CONRAD IV, Emperor. - Born at Andria in 1228 from the marriage of Frederick II to Isabella of Brienne, heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem; he was named by his father, in 1237, duke of Swabia and Alsace, after the rebellion of his elder son Henry. At nine years of age, he was left as vicar in Italy during the emperor's new stay in Germany. From Vienna the latter, in February 1237, named him king of the Romans.
He was therefore vicar in Germany: but the resistance of Swabia to the opposition, intensified by the Roman Curia and by the anti-kings supported by it, could only be very slight. Heir, by his father's will, to the Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily, he continued the policy opposed to the papacy and to the communes, but he saw the predominance slip from his grasp, in Germany as in Italy, already rendered precarious at Frederick's death. His heir Conradin had just been born, when he had to set out for the peninsula, in October 1251. In November, at Goito, he gathered in parliament the representatives of the cities of the imperial party; the scantiness of his forces obliged him (in order to reach the Kingdom of Sicily, where meanwhile his half-brother Manfred, left as vicar general by Frederick II, was 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. Every attempt at agreement with the pontiff Innocent IV and with the rebels having proved vain, he energetically waged war at the head of his loyal 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 Manfred had become difficult because of Conrad's distrust of him, insinuated by the magnates; and many sympathies, even among the people, came to be lacking. A renewed attempt at understanding with the Roman Curia failed: Innocent rather confirmed, on Maundy Thursday of 1254, the excommunication against Conrad, while he hastened negotiations to enfeoff the kingdom of Sicily to others, which he deemed devolved to the Church at Frederick's death. But precisely then, almost suddenly, malarial fevers cut short the king's youth; at 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.
Bibliography5 works
Pier Fausto Palumbo