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elatives were waiting for him at the port of Civitavecchia to take him to Genoa and
then to Lyon. Although Lyon was nominally subject to the empire, Innocent IV was
under the protection of Louis IX of France.
Late in 1244 the Pope called a general council to meet in Lyon the following
summer. Gregory IX had earlier announced such a council, but Frederick II had
impeded it by holding as prisoners more than 100 bishops who had fallen into the
hands of the Pisans in the naval battle of Meloria. Three themes were to be treated
in the council: the question of the Emperor, the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre,
and the defense of Christianity against the advance of the Mongols. Thaddeus of
Suessa tried in vain to defend the Emperor before the council. Frederick II was
solemnly condemned, his subjects were freed from their bond of loyalty to him, and
he was deposed on the basis of the triple charge of perjury, sacrilege, and suspicion
of heresy. The Pope himself admonished the German princes to elect a new
emperor. They named Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, and, at his death in
1247, William of Holland. The condemnation of Frederick II did not obtain the
desired political effects in Germany, but it did show the effectiveness of the
network of ties that the papal family had succeeded in tightening in northern Italy,
which contributed to the Emperor’s defeat at Parma (1247).
Frederick II died on Dec. 13, 1250. The Pope left Lyon and triumphantly returned
to Rome in 1253. Meanwhile, he had to continue the struggle against Frederick II’s
son Conrad IV and also to find a king to whom he could entrust the Kingdom of
Sicily as a fief. The Pope offered Sicily first to Richard of Cornwall, then to Charles
of Anjou, both of whom refused, and later to Henry III of England, who accepted
for his son Edmund. After the death of Conrad IV in May 1254, the papal army was
defeated by Manfred, Frederick II’s illegitimate son, who had become regent for
Conradin, the infant son of Conrad IV. The Pope died soon after at Naples in
December 1254.
Background
Sinisbaldo Fieschi was born in Manarola, Liguria (North
coastal Italy) into the ancient and powerful Fieschi
bloodline. The Fieschi had held power over a large part of
Tuscany and the coast of Genoa and the north from the
beginning of the 11th Century until the 16th Century.
In 1010, Holy Roman Emperor Henry (also King of Italy)
granted the family the fief Counts of Lavagna and
Imperial Vicars General (ie Viceroys) of the whole of
Tuscany and of the coast of Genoa.
By the time Sinisbaldo Fieschi was born, the Fieschi was
The Hohenstaufen Dynasty - Page 75 of 200