Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  But if any one wishes to see the northern element as it developed in Italy, without amalgamation, let him go down into the deep old court of La Cava, in the wild gorge above Salerno; for though the great Benedictine monastery was founded a hundred years before King Roger’s day, by a Lombard, the cloistered court is Norman, and of the roughest sort; and far below, in Gothic vaults where a faint glimmer of daylight makes the glare of the wax torches ghostly, there lie the skulls and the bones of many hundred fighting pilgrims of the early days, arranged in a sort of reverent order by the careful monks. One great skull is pierced through the forehead by a thrust of a blade three fingers broad, clean and straight, for the pilgrims did not always die a natural death; and the traveller who pauses to gaze upon the cloven head may think of those forty Normans who put an army to flight, and saved Salerno long ago. The place has not the majesty of Monte Cassino, the mother abbey of the Benedictines; it is wild, rude, and romantic, an abode of warlike ghosts and the war‑worn wrecks of dead men, and the peaceful monastery above is the work of a later age. There is nothing in Sicily like La Cava. The cathedrals of the Norman kings are splendid with gold and alive with sunshine, the tender traceries of the south soften the bold spring of arch and vault, but the grim and grotesque mummied figures in the miniature catacombs of the Capuchin Convent, near Palermo, could never have been set in their narrow niches by northern hands. There is something in Palermo that reminds one of Constantinople, a similarity of circumstances, with a renewal of the conditions in which they have taken place. In the East the capital of Christian emperors was turned in a day to the use of Moslem sultans, and the victors used the hands and eyes of the vanquished make mosques of churches, to build a minaret beside every dome, and to adorn the lordly retreats of Asiatic idleness and luxury. And still the Greek is at home in the great city where he has been so long in subjection. In Palermo, it was the African who went down before a Christian conqueror, whose mosques were turned into churches again, whose palaces of delight became the abodes of fighting kings, to whom all idleness was strange, and all luxury new. But still, after eight centuries of change, renewal, and decay, the hawk-eyed, thin-lipped Saracen treads the streets of the royal city with a grace that is not European, and a quiet dignity not bred in the blustering north; while in that beautiful land of contradictions you can visit no village nor hamlet without seeing a score of handsome Norman children, with bright blue eyes and yellow hair, playing little eastern games under the Sicilian sun, and chattering in Italian dialect that is motley with Norman and Arabic and Spanish words. It is not the language of the often conquered, upon which many successive languages have been imposed, but rather the mixed speech of many conquering races, in a country where each has ruled in turn, and where it is hard to say which has left the deeper mark.

  It cannot have been very different in the days when King Roger was a little child, and his mother watched over him and ruled for him, when he alone was left to her, to be the great survivor of Tancred’s race. There is not much to tell of those times, save that a woman held easily what the Greek count had spent a lifetime in getting by the sword. Fate worked for the young king until he could go out and fight for himself. The Guiscard’s son, Roger Bursa, lived but a short life and left a feeble son, William of Apulia, as duke in his stead, who died prematurely, and without male issue. He was scarcely in his grave when Roger of Sicily, son of the Great Count, sailed up to Salerno with his galleys, convoked the Norman nobles, obtained an investiture from the Holy See, and took Apulia for himself; and three years afterwards, on Christmas Day, 1130, he was crowned King of Sicily at Palermo, in the chapel of Santa Maria l’ Incoronata, barbarously destroyed by the bombardment of 1860. It was on this spot that the small church of Saint Gregory once stood, which Count Roger compared to an oven amidst the Saracen palaces that surrounded it, and which he ordered to be pulled down and rebuilt, and here for two centuries and a half each king of Sicily was crowned. The little that remains of it stands by the northwest tower of the cathedral.

  Gibbon accuses King Roger of gratifying his ambition by the vulgar means of violence and artifice, and goes on to say that when he wished to be a king, the pride of Anacletus, the Jewish Pierleone’s antipope, was pleased to confer a title which the pride of the Norman had stooped to solicit. The judgment of the great historian is severe, and may well be modified by most readers. Roger was the survivor the house of Tancred in Italy, and he knew that he must keep his dominions free, or lose himself and his subjects. The investiture of the Holy See was necessary, and he was in no position to judge the claims of the ruling pontiff, Pope, or antipope. Innocent the Second was elected, indeed, but was long a fugitive, while Anacletus held the Vatican by the will of the powerful Pierleone; but, when the Emperor Lothair and Innocent joined hands with Pisa to excommunicate and destroy the Sicilian king, Roger fought for his life as well as his crown. Driven back at first into Sicily, he returned in wrath, destroyed the emperor’s newly invested Duke of Apulia, and terminated a war that lasted nine years by taking Pope Innocent prisoner at San Germano, near Monte Cassino. With the devotion of fervent Catholics he and his captains humbly knelt down at the feet of their captive; but it was with the cold tenacity of Tancred’s race that Roger dictated to the pontiff the terms of a peace which invested himself and his successors forever with the kingdom of Sicily, the Duchy of Apulia, and the principality of Capua. The reconciliation of the king and the Pope, says Gibbon, in sarcastic comment, was celebrated by the eloquence of Bernard of Clairvaux, who now revered the title and virtues of the king of Sicily; but with those who have some acquaintance with Saint Bernard’s character, the praise of the saint will outweigh the contempt of the historian, and we can admit without prejudice that King Roger was a brave and honourable man for his times, such as they were. From him, then, dates that kingdom of Sicily which was divided after the Sicilian Vespers, and became the Two Sicilies of later history.

  That he did much, if not all that he might have done, for the lands he ruled, there is ample evidence in history and in monument; but the greatest of his doings was that amalgamation of races which took place in his reign. His Moslem subjects were faithful to him and fought for him, even against Moslems, and if it was by their help that he overcame the Pope at San Germano, it was by their arms also that he took Tripoli, the strong Mohammedan city of the African coast; and in the fleet of the Sicilian admiral George of Antioch, which received the submission of Corfù and momentarily wrested all Greece from the enfeebled hold of Constantinople, there were as many free Saracens as there were Christians. That there was an element of fear in the Moslem subjection is true, and the eight-sided tower of King Roger still frowns over Castrogiovanni, the last great stronghold of the Mohammedans, to testify to the strength of his hand; but there was much loyalty also in the Saracens’ obedience, and we need not confound submission with servility, nor fear with cowardice.

  So far as King Roger’s conduct during the second Crusade is concerned, we know not whether to ascribe it to a certain consideration for his Mohammedan subjects, or to his apprehension of losing them; be that as it may, he imitated Count Roger in quietly refusing to join the armies of the Cross, and while the most glorious armament of the century was divided by the dissension of its leaders, decimated by disease, and at last reduced to a remnant by the swords of the Seljuks, King Roger was extending his dominions, increasing his wealth, and preparing for a war which he knew could not be long avoided. When Lewis the Seventh of France was returning from Jerusalem, disappointed and humiliated by the failure of the holy enterprise, and distracted by domestic troubles, he was almost captured on the high seas by treacherous Greeks, and was rescued from what might have proved an ignominious captivity by the timely appearance of the Norman fleet, which had lately ravaged the coasts of Greece; and being brought to Palermo he was royally entertained and sent forward on his journey by King Roger. With something like old Scandinavian daring, the Admiral George sailed up the Hellespont, dropped anchor with his galleys a
t the entrance to the Golden Horn, and shot a flight of arrows tipped with silver into the imperial gardens; but the Emperor Manuel’s anger soon avenged the taunt, George lost nineteen of his galleys on his homeward voyage, Corfù yielded to the emperor after a brave defence, the Eastern Empire was in arms, and King Roger’s last war had begun. While Manuel himself fought the Hungarians and the Turks in the East, he prepared a fleet, an army, and a kingdom’s ransom in treasure to win back the Norman’s possessions. Before he was ready to invade the West, however, King Roger had breathed his last. He died after a long illness, which some have called consumption, but which others have attributed to excesses: his last years, during which the conduct of his wars was intrusted to lieutenants, were spent in close intercourse with the wise men and learned Arabians he had attracted to his court, chief among whom was the geographer Edrisi, whose greatest work, composed under the direction of the king himself, was called ‘the book of Roger, the delight of him that journeys through the world,’ and was completed a few months before the king’s death. It is said that the composition of this great book occupied no less than fifteen years, during which hardly a day passed on which the king did not discuss some subject connected with it, and during which he explored, in the society of his learned Arabians, every department of known science. The book has remained a vast repository of learning, and a chief authority for the times, reflecting no small glory upon the sovereign who presided over its compilation.

  The great map of the world which Roger caused to be engraved upon a disk of silver weighing between three and four hundred pounds has been fully described, but it is needless to say that it disappeared in the disturbances of later times; upon it were engraved ‘the seven climates with their regions and townships, their coasts and their tablelands, their gulfs, seas, springs, and rivers, their inhabited and uninhabited lands, their highroads measured in miles, and the distances by sea from port to port.’ It is even said that the particular description of this plate in the Arabic language may have been the work of King Roger himself; it is at least certain that he deserves much of the credit for it. He had founded a sort of academy at Palermo, over which he presided, and of which the perpetual secretary was descended from the khalifs of Cordova. Owing to the king’s death the book was not translated into Latin at the time, but the seven centuries that elapsed before a translation made it accessible to ordinary scholars rather increased than diminished the fame which it was to bestow upon its royal compiler. It would be strange if the churchmen of that day had not found fault with the sovereign who surrounded himself with Moslems, and whose most intimate associate was an Arabian, and indeed the priests and monks said loudly that the king was little better than a Moslem himself. But the Moslems praised him as their Maecenas,º describing the magnificence of his palaces and gardens, the joyous life men led at his court, and the abundance of golden wine, which seems not to have shocked the pious Mohammedans of Sicily in that day. And true it is that Roger both protected and restored the arts, and that if he filled his coffers by Norman means, he spent his wealth royally in beautifying his favourite cities and in the encouragement of learning.

  The fortunes of the house of Tancred really culminated in the reign of King Roger, declined under William the Bad, improved under William the Good, the latter’s son, and then vacillated, after the failure of the legitimate succession, until they became involved with the destiny of the Empire under Henry the Sixth and Frederick the Second, of Hohenstaufen. Before going on to give a brief sketch of those changes, I shall endeavour to explain very clearly the connexion between the race of Tancred and King Roger’s successors, since it was in virtue of this connexion that they claimed the crown of Sicily for centuries after his death.

  Roger the Great Count was the youngest son of Tancred of Hauteville. Roger’s eldest son died an infant, and was succeeded by Roger, the first king.

  King Roger’s eldest son, Roger, grew to manhood, but died before his father, who was succeeded by his second son, William the First, the Bad.

  William the First was succeeded by William the Second, the Good, who left no heir.

  King Roger’s eldest son, Roger, who died before his father, left a natural son, called Tancred.

  William the Second was succeeded by this Tancred.

  Tancred was succeeded by his son, the infant William the Third.

  King Roger had a daughter, Constance, sister of William the First. She married the Emperor Henry the Sixth. He claimed the crown for her, and deposed and probably killed the infant William the Third.

  William the Third was therefore succeeded by Henry the Sixth of Hohenstaufen.

  Henry the Sixth was succeeded by his only son, the Emperor Frederick the Second of Hohenstaufen, who was the grandson of King Roger.

  Frederick the Second was succeeded by his second son, Conrad.

  Conrad was succeeded by his only son, Conradin, a young boy, whose uncle Manfred, a natural son of Frederick the Second, was regent, and took the crown.

  Manfred was killed in battle at Benevento. He left one daughter, Constance, married to Peter the Third of Aragon.

  Conradin succeeded his uncle Manfred, but was taken prisoner by Charles of Anjou, and was executed in Naples.

  Conradin was succeeded by Charles of Anjou, brother of Lewis the Ninth of France, known as Saint Lewis.

  Charles of Anjou lost Sicily in the revolution of the Sicilian Vespers, and the Sicilians elected Peter the Third of Aragon for their king, because he was married to Constance, great-great‑granddaughter of King Roger, and also the last heiress of the house of Hohenstaufen.

  Peter the Third was succeeded by a long line of Aragonese kings, the second of whom, after him, was his second son, King Frederick the Second of Sicily, often confounded with the Emperor Frederick the Second, his great-grandfather.

  Now, as Ferdinand the ‘Catholic,’ whose queen was Isabella, was of the united houses of Aragon and Castile, he also inherited the Norman blood, which through him was transmitted to his grandson, Charles the Fifth, of the house of Austria, and so on through all the Spanish dynasties to the present day. About nine hundred years have passed since Tancred of Hauteville dealt his famous thrust at the wild boar, and though his house gave Sicily no long and unbroken line of kings, yet the blood of the Norman gentleman is in the veins of almost every royal race in Europe.

  My readers will not have lost patience over this page of genealogy, which makes clear a point too often left in obscurity, namely, that with the exception of Charles of Anjou’s episodic reign in Sicily, and of Garibaldi’s forcible seizure of the island in order to found a republic, which rather unexpectedly turned into a kingdom, and excepting the seven years’ reign granted to a Duke of Savoy by the absurd peace of Utrecht in 1713, the succession to the kingdom really continued on the strength of the Norman blood down to 1860, the descent to the Bourbons being traced through Anne of Austria, wife of Lewis the Thirteenth of France and sister of Philip the Fourth of Spain. By its alliance with the house of Hapsburg the house of Savoy may really claim as much Norman blood as the deposed king of Naples.

  I shall now return to the task of briefly outlining the reigns of Roger’s successors.

  It is not surprising that his son and successor, William, afterwards surnamed the Bad, should really have been more a Mohammedan than a Christian in belief, in character, and in manners. He had been brought up chiefly by learned Arabians in the customs and luxuries of what was in reality an Eastern court. Amari describes him as indolent, fierce, proud, and avaricious, and suggests that his admiral, Majo of Bari, personified the Sicilian court with all its sins, while even the Moslems themselves attribute to the evil character of the king and of his general the disturbances which marked the beginning of William’s reign. That he lived the life of an Arab emir can hardly be denied; his palace was the abode of an Eastern harem, and both were directed, if not controlled, by Moslem eunuchs hateful to the people. It must be admitted that although he repressed sedition in Sicily itself with wisdom a
nd justice, he dealt cruelly with insurgents in Calabria and Apulia. He was full of contradictions, as men often are who have been educated against their natural tastes. He was slothful, but when roused he was desperately brave; he was capricious, but he could be wise; he was kind, but he could be ruthless. In a community of upright and virtuous men he would have deserved to be called the Bad; but in his own times he earned the appellation by his unpopularity rather than by his surprising wickedness, and he cannot be held responsible for the long struggle between the Emperor Barbarossa and the Emperor Manuel, which had its origin when he was a youth, and ended after his death. King Roger was still alive when Manuel took Bari and Brindisi. King William forced him to conclude an honourable treaty a year after Roger’s death, and Sicily enjoyed the benefits of a thirty years’ peace, while Europe was convulsed by the quarrels of the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy See. The Vatican received the ambassadors of the East, who almost returned to the ancient allegiance of Constantinople and to the unity of the Eastern and Western churches, but to the indescribable mortification of Manuel, Pope Alexander the Third reconciled himself with Barbarossa, declared that separation of the churches was final, and excommunicated the Emperors of the East.

  The excommunication may or may not have affected the spiritual welfare of the warlike Greek; there can be no doubt but that the alliance of the Pope with Barbarossa put a stop to Manuel’s reconquest of the West, and that Venice, which had temporarily withdrawn from the strife, took the offensive again as soon as it was evident that in so doing she could find herself on the stronger side. Manuel poured his armies and his gold upon the eastern coast of Italy, and such was the strength of the one and the persuasion of the other that the hosts of the Emperor Frederick were twice driven back from the walls of Ancona; but no sooner had the Pope taken a decided course of action than Ancona returned to the imperial allegiance. Venice descended with a fleet of one hundred galleys, and the Normans of the south completed the destruction of the Greeks with their swords. The thirty years’ peace was signed, and it was long before Manuel renewed his quarrel with the emperor. William had already entered into the Pope’s good graces, and a series of victories against the African Arabs increased his credit with the Holy See. That he attempted even by bribery to prevent the coronation of Frederick Barbarossa in Rome is more than probable, for in the riot which was stirred up by that ceremony the imperial soldiers fell upon the Roman people with their drawn swords, crying out that they would give German steel for Arabian gold.