Frederick II of Swabia

Frederick Roger of Hohenstaufen (Jesi, 26 December 1194 – Castel Fiorentino di Puglia, 13 December 1250), remembered as Stupor Mundi, the « wonder of the world », was King of Sicily from 1198, Emperor of the Romans from 1220, King of Jerusalem from 1225. On his father's side heir of the Hohenstaufen of Swabia, on his mother's side — Constance of Hauteville, daughter of Roger II — a descendant of the Normans of Hauteville, founders of the Kingdom of Sicily, he united in his blood the Germanic imperial heritage and the Norman-Sicilian one.

Orphaned of his father Henry VI at three and of his mother at four, placed under the guardianship of Pope Innocent III, Frederick grew up in Palermo, in a court at the crossroads of the Christian, Arab, Greek and Jewish cultures. A polyglot — he mastered Latin, the Sicilian vernacular, German, Greek, Arabic and French —, he was a patron of the arts and sciences, founder of the University of Naples in 1224, protector of the Sicilian poetic school, himself the author of the treatise on falconry De arte venandi cum avibus.

His reign was marked by the long conflict with the Papacy, which earned him two excommunications, and by intense legislative activity: the Constitutions of Melfi of 1231 (Liber Augustalis) refounded the law of the Kingdom of Sicily. He scattered the South with castles, of which Castel del Monte near Andria — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — remains the emblem. He died in 1250 at Castel Fiorentino, in that Apulia he loved so much as to be called Puer Apuliae; he rests in the Cathedral of Palermo.

The descent of the House of Guerri dall'Oro Gallone goes back to Frederick II through a documented line by way of the emperor's natural daughter, Caterina da Marano (1226–1279), who entered by marriage into the del Carretto house, marquises of Finale and Savona. From these, through the Doria del Carretto princes of Melfi and Avella, the Carignani and the della Posta, the line reaches the present day. Twenty-two generations separate Frederick II from Simon Guerri dall'Oro Gallone.