Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
on falconry during one of the long, boring sieges of Faenza, and Dante once called him
the father of Italian poetry.
Yet despite his brilliance, Frederick's vision for an international empire was incompat-
ible with the ambitions of the papacy and he struggled throughout his reign to remain on
good terms with increasingly aggressive popes. Finally, in 1243, Pope Innocent IV pro-
claimed him deposed, characterising him as a 'friend of Babylon's sultan' and a heretic.
At the same time, the northern Italian provinces were straining against his centralised con-
trol and years of war and strategising were finally taking their toll. Only in Puglia, his fa-
vourite province throughout this reign, did Frederick remain undisputed master.
Steven Runciman's
Fall of Constantinople 1453
provides a classic account of this bloody episode in Crusading
history. It manages to be academically sound and highly entertaining at the same time.
In December 1250, after suffering a bout of dysentery, he died suddenly in Castel
Fiorentino near Lucera. His heirs, Conrad and Manfred, did not long survive him; Conrad
died of malaria four years later in Lavello in Basilicata, and Manfred was defeated at the
Battle of Benevento in 1266 by Charles of Anjou, the pope's pretender to the throne. Two
years later another battle took the life of Manfred's 15-year-old nephew and heir, Conrad-
in, who was publicly beheaded in Naples.
By 1270 the brilliant Hohenstaufen period was officially over. And while Frederick's
reign marked a major stage in the transformation of Europe from a community of Latin
Christians under the rule of two competing powers (pope and emperor) to a Europe of na-
tion states, he had failed to leave any physical legacies. The following ruling family, the
Angevins, did not make the same mistake: Naples' Castel Nuovo (built by Charles of An-
jou in 1279) and Castel Sant'Elmo (constructed by Robert of Anjou in the early 14th cen-
tury) remain two of the city's iconic landmarks.
For a wide-ranging general site on Italian history, check out
www.arcaini.com
.
It covers, in potted form,
everything from prehistory to the postwar period, and includes a brief chronology.
