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Henry submitted and was kept for some time as a prisoner in Germany, though his
formal deposition as German king was not considered necessary, as he had broken
the oath taken in 1232.
Possibly on 12 February 1242, Henry died near to Martirano after a fall from his
horse when he was moved there from Nicastro. Some chroniclers report that it had
been an attempted suicide. His father had him buried with royal honors in the
cathedral of Cosenza, in an antique Roman sarcophagus.
Frederick, Henry's second and only surviving son, was deprived of the succession
jointly with his father after his rebellion in 1235. However, his grandfather
Frederick II, in his testament, entrusted him with the Duchy of Austria and the
Marquisate of Styria, but he could never take over the government of these lands
and died few years later (ca. 1251/1252) unmarried and childless.
Among the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, Henry is numbered only in
parentheses, as he did not exercise the sole kingship. He is not to be confused with
the later Emperor Henry VII of the House of Luxembourg.
The Antichrist
On December 13, 1250, the Emperor Frederick II had
died of a sudden fever at Castel Fiorentino, in South
Italy. To Pope Innocent IV in his excitement it seemed
that all the troubles of the Church were now ended. The
Antichrist had passed away; the race of vipers had lost
its leader. “Let the heavens rejoice”, he wrote at once to
the faithful in Sicily. “Let the earth be filled with
gladness. For the fall of the tyrant has changed the
thunderbolts and tempests that God Almighty held over
your heads into gentle zephyrs and fecund dews”.
Innocent IV was elected on 25 June 1243. He was a member of a noble Imperial
family and had some relatives in Frederick's camp, so the Emperor was initially
happy with his election. Innocent, however, was to become his fiercest enemy.
When in 1243 Innocent IV was elected, Frederick, at the urging of the German
princes and of King Louis IX of France, opened negotiations with the new pope.
Agreement between the Pope and the Emperor seemed close on the evacuation of
the Papal States, when in June 1244 Innocent fled the city. In Lyon he convened a
council for 1245 and in July of that year deposed the Emperor, the obstacle to
reconciliation apparently being the status of the Lombard communes. Innocent
characterizing him as a "friend of Babylon's sultan", "of Saracen customs",
The Hohenstaufen Dynasty - Page 56 of 200