Frederick II: The Genius, Polyglot, Polymath, Machiavellian, Warrior King.

Here’s Frederick being impossibly intelligent.

Meet Fredrick II, he’s better than you (that rhymed). In fact, I’m here to make the case that he’s better than everyone. People love geniuses; more so, we love talking about them gushingly and tweeting the wise things they say as our own words. We speak of Mozart, Einstein, and Da Vinci; all geniuses, to be sure, but mentioned at the expense of the good king Frederick. And any time spent not learning or reading about Frederick II, the king of dudes, is time wasted. That’s why I’m here: To correct the imbalance, to throw Frederick II’s gilded crown into the ring and make a case for a man oft neglected, or, outright ignored when discussing humanity’s leading lights.

What makes him better is that he is the ultimate GQ man, just a millenia before GQ. He well rounded, loved, and he freaking loved to fight. Frederick II lived in the 13th century – the pre-Renaissance age broadly derided as “the Dark Ages”. Well, fine, call it what you want, but I’m telling you: Frederick did not earn the name Stupor Mundi–which means “The Wonder of the World” for those among us not up to scratch with their Latin–for no good reason. He was exceptional. But exceptional is so overused these days, you cry! Not in this case damnit.

Try this on for size: How many languages can you speak? One? Maybe two? If you’re super special, perhaps three! Frederick is, once again, better than you. He spoke six languages – Sicilian, Italian, German, French, Greek, and Arabic. He also understood some Hebrew because, hey, life’s too short. That’s some extreme, next level polyglot business right there. And he did this without all the fancy aides we have now; no about.french.com, no Rosetta Stone, no Google Translate. Learning languages in the 13th century largely involved memorizing shit (Memorizing things! Ha! Remember that?).

Aside from being a formidable linguist, he was an astute, rational mind in era of superstition and ignorance. He looked to outlaw medical quackery; the Middle Ages equivalent of trying to outlaw alcohol in Ireland, he employed the era’s greatest scholars in his court, he founded the University of Naples, and tackled subjects such as mathematics and physics. And just because he could, he wrote a well respected treatise on the art of falconry. He was a broad and conquering mind when he could have easily been a wealthy, fat do-nothing king.

All this talk of science and maths probably conjures up images of a bookish and reticent gentleman scholar but, let me assure you, Fredrick was scared of no man alive or dead (with dead I’m referring to the omnipresent threat of zombies, of course). He took on the Pope countless times, not in Martin Luther, “Oh hey, lets talk about this” style, but in open warfare. That’s THE pope. The same Pope that was so powerful in the middle ages, that if he issue a papal decree demanding that everybody should rip their pants off and sodomize themselves with a rabbit’s foot, everyone would have followed suit. Not Fredrick though, because he wasn’t afraid of no old man in a funny hat. He loved brawlin’. The pope even excommunicated him four times. Four times! A totally unnecessary amount surely. Although, I’m almost sure that each excommunication was probably met with Fredrick doing a triumphant multi-lingual rendition of “Fuck da Police!” whilst he did the Dougie.

That was Fredrick for you, he was THE renaissance man even before the Renaissance was a glint in Florentine eyes. He was a dude, in the James Dean tradition, mixed with Aristotle – Aristotle Dean. And what I want you take from this, is that he was better than you and me. So stop trying, the pinnacle of being a badass was reached, taken out for dinner, and roughly screwed by the good king Frederick in the 13th century.