September 9, 2025 • 30 mins
Frederick II was celebrated as a "renaissance man" who championed education and the arts. But his conflicts with the Pope would lead to multiple excommunications. Actor and historian Peter Weller (RoboCop, author of Leon Battista Alberti in Exile) joins the show to discuss his complicated legacy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Hi, this
is Danish Sports.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I am so excited to be here today for a
very special episode of Noble Blood. I'm joined by the
incredible actor, director, historian writer Peter Weller. Just an incredible figure,
an incredible life. You've done so much. We're going to
be talking about the Holy Roman Ember of Frederick the Second,
but before we dive in, I would just love to ask,
(00:32):
and I think my listeners would love to know what
was your transition like going from the acting world in
Hollywood to going back and studying Italian Renaissance art.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
So I knew nothing about art. My mother tried to
introduce me to art. You know, I didn't really get it.
There's a wonderful actress. Most people know it was an
actress model. She's actually an art history design degree from Wellesley.
Was a Girl of the Year under Diana Breeland, was
a stylist for Vogue, a lot of other stuff. Ali McGraw.
Ali McGraw is one of the great beauties of the
world and also one of the smartest people I've ever known,
(01:04):
and I did the movie with her, and I usually
don't get involved, but after the movie she asked me
to go to see Sweeney Todd. When Sweeney Todd first
open and Angel Lansbury, I went to see it on
Saint Patrick's day. I'll never get it. And then when
he started up this affair, and then we turned into
a longtime friendship. It goes on and on and on on,
and she's to this day one of the first real
life thank in my new book, it's because just cannot
(01:26):
game to University press about Renaissance Guide. But Ali's personally
took me by the hand, introduced me to Picasso Picasso's
GUERNI leave New York and go to Once Franco was
either passed away and Spain had a social democracy, Picasso
wanted this cornerstone piece of anti fascist art and horror
(01:47):
to go to Spain. And so there was a big
exhibition at MoMA and you couldn't get in, but if
you were Ali, you could get in. Because Allie's friends were.
People think that she ran with movie No No, she
ran with the literal that glitter out, that she ran
with Halston and Truemy, Capodi and Veland and the head
of moment, and they head of the met powerful powerful
(02:08):
people in New York, both women and men. So she thinks,
by the hand threw me into Picasso, I come out
of five flowers at Picasso. I'm so But this bears
this embarrassment because the second person, other than Maria Connell,
who's a great friend and head of Fit in America
Folk Art Museum, one of the people got me to
the Renaissance. After this happened, I am at the National
(02:30):
Film Festival of Japan with the great Jean Moreau, one
of the greatest actors as ever, Mike met a Boy,
one of the great producers ever, producer Robo cop and
Victoria Sto. And if you haven't heard of him, or
your listeners haven't heard of him, then they have to
leave the show. Because Touroro is the first guy to
filter technicolor, which was against the law to be filtered.
If you see visions of Light, He's the first guy
(02:52):
that the experiment. Really you know, we just take tepic
color for granted. And if you know Apocalypse Now or
Last Time in Paris or The Sheltering Sky or Last
Emperor or Dick Tracy, can I go on and on
and on. Vittorio is a very elite dude and was
versace all the time, and he had this VERSACEI scar
pond and not playing mister Horton because I know I
(03:14):
could talk about Sich Twombley and I could talk about
franket Dollar or whatever. So I say, vittoyo Keia Rito
Pettori too, or this is nineteen ninety two. I say,
who's your favorite painter nineteen ninety one and work Kyoto
and he goes uh. And even the Padua they see
Jolto in the very first one by one four frames
of narrative of light color, perception, dark emotion, negative space narrative.
(03:39):
I go, what this is, Jolto. I don't know who
you're talking about, man, And he takes his versace scar
and he flips it. Look, Francis Coppola said, Victoria Sore
is the only guy who spent two years in the
Philippines in a white suit, and he did, and that's Vittorio.
So he flips his scar, but he says, well, Peter,
(03:59):
we cannot talk about it, and he walks away. Then
I say, you get really pretentious, man, and he goes, no,
you're like the most Americans. You're pretentious, You're like so
many people. You can drop all these names and you
don't know Joto. You have no context, You have no context.
He's the one person that's indemnified in contemporary art. Karo
karof Father of Cubas, that talks about him, Precisions, that
(04:21):
talks about him, roth Coo talks about him, Picasto talks
about him. Rembrandt. I'm going I feel like a dummy.
And I got to sitting at church in the Capella Scrotin,
which is in my book now, and I find out
that that's the one piece, the one Nama piece of
art in the Western world that is like solarified as
a cornerstone, and all the art that comes after it
(04:43):
in the Western world doesn't matter what you're talking about,
post Cubism, abstract Depressionism, piet Mondrian, whatever, They're all gonna
go back to Joto. They're all going to go back
to that. I called up Ali, I go, look, why
didn't you talk about Joto? She says, I did. You
had no interest in the Renaissance. I'll do the horny
Toy New York scene like every other idiot, you know,
(05:04):
I couldn't get you out of modern art. I couldn't
get you out of get there where art. So that's
how I started. I said, how do I start this?
They said, take a classe at Syracuse. Do ten weeks.
You go to Italy anyway, but you know nothing. But
I was the ugly American Dana. I'm telling you this
some benefit of your podcast. I was the guy who
went to Italy and hung out on the piazza smoking
(05:27):
a cigar, walking here and there. Yeah, looking at the thing,
looking at the coliseums, or but never get a deep
dive into it. Pit me eight years before I started
to look at the art and now, yeah, PhD book
with Cambridge University Press. But it wasn't for those two
people shaming me into it, you know. It wasn't like
I just kind of went, oh wow, or I think
(05:48):
I'll do this. I'll flip with the second O and
stop and no, they gonna do this. Here's a good
segue here. One of the things I get fascinated in
when I get my master's degree in a very special
program at Syracuse University, whether it only take it by
four six people a year, is I get fascinated with
the Franciscan movement, which is, by the way, contemporary to
Frederick the second who we're going to talk about today, Owenstaufen.
(06:10):
So Francis of a SIZI. We've all heard of him.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Big saints, statues and gardens all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yeah, big deal, Okay, connect joto. Francis is the guy
who preaches, never is a priest, never does a marriage,
never owns a mass. Francis and Francis man started walking
and talking. And you know, I was talking to a
guy from Oxford and I was speaking in a historiography
class PhD level at my alma mater, UCLA, and I say,
(06:42):
the influence of Francis is a quarter million people following
him within eight years without a fax machine. But here's
what he's say. He's saying, Look, man, walk the walk
of the human Jesus. You don't have to do the
seven steps to happen. If you Hannah what's in front
of you with kindness, if you understand Christ trying to
(07:04):
preach kindness and the suffering with it, then you identify
with it. That's all you got to do, you know.
And people have been listening to this pulpit crack. You know,
God wins and you don't, man, You're the loser and
he's the winner. And all of a sudden, Francis comes on.
You ought to follow the dude, I mean yeah, I
(07:24):
to go in so anyway, when he dies, there's a
whole lot of people really want to follow this thing.
And then of course the hierarchy of the church gets
hold of his movement and says, no, no, no, we
got to build churches, make money, la la la, And
that's too bad, dog, right, Okay, this is right around
the time of Frederick. Frederick has got some towns, and
(07:44):
Francis has got some towns that sympathize with the Franciscans
and someone who sympathize with the pope and want to
make money. So dig this history of the world. Simply
Rome falls in Rome around four point fifty, they burn
the books. You've got nothing. You got tribes coming in.
We used to call them barbarians, oss, vandals, etc. They
(08:07):
come raiding in Italy. Why Italy? Why is everybody want Italy?
Now that's my question to you. You can answer why
does all of Europe want Italy?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Let's see, is it because it's sort of a strategic
stronghold before the crusades strategic.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
It's a finger that sticks into the Med, and the
Med is the only systemic of trade in the world.
So you got this thing that sticks into the Med
that nobody owns because roam's down. Hey man, let's go
conquer the dude, got it. Yeah, So by eight nine hundred,
Charlemagne takes over and unites the war, becomes Holy Woman
(08:44):
I heard night, and unites all these tribes. But there
are still serves in and Muslim groups that have been
in Sicily forever, and they gonna give it up. So
Charlottatne says, okay, all you tribes are under me now,
la la lah. The only one group that doesn't follow
him is Venice. I love it. That's an whole nother story.
I gotta talk about. Venice goes few man, we follow
no emperor nowhere, man. We are Venetian, Venetian, Venetian. They know,
(09:08):
they go off and do their own thing. Yeah, and
everybody else's got to follow him, right, So anyway, Charle
Maine becomes that. Then his Holy Woman empire splits up.
The next thing you know, there's a crusade, and the
crusade is essentially by the time that late ten hundreds,
a pope goes Man, you know what, we're doing enough
business now with the Levant, which is that you got
(09:31):
to think of like your Joe blow out there thinking
of what Islam is now with reactionary fundamentalism as opposed
to moderate and some for Islam, with the Moors and
all the way into the Levant. That's Turkey and Judea
was the most sophisticated civilization of planet Earth. They gave
us numbers, they gave us star science, They brought back science,
(09:52):
brought back medicine, brought back to everything. Whatever you may
think of any religion when it goes into its crusade stage,
Islam at that point was really sophisticated. Yeah, the Moors
are Islamic. They fought against the Arabs to keep Spain.
So you can't just group them all together and go, hey,
this is all a bunch of Arabs. No, they're not
the tribal. So what happens is they got Baliland, and
(10:16):
the Western world wants it. They don't want a new
business with it, they want to own it. It's the
place of Jesus and Moses and you know, Joshua or
whatever man. And so they send a crusade to send
another crusade, another than a crusade, right, okay, So then.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Just for a brief context for our listeners, we're talking
about the Holy Roman Emperor Frederic the Second, and this
is going to be early thirteenth century, so you know,
early twelve hundreds.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Right same time as Francis, by the.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Way, and Frederick the Second was involved in the sixth Crusades, right.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah, it's the dicey deal because the first crusade they
get stuff, and this essentially ends the feudal system, you know,
because people get leave the land and go, hey man,
they need numbers as an account and so forth. The
lawyer's la la la lah. This goes to former university,
the former University of Bologna and so forth, and Uissia
Padua and they start account. Then the second crusade is
kind of dicey. Then the third crusade is a guy
(11:14):
named Frederick Barbara Rosa. Okay, you know the Robin Hood lender, right,
Robin Hood of course. Okay, So Robin Hood is the servant.
Really he's looking for the good king to come back.
Remember his name, Richard the Lionheart Great, And what's wrong
with Richard why can't Richard come back?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Well, I think he was kidnapped by Germans at some point.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, that's right. So who's the German guy that kidnapped
him and said, hey, you haven't recognized me as the
Holy Roman Emperor. And by the way, you owe me
some money because you want to this crusade and we
financed you someone to keep you here. So who's this guy?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Is it Frederick?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
It's his dad, Henry the sixth, and his dad the
Holy Woman Emperor Charlemagne the first one, and there's several
and there's autos and so forth, and then it breaks down.
France says, we don't want to be ali Roman Empire.
We're gonna be France. Germany continues this idea of the
only Reman empire. So you got the starting a hunder
and by the time you get to eleven hundred and
(12:13):
the Third Crusade, the son of Frederick Barbarossa Redbeard. Okay,
I'm gonna back up a second, and this period we're
talking about the famous Normans that invaded England. Normans are
not just normandy knights anymore from you know, Norway or whatever.
They are sexually guns for hire, and they really take
(12:36):
over Sicily. The Norman inclusion of Sicily is amazing. And
these kings, these tancred Norman kings, Roger the first, Roger
the second, these are the guys that bring sovereignty to Sicily.
By what by tolerance? Here's unheard of you. You don't
(12:56):
do tolerance in the Middle Ages, man, You cut off
people's eyes and and so forth. But Roger the second
is the guy who's tolerant of Jews, He's tolerant of Muslims,
He's tolerant of like the princes who want their own
lands off. So this Norman guy right is swinging. Okay.
You know the German guys want like I said, remember
(13:17):
they want Italy. Okay, they can't get it. Why because
in between is a pope going. You can't have the
bottom of the world and the top of the world.
You can't smash us together. Henry the sixth, the guy's
getting that bridge of the lineup, gets this great idea.
You know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna marry Roger
(13:38):
the Norman's daughter. Yes, Constance, I'm gonna marry her. And
that way the Queen of Sicily and me, the King
of Germany, will own the world together.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
It's a pretty good plan. I can't imagine the rest
of the world is happy about it.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
But no they're not. First goes wait on, you know,
the parent's going, hey man, you know I gotta handle
this guy. Francis man, you know what are you doing now?
You squeeze me so longstone short. Any of the six
dies and they have a kid. And they have a
kid in a play called Jesse, which is near Ancona
in the eastern part of Italy, which is beautiful, and
this is Frederick, and Frederick is like taken to Sicily,
(14:18):
and Frederick is a kid. Immediately the infiltration of a
whole lot of Lombards does her up by Milan. French
warrior families come down. I want to take over seas.
Nobody's running Sicily now, man, the Rogers are gone. The
Constances can't really do it on our own. This kid
is amazingly ferociously. There's a legend that when a guy
(14:42):
named Mark Ward, one of the German thugs, came down
to take over Sicily, they looked for the kid to
kill him or to do what when he was hiding
out he's five years old, that he jumped on mark
Ward and started to scratch his face and so forth.
And that's Frederick. I mean, the legends about Frederick are
immense that what he goes on to be is this.
(15:04):
He goes on to first tell the pope, look, the
auto dynasty, the wealth. This is factions and it was
going to turn into guelfs and ghibelins, people who support
the both people' support. They're right, I'm jumping to. This
is about twelve hundreds Frederick's Morning, eleven ninety four, about
ten years after the crusade. Then your mother dies, his
mother tries to school it, his mother tries to give
(15:25):
him tolerance. This is a one off, dude. You gotta
learn stuff. You gotta learn languages. You got to learn Hebrew,
you gotta learn Arabic, you gotta learn Greek. You gotta
learn these people. Man, these people are around you, and
you better be talking their lingo if you want something
to do with it, because you can't just win by domination,
even though you gotta remember, despots do live and they are,
you know, caged. Yeah, And Frederick second is going to
(15:48):
spur a guy to debt, you know, and tell a
guy that you're gonna have your tongue cut out somewhere,
so they're not nice guys at the end of the day.
But in the realm of humanism, I'm reading about Franciscanism.
It's Syracuse, and I'm reading about how these certain cities
hid are the spiritual Franciscans. You wanted to just walk
the walk of Francis and not be part of the
(16:09):
money thing. And I'm reading about how certain parts of
the pope did not support these spiritual Franciscans, but the
only woman, Frederic the second, did so I get deep
dive into Frederic second, and I see that he's into science,
see that he's in the literature. I see that this
guy's obsessed with birds. I see obsessed with writing, that
he's a vegetarian, that he weighs the same amount when
(16:32):
he was sixty four years old and when he died
that he did when he was eighteen. I also see
that he went and got Germany back with the Pope's approval,
with a whole lot lesser men than Otto, by going
in and promising all these princes that I'm not going
to get your jam man, I'm just going to be
(16:53):
the Holy Roman Emperor. You guys can continue your act.
I don't want to dominate, you scold, you complain, you
guys guy pay me the veig, but you guys can groove.
And then within two months they support him. Then he's
ordered to go on a crusader. He tells the Pope,
I will I gotta go back and make sure Sicily's mine.
And he goes back to Sicily and he does the
(17:15):
same thing. He essentially wings Sicily through diplomacy. Can't Klowich
writes a book on the guy that lionizes and the
great David Atalafia, who is wrote I think the greatest
book on him, who is the mentor to my mentor.
Pete Stacy at UCLA writes a book that like, say,
wait a minute, you gotta put Frederic the Second because
(17:36):
by now Beta everyone has hasted Frederic the Second on
is like something else. But it's like Cyrus the Great
with the freedom of the Jews from Babylon and the
Cyrus Cylinder. The Cyrus Cylindator says, you know, hey, all
you Jews can go back from Babylon and live in
your home, because I write a vision from Zora's division
that people want to live on the turf of their homeland.
(17:58):
Nobody did this in twenty six PC. They killed you
or dispersed you or enslaved you. Yeah, but he did
it once in a while as a dude or a
woman who goes, you know what, I see that the
freedom of people is better than the domination of people.
I can allowing people liberties. The way to control your
(18:19):
sheep is give him a large pasture. And I think
that is essentially what Frederick is famous for. And Frederick,
by the way, goes on a crusade and he wins
territory by diplomacy, and it pisss off the Pope. They say,
we know what diplomacy, man, we want like dominance, and
he goes, yeah, I ain't gonna do that. Then he
(18:40):
comes back and you know, he's considered the Holy King
of Jerusalem and so forth, and Pope hates that and
he gets into an antagonistic thing. Well, but it starts
the very first state endowed university in Naples, which is
called it called the University toa Frederica Secundo named after him.
He does so many things to essentially trans formed the
(19:00):
idea of and ab lafia. This guy ropes him in yeah,
and essentially says that Frederick you cannot divorce Frederick from
essentially the guy who was in a clash with Catholicism,
as almost all emperors were, you know, until eighteen hundred.
Cannot take him out of the context though, the dude
(19:21):
who wanted to be acknowledged as you know, the dude
of it all. But the acknowledgment aside, yeah, which everybody wanted.
How he went about it in so many ways, was
so deferential to human rights in many ways, you know.
And people say, yeah, okay, man, okay, look he took
(19:42):
all the Muslims in Sicily. You didn't tell him he
gave him a hundred thousand acres or ten thousand acres
in Apulia.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
But if I am correct, he does get excommunicated four times. Yes,
they forgive him. They bring him back, they say, just kidding.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
You know, how they bring you back because he's diplomatic. Yeah,
he's diplomatic. What is And he's diplomatic what the noise is. Ironically,
the guy that really hates him is Gregory than Knight,
and Gregory the Knight is Ugolino, the guy who championed
Francis a Vesisi. He's the guy from Umbria who went
with Francis to Innocent the third and today man. The
(20:19):
guy's preaching, but he's not a priest. I gotta think anything,
why I don't kill him? Let him walk around. And
that's the guy who later becomes the pope who hates
veteran and he's a very humanist poet, Ugolino, very humanist,
but he just can't take it that Frederick is not
bowing to him.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I think of Frederick the Second as sort of the
quintessential renaissance man. You know, this is some intolerant spoke,
multiple languages, a mathematician, a poet, a composer. Obviously, when
he's excommune indicated multiple times by the Pope, we're going
to get some sources vilifying him, these pro papal chronicles.
How would you define his legacy looking at all of
(21:10):
those sources and sort of weighing it all together.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
You know, I want to be David Abulafia and say,
wait a minute, let's put the rains on theticism. You know,
the mystic legend of this guy. Yeah, he did kill people.
He did jill his best friend.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
You know, it's patrision, but it was a brutal time.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
That's right. You can't take it out of context. But
he did also give people right to civil courts, over
land distributions or what. I'm thinking that he is the forerunner.
I mean, in spite of the fact that doctor Abolafia
wants to rain him in. I finished reading the Abelavia's
book and I go, you know what, man, the guy
is still not like anybody else. And you acknowledge him
(21:52):
so many times in there. Well, come on, thinking three
thousand people into Germany, I guess an army of almost
like you know, eight thousand dudes, and like talking your
way diplomacy, diplomatically winning that whole thing back and doing
the same thing at Sicily. This is gifted stuff. This
is the art of rap I think that's his great legacy.
(22:14):
His great legacy is diplomacy, I think. And one can
bring up all of the footnotes about brutality, but like
you said, it's the time you're living in and somebody
tries to kill you, you kill them. That's the way
it goes. Well.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I do have one question about Frederick's legacy. It looks
like after he dies we're going to get the Great
interregnum with the Holy Roman Emperor. There's not going to
be a clear succession after him. Why is that.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I don't think that MANFREDI or Manfred or Conrad Conridine grandson,
I don't think they had the talent. Yeah, if you're
fatherless and then you're raised by this incredible mother who
is like running a show and instills the temperance in
you that you're gonna live through, that's inured. I mean,
(23:03):
that's almost something that he can't be taught.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Hmm.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So his jam, which is speaking and coming to terms
and let's meet, let's do this, let's do that. It's
unique to him and when he goes, I don't think
that he's taught that to his kids or his great kids.
Beyonka his lover. Basically they say he married who ivn
Avolafia acknowledges was the one sort of passion in his life.
(23:29):
He probably did marry her before he died, but they
never spent time with the kid. I got to go,
you know this is right, this is wrong. Here's what
you do. You go here, you do that. I don't
know Frederick had those people, the school, these kids. I
don't think his kids knew international law. I don't think
he spoke Brive languages. I'm sorry. I don't think they
like travel with him in all his places. His one kid, Henry,
(23:52):
tried to revolt against him. He had to take the
guy down he had and imprison his own kid in Germany.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So he's a great holy Roman emperor, not a great.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Father, not a great dad.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, well, nobody's perfect.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
I know, you know what, I gotta remember that my
kid and I with the POMPEII. My son is the
attention span of all thirteen year old which is about,
you know, six feet until it gets too hot or
the phones are gone or whatever. Hey, he's in POMPEII.
He said, hey, Dad, over here, look over here, this
is where they had the sewage pipes. Now I've done
(24:27):
historiography on POMPEII. I had to present on POMPEII. I
had to take tours, not to tours, but school groups
do pompe And I've never seen these sewage pipes. And
I said, how did you do that? He says, I
found it a TikTok. He found the friggin sewage pipes
in POMPEII on TikTok. And then he's got the scholar
Antonio and shows us. I almost started crying. Man, I
(24:50):
was so impressed with him. I was impressed that he
was showing me something. And two days ago, two scholars
giving up to me and they were talking about the
sewage systems in Roma. Said, were they essentially discovered by pass? Yeah?
She was just vompe have taught us everything. So my
kid taught me about them. What do you mean your
kid talking about it? I said, about two weeks ago,
my kid on TikTok find out where the sewage systems
were in POMPEII and were showing me. And these guys
(25:13):
are like your thirteen year old kid on TikTok was
showing you where the sewage systems or I said, yeah,
and it's just stopped us dead data, so good dead
good leader. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I was in POMPEII a few years ago, and the
fun fact about the plumbing that stuck with me. Maybe
the listeners don't know, maybe it's incredibly obvious, but the
elemental symbol for lead is peeb, and that comes from
the Latin word for plumbing plumb them peeb because their
pipes were lead, their plumbing was lead. Who knew?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Did somebody teach you that?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
I think our tour guide said that it must have
been in the back of my mind. When I studied
chemistry in college, I.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Only learned PB meaning lead in Rome, with the pipes
in Rome, you know, coming out of places like the
Colise and down with the eastrect channels of the history channel.
Learners that I wasn't walking around Pompeii with a thirteen
year old. But that's great that you know that it
isn't Pompeii extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I will say it was one of the historical sites
that truly floored me, that exceeded all expectations for me.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
You have to go back. I've been twenty nine times now,
but look twenty nine times, and now I find out
for my kid where the plumbing is.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Doctor Peter Weller with your brand new book Leon Batista
Alberti in Exile by Peter Weller.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
And the subtitle is Tracing the Path.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Too, the first modern book on painting.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yes, and in it are a ton of photographs and
images and so forth. Not to mention at the beginning
of it is Joto in the Capella Scravegni that Victorios
Durero told me that I was an idiot because I
hadn't seen it, which his figures hugely in this thing.
(26:59):
And I just want to say this to wrap this up,
is that you know, the beginning of this is my
dissertation and also acknowledgement in this book and in the
dissertation one page begins with this book owes the debt
of inspiration to Alice McGraw, Maria Connelliot of the Brooklyn Academy,
and cinematographer Victoria Stiro.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
That's amazing this.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Book really quickly, just I'll tell you what is a
very famous Renaissance guys that probably Math. He's an architect writer,
he's like the he's like the fallout of Frederick the Second.
He's everything that Frederick the Second wanted to be. Eddie
Gorisseecond also is an amazing architect. You got to go
to right northern Bari and see his castle, which is
a circle which steps only this big, so you can
actually run up them, you know, instead of these big
(27:43):
clonky deals. You can run up and down them, so
that knights can run with armor and so forth. Right
and these eight chaurrets around it. It's astounding piece of
architecture that he supervised himself. So look in the notice
of Frederick the Second wanting to be this polymath, which
is what he wants us A language guy, scientist, guy,
a berg guy, you know, biologist, architect, everything you've got.
(28:06):
This dude here, Leon Butt STALBERTI which I'm sure who am?
I'm sure knew everything at Athletic the second it's meant.
The second is like a one off. And he they
say that somebody scholars said in the twenty century, oh
you know what. His family was exiled and then he
came to Florence and in eight months wrote the first
Martyn book on painting in tripart at Latin Ciceronian ideas.
(28:28):
And I'm asking when I was getting master, I'm asking
all these holy to dots, I said, what a great Elaine.
I said, I can't buy it that this guy just
came to Florence and in eight months wrote this astounding
book on Lion's points light art of it. They said,
yeah you did. And one guy rab Hadfield, his great scholar,
(28:50):
said no, everybody knows. He came from Cadua. He came
from Joe too, he came from Bologna, he came through
all this stuff. I said, wh do you teach that?
I said, because Florence is the apex of all things Renaissance,
which is horseshit. It's is horseshit. You know, Florence is
the apex of all things Renaissance, but it's not the
(29:11):
seed of all things Renaissance.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Doctor Peter Weller, this has been such a joy. Next
time I'm into Italy, I want you to be my
tour guide. This was extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
All you got to do is let us know when
you're going, because even if we can't be there with you,
we can turn you on, save you a lot of
time and money and saving you essentially a whole lot
of energy that you don't need to spend.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. This is doctor Weller,
author of Leon batistal Bertie in Exile. Thank you so
much for joining us. This is such a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Okay, listen, I want the last thing. I just wanted
to say this, Frederick Second by David Abolafia is really
the book to read. On the thing, there's a lot
of great books, but this is the book that really
takes you, walks you through the good and the bad
news about Frederick the Second, and by the way, the
wonder what the bad news is about Frederick Second? You
come away thinking, hey, once in a while, there's a hero.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Absolutely, thank you so much. Noble Blood is a production
of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional
(30:21):
writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy
Hit and Julia Melaney. The show is edited and produced
by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il KLi and
executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(30:46):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Hi, this
is Danish Sports.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I am so excited to be here today for a
very special episode of Noble Blood. I'm joined by the
incredible actor, director, historian writer Peter Weller. Just an incredible figure,
an incredible life. You've done so much. We're going to
be talking about the Holy Roman Ember of Frederick the Second,
but before we dive in, I would just love to ask,
(00:32):
and I think my listeners would love to know what
was your transition like going from the acting world in
Hollywood to going back and studying Italian Renaissance art.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
So I knew nothing about art. My mother tried to
introduce me to art. You know, I didn't really get it.
There's a wonderful actress. Most people know it was an
actress model. She's actually an art history design degree from Wellesley.
Was a Girl of the Year under Diana Breeland, was
a stylist for Vogue, a lot of other stuff. Ali McGraw.
Ali McGraw is one of the great beauties of the
world and also one of the smartest people I've ever known,
(01:04):
and I did the movie with her, and I usually
don't get involved, but after the movie she asked me
to go to see Sweeney Todd. When Sweeney Todd first
open and Angel Lansbury, I went to see it on
Saint Patrick's day. I'll never get it. And then when
he started up this affair, and then we turned into
a longtime friendship. It goes on and on and on on,
and she's to this day one of the first real
life thank in my new book, it's because just cannot
(01:26):
game to University press about Renaissance Guide. But Ali's personally
took me by the hand, introduced me to Picasso Picasso's
GUERNI leave New York and go to Once Franco was
either passed away and Spain had a social democracy, Picasso
wanted this cornerstone piece of anti fascist art and horror
(01:47):
to go to Spain. And so there was a big
exhibition at MoMA and you couldn't get in, but if
you were Ali, you could get in. Because Allie's friends were.
People think that she ran with movie No No, she
ran with the literal that glitter out, that she ran
with Halston and Truemy, Capodi and Veland and the head
of moment, and they head of the met powerful powerful
(02:08):
people in New York, both women and men. So she thinks,
by the hand threw me into Picasso, I come out
of five flowers at Picasso. I'm so But this bears
this embarrassment because the second person, other than Maria Connell,
who's a great friend and head of Fit in America
Folk Art Museum, one of the people got me to
the Renaissance. After this happened, I am at the National
(02:30):
Film Festival of Japan with the great Jean Moreau, one
of the greatest actors as ever, Mike met a Boy,
one of the great producers ever, producer Robo cop and
Victoria Sto. And if you haven't heard of him, or
your listeners haven't heard of him, then they have to
leave the show. Because Touroro is the first guy to
filter technicolor, which was against the law to be filtered.
If you see visions of Light, He's the first guy
(02:52):
that the experiment. Really you know, we just take tepic
color for granted. And if you know Apocalypse Now or
Last Time in Paris or The Sheltering Sky or Last
Emperor or Dick Tracy, can I go on and on
and on. Vittorio is a very elite dude and was
versace all the time, and he had this VERSACEI scar
pond and not playing mister Horton because I know I
(03:14):
could talk about Sich Twombley and I could talk about
franket Dollar or whatever. So I say, vittoyo Keia Rito
Pettori too, or this is nineteen ninety two. I say,
who's your favorite painter nineteen ninety one and work Kyoto
and he goes uh. And even the Padua they see
Jolto in the very first one by one four frames
of narrative of light color, perception, dark emotion, negative space narrative.
(03:39):
I go, what this is, Jolto. I don't know who
you're talking about, man, And he takes his versace scar
and he flips it. Look, Francis Coppola said, Victoria Sore
is the only guy who spent two years in the
Philippines in a white suit, and he did, and that's Vittorio.
So he flips his scar, but he says, well, Peter,
(03:59):
we cannot talk about it, and he walks away. Then
I say, you get really pretentious, man, and he goes, no,
you're like the most Americans. You're pretentious, You're like so
many people. You can drop all these names and you
don't know Joto. You have no context, You have no context.
He's the one person that's indemnified in contemporary art. Karo
karof Father of Cubas, that talks about him, Precisions, that
(04:21):
talks about him, roth Coo talks about him, Picasto talks
about him. Rembrandt. I'm going I feel like a dummy.
And I got to sitting at church in the Capella Scrotin,
which is in my book now, and I find out
that that's the one piece, the one Nama piece of
art in the Western world that is like solarified as
a cornerstone, and all the art that comes after it
(04:43):
in the Western world doesn't matter what you're talking about,
post Cubism, abstract Depressionism, piet Mondrian, whatever, They're all gonna
go back to Joto. They're all going to go back
to that. I called up Ali, I go, look, why
didn't you talk about Joto? She says, I did. You
had no interest in the Renaissance. I'll do the horny
Toy New York scene like every other idiot, you know,
(05:04):
I couldn't get you out of modern art. I couldn't
get you out of get there where art. So that's
how I started. I said, how do I start this?
They said, take a classe at Syracuse. Do ten weeks.
You go to Italy anyway, but you know nothing. But
I was the ugly American Dana. I'm telling you this
some benefit of your podcast. I was the guy who
went to Italy and hung out on the piazza smoking
(05:27):
a cigar, walking here and there. Yeah, looking at the thing,
looking at the coliseums, or but never get a deep
dive into it. Pit me eight years before I started
to look at the art and now, yeah, PhD book
with Cambridge University Press. But it wasn't for those two
people shaming me into it, you know. It wasn't like
I just kind of went, oh wow, or I think
(05:48):
I'll do this. I'll flip with the second O and
stop and no, they gonna do this. Here's a good
segue here. One of the things I get fascinated in
when I get my master's degree in a very special
program at Syracuse University, whether it only take it by
four six people a year, is I get fascinated with
the Franciscan movement, which is, by the way, contemporary to
Frederick the second who we're going to talk about today, Owenstaufen.
(06:10):
So Francis of a SIZI. We've all heard of him.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Big saints, statues and gardens all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yeah, big deal, Okay, connect joto. Francis is the guy
who preaches, never is a priest, never does a marriage,
never owns a mass. Francis and Francis man started walking
and talking. And you know, I was talking to a
guy from Oxford and I was speaking in a historiography
class PhD level at my alma mater, UCLA, and I say,
(06:42):
the influence of Francis is a quarter million people following
him within eight years without a fax machine. But here's
what he's say. He's saying, Look, man, walk the walk
of the human Jesus. You don't have to do the
seven steps to happen. If you Hannah what's in front
of you with kindness, if you understand Christ trying to
(07:04):
preach kindness and the suffering with it, then you identify
with it. That's all you got to do, you know.
And people have been listening to this pulpit crack. You know,
God wins and you don't, man, You're the loser and
he's the winner. And all of a sudden, Francis comes on.
You ought to follow the dude, I mean yeah, I
(07:24):
to go in so anyway, when he dies, there's a
whole lot of people really want to follow this thing.
And then of course the hierarchy of the church gets
hold of his movement and says, no, no, no, we
got to build churches, make money, la la la, And
that's too bad, dog, right, Okay, this is right around
the time of Frederick. Frederick has got some towns, and
(07:44):
Francis has got some towns that sympathize with the Franciscans
and someone who sympathize with the pope and want to
make money. So dig this history of the world. Simply
Rome falls in Rome around four point fifty, they burn
the books. You've got nothing. You got tribes coming in.
We used to call them barbarians, oss, vandals, etc. They
(08:07):
come raiding in Italy. Why Italy? Why is everybody want Italy?
Now that's my question to you. You can answer why
does all of Europe want Italy?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Let's see, is it because it's sort of a strategic
stronghold before the crusades strategic.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
It's a finger that sticks into the Med, and the
Med is the only systemic of trade in the world.
So you got this thing that sticks into the Med
that nobody owns because roam's down. Hey man, let's go
conquer the dude, got it. Yeah, So by eight nine hundred,
Charlemagne takes over and unites the war, becomes Holy Woman
(08:44):
I heard night, and unites all these tribes. But there
are still serves in and Muslim groups that have been
in Sicily forever, and they gonna give it up. So
Charlottatne says, okay, all you tribes are under me now,
la la lah. The only one group that doesn't follow
him is Venice. I love it. That's an whole nother story.
I gotta talk about. Venice goes few man, we follow
no emperor nowhere, man. We are Venetian, Venetian, Venetian. They know,
(09:08):
they go off and do their own thing. Yeah, and
everybody else's got to follow him, right, So anyway, Charle
Maine becomes that. Then his Holy Woman empire splits up.
The next thing you know, there's a crusade, and the
crusade is essentially by the time that late ten hundreds,
a pope goes Man, you know what, we're doing enough
business now with the Levant, which is that you got
(09:31):
to think of like your Joe blow out there thinking
of what Islam is now with reactionary fundamentalism as opposed
to moderate and some for Islam, with the Moors and
all the way into the Levant. That's Turkey and Judea
was the most sophisticated civilization of planet Earth. They gave
us numbers, they gave us star science, They brought back science,
(09:52):
brought back medicine, brought back to everything. Whatever you may
think of any religion when it goes into its crusade stage,
Islam at that point was really sophisticated. Yeah, the Moors
are Islamic. They fought against the Arabs to keep Spain.
So you can't just group them all together and go, hey,
this is all a bunch of Arabs. No, they're not
the tribal. So what happens is they got Baliland, and
(10:16):
the Western world wants it. They don't want a new
business with it, they want to own it. It's the
place of Jesus and Moses and you know, Joshua or
whatever man. And so they send a crusade to send
another crusade, another than a crusade, right, okay, So then.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Just for a brief context for our listeners, we're talking
about the Holy Roman Emperor Frederic the Second, and this
is going to be early thirteenth century, so you know,
early twelve hundreds.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Right same time as Francis, by the.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Way, and Frederick the Second was involved in the sixth Crusades, right.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah, it's the dicey deal because the first crusade they
get stuff, and this essentially ends the feudal system, you know,
because people get leave the land and go, hey man,
they need numbers as an account and so forth. The
lawyer's la la la lah. This goes to former university,
the former University of Bologna and so forth, and Uissia
Padua and they start account. Then the second crusade is
kind of dicey. Then the third crusade is a guy
(11:14):
named Frederick Barbara Rosa. Okay, you know the Robin Hood lender, right,
Robin Hood of course. Okay, So Robin Hood is the servant.
Really he's looking for the good king to come back.
Remember his name, Richard the Lionheart Great, And what's wrong
with Richard why can't Richard come back?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Well, I think he was kidnapped by Germans at some point.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, that's right. So who's the German guy that kidnapped
him and said, hey, you haven't recognized me as the
Holy Roman Emperor. And by the way, you owe me
some money because you want to this crusade and we
financed you someone to keep you here. So who's this guy?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Is it Frederick?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
It's his dad, Henry the sixth, and his dad the
Holy Woman Emperor Charlemagne the first one, and there's several
and there's autos and so forth, and then it breaks down.
France says, we don't want to be ali Roman Empire.
We're gonna be France. Germany continues this idea of the
only Reman empire. So you got the starting a hunder
and by the time you get to eleven hundred and
(12:13):
the Third Crusade, the son of Frederick Barbarossa Redbeard. Okay,
I'm gonna back up a second, and this period we're
talking about the famous Normans that invaded England. Normans are
not just normandy knights anymore from you know, Norway or whatever.
They are sexually guns for hire, and they really take
(12:36):
over Sicily. The Norman inclusion of Sicily is amazing. And
these kings, these tancred Norman kings, Roger the first, Roger
the second, these are the guys that bring sovereignty to Sicily.
By what by tolerance? Here's unheard of you. You don't
(12:56):
do tolerance in the Middle Ages, man, You cut off
people's eyes and and so forth. But Roger the second
is the guy who's tolerant of Jews, He's tolerant of Muslims,
He's tolerant of like the princes who want their own
lands off. So this Norman guy right is swinging. Okay.
You know the German guys want like I said, remember
(13:17):
they want Italy. Okay, they can't get it. Why because
in between is a pope going. You can't have the
bottom of the world and the top of the world.
You can't smash us together. Henry the sixth, the guy's
getting that bridge of the lineup, gets this great idea.
You know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna marry Roger
(13:38):
the Norman's daughter. Yes, Constance, I'm gonna marry her. And
that way the Queen of Sicily and me, the King
of Germany, will own the world together.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
It's a pretty good plan. I can't imagine the rest
of the world is happy about it.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
But no they're not. First goes wait on, you know,
the parent's going, hey man, you know I gotta handle
this guy. Francis man, you know what are you doing now?
You squeeze me so longstone short. Any of the six
dies and they have a kid. And they have a
kid in a play called Jesse, which is near Ancona
in the eastern part of Italy, which is beautiful, and
this is Frederick, and Frederick is like taken to Sicily,
(14:18):
and Frederick is a kid. Immediately the infiltration of a
whole lot of Lombards does her up by Milan. French
warrior families come down. I want to take over seas.
Nobody's running Sicily now, man, the Rogers are gone. The
Constances can't really do it on our own. This kid
is amazingly ferociously. There's a legend that when a guy
(14:42):
named Mark Ward, one of the German thugs, came down
to take over Sicily, they looked for the kid to
kill him or to do what when he was hiding
out he's five years old, that he jumped on mark
Ward and started to scratch his face and so forth.
And that's Frederick. I mean, the legends about Frederick are
immense that what he goes on to be is this.
(15:04):
He goes on to first tell the pope, look, the
auto dynasty, the wealth. This is factions and it was
going to turn into guelfs and ghibelins, people who support
the both people' support. They're right, I'm jumping to. This
is about twelve hundreds Frederick's Morning, eleven ninety four, about
ten years after the crusade. Then your mother dies, his
mother tries to school it, his mother tries to give
(15:25):
him tolerance. This is a one off, dude. You gotta
learn stuff. You gotta learn languages. You got to learn Hebrew,
you gotta learn Arabic, you gotta learn Greek. You gotta
learn these people. Man, these people are around you, and
you better be talking their lingo if you want something
to do with it, because you can't just win by domination,
even though you gotta remember, despots do live and they are,
you know, caged. Yeah, And Frederick second is going to
(15:48):
spur a guy to debt, you know, and tell a
guy that you're gonna have your tongue cut out somewhere,
so they're not nice guys at the end of the day.
But in the realm of humanism, I'm reading about Franciscanism.
It's Syracuse, and I'm reading about how these certain cities
hid are the spiritual Franciscans. You wanted to just walk
the walk of Francis and not be part of the
(16:09):
money thing. And I'm reading about how certain parts of
the pope did not support these spiritual Franciscans, but the
only woman, Frederic the second, did so I get deep
dive into Frederic second, and I see that he's into science,
see that he's in the literature. I see that this
guy's obsessed with birds. I see obsessed with writing, that
he's a vegetarian, that he weighs the same amount when
(16:32):
he was sixty four years old and when he died
that he did when he was eighteen. I also see
that he went and got Germany back with the Pope's approval,
with a whole lot lesser men than Otto, by going
in and promising all these princes that I'm not going
to get your jam man, I'm just going to be
(16:53):
the Holy Roman Emperor. You guys can continue your act.
I don't want to dominate, you scold, you complain, you
guys guy pay me the veig, but you guys can groove.
And then within two months they support him. Then he's
ordered to go on a crusader. He tells the Pope,
I will I gotta go back and make sure Sicily's mine.
And he goes back to Sicily and he does the
(17:15):
same thing. He essentially wings Sicily through diplomacy. Can't Klowich
writes a book on the guy that lionizes and the
great David Atalafia, who is wrote I think the greatest
book on him, who is the mentor to my mentor.
Pete Stacy at UCLA writes a book that like, say,
wait a minute, you gotta put Frederic the Second because
(17:36):
by now Beta everyone has hasted Frederic the Second on
is like something else. But it's like Cyrus the Great
with the freedom of the Jews from Babylon and the
Cyrus Cylinder. The Cyrus Cylindator says, you know, hey, all
you Jews can go back from Babylon and live in
your home, because I write a vision from Zora's division
that people want to live on the turf of their homeland.
(17:58):
Nobody did this in twenty six PC. They killed you
or dispersed you or enslaved you. Yeah, but he did
it once in a while as a dude or a
woman who goes, you know what, I see that the
freedom of people is better than the domination of people.
I can allowing people liberties. The way to control your
(18:19):
sheep is give him a large pasture. And I think
that is essentially what Frederick is famous for. And Frederick,
by the way, goes on a crusade and he wins
territory by diplomacy, and it pisss off the Pope. They say,
we know what diplomacy, man, we want like dominance, and
he goes, yeah, I ain't gonna do that. Then he
(18:40):
comes back and you know, he's considered the Holy King
of Jerusalem and so forth, and Pope hates that and
he gets into an antagonistic thing. Well, but it starts
the very first state endowed university in Naples, which is
called it called the University toa Frederica Secundo named after him.
He does so many things to essentially trans formed the
(19:00):
idea of and ab lafia. This guy ropes him in yeah,
and essentially says that Frederick you cannot divorce Frederick from
essentially the guy who was in a clash with Catholicism,
as almost all emperors were, you know, until eighteen hundred.
Cannot take him out of the context though, the dude
(19:21):
who wanted to be acknowledged as you know, the dude
of it all. But the acknowledgment aside, yeah, which everybody wanted.
How he went about it in so many ways, was
so deferential to human rights in many ways, you know.
And people say, yeah, okay, man, okay, look he took
(19:42):
all the Muslims in Sicily. You didn't tell him he
gave him a hundred thousand acres or ten thousand acres
in Apulia.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
But if I am correct, he does get excommunicated four times. Yes,
they forgive him. They bring him back, they say, just kidding.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
You know, how they bring you back because he's diplomatic. Yeah,
he's diplomatic. What is And he's diplomatic what the noise is. Ironically,
the guy that really hates him is Gregory than Knight,
and Gregory the Knight is Ugolino, the guy who championed
Francis a Vesisi. He's the guy from Umbria who went
with Francis to Innocent the third and today man. The
(20:19):
guy's preaching, but he's not a priest. I gotta think anything,
why I don't kill him? Let him walk around. And
that's the guy who later becomes the pope who hates
veteran and he's a very humanist poet, Ugolino, very humanist,
but he just can't take it that Frederick is not
bowing to him.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I think of Frederick the Second as sort of the
quintessential renaissance man. You know, this is some intolerant spoke,
multiple languages, a mathematician, a poet, a composer. Obviously, when
he's excommune indicated multiple times by the Pope, we're going
to get some sources vilifying him, these pro papal chronicles.
How would you define his legacy looking at all of
(21:10):
those sources and sort of weighing it all together.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
You know, I want to be David Abulafia and say,
wait a minute, let's put the rains on theticism. You know,
the mystic legend of this guy. Yeah, he did kill people.
He did jill his best friend.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
You know, it's patrision, but it was a brutal time.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
That's right. You can't take it out of context. But
he did also give people right to civil courts, over
land distributions or what. I'm thinking that he is the forerunner.
I mean, in spite of the fact that doctor Abolafia
wants to rain him in. I finished reading the Abelavia's
book and I go, you know what, man, the guy
is still not like anybody else. And you acknowledge him
(21:52):
so many times in there. Well, come on, thinking three
thousand people into Germany, I guess an army of almost
like you know, eight thousand dudes, and like talking your
way diplomacy, diplomatically winning that whole thing back and doing
the same thing at Sicily. This is gifted stuff. This
is the art of rap I think that's his great legacy.
(22:14):
His great legacy is diplomacy, I think. And one can
bring up all of the footnotes about brutality, but like
you said, it's the time you're living in and somebody
tries to kill you, you kill them. That's the way
it goes. Well.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I do have one question about Frederick's legacy. It looks
like after he dies we're going to get the Great
interregnum with the Holy Roman Emperor. There's not going to
be a clear succession after him. Why is that.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I don't think that MANFREDI or Manfred or Conrad Conridine grandson,
I don't think they had the talent. Yeah, if you're
fatherless and then you're raised by this incredible mother who
is like running a show and instills the temperance in
you that you're gonna live through, that's inured. I mean,
(23:03):
that's almost something that he can't be taught.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Hmm.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So his jam, which is speaking and coming to terms
and let's meet, let's do this, let's do that. It's
unique to him and when he goes, I don't think
that he's taught that to his kids or his great kids.
Beyonka his lover. Basically they say he married who ivn
Avolafia acknowledges was the one sort of passion in his life.
(23:29):
He probably did marry her before he died, but they
never spent time with the kid. I got to go,
you know this is right, this is wrong. Here's what
you do. You go here, you do that. I don't
know Frederick had those people, the school, these kids. I
don't think his kids knew international law. I don't think
he spoke Brive languages. I'm sorry. I don't think they
like travel with him in all his places. His one kid, Henry,
(23:52):
tried to revolt against him. He had to take the
guy down he had and imprison his own kid in Germany.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
So he's a great holy Roman emperor, not a great.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Father, not a great dad.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, well, nobody's perfect.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
I know, you know what, I gotta remember that my
kid and I with the POMPEII. My son is the
attention span of all thirteen year old which is about,
you know, six feet until it gets too hot or
the phones are gone or whatever. Hey, he's in POMPEII.
He said, hey, Dad, over here, look over here, this
is where they had the sewage pipes. Now I've done
(24:27):
historiography on POMPEII. I had to present on POMPEII. I
had to take tours, not to tours, but school groups
do pompe And I've never seen these sewage pipes. And
I said, how did you do that? He says, I
found it a TikTok. He found the friggin sewage pipes
in POMPEII on TikTok. And then he's got the scholar
Antonio and shows us. I almost started crying. Man, I
(24:50):
was so impressed with him. I was impressed that he
was showing me something. And two days ago, two scholars
giving up to me and they were talking about the
sewage systems in Roma. Said, were they essentially discovered by pass? Yeah?
She was just vompe have taught us everything. So my
kid taught me about them. What do you mean your
kid talking about it? I said, about two weeks ago,
my kid on TikTok find out where the sewage systems
were in POMPEII and were showing me. And these guys
(25:13):
are like your thirteen year old kid on TikTok was
showing you where the sewage systems or I said, yeah,
and it's just stopped us dead data, so good dead
good leader. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I was in POMPEII a few years ago, and the
fun fact about the plumbing that stuck with me. Maybe
the listeners don't know, maybe it's incredibly obvious, but the
elemental symbol for lead is peeb, and that comes from
the Latin word for plumbing plumb them peeb because their
pipes were lead, their plumbing was lead. Who knew?
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Did somebody teach you that?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
I think our tour guide said that it must have
been in the back of my mind. When I studied
chemistry in college, I.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Only learned PB meaning lead in Rome, with the pipes
in Rome, you know, coming out of places like the
Colise and down with the eastrect channels of the history channel.
Learners that I wasn't walking around Pompeii with a thirteen
year old. But that's great that you know that it
isn't Pompeii extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I will say it was one of the historical sites
that truly floored me, that exceeded all expectations for me.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
You have to go back. I've been twenty nine times now,
but look twenty nine times, and now I find out
for my kid where the plumbing is.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Doctor Peter Weller with your brand new book Leon Batista
Alberti in Exile by Peter Weller.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
And the subtitle is Tracing the Path.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Too, the first modern book on painting.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yes, and in it are a ton of photographs and
images and so forth. Not to mention at the beginning
of it is Joto in the Capella Scravegni that Victorios
Durero told me that I was an idiot because I
hadn't seen it, which his figures hugely in this thing.
(26:59):
And I just want to say this to wrap this up,
is that you know, the beginning of this is my
dissertation and also acknowledgement in this book and in the
dissertation one page begins with this book owes the debt
of inspiration to Alice McGraw, Maria Connelliot of the Brooklyn Academy,
and cinematographer Victoria Stiro.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
That's amazing this.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Book really quickly, just I'll tell you what is a
very famous Renaissance guys that probably Math. He's an architect writer,
he's like the he's like the fallout of Frederick the Second.
He's everything that Frederick the Second wanted to be. Eddie
Gorisseecond also is an amazing architect. You got to go
to right northern Bari and see his castle, which is
a circle which steps only this big, so you can
actually run up them, you know, instead of these big
(27:43):
clonky deals. You can run up and down them, so
that knights can run with armor and so forth. Right
and these eight chaurrets around it. It's astounding piece of
architecture that he supervised himself. So look in the notice
of Frederick the Second wanting to be this polymath, which
is what he wants us A language guy, scientist, guy,
a berg guy, you know, biologist, architect, everything you've got.
(28:06):
This dude here, Leon Butt STALBERTI which I'm sure who am?
I'm sure knew everything at Athletic the second it's meant.
The second is like a one off. And he they
say that somebody scholars said in the twenty century, oh
you know what. His family was exiled and then he
came to Florence and in eight months wrote the first
Martyn book on painting in tripart at Latin Ciceronian ideas.
(28:28):
And I'm asking when I was getting master, I'm asking
all these holy to dots, I said, what a great Elaine.
I said, I can't buy it that this guy just
came to Florence and in eight months wrote this astounding
book on Lion's points light art of it. They said,
yeah you did. And one guy rab Hadfield, his great scholar,
(28:50):
said no, everybody knows. He came from Cadua. He came
from Joe too, he came from Bologna, he came through
all this stuff. I said, wh do you teach that?
I said, because Florence is the apex of all things Renaissance,
which is horseshit. It's is horseshit. You know, Florence is
the apex of all things Renaissance, but it's not the
(29:11):
seed of all things Renaissance.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Doctor Peter Weller, this has been such a joy. Next
time I'm into Italy, I want you to be my
tour guide. This was extraordinary.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
All you got to do is let us know when
you're going, because even if we can't be there with you,
we can turn you on, save you a lot of
time and money and saving you essentially a whole lot
of energy that you don't need to spend.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. This is doctor Weller,
author of Leon batistal Bertie in Exile. Thank you so
much for joining us. This is such a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Okay, listen, I want the last thing. I just wanted
to say this, Frederick Second by David Abolafia is really
the book to read. On the thing, there's a lot
of great books, but this is the book that really
takes you, walks you through the good and the bad
news about Frederick the Second, and by the way, the
wonder what the bad news is about Frederick Second? You
come away thinking, hey, once in a while, there's a hero.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Absolutely, thank you so much. Noble Blood is a production
of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional
(30:21):
writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy
Hit and Julia Melaney. The show is edited and produced
by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il KLi and
executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(30:46):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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