United States or Azerbaijan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Empire forms the centre of the group, and round the Empire the minor states are grouped like satellites: on the west, Savoy and Provence; south of the Alps, Venice, the Papal States, and the Kingdom of Sicily the last-named independent until 1194, and the private property of the Hohenstauffen from that date till 1268; on the east the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia and Poland, and the Russian principalities; on the north the three Scandinavian powers.
From every possible point of view, Frederick of Hohenstauffen justified his uncle's choice: endowed with the most brilliant qualities of heart and mind, he had already earned the suffrages of a great portion of his new subjects by the manner in which he had distinguished himself during the above-mentioned campaign in the Holy Land; moreover, as the son of Frederick of Hohenstauffen and Judith, daughter of Henry the Black, Duke of Bavaria, Ghibelline by his father and Guelph on his mother's side, there seemed good ground for the hope that in him might terminate the differences of the two contending factions.
At the close of their long quarrel with the house of Hohenstauffen, the Popes called Charles of Anjou into Italy. The final issue of that policy for the nation at large will be discussed in another portion of this work.
The present German empire assuredly exhibits in nothing the qualities of ancient lineage; yet the race which composes it is the same race as was once united under Hapsburg, under Luxemburg, under Hohenstauffen, and under Franconian, as now under the Hohenzollern dynasty.
The Hohenstauffen, like the early Capets, were sensible of the advantages to be gained by alliance with the Third Estate; but Frederic II was obliged to renounce the right of creating free imperial cities within the fiefs of the great princes; and most towns were left to bargain single-handed with their immediate lords.
Master of the South, Frederick sought to reconquer the lost prerogatives of the Empire in Lombardy and Tuscany; nor is it improbable that he might have succeeded in uniting Italy beneath his sway but for the violent animosity of the Church. The warfare of extermination carried on by the Popes against the house of Hohenstauffen was no proof of their partiality for the cause of freedom.
Yet the Sicilian poets of the courts of Hohenstauffen and Anjou, recognizable by their name or the name of their town, Inghilfredi, Manfredi, Ranieri and Ruggierone da Palermo, Tommaso and Matteo da Messina, Guglielmotto d' Otranto, Rinaldo d'Aquino, Peir delle Vigne, either maintain altogether unchanged the tone of the troubadours, or only gradually, as in the remarkable case of the Notary of Lentino, approximate to the platonic poets of Tuscany.
Few medieval battles were so far-reaching in their consequences as Bouvines , to which England owes her Magna Carta, Germany the magnificent and stormy autumn of the Hohenstauffen dynasty, France the consolidation of her long-divided provinces under an absolutist monarchy. At ordinary times there were in medieval Europe two groups of states with separate interests and types of polity.
"The History of Papacy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" is highly esteemed, though Catholic critics have objected to some of its statements. Histories of the German people, of the Hohenstauffen Dynasty, of the Crusades; histories of nations, of cities, of events, and of individuals, all have found their interpreters in German genius.
Thus ended the royal race of the Hohenstauffen, a race marked by unusual personal beauty, rich poetical genius, and brilliant warlike achievements, and during whose period of power the mediæval age and its institutions attained their highest development.
Word Of The Day