Frederick II with Richard Cole (Subscriber Preview)

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Hi there, it's Claire. If you're hearing me, that means you're listening to the free preview of

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this guy sucked and join our honorary haters club. A list of sensitive themes and topics included in

this episode can be found in the episode description.

Welcome to this guy sucked. The show where we prove that it's never too late to have haters

and you can't label the dead. I'm your host Dr. Claire Aubin and I'm a historian, writer, and most

importantly, certified hater. On this show, we talk about people from throughout history with

legacies that need a little updating. Whether it's because of their politics, their behavior,

or their impact on society and culture, these guys actually kind of sucked and we bring in a new

scholar every week to tell us why. With me today is Richard Cole who is an associate professor of

medieval European history at Orhus University and he has his own podcast, The Chronicles,

From the Center for Viking and Medieval Studies at Orhus. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having

me. Yeah. So I thought of a lot of different things to ask you because I normally start out with

a question and so I like a question unrelated to the actual topic and at first I was like how do I

escape to Scandinavia was my initial thought and then I was like okay maybe this is an off-pod

conversation. So I think the question I settled on because I've recently been shifting away

from historian questions and I would like to get back to some of those again last time I asked

someone about their skincare and stuff. What is your favorite part of being a historian?

Oh, wasn't my favorite? That's a great question. I think it's that I get to spend all this time

that I think I would have been spending my time thinking about the Middle Ages anyway and in fact

the times I've had when I've been out of academic work and I've had to do non-academic jobs,

I found that that is really what was happening. I was obsessed with the Middle Ages all the time

and that definitely hampered my effectiveness as a postman and I think it's such a fantastic privilege

to have the time to be able to think about this stuff and even better to be able to talk

about it with other people. It's really wonderful. Yeah, I mean I think sometimes we get very bogged

down. We as in like our profession get very bogged down in the many extent problems right that

there are within the profession. There are lots of them but I said this on a recent other episode

that people will have heard a few weeks before this one comes out or hardly like down the mines.

You know like our job is for me often sit in the chair that's behind me read a book and then

talk to someone about the book I read and people pay me to do that. That is an immense, immense joy

and privilege for me, you know. I fully agree and I think it's a story I mean you're

basically a second world, more historian though of course increasingly you have to same issue

as me I suppose which is the which is that these people are gone right the people that we're

talking to by reading the sources they aren't with us anymore so it's an incredible thing to be

able to talk to the dead in that way. Yeah there is a sort of necromancy is that the necromancing

necromancy? That is the correct objective. There is this sort of necromancy experience here where

you are at least for me it might work in part because the people that I work on not only are

often dead but often I compare them to the sort of black box because I work on Holocaust

perpetrators in the US and I have a real vested interest in not telling their stories so a lot of

times what I'm trying to do is understand and recreate their lives without being able to glimpse

or engage with their internal world. So there's a level of like detective work that happens that I

find really interesting where I'm trying to piece together their experiences of the world

while also not fully having access to those experiences and I think that's actually like a very

interesting kind of enriching thing to do is to ask myself how did someone think in the past?

Based on how all of these behaviors all of these contexts and for me to medieval historians it's

even like much harder than I have to. Yeah I think that's true. I think it's one of the epigraphs

of Mark Bloch's epilogue on being a historian or something like that but he quotes someone else one

of the kind of great prussian historians and it's just the simple words no one has ever lost

as long as there are some historians around who can read the sources then even death

nothing it can't take this away it's an amazing thought. Yeah it is an amazing thought. There is

something I feel like right now because we're talking about all these things also that history as

a profession is kind of bogged down with there's this thing now where we're constantly having to

prove our value right like STEM students should take history classes because we'll make them better

at mining crypto or whatever it is that they're doing right like there's this thing where we have

to like make it an argument for our value or for the value of the humanities and other academic

disciplines aren't doing what we're doing in terms of being able to speak to the dead right

and that sounds really silly but there is something to that where like this is a skill and it's

the most exciting part of what we're doing to me at least but there's a good use case

there that maybe gets undersold a little bit. Yeah and it's something that people can understand

it's something that I mean I live in a taxpayer funded university system obviously your American

listeners well some there are state schools in America of course but there's a lot of private schools

that study different ecology but it's something that actually you know a taxpayer who hasn't studied

at the university at all can understand what it is a historian is doing from nine to five. Yeah

I don't know if they can always understand what the you know some of the things where our politicians

would say well that's obviously good and we should definitely have that. Well I don't know how much

of that is readily intelligible to the people who are actually paying for it you know. Yeah this will

now be my second reference to my best friend on this show but or one of my best friends on the show

but one of my best friends is Simele and I'm a historian and when we go to bars or parties or

something there are 50 people that we talk to who are like I'm in venture capital and then they

explain what they're doing or they're like I am at desk type thing something about deliverables

their shareholder value right and when they turn to us she's like well I taste and sell wine

and I'm like I'm a historian and people immediately understand what our jobs are and so I think

that alone is like it is such an easily understood profession that requires so much effort to be able

to do it in the first place and that doesn't mean that I think sort of history qualifications or

university qualifications are the only thing that allows you to do it but it is interesting to work

this hard to do something and then you can be like yeah I do this and my partner's a therapist

and because I'm a therapist and everyone says okay I got that one too you know so I think that's

pretty great we probably should talk about the thing that you research or one of the things slash

people that you research since that is theoretically the point of the episode who did you want to talk

about today I would like to talk about Frederick the second emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from 1220

to 1250 not to be confused with the other Frederick the second Frederick the second of Prussia

who's from the 1700s well I think probably is maybe these days a little bit better known than my

Frederick to the extent that even Frederick the greatest better but I want to talk about Frederick

the second emperor in the 1200s so I said this before we started which is something I'm always

saying on the show I'll like reference the fact that I have to give people like a talk in before

we start the show but before we started I said to you that I did the normal amount of research that

I always do and beyond the normal sort of obvious violent despotic medieval king stuff because this

is so far outside of my wheelhouse of historical knowledge I have truly no idea what your problem

with him is going to be normally I can kind of tell like normally I can figure out okay it's going

to be somewhere in here but with this I am actually very excited to find out what like because

I'm sure the violent despotic king emperor stuff is is enough right but I'm curious about some of

the it feels to me like there's going to be more here so I'm ready for that what is he most famous

for in your estimation you may as in today what is it if he's remembered at all today or when he

was alive or right after he was alive yeah that's an interesting question I mean in the middle of

the 1200s virtually everybody in the Latin question world and a lot of people who weren't in the

Latin question world a lot of people in the Islamic world a lot of people in the Greek speaking world

would have known who Frederick II was and that is something that carried on actually for centuries

after his death before that sort of period from around 1220 to 1250 I mean he wore multiple

crowns at once but through the various crowns that he held if we were yes talking about say the

1230s through the early 1240s for example he ruled a collected realm I mean it was never actually

sort of constitutionally collected but everything together right that would have stretched from

the borders of Denmark where I live and work in the north all the way through to the northern

coast of Tunisia in the south so the full stretch of Europe right and from province in the west all

the way through to Jerusalem in the east so it's huge a huge kind of territorial holding and it

was something that was remembered for centuries after his death in fact Europeans lots of different

types of European that were in places in various times simply couldn't accept that he had died so

kind of magnificent was he supposed to be and for centuries after his death I mean all the way

through to the 1400s right so nearly 200 years after his death you get people who think they've

seen him right and it's like Elvis huh although unlike Elvis you do get armed uprisings who proclaim

that yeah he's back you know and that hasn't happened with albums yet yeah well it's still time

at first but well we all know about the second coming of Frederick right like that's an important

yeah world mythology yeah I'm also curious he gets called things like stupermundi which is like

the wonder of the world there is a sort of mythological association what even while he's alive

with him right yeah before he's born actually it starts while he's still in the womb

huh people start coming out with mad prophecies about him yeah please tell me more about that yeah

I mean it's hard to one is low to uh to introduce Dune but I'm assuming more people have seen Dune

and they have already booked that please do but they almost when you look at his life it's hard

to fight the idea that people were planning that he should have this sort of mystical effect and

people's minds I've I've got no evidence for that per se but they're just the way that people

are behaving I mean if you look at his parents you've got Henry on his father's side who's from the

Hohenstalfan dynasty so so these are the ruler have been the rulers of the empire for some time

and obviously the empire is a big old chunk of Europe and it's got a lot of ideological

ideological baggage as well I have almost an empire right somewhere deep inside

famously yeah I've been actually maybe they don't look I'm always saying that to people

everybody wants to have an empose I can barely run the centre of Viking medieval studies I'm not

sure I want to know by but but Godl so he's caught that in on his father's side but then on his

mother's side he's from the Sicilian ruling house and his mother really seems to be doing some

stuff cultivating some mystique around him as soon as he's out the womb and and maybe even before

so she's called Constance and her name obviously evokes Constantine you know the first Christian

emperor there's there's some stuff going on there just with her and actually when Frederick is

first born he is named Constantine the masculine form of it so there's clearly kind of nods to

this imperial ideology already there and then he gets given the name Frederick that harks back to

his grandfather Frederick the first Barbarossa who again is this great you know kind of imperial

figure and so yeah he's in the womb and because he there's this Norman Sicilian milieu that he's

kind of coming from on his mother's side wherever you get Normans you get bureaucracy and you get

horse riding you all kinds of strange things but one of the things that comes wherever you get

Normans is Merlinic prophecies um Ormans are really into the old Merlin prophecies it's kind of

funny because the original Merlin prophecies are kind of they're all about how we the oppressed

kind of Celtic peoples it's not quite an idea in their minds but something like it I'm going to throw

off these horrible invaders who've come into the British Isles right and the Normans who are sort

of the third round of invaders coming into the British Isles are like oh yes quite good to think

we'll be procreating that thank you very much so so they start kind of coming out with this stuff

and and so there's kind of Merlinic prophecy about Frederick and he's got these two names

Constantine and Frederick two great kind of imperial names yeah bringing together the Sicilians

and the horny styles and so there's really a feeling that kind of incredible things are going to

happen with this kid I know you're scared to invoke June but this really is like a Kuisatz Haudra

Lissan al-Gayib situation where I also his mom in this scenario is a Benajezer from Sicily and I

don't know it is that is an interesting we're constantly making these random pop culture comparisons

on the show and I also never go in planning to do them so like one of the last episodes I recorded

we called Dick Cheney the forest gump of evil and like this is this he's like the Kuisatz Haudra

of 13th century Europe yeah and you know and that's a really classic scenario that everyone is

familiar with I'm sure but that is fascinating that from before he's even born that he sort of

has this thing bestowed upon him is it that he has to spend his life living up to it or he just

kind of does does this stuff and people are like well you know I guess we can assign this to him

yeah does he live up to it I think that's the big question he certainly I mean you quoted

there Stuper Mundi that's from Matthew Paris who's an English conic right in the middle of the

1200s Pinkippo Mundi Maximus Federico Stuper Coca Mundi at Imutatil Mirabilis first among the

princes of the world Frederick Wunder and Miraculous transformer of the world right and that's being

written in a report about the death of Frederick in 1215 right this idea of yes he's the wonder

of the world the Stuper Mundi but he's the Imutatil of the world he's a transformer of the world

the world's never the same after him is is the idea right I think something really interesting is

he's still a toddler when another chronicler Peter of the Bowley calls him Réphormatil Orbis

Imperia the Reformer of the world and the Empire you know he's about four years old when that's

being said about him I mean he's not performing anything other than his potty issue but even then

as this this this idea and I think interesting that this is going all the way to his life I mean

I'm getting ahead of us a little bit perhaps but the question is how much does he really actually

transform the world right people are going around yeah saying it but is the world transformed

after Frederick's death I'm not I'm not sure that it is that is so fast and that's the thing that

we're going to get into right like not I mean in a few minutes but it is interesting that there

is a specific sort of legacy and in the research I did on him that's sort of how he's framed but then

while doing further research into things he does I was kind of like I don't know if this is

borne out so much by sources but he does also do things like he is a patron you can also tell me

in any of these moments if I'm right or wrong because I feel like medieval sources or medieval people

are actually the hardest for me to do research into because of how much their legacy has been shaped

and reshaped over and over since then and is often shaped by them while they're alive or immediately

following their death so sometimes the facts aren't really facts like the facts that people know

or put out into the world are not really real but sort of he's sort of from what I could tell

sort of a patron of science and philosophy and learning and that seems to be a big part of his

long-term legacy that people think that he's this sort of like learned figure is that right?

Yes that man of letters sort of thing going on there this is something that's been sort of debated

I think a lot of academics you know they like to are quite bookish types wisely and I'm shocked

here for a reason that I think I attracted to the idea of an emperor who's a man of letters

and certainly when he's interacting with the Islamic world you know there's an expectation that

that Muslim rulers should be learned and he's very careful to make sure that Muslim rulers know

what a brain box he is and that he can communicate in Arabic and all this kind of stuff so

so this stuff going on in the kind of the great sort of revisionist biography of him David Abulafia

who passed away recently he sort of says actually he probably wasn't much more

learned than any other kind of Sicilian ruler so sort of pause a drama of scorn on that idea but

I mean I think we can't lose sight of the fact that there's a lot of scholarship that goes on

at his court and it's happening in multiple languages right and he's Frederick is making an

effort to interact with the Arabic world which he's actually fairly unusual for a Christian prince

in his time and and the learning is a huge part of that that's sort of his his way in right because

he's not gonna I mean while he was alive his enemies often said oh he's secretly converted to his

arm he's a secret Muslim you know what a what a deposit so this is often said about him it's

clearly not true in any any kind of way so he's his way in his way of interacting is he's never

going to become a Muslim that's obviously not on the table but he's interacting with Muslim

scholarship and learning that's kind of his way in in that part of the world I will say on

our Crusades episode on Peter the Hermit I kind of jokingly asked whether life in the medieval

or in the in the Middle Ages in the medieval period was better or worse and Ellen Rihonika said

yes in response and this is one of those scenarios where like man at least people kind of wanted

their leader to be smart they were doing that maybe better than or doing right now in terms of

wanting them to have red books and be interested in things that being said they aren't he's not a leader

because people like choose him to be very necessarily so you know yeah as well not the peasant on

the street yeah the field or the the house or industry is choosing it although it is interesting

that he he really does seem to attract a lot of popular support and he seems to mythologize

himself successfully as far as we can tell to ordinary people you know whenever exactly that words

whatever that should mean but but when we're not totally making something up when we talk about

ordinary people and Frederick Dickers yeah even sources at the time used terms like the middle

high German rhyming chronicles about him often mentioned that he's he's backed up by Domingue

right you know the masses are kind of going forward it's quite often in stories about him

that there's illusions to sort of what the little people are saying about him so there is I think

a sort of popularity there he's of course he's got a special place with the Arabic stuff as well

right because he's brought up in Sicily and he actually has a there's all this great expectations

around him right these prophecies as soon as he's kind of out of the womb and even before he's

why he's still still in there actually but it all goes wrong fairly quickly you know his father

the emperor died when he's three his mother dies when he's just about turned four so you know he's

an orphan at four years old and he loses the lot basically all of this great promise that he's

supposed to you know unite the Italian south and the German north if you're looking at the very

late 1100s and the early 1200s it wouldn't seem obvious at all that it was going anything good was

going to happen to this boy I mean you probably would have put money on the accordio is going to

smother him in his sleep basically why he's going to have an accident all his minions get given to

other people you know wise to a child and he's just there in Sicily just kind of being kept around

and that's where the Arabic connection comes in because in you know Sicily in this period is

tri-lingual space that's probably probably more than the languages but you know you've got

the Arabic third the Greek third and the Latin third we're not really certainly exactly how he

gets so in there with the Arabic third one of his great biocryphus-enched can sort of it you maybe

will speak about in a bit he tells these lovely stories that basically the the boy is just left to

wander in the suks it's sort of quite orientalistic anyway sure that's where he picks up his Arabic right

in the sort of in the suks of Sicily that is made out we don't know we don't know that's what happened

but he's he got it somehow someone taught him speak Arabic because he he communicated in it

fluently and we have apagraphs of letters written by him in Arabic and he he undertook translation

personally from Arabic into Latin so he could speak it and that's something that he could probably only

have access because of his Sicilian background this does also I think very importantly underscore

how false this sort of popular myth of this disconnected Europe or disconnected world in the

middle ages is I think there's for some reason this in this popular imagination all of these spaces

are existing separate from one another and they're not connected and there's no diplomatic

relationship and there's no intellectual relationship and whatever and that has been the work of

so many medievalists for especially like the last hundred years but even much shorter than that now

to really like tell people that the world was much better connected there was much more cultural

exchange happening than a lot of people are willing to accept and understand because it subverts a

kind of narrative of this like pure separate Europe right so that's kind of a tangential to what

we're talking about but I think he's a good example of like clearly there are connections being

made interculturally across culturally here in this moment can you now that we're at you know

a few a little while in and people have a general idea of who he is as a person and what he maybe

represents and a lot of people's memory can we start to talk a little bit about what you see as

some problems here and I'm curious about whether your problem is with his legacy whether your

problem is with things that he actually did during his life is it a little of both yeah

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