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eceived from the Emperor a confirmation and extension of the grants of Prussian
territory already made by the Polish duke to the Teutonic Knights.
If in Sicily Frederick II. ruled as an absolute monarch and in Germany as the feudal
chief of a federation of princes, in both kingdoms, by coercion or conciliation, he
had made himself master.
Frederick was red-haired, like his grandfather, and was near-sighted. He was a
Norman and he loved to hunt birds. He learned falconry from Konrad von
Lützelhard, a Teutonic Knight. Frederick had a long association with the
Teutonic Knights. Hermann von Salza, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights,
stood with Frederick and was handsomely rewarded as he had built Frederick's
trust. Hermann was particularly interested in the Baltic Sea for the future domain
of the Teutonic Order. Frederick was more like a Renaissance ruler, than a
Medieval one. He was a patron of the arts and sciences, a man of culture and
learning, and even wrote a book on the hunting of birds. Hunting birds was one of
his passions.
With the death of Frederick, ended the Empire in its classical meaning and
medieval. The title of Emperor survived until the nineteenth century, but not one of
his successors could be considered divine or universal.
At this time," wrote the English chronicler Matthew Paris, "died the greatest of the
princes of the world, Frederick, the Wonder of the World {stupor mundi), the
marvelous revolutionist (immutator), absolved from the sentence which bound
him, in the habit, it is said, of the Cistercians, and full of contrition and
humiliation." The papal historian, on the contrary, describes him as dying
excommunicated and deposed, gnashing his teeth and foaming at the mouth, with
loud crying and groaning. He was buried in a splendid tomb by the side of his
parents, in the cathedral of Palermo, the capital of his beloved Sicily.
The phrase Stupor Mundi, the “Wonder of the World," well expresses the feeling
of the contemporaries of Frederick II. towards the great Emperor. Otto III had
been a world-wonder, too (mirabilia mundi, see p. 19), a marvel of precocious
talent, but the genius of Frederick II. inspired terror and awe. Men stood amazed
and stupefied before him, and regarded him as something portentous and almost
superhuman. To the papalists he was an atheist, a monster of iniquity, Antichrist
himself. He was accused of denying the immortality of the soul and the
resurrection of the body, of rejecting the mystery of the Incarnation, and of
believing only what could be proved by physical science and natural reason. He was
said to have declared that the world had been deceived by three impostors —
Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. In later days Dante, in the Divinia Commedia,
placed him in hell among the misbelievers.
The Hohenstaufen Dynasty - Page 53 of 200