The Normans In The South

by John Julius Norwich

  Four days later, riots broke out in the city. Roger Borsa had chosen this moment to liberate the Imperial Prefect of Rome, whom his father had taken prisoner two years before. Whether in doing so he was deliberately spiking the guns of Jordan of Capua and the papal Curia (who had recently refused ratification for his new Archbishop of Salerno) or whether he was simply acting with his usual cluelessness is not certain; at any rate it was a foolish move. Desiderius, well-disposed and malleable, was the best possible choice of Pope from the Norman point of view; but now the Prefect went straight to Rome where, stirring up the old imperialist faction, he successfully prevented the formal consecration in St Peter's. For the new Pope this was confirmation of his worst fears. He seemed almost to welcome the opportunity to prove that he was not of papal calibre. Making no attempt at resistance, he left the city at once and took ship to Terracina whence, having made a full and formal renunciation of his throne, he returned with all speed to Monte Cassino.

  Now the situation was worse than ever. Now, too, the first voices hostile to Desiderius began to be heard. Hugh of Lyons and Odo of Ostia, both nominees of the dying Gregory and both considering themselves eminently suitable candidates for the papal tiara, naturally resented the manner in which it had been thrust on to the head of a colleague who was at once unwilling and manifestly incapable. In October these two disgruntled prelates, accompanied by several others who had by now come round to their way of thinking, arrived at Salerno; Roger Borsa, still thwarted over his Archbishop, gave them a ready welcome; and though we cannot be sure just what took place during their deliberations, from that time the abbot's popularity began to wane. Had he not made a separate treaty with Henry IV when Henry was openly threatening not only the city of Rome but even the person of the Pope himself? Had he not, indeed, suffered a year's excommunication in consequence ? Was such a man truly the best that could be found to assume the Vicariate of Christ?

  It was inevitable, sooner or later, that these rumblings from Salerno should reach the ears of Desiderius, safely back in his abbey. What was more surprising was the effect they had on him. For the first time since Gregory's death he began to show signs of determination. Perhaps it was the thought of seeing one of his opponents on the throne that goaded him into action. He had never liked Hugh of Lyons, who had publicly expressed disapproval at his dealings with the imperialists; while Odo, whom he himself had nominated only a few months before, had chosen an odd way to express his gratitude. But Desiderius was by nature neither jealous nor vindictive. For more than thirty years his actions had been motivated by two considerations only—the good of his monastery and the peaceful continuance of his own life within its walls—and it is here that we must seek an explanation for the steps he now took. It may be that Jordan, still his determined champion, suddenly hit upon the one way to infuse him with a little spirit and suggested to him that the elevation of either of his opponents might have unfavourable effects on his own position as abbot; similar rumours may even have reached him from other, better-placed sources. Whatever the reason, Desiderius pulled himself together and, by virtue of his former authority, summoned a council of the Church at Capua. There, in March 1087, he solemnly announced his resumption of the Papacy. His clerical opponents walked out forthwith, doubtless trusting that their ally Roger Borsa would support them; but the Duke had been summoned secretly by Desiderius the previous night and had come to a very satisfactory arrangement about his Archbishop of Salerno. Unreliable as always, he now proclaimed himself for the Pope. Victor resumed, without further reluctance, the vestments he had so eagerly cast off and started at once for Rome, the combined Norman troops of Apulia and Capua in his train.

  The atmosphere in the City had not improved during his absence. The Imperial Prefect, whom his departure had left in undisputed control, had summoned back anti-Pope Clement and reinstalled him in the Vatican; and it was the Vatican, and in particular old St Peter's itself, that now received the full shock of the Norman attack. Its defenders did their best, but St Peter's was no St Angelo's; it could not be held for long. Clement withdrew to the Pantheon and barricaded himself in; and on 9 May the Bishop of Ostia, reconciled at last to the inevitable, consecrated Victor III in the basilica. Even now, however, the Pope's triumph was far from complete. Trastevere was his, but Rome itself remained in imperialist hands and the Normans, their primary purpose achieved, were understandably reluctant to venture once again into the old city, where memories of 1084 were still dangerously fresh. In the circumstances Victor had no difficulty in persuading himself that it was useless to remain in his see; within a fortnight he was back at Monte Cassino.

  This time he felt safe from his enemies; but God, who had in other respects treated him with so much consideration, still refused to protect him from his friends. Now it was Countess Matilda of Tuscany who appeared at the gates of Rome, intent on expelling Clement and his supporters, insistent on Victor's presence at her side. Wearily the wretched pontiff dragged himself back to the city where, immured with his unwanted champion in the Pierleoni stronghold on the Tiber Island,1 he had to face another two months' tribulation through the height of the Roman summer while the tide of battle swung back and forth, ever bloodier but always inconclusive. In July, by now seriously ill, he could bear it no longer and departed, via Benevento, for the monastery he should never have left; and there, on 16 September, he died. He was buried in the chapter-house; but the whole abbey, which he had recon-ceived and recreated, was his monument. For the monks of Monte Cassino his memory would be imperishable; for the rest of the world he had proved a disappointment and an anticlimax, whose story served only to corroborate two truths which should have been self-evident—that great abbots do not necessarily make great popes, and that, just as in the days of Gregory, the Papacy still depended for its survival on Norman steel.

  1 The mediaeval tower which still rises from the island just south of the Ponte Fabricio is part of the old fortress. It is still known as the Torre della Contessa, in memory of Matilda. The Pierleoni had further guarded the approach by fortifying the theatre of Marcellus, immediately opposite the island on the left bank.

  19

  THE GREAT COUNT

  Lingua facundissimus, consilio callidus, in ordinatione agendarum rerum providens.

  (Most ready of tongue, wise in counsel, far-sighted in the ordering of affairs.)

  Malaterra on Roger, I, 19

  SEVENTY-ONE years had passed since that day when Melus had approached the pilgrims in the Archangel's cave—seventy-one years during which the great tide that had swept across South Italy, carrying the Normans upon its crest and engulfing all others, had never once faltered in its career. It had carried them through Aversa, Melfi, and Civitate, through Messina, Bari and Palermo, and even to Rome itself; it had raised them, with each succeeding decade, to new heights of glory and power; and if occasionally for a year or two the impetus had seemed to diminish, it had always proved merely to be gathering strength for a still grander forward surge. Now, suddenly, in the last dozen years of the century, the pace slackens. The old momentum is lost. It is as if, no longer able to cope with so relentless an onrush of events, time itself has grown tired.

  So, at least, it appears to the historian. To those of the Duke's subjects who lived in mainland Italy during those years, life probably continued much the same—except that it was perhaps a little duller since the Guiscard's death, for his energy and ebullience had made themselves felt far beyond the immediate sphere of his vassals, his soldiers and those whose lives were immediately affected by his policies. But dullness, alas, did not mean security. The old quarrel between Roger Borsa and Bohemund broke out again in the autumn

  of 1087, and during the next nine years few regions of the South were to escape the consequences of their rivalry. Civil wars tend inevitably to be sterile, exhausting a country physically and financially while offering no hope of expansion or conquest or economic gain; that which now spread across the peninsula was even more profitless than most s
ince, though it enabled Bohemund to dghten his grip on his half-brother's dominions, its effects were largely to be nullified when, in 1096, he left on the First Crusade.

  But it was not only the local populations that had cause to regret the passing of the old order. There were others, outside the Dukedom, who found themselves increasingly concerned over the anarchy into which it was slipping; and chief among these was Odo, the former Bishop of Osda who, six months after the death of Pope Victor, had been elected to succeed him on the papal throne under the name of Urban II. This stately, scholarly aristocrat from Champagne, a zealous reformer who had been Prior of Cluny before coming south to join the Curia, had little in common with his pathetic predecessor. He was, instead, a staunch upholder of papal supremacy on the Gregorian model—except that he possessed all the polish and diplomatic finesse that his exemplar had so disastrously lacked. Since his city was now once again firmly in the hands of the anti-Pope Clement and the imperialists he had been elected and consecrated at Terracina, and he well knew that Norman help would be necessary if he were ever to return to Rome. At the beginning of his pontificate, with the Duke of Apulia fully occupied with the Prince of Taranto, such help was obviously out of the question; and it was only after a personal visit by Urban to Sicily that Count Roger was able to patch up another temporary peace between his nephews and so to make possible an armed expedition to Rome by which, in November 1088, the Pope entered the city. Even then he found himself, like Victor before him, confined to the tiny Tiber Island; and by the following autumn he was back in exile. Not until Easter 1094, and then by bribery, was he able to penetrate to the Lateran Palace and, six years after his consecration, to assume his rightful throne.

  Most of those six years Urban had spent wandering through South Italy; and the more he wandered the more convinced he must have become that it was on Count Roger rather than his nephew that the mantle of Robert Guiscard had fallen. The new Duke of Apulia was a well-meaning but worthless cypher, despised by Normans and Lombards alike, struggling along as best he could but increasingly dependent on his uncle and more and more inclined to take refuge from his inadequacy in the churches and monasteries where, alone, his open-handedness and undoubted piety made him genuinely popular. Bohemund on the other hand, if he was already showing some of his father's genius, had also inherited his restlessness and irresponsibility. Although in the Pope's eyes he was an outlaw— having taken up arms against a papal vassal—his stength was rapidly increasing: in 1090 he had managed to annex Bari, as well as several towns in Northern Calabria, and he now exercised effective control, not only over the heel of Italy but also over the entire region between Melfi and the Gulf of Taranto. Even if he could be prevented from destroying the South, his influence in the peninsula would never be anything but disruptive. There was equally little hope to be drawn from the principality of Capua; Jordan had died in 1090 and his son Richard, still a minor, had been thrown out by the populace and was now living in exile.

  In 1094 Count Roger was sixty-three years old, and at last the undisputed master of Sicily. Butera had yielded to him soon after Urban's visit in 1088 and Noto, the last bastion of Saracen independence, had followed voluntarily in 1091. That same year, as an additional protection against raids from the south, he had led an expedition to Malta, which had also surrendered without a struggle. Of those areas of Sicily which Robert Guiscard had retained for himself, half the cities of Palermo and Messina and much of the Val Demone remained technically the property of Roger Borsa— the other half of Palermo having been acquired by the Count the previous year in return for helping his nephew at the siege of Cosenza. But although he was deprived of their revenues, Roger's authority ran as firm here as everywhere else on the island.

  The two decades that had elapsed since the fall of the Sicilian capital had had a deep effect on his character. During his youth he had shown as much hot-blooded impetuosity as any of his Hauteville brothers; but whereas the Guiscard had remained to the end of his life the adventurer and soldier of fortune he had always been, Roger had developed into a mature and responsible statesman. Moreover, despite his conquests, he had proved himself to be fundamentally a man of peace. Never during the slow extension of his authority over the island had he used military force to gain results which might have been achieved by negotiation; never, when war was inevitable, had he embarked on it until he could be confident of victory. The process, from first to last, had taken a long time—most of his adult life—but it had enabled him to consolidate as he went along, and it had eventually secured for him the respect and trust of the large majority of his subjects, whatever their religion or race. It was more than Robert Guiscard had ever been able to boast.

  Robert, it must be admitted, had had to contend with one immense and perhaps ultimately insuperable handicap—his vassals. Jealous, insubordinate, ever resentful of his domination, they were the curse of the South, the supreme obstacle to its prosperity and cohesion. They had, however, an undoubted right to be where they were: many of their families had already settled in Italy before the first of the sons of Tancred had left their father's manor. The Guiscard had been forced to accept them as a necessary evil and to deal with them as best he could. In Sicily, on the other hand, things were different. There the Hautevilles had arrived first in the field with full papal authority behind them; they constituted the only fount of honour; and they had taken care from the outset to prevent the establishment of any large fiefs that might subsequently jeopardise their own position.

  Thus it was that Roger of Sicily had become, by the beginning of the last decade of the eleventh century, the greatest prince of the South, more powerful than any ruler on the Italian mainland. To Pope Urban, whose tenure of Rome was still by no means assured— the Castel S. Angelo was to remain in the hands of the anti-Pope's faction till 1098—it was clear that if the Papacy were once again seriously threatened only the Count would be able to provide the necessary southern support. Roger, to be sure, was not the easiest of allies. He knew his worth and, with the Pope just as with his nephew, he drove hard bargains. On the other hand he needed a strong Latin element in Sicily. Without it he would not only have found his present position difficult but would have had no religious backing on which to rely in time of crisis; and he well understood that three potentially opposing factions tend to be safer and easier to handle than two. Thus, while taking care never to offend or frighten the Greek and Islamic communities, he had from the outset given cautious encouragement to the vanguard of Latin churchmen who had arrived in Sicily in the early years of the conquest. By April 1073 a Latin Archbishopric had already been established in Palermo; during the next fifteen years, as the ecclesiastical immigration gathered strength, Frenchmen were installed as bishops in Troina, Mazara, Agrigento, Syracuse and Catania; and before 1085 the first Sicilian Benedictine abbey had been founded, at Roger's own expense, on the island of Lipari.

  The Papacy, while obviously gratified to see the influence of the Mother Church so rapidly expanding in a land where it had been unknown only a few years before, at first viewed Roger's actions with some misgiving. Gregory VII, as we have seen, did not take kindly to the appointment of bishops by lay rulers; and though the Great Count never claimed the right of investiture as a matter of principle as Henry IV had done, he plainly had no intention of relinquishing his effective control of Church affairs. Fortunately Gregory had been too fully occupied elsewhere to bother overmuch with Sicily; and Urban, though his views on the subject were avowedly identical,1 approached the problem with a degree of diplomacy of which his predecessor would never have been capable. It was not only a question of needing Roger as an ally. The Pope, who may have been already pondering the idea of a huge international Crusade to deliver the Holy Land from the Infidel, could hardly come out in active opposition against the one successful crusader in the West, who after two and a half centuries had restored much of Sicily to the Christian fold. Lurking, too, at the back of his mind there was possibly a further uneasy doubt: could
he be

  1 'All that he [Gregory] rejected I reject, what he condemned I condemn, what he loved I embrace, what he regarded as Catholic I approve, and to whatever side he was attracted I incline' (from a circular letter written by Urban immediately after his election, March 1088).

  altogether sure of Roger's own devotion to the True Faith ? Admittedly the Count, for purposes of practical administration, had subordinated the Orthodox churches in Sicily to his Latin hierarchy; but he had taken this step more in self-defence against Byzantine influence than in submission to Rome. He was, moreover, setting up Basilian monasteries at an alarming rate, and rumours of a possible important conversion had long been current in Palermo and elsewhere. Urban could not afford to take any chances.

  Neither, however, could he allow the Count to claim rights which belonged properly to himself; and whatever may have been the primary reason for his visit to Roger at Troina in 1088—whether it was to seek help for a march on Rome or, as Malaterra suggests, to discuss Byzantine proposals for an end to the schism—it seems clear enough that the two reached a mutually satisfactory agreement on the whole question of the Church in Sicily. Henceforth, in return for his recognition of papal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, we find Roger enjoying a large measure of autonomy, making his own decisions in the Pope's name and only in the last resort—as when Urban refused to elevate Lipari to a bishopric in 1091— submitting to papal force majeure.