Swabian Period and The House of Anjou
The state marriage between the emperor Henry VI and the last descendant of the Norman monarchs, Constance of Hauteville, gave the Kingdom of Sicily and Palermo to the Hohenstaufen house of Germany. However, the noblemen refused to be ruled by a foreigner, and Henry had to fight a rival king, before conquering Palermo in 1194 and being crowned as King. The second ruler of the house of Swabia was the famed Frederick II, who spent his early years in Palermo as a rogue. He probably considered himself as primarily a true Sicilian instead of a German. Under his reign Palermo became the effective capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Palermo’s court anticipated Renaissance courts and hosted some of the better intellectuals, artists and scholars of the period. The first Italian poetical school was born in Palermo.
Frederick died in 1250 and was buried in the cathedral. His illegitimate son Manfred succeeded him and continued his cultural and administrative politics. However, in 1268 Manfred was defeated by Charles I of Anjou, and the Kingdom of Sicily passed to this new French house. Palermo suffered a decay as the capital was moved to Naples. Charles and his officials exploited Sicily heavily and the island rebelled in 1282 (the Sicilian Vespers), giving itself to the Aragonese.
Read more about this topic: History Of Palermo
Famous quotes containing the words period and/or house:
“There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the “best men,” as the Algonquins called them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)