A Brill Calendar: December 26

The Enigmatic Friederich von Hohenstaufen

Few statesmen who added crucial chapters to Europe’s history can pass for creative scholars.

Fostering education and learning via State or Church is something else. Within this elite glows the enigmatic figure of Friedrich von Hohenstaufen (Jesi, Papal States, December 26, 1194 – Castel Fiorentino, Kingdom of Sicily, December 13, 1250). When he died suddenly, he had been without interruption King of Sicily for 53 years, German King for 38 years, and Holy Roman Emperor for 30 years. ‘False Fredericks’ emerged promptly everywhere; friend & foe couldn’t believe the flamboyant ‘Immutator Mundi’, an astute ‘Changer of the World’ and Crusader, wasn’t among them anymore; similar to the posthumous grandeur of his grandsire, Friedrich Barbarossa.

The ‘Vox Populi’ deemed both to be magicians. Had they known it, a learned treatise authored by the Emperor may have further impressed them in their ignorant awe. Entitled ‘De arte venandi cum avibus’ – ‘On the Art of Hunting with Birds’ – this book is the first scientific treatise on falconry abstaining strictly from folklore and hearsay; every scrap in it is exclusively based on Friedrich’s personal experience and experimental verification.

It is seldom, naturally, that later histories of ornithology omit mentioning this intrinsic original approach of studying nature. Still, there is a dimension of more general import to appreciate Friedrich’s genius. As a boy he was as lucky as to grow up in Sicily; in the two decades flanking the shift from the 11th to the 12th century no other European princely domain boasted such a diversity of creeds, cultures, languages, arts and ideas. In the Romantic era, Friedrich is depicted as a genius ‘ahead of his time’. Nowadays the most brilliant of all Hohenstaufens is rather seen as the exemplary issue of the first truly ‘multi-cultural’ environment originating in the European Middle Ages.