Frederick the Second, 1194-1250 (Makers of the Middle Ages)

Frederick the Second is the story of the remarkable man whose power and sphere of influence straddled the worlds of Christendom and of Islam. The last of the Hohenstaufens, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily and Jerusalem, Frederick II was an energetic and versatile ruler, a man of great ambition in whose lifetime the conflict between Emperor and Pope reached a new intensity. Excommunicated three times by the Church, he was an absolute monarch whose power, defended in almost continuous struggle, extended over much of Germany and Italy as well as the Holy Land.
Frederick was a complex man of cultured tastes and licentious manners who had unusually wide intellectual interests. At his Sicilian court scholars of all religions were welcomed Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan. He founded the University of Naples in 1M4 and was a patron of the arts and sciences.
The life of this dynamic man is fully explored in Ernst Kantorowicz notable biography, filled with dramatic incident and absorbing detail, and written with style and scholarship. From the reviews of the English edition: "A first-rate book on a remarkable man. The narrative runs to 700 pages, but Frederick's career was so dramatic and surprising that the story never flags." --The Spectator.