So it’s medieval times, you’re a barrel-monger or whatever, and you hear a big ol’ hullabaloo.
You’re not sure what’s going on so you get a little closer and you hear some lady sounds like
she’s in labor. And as you get a little closer you realize yeah, there is a woman in labor in the
middle of town square, but that’s not some lady - that right there is the queen. And soon she’s
holding up this baby in the air, letting everyone know that yes, a woman in her 40s has had a son,
and yes, he looks like his father, and yes, this little bun fresh out of the oven in the middle
of town square is going to be king of like 30% of Europe. But what she didn’t know was that he was
also going to be the Antichrist. [intro]
Ahoy! First of all, as you can see I’m trying something different for this episode, there was
way too much to talk about if I wanted to animate it all and I’ve been talking with my patrons
about trying something new so here it is. Second of all, this episode is sponsored by
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for a week, long enough to listen to like twenty, thirty books easy, and if you decide you like it
you’ll also get 25% off a full membership. Now a little background on how the Papacy
ended up going to war with the Holy Roman Empire. Ever since the Pope got his own kingdom in 754,
and especially after he started proclaiming Holy Roman Emperors, you might be surprised
to hear that medieval politics didn’t get holier, the Popes just got a lot less holy.
This culminated in the 900s in a low point for the Papacy, both spiritually and politically,
known as the pornocracy, which is pretty much what you think it is
About a hundred years later, Pope Gregory VII comes along and says “Hey, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry IV, you’re not the emperor because only the pope gets to appoint emperors!”
and Henry IV says “Well you’re not the real pope because only the emperor gets to appoint popes!”
“You’re excommunicated!” “Not if I excommunicate you first!” and so it went for several decades.
The year is now 1197 and the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire are not friends.
So here we pick up on our boy Frederick II. Freddy is only three years old when his dad, Holy
Roman Emperor Henry VI dies, and so his mother acts as his regent and whoops she’s dead too.
But never fear, Freddy ends up in the loving arms of… the Pope. And not just any Pope, but the Pope
who killed as many as a million Christians and burned down one of Christianity’s holiest cities,
give it up for Innocent III! Don’t ask me how he got a hold of Freddy, I have no idea.
Now Freddy had also inherited the Kingdom of Sicily from his mother, which at this point was
all of Southern Italy, and the Pope wasn’t a huge fan of the Papal States being a Fred sandwich,
so he let Freddy keep Sicily, but gave the Holy Roman Empire to this guy named Otto,
who was a good choice because unlike Freddy who was from the Hohenstaufen family,
Otto was from the Welf family, and all you really need to know about them was that in large part the
Welfs were the ones who actually liked the Pope. Well except Otto was challenged by Frederick’s
uncle and then he ended up attacking the Pope anyway, but that’s a story for another time.
..That time being two years ago, roll clip! So the HRE holds an Election. England supports
a chap named Otto. The pope also supports Otto and excommunicates anyone who doesn’t, because
Prince Philip the Alternative is a Hohenstaufen and nobody likes Hohenstaufens. Except the French
king, also named Philip, who declares “ “Come hell or high water, Philips stick together. Bite me,
England”.. So now the entire kingdom of France is excommunicated I guess. But even with
God ostensibly against them, Philip and Philip prevailed…
until some rando conveniently murders Philip Hohenstaufen in his sleep!
In the end, it didn’t make much difference, because someone feeds Otto after midnight,
he marches on Rome and tries to take over Sicily, so the Pope has no choice but to
pull Frederick out of his back pocket, make an awkward alliance with France,
and declare war on Otto and England. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting flashbacks to the
League of Cambrai. Thankfully this war only lasts long enough for one papal flip-flop and Frederick
takes the reigns. And to avoid this sort of thing happening again, Innocent lays down some rules
where the Pope has to confirm/deny elections. And that’s how Frederick II ended up in charge
of the Holy Roman Empire anyway. God I love being able to come back to old videos, it’s like having
my own cinematic universe. I just need to make enough history content until the point that I
can just be like 5 minute crafts and make each video like 95% reused footage and call it a day.
After taking power, Frederick made some laws about centralizing the government
and taking power away from his vassals, but that sort of thing definitely won’t
be important later Oh look Crusades! Yes it’s time for another crusade! A
quick recap of Western Europe’s adventures in the Holy Land so far: Crusade numero uno,
some French and German nobles carve up the levant, not what the Byzantines asked for but
pretty solid as far as impromptu conquerings go. Number two, oh no one of the kingdoms went poof
better go attack some random Muslim city instead! Oops! Third Crusade: Oh no everything disappeared!
Better take Jerusal-oops! But pilgrims can travel now so that’s something. Fourth Crusade! Oops! So
at this point there’s nowhere to go but up! Well Fred kinda puts it off for later,
but the people w ho do go do pretty well for themselves! The Ayyubid Sultanate offers to
give them Jerusalem, but instead of taking it and running they say “Hah! You’ll soon tremble
in fear before the will of God! We’re taking more!” “But you’re just as exhausted as we are!”
“That’s where you’re wrong! Because while we’ve been fighting, Frederick has been organizing
a new army, one that’s ready and itching for a fight, and when they join us we’ll wipe you out!
Any second now. Annnnny – they’re not coming.” And they threw themselves headlong
into the Muslim army and lost everything. Okay, Crusade number six! This time Fred’s
got some skin in the game! Because his mail-order bride was Queen Isabella of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem, which at this point was just a couple of cities on the coast, but not for long!
Unfortunately he’s stopped by an epidemic and everyone tells him to stay home.
Everyone, that is, except the Pope, now Gregory IX, who says “Fake! Hoax! I’ll
show him to procrastinate like this!” and he excommunicates Frederick on the spot.
But Frederick knows how to make things right, so as soon as he gets his health back,
he goes straight to Jerusalem. But after getting banished from the Church, his army isn’t what
it used to be, and he knows it won’t perform well. So he has to be clever. And he comes up
with a brilliant strategy – negotiation. Al-Kamil: “Okay, so you get Jerusalem,
I’ll go deal with my revolts, but the Dome of the Rock stays Muslim okay?”
Fred: “Fine by me, Oh, one last thing?” Al-Kamil: “Yeah?”
Fred: “I’m kicking out all the Jews, cool?” Al-Kamil: “Uhhhh….. sure.”
So Frederick turns to the Pope and says “See? Single-handedly captured Jerusalem with like
no casualties, how’s that for my Christian duty?” Never mind the fact that the Kingdom of Jerusalem
erupted into a 15-year-long civil war before he even left. But the Pope says “No, you were
excommunicated. Excommunicates can’t Crusade.” Fred: “So…”
Gregory IX: “Congrats, you’re double excommunicated”
So after being excommunicated twice for being the only person to successfully recapture Jerusalem
since the First Crusade, Frederick returns home in a bit of a sore mood, and then his butler or
whoever catches him up with everything he’s missed since he left Jerusalem, and they go “Welcome
back! The bed’s made, your dukes are very keen to hear from you, and we’re at war with the Pope.”
Yeah so Gregory had been getting Fred’s vassals in Northern Italy all rowdy,
so when Fred comes by asking him to please stop that, Greg responds “Actually they’re my vassals,
don’t you remember when Constantine the Great gave all of Italy to the Pope?” and Fred says “Uhhh no,
your holiness, I don’t remember that, because that never happened” and indeed the whole
thing was based off a document that was forged, coincidentally, around the time the Popes first
got a hold of land in Italy, you know like four hundred years after Constantine died.
Fred then goes to the cardinals asking if maybe they could ask Northern Italy to stop rebelling
because the Pope doesn’t know what he’s talking about and he gets excommunicated for a third time.
And from this point on, the last three decades of Fred’s life are just one long back and forth
between quelling rebellions and back-slapping the Pope. Because remember that whole thing
about centralizing power across his domain? That may have created a lasting foundation
for the future of nation-states in Sicily, but in the fustercluck of the Holy Roman Empire,
that kind of thinking was not appreciated. And to be fair, Frederick knew that.
His son Henry, however, was a different story, and prince Henry got all the princes and dukes
so angry that they made him sign a document giving them the right to mint their own coins and approve
or deny any legislation proposed by the emperor. It was a little bit like a German magna carta,
only without nearly the same modern fanfare. Anyway, Fred throws his son in prison and tells
him he’s not mad, just disappointed, and then it’s back to some good old fashioned Pope fights.
Fred beats Austria and Northern Italy into submission, and he’s ready to simply
capture Rome… right after he beats Sicily into submission, then he’s ready to capture Rome…
and then Greg dies. And that’s a problem. You see if you’re fighting a war against the Pope,
that’s one thing, you’d be surprised how often that happens. And Gregory was a petulant little
mischief maker who no one seems to have liked well enough to defend him in any of his wars,
but if you keep fighting after that Pope is dead? Well then you’re not just fighting one corrupt
official, then you’re waging war against the Catholic Church itself and that’s a real bad look.
So instead of capturing Rome and absorbing the Papal States into the HRE,
Fred backs off and waits until Pope Innocent IV is elected. And Innocent IV seems like he’ll be chill
because he’s from a German noble family and all the revolts in Germany had been quashed and
even the Pope-loving Welfs had fallen in line. But it turns out Innocent IV had no chill.
And so it’s more rebellions! More treaty-breaking! More failure to negotiate, more slander,
more attempted assassinations! At this point Fred is a Muslim Saracen heretic with a harem
because the Pope probably read that in a book somewhere and figured that’s what all heretics do,
and what do you know one of the cardinals dubs him the Antichrist for good measure.
So there you go, official decree from the church, the Antichrist’s name is Fred and we’re 800 years
overdue for Judgement Day. That or we all missed the boat. Like obviously Fred was conspiring
against the Pope, which is a bad look, gets caught trying to straight up assassinate a guy either.
I won’t bore you with the details, but the Pope uses his tithe money to prop up a rebel king,
but between marriage, negotiations, and overwhelming force, Antichrist Frederick
II manages to come out on top until he loses one big battle and then everything unravels
and the entire empire rebels all at once. Fred dies peacefully, believe it or not,
but his son Conrad only rules for four years before he died of malaria
and the whole empire fell into chaos for six decades before anyone ever got crowned again.
Hey look at that an end card, kinda forgot I could speak in these! Special thanks to my
patrons for giving me the time I needed to mix up my formula and thank you so much to
Denis Blinov for helping me research this episode and figure out what was going on.
Let me know what you think of this longer format,
I’m gonna try a couple episodes like this and we’ll see how it goes! Until next time!