Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen was king of Sicily, king of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, ruling a complex set of territories that stretched from the Mediterranean to central Europe. Born at Jesi in 1194 and raised largely in Sicily, he inherited the kingdom there as a child and later secured the German and imperial crowns. His government in Sicily became known for centralising legislation, taxation and royal administration, most famously through the Constitutions of Melfi of 1231.

Frederick’s reign was dominated by conflict with successive popes, who feared the political encirclement of the Papal States and repeatedly excommunicated him. During the Sixth Crusade he recovered Jerusalem in 1229 by negotiation with al-Kamil rather than a major battle and crowned himself there despite his excommunication. He also fought the Lombard League in northern Italy and promoted a multilingual court culture associated with science, philosophy and vernacular poetry. His death in 1250 left the Hohenstaufen position increasingly vulnerable.

Cecelia Holland’s The King’s Road imagines the young Frederick before the mature emperor emerges, using his precarious Sicilian childhood and contested inheritance as its setting. Frank Yerby’s The Saracen Blade moves through the cosmopolitan Mediterranean world associated with Frederick’s reign, where imperial, papal, Muslim and crusading politics intersect around the emperor’s unusual Sicilian court.