This episode is also available on YouTube, Spotify, Acast, and all major podcast platforms.
The iron fist of Manfred
In February 1256 Manfred moved to consolidate his power within the kingdom, summoning a great curia at Barletta to display his dominant position publicly, confirm loyalties, and distribute rewards to his supporters—especially the “Lombards” connected to the Lancia family. At the same time he punished traitors such as Bertoldo of Hohenburg and his household, sentencing them to life imprisonment, where they soon died from hardship and disease.
During the summer of 1256 Manfred reconquered the whole of Sicily. The last pockets of resistance on the mainland—including the Terra d’Otranto and L’Aquila—were pacified by 1257. Manfred’s strategy was simple yet effective: acts of clemency towards those who surrendered spontaneously, and fierce reprisals against the most stubborn opponents. An emblematic example was Ariano Irpino which, having capitulated, was entirely razed; the leading citizens were brutally killed and the rest condemned to exile.
(circa 1260) De arte venandi cum avibus, ms. Pal. lat. 1071 f 81r, Vatican Apostolic Library
It was not an isolated case. To secure his supremacy Manfred chose the path of ruthless repression, persecuting his enemies even after they had yielded. Thus the Count of Catanzaro was assassinated at Terracina in 1257; in 1260 Manfred ordered the murder of two of Conradin’s envoys to the Pope; and so on. This policy of intimidation soon bore fruit: before long, fear of the Sicilian assassins spread through Europe, and Pope Urban IV himself referred to them with grave concern in a letter to James I of Aragon in 1262:
“He never ceased from his misdeeds; and if perchance he desisted for a while, he resumed them in yet more dangerous fashion as soon as the faithful of the Church began to doubt the perils. Thus did he have the late Bussaro, ambassador of his aforesaid nephew [Conradin], slain by his followers while in the lands of the Church and under its protection. And by many stratagems and by force of arms he afflicted the Church’s supporters in Tuscany, not without great slaughter of men, inflicting injuries and offences—as the fate of the late Pietro of Calabria likewise shows[11]”.
Once the kingdom had been pacified—though only by an iron fist—Manfred was ready for a daring, decisive stroke. False rumours were spread in Germany that his nephew Conradin had died; as the boy’s closest kin, Manfred then had himself crowned King of Sicily in Palermo Cathedral on 10 August 1258[12][13]. With that ceremony his rule, hitherto confined to local affairs, stepped onto a far broader stage, projecting the young monarch into the wider Mediterranean and European chessboard.
Giovanni Villani (mid 14th century). Nuova Cronica, ms. Chigiano L VIII 296, fol. 85r, Vatican Apostolic Library
King of Sicily
He set about reorganising the realm at once. Sicily was divided into two great military provinces – Terra di Lavoro and Sicilia–Calabria – each entrusted to captains endowed with sweeping powers to keep order and crush rebellion. Such control demanded money, and the administration quickly became a model of centralised bureaucracy and taxation. The chief impost was the colletta, re‑introduced after Frederick II and sharply increased to finance Manfred’s campaigns in northern Italy. A heavy burden for his subjects, it was nonetheless a godsend to the royal treasury: at the height of his power Manfred’s revenues were reckoned double those of the King of France and four times those of the King of England[14].
Life at court was dominated by the king’s maternal kin, the Lancia family – above all his favourite, Count Galvano Lancia. The Franciscan chronicler Salimbene da Parma sketches the new élite:
“The most powerful men in Manfred’s court were these: Count Galvano Lancia—by far the greatest of all, a Piedmontese and kinsman of the Marquises Lancia; Counts Giordano and Bartolomeo, likewise Piedmontese; the Count of Caserta, a southerner who later betrayed Manfred, though married to his sister; the Count of Acerra from Terra di Lavoro; Messer Giovanni da Procida, great and mighty at court—some say he administered the poison to King Conrad at Manfred’s bidding; and the chamberlain, immensely rich and dear to the king, named Messer Manfredo Maletta[15].”
Beside these nobles Manfred promoted a band of his own contemporaries—men not yet thirty, probably educated with him at Frederick II’s court. They were vigorous and enterprising, loyal beyond doubt yet painfully inexperienced; the consequences of that choice would soon become apparent.
© Cambi Casa d’Aste 2025 – Legend outside flan around linear circle; within, male head s. charging on eagle with spread wings, facing s. R/ Legend outside flan around linear circle; within, I C – XC / NI – KA on the sides of a long processional cross. Spahr 184. MIR 132. Rare. g. 2,51. Diam. mm. 12,26. Gold. q.VF
As in every autocracy, propaganda served the centre of power, and here too Manfred followed his father’s example. He sponsored translations of philosophical and scientific works – among them the pseudo‑Aristotelian Liber de Pomo – kept the University of Naples and the Salerno Medical School active, and struck coins that paired his own likeness with the imperial eagle. Troubadours in Provence sang his praises, celebrating him above all as a bulwark against clerical dominance.
His foreign policy was equally vigorous. After all, Sicily stands at the heart of the Mediterranean, a crossroads of maritime trade for centuries. From 1257 onward Manfred widened his diplomatic horizon: commercial treaties with Genoa and Venice were swiftly followed by amicable relations with the sultans of Egypt and the caliphs of Tunisia. He confirmed royal control over strategic archipelagos such as Malta and even nurtured ambitions in Sardinia, though those schemes never quite came to fruition.
Yet the true pivot of his Mediterranean strategy remained the Balkans. In 1258 he married Helena, daughter of Michael II Komnenos Doukas, Despot of Epirus—abruptly abandoning his father’s earlier alliance with the Empire of Nicaea. Through this marriage, he secured key possessions along the Adriatic littoral: Corfu, Durazzo, Valona, Butrint, and the strongholds of Berat and Kaninë[16].”
From 1258 onwards, Manfred began to intervene decisively in northern Italy as well, finally answering the long‑ignored pleas of the local Ghibellines—pleas he had previously set aside while consolidating the south. He appointed Percevalle Doria as his vicar‑general for the Marches, the duchy of Spoleto and Romagna; Giordano d’Agliano—already familiar to us from earlier episodes—as vicar for Tuscany; while Oberto Pelavicino was charged with directing Ghibelline operations in Lombardy, taking the symbolic title of “master of the Ghibellines”. To each of them, Manfred sent contingents of German mercenaries, financed in part from the royal treasury.
This strategy relied more on military force and on the appointment of royal officials than on any true juridical legitimacy: Manfred’s authority rested chiefly on pragmatic acceptance by local communities—an acceptance helped, not infrequently, by the presence of hundreds of formidable German knights in heavy armour. We shall not linger on the details here; if curiosity strikes, do revisit episodes 4 and 5 of this season, or the previous posts (1, 2)
The high mark of Manfred’s power
By 1259 Manfred found himself King of Sicily: master of an erudite, indecently wealthy court, yet burdened abroad with the reputation of a ruthless oppressor – fratricide and parricide alike – at only twenty‑seven years of age. The next step seemed almost inevitable: press for the imperial crown[17]. Fully aware that the dignity was elective rather than hereditary, he set about crafting a favourable climate through strategic alliances and by courting the Ghibelline cities of northern Italy, Siena among them. His chancery even issued formal documents proclaiming his imperial ambition—an aspiration Siena endorsed in a letter of August 1259:
(late 13th century), De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, ms. Pal. Lat. 1071, fol 1v, Vatican Apostolic Library
“When your envoys, Guglielmo son of Pepe and Guidone di Macio, stood before Our Majesty, they faithfully and prudently conveyed your wishes. Through their words we clearly perceived the ardent devotion you bear towards Our Excellency, and in particular the resolute desire that we should labour with still greater zeal to obtain the imperial crown[18]”.
Yet it seemed written that this imperial dream would be dashed at the outset. In the autumn of 1259, at the battle of Pelagonia in Macedonia, the joint army of Manfred, Michael II of Epirus and William of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaia, was utterly routed by the Nicaean forces under John Palaiologos. The disaster – caused above all by poor co‑ordination between Greek and Latin contingents and the effectiveness of Nicaea’s light troops[19] – killed Manfred’s nascent imperial venture stone dead. And that, alas, was only the beginning of his troubles.
In December 1259 Pope Alexander IV exploited the Balkan debacle to isolate Manfred still further, offering absolution to many northern Italian Ghibellines on condition that they sever all ties with the Swabian king. The move paid, once and for all, to any hope Manfred might have had of papal support and crystallised a conflict between the Sicilian kingdom and Rome that left no room for compromise.
Hartmann Schedel / Michel Wolgemut /Wilhelm Pleydenwurff (1493). Liber Chronicarum, 211v, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Matters in Tuscany were scarcely better. After the battle of Montaperti (discussed also in episode 5), Siena had embraced a Ghibelline government firmly linked to Manfred. But the prolonged papal interdict imposed by Urban IV in response to Sienese loyalty stoked growing unrest. Many citizens—especially those whose fortunes depended on business with the Curia—grew resentful of the city’s harsh economic and spiritual isolation. On 30 April 1262 street‑fighting broke out between Guelfs and Ghibellines; it was crushed with brutal force, climaxing in the murder of a Ghibelline leader. That December, several prominent families—the Salimbeni, Tolomei and Piccolomini among them—abandoned Siena for the fortress of Radicofani under papal protection. Urban IV welcomed the exiles and formally reconciled them with the Church; they soon reorganised, politically and militarily, under the pontiff’s wing. Thus was born the Sienese Guelf party.
The Papacy’s pressure reached Florence with equal speed. The city, now ruled by the pro‑Swabian Ghibellines under Farinata degli Uberti, found its merchant class targeted in August 1263 when Urban IV ordered the seizure of Florentine goods at the fairs of Flanders and France. The tactic worked swiftly: by the end of that same month many leading Florentine merchants had sworn fealty to the Pope to salvage their assets and trade.
Manfred’s iron grip was closing upon nothing but sand, and the young king had yet to realise it. Far from Sicily’s sun‑baked shores, storm‑clouds of war were gathering—soon to take the shape of his most formidable foe, Charles of Anjou, Prince of France.
Sources
Primary sources
- Alighieri, D. (2023). Inferno (A. M. Chiavacci Leonardi, Comm., 27ª ed.). Milano: Mondadori, Oscar Classici.
- Malaspina, S. (XIII sec.). Rerum Sicularum Historia.
- Matthew Paris. (1872). Chronica Majora (H. R. Luard, Ed., Vol. 5). London: Longman, Green, Reader, and Dyer.
- Pseudo-Jamsilla. (XIII sec.). Historia de rebus gestis Frederici II imperatoris eiusque filiorum Conradi et Manfredi.
- Salimbene de Adam. (XIII sec.). Cronica.
- Villani, G. (1991). Nuova Cronica (G. Porta, Ed.). Milano: Fondazione Pietro Bembo / Guanda.
Secondary sources
- Abulafia, D. (1993). Federico II. Un imperatore medievale (G. Mainardi, Trad.). Torino: Einaudi.
- Delle Donne, F. (2019). La porta del sapere: Cultura alla corte di Federico II di Svevia. Roma: Carocci.
- Grillo, P. (2019). Manfredi di Svevia. Salerno: Salerno Editrice.
- Houben, H. (2009). Federico II: Imperatore, uomo, mito. Bologna: Il Mulino.
- Kantorowicz, E. H. (1931). Frederick the Second, 1194–1250 (E. O. Lorimer, Trans.). New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing.
- Maire Vigueur, J.-C. (2003). Cavalieri e cittadini. Guerra, conflitti e società nell’Italia comunale. Bologna: Il Mulino.
- Runciman, S. (1958). The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trad. it.: (1997). I Vespri Siciliani. Bari: Dedalo.
[11] Les Registres d’Urbain IV (1261 ‑ 1264), éd. J. Guiraud, Paris, Thorin et Fils, 1901, vol. II/1 †
† Cited in Grillo (2019), chap. VI.
[12] “Eodem insuper tempore coepit curia Romana non mediocriter vilescere, eo quod Appuliae praelati et magnates contra voluntatem Papae elegerunt sibi in regem et coronari fecerunt Memfredum, filium imperatoris Fretherici“
– Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora, vol. V, ed. Henry Richards Luard, Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland During the Middle Ages, London, Longman & Co., 1880, p. 772.
[13] – Nicolaus de Jamsilla, Historia de rebus gestis Frederici II et Manfredi, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. Ernesto Pontieri, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1935, p. 200.
– Malaspina, Chronica, ibid., pp. 113‑114.
[14] – G. Fasoli, «Organizzazione delle città ed economia urbana», in Potere, società e popolo, pp. 167‑189 (spec. 177‑178).
– A. Pispisa, Il Regno di Manfredi, pp. 235‑236.
– K. Toomaspoeg, «L’amministrazione del demanio regio», pp. 217‑222.
[15] – Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, p. 469 — cited in M. Grillo, 2019, chap. VII.
[16] – Die Urkunden Manfreds, p. 141, doc. 61 — cited in M. Grillo, 2019, chap. IX.
[17] E. Kantorowicz, Frederick II, p. 674 — cited in M. Grillo, 2019, chap. IV.
[18] – Die Urkunden Manfreds, p. 141, doc. 61 — cited in M. Grillo, 2019, chap. IX.
[19] – D. J. Geanakoplos, “Greco‑Latin Relations,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology, ed. C. J. Rogers, vol. III (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 114‑115 — cited in M. Grillo, 2019, chap. IX.
– J. W. Barker, “Pelagonia, Battle of,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military
