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| Emperor Frederick II |
If you believe admirers of Emperor Frederick II, then his relationship with Islam was a story of mutual respect and affection. After the crusade of 1228/29, contemporary writers reported that the medieval ruler was offering Muslims a devoted friendship. Indeed, they went so far as to claim he was behaving almost like a Muslim.
How else, they asked their readers, was he able to reconquer the coveted holy city of Jerusalem without a fight? How could he have done a feat singlehandedly that Richard I the Lionheart and Philip II Augustus, the mighty kings of England and France, had not managed by the sword in unison? Frederick was obviously in cahoots with the Muslims.
Much of what was written seemed to indicate that as King of Sicily he had many Muslim subjects which he cherished. Due to his upbringing, he spoke several languages including Arabic. He had a devoted private guard of Saracen warriors. The cardinals of the Curia were convinced of him having a harem of concubines.
He was a collector and avid reader of Arab hunting tracts and philosophical writings. And he was rumored to be in contact with the Arab sect of the Hashashim (where our words for hashish and assassin come from), an internationally notorious group which executed political assassinations under the influence of dope.
Much of what was rumored was at least partly true. But to see him as a special friend of the Muslim world is misreading the facts. Historians tend to judge rulers and their behavior too often by the standards of their own time or even worse by their own wishful thinking. A ruler should be judged against the backdrop of contemporary practice and not by hindsight. And it is important to separate historical facts from later additions. It was later writing that made Frederick the first European, a rational thinker and a friend of Islam.
The English Benedictine Matthew Paris (c. 1200 to 1259) called Frederick in his Chronica Maiora "stupor mundi et quoque immutator mirabilis" - a wonder of the world and its wonderful transformer. This admiration, which at that time included a considerable amount of fear, continued to shine down the centuries. Thus appeared an image of a multicultural emperor of wonders and miracles.
Germany in the 19th century was desperately in need of great Germans with no connection to the (Swiss-Austrian) Habsburg Emperors. They built their case on the historical judgment of eminent Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt at the University of Basel. He described the Emperor Frederick II as the "first modern man on the throne."
German historians graciously overlooked that Jacob Burckhardt - contrary to popular opinion and the press in Germany – did not see the ruler as a positive figure. Quite unlike Friedrich Nietzsche who commented in The Antichrist, his polemical work on Christianity: "’War with Rome to the death! Peace and friendship with Islam': so felt, so did that great free spirit, this genius among German emperors, Frederick II." This errant assessment has been quoted over and over until today it is seen as truth.
As a consequence, the circle of artists around Stefan George, and especially Emperor Frederick II biographer Ernst Kantorowicz, modeled and promoted an inflated and modernized image of the ruler.
Further reading
The Town of Baden in Baden
Count Welf and His Descendants
A Desert Country By the Sea
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