The Wonder of the World, the last Templar, and a Tudor princess

On March 18th in 37AD, the Roman Senate proclaimed Caligula as the next emperor. Bad, bad move, one they came to greatly regret.

On March 18th, 1229, Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, son of Richard I’s nemesis Heinrich von Hohenstaufen and Constance of Sicily, crowned himself as King of Jerusalem. He had to put the crown on his own head because the patriarch of Jerusalem refused to do it. He had gained control of Jerusalem by negotiating with the Sultan of Egypt, al-Kamil, with whom he became quite friendly. Ironically, he was excommunicated at the time, the sentence having been passed upon him by the pope for what the Vatican saw as an unreasonable delay in going on crusade. Frederick typically ignored the excommunication, and the pope excommunicated him a second time; he ignored that one, too. The deal he struck with the sultan was viewed by many as a betrayal of Christendom, in part because Frederick himself was so controversial. Called the Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world, he was undeniably a brilliant man, a free thinker, and a significant figure on the political stage in the 13th century, although he was unable to secure the continuation of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. While I find him an undeniably intriguing man, there is a coldness about him that has always put me off. My idea of Hell would have been marriage to Frederick. He flaunted a harem, kept his wives in seclusion, and had numerous illegitimate offspring, as well as a continuing relationship with a mistress that lasted for many years.. His second wife’s story was probably the saddest one. Isabella or Yolanda was the Queen of Jerusalem, for her mother, Marie de Montferrat, had died giving birth to her. Frederick wanted her so that he could lay legal claim to the crown of Jerusalem and they were wed in 1225. Isabella was only 13, but that did not stop Frederick from consummating the marriage, for she gave birth to a daughter the following year at age 14. The daughter died the next year and Isabella herself died in childbirth in 1228, at age 16, after three years of a marriage that brought her little but misery; soon after her wedding, she was writing pitiful letters home to her father, complaining of Frederick’s ill treatment of her. After her death, Frederick would wed another Isabella, this one the sister of the King of England, Henry III. She gave Frederick five children in six years of marriage, dying in childbirth, too, at age 27, having had to bury three of those children.

Also on March 18th, 1314, the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney were burnt at the stake, victims of the greed of the French king, Philippe the Fair.

Lastly, on March 18th, 1496, Elizabeth of York gave birth to her fifth child by Henry Tudor, a daughter they christened Mary, who would later become the unwilling Queen of France. The year before, Elizabeth and Henry had lost their second daughter, named Elizabeth, at only three years of age, so I like to think that Mary’s birth was of some solace to her grieving mother.