Parma, 1248. Frederick II of Swabia suffers one of the worst defeats of his life. The Italian municipalities, united by Pope Innocent IV, the emperor's sworn enemy, have triumphed and the dream of reuniting the whole Peninsula under imperial power now seems to have faded forever. The only hope for the emperor is answered in a powerful secret that fortunately survived the devastation that the municipal troops have perpetrated in the encampment of Frederick II. This hope was picked up a few years later by Manfredi, the emperor's favorite son. It will be up to him to abandon the role of simple falconer, to take up the sword and shield against the enemies of his family. It will be up to Manfredi, by a game of fate, to gird the crown of the kingdom of southern Italy, the most advanced and cosmopolitan state that the Middle Ages have known.

This is the frame in which the events told in the novel " The sword of Manfredi " (Marlin editore, 2022, pp. 336) written by Francesco Nobile move. A novel that starts with a mysterious knight who knocks on Dante Alighieri's door , with a story to tell: it will be the great poet who will grasp the deepest secret of the dynasty of Frederick II and Manfredi and take charge of it with his immortal work.

We ask Francesco Nobile where the choice to dedicate a historical novel to the figure of Manfredi comes from:

“He is a figure that has always fascinated me. A man of many talents and various passions: falconer, poet, patron and knight, he summed up in himself courteous and military virtues. Discovered among the school benches thanks to Dante's words - to the blond and beautiful and kind-looking verses that paint him with beautiful brushstrokes in Purgatory - he struck my imagination in a vivid way. Then, as I studied his life, until I made my degree thesis, I decided that there was a story to tell that went beyond the simple news ”.

Why were Manfredi and Frederick II before him so important for southern Italy?

“Because they were the bearers of an innovative culture, compared to their times. In a sense they were precursors. The south of Italy was a synthesis of different peoples who lived under the wing of the great imperial eagle. There were Jewish communities, Orthodox and Muslim enclaves that lived side by side, in the kingdom unified by the Normans and then passed to the Swabians. The South was a unitary and centralizing political reality in an Italy still deeply divided, both in ideological and territorial terms, and the Swabians aimed to extend their authority also to the north, in the Italy of the Municipalities.

Did they want to create a kind of unification of Italy?

“There were the preconditions for the constitution of a national unity that would come in advance of that of the other European states. Instead, history went somewhere else: the French and the Spanish, for example, seized modernity before us while the idea of an Italian state slipped for centuries. It was a great missed opportunity, from my point of view, especially for the South which would have emphasized its centrality and claimed a destiny, perhaps, more Mediterranean for our beautiful Peninsula. But, beyond the unexpressed possibilities, much remains of that era. The first lay state university in all of Europe is in Naples. The first lyric production in the vernacular was born in Sicily and arose and a network of castles that still today embellishes and gives beauty to our territory ".

What did the defeat of the Swabians mean for the South of Italy?

“Today we would say that it was a real paradigm shift. The network of international alliances completely jumped: the Swabians were at the head of the Ghibellines of Italy, while the reigning house that took over, the Angevins, was Guelph faithful, linked to the pope. One of the fiercest contrasts that Frederick II and Manfredi had to face is certainly that with the papacy, a contrast that, in the long run, cost the Swabian dynasty the throne. The French, on the other hand, will operate in a much more consistent way with the papal wishes and their needs, in fact acting, in some moments, as an armed hand of the popes' foreign policy. Finally, on other fronts, the dynasties following the Swabians will be much less tolerant towards the different realities that populated the Kingdom of Sicily ”.

Why did you introduce the figure of Dante in the novel?

“The meeting of the great poet with a mysterious knight is the literary setting for the events. I included Dante in the novel both because it enriches the narration and because it makes a strong contribution to the ultimate meaning of the story I wanted to tell. Indeed, in a certain sense he is the character who more than any other embodies the final moral of the book ”.

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