Stupor Mundi

OTL: Frederick II, King of Sicily, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, King of the Romans, King of Germany and Emperor of the Romans, waged a war against Pope Gergory and the Guelf factions of Italy in the name of the temporal power of the Emperor. However, in 1241 just before Frederick was to attack Rome itself after a successful campaign, Gregory died and Frederick ceased his invasion.

What would have happened had either Frederick continued his invasion or the Pope not have died? What effects does the extinguishing of the Papal States have on italian unification, the renaissance, etc.?
 
OTL: Frederick II, King of Sicily, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, King of the Romans, King of Germany and Emperor of the Romans, waged a war against Pope Gergory and the Guelf factions of Italy in the name of the temporal power of the Emperor. However, in 1241 just before Frederick was to attack Rome itself after a successful campaign, Gregory died and Frederick ceased his invasion.

What would have happened had either Frederick continued his invasion or the Pope not have died? What effects does the extinguishing of the Papal States have on italian unification, the renaissance, etc.?

LOL, I wrote a story with this title. For a moment I thought you'd done some thread necromancy on it !

IIRC Frederick gave his children sub-kingdoms, so would that have been an option ?

In addition, did he not have designs of some sort on Constantinople ?

Two years ago I would have been able to answer this question perfectly, except of course I WOULDN'T have been able !

Best Regards
Grye Wolf
 
Sorry, had no idea. We were discussing this in my Medieval/Renaissance Italian history class on Wednesday so I wanted to flesh it out with people who weren't my intellectually-lazy collegiate peers.

As for Constantinople, I can't imagine he had any designs on it, or else after ending the Crusades in a resounding diplomatic victory (and in the process completely embarrasing the Vatican) he would've immediately set his sights to the North instead of having returned to Italy. Sub-kingdoms are potentially an option, but a non-issue with the POD i'm discussing. But perhaps such a POD would rewrite all of Western civilization.
- After extinguishing the Papal States, he could've consolidated his support within the Holy Roman Empire, basically uniting Central and Southern Europe and the Levant under his control
- There would never have been the papal bull Unum Santum; the Avignon papacies; Dante would've never had the impetus to write De Monarchia, or the single most important work of western canon, the Divine Comedy
- religious tensions, at least between Frederick's HRE and Islam and Judaism, would've been greatly reduced... Frederick was a suspected atheist and a sympathizer with Islamic tradition and one of his good friends and allies was the Sultan of Egypt (forgive me if i'm mangling the appropriate title for that leader)
- Protestantism centuries earlier? Or would it never have developed?
 
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