May 17th 1198. A 4 years-old Federico II Hohenstaufen is crowned King of Sicily Soon after the death

May 17th 1198. A 4 years-old Federico II Hohenstaufen is crowned King of Sicily

Soon after the death of the Emperor Henry, Constance had the child fetched from Foligno by an Apulian count and brought to Sicily. Dressed in widow’s weeds she awaited her son in Palermo. There were grave accusatory rumours against the Empress current at the time: some said she had poisoned her husband, and it was a matter of common knowledge that she had no love for Germans. The suspicion of murder was unjust, but the hatred for Germans ascribed to her was genuine enough; she shared it with her Sicilian fellow-countrymen and with the Italians oppressed by the Roman Curia. The foundations of this hate were the same then as they have always been: the arrogance “allied with unwisdom” of the Germans alienated the Mediterranean peoples, as did their “obstinacy and self-assertiveness.”

Their physical strength and their savagery moreover terrified the Southerners, the discords prevailing amongst themselves brought them scorn and contempt. For rulers of the world they appeared “crude, coarse and uncivilised,” while their yet unpolished language seemed to the Romans "like the barking of dogs and the croaking of frogs.” But the main factor in this hate was fear; fear of the inrush “of the winter and the storm into the rose-gardens of Sicily.” This fear was not allayed by the savagely cruel treatment meted out to the Sicilians by Henry VI. Perhaps Innocent with his biblical phraseology hit on the right description of the German visitation of those days when he wrote: “Because the people of Sicily and the other inhabitants of this kingdom have grown effeminate in sloth, and undisciplined through too much peace, and, boasting themselves of their wealth, have given themselves over to the unbridled lusts of the body, their stink has gone up to heaven and the multitude of their sins has delivered them into the hands of the oppressor.”

Innocent spoke thus out of no friendliness to the Germans. The hate of Germans that flamed up throughout Italy on the death of the Emperor had been carefully nurtured beforehand by the Curia, had been given the air of a national pan-Italian movement and utilised as a means to shake off the imperial yoke in the south in favour of a papal Italy. In resonant periods Innocent III had taken pains to stir up and foster this hate: “The wrath of the North wind whistles through the mountains with a new quaking of the earth, it drives through the level plains of Apulia, whirling dust into the eyes of wanderers and country-dwellers.” Thus he wrote about the German,Henry VI, whom Dante also designated “that loud blast which blew the second over Swabia’s realm.” A reaction of this sort against the tyranny of Henry VI was of course inevitable. The importance of the movement in Sicily was enhanced by the fact that the Empress Constance took part in it. Her motives were probably personal, for Henry had made a terrific clearance amongst all related to the old Norman royal house and had banished the survivors to Germany. On his death Constance immediately resumed the sovereignty of her hereditary domain, in accordance both with the Emperor’s instructions and with the right she herself possessed as Norman Queen. But the new ruler of Sicily was Norman Queen only: not widowed Empress; and the first act of her reign was to banish from her kingdom the Emperor’s interpreter, Markward of Anweiler, and with him all other German notables, a considerable number of whom held fief and office in the Norman territory. The pretext was that they might prove dangerous to the peace and quiet of the kingdom,especially Markward, who had not been slow to propose himself as vicegerent. Her next step was to imprison the Sicilian Chancellor, Walter of Palear, Bishop of Troia, who had been from of old an opponent of the Norman dynasty and a willing tool of the German Emperor. The intervention of the Pope was necessary to effect the liberation of the Bishop Chancellor and his re-instatement in his former offices. AntiGerman feeling in the south was so acute that the first German crusaders who were returning, all unsuspecting, from the Holy Land were surprised and plundered by the excited Sicilians, and after that the home-coming pilgrims had to avoid the har bours of this dangerously inhospitable kingdom. Curiously, the German princes who were on the Crusade, when they received in Acre the news of their Emperor’s death, reconfirmed the choice of Frederick as King of the Romans. 

Constance, however, deliberately shut her eyes to all this. Her hate of Germany reinforced the maternal anxiety which heroes’ mothers are wont to suffer from: in the German crown she saw a never-ending series of future perils and struggles for her son. She would as far as possible ward off such a danger from him. Frederick should be king of the wealthy Sicily, and in the southern Land of Dreams he would quietly forget the imperial dignity of his fathers. A few months after the boy’s arrival in Palermo she had him crowned King of Sicily. The solemn rite was celebrated on Whit Sunday 1198, with a pomp and ceremony borrowed from the Byzantine court, while in accordance with ancient custom the people greeted their newly crowned king with the cry which may still be read on every crucifix in southern Italy “Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.” It is significant to note that this is also the motto engraved on Frederick’s early seals. From that day Constance omitted from all official documents of the young king the title that had previously figured there: Rex Romanorum. From henceforth Frederick of Hohenstaufen was to content himself with the many titles borne by the reges felices of Norman stock. He was to be, body and soul, the son of the Sicilian Constance only, and to be kept aloof from all the fatal, unknown consequences in which the dangerous Hohenstaufen blood of his father might involve him. One is reminded of the childhood of Achilles or of Parzival.

Kantorowicz Ernst,Frederick II. 1198-1250, p. 13-16