Part II
8
There has risen from the sea a beast full of blasphemy, that, formed with
the feet of a bear, the mouth of a raging lion and, as it were, a panther in
its other limbs, opens its mouth in blasphemies against God’s name...
this beast is Frederick, the so-called Emperor.
Pope Gregory IX
GOING DOWN FROM THE GARGANO into the Southern Capitanata and the flat Tavoliere that stretches as far as Foggia, you enter the region most closely associated with the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250).
He captured the imagination of the thirteenth century English chronicler Matthew Paris, who called him “Frederick, greatest of earthly princes, the wonder of the world”, and he continues to fascinate. Not even Adolf Hitler was immune to his spell. Among the travellers, he appealed to Norman Douglas in particular, as a “colossal shade”. For Apulians, “Our Emperor, Federico di Svevia” is beyond question a Pugliese, by choice if not birth, and there is nobody they admire more. They remember Hannibal from his elephants and Bohemond from his tomb at Canosa, but Frederick made his home among them.
What did he look like, this great Apulian, who terrified both friends and enemies? All Western chroniclers, even the most hos-tile, agree that Frederick was handsome and impressive. The face on his gold coins shows a fine profile. Yet an Arab who saw him says he was covered with red hair, bald and myopic, and would have fetched a poor price in a slave market.
His father, Emperor Henry VI, became King of Sicily and ruler of Apulia by right of his wife, Constance of Hauteville, burning his opponents alive on the day after his coronation, blinding and castrating a seven year old rival for the throne. At Henry’s death in 1197 the child Frederick was crowned king. His mother died shortly after, placing her son under the Pope’s protection, and he grew up in Palermo, so neglected that he begged for food in the streets. He made Arab friends there, from whom he learned Arabic and an interest in science, while from his Greek subjects he discovered how the Byzantines saw their own emperor as God’s representative on earth. His first wife, the Count of Provence’s sister, taught him the polished manners of the Provençal court, so that he became famous for his charm.
The ‘Puer Apuliae’ (Boy from Apulia) as he was nicknamed, spent his early manhood in Germany, winning all hearts and vanquishing a competitor for the German throne. When crowned King of the Romans at Aix-la-Chapelle he proclaimed a Crusade – something he would live to regret – before returning to Italy in 1220. As he expressed it, “We have chosen our kingdom of Sicily for our very own from among all our other lands, and taken the whole realm for our residence, and although radiant with the glorious title of Caesar, we feel there is nothing ignoble in being called ‘a man from Apulia’.” He always came back to the plains and marshes of the Tavoliere, the uplands of the Murge and the forests of Monte Vulture.
The chronicler Villani, writing half a century later, tells us Frederick “built strong, rich fortresses in all the chief cities of Sicily and Apulia that still remain; and he made a park for sport in the marsh at Foggia in Apulia, and hunting parks near Gravina and near Melfi in the mountains. In winter he lived at Foggia, in summer in the mountains, to enjoy the sport.” One of the reasons the Emperor loved Apulia was the opportunity it gave for hunting and hawking. In those days much of the landscape was covered by dense wood-land, containing wolves, wild boar, deer and game birds – he him-self introduced pheasants – whilst the marshes were full of wild fowl.
Years after, one of Frederick’s sons, King Enzo of Sardinia, by then a prisoner in a cage at Bologna, sang in his canzonetta (a popular secular song): “e vanne in Puglia piana – la magna Capitanata/la dov’è lo mio core notte e dia” (“go to flat Apulia, to the great Capitanata, where my heart is, night and day”). Enzo was remembering days spent hunting with his father.
As the Emperor drew older, during his unending battle with the Papacy, he became bitter and cruel. Most reports of his savagery date from this period. His enemies claimed that he crucified prisoners of war. They also spread a story that he gave two men under sentence of death a heavy meal, and then sent one out hunting and the other to bed; after several hours both were disembowelled to see who had digested his food better.
Gradually the smear campaign took effect, and Frederick found himself surrounded by friends who had turned into secret enemies. His physician gave him a cup of poison, which Frederick pretended to drink, spilling it down his chest. The dregs were given to a condemned criminal, who promptly died in agony – as did the doctor shortly afterwards.
The Friar Salimbene says of Emperor Frederick: “Of faith in God he had none. He was cunning, deceitful, avaricious, lustful, malicious, hot-tempered, and yet sometimes he could be a most agreeable man, when he would be kind and courteous, full of amusement, cheerful, loving life, with all sorts of imaginative ideas. He knew how to read, write and sing, how to make songs and music. He was handsome and well built, if only of medium height. I have seen him myself, and once I loved him... he could speak many different languages, and, in short, had he been a good Catholic and loved God and his Church, few Emperors could have matched him.”
Frederick dazzled and terrified his contemporaries, who credited him with possessing sinister, magic powers. It was not only the Popes who were genuinely convinced that there was something Satanic about the Emperor. Throughout Italy, including Apulia, the Franciscan ‘Spirituals’, the wandering heretic friars trying to live what they thought was the original Franciscan life, identified him with the Antichrist of the prophecy of Abbot Joachim of Fiore, the fiendish monarch who was going to destroy the Church in its present, corrupt form in 1260. Unfortunately Frederick destroyed the prophecy, by dying ten years too soon. When he died, a monk dreamt that he saw him riding down to Hell with his knights through the flaming lava of Mount Etna.
On the other hand, there is plenty of plausible evidence that the Emperor died a good Christian, while his surviving supporters, who included a fair number of orthodox clerics, were clearly devoted to him. There were even men who believed he would one day return, like King Arthur, and usher in a new golden age.
Frederick of Hohenstaufen was a fascinating enigma during his lifetime, and he has remained one ever since.
Certainly no ruler made a more powerful or more enduring im-pact on Apulian folk memory. The massive strongholds that he built all over Apulia, and that serve as his monuments, are often said to conceal hoards of gold guarded by his ghost. In Pugliese legend Frederick is still Stupor Mundi, “the wonder of the world.”