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