at
sort was the mixed culture of Normans, Saracens, Italians, and
Greeks at Palermo. In scenes like these the youth of Frederick II.
was passed:--for at the end, while treating of Palermo, we are bound
to think again of the Emperor who inherited from his German father
the ambition of the Hohenstauffens, and from his Norman mother the
fair fields and Oriental traditions of Sicily. The strange history
of Frederick--an intellect of the eighteenth century born out of
date, a cosmopolitan spirit in the age of Saint Louis, the crusader
who conversed with Moslem sages on the threshold of the Holy
Sepulchre, the Sultan of Lucera[1] who persecuted Paterini while he
respected the superstition of Saracens, the anointed successor of
Charlemagne, who carried his harem with him to the battlefields of
Lombardy, and turned Infidels loose upon the provinces of Christ's
Vicar--would be inexplicable, were it not that Palermo still reveals
in all her monuments the _genius loci_ which gave spiritual nurture
to this phoenix among kings. From his Mussulman teachers Frederick
derived the philosophy to which he gave a vogue in Europe. From his
Arabian predecessors he learnt the arts of internal administration
and finance, which he transmitted to the princes of Italy. In
imitation of Oriental courts, he adopted the practice of verse
composition, which gave the first impulse to Italian literature. His
Grand Vizier, Piero Delle Vigne, set an example to Petrarch, not
only by composing the first sonnet in Italian, but also by showing
to what height a low-born secretary versed in art and law might
rise. In a word, the zeal for liberal studies, the luxury of life,
the religious indifferentism, the bureaucratic system of state
government, which mark the age of the Italian Renaissance, found
their first manifestation within the bosom of the Middle Ages in
Frederick. While our King John was signing Magna Charta, Frederick
had already lived long enough to comprehend, at least in outline,
what is meant by the spirit of modern culture.[2] It is true that
the so-called Renaissance followed slowly and by tortuous paths upon
the death of Frederick. The Church obtained a complete victory over
his family, and succeeded in extinguishing the civilisation of
Sicily. Yet the fame of the Emperor who transmitted questions of
sceptical philosophy to Arab sages, who conversed familiarly with
men of letters, who loved splendour and understood the arts of
refined living,