CORRADO IV, IMPERATORE. — Born at Andria in 1228 from the marriage of Federico II with Iolanda di Brienne, heiress to the kingdom of Jerusalem, he was appointed by his father in 1237 duke of Swabia and Alsace, after the rebellion of his eldest son Enrico. At the age of nine, he was left as vicar in Italy during the emperor’s renewed residence in Germany. From Vienna, in February 1237, the latter appointed him King of the Romans.
He was then vicar in Germany; but Swabia could offer very little resistance to the opposition, intensified by the Roman Curia and the anti-kings supported by II. Heir, by his father’s testament, to the Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily, he continued the policy opposed to the papacy and the communes, but saw the supremacy—which had already become precarious at Federico’s death—slip from his grasp in Germany as well as in Italy. His heir Corradino had barely been born when he was obliged to set out for the peninsula, in October 1251. In November, at Goito, he summoned the representatives of the imperial cities to a parliament; the smallness of his forces compelled him—so as to reach the Kingdom of Sicily, where his half-brother Manfredi, left as vicar general by Federico II, was meanwhile striving to quell the great revolt of the cities and barons—to embark from Pola for Siponto in Apulia, where he arrived on 8 January 1251. After every attempt to reach an agreement with Pope Innocenzo IV and the rebels had proved fruitless, he energetically conducted the war at the head of his faithful Saracens: the lands of the d’Aquino, Capua, and Naples itself fell; in December 1253, at Melfi, in a solemn parliament, he was able to celebrate the recovery of the domains of Apulia. Meanwhile, relations with Manfredi had become difficult because of the distrust of C. toward him, insinuated by the nobles; and many sympathies, even among the people, were lost. A renewed attempt at an understanding with the Roman Curia failed: indeed, on Holy Thursday of 1254, Innocenzo confirmed the excommunication against C., while hastening negotiations to enfeoff the kingdom of Sicily to another, since he considered it devolved upon the Church at Federico’s death. But precisely then, almost suddenly, malarial fevers cut short the king’s youth; at the age of twenty-six he died at Lavello, in Basilicata, on 21 May 1254, entrusting the regency of the Kingdom of Sicily for his infant son not to Manfredi, but to Bertoldo di Hohenburg.