Part 474

Frederick was succeeded by his son Henry the Sixth, who had already been chosen King, and who in the next year, 1191, was crowned Emperor. The chief event of his reign was the conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily, which he claimed in right of his wife Constance, the daughter of the first King William. He died in 1197, leaving his son Frederick a young child, who had already been chosen King in Germany, and who succeeded as hereditary King in Sicily. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily thus came to an end, except so far as it was continued through Frederick, who was descended from the Norman Kings through his mother. On the death of the Emperor Henry, the election of young Frederick seems to have been quite forgotten, and the crown was disputed between his uncle Philip of Swabia and Otto of Saxony. He was son of Henry the Lion, who had been Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, but who had lost the more part of his dominions in the time of Frederick Barbarossa. Otto's mother was Matilda, daughter of Henry the Second of England. … Both Kings were crowned, and, after the death of Philip, Otto was crowned Emperor in 1209. But presently young Frederick was again chosen, and in 1220 he was crowned Emperor, and reigned thirty years till his death in 1250. This Frederick the Second, who joined together so many crowns, was called the Wonder of the World. And he well deserved the name, for perhaps no King that ever reigned had greater natural gifts, and in thought and learning he was far above the age in which he lived. In his own kingdom of Sicily he could do pretty much as he pleased, and it flourished wonderfully in his time. But in Germany and Italy he had constantly to struggle against enemies of all kinds. In Germany he had to win the support of the Princes by granting them privileges which did much to undermine the royal power, and on the other hand he showed no favour to the rising power of the cities. In Italy he had endless strivings with one Pope after another, with Innocent the Third; Honorius the Third, Gregory the Ninth, and Innocent the Fourth; as well as with the Guelfic cities, which withstood him much as they had withstood his grandfather. He was more than once excommunicated by the Popes, and in 1245 Pope Innocent the Fourth held a Council at Lyons, in which he professed to depose the Emperor. More than one King was chosen in opposition to him in Germany, just as had been done in the time of Henry the Fourth, and there were civil wars all his time, both in Germany and in Italy, while a great part of the Kingdom of Burgundy was beginning to slip away from the Empire altogether."

_E. A. Freeman, General Sketch of European History, chapter 11._

"It is probable that there never lived a human being endowed with greater natural gifts, or whose natural gifts were, according to the means afforded him by his age, more sedulously cultivated, than the last Emperor of the House of Swabia. There seems to be no aspect of human nature which was not developed to the highest degree in his person. In versatility of gifts, in what we may call manysidedness of character, he appears as a sort of mediæval Alkibiadês, while he was undoubtedly far removed from Alkibiadês' utter lack of principle or steadiness of any kind. Warrior, statesman, lawgiver, scholar, there was nothing in the compass of the political or intellectual world of his age which he failed to grasp. In an age of change, when, in every corner of Europe and civilized Asia, old kingdoms, nations, systems, were falling and new ones rising, Frederick was emphatically the man of change, the author of things new and unheard of—he was stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis. {1447} A suspected heretic, a suspected Mahometan, he was the subject of all kinds of absurd and self-contradictory charges; but the charges mark real features in the character of the man. He was something unlike any other Emperor or any other man. … Of all men, Frederick the Second might have been expected to be the founder of something, the beginner of some new era, political or intellectual. He was a man to whom some great institution might well have looked back as its creator, to whom some large body of men, some sect or party or nation, might well have looked back as their prophet or founder or deliverer. But the most gifted of the sons of men has left behind him no such memory, while men whose gifts cannot bear a comparison with his are reverenced as founders by grateful nations, churches, political and philosophical parties. Frederick in fact founded nothing, and he sowed the seeds of the destruction of many things. His great charters to the spiritual and temporal princes of Germany dealt the death-blow to the Imperial power, while he, to say the least, looked coldly on the rising power of the cities and on those commercial Leagues which were in his time the best element of German political life. In fact, in whatever aspect we look at Frederick the Second, we find him, not the first, but the last, of every series to which he belongs. An English writer [Capgrave], two hundred years after his time, had the penetration to see that he was really the last Emperor. He was the last Prince in whose style the Imperial titles do not seem a mockery; he was the last under whose rule the three Imperial kingdoms retained any practical connexion with one another and with the ancient capital of all. … He was not only the last Emperor of the whole Empire; he might almost be called the last King of its several Kingdoms. After his time Burgundy vanishes as a kingdom. … Italy too, after Frederick, vanishes as a kingdom; any later exercise of the royal authority in Italy was something which came and went wholly by fits and starts. … Germany did not utterly vanish, or utterly split in pieces, like the sister kingdoms; but after Frederick came the Great Interregnum, and after the Great Interregnum the royal power in Germany never was what it had been before. In his hereditary Kingdom of Sicily he was not absolutely the last of his dynasty, for his son Manfred ruled prosperously and gloriously for some years after his death. But it is none the less clear that from Frederick's time the Sicilian Kingdom was doomed. … Still more conspicuously than all was Frederick the last Christian King of Jerusalem, the last baptized man who really ruled the Holy Land or wore a crown in the Holy City. … In the world of elegant letters Frederick has some claim to be looked on as the founder of that modern Italian language and literature which first assumed a distinctive shape at his Sicilian court. But in the wider field of political history Frederick appears nowhere as a creator, but rather everywhere as an involuntary destroyer. … Under Frederick the Empire and everything connected with it seems to crumble and decay while preserving its external splendour. As soon as its brilliant possessor is gone, it at once falls asunder. It is a significant fact that one who in mere genius, in mere accomplishments, was surely the greatest prince who ever wore a crown, a prince who held the greatest place on earth, and who was concerned during a long reign in some of the greatest transactions of one of the greatest ages, seems never, even from his own flatterers, to have received that title of Great which has been so lavishly bestowed on far smaller men. … Many causes combined to produce this singular result, that a man of the extraordinary genius of Frederick, and possessed of every advantage of birth, office, and opportunity, should have had so little direct effect upon the world. It is not enough to attribute his failure to the many and great faults of his moral character. Doubtless they were one cause among others. But a man who influences future ages is not necessarily a good man. … The weak side in the brilliant career of Frederick is one which seems to have been partly inherent in his character, and partly the result of the circumstances in which he found himself. Capable of every part, and in fact playing every part by turns, he had no single definite object, pursued honestly and steadfastly, throughout his whole life. With all his powers, with all his brilliancy, his course throughout life seems to have been in a manner determined for him by others. He was ever drifting into wars, into schemes of policy, which seem to be hardly ever of his own choosing. He was the mightiest and most dangerous adversary that the Papacy ever had. But he does not seem to have withstood the Papacy from any personal choice, or as the voluntary champion of any opposing principle. He became the enemy of the Papacy, he planned schemes which involved the utter overthrow of Papacy, yet he did so simply because he found that no Pope would ever let him alone. … The most really successful feature in Frederick's career, his acquisition of Jerusalem [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1216-1229], is not only a mere episode in his life, but it is something that was absolutely forced upon him against his will. … With other Crusaders the Holy War was, in some cases, the main business of their lives; in all cases it was something seriously undertaken as a matter either of policy or of religious duty. But the Crusade of the man who actually did recover the Holy City is simply a grotesque episode in his life. Excommunicated for not going, excommunicated again for going, excommunicated again for coming back, threatened on every side, he still went, and he succeeded. What others had failed to win by arms, he contrived to win by address, and all that came of his success was that it was made the ground of fresh accusations against him. … For a man to influence his age, he must in some sort belong to his age. He should be above it, before it, but he should not be foreign to it. … But Frederick belongs to no age; intellectually he is above his own age, above every age; morally it can hardly be denied that he was below his age; but in nothing was he of his age."

_E. A. Freeman, The Emperor Frederick the Second (Historical Essays, volume 1, Essay 10)._

For an account of Frederick's brilliant Sicilian court, and of some of the distinguishing features of his reign in Southern Italy, as well as of the end of his family, in the tragical deaths of his son Manfred and his grandson Conradin (1268).

See ITALY: A. D. 1183-1250.

ALSO IN: _T. L. Kington, History of Frederick the Second._

_J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapters 10-13._

_H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, book 8, chapter 7, and book 9._

{1448}

GERMANY: A. D. 1142-1152. Creation of the Electorate of Brandenburg.

See BRANDENBURG: A. D. 1142-1152.

GERMANY: A. D. 1156. The Margravate of Austria created a Duchy.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 805-1246.

GERMANY: A. D. 1180-1214. Bavaria and the Palatinate of the Rhine acquired by the house of Wittelsbach.

See BAVARIA: A. D. 1180-1356.

GERMANY: A. D. 1196-1197. The Fourth Crusade.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1196-1197.

GERMANY: 13th Century. The rise of the Hanseatic League.

See HANSA TOWNS.

GERMANY: 13th Century. Cause of the multiplication of petty principalities and states.

"While the duchies and counties of Germany retained their original character of offices or governments, they were of course, even though considered as hereditary, not subject to partition among children. When they acquired the nature of fiefs, it was still consonant to the principles of a feudal tenure that the eldest son should inherit according to the law of primogeniture; an inferior provision or appanage, at most, being reserved for the younger children. The law of England favoured the eldest exclusively; that of France gave him great advantages. But in Germany a different rule began to prevail about the thirteenth century. An equal partition of the inheritance, without the least regard to priority of birth, was the general law of its principalities. Sometimes this was effected by undivided possession, or tenancy in common; the brothers residing together, and reigning jointly. This tended to preserve the integrity of dominion; but as it was frequently incommodious, a more usual practice was to divide the territory. From such partitions are derived those numerous independent principalities of the same house, many of which still subsist in Germany. In 1589 there were eight reigning princes of the Palatine family; and fourteen, in 1675, of that of Saxony. Originally these partitions were in general absolute and without reversion; but, as their effect in weakening families became evident, a practice was introduced of making compacts of reciprocal succession, by which a fief was prevented from escheating to the empire, until all the male posterity of the first feudatory should be extinct. Thus, while the German empire survived, all the princes of Hesse or of Saxony had reciprocal contingencies of succession, or what our lawyers call cross-remainders, to each other's dominions. A different system was gradually adopted. By the Golden Bull of Charles IV. the electoral territory, that is, the particular district to which the electoral suffrage was inseparably attached, became incapable of partition, and was to descend to the eldest son. In the 15th century the present house of Brandenburg set the first example of establishing primogeniture by law; the principalities of Anspach and Bayreuth were dismembered from it for the benefit of younger branches; but it was declared that all the other dominions of the family should for the future belong exclusively to the reigning elector. This politic measure was adopted in several other families; but, even in the 16th century, the prejudice was not removed, and some German princes denounced curses on their posterity, if they should introduce the impious custom of primogeniture. … Weakened by these subdivisions, the principalities of Germany in the 14th and 15th centuries shrink to a more and more diminutive size in the scale of nations."

_H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 5 (volume 2)._

See, also, CITIES, IMPERIAL AND FREE, OF GERMANY.

GERMANY: A. D. 1212. The Children's Crusade.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1212.

GERMANY: A. D. 1231-1315. Relations of the Swiss Forest Cantons to the Empire and to the House of Austria.

See SWITZERLAND: THE THREE FOREST CANTONS.

GERMANY: A. D. 1250-1272. Degradation of the Holy Roman Empire. The Great Interregnum. Anarchy and disorder universal. Election of Rudolf of Hapsburg.

"With Frederick [the Second] fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emerged, living indeed, and destined to a long life, but so shattered, crippled, and degraded, that it could never more be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been. … The German kingdom broke down beneath the weight of the Roman Empire. To be universal sovereign Germany had sacrificed her own political existence. The necessity which their projects in Italy and disputes with the Pope laid the Emperors under of purchasing by concessions the support of their own princes, the ease with which in their absence the magnates could usurp, the difficulty which the monarch returning found in resuming the privileges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and set up pretenders to the throne which the Holy See held out, these were the causes whose steady action laid the foundation of that territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric at the era of the Great Interregnum. Frederick II. had, by two Pragmatic Sanctions, A. D. 1220 and 1232, granted, or rather confirmed, rights already customary, such as to give the bishops and nobles legal sovereignty in their own towns and territories, except when the Emperor should be present; and thus his direct jurisdiction became restricted to his narrowed domain, and to the cities immediately dependent on the crown. With so much less to do, an Emperor became altogether a less necessary personage; and hence the seven magnates of the realm, now by law or custom sole electors, were in no haste to fill up the place of Conrad IV., whom the supporters of his father Frederick had acknowledged. William of Holland [A. D. 1254] was in the field, but rejected by the Swabian party: on his death a new election was called for, and at last set on foot. The archbishop of Cologne advised his brethren to choose some one rich enough to support the dignity, not strong enough to be feared by the electors: both requisites met in the Plantagenet Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of the English Henry III. He received three, eventually four votes, came to Germany, and was crowned at Aachen [A. D. 1256]. But three of the electors, finding that his bribe to them was lower than to the others, seceded in disgust, and chose Alfonso X. of Castile, who, shrewder than his competitor, continued to watch the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splendours of his title while troubling himself about it no further than to issue now and then a proclamation. Meantime the condition of Germany was frightful. The new Didius Julianus, the chosen of princes baser than the prætorians whom they copied, had neither the character nor the outward power and resources to make himself respected. Every floodgate of anarchy was opened: prelates and barons extended their domains by war: robber-knights infested the highways and the rivers: the misery of the weak, the tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as had not been seen for centuries. {1449} Things were even worse than under the Saxon and Franconian Emperors; for the petty nobles who had then been in some measure controlled by their dukes were now, after the extinction of the great houses, left without any feudal superior. Only in the cities was shelter or peace to be found. Those of the Rhine had already leagued themselves for mutual defence, and maintained a struggle in the interests of commerce and order against universal brigandage. At last, when Richard had been some time dead, it was felt that such things could not go on for ever: with no public law, and no courts of justice, an Emperor, the embodiment of legal government, was the only resource. The Pope himself, having now sufficiently improved the weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization of Germany beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened that if the electors did not appoint an Emperor, he would. Thus urged, they chose, in 1272 [1273?], Rudolf, count of Hapsburg, founder of the house of Austria. From this point there begins a new era. We have seen the Roman Empire revived in A. D. 800, by a prince whose vast dominions gave ground to his claim of universal monarchy; again erected, in A. D. 962, on the narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We have seen Otto the Great and his successors during the three following centuries, a line of monarchs of unrivalled vigour and abilities, strain every nerve to make good the pretensions of their office against the rebels in Italy and the ecclesiastical power. Those efforts had now failed signally and hopelessly. Each successive Emperor had entered the strife with resources scantier than his predecessors, each had been more decisively vanquished by the Pope, the cities, and the princes. The Roman Empire might, and, so far as its practical utility was concerned, ought now to have been suffered to expire; nor could it have ended more gloriously than with the last of the Hohenstaufen. That it did not so expire, but lived on 600 years more, till it became a piece of antiquarianism hardly more venerable than ridiculous—till, as Voltaire said, all that could be said about it was that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire—was owing partly indeed to the belief, still unshaken, that it was a necessary part of the world's order, yet chiefly to its connection, which was by this time indissoluble, with the German kingdom. The Germans had confounded the two characters of their sovereign so long, and had grown so fond of the style and pretensions of a dignity whose possession appeared to exalt them above the other peoples of Europe, that it was now too late for them to separate the local from the universal monarch. If a German king was to be maintained at all, he must be Roman Emperor; and a German king there must still be. … That head, however, was no longer what he had been. The relative position of Germany and France was now exactly the reverse of that which they had occupied two centuries earlier. Rudolf was as conspicuously a weaker sovereign than Philip III. of France, as the Franconian Emperor Henry III. had been stronger than the Capetian Philip I. In every other state of Europe the tendency of events had been to centralize the administration and increase the power of the monarch, even in England not to diminish it: in Germany alone had political union become weaker, and the independence of the princes more confirmed."

_J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 13._

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1250-1520.

GERMANY: A. D. 1273-1308. The first Hapsburg kings of the Romans, Rodolph and Albert.