334 July The i De Arte Venandi cum Avibus' of the Emperor Frederick II THE reign of the Emperor Frederick II holds an important place in the transition from medieval to modern culture. Much has been written of the cosmopolitan intellectual life of his court, of its school of poetry as the cradle of Italian vernacular literature, of the philosophers and translators who linked it with the older world. To many it has seemed that it is under Frederick,
- the first modern man upon a throne V rather than in the days
of Petrarch, that the real beginning of the Italian Renaissance is to be sought. In any such discussion much depends upon our judgement of the personality o£ the emperor, that stupor mundi of learning whose superstitiones et curiositates scandalized con- temporaries. 2 All agree as to the extraordinary activity and extraordinary interest of his mind, yet its principal literary product, his De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, has been strangely neglected. Mentioned in rather perfunctory fashion by other historians, 3 its significance has been more fully seen by Karl Hampe, who declares that this book must be studied by all ' who wish to learn to know Frederick's method of thinking and working scientifically ' ; 4 yet Hampe devotes but two pages to the treatise, the greater part of which he has not read. The solid volume required for a complete text would need careful examina- tion by the zoologist and the falconer, in relation both to its antecedents and to its additions to the store of theoretical and practical birdlore, and our knowledge of medieval zoology and of 1 J. Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien (ed Geiger, Leipzig, 1899), i. 4. 8 Salimbene, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, xxxii. 351. 8 Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen (Leipzig, 1857), iii. 286 f. ; Huillard-Bre- holles, Historia diplomatica Friderici Secundi (Paris, 1859), introduction, pp. Dxxxvf.; Ranke, Weltgeschichte, viii. 369 ; Biehringer, Kaiser Friedrich II (Berlin, 1912), p. 273 ; L. Allshorn, Stupor Mundi (London, 1912), p. 118. The very brief treatment of the De arte venandi is a serious gap in the suggestive article of H. Niese, 'Zur Geschichte des geistigen Lebens am Hofe Kaiser Friedrichs II ', in Historische Zeit- schrift, cviii. 473-540 (1912). For recent materials for the study of the reign, see Hampe, Deutsche Kaiser geschichte (Leipzig, 1919), pp. 219 f.
- Historische Zeitschrift* lxxxiii. 19 (1899).
