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| 1186 |
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| Triple coronation at Milan. Frederick as king of Burgundy; Henry as Caesar (a deliberate revival of the title), and Constance as queen of the Germans. | 1 |
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| 1189 |
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| Frederick took the Cross, and until his death, led the Third Crusade (See 1189–92) in the traditional role of the emperor as the knightly champion of Christendom. | 2 |
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| 1190–97 |
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| Henry VI (already Caesar and regent, crowned emperor, 1191). The medieval empire at its maximum, ideally and territorially. Henry was not robust and lacked the usual Hohenstaufen good nature. A good soldier, learned, practical, a shrewd diplomat, stern, cruel, but of heroic and original mind. | 3 |
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| 1190–95 |
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| Intermittent struggles with the Welfs in Germany under Henry the Lion. | 4 |
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| 1191–94 |
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| Restoration of order in Sicily. Struggle with the Norman antiking, Tancred of Lecce (d. 1194); coronation of Henry as king of Sicily (1194); birth of Frederick (later Frederick II) at Jesi (1194). | 5 |
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| 1192–94 |
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| Henry used the captivity of King Richard I of England to make the crown of England a fief of the empire, and to extort an enormous ransom. | 6 |
| Henry's plans to unite the German and Sicilian crowns, and to crown Frederick without election, thereby establishing the heredity of the German crown, were blocked by powerful German and papal opposition. Frederick was elected king of the Romans (1196). Plans (traditional with the Norman kings of Sicily) for the foundations of a Mediterranean empire on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire as the basis for a universal dominion; dynastic marriage with the Greek imperial house; active preparations for a crusade; advance in central Italy and conciliation of northern Italy. Sicilian outbreak against the German administration brutally crushed. Henry's sudden death was followed by a bitter anti-imperial reaction in Italy and by 14 years of civil war in Germany. | 7 |
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| 1197–1212 |
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| Civil war in Germany, chaos in the empire. Rival kings: Henry's brother, the Waiblinger Philip of Swabia (supported by King Philip II of France) and the Welf Otto of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion (supported by King Richard I of England). The German nobles played one side off against the other. Chaos in Sicily, where Pope Innocent III acted as guardian of Frederick (after 1198). Otto's title validated by Innocent (1201); assassination of Philip (1208); imperial coronation of Otto (1209); papal break with Otto (1210) and support of Frederick (with Philip II); Frederick's second election (1211) and dash to Germany. | 8 |
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| 1212–50 |
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| FREDERICK II (Stupor Mundi), amiable, charming, pitiless, arrogant; the most brilliant ruler and one of the most learned men of his day; a legislator of the first order, able soldier, diplomat, skeptic, one of the leading scientific investigators of his time; an astrologer with the mind of a Renaissance rationalist; Sicilian by taste and training, half Norman by blood, with little of the German about him. Crowned king of the Romans, 1212; king of the Germans, at Aachen, 1215; emperor, at Rome, 1220. | 9 |
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| 1212 |
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| Alliance with King Philip II of France. | 10 |
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| 1213 |
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| The Golden Bull of Eger: Frederick, who had already sworn an oath to keep his two crowns separate and to support the pope, abandoned the German Church to Innocent (conceding the free election of bishops, the right of appeal to Rome) and undertook to support the pope against heretics. | 11 |
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| 1214 |
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| The Battle of Bouvines (See 1214, July 27): Frederick and Philip II completed the defeat of Otto and the Welfs. On the death of Innocent III (1216), Frederick's personal rule may be said to have begun. | 12 |
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| 1216–27 |
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| Frederick on tolerable terms with Pope Honorius III, his old tutor: election (1220) of Frederick's son Henry as king of the Romans (a violation of Frederick's promise); Frederick allowed to retain Sicily during his lifetime; renewal of his crusading oath. Granting of generous privileges (1220) to the clergy: exemption of the Church from taxation and of clerics from lay jurisdiction, making clerical princes virtually independent territorial princes; support of the bishops against the towns; promises to suppress heresy. Crusade postponed until 1225. | 13 |
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