Hohenstaufen loyalists make final stand in Apulia

1259

Manfred of Sicily, illegitimate son of Frederick II, consolidated Hohenstaufen holdings in southern Italy against papal pressure. He revived Palermo as a court of poets, falconers, and Arab scholars, a last gasp of cosmopolitan Sicilian kingship before Angevin conquest. Dante would place Manfred in Purgatory rather than Hell, praising his penitent death at Benevento with a sympathy unusual for a Guelph poet.