CORRADO IV, EMPEROR. — Born at Andria in 1228 from the marriage of Frederick II with Iolanda of Brienne, heiress to the kingdom of Jerusalem; in 1237 his father named him Duke of Swabia and Alsace, after the rebellion of his elder son Henry. At nine years old, he was left as vicar in Italy during the emperor’s new sojourn in Germany. From Vienna, in February 1237, Frederick named him King of the Romans.
He then served as vicar in Germany; yet the resistance of Swabia to the opposition, intensified by the Roman Curia and its ancient partisans, could be but feeble. 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 his dominion slip from his grasp both in Germany and Italy, already made precarious by Frederick’s death. Scarcely had his heir Conradin been born when, in October 1251, he set out for the peninsula. In November, at Goito, he summoned a parliament of the representatives of the imperialist cities; the paucity of his forces compelled him (to reach the Kingdom of Sicily, where meanwhile his half-brother Manfred, left as general vicar by Frederick, strove to quell the great revolt of the cities and barons) to embark from Pola to Siponto in Apulia, where he arrived on 8 January 1252.
When every attempt at agreement with Pope Innocent IV and the rebels proved vain, he waged war with vigor at the head of his loyal Saracens: the lands of the d’Aquino, Capua, even Naples fell; in December 1253, at Melfi, in solemn parliament, he could celebrate the recovery of the Apulian domains. Meanwhile, relations with Manfred had grown difficult through the mistrust sown among Conrad’s magnates; and much sympathy, even among the people, waned. A renewed effort at reconciliation with the Roman Curia failed: Innocent, indeed, on Holy Thursday 1254, confirmed the excommunication against Conrad, while hastening negotiations to invest another with the kingdom of Sicily, which he deemed devolved to the Church at Frederick’s death. But at that very moment, almost suddenly, malarial fever cut short the young king’s life; at scarcely twenty-six he died at Lavello in Basilicata on 21 May 1254, entrusting, for his infant son, the regency of the kingdom of Sicily not to Manfred but to Berthold of Hohenburg.