When the last Norman king died in 1189 without a direct heir, the Kingdom of Sicily passed by marriage to the Germanic Hohenstaufen dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire. During the entire first half of the 13th century Sicily was ruled by the most remarkable rulers of the entire Middle Ages. Born in 1194, Frederick II was the product of two of the greatest family dynasties of medieval Europe. From his Hauteville Norman mother he inherited the Kingdom of Sicily, which he ruled from 1198 until his death in 1250. From his Hohenstaufen father, he claimed the vaulted imperial throne of the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Frederick II would come to be known throughout medieval Europe as Stupor Mundi: the Wonder of the World. He was a unique individual of many diverse talents – a scientist, a poet, scholar, a lawmaker, a crusader (albeit a reluctant one), and a patron of the arts and sciences on a scale few medieval monarchs matched.
Frederick’s court at Palermo continued the multicultural tradition of the Norman kings of Sicily. He wrote one of the most influential medieval treatises on falconry. He founded the University of Naples. He promulgated the Constitutions of Melfi, one of the most sophisticated legal codes of the age. He was a master builder, who commissioned the extraordinary fortresses of Castel del Monte in Puglia and the Castello Maniace in Siracusa. And he maintained a working relationship with the Islamic world so cordial that the xenophobic Pope Gregory IX excommunicated him — twice. Frederick II’s Sicily was the continuation of the Norman golden age under a different dynasty.
After Frederick’s death in 1250, the Hohenstaufen dynasty collapsed quickly. A series of 13th century popes, determined to prevent any strong imperial power in southern Italy and also to plunder its fabulous riches, invited Charles of Anjou, brother of the King of France, to seize the Kingdom of Sicily. Charles arrived with a French army, defeated and executed the last Hohenstaufen heir, and established French rule over the island in 1266. The Angevin years were short but vicious, a period marked by a great plundering of Sicilian wealth and the wholesale abuse of its citizens. After nearly two decades of constant abuse, the French repression had transformed Sicily into a volatile tinderbox, requiring a single spark to set the entire island ablaze. In 1282, in Palermo, on Easter Monday, a French soldier molested a Sicilian woman, and was promptly murdered by her vengeful husband. This tiny spark of personal vengeance quickly ignited the fury of the Sicilian people and the island exploded in violent revolution.
