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February 18

February 18

February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 316 days remaining (317 in leap years).

Events

- 3102 BC - Epoch (origin) of the Kali Yuga- Lord Krishna leaves his mortal coil.
- 1229 - The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor signs a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy.
- 1478 - George, Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, is privately executed in the Tower of London.
- 1685 - Fort St. Louis is established by a Frenchman at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas.
- 1797 - Trinidad is surrendered to a British fleet under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby.
- 1814 - Battle of Montereau occurs.
- 1841 - The first ongoing filibuster in the United States Senate begins and lasts until March 11.
- 1856 - The American Party (Know-Nothings) convene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to nominate their first Presidential candidate, former President (Millard Fillmore).
- 1861 - In Montgomery, Alabama Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
- 1861 - With the Italian unification almost complete, King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumes the title of King of Italy.
- 1865 - In the U.S., Delaware voters reject the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and vote to continue the practice of slavery. (Delaware finally ratifies the amendment on February 12, 1901.)
- 1878 - The Lincoln County War begins in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
- 1885 - Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time.
- 1911 - The first official flight with air mail takes place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 km away.
- 1913 - Raymond Poincaré becomes President of France.
- 1929 - First Academy Awards are announced.
- 1930 - While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
- 1930 - Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.
- 1932 - The Empire of Japan declares Manzhouguo (obsolete Chinese name for Manchuria) independent from China.
- 1943 - The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rose movement.
- 1943 - Joseph Goebbels delivers the Sportpalast speech
- 1948 - Eamon de Valera resigns as Taoiseach of Ireland.
- 1953 - The first 3D film, Bwana Devil, opens.
- 1953 - Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz sign an $8,000,000 contract to continue the I Love Lucy television series through 1955.
- 1965 - The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
- 1970 - The Chicago Eight are found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic Party national convention.
- 1972 - The California Supreme Court invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life in prison.
- 1974 - The game show Tattletales debuts in the slot vacated by the long-running soap opera The Secret Storm.
- 1974 - KISS releases their self-titled debut album.
- 1977 - The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle goes on its maiden "flight" while sitting on top of a Boeing 747.
- 1983 - Thirteen people die and one is seriously injured in the Wah Mee Massacre in Seattle, Washington, said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in American history.
- 1985 - The legendary "mirror globe" ident, first used in 1969, is seen for the last time in regular rotation on BBC1.
- 1998 - Two white separatists are arrested in Nevada and accused of plotting a biological attack on New York City subways.
- 2003 - Nearly 200 people die in the Daegu subway fire in South Korea
- 2004 - Up to 295 people, including nearly 200 rescue workers, die near Neyshabur in Iran when a run-away freight train carrying sulfur, petrol and fertiliser catches fire and explodes.
- 2005 - The United Kingdom law banning fox hunting, hare coursing and other sports which kill wild mammals is enforced from this date.

Births

- 1516 - Queen Mary I of England (d. 1558)
- 1530 - Uesugi Kenshin, Japanese samurai and warlord (d. 1578)
- 1559 - Isaac Casaubon, French classical scholar (d. 1614)
- 1602 - Per Brahe (the younger), Swedish soldier and statesman (d. 1680)
- 1635 - Johan Göransson Gyllenstierna, Swedish statesman (d. 1680)
- 1609 - Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, English statesman and historian (d. 1674)
- 1642 - Marie Champmeslé, French actress (d. 1698)
- 1658 - Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, French writer (d. 1743)
- 1745 - Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist (d. 1827)
- 1835 - César Cui, Lithuanian composer (d. 1918)
- 1838 - Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher (d. 1916)
- 1846 - Wilson Barrett, English actor and playwright (d. 1904)
- 1848 - Louis Comfort Tiffany, American glass artist (d. 1933)
- 1849 - Alexander Kielland, Norwegian author (d. 1906)
- 1859 - Sholom Aleichem, Russian Yiddish humorist and author (d. 1916)
- 1871 - Harry Brearley, English inventor (d. 1948)
- 1883 - Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek writer (d. 1957)
- 1884 - Andrew Watson Myles, Canadian politician (d. 1970)
- 1890 - Edward Arnold, American actor (d. 1956)
- 1890 - Adolphe Menjou, American actor (d. 1963)
- 1892 - Wendell Willkie, U.S. Presidential candidate (d. 1944)
- 1896 - Andre Breton, French writer (d. 1966)
- 1898 - Enzo Ferrari, Italian race car driver and manufacturer (d. 1988)
- 1901 - Reginald Sheffield, British actor (d. 1957)
- 1903 - Nikolai Podgorny, President of the Soviet Union (d. 1983)
- 1905 - Jan Gies, Dutch resistance fighter (d. 1993)
- 1906 - Hans Asperger, Austrian pediatrician (d. 1980)
- 1909 - Wallace Stegner, American writer (d. 1993)
- 1915 - Phyllis Calvert, British actress (d. 2002)
- 1919 - Jack Palance, American actor
- 1920 - Bill Cullen, American game show host (d. 1990)
- 1920 - Eric Gairy, Grenadan politician (d. 1997)
- 1922 - Helen Gurley Brown, American editor and publisher
- 1922 - Allan Melvin, American actor
- 1925 - George Kennedy, American actor
- 1927 - John Warner, U.S. Senator
- 1929 - Len Deighton, British author
- 1930 - Gahan Wilson, American cartoonist
- 1931 - Johnny Hart, American cartoonist
- 1931 - Toni Morrison, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1931 - Bob St. Clair, American football player
- 1932 - Milos Forman, Czech film director
- 1933 - Yoko Ono, Japanese-born singer, artist, and wife of John Lennon
- 1933 - Bobby Robson, English football manager
- 1933 - Mary Ure, Scottish actress (d. 1975)
- 1936 - Jean Auel, American writer
- 1938 - István Szabó, Hungarian film director
- 1943 - Graeme Garden, Scottish writer, comedian, and actor
- 1945 - Judy Rankin, American golfer
- 1947 - Princess Christina of the Netherlands
- 1947 - Dennis DeYoung, American musician (Styx)
- 1948 - Sinéad Cusack, Irish actress
- 1949 - Gary Ridgway, American serial killer
- 1950 - John Hughes, American director, producer, and writer
- 1950 - Cybill Shepherd, American actress
- 1952 - Maurice Lucas, American basketball player
- 1952 - Juice Newton, American entertainer
- 1954 - John Travolta, American actor
- 1957 - Marita Koch, German athlete
- 1957 - Vanna White, American game show presenter
- 1960 - Greta Scacchi, Italian actress
- 1962 - Julie Strain, American actress
- 1964 - Matt Dillon, American actor
- 1965 - Dr. Dre, American rapper and record producer
- 1967 - Roberto Baggio, Italian footballer
- 1968 - Molly Ringwald, American actress
- 1970 - Susan Egan, American musical actress
- 1973 - Claude Makelele, French footballer
- 1975 - Gary Neville, English footballer
- 1981 - Andrei Kirilenko, Russian basketball player
- 1981 - Buddy Nielsen, American singer (Senses Fail)
- 1983 - Jermaine Jenas, English footballer
- 1985 - Lee Boyd Malvo, American serial killer
- 1988 - Rihanna, West Indian singer

Deaths

- 806 - Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople (b. 1866)
- 814 - Angilbert, Frankish monk and confidant of Charlemagne
- 901 - Thabit ibn Qurra, Arab astronomer and mathematician (b. 826)
- 999 - Pope Gregory V
- 1139 - Prince Yaropolk II of Kiev (b. 1082)
- 1294 - Kublai Khan of the Mongol Empire (b. 1215)
- 1379 - Albert II of Mecklenburg
- 1478 - George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV and Richard III of England (executed) (b. 1449)
- 1535 - Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, astrologer and alchemist (b. 1486)
- 1546 - Martin Luther, German religious reformer (b. 1483)
- 1564 - Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian artist (b. 1475)
- 1583 - Antonio Francesco Grazzini, Itlian writer (b. 1503)
- 1654 - Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, French writer (b. 1594)
- 1683 - Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem, Dutch painter (b. 1620)
- 1712 - Louis, Duke of Burgundy, heir to the throne of France (b. 1682)
- 1718 - Pierre Antoine Motteux, French-born English dramatist (b. 1663)
- 1743 - Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, last of the Medicis (b. 1667)
- 1748 - Otto Ferdinand Graf von Abensperg und Traun, Austrian field marshal (b. 1677)
- 1772 - Johann Hartwig Ernst, Count von Bernstorff, Danish statesman (b. 1712)
- 1778 - Joseph Marie Terray, French statesman (b. 1715)
- 1780 - Kristijonas Donelaitis, Lithuanian poet (b. 1714)
- 1788 - John Whitehurst, English clockmaker and scientist (b. 1713)
- 1803 - Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, German poet (b. 1719)
- 1931 - Milan Sufflay, Croatian politician (b. 1879)
- 1933 - James J. Corbett, American boxer (b. 1866)
- 1938 - David King Udall, American politician (b. 1851)
- 1942 - Albert Payson Terhune, American author (b. 1872)
- 1956 - Gustave Charpentier, French composer
- 1957 - Henry Norris Russell, American astronomer (b. 1877)
- 1966 - Robert Rossen, American screenwriter, producer, and director (d. 1908
- 1967 - J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist (b. 1904)
- 1973 - Frank Costello, Italian-born gangster (b. 1891)
- 1977 - Andy Devine, American actor (b. 1905)
- 1978 - Maggie McNamara, American actress (b. 1928)
- 1981 - John Knudsen Northrop, American aircraft designer (b. 1895)
- 1982 - Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand author (b. 1895)
- 1993 - Kerry Von Erich, American professional wrestler
- 1993 - Jacqueline Hill, British actress (b. 1929)
- 1997 - Emily Hahn, American writer (b. 1905)
- 1998 - Harry Caray, baseball broadcaster (b. 1917)
- 1999 - Noam Pitlik, American actor and director (b. 1932)
- 2001 - Balthus, French-Polish painter (b. 1908)
- 2001 - Dale Earnhardt, American race car driver (b. 1951)
- 2001 - Eddie Mathews, baseball player (b. 1931)
- 2003 - Isser Harel, Israeli Mossad leader (b. 1912)
- 2004 - Jean Rouch, French filmmaker and ethnologist (b. 1917)

Holidays and observances

- Independence Day in The Gambia, (1965)

External links

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/18 BBC: On This Day]
- [http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20050218.html The New York Times: On This Day] ---- February 17 - February 19 - January 18 - March 18 -- listing of all days ko:2월 18일 ms:18 Februari ja:2月18日 simple:February 18 th:18 กุมภาพันธ์

Leap year

A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing an extra day or month in order to keep the calendar year in sync with an astronomical or seasonal year. Seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of days, so a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would over time drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. Leap years (which keep the calendar in sync with the year) should not be confused with leap seconds (which keep clock time in sync with the day).

Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar, the current standard calendar in most of the world, adds a 29th day to February in all years evenly divisible by 4, except for century years (those ending in -00), which receive the extra day only if they are evenly divisible by 400. Thus 1996 was a leap year whereas 1999 was not, and 1600, 2000 and 2400 are leap years but 1700, 1800, 1900 and 2100 are not. The reasoning behind this rule is as follows:
- The Gregorian calendar is designed to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21, so that the date of Easter (celebrated on the Sunday after the 14th day of the Moon that falls on or after 21 March) remains correct with respect to the vernal equinox.
- The vernal equinox year is currently about 365.242375 days long.
- The Gregorian leap year rule gives an average year length of 365.2425 days. This difference of a little over 0.0001 days means that in around 8,000 years, the calendar will be about one day behind where it should be. But in 8,000 years' time the length of the vernal equinox year will have changed by an amount we can't accurately predict (see below). So the Gregorian leap year rule does a good enough job. Image:Gregoriancalendarleap.png

Which day is the leap day?

The Gregorian calendar is a modification of the Julian calendar first used by the Romans. The Roman calendar originated as a lunar calendar (though from the 5th century BC it no longer followed the real moon) and named its days after three of the phases of the moon: the new moon (calends, hence "calendar"), the first quarter (nones) and the full moon (ides). Days were counted down (inclusively) to the next named day, so 24 February was ante diem sextum calendas martii ("the sixth day before the calends of March"). Since 45 BC, February in a leap year had two days called "the sixth day before the calends of March". The extra day was originally the second of these, but since the third century it was the first. Hence the term bissextile day for 24 February in a bissextile year. Where this custom is followed, anniversaries after the inserted day are moved in leap years. For example, the former feast day of Saint Matthias, 24 February in ordinary years, would be 25 February in leap years. This historical nicety is, however, in the process of being discarded: The European Union declared that, starting in 2000, 29 February rather than 24 February would be leap day, and the Roman Catholic Church also now uses 29 February as leap day. The only tangible difference is felt in countries that celebrate feast days.

Julian calendar

The Julian calendar adds an extra day to February in years divisible by 4. This rule gives an average year length of 365.25 days. The excess of about 0.0076 days with respect to the vernal equinox year means that the vernal equinox moves a day earlier in the calendar every 130 years or so.

Revised Julian Calendar

The Revised Julian calendar adds an extra day to February in years divisible by 4, except for years divisible by 100 that do not leave a remainder of 200 or 600 when divided by 900. This rule agrees with the rule for the Gregorian calendar until 2799. The first year that dates in the Revised Julian calendar will not agree with the those in the Gregorian calendar will be 2800, because it will be a leap year in the Gregorian calendar but not in the Revised Julian calendar. This rule gives an average year length of 365.242222… days. This is a very good approximation to the mean tropical year, but because the vernal equinox tropical year is slightly longer, the Revised Julian calendar does not do as good a job as the Gregorian calendar of keeping the vernal equinox on or close to 21 March.

Chinese calendar

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, so a leap year has an extra month, often called an embolismic month after the Greek word for it. In the Chinese calendar the leap month is added according to a complicated rule, which ensures that month 11 is always the month that contains the northern winter solstice. The intercalary month takes the same number as the preceding month; for example, if it follows the second month then it is simply called "leap second month".

Hebrew calendar

The Hebrew calendar is also lunisolar with an embolistic month. In the Hebrew calendar the extra month is called Adar Alef (first Adar) and is added before Adar, which then becomes Adar Sheni (second Adar). According to the Metonic cycle, this is done seven times every nineteen years, specifically, in years, 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19. In addition, the Hebrew calendar has postponement rules that postpone the start of the year by one or two days. The year before the postponement gets one or two extra days, and the year whose start is postponed loses one or two days. These postponement rules reduce the number of different combinations of year length and starting day of the week from 28 to 14, and regulate the location of certain religious holidays in relation to the Sabbath.

Hindu Calendar

In the Hindu calendar, which is a lunisolar calendar, the embolismic month is called adhika maas (extra month). It is the month in which the sun is in the same sign of the stellar zodiac on two consecutive dark moons.

Iranian calendar

The Iranian calendar also has a single intercalated day once in every four years, but every 33 years or so the leap years will be five years apart instead of four years apart. The system used is more accurate and more complicated, and is based on the time of the March equinox as observed from Teheran. The 33-year period is not completely regular; every so often the 33-year cycle will be broken by a cycle of 29 or 37 years.

Long term leap year rules

The accumulated difference between the Gregorian calendar and the vernal equinoctial year amounts to 1 day in about 8,000 years. This suggests that the calendar needs to be improved by another refinement to the leap year rule: perhaps by avoiding leap years in years divisible by 8,000. (The most common such proposal is to avoid leap years in years divisible by 4,000 [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22gregorian+calendar%22+error+%22leap+year%22+4000]. This is based on the difference between the Gregorian calendar and the mean tropical year. Others claim, erroneously, that the Gregorian calendar itself already contains a refinement of this kind [http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mleapyr.html].) However, there is little point in planning a calendar so far ahead because over a timescale of tens of thousands of years the number of days in a year will change for a number of reasons, most notably: #Precession of the equinoxes moves the position of the vernal equinox with respect to perihelion and so changes the length of the vernal equinoctial year. #Tidal acceleration from the sun and moon slows the rotation of the earth, making the day longer. In particular, the second component of change depends on such things as post-glacial rebound and sea level rise due to climate change. We can't predict these changes accurately enough to be able to make a calendar that will be accurate to a day in tens of thousands of years.

Marriage proposal

There is a tradition, said to go back to Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget in 5th century Ireland, whereby women may only make marriage proposals in leap years.

Saint Patrick and the leap year

:Saint Patrick, having driven the frogs out of the bogs was walking along the shores of Lough Neagh, when he was accosted by Saint Bridget in tears, and was told that a mutiny had broken out in the nunnery over which she presided, the ladies claiming the right of popping the question. :Saint Patrick said he would concede them the right every seventh year, when Saint Bridget threw her arms round his neck, and exclaimed, "Arrah, Pathrick, jewel, I daurn't go back to the girls wid such a proposal. Make it one year in four." Saint Patrick replied, "Bridget, acushla, squeeze me that way again, an' I'll give ye leap-year, the longest of the lot." Saint Bridget, upon this, popped the question to St Patrick himself, who, of course, could not marry: so he patched up the difficulty as best he could with a kiss and a silk gown. (Source: Evans, Ivor H, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988) According to a 1288 law in Scotland, fines were levied if the proposal was refused by the man; compensation ranged from a kiss to a silk gown to soften the blow. Because men felt that put them at too great a risk, the tradition was in some places tightened to restricting female proposals to 29 February.

Birthdays

A person who was born on 29 February may be called a "leapling". In non-leap years they usually celebrate their birthday on 28 February or 1 March. There are many instances in children's literature where a person's claim to be only a quarter of their actual age turns out be based on counting their leap-year birthdays. A similar device is used in the plot of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance. Category:Calendars Category:Units of time als:Schaltjahr ko:윤년 ja:閏年 simple:Leap year th:ปีอธิกสุรทิน

Epoch

The word epoch can mean either an interval of time, or a particular point in time used as a reference point.
- In common usage, the term is often used to apply to a period of time when significant related events took place. Synonyms include historical period and era (links are to disambiguation pages).
- In geology, the recent (to the geologist) past is divided into a series of epochs of a few million years each. See geologic timescale.
- In computing and telecommunications, an epoch date is a specific date and time used as the reference for all other times. The Unix epoch is an example.
- In astronomy, an epoch (astronomy) is a moment in time for which celestial coordinates or orbital elements are specified.
- The epoch of a calendar era is the year, day, or instant from which the later (and earlier) years of a calendar are counted.
- The Epoch was a vehicle capable of time travel in the popular SNES game, Chrono Trigger.
- Epoch is a supervillian written in DC comics also known as the Lord of Time.
- Epoch is the name of a Japanese video game company. They released consoles in the early and mid 1980s
- [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233657/ Epoch] is the name of a TV movie from the year 2000.

Krishna

:This article is about the Hindu deity. For other meanings, see Krishna (disambiguation). Krishna (IAST , the Sanskrit for "dark" or "black"), is according to common Hindu tradition the eighth avatar of Vishnu. In Gaudiya Vaishnavism he is seen as the Supreme God. God

Major aspects

Krishna appears under many names, in a multiplicity of stories, among different cultures, and in different traditions. Sometimes these contradict each other, though there is a common core story that is central to most people's knowledge of Krishna. Among his important or celebrated aspects are:
- Govinda Krishna, the lord of the cow-herders. He is contrasted in this to his brother Balarama representing the cultivators, who is sometimes called Halayudha - 'armed with a plough'.
- Krishna the focus of devotion (the lover, the attractive one, the flute player). He is frequently shown playing the flute, attracting and bewildering the gopis of Vrindavana.
- Krishna the child (Bala Krishna). Stories of his upbringing in Gokula and Vrindavan are a staple of children's tales in India.
- The incarnation of the Supreme Being, and the divine Guru, who teaches Arjuna how to take the right action in the Bhagavad Gita.

Texts, stories, and literature

Bhagavad Gita A number of local traditions and regional deities may have been subsumed into the stories and person of Krishna. Accounts of or ballads about Krishna occur in a large number of works. These include the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, and the Gita Govinda. Roughly one quarter of the Bhagavata Purana (mostly in the tenth book) is spent extolling his life and philosophy. The best known, or the most important stories of Krishna, include these:
- Krishna the butter-thief (Maakhanchor). One of the most popular children's stories is that of the butter-thief, the child stealing freshly made butter from his mother.
- The killer of Putana. She was a demoness who was sent to kill him by getting him to suckle her poisoned breasts.
- Krishna Giridhari. As a boy, he raised Govardhana hill to protect villagers from rain and flood sent by Indra.
- Govinda Krishna, the beloved of the gopis. The original stories of Krishna as a boy included his adolescent play with the Gopis or cowgirls of the village of Vrindavana. These were developed to form the basis of the Gita Govinda, and numerous other later works.
- Krishna Vaasudeva the prince, of the Yadavas at Mathura and later at Dwaraka. As a prince he was also the husband of Rukmini.
- Krishna, together with Arjuna, was responsible for the burning of the Khandava forest.
- He plays a major role in the events leading up to the Kurukshetra war in the Mahabharata, helping the Pandavas who accept him as their counsel and guide. He protects the dignity of Draupadi when Dushasana tries to strip her in the court.
- Paartha-sarathi – the charioteer of Arjuna (Paartha) during the great battle where, he instructs Arjuna in dharma and yoga in the Bhagavad Gita.

Summary of the story of Krishna

This summary is derived from the Mahabharata, and the Harivamsaparva, an addendum to it. Harivamsaparva

Birth and childhood

Krishna was of the royal family of Mathura, and was the eighth son born to the princess Devaki, and her husband Vasudeva, a noble of the court. He was born in a prison cell in Mathura, and the place of his birth is now known as Krishnajanmabhoomi, where a temple is raised in his memory. As his life was in danger from his uncle Kamsa the king, he was smuggled out to be raised by his foster parents Yashoda and Nanda in the forest at Vrindavana. Two of his siblings also survived, Balarama and Subhadra.

Boyhood and youth

He reached adulthood at Vrindavana. The original corpus of stories of his youth here include that of his life with, and his protection of, the local people. They included those of his play with the gopis of the village, including Radha, which later became known as the rasa lila.

Krishna the prince

Krishna as a young man returned to Mathura, overthrew his uncle Kamsa, and became ruler of the Yadavas at Mathura. In this period he became a friend of Arjuna and the other Pandava princes of the Kuru kingdom on the other side of the Yamuna. Later, he takes his Yadava subjects to Dwaraka (in modern Gujarat). He married Rukmini, daughter of King Bhishmaka of Vidarbha.

The Kurukshetra War

In the Mahabharata, Krishna is cousin to both sides in the war between the Pandavas and Kauravas. He asks the sides to choose between his army and himself. The Kauravas pick his army and he sides with the Pandavas. He agrees to be the chariot driver for Arjuna in the great battle. The Bhagavad Gita is the advice given to Arjuna by Krishna before the start of the battle.

The last days

Krishna rules the Yadavas at Dwaraka with his wife Rukmini. Later, the Yadavas kill themselves in infighting. Krishna dwells for a time in the forest, is shot in the foot when asleep by a hunter, and dies there.

The Bhakti traditions

Bhagavad Gita (190 BC-180 BC)
Obv: Indian god Balarama-Samkarshana, wearing an ornate headress, earrings, sword in sheath, holding a mace in his right hand and a plow-symbol in the left. Greek legend: BASILEOS AGATOKLEOUS "King Agathocles".
Rev: Indian god Vasudeva-Krishna, with ornate headdress, earrings, sword in sheath, holding sankha (pear-shaped vase) and chakra (wheel). Brahmi legend: RAJANE AGATHUKLAYASA "King Agathocles".]] Bhakti, meaning devotion, is not confined to any one deity of Hinduism. However Krishna has become the most important and popular focus of the devotional and ecstatic aspects of Hindu religion. Devotees of Krishna subscribe to the concept of lila, or divine play as the central principle of the universe. This is counterpoint to another avatar of Vishnu: Rama, "He of the straight and narrow path of maryada, or rules and regulations."

Earlier traditions

Those bhakti movements devoted to Krishna first became prominent in southern India in the late 1st millennium. Earlier works included those of the Alvar saints of the Tamil country. A major collection of their works is the Divya Prabandham.

Gita Govinda - the song of the cowherd

Certain literary works were important to later development of the bhakti traditions, including especially the Gita Govinda. This work was composed by Jayadeva in eastern India, in the 12th century. It elaborated part of the story of Krishna, and of one particular gopi, called Radha who had been a minor character in the Mahabharata. According to one interpretation of this work, Radha represented humanity, and Krishna represented divinity. The desire of Radha for Krishna can be seen as allegory of the desire of humanity for union with the godhead.

Recent Krishna bhakti movements

Later bhakti traditions include those promoted by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (16th century in Bengal). Followers of Chaitanya maintain that he is an incarnation of Krishna. A number of modern movements belong in this tradition, including ISKCON, sometimes called the Hare Krishna movement. ISKCON has recently been participating in bringing the academic study of Krishna into western academia in the theological discourse on Krishnology.

The name

Krishnology.]] The Sanskrit name and word is written in IAST transliteration (the equivalent of Devanagari ; see Sanskrit for pronunciation.)

Krishna the Dark One

The term Krishna in Sanskrit means "black" or "dark". It is related to similar words in other Indo-European languages meaning black. The name is often translated as 'the dark one' or as 'the black one'. In depictions, Krishna often appears as a black or dark-skinned figure, for instance in the modern murtis (statues) and pictorial representations of Lord Jaganatha at Puri (Krishna as Lord of the World). In the same representations, his brother and sister are shown with a distinctly lighter complexion. Early pictorial representations also generally show him as dark or black-skinned. Rajasthani miniature paintings of the 16th century are often of a brown or black-skinned figure. However, by the 19th century, he is almost always shown as blue skinned.

Other meanings of the name

The name is sometimes said to mean dark blue, rather than black. This may be connected to the common modern practice of representing many Hindu deities with blue skin. The blue is meant to represent the deities' holy aura.
- Mahabharata, Udyogaparva 71.4, gives this analysis of the word 'Krishna': :krishir bhu-vacakah sabdo nas ca nirvriti-vacakah :tayor aikyam param brahma krishna ity abhidhiyate
- "The word 'krish' is the attractive feature of the Lord's existence, and 'na' means 'spiritual pleasure.' When the verb krish is added to na, it becomes krishna, which indicates the Absolute Truth."
- According to the Vishnu sahasranama, Krishna is the 57th name of Vishnu, and also means the "Existence of Knowledge and Bliss".
- There are [http://www.astrology.aryabhatt.com/108_Names_Krishna.asp 108 Names of Krishna] Vishnu

Other names of Krishna

He is known by numerous other names or titles. The most commonly used of these include:
- Acyutah
- Gopala - cowherd; protector of cows
- Govinda - protector of cows
- Hari - the fawn (or yellow or gold) coloured one
- Hrshikesha - master of the senses
- Jaganatha - lord of the universe (see also Juggernaut).
- Keshava – long haired; in some accounts, the killer of Kesi
- Madhava - bringer of springtime
- Panduranga
- Vaasudeva, Krishna Vaasudeva - son of Vasudeva

Chronology

A paper presented recently at a convention in Prabhas Patan near Somnath, concludes that Krishna died at the age of 125 on February 18, 3102 BC at 14:27:30 hours on the banks of river Hiran in Prabhas Patan. As the report goes, he was 125 years, 7 months and 6 days old when he left the earth for his divine abode Goloka. The finding was based on clues in the Vedic literatures. Certain dates were fed into special software which was used to prepare a kundli (astrological horoscope charts). The Bhagavata Purana and Bhagavad Gita say that Krishna "left" Dwarka 36 years after the Battle of the Mahabharata. The Matsya Purana says that Krishna was 89 years old when the battle was fought. There after Pandavas ruled for a period of 36 years, their rule was in the beginning of Kali yuga. It further says that the Kali Yuga began on the day Duryodhana was felled to ground by Bhima. Some Hindus believe that the year 2005 is the year 5106 of the Kali Yuga (which began with a year 0).

External links

- [http://www.dlshq.org/download/lordkrishna.htm Lord Krishna and His Teachings, by Swami Sivananda]
- [http://www.iskcon.com/ International Society for Krishna Consciousness]
- [http://1-krishna.com Hare Krishna ]
- [http://www.vedabase.net/kb/en Krishna's Life Story]
- [http://www.shikshapatri.org.uk/~imagedb/hms/mss_obj.php?type=biographies&id=7#a7 Lord Krishna's Biography]
- [http://www.harekrishna.com/~ara/col/books/BG/tsem1.html Gita and strong monotheism.]
- [http://krishna.org/Articles/2000/10/00147.html Questions From A Muslim With Answers From Khan]
- [http://www.krishna.com/ Krishna.com] All about Krishna. Includes information, books, MP3s, images, and radio.
- [http://www.jkp.org Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat] The homepage of the Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat, which propagates Raganuga Bhakti
- [http://www.stephen-knapp.com/sri_krishna.htm Stephen Knapp's site about Krishna.]
- [http://veda.harekrsna.cz/encyclopedia/index.htm#8 Vedic Encyclopedia] information on Krishna.
- [http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/krishnaimage Iconographic Perception of Krishna's Image], by Dr. P. C. Jain.
- [http://veda.harekrsna.cz/encyclopedia/historical-krsna.htm Search for the Historical Krishna, by Prof. N.S. Rajaram]
- [http://www.wva-vvrs.org/ World Vaishnava Association] An Umbrella Organisation of the Vaishnava faith
- [http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/ Sri Narasingha Chaitanya Matha] An extensive site on Gaudiya Vaishnavism
- [http://veda.harekrsna.cz/encyclopedia/krishna-archeology.htm Krishna Archeology, by Nanditha Krishna]
- [http://www.dvaita.org/shaastra/gita/gita_sara/gs-007.html Devotion and Knowledge of God's Greatness] (only one God in Hinduism, #56 and see Shri Krishna is the supreme God; #57.)
- [http://www.gitamrta.org/ Pro-Krishna site]
- [http://www.vina.cc/ VINA - Vaishnava Internet News Agency] The Official News Site of the World Vaishnava Association
- [http://bhagavadgita.swami-center.org/page_21.shtml Three Aspects of Krishna’s Teaching] Category:Mahabharata epic Category:Hindu gods category:titles and names of Krishna Category:Vaishnavism Category:Forms of Vishnu simple:Krishna

1229

Events

- March 18 - Sixth Crusade of Emperor Frederick II ends in truce with Sultan al-Kamil and coronation of Frederick as King of Jerusalem.
- Catalans capture island of Majorca from Muslims.
- University of Paris strike of 1229.
- Foundation of the University of Toulouse in Toulouse, France.
- Founding of the city of Turku, Finland.

Births

Deaths

- January 17 - Albert of Buxhoeveden, German soldier
- Yaqut al-Hamawi, Arab biographer and geographer (born 1179) Category:1229 ko:1229년

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

Frederick II (December 26, 1194 – December 13, 1250), Holy Roman Emperor of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, was pretender to the title of King of the Romans from 1212, unopposed holder of that monarchy from 1215, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 until his death in 1250. He was also King of Sicily, from 1198 to 1250, where he was raised and lived most of his life (his mother, Constance of Sicily, was the daughter of Roger II of Sicily). He is also referred to as Frederick I of Sicily. His empire was frequently at war with the Papal States, so it is not surprising that he was excommunicated twice. Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him the anti-Christ. After his death the idea of his second coming where he would rule a 1000-year reich took hold, possibly in part because of this. Said to speak nine languages and be literate in seven [Armstrong 2001, p. 415] (at a time when many monarchs and nobles were not literate at all), Frederick was a very modern ruler for his times, being a patron of science and learning, and having fairly advanced views on economics. He abolished state monopolies, internal tolls, and import regulations within his empire. He was patron of the Sicilian School of poetry, where in his royal court in Palermo, from around 1220 to his death, we witness the first use of a literary form of an Italo-Romance language, Sicilian. The poetry that emanated from the school predates the use of the Tuscan idiom as the preferred lingua franca of the Italian peninsula by at least a century. The school and its poetry was well known to Dante and his peers and had a significant influence on the literary form of what was eventually to become the modern Italian. He was known in his own time as the Stupor mundi ("wonder of the world"). Frederick wrote, or rewrote, a manual on the art of falconry, De arte venandi cum avibus ("On the art of hunting with birds"), of which many illustrated copies survive from the 13th and 14th centuries.

Life

Early years

Born in Jesi, near Ancona, Frederick was the son of the emperor Henry VI. Some old chronicles account he was born in a public square of the city of Jesi, in northern Italy, while is father was entering triumphantly into Palermo. Frederick was baptised in Assisi. In 1196 at Frankfurt am Main the child Frederick had already been elected to become King of the Germans. At the death of his father in 1197, the three-year-old Frederick was in Italy in voyage towards Germany, and when the bad news reached his guardian Conrad of Spoleto, he was hastily brought back to Palermo to Constance. It was a good move, as Henry's empire dissolved, and its monarchy was disputed by Henry's brother Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. His mother, Constance, had been in her own right queen of Sicily; she had Frederick crowned King of Sicily and established herself as regent. In Frederick's name she dissolved Sicily's ties to the Empire sending home his German counsellors (notably Markward of Anweiler and Gualtiero da Pagliara), renouncing to his claims to the German kingship and empire. Upon Constance's death in 1198, Pope Innocent III succeeded as Frederick's guardian until he was of age: he was crowned King of Sicily on May 17, 1198, being only four years of age, and received some of his early formal education in Rome. He was to remember forever, however, the time spent in his early years in the court of Palermo, where Arab, German, Latin, Byzantine, Norman, Provencal and even Jewish influences mixed. Jewish See also Personality

Emperor

Otto of Brunswick had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Innocent III in 1209. In September 1211 at the Diet of Nuremberg Frederick was elected in absentia as German King by a rebellious faction backed by Innocent, who had fallen out with Otto and excommunicated him; he was again elected in 1212 and crowned December 9, 1212 in Mainz; yet another coronation ceremony took place in 1215. Being King of the Germans had been the traditional precursor step for emperorship. However, until the debacle at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, Frederick's authority was quite tenuous and he was recognized only in southern Germany: in northern Germany, the center of Guelph power, Otto continued to hold the reins of royal and imperial power despite excommunication. Otto's decisive military loss at Bouvines lost him the practical means to hold onto kingship and emperorship, and he withdrew to the Guelph hereditary lands to die, virtually without supporters, in 1218. (See also Guelphs and Ghibellines). The German princes, supported by Innocent III, again elected Frederick king of Germany in 1215, and the pope crowned him king in Aachen on July 23, 1215. It was not until another five years had passed, and only after further negotiations between Frederick, Innocent III, and Honorius III—who succeeded to the papacy after Innocent's death in 1216—that Frederick was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by Honorius III on November 22, 1220. At the same time his oldest son Henry took the title of King of the Romans. See also Personality Unlike most Holy Roman emperors, Frederick spent little of his life in Germany. After his coronation in 1220, he remained either in the Kingdom of Sicily or on Crusade until 1236, when he made his last journey to Germany. (At this time, the Kingdom of Sicily, with its capital at Palermo, extended onto the Italian mainland to include most of southern Italy.) He returned to Italy in 1237 and stayed there for the remaining 13 years of his life, represented in Germany by his son Conrad. In the Kingdom of Sicily, he built on the reform of the laws begun at the Assizes of Ariano in 1146 by his grandfather Roger II. His initiative in this direction was visible as early as the Assizes of Capua (1220) but came to fruition in his promulgation of the Constitutions of Melfi (1231, also known as Liber Augustalis), a collection of laws for his realm that was remarkable for its time and was a source of inspiration for a long time after. It made the Kingdom of Sicily an absolutist monarchy, the first centralized state in Europe to emerge from feudalism; it also set a precedent for the primacy of written law. With relatively small modifications, the Liber Augustalis remained the basis of Sicilian law until 1819. During this period, he also built the Castel del Monte and in 1224 created the University of Naples: now called Università Federico II, it remained the sole atheneum of Southern Italy for centuries. In 1226, by means of the Golden Bull of Rimini he confirmed the legitimacy of rule by the Teutonic Knights under their headmaster Hermann von Salza over the Prussian lands east of the Vistula, the Chelmno Land.

The Crusade

At the time he was crowned Emperor, Frederick had promised to go on crusade. In preparation for his crusade, Frederick had, in 1225, married Yolande of Jerusalem, heiress to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and immediately taken steps to take control of the Kingdom from his new father-in-law, John of Brienne. However, he continued to take his time in setting off, and in 1227, Frederick was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for failing to honor his crusading pledge - perhaps unfairly, at this point, as his plans had been delayed by an epidemic. He eventually embarked on the crusade the following year (1228), which was seen on by the pope as a rude provocation, since the church could not take any part in the honor for the crusade, resulting in a second excommunication. Frederick did not attempt to take Jerusalem by force of arms. Instead, he negotiated restitution of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem to the Kingdom with sultan Al-Kamil, the Ayyubid ruler of the region, who was nervous about possible war with his relatives who ruled Syria and Mesopotamia and wished to avoid further trouble from the Christians. The crusade ended in a truce and in Frederick's coronation as King of Jerusalem on March 18, 1229 — although this was technically improper, as Frederick's wife Yolande, the heiress, had died in the meantime, leaving their infant son Conrad as rightful heir to the kingdom. Frederick's further attempts to rule over the Kingdom of Jerusalem were met by resistance on the part of the barons, led by John of Ibelin, Lord of Beirut. By the mid-1230s, Frederick's viceroy had been forced to leave Acre, the capital, and by 1244, Jerusalem itself had been lost again to a new Muslim offensive. However, Frederick's seeming bloodless victory in recovering Jerusalem for the cross brought him great prestige in Europe, and in 1231 the pope rescinded Frederick's excommunication; this event is known as the Peace of San Germano.

The war against the Pope and the Italian Guelphs

While he may have temporarily made his peace with the pope, the lesser German princes were another matter. In 1231, Frederick's son Henry claimed the crown for himself and allied with the Lombard League. The rebellion failed, though not utterly; Henry was imprisoned in 1235, and replaced in his royal title by his brother Conrad, already the King of Jerusalem; Frederick won a decisive battle in Cortenuova over the Lombard League in 1237. Frederick celebrated it with a triumph in Cremona, in the manner of an ancient Roman emperor, with the captured carroccio (later sent to the commune of Rome) and an elephant. He rejected any suit for peace, even from Milan which had sent a great sum of money. This demand of total surrender spurred further resistance from Milan, Brescia, Bologna and Piacenza, and in October 1238 he was forced to raise the siege of Brescia, in the course of which his enemies had tried unsuccessfully to capture him. Frederick received the news of his excommunication by Gregory IX in the first months of 1239, while his court was in Padova. The emperor replied expelling the Minorites and the preachers from Lombardy, and electing his son Enzio as Imperial vicar for Northern Italy. Enzio soon annexed the Romagna, Marche and the Duchy of Spoleto, nominally part of the Papal States. The father announced he was to destroy the Republic of Venice, which had sent some ships against Sicily. In December of that year Frederick marched over Toscana, entered triumphantly into Foligno and then in Viterbo, whence he aimed to finally conquer Rome, in order to restore the ancient splendours of the Empire. The siege, however, was vain, and Frederick returned to Southern Italy, sacking Benevento (a papal possession). Peace negotiations came to nothing. In the meantime the Ghibelline city of Ferrara had fallen, and Frederick swept his way northwards capturing Ravenna and, after another long siege, Faenza. The people of Forlì (which kept its Ghibelline stance even after the collapse of Hohenstaufen power) offered their loyal support during the capture of the rival city: as a sign of gratitude, they were granted an augmentation of the communal coat-of-arms with the Hohenstaufen eagle, together with other privileges. This episode shows how the independent cities used the rivalry between Empire and Pope as a mean to obtain the maximum advantage for themselves. The Pope had called a council, but Ghibelline Pisa thwarted it, capturing cardinals and prelates on a ship sailing from Genoa to Rome. Frederick thought that this time the way into Rome was opened, and again directed his forces against the Pope, trailing behind him a ruined and burning Umbria. Frederick destroyed Grottaferrata preparing to invade Rome. But on August 22, 1240, Gregory died. Frederick, showing that his war was not directed against the Church of Rome but against the Pope, drew back his troops and freed two cardinals from the jail of Capua. Nothing changed, however, in the relationship between Papacy and Empire, as Roman troops assaulted the Imperial garrison in Tivoli and the Emperor soon reached Rome. This back-and-forth situation repeated again in 1242 and 1243. Though unfruitful, these expeditions around Rome permitted Frederick to capture treasures from the church of the cities he passed through, and gave him the opportunity to enjoy the pleasant nature of hills, lakes and woods of the Latium.

His last and fiercest opponent, Innocent IV

A new pope, Innocent, was elected on June 25, 1243. He was a member of a noble Imperial family and had some relatives in Frederick's camp, so the Emperor was initially happy with his election. Innocent instead was to become his fiercest enemy. Negotiations began in the summer of 1243, but the situation changed as Viterbo rebelled, instigated by the intriguing Cardinal Ranieri of Viterbo. Frederick could not lose his main stronghold near Rome, and besieged the city. Many authorities state that the Emperor's star began its descent with this move. Innocent convinced him to withdraw his troops, but Ranieri nonetheless had the Imperial garrison slaughtered on November 13. Frederick was full of powerless rage. The new Pope was a master diplomat, and Frederick signed a peace treaty, which was soon broken. Innocent showed his true Guelph face, and, together with most of the Cardinals, fled via Genoese galleys to the Ligurian republic, arriving on July 7. His aim was to reach Lyon, where a new coucil was held beginning June 24, 1245. One month later, Innocent IV declared Frederick to be deposed as emperor: he was characterized as a "friend of Babylon's sultan", "of Saracen customs", "provided with a harem guarded by eunuchs" like the schismatic emperor of Byzantium and, in sum, a "heretic". The Pope backed Heinrich Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia as his rival for the imperial crown, and set in motion a plot to kill Frederick and Enzio, with the support of his (the pope's) brother-in-law Orlando de Rossi, who was a friend of Frederick's as well. The conjurers, however, were unmasked by the count of Caserta. The vengeance was terrible: the city of Altavilla, where they had found shelter, was razed, and the guilty were blinded, mutilated and burnt alive or hung. An attempt to invade the Kingdom of Sicily, under the command of Ranieri, was halted at Spello by Marino of Eboli, Imperial vicar of Spoleto. Spello] Innocent also sent a flow of money to Germany to cut off Frederick's power at its source. The archbishops of Köln and Mainz also declared Frederick deposed, and in May 1246 a new king was chosen in the person of Heinrich Raspe. On August 5 Heinrich, thanks to the Pope's money, managed to defeat an army of Conrad son of Frederick near Frankfurt. But Frederick strenghtened his position in Southern Germany acquiring the Duchy of Austria, whose titular had died without heirs, and one year later Heinrich died as well. The new anti-king was William II, Count of Holland. Between February and March 1247 Frederick settled the situation in Italy with the diet of Terni, naming his relatives of friends as vicars of the various lands. Marrying his son Manfred to the daughter of Amedeo di Savoia and, gaining the submission of the marquis of Monferrato, he also gained of control of the passages of the Eastern Alps, clearing the route to Lyon, where he hoped finally to settle the long-standing dispute with the Pope. Innocent asked protection from the King of France, Louis IX, but his position was not so secure, as the king was a friend of the Emperor and knew the peaceful aims of the latter. A papal army under the command of Ottaviano degli Ubaldini never reached Lombardy, and the Emperor, accompanied by a massive army, held the next diet in Turin. Turin

The Battle of Parma and the end

An unexpected event was to change the situation dramatically. In June 1247 the important Lombard city of Parma expelled the Imperial functionaries and sided with the Guelphs. Enzio was not in the city and could do nothing more than ask for help from his father, who came back to lay siege to the rebels, together with his friend Ezzelino da Romano, tyrant of Verona. The besieged languished, as the Emperor waited the besieged surrendered of starvation. He had a true wooden city built around the walls, pompously called Vittoria ("Victory"). Here Frederick kept the treasure with the harem and the menagerie, and from its pavillions he could attend his favourite hunting expeditions. On February 18, 1248, during one of these absences the camp was suddenly assaulted and conquered, and in the ensuing Battle of Parma the Imperial side was routed. Frederick lost the Imperial treasure and, with it, any hope to keep up his struggle against the rebellious communes, as well as the triumphant Pope, who began plans for a crusade against Sicily. Though he soon recovered and rebuilt an army, this defeat spurred the rebellious feeling of many cities that could no longer bear his fiscal and monarchic regime: Romagna, Marche and Spoleto were lost. On February 1249 Frederick, who had just lost his other faithful minister Taddeo of Suessa, fired his advisor and prime minister, the famous jurist and poet Pier delle Vigne. The charge was speculation and embezzlement. Some historians, however, maintain instead that Pier was planning to betray the Emperor: according to Matthew of Paris, he cried when he discovered the betrayal. Pier, blinded and in chains, died in Pisa, presumably by suicide (a presumption that placed him in the Seventh Circle of Dante's Hell in Canto XII of the Inferno). Even more shocking for Frederick was the capture of his son Enzio by the Bolognese at the Battle of Fossalta, in the May of the same year. Only 23 at the time, he was thrown into a jail cell in which he was to spend the rest of his life, dying in 1272. The place of the king of Sardinia was taken over by the marquis Palavicino, a skilled but cruel man, not different from his ill-famed contemporary Ezzelino. In this period Frederick lost another son, Richard of Chieti. But the struggle continued: the Empire lost Como and Modena, but regained Ravenna and another army sent to invade the Kingdom of Sicily, under the command of Cardinal Pietro Capocci, was crushed in the Marche, at the Battle of Cingoli in 1250. In the first month of that year the indomitable Ranieri of Viterbo died and the Imperial condottieri again reconquered Romagna, Marche and Spoleto, and Conrad, King of the Romans scored several victories in Germany against William of Holland. Frederick did not take part of any of these campaigns. He had been ill and probably felt himself tired. Despite the betrayals and the ill happenings he had faced in his last years, Frederick died peacefully on December 13, 1250 in Castel Fiorentino near Lucera, in Puglia, after an attack of dysentery: in his last moment he wore the habit of a Cistercian monk. At the time of his death, his preeminent position in Europe was challenged but not lost: his testament left his legitimate son Conrad IV the Imperial and Sicilian crowns. Manfred received the principate of Taranto and the government of the Kingdom, Henry the Kingdom of Arles or that of Jerusalem, while the son of Henry VII was entrusted the Duchy of Austria and the Marquisate of Styria. His will was that all the lands he had taken from the Church were to be returned to it, all the prisoners freed, and the taxes reduced, provided this not damaged the Empire's pride. However, upon Conrad's death a mere four years later, the Hohenstaufen dynasty fell from power and an interregnum began, lasting until 1273, one year after the last Hohenstaufen, Enzio, had died in his prison. During this time, a legend developed that Frederick was not truly dead, but merely slept in the Kyffhaeuser Mountains and would one day awaken to reestablish his empire. Over time, this legend largely transferred itself to his grandfather, Frederick I, also known as Barbarossa ("Redbeard"). His sarcophagus (made of red porphyry) lies in the cathedral of Palermo, beside those of his parents (Henry VI and Constance) as well as his grandfather, the Norman king Roger II of Sicily. A bust of Frederick sits in the Walhalla temple built by Ludwig I of Bavaria.

Heirs

Ludwig I of Bavaria All the heirs of Frederick met unlucky fates.
- Frederick's son Henry, sometimes styled Henry VII, especially during his period of rebellion in alliance with the Lombard League — not to be confused with Henry VII of the House of Luxembourg, Holy Roman Emperor 1275-1313 — was born 1211 in Sicily, son of Frederick's first wife Constance of Aragon, whom he had married in the August of 1209. King of the Germans (or, equivalently, "King of the Romans"), King of Sicily, claimant to the imperial title. After quarrelling with his father and forming an alliance with the Lombard League, he was captured by Frederick's forces and imprisoned from 1236; he died in Martirano in 1242, probably of the consequences of an attempted suicide.
- Frederick's son Conrad IV, son of his second wife Yolande de Brienne, Queen of Jerusalem, was born April 25, 1228 in Andria, Apulia. He became King of Jerusalem at birth (his mother having died in childbirth), and was elected German king and future emperor 1237 in Vienna, although no coronation took place. In 1250, he succeeded his father as King of Sicily, as well. Conrad died May 21, 1254 of malaria in an army camp in Lavello.
- Frederick's illegitimate son Manfred, King of Sicily, was born in 1231 of Bianca, the daughter of Count Bonifacio Lancia. According to some accounts, Frederick married Bianca on his deathbed, in order to make Manfred's birth legitimate, but there is no consensus on this. Manfred, initially as regent for Conrad's young son Conradin, and, after 1258 as King of Sicily, continued—after initial attempts at reconciliation—Frederick's conflict with the Pope and was also placed under papal interdict. Manfred died February 26, 1266 in battle near Benevento against Charles of Anjou, brother to the French King, who had been entrusted with the Kingdom of Sicily by the Pope. Still under excommunication, he was buried in unhallowed ground in the rocky valley of Verde. His wife Helena, and also their sons Frederick, Henry, and Enzio died in prison, the sons having been held in lifelong solitary confinement, like animals, never even learning human speech.
- Enzio (or Enzo) in particular seemed to be the father's favourite, as he received the titles of King of Sardinia and that of Imperial vicar in Northern Italy. These nominations have been seen as a Frederick's attempt to create a centralized state also in Northern and Central Italy: but this failed after the Battle of Parma and the subsequent imprisonment of Enzio in Bologna in 1249. Enzio became a popular character for his pitiful fate, as he spent all the rest of his life in prison, dying in 1272.
- The last legitimate male heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty was Frederick's grandson Conradin, son of Conrad IV. The grandson, born March 25, 1252 at Burg Wolfstein near Landshut, held the titles of Duke of Swabia, King of Jerusalem and Sicily. He invaded Italy in 1268 to reclaim his Kingdom from Charles of Anjou, but was defeated and captured by Charles at the Battle of Tagliacozzo and publicly executed at age 16 on October 29, 1268 in Naples. In 1284 Frederick's ghost resurfaced in the form of a very convincing false Frederick, the impostor Tile Kolup, who impersonated the emperor with such expert knowledge and an amazing similarity that many of those who had known the true Frederick fell for him. Kolup was captured and executed, but rumors persist to this day that Kolup had been another illegitimate son of Frederick II.

Personality

In Frederick II we encounter one of the most remarkable personalities in world history. His contemporaries called him stupor mundi, the "wonder" — or, more precisely, the "astonishment" — "of the world"; the majority of his contemporaries, subscribing to medieval religious orthodoxy, under which the doctrines promulgated by the Church were supposed to be uniform and universal, were, indeed astonished — not seldom repelled — by the highly developed individual consciousness of the Hohenstaufen emperor, his temperamental stubbornness and his unorthodox, nearly unstoppable thirst for knowledge. Frederick II was a religious sceptic. He is said to have denounced Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as all being frauds and deceivers of mankind. He delighted in uttering blasphemies and making mocking remarks directed toward Christian sacraments and beliefs. Frederick's religious scepticism was most unusual for the era in which he lived, and to his contemporaries, highly shocking and scandalous. In his period in Jerusalem, this behaviour was much to the dislike of the Muslims too, who grew mistrustful of a Christian which was not a Christian. Muslims Even his birth was remarkable. According to chronicles from the era, in order to stanch any doubt about his origin, the already 40-year old Constance gave birth to the child publicly in a marketplace. After Henry VI, his father, died at 31, Frederick came under the guardianship of the pope, which the latter, however, neglected him on the basis of power-politics. In Palermo, where the three-year-old boy was brought after his mother's death, he grew up like a street youth. On his own, he roamed a city which swarmed with adventurers and pirates, beggars and jugglers, Arab and Jewish merchants. The only benefit from Innocent III was that at 14 years of age he married a 25-year-old widow named Constance, the daughter of the king of Aragon in what is now Spain. As it happened, both seemed reasonably happy with the arrangement, and Constance soon bore a son, Henry. Later, it appeared opportune to Innocent III to support Frederick as a legitimate king, in order to counter the Emperor Otto — whom up to that time the pope had supported. In 1212 he brought him to Rome, gave him a round of instruction in things political, and sent him, provided with a bull of excommunication against the Guelph Otto, in the direction of Germany. The voyage seemed difficult, as the sea was roamed by the ships of Pisa, as usual faithful to the official emperor, and the road north to Rome were commanded by imperial garrisons. But in that period of his life a kind of mystic and prophetical luck seemed to illuminate every step made by the young king. Frederick managed to reach Liguria with ships sent by the fiercest rival of Pisa, Genova, where he stayed for three months. He crossed the Alps using the most difficult passes, as the Brenner Pass was occupied by the enemy troops of the duchies of Merano and Bavaria, and then he came to Konstanz in territory of the archbishop of Chur. The city was in fact preparing to receive the emperor, and would not allow the new aspirant to the imperial title to remain in the city. However, after a solemn reading of the pope's Bull of Excommunication, the gates of the city were opened for him. Otto, who meanwhile had waited in Überlingen for the ferry, came three weeks later before the city gates and was turned away. Frederick conquered the realm by means of generous promises and donations, without spilling a drop of blood. Otto, crushed in the Battle of Bouvines by the French, died some years later, a lonely man in the Harzburg, while Frederick would be crowned Emperor in Rome by the pope. In his coronation, too, he showed how unusual he was. At his coronation he carried a brand-new, red coronation robe with a strange ornamentation at the edge. In reality it was an Arabic inscription, which indicated that this robe dated from the year 528, not by the Christian but by Muslim calendar! About this was an Arab benediction: "May the Emperor be received well, may he enjoy vast prosperity, great generosity and high splendor, fame and magnificent endowments, and the fulfillment of his wishes and hopes. May his days and nights go in pleasure without end or change". This coronation robe can be found today in the Schatzkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. This was typical of him: while he was being crowned by the Pope to be the highest defender of the Christian faith, his coat referred to the history of Islam. And not only that. He did not exterminate the Saracens of Sicily with fire and sword; on the contrary, he allowed them to settle on the mainland and even to build mosques. Not least, he enlisted them in his - Christian - army and even into his personal bodyguards. As these were Muslim soldiers, they were immune from papal excommunication. A further example of how much he differed from his contemporaries was his Crusade in the Holy Land. Outside Jerusalem, with the power to take it, he parlayed five months with the Egyptian Sultan al-Kamil about the surrender of the city. The Sultan summoned him into Jerusalem and entertained him in the most lavish fashion. When the muezzin, out of consideration for Frederick, failed to make the morning call to prayer, the emperor declared: "I stayed overnight in Jerusalem, in order to overhear the prayer call of the Muslims and their worthy God". The Saracens had a good opinion of him, so it was no surprise that after five months Jerusalem was handed over to him, taking advantage of the war difficulties of al-Kamil. The fact that this was regarded in the Arab as in the Christian world as high treason did not matter to him one whit. As the Patriarch of Jerusalem refused to crown him king, he set the crown on his own head. Besides his great tolerance (which, however, did not apply to Christian heretics), he had an unlimited thirst for knowledge and learning. To the horror of his contemporaries, he simply did not believe things that could not be explained by reason. So he forbade trials by ordeal on the firm conviction that in a duel the stronger would always win, whether he was guilty or not. Also, it can be forgotten amidst the general enthusiasm over his book on falconry releases frequently that he also wrote a scientific book about birds or that many of his laws continue to affect life down to the present day, such as the prohibition on physicians acting as their own pharmacists. This was a blow at the charlatanism under which physicians diagnosed dubious maladies and also at the same time in order to sell a useless, even dangerous "cure". Frederick's greatest passion were animals, and falcons in particular. He inherited his love for falconry from his Norman ancestors. According to a source, Frederick replied to a letter in which the Mongol khan invited him to sumbit that he was keen to do it, provided he was permitted to become the khan's hawker. He mantained up to 50 hawkers a time for his court, and in his letters he requested the acquiring of Arctic gerfalcons from Lübeck and even from Greenland. He commissioned the translation of the treaty De arte venandi cum avibus, by the Arab Moamyn, to his Syrian astrologer Theodor, but he corrected or rewrote it during the endless siege of Faenza. This implies that the Emperor knew the Arab language very well. Frederick picked up information from many of the philosphers then known, and mainly from the De Animalibus by Aristotle, creating a really noteworthy scientific work for the time it was written. One of the two existing versions was modified by his son Manfred, also a keen adherent of falconry. Frederick loved exotic animals in general: his mobile zoo, with which he used to impress the cold cities of Northern Italy and Europe, included hounds, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, lynxs, leopards and exotic birds. In 1232 he sent the Egyptian sultan a rare white bear, in exchange for a planetary worth 20,000 marks: Frederick was in fact attracted by stars, and his court was full of astrologers and astronomers. He often issued letters to the main scholars of the time (not only in Europe) asking for solutions to questions of science, mathematics and physics. A Damascene chronicler, Sibt ibn al-Jawzi, leaves a physical description of Frederick based on the testimony of those who had seen the emperor in person in Jerusalem. "The Emperor was covered with red hair, was bald and myopic. Had he been a slave, he would not have fetched 200 dirhams at market." His eyes were described variously as blue, or "green like those of a serpent".

Law Reforms

His 1241 Edict of Salerno (sometimes called "Constitution of Salerno") made the first legally fixed separation of the occupations of physician and apothecary. Physicians were forbidden to double as pharmacists and the prices of various medicinal remedies were fixed. This became a model for regulation of the practice of pharmacy throughout Europe. He was not able to extend his legal reforms beyond Sicily to the Empire. In 1232, he was forced by the German princes to promulgate the Statutum in favorem principum ("statute in favor of princes"). It was a charter of aristocratic liberties for German princes at the expense of the lesser nobility and commoners. The princes gained whole power of jurisdiction, and the power to strike their own coins. The emperor lost his right to establish new cities, castles and mints over their territories. The Statutum extremely weakened central authority in Germany for ages. From 1232 the vassals of the emperor had a veto over imperial legislative decisions. Every new law established by the emperor had to be approved by the princes.

Summary

Frederick II was considered singular among the European Christian monarchs of the Middle Ages. This was observed even in his own time, although many of his contemporaries, because of his lifelong interest in Islam saw in him "the Hammer of Christianity", or at the very least a dissenter from Christendom. Many modern medievalists view this as false, and hold that Frederick understood himself as a Christian monarch in the sense of a Byzantine emperor, thus as God's Viceroy on earth. Other scholars view him as holding all religion in contempt, citing his rationalism and penchant for blasphemy. Whatever his personal feelings toward religion were, certainly submission to the pope did not enter into the matter. This was in line with the Hohenstaufen Kaiseridee: the ideology, claiming the Holy Roman Emperor to be the legitimate successor to the Roman emperors