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Yet even his enemies admitted his extraordinary ability. The Franciscan, Fra
Salimbene, wrote that if he had been a true Catholic, and had loved God and the
Church, few Emperors would have been his equals. His followers seem to have
looked on him as a kind of Messiah, a mystic incarnation of divine power. They
compared him to Christ, and punned on the name of his minister, Peter de la
Vigne, the "corner-stone," the "fruitful vine," the Peter who would not betray his
Master. He himself spoke of his mother as “holy," and called his birth-place
“Bethlehem," and he was hailed as “Sanctus Fridericus." How far these claims were
serious, how far they represent mere extravagant adulation is doubtful. Frederick
posed deliberately as the successor of the ancient Eoman Emperors, the heir of all
their rights and dignities, but he always professed his loyalty to the Church which
had excommunicated him, though he advocated ecclesiastical reforms, and, in
particular, a return to apostolic poverty.
“The primitive Church," he said,” was based on poverty and simplicity." If his
tolerance of Jews and Mohammedans, his rationalism and love of scientific study
were enough to condemn him in the eyes of the orthodox, the visionary poetic
strain in his character, and his daring intellectual originality fascinated the
imagination of the dreamer and the fanatic. Men were loath to believe that he was
really dead. The prophecies of the Abbot The Joachim were applied to him, and it
was Frederick believed that he would come again, whether for evil or for good, as
Antichrist, or as the defender of the Church and the savior of Germany. He was
more than once personated by impostors, and, in the fifteenth century, legend told
how he waited, hidden in a Thuringian mountain, for the day of the deliverance of
Germany.
Henry VII Hohenstaufen *1211 - †1242
The Rebellious King
1211- †12.II.1242
King of Sicily II.1212
Duke of Swabia 1216/'17
Rector of Burgundy 4.I.1220
King of Rome 1220 - 1235
Elected Frankfurt 23.IV.1220
Crowned Aachen 8.V.1222
Deposed 2/4.VII.1235
Henry VII (*1211- †12.II.1242) was the first son of
Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and Constance of
Aragon. He was crowned a king of Sicily when he
was still a baby and became a duke of Swabia when he was five. His dazzling career
The Hohenstaufen Dynasty - Page 54 of 200