Search Results

This chapter begins by offering several criticisms against the rule of King Louis XIV. It was the failure of Louis and his successors to reinvigorate the political myth of absolutism that condemned the old French regime to early extinction. The chapter then explores the life of Frederick II and how he managed his subordinates and his Prussian state. It argues that religious identity has been a potent and popular intensifier of national identity. It then examines the birth of German nationalism influenced by politics and religion. Next, it examines the development of German literature and the vernacular on which it was based. It notes that Germans were viewed as dim-witted clodhoppers, whose only culture was borrowed from abroad. Next, it states that music made way for a more positive stereotype of Germans.

This chapter shows that the political thought of King Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) influenced Americans during the revolutionary era by offering both a positive and negative example of despotic executive power. Having thrown off the monarchical rule of King George III in 1776, Americans remained unsure about which kind of executive rule would be acceptable in their new kingless republic. Widely admired by leading revolutionaries, Frederick II offered a viable and appealing example for newly republican Americans because he combined military success with a well-publicized effort to rule the people of Prussia in the name of enlightenment, whose core ideal was that human reason would lead to progress and happiness. Frederick encouraged religious freedom, educational and judicial reforms, and even some freedoms of the press. Frederick’s influence rapidly faded in the early nineteenth century after Napoleon Bonaparte’s conquests dimmed the appeal of despotism.

This chapter discusses briefly the history of Sicily from 1025 to 1204. It concentrates mostly on the less-well-known and more complicated periods, specifically the last few years of Islamic Sicily and the passage from Norman rule to the reign of Emperor Frederick II. The politically uncomplicated reign of the Norman kings is mentioned in passing. The chapter also discusses the fate of the Muslims of Sicily under Christian rule, along with the unique mass of Arabic sources from Norman Sicily.

Frederick II Hohenstaufen, the Holy Roman Emperor who ruled southern Italy in the 13th century, seems to have acquired the Tazza from travelling merchants. He was keen to emulate and revive the golden age of Rome and both collected and commissioned works associated with antiquity. But he may have also re-interpreted the Tazza’s imagery as a Christian scene, as medieval Europeans often did when confronted with pagan artworks.

This chapter explores conflicts between urban dwellers and the state and its officials over fiscal matters. These conflicts developed as a result of the different perspectives on urban society that had emerged in the urban public and within the apparatus of state. The conflicts escalated when in the aftermath of the extremely costly Seven Years's War (1757–63) Frederick II decided to increase certain indirect taxes that were levied only in the towns. For this purpose he created a new excise administration, the Régie, that was lead by French administrators. The objective was to raise more revenue and to create protective tariffs to shield domestic industries from foreign competition. This increased the fiscal burden on urban dwellers but above all it interfered with their freedom to consume and produce goods. This interference of the state with individual autonomy was resented by many urban dwellers and led to various forms of resistance that ranged from petitions, to criticism in the public sphere, contraband and use of violence. As a result of the mounting pressure of the Prussian public the new tax administration was eventually dissolved and the new excise tariffs were abolished after the death of Frederick II by his successors Frederick William II.

This chapter focuses on the groups of brothers and sisters who were active within the princely elite during the reign of Emperor Frederick II. It first examines how the changing character of secular lordship and imperial politics during Frederick II's reign forced siblings to interact with each other under new conditions. It then considers collaboration and cooperation as the foundation for most sibling relationships and shows that conflict arose during uncertain inheritance and succession scenarios. It also explains how the absence of large, influential sibling groups led Frederick II to rely on other types of relationships to exert his authority and to build consensus among the principes imperii. Finally, it looks at joint lordship as an inheritance and succession strategy within the German kingdom.

This chapter explores conflicts between urban dwellers and state authorities over religious matters. In 1780 Frederick II decide to introduce a new hymnal in the Prussian provinces. The new hymnal reflect the neologic theology that had developed in this period. However, resistance quickly formed quickly. Many faithful waned to preserve traditional forms of religiosity and rejected the imposition of a new hymnal. Violent incidents occurred and a petition was sent to the king. Much of the resistance was associated with the small prayer groups, conventicles, that had developed in the tradition of Pietism in Prussia. Confronted with public criticism Frederick II decided to abandon his reform project and allow the faithful to choose their hymnal freely. In a second, more prolonged conflict Woellner, a minister of Frederick William II, formulated an edict on religion that imposed strict controls on the content of sermons in particular and religious instruction in general. Further restrictions on the freedom of expression were later added. Again this interference with the freedom of religion and expression resulted in a wave of public criticism and other forms of resistance. Woellner's edicts were abandoned and the state confirmed individual autonomy in religious matters. As in the case of fiscal conflicts civil society forced the state to renounce to an extension of its powers.

Alongside the new terminology of fiefs and vassals, the thirteenth century saw the arrival of a new idea: that the pope might be able to depose vassal-kings by virtue of his authority as the kings’ temporal lord. Such an idea lurked behind the arras during the disputes between Emperor Frederick II and Popes Gregory IX and Innocent IV, and was then formalized when the kingdom of Sicily was given to Charles of Anjou. This right of confiscation was, however, never exercised, indicating the unwillingness of the papacy to use the coercive power supposedly given to it through feudal relationships with secular rulers.

This chapter first discusses Frederick's paternal “Staufer” ancestry. It argues that while Frederick is remembered as the greatest of the Staufer monarchs, he seemingly knew little about his paternal ancestry and/or was ashamed of his grandfather's relatively modest origins—and he was never identified in his lifetime as a Staufer. The designation of the lineage as the Staufer is, in fact, a convenient scholarly convention, but it is anachronistic since key members of the lineage, including Barbarossa, were never called as such. The remainder of the chapter focuses on Duke Frederick II and the Welfs, Germany's most aristocratic family.

This chapter details the success of Ernst Kantorowicz's biography of emperor Frederick II, Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite, which was published at the end of March 1927 with an initial run of 2,600 copies. Several qualities mentioned in the reviews account for the book's attractiveness for large numbers of readers. Not least was its “brilliant” style. Kantorowicz was a forceful writer, taken to employing high-flown rhetoric, alliteration, and sometimes archaic diction for dramatic effect. The book featured memorable portraits, brightly colored scenes, literary allusions. References to classical Latin literature and mythology also served for flavor. Half a century after its publication the work was excerpted in a French literary magazine for its literary qualities.

During Dante’s lifetime a Muslim city existed in southern Italy, Lucera, which had been settled with rebellious Muslims by Emperor Frederick II in the 1220s and 1230s. This article lays emphasis on their legal status as ‘servi’ of the royal chamber, which was similar to and derived from that of the Jews. Many were farmers and craftsmen. The dissolution of the Muslim colony in 1300 by King Charles II of Anjou has been attributed to the king’s need for money during the War of the Sicilian Vespers, since they were sold as slaves for considerable profit; but the article adduces religious motives in parallel with Charles II’s anti-Jewish policy.

This postscript begins with an overview of further developments in the 1780s, among them the complex combination of innatism with naturalism, Frederick the Great's essay on German language and literature, and the 1784 contest on the universality of French. The chapter concludes with a re-assessment of the role of German thinkers in the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. It argues for the close reconstruction of intellectual debates and contexts instead of their examination through national perspectives, as in Isaiah Berlin's ‘Counter-Enlightenment’ thesis.

In the first decades of the thirteenth century, Popes Innocent III and Honorius III found themselves bound to support the succession of three young kings—Henry III of England, James I of Aragon, and Frederick II of Sicily. Although a supposed feudal right of wardship has often been supposed to have motivated the popes, actually, papal letters changed and altered their justifications for papal solicitude depending on the circumstances of the time. In practice, papal involvement in these royal minorities was reactive: the pope replied to petitions he received. Consequently, papal mandates and instructions were often variable and even contradictory. Papal instructions—rather than being a medium for a centralized papal will to be expressed—were more often the means through which local power struggles were fought.

This paper argues the hypothesis that the condition of the souls in Dante’s Purgatorio and Dante’s own journey of ascent of that transformative mountain lend themselves to be understood in terms of falconry — the art of training a wild raptor to relate to the presence of the falconer and respond to his call. By analyzing the falconry techniques Dante mentions in the Commedia and tracing their origin in the practices that Emperor Frederick II had imported from the Islamic world, we can also better gauge the symbolic value Dante attributes to falconry as an initiatory art of inner transmutation. Seen in the larger perspective of a Mediterranean shared culture, Dante’s understanding of falconry clearly mirrors, on European grounds, the views of some of the towering figures of Islamic medieval poetry and speculative thinking, such as Attar, Ibn Arabi and Rumi. The article finally explores the way in which the concept of inner transmutation, foundational to the art of falconry, contributes to a renewed understanding of Dante’s Purgatory as the locus where Law transmutes into Love — where “amor d’animo” paradoxically learns to respond to the call of “amor naturale”.

This epilogue first explains the reaction to Frederick's death. The initial reaction to the news of his death was mixed. It was the drowning that was inexplicable. Frederick had not died in a battle against the infidel or in the Holy Land, but while swimming or taking a bath. Worst of all, he had died without confessing his sins or receiving the viaticum. To allay misgivings about his salvation, some chroniclers changed the story of Frederick's drowning so the dying emperor had a chance to repent. The chapter then describes how in the later Middle Ages, Frederick's grandson, Frederick II, became the subject of apocalyptic imaginings about a returning last emperor ready to punish and/or purify a corrupt Church. This is followed by discussions of the Romantic rediscovery of Frederick; the Wilhelmine appropriation of Barbarossa; linking of Barbarossa to the Führer and German hopes of regaining the country's lost eastern lands; and debates over Barbarossa's policies after World War II.

This epilogue describes Frederick II's coronation as the king of the Romans at Aachen, a center of Hohenstaufen support in a German realm. Soon after the ceremony, the young king was inspired to take up the cross in the name of aid to the Holy Land. Soon after this pronouncement Frederick presided over the translation of the remains of his ancestor Charlemagne. The coincidence of Frederick's first crusading vow and his translation of Charlemagne's remains supports the notion that the German emperors saw Charlemagne as a model crusader. David Abulafia frames the events surrounding the translation in terms of Hohenstaufen crusading dreams, claiming that the emperor had been avowed in his determination to be a new Charlemagne who was “a model emperor.”

The Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean preserved ancient Greek writings and made modest additions to them, often in the form of syntheses of ancient and medieval observations. One of their important legacies was to transmit this learning to the neighboring Muslim civilization and much later also to the western Latin civilization. Muslim civilization stretched from Spain across North Africa and on to the Indus Valley, and it made more important contributions to science than did the Byzantines. Their achievements included additions to Greek botany and zoology, and by the 1100s their Arabic-language writings began to be translated into Latin in Spain and Sicily. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II benefited from translations from Arabic and wrote an outstanding handbook of falconry. Later, Albertus Magnus wrote important encyclopedias on botany, zoology, and geography. Medieval Latin Europe founded important universities.