Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/248

 younger of Sicily's "two baptized sultans," Frederick II—stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis, "the wonder of the world and a marvellous innovator." No one can follow the career of this most gifted and fascinating figure without feeling the modern elements in his character and in his administration of the Sicilian state. His government stands ahead of its contemporaries in the thirteenth century as does that of Roger in the twelfth, and the more recent naturally seems the more modern. It is not, however, clear that the relative superiority was greater, and recent studies have made plain, what was not at first realized, that considerable portions of Frederick's legislation and of his administrative system go back to his Norman predecessors, some of them to Roger himself. After all it is not the historian's business to award prizes for being modern, especially when it is not always plain in what modernity consists. The main point is to recognize the striking individuality of the Sicilian state in directions which other states were in time to follow, and to remember that this individuality was a continuous thing and not a creation of the second Frederick. Moreover, as we shall shortly see, what is true in the field of government is also true in the field of civilization: the brilliant cosmopolitan culture of the thirteenth century is a direct development from similar conditions under King Roger.