FREDERICK II is the story of the remarkable man whose power and sphere of influence straddled the worlds of Christendom and of Islam. The last of the Hohenstaufens, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily and Jerusalem, Frederick II was an energetic and versatile ruler, a man of great ambition in whose lifetime the conflict between Emperor and Pope reached a new intensity. Excommunicated three times by the Church, he was an absolute monarch whose power, defended in almost continuous struggle, extended over much of Germany and Italy as well as the Holy Land. Frederick was a complex man of cultured tastes and licentious manners who had unusually wide intellectual interests. At his Sicilian court scholars of all religions were welcomed--Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan. He founded the University of Naples in 1224 and was a patron of the arts and sciences. The life of this dynamic man is fully explored in Ernst Kantorowicz's notable biography and written with style and scholarship.