There would have been a number of Jewish doctors to choose from in Rome in 1081, as the city had a sizeable Jewish population. Benjamin Tudela, a Jewish visitor to Rome three generations after 1081, wrote that the city had a community of two hundred. In a curious mirror of the Christian world, Rome was the centre of European Judaism. The high status of Roman Jews sprang from the fact that their community was so ancient – it was the oldest continuously in existence – and that the Roman Jewish liturgy was believed to have been brought directly from the Great Temple of Jerusalem, from a time when it had still been functioning. The city’s Jews were often closely connected with the popes – in Tudela’s time one was Alexander III’s steward – and they sometimes persuaded popes to intercede on behalf of Jews who were being maltreated elsewhere in the Catholic world. In the late eleventh century Rome’s Jews had a powerful friend in Leone di Benedetto Cristiano who helped Gregory VII bribe the Romans in papal elections, and who, as one can guess from his name, was descended from Jewish converts to Christianity.
Yet, aside from its Jewish community, Rome was not a place of great diversity. The streets of the Leonine City pilgrims may have echoed with numerous languages, spoken by visiting pilgrims, but across the Tiber one would have heard little else but Italian, along with some Latin, and German spoken by a few higher churchmen in the Lateran. Rome was probably more culturally monochrome in the eleventh century than it had been in the 530s, when at least there was a visible Gothic presence.
Roman food, though, was becoming more diverse. The city’s lively market, which had moved only a short way from its ancient site beside the Tiber, to the slope of the Capitoline Hill, offered fish, every kind of meat, vegetable and fruit, along with vinegar, wines, and mustard oil. One could find black peppercorns, imported from the distant East, which were as popular as they had been in classical times, and so precious that they were sometimes used as currency. One could buy cheeses, which probably included buffalo mozzarella, as buffaloes had been introduced to Italy several centuries earlier, either by the Lombards or the Byzantines. Exotic new ingredients brought to Sicily by the Arabs were also to be found, including aubergines, spinach, pomegranates, almonds, rice and saffron, sugar cane and lemons.
By 1081 Roman cuisine was already moving away from its classical, Thai style incarnation towards something that is more recognisably Italian. Eleventh-century Romans enjoyed a vegetable sauce named pulmentarium that was the ancestor of pasta sauces and pizza toppings. However, there is no evidence that fresh pasta, which had existed in classical times, was particularly popular in the eleventh century, while dried pasta was a thing of the future and tomatoes remained undiscovered in the Americas. Though one culinary innovation had already reached Rome by 1081. It was first recorded in Venice in the tenth century, where it caused quite a stir when it was observed being used by a sophisticated Byzantine princess: the fork.
Romans were also less divided in terms of wealth than they had been for a long time. The thirteen leading families were nothing like the super-rich aristocrats of the past. They were not even landowners – how could they be when the Church owned most land? – but were instead sub-letting tenants. Lacking dynastic prestige, as none could trace ancestors back beyond a few generations, they were an elite of the nouveau riche, whose power sprang from their fortresses, their gold and their connections.
Beneath them a whole crowd was pressing upwards, hoping for advancement. In marked contrast to Rome in 410 or even Rome in 530, Rome in 1081 had a sizeable middle class. This sprang from the city’s dynamic economy as, for all its parasitism, eleventh-century Rome was a productive place. Following on from Belisarius’ innovation, the Tiber now had a small fleet of floating mills. The city was filled with artisans’ workshops and there were ironworkers and potters in Trastevere, carpenters and shield-makers over the river, and shoemakers, furriers and bronze workers in the old Forum area. Rome was also one of Europe’s most important financial centres, whose moneylenders provided gold to popes, and to visitors who needed to bribe their way to a favourable result in the city’s new international Church court, which had recently been established by Gregory VII.
Rome’s middle-class clerks and minor clergy, builders and soldiers, artisans and shopkeepers enjoyed comfortable lives. The rents they paid were low and many leased two or three homes, along with a little land outside the city. Most owned a horse and a suit of chain mail and on the first Sunday of Lent, when throngs of Romans made their way to the hill of discarded amphorae, Monte Testaccio, to play games and kill a bear, a bullock and a cockerel – representing, respectively, the devil, pride and unchastity – the city’s poor walked, but its butchers and clerks, along with members of thirteen great families, rode with the pope. Rome still had its poor, of course, about whom – as usual – we know relatively little, but the city was now largely free of slaves. In 1081, though slavery still existed in Western Europe, it was a rarity. Instead of slaves, Rome’s wealthy were looked after by servants. Though the quality of servants’ lives was probably little better than that of slaves of earlier centuries, at least they had marriage rights and could own property.
Finally, Roman society was a little less patriarchal than it had been in earlier eras. The Middle Ages is not a time that is usually associated with women’s rights but in 1081 Roman females – or at least rich Roman females – were better off than one might suppose. In part, this was because their city followed Roman law, which was more generous to them than other legal systems in force in Italy at this time. Roman females could expect to inherit property alongside their male siblings. Like females in earlier ages they were usually married in their teens to Roman males in their twenties, which meant they had a good chance of becoming rich widows. The eleventh century saw a peak in female land ownership in Italy and a good portion of Roman property was passed down to children from their mothers. Some even passed on their surnames. In most cases this was probably because the children were born illegitimately or their father had been a churchman. In the century before 1081 more than a third of Romans who found their way into official records did not take their father’s surname but their mother’s. This was an era when Italian women could wield real political power, as did the formidable Matilda of Tuscany, who personally led her troops on campaigns.
As to Roman fathers, if, as is probable, they were like Genoese fathers a few decades later whose wills have survived, they would have been worriers. They worried they would be outlived by their young wives and that their children would be sidelined and lose their inheritance to children of a second marriage, a fear which led them to leave money incentives to discourage their wives from remarrying. They worried about their children who had died – of whom there would have been distressingly many in this era – and, fearing for their chances of reaching heaven, they left money to have masses said on their behalf. Even the childless were worriers. Afraid that there would be nobody to take care of them in their old age, they adopted.
When they were not worrying about their children or their health, or eating fine food with forks, the thirteen great families of Rome spent their energies competing with one another, and by the reign of Pope Gregory VII this competition had grown increasingly violent. A split existed among them whose origins went back to the 1062 crisis, when Henry’s riverboat kidnapper Archbishop Anno of Cologne and the German court tried to impose their own papal candidate. Though, as we saw, the German court was thwarted by Hildebrand’s energetic bribery, the dispute opened up a new and lasting fissure between supporters of popes and emperors, which would grow into the Guelph–Ghibelline conflict that set Italian cities against one another for several centuries. It would also play a part in Henry IV’s attack on Rome.
Most of Rome’s leading families, including the Frangipani, the Corsi, and the family of Leone di Benedetto Cristiano, the Pierleoni, stayed loyal to the reform popes, but three took the German side of the squabble. In 1075 a spat grew up between one of the pope’s officials and a member of one of these fami
lies, Cencio di Stefano. After di Stefano built a tower on Hadrian’s Bridge to extort money from passers-by, Gregory’s city prefect arrested him and was dissuaded with difficulty from executing him. The following Christmas Gregory VII, as was traditional, celebrated mass in Santa Maria Maggiore but a heavy rainstorm kept most Romans away and the church was almost empty. Di Stefano saw his chance for revenge. He ran into the church with a group of armed followers, seized Gregory by the hair, flung him on to his horse and kidnapped him, taking him to a nearby tower belonging to his family. The drama proved short-lived. The next day, when the weather had improved, a crowd of Romans freed Gregory, who forgave di Stefano on condition that he go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Having agreed, di Stefano then reneged and fled to Henry IV’s Italian capital at Pavia. It may seem a minor enough incident yet it seems to have had important consequences. Most of all it would lead Henry IV to make a bad miscalculation.
III
On 21 May 1081, Henry IV’s army camped outside the walls of Rome. Once again, our picture of his forces is imprecise but we know that they included Germans, Bohemians and northern Italians. There were feudal levies and mercenaries, foot soldiers, archers and also Europe’s new super-weapon: knights. Knights were a product of the stirrup, an innovation that had arrived several centuries earlier from the East. Thanks to stirrups a knight could ride full tilt at an enemy and spear him with his lance without being thrown backwards off his horse. With chain mail to protect both man and horse from archers’ arrows, knights were the tanks of the medieval world and a charge by them could smash through the most determined resistance. Yet there would not have been many knights in this particular army. As has been seen, Henry’s force was small. Compared to the hordes of Alaric and Witigis, it was tiny and it was probably a good deal smaller even than Belisarius’ army of 5,000.
Henry seems to have assumed that his military strength was not of much importance. What mattered was that he was there. The ease with which Gregory VII had been kidnapped from Santa Maria Maggiore may have made him over-confident, leading him to assume that Romans loathed their pope as much as he did. Such thinking would certainly explain his woeful lack of preparedness. Though he had brought an antipope, Wibert, he had neglected to bring any siege machinery and his timing, too, was poor. To mount a serious siege of Rome before the summer malarial season began he should have left Germany in the autumn. Instead he had left in the late winter, reaching Rome only on 21 May. He expected to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, whether by Wibert or Gregory, at Pentecost, which fell just a couple of weeks later. It seems Henry had hurried to Rome assuming he would be welcomed into the city by its citizens.
He soon realized his mistake. Members of Rome’s pro-German families slipped out to join him but, whether from a sense of loyalty or in memory of his cash handouts, the great majority of Romans sided with their pope. The city gates remained firmly shut and the walls were well guarded by the city’s militiamen, bolstered by a few Normans and some Tuscans sent by Gregory’s ally Matilda. Thwarted, Henry did his best to put a good face on things, writing a friendly manifesto to the Romans in which he feigned puzzlement that they had not come out to welcome their soon-to-be Holy Roman Emperor. He appointed officials, church and lay, just as if he were already inside the city, and even held a Whitsuntide procession with his antipope. Then, in early June, he and his army packed up and left.
Gregory and the Romans must have been exultant. After barely two weeks their enemy had turned tail and gone. Yet any celebrations were premature. Henry was fully determined to be crowned and to enjoy some revenge for his humiliation at Canossa, and the following three years saw a series of sieges of Rome that were the most protracted since those of Totila five centuries earlier. With each, Henry came a little closer to getting what he wanted. During his second siege, which began in February 1082, he detached two of Gregory’s last significant friends in the region, Abbot Desiderius of the monastery of Montecassino and southern Italy’s lesser Norman ruler, Prince Jordan of Capua. Henry also began negotiating an alliance with the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comemnus, who, eager to halt Robert Guiscard’s invasion of his empire, offered Henry a large cash payment if he would attack Guiscard’s territories in Puglia. Yet Comemnus’ gold also brought Henry new worries. Comemnus bribed a number of Guiscard’s underlings in Puglia to revolt and in April 1082 Guiscard was forced to leave his Byzantine invasion in the hands of one of his sons and sail back across the Adriatic. For the moment Guiscard was fully occupied dealing with the rebels but Henry cannot have been pleased to see him back on Italian soil.
At the end of 1082 Henry camped outside Rome with his army, determined to throttle the city with a prolonged siege. As famine struck, Romans’ loyalty to Gregory VII began to waver. Gregory did not help his own cause, as it was clear to all that he was the one preventing a resolution of the crisis. Regular negotiations were held between the besieged and the besiegers, in which Henry, eager to finish his campaign and get back to his kingdom, showed some flexibility, but Gregory would not give an inch. Starving Romans were paying the price for his high principles. Then Henry’s position was further strengthened when he enjoyed a breakthrough. The city’s famished defenders had become sloppy and on 3 June 1083 a force of Milanese and Saxons led by Wigbert of Thuringia scaled the low walls of the Leonine City, broke inside and opened one of the gates. After two days of fighting around St Peter’s, Henry’s army prevailed and he marched triumphantly through the gate with his knights, his bishops, his Roman allies and his antipope, to take up residence in the Imperial Palace beside St Peter’s.
His victory was a limited one. Though the Leonine City was his, the rest of Rome across the river was still locked firmly against him. As for Gregory VII, he was tantalizingly close and Henry might have glimpsed him staring disapprovingly at him. As the Leonine City fell Gregory’s Pierleoni allies had whisked him to safety in Castel Sant’Angelo, just a few hundred yards from St Peter’s. Yet, even if Gregory was safe, his position was deteriorating. The loss of the Leonine City further undermined Romans’ sense of loyalty. Henry increased his popularity by showering the Romans with gold that he had just received from his new Byzantine ally, Emperor Comemnus, which would have been very welcome to Romans who had been starved of income from the Church and the pilgrim trade. By the next year, as they endured yet another siege, and saw their pope as obdurate as ever – he insisted that Henry must humble himself again, as he had at Canossa – loyalty began to turn to loathing.
King Henry was unaware of their change of heart. Gloomily accepting that he would probably have to return to Germany crownless, he left Rome to honour his agreement with Alexius Comemnus and attack Robert Guiscard’s territories in Puglia, until, his campaign having hardly begun, he was surprised to receive a delegation of Romans inviting him into the city. In a letter to Bishop Theodoric of Verdun, Henry recounted his amazement:
What we did in Rome with ten men, so to say, the Lord wrought through us; if our predecessors had done it with tens of thousands, to all it would have been a miracle. When we were thinking of returning to German territory, behold, the Romans sent us envoys, asked us to enter Rome, and promised to obey us in all respects. And so they did…6
Finally, on 21 March 1084, after almost three years of trying, Henry entered Rome in full splendour. Against all precedent he took up residence not in the Imperial Palace but in Gregory’s home, the Lateran Palace, together with his wife, Bertha, who he had tried to divorce, and his antipope Wibert. Within days a parliament of Romans met and deposed Gregory VII – safe but livid in the Castel Sant’Angelo – and Wibert was elected as Pope Clement III. On Easter Monday, in a ceremony of great pomp, Clement III crowned Henry and Bertha Holy Roman Emperor and Empress. He had achieved all that he had come to Italy for.
Except that it was not quite all. He also wanted to enjoy some revenge for his humiliation at Canossa Castle. Shortly after his arrival in Rome his troops launched an attack on Castel Sant’Angelo, but the smooth, high stones of
Hadrian’s old tomb proved as strong as they had to Witigis’ Goths five centuries earlier, and the attack was fended off with high casualties. It was still only the beginning of April, so there was ample time before the malarial season threatened. Henry besieged the fortress to starve Gregory into submission. In the meantime, he turned his attention to those of the city’s great families – the Frangipani, the Corsi, the Pierleoni – who had remained loyal to Gregory and had retreated to their fortresses. Henry besieged and took the Corsi’s strongpoint on the Capitoline. He had less luck with the artificial spur of the Palatine, the Septizonium, that was held by Gregory’s nephew Rusticus, where all he achieved was the destruction of some fine classical colonnades. His forces probably also attacked the Frangipani’s fortress in the Colosseum, where fire damage has been found from this time. He does not seem to have attempted to seize the Pierleoni’s fortress in the Theatre of Marcellus.
Then Henry’s chance for revenge slipped away. In early May troubling news arrived. Robert Guiscard was marching on Rome. Having shown no interest in helping Gregory since he had returned to Italy, two years earlier, he had now decided to come to his rescue. In part this would have been because he had finally crushed his rebellious underlings. At the time same time, while he had been content to see his former excommunicator suffer a little in Castel Sant’Angelo, he probably did not wish to risk losing him for good. A papal ally, especially a papal ally who owed him, could be useful.
Henry had no intention of staying and defending his new friends the Romans. He had everything he had come for. Why risk facing Robert Guiscard in battle, or becoming besieged in Rome during the malaria season? So, on 21 May 1084, in some haste, he, his wife, his antipope and his army abandoned Rome. They left just in time. Three days later Robert Guiscard’s army were camped outside the San Lorenzo Gate. If Guiscard hoped to be invited inside by Gregory’s supporters he was disappointed. Aside from the families still loyal to Gregory, still besieged in their fortresses, Romans remained resolutely antagonistic to their pope. This would be a fight.
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