FREDERIC OF HOHENSTAUFEN was Frederic “Barbarossa” grand-son. He became King of Sicily, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Jerusalem and had been rated as “the first modern European”. He was multilingual and had an insatiable curiosity for science and the arts. He actively pursued a plan to integrate the Western, Byzantine and Muslim civilizations by way of intelligence rather than strength. He developed universities, medical schools, centers of artistic creation and other institutions that could have brought about “The Renaissance” three centuries earlier and that couls have unifed Europe as soon as in the twelfth century. But the papacy was his implacable enemy and prevailed over him and all his creations with the power of “excommunication”.
Copyright: Alice Labrèque and Jean Routier, Québec, 2012-2013.