The Kingdom in the Sun

by John Julius Norwich

  Similar reports had already reached Roger, whose agents had left him with no delusions as to just how strong the imperial army would be. And so he too began to make his preparations, basing them on the assumption that the enemy force would be vastly superior in numbers to anything that he himself could muster. A Sicilian victory through force of arms would be out of the question; he would have to put his faith in guile.

  It was high summer before Lothair's army was finally gathered at Würzburg. We have been left no very clear indications of its size, but a fist of all the great imperial vassals who were present shows that it must have been on a very different scale from the sad littie company that had set off with Lothair to Rome in 1132. In the forefront were Duke Henry the Proud of Bavaria, the Emperor's son-in-law, and Conrad of Hohenstaufen, the old enemy and rival who had now made his submission and whom Lothair had con­firmed in the possession of all his lands and honours in return for a promise to participate in the coming campaign. There followed an imposing array of lesser nobles and their retinues, of Markgrafen and Pfalzgrafen, Landgrafen and Burggrafen from all over the Empire, together with an ecclesiastical contingent which included no less than five archbishops, fourteen bishops and an abbot. By the third week of August they were ready to start; and on about the 21st, with Lothair and his Empress at its head, the huge army lumbered off southward towards the Brenner.

  The Emperor was no more popular with the Lombard towns than he had been four years earlier, but this time the size of his following commanded respect. Inevitably there were occasions when his men had to draw their swords; but nowhere was progress seriously delayed. Near Cremona his army was swelled by a Milanese detach­ment ; there too he found Robert of Capua waiting for him. Early in February 1137 he reached Bologna, where he split the army into two. He himself proposed to continue through Ravenna to Ancona, and thence to follow the Adriatic coast into Apulia; meanwhile the Duke of Bavaria, with three thousand knights and perhaps twelve thousand infantry, was to press down through Tuscany and the Papal State, if possible re-establishing Innocent in Rome and assur­ing himself of the monastery of Monte Cassino, before meeting his father-in-law at Bari for Whitsun.

  When, in the year 529, St Benedict had chosen a high hill-crest commanding the road between Rome and Naples as the site for the first and greatest of his foundations, he had inadvertently endowed the abbey with a strategic importance which its occupants, over the next fifteen centuries, would more than once have cause to regret. Later, as Monte Cassino grew in power and prestige, its geographical eminence took second place to its political; but for the Normans, ever since their earliest days in the peninsula, the monastery had always represented, both politically and militarily, one of the princi­pal keys to the South. For Roger II, indeed, it was something more—a vital fortress, almost a buffer-state of its own, guarding the frontier which separated his kingdom from papal territory.

  The monastery, for its part, had never found its position as a frontier fortress a particularly easy one. When in doubt, however, it had learnt to cast in its lot with the Normans. Thus it had been careful to remain on good terms with Roger's mainland viceroys, and though there had been a brief crisis a few months before when its loyalty had fallen—probably unjustifiably—under suspicion, the new abbot, Rainald, whom it had then been forced to elect was a staunch supporter of the King. When Henry of Bavaria arrived at the foot of the hill towards the middle of April, it was to find the surrounding countryside deliberately laid waste and the gates of the monastery barred against him. Henry had already had a rough passage through Tuscany. Pisa and certain other towns which had always remained loyal to Innocent gave him what help they could; but Florence and Lucca had been subdued only after a stout resistance, and Henry was still occupied with Grosseto when, at the beginning of March, Innocent—probably accompanied by St Bernard—rode out from Pisa to join him.

  From the outset Prince and Pontiff seem to have disliked each other intensely. Henry was if anything a stronger and more un­yielding character than his father-in-law. As Prince of the Empire, with every expectation of succeeding to the throne on Lothair's death, he was determined to make no concessions that he might later have cause to regret; as a general with a job to do; and he had no intention of taking orders from the Pope or from anyone else. Matters first came to a head after the capture of Viterbo; an in­demnity of three thousand talents—roughly equivalent to some two thousand pounds of silver—was promptly claimed by Innocent on the grounds that the town lay within the papal frontiers, but was retained by Henry as part of the legitimate spoils of war. Then the Duke decided to by-pass Rome. It was, he maintained, more sensible to crush Roger first and allow Anacletus to collapse through lack of support than to waste time and energy in forcibly expelling him from St Peter's. The logic of this argument was unanswerable and Innocent accepted it; it meant, none the less, a further indefinite extension of his exile—to say nothing of the prospect of a long, hot Apulian summer trailing around in the wake of an imperial army— and it cannot have improved the Pope's temper.

  And now, to crown it all, came the trouble at Monte Cassino, with the very fountain-head of western monasticism arrogantly defying not just the imperial army but Innocent himself. Eleven days Henry waited, blocking all access to the monastery and vaguely hoping for some sign that it might be prepared to make terms. But none came.

  Its store-houses were well stocked with food, its garrison strong and in good heart; its position, in any case, made it virtually impreg­nable. The Duke, meanwhile, who had undertaken to join Lothair in Apulia by the end of May, had no time to waste. Swallowing his pride, he sent another messenger up the hill with an offer to negotiate.

  Though Abbot Rainald's sympathies lay with Roger his first loyalty was to his monastery, his primary objective to get rid of Henry and his army as soon as possible. When the Duke offered, therefore, to leave Monte Cassino untouched and to confirm him as its abbot, in return only for a small recognisance in gold and an undertaking to fly the imperial banner from the citadel, he readily accepted. Innocent had already excommunicated the monastery for its Anacletan sympathies. His immediate reaction to this new agreement, by which the most venerable religious foundation in Europe—and one, moreover, situated on the very border of the Papal State—was left in the hands of an unrepentant champion of Anacletus and under the imperial rather than the papal colours, is not recorded in any of the chronicles. Perhaps it is just as well.1

  As Duke Henry led his troops south across the Garigliano he may have congratulated himself on a technical victory, but he cannot have cherished any delusions about its real significance. The imperial flag flying over the monastery might temporarily affect Roger's prestige in the area, but in the absence of a garrison there was nothing to stop its being hauled down the moment the German army had disappeared from sight. At Capua, however, the next stage of his journey, better things awaited him. Immediately on his arrival the two local barons whom Roger had appointed to defend the city transferred their allegiance and opened the gates; and Prince Robert, who had accompanied the army from Cremona onwards, was replaced

  1 According to the Kaiserchronik, a long and rambling piece of Bavarian doggerel composed around 1150, the abbey was actually taken by a party of Henry's men, who gained admission by disguising themselves as pilgrims, hiding their swords beneath their robes. But this story, in one form or another, is almost de rigueur in mediaeval accounts of monastic sieges—see The Normans in the South, pp. 77-8. The only surprising thing is that Bernhardi, the punctilious (if tendentious) biographer of Lothair, should have taken it seriously. (Lothar von Supplinburg, pp. 700-1.)

  on his old throne. The citizens accepted him willingly enough. The majority had always felt him to be their rightful lord, with a stronger and more ancient claim on their loyalties than the King of Sicily could ever boast; and the remainder, seeing him supported by so large a force, bowed to the inevitable. Robert, it is true, had to pay Henry four thousand talents not to turn his men loose
on the city; but at such a price he must have considered his restoration cheap indeed.

  Now it was the turn of Benevento. This time the populace stood firm, but were unwise enough to launch what they hoped would be a surprise attack on the imperial camp. It proved a disaster. They fled back to the city; the pursuers passed through the gates on the heels of the pursued; and the following morning—it was Sunday, 23 May—the Beneventans too made their submission, merely stipulating that their city should remain inviolate and that the erstwhile supporters of Anacletus should not be made to suffer. Their conditions were agreed; only Cardinal Crescentius, the Anacletan Rector who had already suffered one expulsion five years before, was seized by an old enemy and delivered over to Innocent, who condemned him to live out the rest of his days in the obscurity of a monastic cell.

  Cheered by its successes—though possibly a little disappointed at having been once again cheated of a good day's pillage—Henry's army threaded its way over the mountains into Apulia, joining up with Lothair at Bari just in time to participate in the Whit Sunday thanksgiving. The Emperor indeed had a lot to be thankful for. His progress down the peninsula had been smoother than his son-in-law's. Ravenna had welcomed him. Ancona had resisted but had paid the price. Lothair's savage treatment of it had served as a warn­ing to others and brought out many of the local barons to offer him homage and often material assistance. This pattern had continued as he marched south. The towns tended to be hostile, though after the fate of Ancona they generally managed to commute their hostility into a policy of sullen acceptance; but in the country districts most barons had rallied willingly enough.

  Once over the Apulian frontier, the Emperor met with no resis­tance till he reached the spur of Monte Gargano. There Robert

  Guiscard's old castle of Monte Sant' Angelo held out for three days against Gonrad of Hohenstaufen and submitted only when Lothair arrived with the main army from Siponto and managed to take it by storm.1 The anonymous Saxon Annalist, who gives us much the most detailed account of the whole campaign, tells us that Lothair then descended into the cave-shrine, where the whole Norman epic had begun, and 'humbly adored the blessed Archangel Michael'. His humility does not, however, seem to have inhibited him from stripping the shrine of its treasure—the gold and silver, precious stones and vestments presented by Duke Simon of Dalmatia some years before. Nor did it improve his treatment of those who op­posed him and later fell into his hands. Mutilations, dismember­ments and nose-slittings were the rule; and such was the terror he inspired that, on his return journey through the same region, whole populations were to flee at his approach.

  Fortunately for the Apulians he was in a hurry, anxious not to waste time over protracted sieges while he still had only half his army with him. Towns like Troia or Barletta that put up a strong or spirited resistance he simply ignored: they could wait till after his son-in-law had arrived. At Trani, however, it was a different story. No sooner had he reached the town than its inhabitants rose up against the Sicilian garrison—it was probably composed for the most part of Saracens, who were seldom popular in Italy—and destroyed the citadel. A Sicilian relief fleet of thirty-three ships was scattered. The way was clear to Bari.

  It was, therefore, a joyful and triumphant German congregation which assembled in the church of St Nicholas at Bari on Whit Sunday, 30 May 1137, to hear a High Mass of Thanksgiving read by the Pope himself.2 So blessed was the hour that, according to the Saxon Annalist, a great golden crown was seen during the service, slowly descending from heaven over the church; above it

  1Its ruins still stand today, and very impressive they are.

  2 Plate 3. This glorious church with its two great western towers, one Lombard, the other semi-oriental, was built to house the remains of St Nicholas of Myra-— later metamorphosed into Father Christmas—after they reached Bari in rather dubious circumstances on 9 May 1087. The upper gallery has now been con­verted into a little museum. It contains, among other things, the huge crown and the enamel portrait of the saint with Roger II, mentioned on p. 98.

  hovered a dove, while from it there swung a smoking censer bear­ing two lighted candles. This ungainly manifestation seems to have been a little premature, since the Sicilian garrison in the citadel was still holding out; it was another month before it finally surrendered. But in general the Emperor felt he had cause for satisfaction. Between them, he and Duke Henry had made the imperial strength felt over most of South Italy; they had come together, their armies virtually intact, at the appointed time and place; and though they had on several occasions compromised with the opposition when time was pressing they had still not met with a single defeat. The Sicilian on the other hand—they never called him King—had suffered disaster after disaster. His vassals, including members of his own family, had turned against him; so had several of his towns. Garri­sons had capitulated without a struggle, a valuable fleet had been put to flight. His arch-enemy Robert of Capua was restored to power and in firm possession of all his domains. And not once since the campaign began had he dared to show his face. Roger, it appeared, was not only a usurper; he was a coward as well.

  So must Lothair have reasoned; and yet the situation was not as simple as that. If Roger remained in Sicily, making no effort to halt the imperial advance, it was because he knew that the Emperor was too strong for him; and that he must consequently stick more closely than ever to his old principle and avoid open engagements. He had only one element on his side, but that a vital one—the element of time. Lothair might advance as far as he liked, even up to the straits of Messina—where Roger was confident of being able to hold him; but sooner or later he would be driven back, as so many invading armies had been driven back before, by sickness, the relentless summer heat of Apulia, or the need to reach the Alps before the first snowfalls of the winter made them impassable. There remained a theoretical possibility that the old Emperor might decide to winter in Italy and continue the campaign the following year; but it seemed unlikely. His army would be pressing him to return and he himself would be reluctant to stay too long away from the seat of his power. Certainly no previous imperial expedition had risked a second season. And past experience showed that although such expeditions could have a considerable effect in the short term, the results they achieved seldom lasted for very long after they left. For the time being the only sensible course was to encourage the invaders to extend and exhaust themselves to the limit.

  There might also be something to be gained, even at this late stage, by diplomacy. Politically, most of Roger's troubles were due to the fact that his two most powerful enemies, the Emperor and the Pope, were allied against him. If he could only separate them, some settlement might yet be reached. And so—according to the Saxon Annalist—he sent messengers to Lothair with a peace offer; if the Emperor would call a halt and recognise him as King, he for his part would split the Kingdom into two. He would continue to reign in Sicily, but his mainland dominion he would pass to his son, who would hold it forthwith as an imperial fief. In addition he would pay Lothair a substantial war indemnity and send him another son as a hostage.

  The proposal was typical of Roger. It sounded reasonable and imaginative, and it would have confirmed the imperial claim on South Italy—which the Normans had tended to forget in the ninety years since Drogo de Hauteville had received his investiture from the Emperor Henry III.1 In practice it might have meant rather less; Roger had already given his sons mainland fiefs and clearly hoped to leave more and more of the administration in the peninsula to them. The technical suzerainty of the Empire—which in theory existed already—was in any case of little practical value once the Emperor was safely back the other side of the Alps. It would, however, have been a genuine political concession; Roger's offer of his son as hostage would have been a guarantee of his sincerity; and Lothair, had he had only his own interests to consider, would have been well advised to accept an arrangement which, though admittedly less than he hoped to achieve, favoured the Empire and was above all work
able.

  Unfortunately there were papal interests also at stake; and Pope Innocent was interested in one thing only—the removal, immedi­ately and for ever, of Anacletus from Rome. This was the crucial issue, and Roger's apparent silence on it poses an intriguing prob­lem. Did he really believe that he could draw Lothair into a separate

  1 The Normans in the South, p. 74.

  peace, and so persuade him to march back to Germany without taking any direct action against the and-Pope ? Or, for the sake of such a peace, was he by now prepared to leave Anacletus to his fate, and awaiting only some later stage in negotiations before overtly saying so ? Neither of these possibilities seems likely. Roger was too realistic a statesman to have made the former mistake, too clear­headed an ally to have contemplated the second. But there is a third explanation, which accords far more closely with what we know of his character and with subsequent events. It is that he had no real intention of coming to terms with the Emperor at all—that his purpose was simply to beguile Lothair with as tempting an offer as could safely be made and which only considerations of the papacy would prevent his accepting, thus putting the greatest possible strain on relations between him and the Pope.