The Normans: From Raiders to Kings

by Lars Brownworth

  Byzantium and the Western Empire, however, the two other great enemies of Norman Sicily, had not forgotten their humiliations. They had left Roger in peace so far only because each power had been swept up in its own problems. Both imperial thrones suffered sudden vacancies. Just six years after Lothair expired, his Byzantine counterpart John Comnenus was killed in a freak hunting accident. The new monarchs, Conrad of Hohenstauffen in Germany and Manuel Comnenus in Constantinople, solemnly agreed to a joint campaign, but just as they mobilized their armies one of the Crusader kingdoms fell to the Turks and a new crusade erupted. The imperial relationship was severely strained when German forces marching through Byzantine territory failed to distinguish between Greeks and Turks, bringing the two empires to the brink of war.

  Somehow, through it all, Conrad and Manuel managed to strike up a genuinely warm friendship. When Conrad was injured during the crusade Manuel personally nursed him back to health, and the two renewed their pledge to go to war against Roger. Two years later the imperial families got closer still when Manuel married Conrad’s daughter Bertha.

  The nuptials were a warning to Roger of the determination of his enemies, and a public rebuke. He had been trying to get Manuel to marry one of his daughters for years, although frankly his behavior hadn’t helped his cause. During the crusade he had taken advantage of Manuel’s distraction to have his admiral George of Antioch sack Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, the three richest cities of Byzantine Greece.

  The provoked Manuel raised a huge army thirty-thousand strong, but just as the long-awaited campaign was about to get underway a horde of barbarians came pouring over the Pindus Mountains into northern Greece, and the emperor was forced to divert his army to deal with the threat. Manuel was a capable general,46 but by the time he had driven the barbarians out, the snows had ended the campaigning season.

  In the spring he tried again, but again was delayed. This time it was Sicilian gold that financed an uprising in the Balkans,47 threatening the empire’s western border. Manuel sent the fleet to deal with the problem and while it was away Roger cheekily had his admiral sail into the waters off of the coast of Constantinople and fire some arrows into the gardens of the imperial palace.

  Such delaying tactics could only last for so long. By 1152 both Conrad and Manuel had dealt with their respective obstacles and were ready to march. The two emperors made plans to meet in northern Italy and then continue south where the Venetian fleet would be there to ferry them across the straits to Sicily. The moment was perfect; Roger’s son and namesake had recently died and Roger, who had now outlived five of his six children, seemed suddenly old and vulnerable.

  There seemed little that could save the Norman kingdom from the coming storm, but this time it was spared by luck. In the spring of 1152, just as Conrad was starting his march, he abruptly died, and as Germany convulsed in a power struggle the war against Roger was quietly abandoned. Manuel had too many enemies closer to home to risk it alone, and in any case he had already realized that Venice posed a far more serious threat than Palermo. Even now he was considering the first strike against the Sea-Republic that would lead inexorably to the tragedy of the Fourth Crusade.48

  That was some years in the future, but it already seemed as if an age was ending. Conrad was merely the first of the great figures to exit the stage. He was followed the next year by Bernard of Clairvaux and then George of Antioch, the remarkable admiral who had won the Normans their North African empire. The loss of his most able advisor seemed to sap the last of Roger’s energy. He retired to his pleasure dome in Palermo, a mix of exotic zoo, garden, and palace, and died quietly two years later.

  The king’s body was laid to rest in a simple porphyry tomb in Palermo’s cathedral, fittingly dressed in the ornate robes and drooping pearl crown of a Byzantine emperor. Across his chest was laid his sword, emblazoned in Latin with the words “The Apulian, Calabrian, Sicilian, and African all obey my will”.

  He had been a remarkable ruler, and Sicily was never to see one like him again. If his behavior at times left much to be desired (his infidelity was famous) he never shirked the responsibilities of kingship. He was a unique blend of northern energy and southern refinement, the product and inspiration of the Norman kingdom in full bloom. After him it would slide into dissolution, but he still possessed that fearsome drive of his ancestors that had won them two kingdoms at opposite ends of Europe. As one courtier wrote, he ‘accomplished more in his sleep than others did in their waking day’.

  That accomplishment had been the seemingly impossible task of forging a petty, tribal land of diverse cultures and religions into a single united kingdom. Compared with the rest of the Italian peninsula, which remained stubbornly divided and quarreling for the next seven centuries, Roger’s territory was a beacon of hope of what was possible. It was also surprisingly enduring. It was battered and squandered, tossed around between the crowned heads of Europe, but the kingdom of Sicily remained intact until the unification of modern Italy in the nineteenth century.

  The great king may have been buried in the cathedral of Cefalù in Sicily, but it is in the church of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio that he is most appropriately remembered. There, the gift he bestowed to his beloved island is enshrined in marble and gold, a fusion of art and architecture that even after eight centuries still manages to catch the breath.

  Each of the three great civilizations of Sicily’s past is blended in this penultimate church, a fitting tribute to the man who created Norman Sicily. Built in the traditional form of a Greek cross, the interior drips with gold, covered by a magnificent cycle of Byzantine mosaics depicting scenes from the life of Christ. Beneath the Greek icons and the Norman arches, Fatimid artisans of North Africa carved two immense wooden doors and left a hymn to the Virgin Mary inscribed in Arabic at the base of the main dome. Most impressive of all is a mosaic found on an unassuming interior wall of the nave. There the Christian king who dressed as an Arab and decorated his church in the Byzantine and Muslim styles, had himself depicted.

  It remains the only surviving likeness of Roger II that was produced by men who had seen him, and it captures completely the spirit of Norman Sicily. Adorned with the dalmatic and stole of a Byzantine emperor, the ‘baptized Sultan’49 leans forward slightly to receive his crown from the hands of Christ. Above his head simple Greek letters spell out the Latin phrase ‘Rogerios Rex’ – Roger the King.

  It was a title he had struggled most of his adult life for, wrenching it from the unwilling grasp of no less than two opposing popes. Yet there was no statesman of the twelfth century who deserved it more. He had found an island torn apart by religious and cultural divisions and had welded it into the most prosperous and effectively run kingdom in Europe. In doing so he had provided an invaluable guide on how to govern a modern state, to unite seemingly irreconcilable parties into a strong and functioning whole. His reign was a rare oasis of peace on an otherwise turbulent medieval stage. After him, the sun began to inexorably set on the Sicilian kingdom.

  Chapter 14

  William the Bad

  Dextera Domini Fecit Virtutem; Dextera Domini Exaltavit Me

  “The Right Hand of God gave me courage;

  The Right Hand of God raised me up.”

  – Inscription on the Great Count’s sword after the Battle of Cerami and his grandson’s Treaty of Benevento

  In 1154 Roger II was succeeded by his youngest son, William, and by all outward appearances it was a splendid choice. The twenty-three-year-old was a magnificent physical specimen, a hulking throwback to his Viking ancestors, easily towering over his diminutive Mediterranean subjects. His face was dominated by a thick, black beard, and he was known for his massive strength, reportedly able to straighten an iron horseshoe with his bare hands. If, however, he loomed larger than his father physically, he had acquired little of his political skills. Much of this was Roger’s own fault. It’s always difficult to succeed a great man, but Roger hardly bothered to prepare his heir. He had made a
point instead to constantly identify his son’s shortcomings.

  William was the youngest of the four boys from his first marriage, considered unlikely and unworthy to ever wear the crown. As such he was virtually ignored, given no important administrative or military office to prepare him for leadership. He grew up largely left to himself, enjoying the luxuries of the palace without any of its responsibilities. Within a single decade, though, his world was turned upside down. His older brothers unexpectedly died, and at the age of thirty he was abruptly thrust on the throne, completely unprepared.

  Unsurprisingly, William was more concerned with enjoying the good life than learning statecraft. While he built ever more extravagant palaces, he left the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom to others, in most cases not even bothering to appoint new ministers but simply confirming his father’s choices in their posts. The only exception he made to this general policy was to raise a young chancellor named Maio to the supreme administrative post of admiral.

  It was a wise choice. Maio was the son of a judge from the southern Italian town of Bari, and had received the best classical education money could buy. In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Palermo he more than held his own, displaying a ruthless disregard of popularity or softness. Without his iron hand, William, who was far more interested in his hunting parks than governing, would have been lucky to keep his throne for more than a few months.

  The international stage had become much more dangerous since the last years of Roger II. The Byzantine and German Empires were both ruled by outstanding figures – the ferocious Frederick Barbarossa in Germany, and the smooth Manuel Comnenus in Constantinople. Fortunately for William, their mutual distrust kept them checked. At his coronation, Barbarossa had announced that he would restore the Western Empire to greatness. This meant bringing Sicily and southern Italy under his control, and since both of those territories recently belonged to the Byzantine Empire, Barbarossa considered the emperor Manuel to be his principal enemy. With this in mind he signed a treaty with the pope to exclude Byzantium from any division of the Norman kingdom. At the same time he kept up a correspondence with Manuel, dangling the idea of a mutual campaign, but always finding an excuse to delay it. Manuel only discovered the deception after Barbarossa’s army had already left Germany to win Italy without him.

  The German monarch expected trouble in the north of Italy since anti-Imperial sentiment was always strong, but when he descended from the Alps he found the entire peninsula in a religious uproar.

  Pope Adrian IV, the only Englishman ever to sit on the papal throne, was the latest in a long line of foreign, reforming popes. He had cut his teeth reorganizing the Scandinavian church, and expected to do a thorough house-cleaning of St Peter’s. His entry into Rome, however, had been a rude awakening for him. The Roman Senate had been growing in power for years – largely at the expense of the pope – and now there was a popular movement to restore the old republican traditions, divest the Church of its temporal power, and return the city to its ancient greatness.

  The leader of this movement was a monk by the name of Arnold of Brescia, and he so thoroughly whipped up public sentiment that Adrian became a virtual prisoner on the Vatican Hill. Adrian responded by adopting the unprecedented tactic of excommunicating the entire city, essentially declaring war on Rome. No tourists, church services, baptisms, weddings, or burials in consecrated ground would be allowed until the interdict was lifted. It was a daring manoeuvre for a new, foreign pope to attempt given the mood of the day, but the gambit worked. Arnold resisted until the Wednesday of Holy Week, but the prospect of an Easter without the sacrament (much less the lucrative tourist trade) undermined his support. By Thursday morning he had been expelled by his own partisans and Adrian celebrated the Easter mass in triumph.

  The victory pacified Rome for the moment, but did little to settle the rest of the North. Barbarossa, meanwhile, was in no mood to deal with republican idealists. When the northern Italian town of Tortona resisted in the name of republicanism, he demolished it stone by stone and deported the entire population. Still in a foul mood he then turned towards Rome.

  Adrian was caught in an uncomfortable position. He was painfully aware of how fragile his grip on Rome was with the populace still dreaming of self-rule, and he mistrusted an over-powerful Barbarossa. Having won a temporary victory against the republicans he had no desire to become a pawn of the German emperor. He set up camp outside of the city and waited.

  Their meeting was not a smooth one. The emperor intended to enter Rome as its master, and the pope just as stubbornly insisted on maintaining his dignity. Barbarossa began by quarreling over protocol. He refused to perform the customary act of guiding the pope’s horse on foot, protesting that he was not a groom, but Adrian made it clear that there would be no entry into Rome without it. Barbarossa withdrew in a huff, but when it became clear that the pope wouldn’t budge, he had the meeting restaged and grudgingly performed the homage.

  With that unpleasantness out of the way, the two came to an agreement. Under no circumstances would either make peace with William of Sicily, the emperor Manuel, or the republican commune in Rome. In return Adrian agreed to excommunicate Barbarossa’s enemies, while the emperor would enforce the pope’s authority.

  Adrian had chosen to meet outside of Rome for good reason. As the two rode in state towards the gates they were met by messengers from the commune who informed the pair that they would only be admitted to the city if Barbarossa first offered a ‘gift’ of five thousand pounds of gold and guaranteed their ancestral ‘rights’. They then launched into a long speech about the glorious heritage of Rome. Barbarossa interrupted mid-sentence with a curt “Rome’s greatness is behind it. I have not come to give gifts but to claim what is mine”.

  With that the two marched into the city, and Barbarossa was crowned. However, the coronation proved to be a bridge too far for the citizens. News of an imperial coronation in a city intoxicated by the thought of independence caused a frenzy, and a mob assaulted the procession as Barbarossa was leaving the cathedral. The emperor was caught unprepared and street fighting raged long into the night. By the next morning order had been restored, but casualties had been terrible on both sides. The German barons had no more stomach for Italy and made it clear that they wished to return home, and Barbarossa, a feudal monarch, was unable to resist them. Adrian begged him to continue with the original plan of invading Sicily, but within a month the Germans were gone.

  The pope was now dangerously exposed. He had weakened his own position in Rome for Barbarossa and had received nothing tangible in return. Fortunately, however, there was another emperor at hand. Manuel Comnenus had been preparing his own invasion, and he dispatched a letter to the pope with the extraordinary offer to be the ‘sword-arm of the Church’.50 It didn’t matter to Adrian who crushed the Norman kingdom; if the Germans wouldn’t help, then the distant Byzantines were an acceptable surrogate. He wrote to Manuel giving him his full blessing for an attack on Sicily.

  The Byzantine monarch was a consummate diplomat, and his agents found ready allies in Italy. The Norman barons of the peninsula had never really been reconciled to being ruled from Palermo. More than a decade had passed since Roger II had reined them in, and the relatively light hand of his successor was seen as weakness. Byzantine gold encouraged the natural desire to revolt, and before long an uprising was spreading throughout the south.

  Together, the Norman rebels and the Byzantines posed a more formidable threat to Sicily than even the Germans had. The barons provided local knowledge and an army, and Manuel provided a supply fleet and unlimited funds to raise fresh troops.

  To soften up Sicily for an invasion, the rebels turned on any mainland Italian city that remained loyal to William. The first target, Bari, was the most important Norman stronghold in Italy and Manuel was especially eager to recover it. Less than a century before it had been part of the Byzantine Empire, and most of the population was still Greek. The royalist defenders prepared to resi
st, but when the allied army drew up to the gates, the locals opened them, resulting in a general massacre of anyone loyal to Palermo.

  The fall of Bari was a major blow to the Norman kingdom, and it shook the loyalty of the Italian cities that hadn’t joined the rebels. To make matters worse William fell seriously ill, and in the absence of a response from Palermo, morale on the mainland plummeted. The king’s admiral, Maio, eventually sent an army to aid the beleaguered peninsula, but its general refused to engage the rebels for several months. When he finally did, the result was another fiasco. The royal army was wiped out and the few coastal towns that had wavered moved into the rebel camp. By the beginning of winter virtually all of Apulia had crumbled.

  By now William’s rule seemed on the verge of collapse. In only six short months the emperor Manuel had seemingly restored Byzantine power in Italy to the level it had been before the Normans arrived, and he showed no signs of stopping. The imperial armies were poised to enter Calabria and if that fell – which it undoubtedly would – the Byzantine force would be separated from Sicily by a thin stretch of water only a mile wide.

  Since the king was ill, the Normans’ poor showing was blamed completely on his powerful minister Maio. Several plots to assassinate him were launched, but Maio’s extensive network of secret police managed to foil them. When it became clear that the hated minister couldn’t be removed covertly, a rebellion broke out on the island demanding his execution.