Frederick II Hohenstaufen

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (Iesi, December 26, 1194-Castel Fiorentino, December 13, 1250), called “stupor mundi” (astonishment of the world) and “puer Apuliae” (son of Apulia), was king of Sicily and Jerusalem, and Holy Roman Emperor. He is also one of the most representative writers of the Sicilian Poetic School, which he himself created.

Life

He was the grandson of Federico I Barbarossa and Roger II of Hauteville and one of the most interesting figures in universal history due to his extraordinary qualities and his eccentric character, different from the men of his time and ahead of them in more than one way. His unconventional personality led him to continually break with the uses and customs of his time, which is why he was nicknamed in life with the adjective “stupor mundi” (wonder or lighthouse of the world). His continued disagreements with the papacy also earned him the nickname & # 34; Antichrist & # 34; .

Childhood

Birth of Federico II.

He was born on December 26, 1194 in Iesi (Ancona, Italy). He was the son of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, and Constance, daughter of Roger II, first King of Sicily. According to some sources, his birth was public, taking place in a store, in the main square of Iesi, while his mother was sheltered by some of Henry VI's notables; Apparently, the advanced age of Constanza, who during the previous eight years had been sterile, raised doubts about the legitimacy of Federico, so the birth would have been celebrated in this way, in order to establish guarantees about the origin of the child.

Henry VI, at first, seems to accept the choice of women and with the name of Constantine, in the summer of 1196, the little boy was elected King of the Romans by the German princes at the Imperial Diet in Frankfurt. A few months later, when the time came for the baptismal ceremony, held in Assisi, the name of the future sovereign was changed by the father who, respecting the priority of the paternal house in application of Salic law, decided to assign him the name "in auspicium cumulande probitatis", by Friedric Roger Constantine: "Federico" to indicate it in the future guide to German princes as Frederick Barbarossa's grandson, "Roger" to underline the legitimate claim to the crown of the Kingdom of Sicily as a descendant of Roger II of Sicily and "Constantine" to commune with the Church of Rome, which in the Middle Ages indicated the source of one's own earthly authority. That was the second and last time that Henry VI saw his son.

Frederick was already born a claimant to many crowns: although the imperial one was not hereditary, Frederick was a valid candidate for King of the Romans (the elective title of the chosen successors of the Holy Emperor) which also included the crowns of Italy and Burgundy. These titles ensured rights and prestige, but did not give effective power, lacking in these States a solid institutional structure controlled by the sovereign. These crowns gave power only if one was strong, otherwise it would be impossible to assert royal rights over the feudatories and over the communes. Besides, through his mother's way he had inherited the crown of Sicily, where instead there was a well-structured administrative apparatus to guarantee that the will of the sovereign was applied, according to the tradition of centralized government.

When his father Henry VI died in 1197, Frederick was in Italy with the intention of crossing into Germany. When the news arrived, Federico's guardian, Conrad of Spoleto, aborted the expedition and took the boy to Palermo with his mother, where he will remain until the end of his education. Her mother Constance was in her own right heiress to the kingdom of Sicily, and to ensure the rights of her son she publicly named him heir to the throne of Sicily upon arrival. Education in Sicily was a fundamental element in forming his personality, due to the Norman-Arab-Byzantine civilization present in Sicily.

The union of the kingdoms of Germany and Sicily was not viewed favorably by the Normans, nor by the pope, who with the territories that by various titles made up the Papal States had a line that would have interrupted territorial unity of the great kingdom, thus making him feel surrounded.

On the death of his mother, Frederick was crowned King of Sicily on May 17, 1198. Since the child's imperial rights could compromise his own life, his mother named the Papacy as guardian of the child in her will. Thus, Pope Innocent III took charge of Federico's guardianship until he was of legal age. In order to protect the inexperienced King against his enemies, the pope induced him to marry Constanza of Aragón y de Castilla, widow of King Emeric of Hungary, in 1209.

Emperor

Otto of Brunswick was crowned emperor as Otto IV by Pope Innocent III in 1209, hoping to end the hegemony of the House of Hohenstaufen; The enmity of the papacy with Frederick's father, Henry VI, and his grandfather, Frederick Barbarossa, had been notorious, as the imperial claims of the Hohenstaufen clashed with the papal ones, which included creating a central theocratic government in Europe with the pope through head. However, Otto IV did not show himself as the expected papal champion, and in September 1211 the Imperial Diet of Nuremberg decided to confirm Frederick as King of the Romans, that is, an elected candidate to succeed Otto IV. Otto had fallen out with the three archbishop-electors of the Holy Empire (those of Mainz, Cologne and Trier) and by trying to resume, now for the House of Welf, the imperial project of the Hohenstaufen, the papacy had marked him as an enemy, and Innocent III had excommunicated him. However, he was able to hold his own until he was defeated at the Battle of Bouvines in July 1214 by the forces of King Philip II of France. He was deposed in 1215.

Frederick was again elected in 1212 and crowned King of the Romans on December 9, 1212 in Mainz; a new coronation ceremony took place when Otto IV was deposed in 1215. Frederick's authority in Germany was weak, as shown by the continuous confirmations of his election. Only southern Germany, where his patrimonial territories (Swabia) were located, recognized him with any degree of adherence to his cause; In northern Germany, the nerve center of Guelf power, Otto continued to hold royal and imperial power despite his excommunication. However, his defeat at the Battle of Bouvines forced him to retreat to the Guelph core, where, with virtually no support, he was assassinated in 1218. The German Electors, supported by Innocent III, reconfirmed Frederick once more as King. of Romans in 1215, and the Pope himself crowned him king in Aachen on July 23, 1218. Papal policy, at that time, had sought to make Frederick a faithful vassal to his cause; however, Innocent III did not feel comfortable enough defending the imperial candidacy of Frederick, who was, after all, a member of the Hohenstaufen family, a “breed of vipers”, which was supported by many Ghibelline factions contrary to papal interests.

It was not until 1220 when, after arduous negotiations with Innocent III and his successor Honorius III –who succeeded him in 1216, and who had been Frederick's own teacher–, Frederick was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by the Pope, on November 22, 1220. At the same time, his eldest son, Henry, was crowned King of the Romans. The promised conditions in exchange for the coronation were harsh and included canceling the papal debt, renouncing the status of apostolic legate in the Kingdom of Sicily, aiding the Latin Empire of Constantinople, and embarking on a crusade to the Holy Land to recover the Holy Places. Frederick, once crowned, was not very willing to keep these promises, although he did speak of preparing a crusade. On his part, he married a daughter of his to the Emperor of Nicaea, which clearly demonstrated his little interest in helping the Latin Empire of Constantinople.

Frederico gave no sign of wanting to abdicate the Kingdom of Sicily, but maintained the firm intention of keeping the two crowns separate. Germany left her to his son, but as emperor he retained supreme authority. Having grown up in Sicily, he probably felt more Italian-Norman than German, but above all he was well aware of the potential of the Sicilian kingdom, with its flourishing agriculture, large cities and good ports, as well as its extraordinary strategic position in the center of the Mediterranean.

Unlike most Holy Roman Emperors, Frederick spent little time in Germany. In 1218 he helped Philip II of France and the Duke of Burgundy, Eudes III, to end the War of the Champagne Succession by invading Lorraine, capturing and burning Nancy, where he took Theobald I of Lorraine prisoner and forced him to to withdraw his support for the Champagne suitor Erard de Brienne. After his coronation in 1220, Frederick hardly left Italy again until 1236, except for the Sixth Crusade. In 1236 he made a year's journey to Germany, and on his return in 1237, he spent the rest of his life, 13 years, in southern Italy or Sicily.

In the Kingdom of Sicily (usually called at that time the Regnum), which then also included southern Italy as far as Campania, he carried out intense and sometimes unpopular reform work. He modified the laws of his grandfather Roger II of Sicily, promulgating the Constitutions of Melfi in 1231; in them the kingdom of Sicily was reorganized as an authoritarian monarchy, with a centralized government, denying feudalism. These laws remained, with minor amendments, the basic laws of Sicily until 1819. Indeed, certain new laws contradicted his promise to the pope to renounce the apostolic legation over the kingdom, which gave him the right to control ecclesiastical affairs and to depose and appoint clergy and bishops. In fact, his continuous skirmishes with the papacy in the form of the struggles between the Guelphs (pro-papal) and the Ghibellines (pro-emperor), especially in northern and southern Italy, led him to enact new taxes and raise the old ones. in the Regnum, which increased his unpopularity.

In general, his affairs took him far from his capital, Palermo, and he preferred to spend his free time hunting in Campania or Apulia. During this period he had Castel del Monte built as a hunting lodge and, as patron saint of letters, he founded in 1224 the University of Naples, now called Università Federico II in his honor.

Confederation with the Ecclesiastical Princes

The Treaty of the Church with the Prince, or Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis, of April 26, 1220 was issued by Frederick II as a concession to the German bishops for have his collaboration in the election of his son Enrique as King of Germany. The document represents one of the most important legislative sources of the Holy Roman Empire on German territory.

With this act, Frederick II renounces a certain number of royal privileges in favor of the prince-bishops. It was a true shift in the balance of power, a new design that was to lead to greater advantages in control of a vast and distant territory.

Among the many acquired rights, the bishops assumed the right to mint money, decree taxes and build fortifications. In addition, they also obtained the power to establish courts in their dominions and to receive the assistance of the king or the emperor to enforce the judgments issued in the territories in question. Condemnation by an ecclesiastical court automatically meant condemnation and punishment by the Royal or Imperial Court. Furthermore, an excommunication automatically translated into a criminal sentence from the King's or Emperor's court. The link between the State court and the Prince Bishop's premises was indissolubly welded.

The emanation of this law was directly related to the later Statutum in favorem principum that sanctioned similar rights for secular princes. The power of the lords increased, but the capacity to control the territory of the empire and the cities also grew. In this way, Frederick II sacrificed the centralization of power to ensure greater tranquility in the continental part of the Empire itself, so that he could turn his attention to the southern and Mediterranean front.

Frederick was then able to devote himself to consolidating the institutions of the Kingdom of Sicily, establishing two large settlements in Capua and Messina (1220-1221). On those occasions he claimed that each royal right confiscated in the past under various titles from the feudatories was immediately reinstated to the sovereign.

The Sixth Crusade

Federico II negotiates with Al-Kamil.

Pope Honorius III had already ordered Frederick to go on the Crusades as a penance. The emperor had assented, but had been delaying his departure, which earned him excommunication in 1227. The new pope, Gregory IX, much less condescending than the feeble Honorius III, went so far as to describe Frederick as Antichrist, and preached an unsuccessful crusade. against him, which was completely rejected by the rest of the European monarchs, considering that, although excommunicated, Frederick was still a Christian. The break with the papacy was evident, and Frederick's actions in Sicily confirmed it. In 1225 Federico had married again, this time with Yolanda of Jerusalem, heiress to the throne of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In order to assert the rights of his wife, he managed to depose the then incumbent King John of Brienne and himself be recognized as King of Jerusalem from 1225.

Despite this, Federico, who never had a large number of troops, could not decide to march to the Holy Land. When Gregory IX excommunicated him in 1227, he had threatened to leave for Palestine, but had canceled his expedition at the last moment, claiming that he had fallen ill, something that did not convince the Pope. Finally, taking advantage of a moment of weakening Muslim power in the Near East, Frederick left for Palestine in 1228 without papal blessing. This act was seen by the papacy as a provocation, since it was carried out without his consent and by an excommunicated person; for all this, he excommunicated him again.

In the Holy Land, the Egyptian Ayyubid sultanate (founded by Saladin) found itself in a politically compromised position: its kin and rivals in Syria and Mesopotamia threatened war, so it considered it dangerous to start a new contest with the Western powers. For this reason, Frederick, with a small army, managed to reconquer Cyprus, which was in a state of anarchy after the collapse of Crusader power. In the Holy Land, and thanks to the help of his adviser, the master of the Teutonic Order, Hermann von Salza, signed a ten-year truce with the Ayyubid sultan Al-Kamil in exchange for possession, in reality, nominally, of the Christian Holy Places, including Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, except for the holy places for Islam. After signing a ten-year armistice with the sultan, he was crowned King of Jerusalem on March 18, 1229.

This, again, was a challenge to the papacy, since, in the interim, his wife and rightful queen, Yolanda, had died, leaving the kingdom to his only son, Conrad. Thus, Gregory IX did not respond to these successes with the acquittal of Frederick, but instead declared that the emperor's actions in the Holy Land could not be qualified as holy war by continuing to be excommunicated, and proceeded to release the crusaders from the vow of obedience to the Emperor.. Federico II's achievements in the Holy Land were quite precarious, and depended more on the Arab political situation than on Christian power; he could not prevent the clashes between the Military Orders and the local barons, nor between the Venetians and the Genoese, which devastated the Near Eastern coast.

For his part, in 1229 he learned that the pope, together with the Lombard League with a Guelph majority, planned to invade the kingdom of Sicily; his own son Henry, his regent in Germany, had proclaimed himself king with papal consent, and claimed his father's domains. He abandoned the crusade and hastily returned to Italy.

Fight against the papacy

After disembarking in Brindisi, Frederick managed to defeat the Papal and Lombard forces, expelling them from the imperial territories. He signed the Treaty of San Germano in 1230, whereby the Emperor assured the Church of his territorial possessions in exchange for the pope revoking his excommunication. After this contest, Federico, with the support of the Ghibelline cities of Tuscany (Pisa and Siena) and Lombardy (Verona and Piacenza) achieved a certain domain of Italy.

This peace was, however, very short-lived. Due to the different way of conceiving the papacy and the pontificate between Gregory IX and Frederick II, a new confrontation was unavoidable. Thus, when in 1237 the imperial troops defeated the Lombard League at the battle of Cortenueva, the pope found the excuse to excommunicate Frederick again in 1239. He immediately ordered a crusade against the emperor, and unsuccessfully tried to get the German princes to elect a new king and called a council in Rome for 1241.

Frederico announced, for his part, his total opposition to holding a council that had no other motivation than his deposition and replacement, for which he ordered his troops to arrest all those who traveled to Rome with the intention to participate in it. The arrest and imprisonment of more than one hundred clergy prevented the celebration of the synod. Shortly after, Gregory IX died.

Chosen Innocent IV as the new pope, Frederick sent emissaries to agree to peace, but without giving up his power and influence in ecclesiastical decisions. Innocent IV demanded from Federico the recognition of the damage that he had caused to the Church. Finally, both parties reached an agreement on March 31, 1244. In it, the church was restored to its possessions, especially the Papal States, and the prelates favorable to the Pope who were imprisoned were released. Although he had signed peace with him thanks to the mediation of the King of France, he felt uncomfortable in Italy due to the presence of the imperial militia and decided to take refuge in Lyon with the support of the Genoese.

Innocent IV summoned, as soon as he arrived in the city, on January 3, 1245, the Council of Lyon despite the opposition of the emperor. Feeling strong, Innocent proceeded to accuse Federico of usurping and oppressing church property, and ended up excommunicating him on July 17 of the same year, for not organizing a new Crusade.

The Battle of Parma

Sarcophagus of Federico II
Palermo Cathedral.

Frederick organized troops to confront the papacy. Innocent IV, for his part, tried to organize a crusade against the emperor himself, mobilizing the German princes. In this way he sought the election of Enrique Raspe and, although he was proclaimed Emperor on May 22, 1246, he was never recognized as such. At the same time he provoked the uprising against the emperor of many cities in northern Italy. He won an important victory on February 18, 1248 at the Battle of Parma, when papal troops captured the imperial camp by surprise.

He took no part in the latter campaign. Federico had been ill and was probably feeling tired. He died peacefully, wearing the habit of a Cistercian monk, on December 13, 1250 at Castel Fiorentino near Lucera, in Apulia, after a bout of dysentery ^{[citation needed ]} .

Stupor world

He was known in his time as «stupor mundi» (astonishment of the world) for his eccentric and heterodox character and for his extensive knowledge. It is said of him that he spoke nine languages (including Latin, Sicilian, German, French, Greek and Arabic) and wrote in seven, unlike other monarchs of his time, often illiterate. His intellectual curiosity led him to found the Sicilian poetic school, and to delve into philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and natural sciences. In 1224 he founded the University of Naples. He introduced the study of Roman Law, with Justinian's glosses reworked by scholars at the University of Bologna. He also favored the old Salernitana Medical School.

He wrote several books: one of the best known is De arte venandi cum avibus, a treatise on falconry considered the first modern book on ornithology, and also a symbolic and philosophical book and some poems.

Like his father Henry VI, Frederick established a cosmopolitan court, open to people of all nations, including his African-born treasurer, Johannes Morus.

His character was branded as extravagant, since he despised the social conventions of the time, such as vassalage relations or the concept of chivalric honor. This motivated the mistrust of some of his allies, who mistrusted his political intentions. Historians have regarded Frederick II as a European monarch anticipating the Renaissance, a prince whose court was the most important in the Middle Ages, who sought to modernize his states.This idea of a renovating sovereign began as early as his own time. Some authors claimed this conception, but others, following the tradition of the Church, described it as anti-Christian.

Modern medievalists no longer accept these ideas. They argue that Frederick understood himself to be a Christian monarch in the sense of a Byzantine emperor, therefore, as the "regent" of God over the world. This ideology, which affirmed that the Holy Roman Emperor was the legitimate successor of the Roman emperors, clashed with the papal claim of submission of the Empire to the Church.

Thus, the modern approach to the reign of Frederick II tends to focus on the continuity between Frederick and his Norman predecessors, the kings of Sicily, and the previous emperors. David Abulafia, in his biography of Frederick II subtitled 'A Medieval Emperor', argues that Frederick's reputation as an enlightened figure ahead of his time is undeserved, and that Frederick was primarily a conventionally Christian monarch seeking to rule in a medieval way.

Investigation of the native language

The Franciscan chronicler Salimbene de Adam (1221 – c. 1290) reported in his Chronicle that, in his interest in elucidating what was the original language of humanity, Frederick II ordered the isolation of a baby from all verbal contact, it being hoped that the child, growing up never having heard anyone speak any language, would spontaneously learn to speak in the original language of Mankind, which Frederick held to be Hebrew. The experiment failed because the boy's nurses taught him to speak in secret.

Marriage and offspring

• First wife: Constanza de Aragón y de Castilla (1179-1222), daughter of King Alfonso II of Aragón. Marriage: August 15, 1209, in Mesina, Sicily.

• Henry II of Suabia (1211-1242), King of Romans.

• Second wife: Yolanda of Jerusalem, Queen of Jerusalem (1211-1228). Marriage: 9 November 1225, Brindisi, Apulia.

• Margarita (November 1226 - August 1227).
• Conrado IV, King of Romans.

• Third wife: Elizabeth of England (1214-1241), daughter of King John I of England. Marriage: July 15, 1235, in Worms, Germany.

• Jordan (born in the spring of 1236, failed to survive a year). This child was given the name Jordan stack because he was baptized with water brought for that purpose from the Jordan River.
• Inés (n and m. 1237).
• Henry Otto (18 February 1238 - May 1253), in honor of Henry III of England his uncle, was appointed governor of Sicily and promised to become King of Jerusalem after the death of his father, but he also died three years later and was never crowned. He was promised with nephews of Pope Inocencio IV, but he never married any.
• Federico (1239-1240)
• Margarita de Sicilia (1 December 1241 - 8 August 1270), married to Alberto II de Meissen.

Frederick was in a relationship with Bianca Lancia, possibly beginning in 1225. One source claims it lasted 20 years. She bore him three children:

• Constance II of Hohenstaufen (1230 - April 1307), married to John III Ducas Vatatzés.
• Manfredo de Sicilia (1232 - dead in battle, Benevento, February 26, 1266), first regent, later king of Sicily.
• Rape (1233-1264), married Ricardo Sanseverino, Count of Caserta.

Matthew of Paris tells the story of a marriage in articulo mortis (on his deathbed) between Federico and Bianca, when the latter was dying; but this marriage was never recognized by the Church. However, Bianca's children were apparently considered by Federico as legitimate, something that is evidenced by the marriage of his daughter Constance with the Emperor of Nicaea; by his own will he made Manfred prince of Taranto and regent of Sicily.

Lovers and illegitimate offspring

• Countess Siciliana of unknown name. He was the first known lover of Frederick II, king at this time of Sicily. Your exact affiliation is unknown, but the Thomas Tusci Gesta Imperatorum et Pontificum, stated that it was a noble Countess heir, of the kingdom of Sicily. He gave him a son:

• Federico de Pettorana, who fled to Spain with his wife and children in 1240, but his two children died there at the age of two and one.

• Adelaide de Urslingen (C. 1184 - c 1222). His relationship with Federico II took place during the time he was in Germany (between 1215 and 1220). According to some sources, which was related to the Hohenburg family under the name of Alayta de Vohburg (in Italian: Alayta di Marano), but the most accepted theory indicates that she was the daughter of Conrado de Urslingen, the count of Assisi and Duke of Spoleto.

• Enzio de Cerdeña (1215-1272).

• Lady unknown name, of the family of the Dukes of Spoleto. This relationship is only displayed in Medlands. Other sources (including Medlands) also declare that Catherine was a sister of Enzio and, consequently, also daughter of Adelaide de Urslingen.

• Catherine de Marano (1216/18 - 1272), who first married a stranger and second with Giacomo del Carretto, Marquis of Noli and Finale.

• Matilda or María de Antioquía.

• Federico de Antioquía (1221-1256).

• Manna, sister of the Archbishop of Mesina.

• Ricardo de Chieti (1225 - 26 May 1249).

• Richina (Ruthina) of Beilstein-Wolfsöden (c. 1205-1236). According to Medlands, she was the wife of Count Godofredo of Löwenstein and daughter of Count Bertoldo of Beilstein and his wife Adelaide of Bonfeld.

• Margarita de Suabia (1230-1298), married Thomas Aquinas, Count of Acerra.

• Ladies of unknown name:

• Selvaggia (1223-1244), married to Ezzelino III of Rome
• White Flower (1226-1279), Dominican nun in Montargis, France.
• Gerardo (dead after 1255).

Frederick II, Emperor of the Last Days

According to one version, Frederick II declared Christ, Moses and Mohammed a trio of impostors (Averroes is attributed a writing on the subject) and openly ignored papal authority, this being the true cause for which he was excommunicated by Gregory IX and Innocent IV, and by the first ecumenical council of Lyon (1245), which deposed him as emperor for perjuring, heretic and disturbing the peace. His response would have been to create a new religion, of which Messiah was proclaimed, reserving his minister Pietro della Vigna the rank of Saint Peter.

Frederick II was the object of surprising eschatological hopes. In fact, everything that the French had expected from the Capetians and Charlemagne, the Germans expected from him. When Frederick Barbarossa died in 1190, prophecies began to appear in Germany that spoke of a future Frederick, emperor of the last days, who would free the Holy Sepulcher and prepare the way for the second coming of Jesus Christ and the millennium. His brilliant personality favored the birth of a messianic myth. He went on a crusade in 1229 and recaptured Jerusalem, crowning himself king of it. He had bitter conflicts with the papacy, he was several times excommunicated as a heretic, perjurer and blasphemer, for which he took revenge by trying to deprive the church of the wealth that was supposedly the source of his corruption.

Joaquin de Fiore in the "Concordia dell'antico e nuovo Testamento", having compared Jesus Christ with Solomon, King David's favorite son, equates Federico II with Absalom, his rebellious son. For all the joaquinistas, Federico II was had like the Antichrist, or at least one of the precursors of him. Joaquin de Fiore would have prophesied his birth to Constanza, wife of Henry VI, who would be the future and most dangerous enemy of the Church. Later, when the Franciscan spirituals resumed his writings, they distorted them to infinity. In the pseudo-Joaquinist "Commentary on the Last Days", written in 1241, it was predicted that Frederick II would persecute the Church so much that in the year 1260 it would be totally destroyed. For the spiritual Italians, the emperor was the Antichrist himself, and his kingdom, the new Babylon. In Germany, on the other hand, he was still seen as the savior or Messiah, whose mission included the punishment of the church.

To everyone's surprise, Frederick II died in the year 1250, ten years before the predicted end of the world, unable to fulfill his eschatological mission. It soon began to be rumored that he was still alive. Moreover, he would have risen, for he had been seen entering the craters of Etna, while an army of knights descended into the raging Sicilian sea. In this way the legend of the king under the mountain was born, which was popularized by the Grimm brothers and later applied retrospectively to Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa.

Such a legend gave rise to the appearance of an allegedly resurrected Frederick II many years later, causing a stir in Italy and Germany, and he was ultimately executed when the hoax was discovered.

Succession

Predecessor: Enrique VI	King holder of Romans 1196 - 1198	Successor: Felipe de Suabia
Predecessor: Oton IV	King of Romans 1212 - 1215 King rival 1215 - 1220 Legitimate King	Successor: Enrique (VII) (1220-1235) Conrado IV (1237-1254)
Predecessor: Oton IV	Emperor of the Holy Germanic Roman Empire 1220 - 1250	Successor: Henry VII
Predecessor: Constance I	King of Sicily 1198 - 1250 Together with Enrique de Hohesntaufen from 1212 to 1217	Successor: Conrado
Predecessor: Yolanda (1212-1228)	King of Jerusalem 1225 - 1228	Successor: Conrado II
Predecessor: Oton IV	Duke of Suabia 1212 - 1216	Successor: Henry II

Pop Culture

Federico II Hohenstaufen is one of the protagonists —and the one who gives the book its name— in the novel Imperator (2010) by Isabel San Sebastián.