Modern medievalists generally no longer accept the notion, sponsored by the popes, of Frederick as an anti-Christian. They argue that Frederick understood himself as a Christian monarch in the sense of a Byzantine emperor, thus as God's "viceroy" on earth. Whatever his personal feelings toward religion, certainly submission to the pope did not enter into the matter in the slightest. This was in line with the Hohenstaufen Kaiser-Idee, the ideology claiming the Holy Roman Emperor to be the legitimate successor to the Roman Emperors. As his father Henry VI, Frederick established a famous reputation for his cosmopolitan court but on a scale of almost unparalleled grandeur. His court has drawn interest as, perhaps, a precursor comparable to those of later centuries. It seemed to match the flair of the Renaissance, the "elegance of Paris, gaiety of old imperial Vienna", and had the "zest for life" of the Elizabethans. Hosting figures such as the black treasury custodian Johannes Morus, the mathematician Fibonacci, the scholar Michael Scot, the astrologer Guido Bonatti, the translator John of Palermo, the physician John of Procida, the Syrian philosopher , and the poet Giacomo da Lentini, the vibrant reputation of Frederick's court persisted throughout the rest of the Late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.
Modern medievalists generally no longer accept the notion, sponsored by the popes, of Frederick as an anti-Christian. They argue that Frederick understood himself as a Christian monarch in the sense of a Byzantine emperor, thus as God's "viceroy" on earth. Whatever his personal feelings toward religion, certainly submission to the pope did not enter into the matter in the slightest. This was in line with the Hohenstaufen Kaiser-Idee, the ideology claiming the Holy Roman Emperor to be the legitimate successor to the Roman Emperor,s. As his father Henry VI, Frederick established a famous reputation for his cosmopolitan court but on a scale of almost unparalleled grandeur. His court has drawn interest as, perhaps, a precursor comparable to those of later centuries. It seemed to match the flair of the Renaissance, the "elegance of Paris, gaiety of old imperial Vienna" and had the "zest for life" of the Elizabethans. Hosting figures such as the black treasury custodian Johannes Morus, the mathematician Fibonacci, the scholar Michael Scot, the astrologer Guido Bonatti, the translator John of Palermo, the physician John of Procida, the Syrian philosopher , and the poet Giacomo da Lentini, the vibrant reputation of Frederick's court persisted throughout the rest of the Late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.