8 - Frederick II of Germany

Summary

The eighth chapter studies the possible occurrence of Frederick II’s self-coronation in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Sunday, 17 March 1229, an event that remains shrouded in mystery. It is still difficult to discern the borders between reality and fiction, desire and its realisation, invention and propaganda. This chapter engages with the question of the extent to which we can affirm the historicity of Frederick II’s self-coronation. It addresses the crucial issue of the nature of this gesture, recognised as transgressive by posterity – but, importantly, not always by contemporaries – in the context of preconceived ideas about the relationship between the temporal and spiritual.It emphasises the provocative nature of Frederick’s ritual with the crown: an excommunicated king wearing the crown in the Holy Sepulchre, in the absence of the patriarch of Jerusalem, opposed by the military orders, eyed suspiciously by the aristocracy of Outremer and fighting off the armies of his former father-in-law in Sicily. It is natural that this gesture was received in the West with the opprobrium the emperor and his collaborators expected.