The Wonder of the World: Frederick II, Part 2
He was a monarch like no other: he was a poet, a lover of science, and in his court multicultural collaboration and innovation were a matter of policy. Muslim, Jewish and Christians courtiers formed what some historians have claimed was the first modern bureaucracy -- some have even called him the first European leader. Damiano Pietropaolo situates the life of Frederick II in his own day and highlights his achievements against the backdrop of an increasingly fragile and fractious Europe in our own day.
**This episode first aired February 25, 2015.
Participants in the program:
Jacqueline Alio
David Abulafia
Michelangelo Levita
Professor Laura Minervini
Karla Mallette
Ortensio Zecchino
Readings by Tony Nardi
Music featured in the program:
Il Dolze Mio Drudo, by Francesco de Natale
Il Dolze Mio Drudo, by Stupore Mistico
Reading List:
Books by David Abulafia:
The Two Italies. Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and The Northern Communes, published by Cambridge University Press, 1977; Italian edn., 1991.
Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100-1400, published by Variorum, 1987.
Frederick II. A Medieval Emperor, published by Oxford University Press, London and NY, 1988; third English edn., 2001; Italian edn., 1990; German edn., 1991.
Books by Jacqueline Alio
The Peoples of Sicily: A Multicultural Legacy, published byTrinacria Editions, New York, 2013.
Women of Sicily:Saints, Queens and Rebels, published by Trinacria Editions, New York, 2014.
Books by Ernst Kantorowicz:
The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, Princeton University Press, 1957.
Frederick the Second, 1194–1250, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1957.
Books by Karla Mallette:
The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History, published by University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean: Toward a New Philology and a Counter-Orientalism, published by University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
Books by Laura Minervini:
Testi giudeospagnoli medievali (Castiglia e Aragona), 2 voll., Napoli, Liguori, 1992 (Romanica Neapolitana, 26).
Federico II, De arte venandi cum avibus. L'art de la chace des oisiaus. Facsimile ed. edizione critica del manoscritto fr. 12400 della Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, edizione critica a cura di L. M., Napoli, Electa Napoli, 1995, pp. 417-605.
Books by Ortensio Zecchino:
L'origine del diritto in Federico II. Storia di un intrigo filologico. Memoria dell'Accademia nazionale dei Lincei (pp. 131), Roma, 2012.
Federico II tra giudizi e pregiudizi storiografici otto-novecenteschi, prefazione a W. Sturner, Federico II e l'apogeo dell'Impero, Roma, 2007 (pp. 7 – 37).