around 200 personnel, musicians, dancers, cooks, servants etc. On top of that came the imperial chancery and the important court officials with their respective servants. Add to that the bishops, princes and nobles who came to court to seek justice, give advice to the emperor or simply enjoy the famous hospitality und you can easily get to 1000 or more individuals who all need food and shelter.

That being said, Frederick had one favourite residence, Foggia where he stayed over 40 times. Foggia is a sleepy town in northern Puglia. An archway with nice carvings is all that is left of the palace that once sported gardens with fountains and statues. Its interior was clad in marble and its roofs were held up by columns made from a green stone called Verde Antico. It was a like a palace from a thousand and one nights, distinctly oriental in its interplay between inside and outside and the use of water in the heat of Southern Italy. Frederick had antique statues brought down from Rome and Naples and displayed them in his palace in Foggia much like a renaissance prince would have done.

Part of the palace complex was an extended menagerie where the emperor kept his exotic animals, lions, leopards, camels, dromedaries, bears, apes and monkeys, parrots and lots and lots of different kinds of birds. The pride of place was given over to a giraffe, an animal not seen in Europe since the gladiatorial games of ancient Rome. At some point the polar bear he gifted to Sulatan al Kamil must have gone through there as well. As one would expect he also had an Elephant that carried a small turret where Frederick’s court musicians would play the trumpets to receive honoured guests. As we heard last week, some of his animals would accompany him on his campaigns as part of the display of imperial power over all the world and all that is in it.

What added to the exotic ambiance was the personnel. The palace guard was recruited mainly from the Muslim community of Lucera. Frederick employed a number of female dancers and acrobats. Matthew Paris describes what his patron Richard of Cornwall saw when he stayed at Foggia:

Quote: “Amongst other astonishing novelties, there was one which particularly excited his admiration and praise: two Saracen girls of handsome form, mounted upon four round balls placed upon the floor, namely, one of the two on two balls, and the other on the other two. They walked backwards and forwards, clapping their hands, moving at pleasure on these revolving globes, gesticulating with their arms, singing various tunes, and twisting their bodies according to the time, beating cymbals or castanets together with their hands, and putting their bodies into various amusing postures, affording with the other jugglers an admirable spectacle to the lookers-on.” (end quote)

There were also number of black slaves usually employed in menial tasks or as musicians. But there was also Jacobus Morus, who was the son of a female black slave. He rose to be the head of the imperial finances, was made a baron and under Frederick’s son became great chamberlain of the kingdom of Sicily. The famous statue in Magdeburg that depicts Saint Maurice as a black man may have been modelled on him.

This court that probably had more in common with Sultan al Kamil’s residence than with the royal assemblies his grandfather Barbarossa held at his palace in Gelnhausen comprised not just the dancers, jugglers and other entertainers.

The heart of it were the gatherings of Frederick with his family, his closest advisers and scholars of mathematics, astronomy, geography, zoology and many more.

Amongst the members of his family the court of Foggia was dominated not by his legitimate offspring, but by his chosen family, his sons from various dalliances and his mistress, Bianca Lancia.

Just to recap, Frederick had spent very little time with his official family. His wives had a habit of dying very quickly and were usually kept behind closed palace doors in the manner of many eastern courts. His sons he barely saw. We already heard about his eldest, Henry, the king in brackets and his sad demise. His next-oldest son, Konrad from his marriage to Isabelle of Brienne was born in 1227 and from the age of 9 also lived in Germany as elected but not crowned king of the Romans. Frederick’s marriage to Isabella of England produced 2 surviving children, Margaret born 1236 and Carlotto, later called Henry born 1238. These two were still children when his father died, which meant he probably spent little time with them either.

That is very different for his illegitimate children. Most of them grew up at their father’s court, had a close relationship with him and were involved in many of his political plans. We know of 12 in total though there were likely many more. We cannot go through all of them in detail, but three became prominent on the European stage.

The oldest was Enzo, born 1220. His name is an Italian version of Heinz, the German abbreviation of the name Heinrich. Frederick will have a total of 3 sons called Henry – not very imaginative and a nightmare for podcasters. Enzo came from a relationship with a Swabian noblewoman called Adelheid who may have been the girl Frederick had grown up with long ago in the castle of the duke of Spoleto. By many accounts he was his father’s favourite son, though that may have had something to do with him being older and hence more employable. Enzo was extremely handsome and blessed with a cheerful personality. His mane of blond hair left the ladies of Bologna swooning and – so the story goes – betrayed his attempt to escape from prison.

Then there is Frederick of Antioch, born 1226 whose mother is unknown to us. His sobriquet “of Antioch” suggests some link to the Holy Land, but what exactly, we do not know. He too shared his father’s passions and will be placed into important positions in the empire.

The third is Manfred, born 1232 who will rise the highest amongst the sons born outside wedlock. His mother was Bianca Lancia, the one woman we know more about.

Bianca Lancia came from a noble family in Piedmont. Her relatives held various positions within Frederick’s armies. Whether they introduced her, or she first met the emperor and then brought in her relatives is unclear. What the chroniclers all say though is that she was stunningly beautiful, though quite frankly have you ever heard of a royal mistress being described as plain?

The relationship between Bianca and Frederick seems to have started around 1227, i.e., during a period when Frederick was married to Isabella of Brienne. When the young bride had died giving birth to the future kin Konrad IV, Bianca could assume a more prominent position at court. That probably changed again when Frederick married Isabella of England in 1235.

We do not know when she died. The elder literature assumed she died before the marriage to Isabella of England, but modern historians date her death to after 1241. The logic for that is that Isabella of England had died in 1241 and two sources, including Matthew Paris state that Frederick married Bianca Lancia on her deathbed. In order to turn his children with Bianca into legitimate offspring.

We can be confident that this deathbed marriage actually took place since Bianca’s children Constance, Manfred and Violante married members of the high aristocracy including royal houses. If they had been bastards, that would have been most unlikely.

There are many myths about the love between Frederick and Bianca Lancia. In the 18^th century the vicar of the village church of Gioia del Colle, 40km south of Bari announced that he had found the grave of Bianca Lancia. The grave displayed the image of a lady with a child and an Eagle, the symbol of the emperor.

What added to the credibility of the grave was that in the night you could hear sighs and wailing in the ruins of the medieval tower of Gioia del Colle. Bianca we hear had been locked up in that tower by Frederick who had accused her of infidelity. She was pregnant with Manfred at the time and Frederick thought that a page was the real father. Once Bianca had given birth, she had her son brought to Frederick, together with her breasts she had cut off. Frederick instantly saw that he had been terribly mistaken and rushed to Gioia del Colle only to find Bianca bleeding to death and marrying her there. If you look closely at the tower’s ruins, you can see two breast shaped protrusions that appeared that night.

If that is not proof enough for you, The local confectionary sells purple sugar sweets called the Lacrime d’amore di Bianca Lancia alla Violetta.

Apart from Frederick’s patchwork family, the court also comprised the most important advisors to the emperor. His oldest and most constant supporter was Berard the archbishop of Palermo. He had been with Frederick when he went up to Germany as a teenager in 1212 to gain the imperial crown. It was Berard’s presence that convinced the bishop to open the gates of Constance just hours before Otto IV’s expected arrival, an event without which this season of the History of the Germans would have ended long ago.

His other confidant and adviser was Pietro della Vigna. Pietro had come from a modest background in Capua but managed to study in Bologna. He quickly gained the favour of the emperor who made him his secretary, the lord chief justice and finally chancellor. He had already been involved in the constitutions of Melfi but will play a major role in our story going forward.

Apart from these two there were more important functionaries of the state, some like Johann von Morra and Thomas and Rainald of Aquino we have already heard about and others, like Taddeo de Sessa and Richard of Caserta we will hear more about shortly.

These men were all chosen not for their aristocratic lineage but for merit. They were mostly lawyers, trained by the best universities. They were also intellectuals and poets.

Poetry and in particular the art of the Troubadours and Minnesaenger has literally exploded in the first half of the 13^th century. Whilst some of these singers were professional artists, more and more of them were knights, even counts, dukes, kings and emperors. Being able to put together a set of well-judged verses became almost as important as their ferrule strike. Across Europe this is seen as the beginning of the transition from vassal to courtier, a process of civilising the uncouth thugs into knights playing the lute below the maiden’s tower.

For Frederick’s court this does not apply 100%. The members of his court, even those who were knights, weren’t there as vassals but as Officiales, civil servants in other words. They were used to operate through diplomacy and negotiation rather than brute force. The motto that Frederick gave them was that “fame comes through knowledge, honour comes through fame and riches come through honour”. It was a court that rated brain over brawn. Let us not forget that their emperor had achieved most of his astounding victories so far without raising his sword.

These poets did not write and perform their love poetry to contain the rage within them, but for intellectual pleasure. And there was a close intersection between poetry and diplomacy. The chancellor Pietro de Vigna’s superpower was to write compelling circulars and open letters to the courts of Europe. His unique style of Latin merging bible quotes and ancient Roman literature into some highfalutin prose would be copied across chanceries throughout the europe of the Middle Ages. His quill had the power of an army of knights they said.

Pietro easily transferred these skills into writing romances in the Sicilian dialect of Italian, confessing eternal love to an unattainable courtly lady.

His colleague Rainald of Aquino, son of a count and trained knight develops an exhilarated style using maritime terms to woo his girl. It is not recorded whether his poems were successful but in my experience discussing the perfect jibe rarely quickens a girls heartbeat.

Like in Provence and Germany these poems were written and performed in the local language, in this case, the southern Italian dialect. We are gradually moving into a world where national languages squeeze out Latin as the language of culture and power. The chivalric poetry played an important role in the transition to German, the Langue d’OC and Provencal, later also to northern French.

In Italy, the Northern Italian cites and courts adopted the troubadour culture but did not use Italian. They preferred the Langue d’Oc of their western neighbours. Hence the court of Frederick II became the birthplace of the Italian language. Petrarch recalls, “in a very short time this type of poetry, which had been born amongst the Sicilians, spread throughout all Italy and beyond.” As late as Dante all non-Latin poetry in Italian was dubbed “Sicilian.”. Only with Dante who’s writing far exceeded the cheerful but somewhat vacuous songs of Frederick’s court does the development of the Italian language move to Tuscan.

In this context I can now paper over one of my mistakes. Last week I forgot to mention that the peace of Mainz of 1235 was published in both Latin and Middle High German, making it one of the earliest imperial proclamations in the common tongue.

Now though the poetry was a bit light-hearted and silly, it did bring one important innovation to European literature, the sonnet. It was one of the members of the circle of poets at the court, Giacomo da Lentini who first came up with the idea for a “little song” which is what sonnet means in Italian, that consists of 14 lines in a strict rhyme scheme. He may have been inspired by a type of Sicilian folk song. Sonnets were and are written in literally every European language and even in Urdu. They became the choice mode of expressing romantic love. Shakespeare wrote a mere 154 of them.

Given how successful Lentini’s invention was, it is sad that none of his poems remain in their original Sicilian language. They were converted into the Tuscan dialect in the 13^th century and adopted by, amongst others, Petrarch, who is still often ascribed the invention of the sonnet. Whilst poor Lentini is largely forgotten.

Frederick himself and his sons were taking part in these pursuits. There are poems attributed to Frederick himself and several to Enzo, Frederick of Antioch and Manfred. Whether they did write them themselves or had a bit of help like today’s techbros get from professional meme-writers, we will never know.

Poetry was not the only intellectual activity at Frederick’s court. Far from it. Frederick was a man of incessant appetite for knowledge. He was one of those rare people who find simply everything interesting and want to know more and more and more about it. His interests ranged from Astrology to Zoology.

So, unsurprisingly he owned a famed library. Books were revered luxury items and most emperors possessed them You may have seen the psalters of Otto III or Henry II. Henry the Lion had a particularly splendid exemplar designed to underpin his status as an almost royal magnate. Frederick too had Psalters as well as other liturgical texts including the so-called the Exulted role of Salerno which features some of the most stunning 13^th century illuminations. On one page it shows Frederick II amongst his court, an image I used in the artwork for episode 80.

Religious texts -as you may gather – made up only a part of his library. Amongst the secular literature he owned several versions of the Romance of Alexander, the most popular topic of the 13^th century. The Macedonian king Alexander had become the ideal knight whose conquests were always achieved through most chivalric deeds. Several versions exist, from the French knight Walter of Chatillon, from a priest in Naples, another from Lamprecht of Strassburg and then there is the Erec of Hartmann von Aue. Frederick most likely had copies of all of them, including the one written by Quilichinus a justice in Puglia who compared the emperor to the great Macedon hero. And there is one more, written by Rudolf von Ems for Frederick’s son, the unlucky Henry.

Another writer whose works Frederick possessed was Petrus of Eboli. He had written the Liber ad Honorem Augusti, all about the deeds of Henry VI which we quoted several times already. Petrus might have also written one about the life of Frederick II, thought that is sadly lost.

His third book is however the most interesting, it begins with “Nomines et virtutes balneaorum” of the names and benefits of the baths. The baths he mentions are those of Pozzuoli just north of Naples. Pozzuoli lies just across the bay from Baiae, the most luxurious of the ancient Roman spas that dotted the coast between Capua and Naples. It is here that emperor Caligula had a 2-mile-long floating bridge built so that he could ride across. Why did he do that? Because some astrologer had predicted that he had as much chance of becoming emperor as he could ride a horse across the bay of Baiea. 

Southern Italy is where the tectonic plates of Africa and Eurasia rub against each other which gives us the sights of Stromboli, Etna, Vesuvius and last not least the 35 different hot springs of Pozzuoli. This book was some sort of spa guide, explaining which of the different baths one should use to achieve which medical outcome. His book became extremely popular and was translated into French and other vernacular languages. There were 12 editions in print between 1457 and 1607. Several original copies exist with beautiful miniatures showing men and women enjoying themselves in what seems to be the ruins of ancient Roman baths. At least one of those is likely to have been in Frederick’s possession. Some argue that the verses and miniatures had a purpose beyond guiding tourists. The depiction of the fallen ruins was meant to urge the emperor to rebuild its fallen glory. Frederick himself had used the baths when he recovered from the fever that forced him to abandon the crusade in 1227. But he never rebuilt them, and the springs disappeared in a volcanic eruption in 1538.

Do not worry, I will not go through the entire content of the imperial library, though I would love to. But let me mention one last set of books. They are by a man called Michael Scot, Michael the Scotsman. He was a translator, philosopher, medical doctor, alchemist, astrologer and according to Dante, a magician who practised in every slight of magic wile. In Dante’s hell he resides in the 8^th circle as a false prophet of the future with his head turned backwards on his shoulders.

It was probably when Frederick II visited Bologna on his coronation journey that he first met the most celebrated of all the scholars of his later court. Little is known with certainty about the Scottish scholar’s life. He began his career at Toledo, where he translated the Spherics of Alpetragius in 1217. Three years later he appears in Bologna, then was for some time in correspondence with the papal Curia, which recommended him to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he probably came to Frederick about 1227. He had probably made Frederick’s acquaintance first at the same time that the Emperor had made friends with the mathematician, Leonardo of Pisa, better known to us as Fibonacci.

Innumerable marvellous and uncanny stories were current about him and the Emperor and can still be found in the novels and tales of the Romantics. The shuddering awe which Frederick II inspired was shared by his Court Astrologer, whom people called a “second Apollo.” They related that, knowing beforehand the manner of his own death, he always wore an iron cap, and that in spite of it he was killed by a falling stone, exactly as he had foretold. His death probably occurred in 1235 as he was accompanying the Emperor to Germany.

Michael Scot is credited with a considerably larger number of writings than he actually produced. It is, however, certain that he translated several of Aristotle’s most significant works from Arabic into Latin. De Caelo (about the Heavens) and De Anima (about the Soul) with the commentaries of Averroes, and also the Aristotelian zoological writings which Avicenna had grouped under the title of Liber animalium: Historiae animalium, De partibus animalium, and other treatises — nineteen books in all. This work was dedicated, like most of his others, to the Emperor. It introduced the Aristotelian zoology for the first time to the West. Master Henry of Cologne made a transcript of the Emperor’s copy in 1232, and this may well have been the copy used by Albertus Magnus.

Translations of the Physics and Metaphysics were also ascribed, probably incorrectly, to Michael Scot. His authorship of some obscure philosophical treatises such as the Quaestiones of Nicolas the Peripatetic and a Systematic Philosophy is more probable.

Michael Scot’s other role at court was that of astronomer and astrologer. Astronomy and astrology played an important part in court life and were considered one and the same. Michael Scot in his Liber Introductorius and his Liber Particularis compiled a wonderful encyclopaedia of the collective astronomical and astrological knowledge of his time. There is a copy of his book covered in fascinating drawings of the planets, some surprisingly accurate, others, like the ones depicting the location of hell and paradise a little less so.

An imperial library was not just a repository of books, it was a living thing. The books were not just for the emperor but for the members of the court and the scholars there. They would constantly annotate texts and find annotations to their annotations. Thereby new knowledge was incorporated as it appeared.

Frederick took some of his books on his campaigns which is how he lost his most splendid copy of the great Moamin, probably his greatest possession and the biggest loss to posterity.

What is the Moamin? Well that we will find out next week. As well as the other scientific endeavours of the emperor, some of which left him open to accusation of experimentation on humans. I hope you will join us again next week.

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