The San Carlo Theater is sold out: 1300 people in the stalls and boxes and another 500 seated in the foyer. Alessandro Barbero, a medievalist from Turin, brings everyone together by bringing students from different faculties closer to the events of the past. Hired free of charge by the Neapolitan University of Federico II to tell the story of the emperor who created the first secular state university in the world in Naples with 800 years of history.
Alessandro Barbero in Naples: “Working with kids is our great fortune”
«A larger-than-life character», explained Barbero who joyfully welcomed the invitation of Rector Lorito and Vice-Rector Mastrullo: «I know of the great interest young people have in history: it is the privilege of our profession to be able to work with them . A marked versatility that of Frederick II told between history and legend. A man born in Italy, in Jesi which he defines as my Bethlehem.”
His magnificence, his formidable intellectual curiosity brought him closer to the most disparate dimensions, even to Islam, even antagonizing Pope Innocent III. Banners and flags for free Palestine were displayed on the stages. The students in the Neapolitan Massimo shouted chants for the freedom of Gaza: «Federico went to Palestine which they had described to him as the land of milk and honey. They haven’t seen my Kingdom of Sicily, he said after evidently having tasted the two ingredients.”
«He is a Christian emperor – stated Barbero -, he had no great connections with Islam. A schismatic, an epicurean. He was against heretics. He promulgated ferocious laws against them.” Maghreb chroniclers told of his passion for Sicily, an Arab land.
«They said he wanted to be with the Muslims and didn’t care about the crusade. They were telling stories too. One thing is certain: the Arabs liked it very much.” He was in fact a character close to southern cultures despite being from the Marche, an Adriatic: «They called him puer Apuliae, the boy from Puglia, the boy from the South and his fame often preceded him», continued the Piedmontese historian.
Another 19th century chronicler like the German Kantorowicz defined him as a purely German spirit, a Germanic one. A precursor of Mephistopheles without the goat’s horns who walks around with his blonde hair.” Salimbene de Adam reported the concept that he denied the existence of the soul. More than someone slandered by claiming that he was the Antichrist: «the versions are different and often controversial. The distinction between what really happened and what was reported is fundamental. It sometimes happens that the credibility of legends takes precedence over the state of facts. This is also the story”, comments Barbero.