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making inroads into Byzantine territories in the Balkans and Arab territories in

northern Africa. He captured Malta and Corfu. In Italy, his realm soon became known
simply as the "Regnum," the Kingdom.

What happened after Roger?
Roger died in1154, shortly before the birth of his last child, Constance. With Roger’s
power removed tensions appeared. The various ethnic and religious groups had
never integrated except at court. Society now began to disintegrate, with rebellions,
assassinations and attacks on Moslems who fled to the mountains. Roger had made

his kingdom a real force in European affairs, but it was now fragmented and weak.
Then outside forces intervened. Constance, Roger’s daughter, became queen
following the deaths of Roger’s male successors. She now married Henry VI, of the
powerful German Swabian von Hohenstaufen dynasty. Henry was son and heir to the
great Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I (“Barbarossa”, red-beard). The marriage made
Constance Empress and gave Henry Sicily. They had a son, called Frederick Roger,
Roger’s grandson. On Henry’s death he became king of Sicily and in 1220 he was

crowned Emperor Frederick II.

Frederick II spent his boyhood in Sicily, continuing the cosmopolitan tradition of his
grandfather Roger, and became the most remarkable of the Holy Roman Emperors.
The English chronicler William of Malmesbury called him “stupor mundi”: “the
wonder of the world”. Like his grandfather he had a harem and was called “a
Christian sultan." Stocky and red-haired, he was educated to respect the various
peoples, religions and languages of Sicily. Stories say he listened and learned from

the stories of sailors and merchants returning to Palermo as well as its scholars,
philosophers, historians, artisans, chroniclers, astrologers and animal trainers (in the
royal gardens there roamed a menagerie including ostriches, panthers, lions, apes,
bears, giraffes and elephants). He cultivated a passion for falconry, about which he
wrote a guide.

As Frederick’s life as Holy Roman Emperor was turbulent, He spent years away from
Sicily countering the schemes of the Pope and trying to tame the German princes.
Sicily became his bolt-hole, a secure base well away from his turbulent life as
emperor. At the Pope’s insistence, he reluctantly fought a crusade against the
Saracens. He succeeded in gaining Jerusalem and became the only Christian leader to
be crowned its king. Much to the Pope’s annoyance he achieved this less by war,
more by wily diplomacy. After years of frenetic activity, conflict and constant travels,
Frederick died of fever in 1250 aged 55 and was buried in Palermo cathedral. After
his death, following petty dynastic struggles and a brief war of independence (the

“Sicilian Vespers”), Sicily was eventually restored to the influence of the Popes and