The Normans In The South

by John Julius Norwich

  All this was bad news indeed for the Emperor Henry, and worse news still for the Pope. Benedict VIII, though upright and morally irreproachable,' was not a particularly religious figure. Member of a noble family of Tusculum, it seems doubtful that he had even taken holy orders at the time of his election in 1012; and throughout his twelve-year occupancy of the throne of St Peter he showed himself to be primarily a politician and a man of action, dedicated to the close association of the Papacy with the Western Empire and to the deliverance of Italy from all other influences. Thus in 1016 he had personally led an army against the Saracens; while against the Greeks he had given Melus and Dattus all the support he could, twice arranging with the authorities of Monte Cassino for the refuge of the latter in the Garigliano tower. Now he saw all his efforts brought to nothing and a sudden explosion by Byzantine power to a point beyond anything he had seen in his lifetime. The defection of Monte Cassino must have been a particular blow—though perhaps more understandable when he remembered that its abbot, Atenulf, was the brother of Pandulf of Capua and had recently acquired in somewhat mysterious conditions a large estate near Trani in Byzantine Apulia. Most serious of all, however, was the danger of continued Greek expansion. After the completeness of their recent triumph why should the Byzantines be content with the Capitanata? The Balkan wars that had so long occupied the formidable energies of Basil II and earned him the title of Bulgaroctonus— the Bulgar-Slayer—were now over; and the Papal States represented a rich prize which he might well believe to be in his grasp. Once Boioannes crossed the Garigliano there would be nothing between him and the gates of Rome itself; and the sinister family of the Cresccntii, longtime enemies of the Counts of Tusculum, would know just how to turn such a catastrophe to their advantage. It was a hundred and fifty years since a Pope had journeyed north of the Alps, but after the news of Monte Cassino was brought to him Benedict hesitated no longer. Early in 1020 he set off to discuss the situation with his old friend and ally Henry II at Bamberg.

  It is impossible to read about Benedict and Henry without reflecting how much more suitable it would have been if the Pope

  1 Irreproachable, that is, according to his lights. He must bear the stigma of having ordered the first official (though, alas, not the last) persecution of the Jews in the history of mediaeval Rome—as the result of a minor earthquake in 1020.

  had been the Emperor and the Emperor the Pope. Henry the Holy fully deserved his nickname. Although perhaps hardly worthy of the canonisation he was to receive in the following century—an honour which appears to have been conferred largely in recognition of the dismal chastity in which he lived with his wife Cunegonde of Luxemburg—and although his piety was liberally laced with superstition, he remained a deeply religious man whose two main passions in life were the building of churches and ecclesiastical reform. These spiritual preoccupations did not, however, prevent him from ruling over his unwieldy empire with surprising efficiency. Despite his perpetual interference in church affairs he and Benedict had been friends ever since 1012 when Henry, still only King in Germany,' had supported Benedict in the papal election against his Crescentius rival; and their friendship, strengthened when Benedict intervened similarly for Henry and officiated at his and Cunegonde's imperial coronation in 1014, had been further cemented by Henry's religious and Benedict's political views. The horizon as yet showed no prospect of that long and agonising struggle between Empire and Papacy which was so soon to begin and would reach its apogee only with Frederick II more than two centuries later; for the moment the two still worked in harmony. A threat to the one was a threat to the other.

  Benedict arrived in Bamberg just before Easter 1020; and after celebrating the feast with great pomp in Henry's new cathedral he and the Emperor at once settled down to business. At the start they had Melus to give them the benefit of his expertise on the South Italian political scene and Byzantine strengths and weaknesses; but a week after the Pope's arrival the 'Duke of Apulia' suddenly expired and the two had to continue alone. For Benedict, always incisive, the necessary course of action was clear: Henry himself must lead a full-scale expeditionary force into Italy. The purpose of this force, which would be joined at a suitable moment by the Pope himself, would not be to oust Byzantium altogether—there would be time for that later—but to show that the Western Empire and the Papacy

  1 The title of Emperor could be adopted only after the elected German king had been crowned by the Pope in Rome. Henry was first to call himself King of the Romans when Emperor-elect.

  were powers to be reckoned with, ready to defend their rights. It would thus put new heart into any of the smaller cities or petty Lombard barons who might be wavering in their allegiance, while leaving Boioannes in no doubt that any further Greek advances would be made at his peril.

  Henry, though sympathedc, was not immediately persuaded. Delicate as the situation was, the Greeks had not in fact moved beyond their own borders; and even though he did not technically recognise those borders, recent Byzantine actions had after all come about only as a result of Lombard insurrection and could hardly be classed as aggressive. The attitude of the Lombard duchies and of Monte Cassino was indeed a cause for anxiety but, as Henry well knew, they all valued their independence far too much to allow themselves to become Byzantine satellites. They alone would certainly not merit an expedition of the size which Benedict was proposing. When the Pope returned to Italy in June, the Emperor had still not finally committed himself.

  For a year he hesitated, and for a year all was quiet. Then, in June 1021, Boioannes struck. By previous financial arrangement with Pandulf, a Greek detachment entered Capuan territory and swept down the Garigliano to the tower which Dattus, with a group of Lombard followers and a still faithful band of Normans, had by now made his headquarters and in which—trusting, presumably, in papal protection—he had decided to remain even after the volte-face of Capua and Monte Cassino. (Neither at this time nor at any other in his history does Dattus betray signs of marked intelligence.) The tower had originally been built and fortified as a protection against Saracen raiders. For such a purpose it was on the whole adequate, but it could not hold out for long against the well-equipped Greek force. Dattus and his men fought valiantly for two days, but on the third they were compelled to surrender. The Normans were spared but the Lombards were all put to the sword. Dattus himself was taken to Bari where, in chains, he was paraded on a donkey through the streets; then, on the evening of 15 June 1021, he was sewn into a sack together with a cock, a monkey and a snake and cast into the sea.

  News of the outrage travelled swiftly to Rome and Bamberg.

  Benedict, of whom Dattus had been a personal friend, was scandalised at this new treachery on the part of Pandulf and Abbot Atenulf, who were known to have received a large reward for handing over their compatriot—the last man still capable of raising the banner of Lombard independence and openly committed to driving the Greeks out of Italy. Moreover, it was the Pope who had advised Dattus to take refuge in the tower and had arranged with Monte Cassino that it should be made available for him. The honour of the Papacy had thus been betrayed, a crime that Benedict could never forgive. His letters to Henry in Bamberg, by which he had kept up a steady pressure ever since his return to Italy, now took on a more urgent note. The fate of Dattus was only the beginning; the success of this operation would encourage the Greeks to acts of still wilder audacity. It was imperative to take strong action while time yet remained. Henry prevaricated no longer. At the Diet of Nijmegen in July 1021 it was resolved that he should lead his imperial armies into Italy as soon as possible. The rest of the summer and all autumn were spent in preparations, and in the following December the immense host began to march.

  The expedition was intended primarily as a show of strength; and a show of strength it unquestionably was. For the outward journey it was split up into three separate divisions, the command of which Henry typically gave to himself and two of his archbishops —Pilgrim of Cologne and Poppo of Aqui
leia. The first division, under Pilgrim, had orders to march down the west side of Italy through the Papal States to Monte Cassino and Capua, there to arrest Atenulf and Pandulf in the Emperor's name. It consisted, we are told—though all such figures must be treated with suspicion—of twenty thousand men. The second, estimated at eleven thousand, would be led by Poppo through Lombardy and the Apennines to the border of Apulia. Here, at a pre-arranged rendezvous, it would link up with the main body of the army under Henry—more numerous than the other two divisions put together—which would have followed the eastern road down the Adriatic coast. The combined force would then march inland to besiege and eradicate Troia, that proud new Byzantine stronghold built by Boioannes and manned by Normans, of which it had been agreed that a public example should be made.

  Pilgrim marched straight to Monte Cassino as instructed, but he arrived too late. The Abbot had not underestimated the wrath of Benedict and knew that he could expect no mercy; on hearing of the approach of the imperial army he at once fled to Otranto and there hastily embarked for Constantinople. But retribution overtook him. Shortly before his departure from the monastery a furious St Benedict had appeared to him in a vision to inform him of the heavenly displeasure he had incurred and to remind him about the wages of sin; and indeed, hardly had his ship put out of harbour when a mighty tempest arose. On 30 March 1022 the vessel went down with all hands and Atenulf was drowned with the rest. Meanwhile Pilgrim continued to Capua. Pandulf was not disposed to give in without a struggle and at once called upon the inhabitants to defend the city walls; but he was so much disliked by his subjects that he found himself no longer able to command their loyalty in the face of the Archbishop's troops. Encouraged by certain Normans in his retinue, who also had no love for their erstwhile paymaster and correctly judged where their own advantage lay, a group of citizens stealthily opened the gates to the imperial army. Pilgrim was thus able to enter Capua, there to receive the submission of its fuming Prince.

  The original plan now provided for Pilgrim to turn eastwards to rejoin the rest of the army. Before doing so, however, he decided to move on to Salerno where Gaimar, although his behaviour had been a good deal less reprehensible than that of his brother-in-law, still continued openly to profess pro-Byzantine sympathies and was clearly capable of causing trouble in the future if he were not discouraged. But as Pilgrim soon discovered, Salerno was a very different proposition from Capua. Its defences were considerably stronger and much more determinedly manned, for Gaimar was as popular as Pandulf was hated and his Norman guard was undismayed by the archiepiscopal cohorts. The city was besieged for over a month but, although hard pressed, obviously had no intention of surrendering. Meanwhile time was passing and Pilgrim still had a long hard road through the mountains between himself and hisE mperor. At last a truce was called and he agreed to raise the siege in return for an adequate number of hostages. Having thus protected his rear he turned away from Salerno and headed inland.

  Henry also had marched swiftly. Despite the unwieldiness of his army and the rigours of the Alpine winter he and Archbishop Poppo, whose journey had been equally uneventful, had joined up as planned by mid-February 1022. Together they then proceeded inland to a point near Benevento where the Pope was awaiting them, and on 3 March Benedict and Henry made their formal entrance into the city. There they stayed for four weeks, resting and catching up with their correspondence—and, presumably, hoping for news of Pilgrim. Meanwhile the army prepared for action. At the end of the month they decided to delay no longer for the Archbishop and set off for Troia.

  Boioannes had, as usual, done his work well. To the imperial troops emerging from the mountain passes on to the plain of Apulia, the immense spur on which Troia stands must have looked virtually impregnable; and the town itself, poised over the very edge of the frontier between Byzantine territory and the Duchy of Benevento, distinctly menacing. But the stern determination of the Pope and the pious fortitude of the Emperor set the required example, and on 12 April the siege began. For nearly three months it was to drag on as the weather grew steadily hotter, its grim monotony broken only by the arrival of Pilgrim with the news from Campania, and Pandulf, still seething, in his train. The news of Atenulf's fate left Henry unmoved; he is said to have merely muttered a verse from the seventh psalm and turned away. Pandulf he condemned to death on the spot but owing to the intercession of the Archbishop, who had grown rather fond of his prisoner during their journey through the mountains, he was persuaded to commute the sentence to one of imprisonment beyond the Alps—an exercise of mercy which many people were before long to have cause to regret. The Wolf of the Abruzzi was led away in chains and the siege continued.

  Unlike her famous Anatolian namesake, Troia held out to the end. Certain pro-German chroniclers have tried to maintain that Henry eventually managed to take the town by storm; one, the notoriously

  1 He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.

  unreliable monk Radulph Glaber (the wildness of whose imagination was rivalled only by that of his private life, which gives him a fair claim to have been expelled from more monasteries than any other litterateur of the eleventh century), tells a typically far-fetched story of how Henry's heart was melted by the sight of a long procession of all its inhabitants, led by an elderly hermit carrying a cross. But if Troia had in fact surrendered it is inconceivable that some mention of it would not appear in any of the contemporary South Italian records —and scarcely more probable that Boioannes should have immediately afterwards granted the town new privileges as a reward for its fidelity.

  So Henry was deprived of his triumph. He could not continue the siege indefinitely. The heat was taking its toll, and malaria, which remained the scourge of Apulia until well into the twentieth century, was rife in his army. At the end of June he decided to give up. The camp was struck, and the Emperor, who was by now in considerable pain from a gall-stone, rode slowly away into the mountains at the head of his huge but dispirited army. It was not the first time that the South Italian summer had conquered the greatest military forces of Europe; nor, as we shall sec, was it to be the last. Henry met the Pope, who had preceded him, at Monte Cassino and here they remained for a few days, Benedict occupying himself with the induction of a new abbot and Henry seeking—successfully, we are told—miraculous relief from his stone. Then, after a short visit to Capua, where another Pandulf, Count of Teano, was installed in the palace of his disgraced namesake, Pope and Emperor left via Rome for Pavia, to attend an important council which Benedict had summoned on Church reform. To Henry such a gathering constituted an irresistible temptation, and it was not until August that he left for Germany.

  His expedition had been only a very qualified success. Pilgrim admittedly had done his work well; with Pandulf and Atenulf removed from the scene there should be no more difficulties in Capua or Monte Cassino, while the hostages from Salerno and Naples (the latter had offered them of its own accord rather than face the possibility of a siege by the Archbishop's army) were a guarantee against trouble along that part of the coast. The Apulian campaign, on the other hand, had been a fiasco. Troia's stubborn stand had shown up the fundamental impotence of imperial arms in Italy. Some sixty thousand men had been completely unable to subdue a small hill-town which had not even existed four years earlier. To make matters worse, they had been under the personal command of the Emperor, whose own reputation had thus suffered a heavy blow—while that of Boioannes, who had conceived, built, fortified and populated Troia, had acquired proportionately greater lustre. And the Catapan had yet another advantage, of which Henry was all too well aware; being resident in Apulia, he was able continually to maintain and consolidate his position and to seize without delay every opportunity for improving it. The Western Emperor, in contrast, could work only through his feudal vassals who, as had so recently been demonstrated, were apt to remain loyal only so long as it suited them. While he was on the spot in all his splendour, holding courts, dispensing justice
and with a generous hand distributing his imperial largesse, these vassals were only too ready to offer their submission and to pay their homage. Once he was gone, the field was left open to malcontents and agitators; laws would be disobeyed, morale undermined, injunctions forgotten; Boioannes would miss no chances; and what then was to prevent the whole painfully rebuilt imperial structure from crumbling again ?

  For the Byzantines, as they watched the imperial host lumbering away into the mountains, the prevailing sentiment must have been one of relief. Had Henry taken Troia, all Apulia might have lain at his mercy. Following the reverses already sustained in the west, this would have meant the undoing of all that had been achieved in the past four years. Even as things were, there was much to be rebuilt; but thanks to Troia the foundations had remained secure. Greek diplomacy could get to work again. No wonder Boioannes rewarded the Troians so handsomely.