The story of Canossa, usually enlivened by an oleaginous illustration of the King, barefoot and dressed in sackcloth, shivering in the snow before the locked doors of the castle, has always been a favourite with the writers of children's history books, where it is apt to appear as an improving object-lesson in the vanity of temporal ambition. In fact Gregory's triumph was empty and ephemeral, and Henry knew it. His humiliation had nothing to do with repentance. It was a cold-blooded political manoeuvre which was necessary to secure his crown, and he had no intention of keeping his promises after they had served their purpose. The Pope, too, can have had few delusions about the King's sincerity. Had his Christian conscience permitted him to withhold absolution he would doubtless have been only too happy to do so. As it was, he had won an unquestionable moral victory; but of what use was a victory after which the vanquished returned unabashed to his kingdom, there to launch a bloody civil war against his still rebellious vassals, while the victor remained cooped up in a Tuscan castle, blocked from Germany by the savage hostility of the Lombard cities and powerless to intervene ? His triumph had been sweet enough while it lasted, but he found the aftertaste singularly unpleasant.
Not until September did the Pope return to Rome. As usual, bad news awaited him. First there was Gisulf, to tell him of the fall of Salerno. Next came grave reports from Naples, where Richard's army and Robert's navy were mercilessly maintaining their siege. More serious still was the situation to the east, where two Norman armies, under the Guiscard's nephew Robert of Loritello and Richard's son Jordan, were pressing ever deeper into the Church lands of the Abruzzi. But the worst shock of all was still to come. On 19 December the Duke of Apulia attacked Benevento. The Pope was outraged. Technically, the town had been papal territory since the days of Charlemagne, whose gift had been confirmed when the Beneventans had ousted their worthless rulers and voluntarily placed themselves under the protection of Gregory's old master Leo IX twenty-seven years before. Since then it had become the principal bastion of the Papacy in South Italy, with its own papal palace where he himself had held court. This unprovoked attack was far worse than a renewed declaration of war; it was a gratuitous insult to the throne of St Peter itself.
And even that was not everything. Besides showing his contempt for the Papacy Robert Guiscard, by laying siege to Benevento, was holding the Pope's own sentence of excommunication up to ridicule. That same sentence that had brought Henry IV, heir to the Roman Empire of the West, cringing to Canossa less than a year before had been directed against this upstart Norman brigand with no adverse effect whatever. If anything, it seemed to have acted on him like a tonic. Certainly the populations of Salerno, Naples, the Abruzzi— for Robert of Loritello and his followers had all been implicitly included in the ban—and now Benevento itself would be revising their earlier opinions about the power and authority of the Church. And they would be right. The Pope had no army, and apparently no prestige either. There was only one thing he could do. Perhaps the Guiscard and his odious compatriots had not heard him the first time. On 3 March 1078 he excommunicated them again.
In normal conditions the new sentence would probably have passed as unheeded as its predecessor, but the Pope had timed it better than he knew. A few days after its official publication in Capua, Prince Richard fell ill; a month later, after an eleventh-hour reconciliation with the Church, he was dead; and the whole pattern of South Italian politics was changed overnight. Richard, like Robert Guiscard, had been a vassal of the Pope, and his son Jordan saw at once that there could be no question of succeeding to his father's throne while he remained under sentence of excommunication. Hastily calling off both the siege of Naples and his own operations in the Abruzzi, he hastened to Rome to make his peace with his suzerain and to assure him of his undying fidelity.
Robert Guiscard was not by nature a sentimental man, but the news of his brother-in-law's death cannot have left him entirely unmoved. The two had arrived from Normandy at the same time over thirty years before, and their rise to power had been rapid. For as long as many of their subjects could remember they had together dominated the two great Norman communities of the South, building up the early settlements at Aversa and Melfi into the rich and powerful states they had now become. Like all good Norman barons, they had been at war for most of the time; but they had fought side by side as often as face to face, and if on occasion promises had been broken or friendship betrayed, that was all in the game—an integral part of life as they knew it. Neither bore any lasting grudge; each had a healthy respect for the capacities of the other; and for the past two years they had worked in a happy, easy partnership that was proving highly profitable to them both. The Guiscard was now sixty-two; for him Richard's death must have meant the passing of an era.
He himself felt his ambitions and energies undiminished; and plans for conquests more daring and far-flung than any he had yet undertaken were already beginning to crystallise in his mind. But he saw that for the moment he would have to draw in his horns. Young Jordan, by his ridiculous decision to go and grovel in Rome just as they were all doing so well, had destroyed the whole momentum of the Norman advance and made himself a willing tool of the Pope. What was to prevent Gregory from forcing him to march his army, now once more unemployed, to the relief of Benevento ? It was not worth the risk. Robert gave his own troops the order to withdraw. Benevento would have to wait.
His fears were justified. At last the Pope had found an ally—and, what was more, an ally with an army—and he was determined to make full use of him. Barely three months after Richard's death, we find Gregory staying at Capua. He can have had no difficulty in imposing his formidable will on the young Prince, alone, inexperienced and pitifully conscious of his exposed position against an angry and predatory Duke of Apulia. Nor had the Pope yet performed that all-important investiture. Jordan may not have liked the proposals which Gregory now put to him, but he was poorly placed to argue.
Fortunately for them both, Robert Guiscard had bitterly antagonised all his principal vassals earlier in the year, when he had forced them to meet the cost of the elaborate celebrations which had attended the wedding of one of his daughters to Hugh, son of the Marquis Azzo of Este. Such exactions were a recognised obligation of vassals in the feudal societies of the North; but to the Norman barons in Apulia, many of whom remembered the Guiscard's beginnings and considered him to be no whit superior in birth or breeding to themselves, his demands had seemed unpardonable arrogance. They paid up because they had no choice; but when Jordan, certainly at the Pope's instigation and probably at his expense, allowed himself to become the focus for a new revolt against the Duke of Apulia, they were ready to answer his call.
The revolt was well-organised and widespread, beginning in the autumn of 1078 simultaneously at several points in Calabria and Apulia and extending rapidly through all Robert Guiscard's mainland dominions. There is no need to trace it in detail. Rebellion was endemic in South Italy; Robert was never secure enough to prevent it altogether, never so weak that he could not deal with it effectively when it came. For this reason one insurrection tended to be very like another. Even the ring-leaders—men such as Abelard, Geoffrey of Conversano or Peter of Trani—changed little, thanks largely to Robert's lack of vindictiveness, between one outbreak and the next. On this occasion nine months sufficed for the Guiscard to reassert his authority to the point where he was able to bring Jordan— through that eternal mediator Desiderius—to a separate peace. Jordan had in fact taken suprisingly little active part in the rebellion he had launched; it may be that his heart was never really in it and that he soon regretted his easy submission to papal pressure. Robert was now able to concentrate on Apulia where, after a whirlwind campaign through the winter of 1078-79, not the least remarkable feature of which was the successful siege of Trani by Sichelgaita while her husband was occupied with Taranto, he soon mopped up the remaining rebels. By the following summer the task of pacification was complete.
Away in Rome, Pope Gregory had
watched his hopes crumble. Ill fortune continued to dog him. He, who had devoted his entire fife to the service of God, had in the seven years of his pontificate been blocked at every turn by the forces of iniquity. The renewed excommunication which he had hurled at Henry IV, now a very different figure from the grovelling penitent of Canossa, was proving a good deal less effective than the first. His threatened descent into Italy to claim the Imperial Crown could not, it seemed, be very much longer postponed. Once again the Papacy was in grave danger; and once again—since Jordan was clearly a broken reed—the key to the situation appeared to lie with Robert Guiscard. He, like Henry, was a double-excommunicate—except that in his case both sentences were running concurrently—but the fact had not prevented him from re-imposing his authority wherever it had been called in question. He was now more firmly entrenched than ever. When, in the past, the Pope had considered trying to regain his allegiance, pride and his old fear of losing face had always held him back. He could not afford such scruples now. If he did not come to terms with the Duke of Apulia—and quickly—Henry IV would do so on his own account and Gregory would soon find himself a Pope without a throne. Already in March 1080 we find his tone softening slightly towards the Normans; at the Lenten Synod of that year he issued a further warning to all 'invaders and pillagers' of Church lands, but this time added a conciliatory note: that if any of these had just cause for complaint against the inhabitants of the territories concerned, they should lay the case before the local governors; and that if justice was still denied them they might themselves take steps to recover what was rightfully theirs—'not in a thieving manner, but in a spirit befitting a Christian'.
The Pope, for once, was trimming his sails. Some time during the spring he instructed Desiderius to begin serious negotiations with Robert Guiscard. They were successful; and on 29 June 1080 at Ceprano, the Duke of Apulia at last knelt before Gregory VII and swore his fealty for all those lands that he had previously held from Popes Nicholas and Alexander. The more recently—and questionably—acquired territories of Amalfi, Salerno and the March of Fermo were left in suspense for the time being, but this was not a point to worry Robert unduly: it was enough for him that Gregory should have implied, in the words of his investiture, his effective de facto recognition of the new conquests. The legal technicalities could be settled later. Meanwhile the meeting at Ceprano had been another diplomatic victory for the Guiscard, and both parties were well aware of the fact. Gregory must at last have understood how ill-advised he had been to stand on his dignity at Benevento seven years before, while his own position was still comparatively strong. But it was too late now for self-recriminations of that kind. He needed Robert's support, and he must pay the price demanded. It was his only hope if he were to survive the oncoming storm.
And indeed, as the Duke of Apulia laid his huge hands between those of his Pope and thunderously pledged his loyalty and allegiance, the clouds were gathering faster than either of them knew. Four days earlier, in the little town of Brixen—now Bressanone— just south of the Brenner Pass, Henry IV had presided over a great council of his German and Lombard bishops. There, by common consent, Gregory VII had once again been deposed; and Archbishop Guibert of Ravenna, under the title of Clement III, had been proclaimed Pope in his stead.
16
AGAINST BYZANTIUM
O wisest and most learned of all men.... Those who have conversed with you and know you well speak highly of your intelligence and of the piety which you show not only in your religious faith but in the management of all your affairs. You are reputed to be a man of great prudence and at the same time a lover of action, with a spirit at once simple and lively. Thus, both in your character and your habits, do I recognise myself in you; and so I offer you the cup of friendship....
The Emperor Michael VII to Robert Guiscard
To Robert Guiscard, riding south from Ceprano to his new capital at Salerno during those July days of 1080, life must have looked as rich and radiant as the countryside around him. All his domains were tranquil, all his enemies subdued. His Apulian and Calabrian vassals were licking their wounds. After their last outbreak he had dealt with them rather more harshly than usual; he expected no more trouble for the moment from that quarter. The Pope and the Prince of Capua were likewise on their best behaviour. Admittedly King Henry might soon be making his long-threatened appearance in Rome; but Robert was not afraid of King Henry, who by his very existence was already serving a most useful purpose in keeping the Pope in order. Anyway the Duke's recent oath to Gregory did not oblige him to sit around twiddling his thumbs and waiting for a German army that might never come. He had more important things to do; and at sixty-four he could not afford to waste time.
He had long dreamed—and over the past two years his dreams had gradually ripened into plans—of a great concerted Norman attack on the Byzantine Empire. The Greeks were his oldest and most persistent enemies. He had ousted them from Italy, but even now they had not given up the struggle. Any of his Apulian vassals contemplating revolt could always count on sympathy and support from Constantinople, while the Byzantine province of Illyria just across the Adriatic was the recognised gathering-place for all Norman and Lombard exiles from Italy—his incorrigible nephew Abelard now among them. This alone in Robert's eyes would more than justify a punitive campaign—but his real reasons lay deeper.
Virtually all the Duke's mainland possessions had been conquered from the Greeks, and were thus impregnated with the heady fragrance of Byzantine civilisation. As a result of this the Normans had suddenly found themselves surrounded by the language and religion, the art and architecture and all the other outward manifestations of a culture more sophisticated and insistently pervasive than any other then known to Europe. Always acutely susceptible to foreign influences, they had not been slow to respond. In Apulia, where the population in general was overwhelmingly Lombard, both impact and response were less; but in Calabria, where the dominant cultural flavour had always been Greek, the Norman overlords had preserved nearly all the old administrative forms and customs and had generally been far more inclined to adopt Byzantine ways than to impose their own. After his investiture by Pope Nicholas with the Duchy of Calabria, Robert Guiscard had gone still further in this direction, deliberately presenting himself to his new subjects as successor to the Basileus, slavishly copying the imperial insignia on his own seals and even wearing, on formal occasions, careful models of the Emperor's own robes of state. It has not been unusual for peoples finding themselves in close proximity to the Greeks to develop, on the cultural level, a marked inferiority complex; it happened to the Romans and, later, to most of the Slavs; the Turks have not recovered from it to this day; and the Normans, even the invincible, confident Normans, were no exception- They knew only one remedy—conquest.
In the last decade Byzantium herself had sunk deeper and deeper into chaos. Around her frontiers her enemies—Hungarians and Russians to the North and West, Seljuk Turks to the South and East—maintained a relentiess pressure; while, at her very heart, a succession of incompetent rulers and corrupt officials had brought her to the brink of political and economic collapse. Her ancient glory remained, but her greatness was gone. Never in her seven and a half centuries of history had her condition been more desperate than in the summer of 1080. Robert Guiscard, by a fortunate coincidence, had never been stronger. Constantinople lay, apparently powerless, before him. His army was in need of employment; so too was his fleet. Its novelty still fascinated him, but he was tired of using it for those interminable blockades. The time had come to cast it in a more active role and to find out just how much it could really do. Thirty-five years earlier he had arrived in Italy, the sixth son of an obscure and impoverished Norman knight. The throne of the Eastern Empire would make a fitting end to his career.
Events in Constantinople during the last few years had provided him, if not with an adequate reason for intervention, at least with an excuse. When, in the early summer of 1073, the Emperor Michael ha
d appealed to the Pope for aid against the infidel, he had not thought it necessary to add that he was already in correspondence with the Duke of Apulia. He had in fact written Robert a letter some months before, couched in a style which, if typically Byzantine in all its verbose convolutions, is at least refreshingly devoid of false modesty. Other princes, the Emperor explained, counted themselves sufficiently honoured if they merely received occasional assurances of his peaceful intentions towards them; but the Duke, whom he knew to be similarly endowed with deep religious faith, must not be surprised to find himself singled out for a greater token of imperial regard. What better token could there be than a military alliance, sealed by a loving marriage ? He therefore proposed that Robert, after a seemly pause for self-congratulation, should forthwith take upon himself all the enviable duties of an ally of the Empire—defending its frontiers, protecting its vassals and battling ceaselessly with its enemies. In return, one of his daughters would be received with all honour at Constantinople and given to the Emperor's own brother as his bride.
The Normans In The South Page 26