The Normans In The South

by John Julius Norwich

  For a decade all went smoothly. In the interim Roger's daughter Constance married Conrad, Henry IV's rebel son who had allied himself with his father's enemies, and soon Sicily became known as one of the leading champions of the papalist cause. Then, in 1097, Urban miscalculated. Without giving the Count any prior warning, he appointed Robert, Bishop of Troina and Messina, as his Apostolic Legate in Sicily. For Roger such interference was unwarranted and intolerable. The unfortunate Robert was seized in his own church and put under instant arrest.

  In other circumstances and with other protagonists such a crisis might have spelt serious trouble between Sicily and the Papacy; but Roger and Urban were both consummate diplomats, and, by a lucky chance, an opportunity to settle the matter soon presented itself. Some months before, Jordan of Capua's son Richard, now grown to manhood, had appealed to both the Duke of Apulia and the Count of Sicily for help in regaining his principality, from which he and his family had been expelled soon after his father's death.

  They had agreed—Roger Borsa in exchange for suzerainty over all Capuan lands, his uncle in return for the surrender of Capuan claims to Naples. The siege began in the middle of May 1098 and lasted forty days; and it was an easy matter for the Pope, on the pretext of an attempt at mediation, to travel down to the beleaguered city. Roger received him with every courtesy, putting, we are told, six tents at his disposal; and in the talks that followed—which were attended also by Bishop Robert as a proof of the Count's goodwill— he seems to have admitted that he had acted hastily and expressed suitable regret. While these talks were still in progress, Capua surrendered and its Prince was reinstated; Pope and Count accordingly withdrew to Salerno, and it was there that they decided upon a formula which has led to more speculation and heated controversy than any other incident in the whole history of Sicilian relations with Rome. This formula was enshrined in a letter, addressed by Urban on 5 July 1098 to 'his most dear son, Count of Calabria and Sicily', in which he undertook that no papal legate should be appointed in any part of Roger's dominions without the express permission of the Count himself or his immediate heirs, whom Urban now formally invested with legatine powers. The letter further granted Roger complete discretion in the choice of bishops whom he might send to future councils of the Church.

  Several distinguished historians of the period1 have argued that by acquiring the perpetual Apostolic Legation the Great Count was obtaining rights which far exceeded those enjoyed by any other lay potentate in the Christian West. Catholic apologists, on the other hand, anxious to refute the exaggerated claims of later Sicilian rulers down the centuries, have gone to immense pains to show that the Pope in fact gave away very little; and recent research seems to have proved them right. Certainly the legatine office was withdrawn from Bishop Robert; yet it is worth noting that Urban's letter is careful not to confer it formally on Roger but merely authorises him to act instead of a Legate ('Legati vice'). Moreover, the letter purports to be merely a written confirmation of an earlier verbal promise; and though the Pope may be referring to an undertaking given immediately

  1 Chalandon, Histoire de la Domination Normande, and Caspar, Die Legalengewall der normannisch-sicilischen Herrscher, to name but two.

  beforehand at Capua or Salerno, an examination of Roger's handling of Church affairs during the previous ten years suggests that he had in fact considered himself empowered with legatine rights ever since Urban's visit of 1088. This would also explain his fury at the appointment of Robert—the only time in his career that he is known to have laid hands on the clergy.1

  If, then, we accept this modern interpretation of the Pope's letter, it emerges simply as the record of a ten-year-old agreement from which both sides stood to gain. The powers it gave Roger were by no means absolute, nor were they long to remain unique: a few years later King Henry I was to acquire almost identical rights over the Church in England. But they should not be underestimated on that account. Roger now had written authority from Rome to take decisions on his own initiative which would have been impossible if the Pope had possessed full local representation, and which gave him an effective practical control of the Latin Church in his dominions such as he already enjoyed over the Orthodox and Muslim communities. It may not have been so brilliant a diplomatic victory as was previously supposed, but it was no mean achievement.

  Pope Urban was not the only distinguished ecclesiastic to appear below the walls of Capua during those summer days of 1098. St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was a Lombard by birth, had left England in despair the previous October—William Rufus, having, not for the first time, made his life intolerable—and was staying in the neighbourhood when he received a message from Roger Borsa inviting him on a short visit to the siege. According to Anselm's friend and biographer, the monk Eadmer (who was also present), the Archbishop accepted and remained outside Capua until the fall of the city, 'living in tents set well apart from the noise and tumult of the army'; and there, soon after his arrival, the Pope had joined him. The following story is best told in Eadmer's own words:

  The Lord Pope and Anselm were neighbours at the siege ... so that their households seemed rather to be one than two, nor did anyone willingly come to visit the Pope without turning aside to Anselm. . . . Indeed,

  1 This whole question is brilliantly discussed by E. Jordan, 'La politique ecclesiastique de Roger I et les origines de la "Legation Sicilienne"'.

  many who were afraid to approach the Pope, hurried to come to Anselm,

  being led by that love which knows no fear. The majesty of the Pope gave access only to the rich: the humanity of Anselm received all without any exceptance of persons. And whom do I mean by all, Even pagans as well as Christians. There were indeed pagans, for the Count of Sicily, a vassal of Duke Roger, had brought many thousands of them with him on the expedition. Some of them, I say, were stirred, by the reports of Anselm's goodness which circulated among them, to frequent our lodging. They gratefully accepted offerings of food from Anselm and returned to their own people making known the wonderful kindness which they had experienced at his hands. As a result he was from this time held in such veneration among them, that when we passed through their camp—for they were all encamped together—a huge crowd of them, raising their hands to heaven, would call down blessings on his head; then, kissing their hands as they are wont, they would do him reverence on their bended knees, giving thanks for his kindness and liberality. Many of them even, as we discovered, would willingly have submitted themselves to his instruction and would have allowed the yoke of the Christian faith to be placed by him upon their shoulders, if they had not feared that the cruelty

  of their Count would have been let loose against them. For in truth he was unwilling to allow any of them to become Christian with impunity.

  With what policy—if one can use that word—he did this, is no concern of mine: that is between God and himself. [tr. Southern.]

  Eadmer was never the most objective of biographers, and it is difficult to believe that Count Roger's Saracen troops were either as numerous or as adulatory as he suggests. His account is interesting, however, for its reference to their master's refusal to allow their conversion. In years to come, succeeding rulers of Sicily were to incur much odium for the apparent coldbloodedness with which they used Muslim soldiers against their Christian enemies, and for the vigour with which they were wont to oppose all evangelical attempts. Such policies may well have seemed immoral to bigoted mediaeval minds, but they certainly justified themselves in practice. First of all, by establishing a crack force of Saracen troops, commanded by Saracen officers and maintaining their traditional fighting methods, Roger provided a useful outlet for the military instincts and talents of his Muslim subjects, preventing them from feeling second-class citizens and giving them a pride of participation in the new Sicilian state. Secondly, he knew how dangerously religious sanctions could affect the morale of any Christian fighting force. His relations with the Papacy were normally amicable enough, but there was no
telling how long they might remain so. Only by preserving a strong Islamic contingent in his army could he be sure that, in the event of a brush with the Pope, he would still retain a body of first-class soldiers whose loyalties would continue undivided. Finally, the addition of the Saracen brigades made the Count's army supreme in the peninsula, stronger than that of Capua or even that of the Duke of Apulia himself.

  Roger's growing respect for the Saracens as soldiers had its counterpart in his civil administration. As he slowly won their confidence they began to respond to his leadership; and as their qualities, particularly in commercial and financial affairs, became more apparent, so the governmental posts held by Muslim functionaries increased in number and importance. In Palermo itself the Governor was always a Christian—though even here he retained the Arabic title of Emir, which passed into the Latin language in the form of ammiratus and from which, through Norman Sicily, our own word admiral is derived; elsewhere, in nearly all regions of the island whose populations were wholly or predominantly Muslim, government was left in the hands of the local Saracen Emirs. And so, with the return of peace and security to the land, the old Arab artistic and intellectual traditions were reawakened; poets, scientists and craftsmen appeared anew and were greeted with admiration and encouragement; and the foundations were laid for the great cultural efflorescence of twelfth-century Sicily, to which the Arab contribution was to be the richest and brightest of all.

  In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that when, at Clermont in November 1095, Pope Urban summoned the princes and peoples of Christendom to take up arms against the Saracen and deliver the Holy Places from heathen pollution, his words should have had little appeal for the Count of Sicily. Among the knights and barons of Apulia, in whose hearts the old Norman wanderlust still burned as fiercely as ever, the response had been enthusiastic and immediate—to such an extent that Roger Borsa, who was, as usual with his uncle's help, busy besieging a rebellious Amalfi when the news of the Crusade reached South Italy, suddenly found himself faced with the mass desertion of nearly half his troops and was obliged to raise the siege. A few months later the great Crusading army, marching down the peninsula to its ports of embarcation, was swelled beyond all estimates as Norman warriors in their hundreds joined its ranks, led by the gigantic Bohemund himself, with no fewer than five other grandsons and two great-grandsons of old Tancred de Hauteville in his train.

  For the Duke of Apulia, despite the unfortunate depletion of his army, the general exodus must have come as a godsend, delivering him at one stroke of all the most dangerous and disruptive elements in his duchies. But the excitement and commotion of that summer seem to have left his uncle unmoved. Roger had had enough of crusading. The Arab historian Ibn al-Athir tells of how, at about this time, the Count was offered the assistance of a Frankish army if he would lead an expedition to Africa against Temim, the Zirid Sultan of Mahdia, in what is now Tunisia. He continues:

  At these tidings Roger assembled his companions and asked their advice. All replied: 'By the Gospel, this is an excellent plan for us and for him; thus will all the country become Christian.' But Roger lifted his foot and made a great fart, saying 'By my faith, here is far better counsel than you have given.... When that army is here I shall have to provide a numerous fleet, and much else besides, to transport it across to Africa, it and my own troops too. If we conquer the country, the country will be theirs; meanwhile we shall have to send them provisions from Sicily and I shall lose the money I draw each year from the sale of my produce. If on the contrary the expedition is unsuccessful, they will return to Sicily and I shall have to suffer their presence. Moreover Temim will be able to accuse me of bad faith towards him, claiming that I have broken my word and that I have severed the links of friendship existing between our countries.

  Ibn al-Athir was writing some hundred years after Roger's death. His facts are a little confused; the episode in question is most probably connected with Roger's known refusal to join a joint Pisan and Genoese expedition against Temim in 1086. The account is therefore less remarkable for its historical accuracy than for the light it sheds on the Count's reputation in the Arab world. It is also one of the few anecdotes to have come down to us that gives us a picture, however imprecise or fleeting, of Roger the man. About his personality and his private life we know infuriatingly little— save that he certainly seems to have possessed in full measure the philoprogenitiveness of the Hautevilles. Existing records testify to at least thirteen and probably seventeen children by various mothers, to three of whom—his beloved Judith of Evreux having died young—he was successively married; but the list may not be exhaustive. The rest of his character can only be deduced from what we know of his career.

  But what a career it was. When Roger died, on 22 June 1101, in his mainland capital of Mileto, he was seventy years old. Forty-four of those years had been spent in the South, and forty had been largely devoted to the island of Sicily. The youngest of the Hautevilles, he had begun with even fewer advantages than his brothers; but by the time of his death, though still only a Count and remaining the faithful vassal of his nephew, he was generally reckoned as one of the foremost princes of Europe, one whom no less than three Kings—Philip of France, Conrad of Germany1 (son of Henry IV) and Coloman of Hungary—had sought as a father-in-law. Sicily he had transformed. An island once despairing and demoralised, torn asunder by internecine wars, decaying after two centuries of misrule, had become a political entity, peaceful and prosperous, in which four races—since, as a result of Roger's efforts, several thriving Lombard colonies were now established round Catania—and three religions were living happily side by side in mutual respect and concord.

  Here—with its significance extending in time and space far beyond the confines of the central Mediterranean—lies the cornerstone of Roger's achievement. In a feudal Europe almost entirely given over to bloodshed, loud with the tumult of a thousand petty struggles, rent by schism, and always overshadowed by the titanic conflict between Emperor and Pope, he left a land—not yet even a nation— in which no barons grew over-turbulent, and neither the Greek nor the Latin Churches strove against the lay authority or against each other. While the rest of the continent, with a ridiculous combination of cynical self-interest and woolly-headed idealism, exhausted and disgraced itself on a Crusade, he—who alone among European leaders had learnt from his own experience the vanity of the crusading spirit—had created a climate of enlightened political and

  1 Conrad died before his father, having revolted against him; but he was acknowledged king in Italy.

  religious thinking in which all races, creeds, languages and cultures were equally encouraged and favoured. Such a phenomenon, unparalleled in the Middle Ages, is rare enough at any time; and the example which Count Roger of Sicily set Europe in the eleventh century might still profitably be followed by most nations in the world today.

  20

  ADELAIDE

  While all the other Christian princes of the world have always done their utmost, both personally and by their great generosity, to protect and nurture our kingdom like a tender shoot, this prince and his successors have never to this day addressed us one word of friendship— despite the fact that they are better and more conveniently placed than any other princes to offer us practical assistance or counsel. They seem to have kept this offence always green in their memory, and so do they unjustly visit upon a whole people a fault which should properly be imputed to one man only.

  William of Tyre, Bk XI

  NOTHING now remains of Count Roger's abbey of the SS. Trinita at Mileto. An earthquake destroyed it, with the rest of the town, in 1783, and all that could be salvaged of its founder's tomb was the antique sarcophagus itself, which now lies in the Archaeological Museum at Naples.1 Its church was neither large nor particularly grandiose, but on that late June day in 1101 it must have offered the mourners physical as well as spiritual consolation; and it was from its cool shadows that, the funeral service over, a dark-haired young
woman stepped out with her two little boys into the sunshine.

  Countess Adelaide was the daughter of a certain Marquis Manfred, brother of the great Boniface del Vasto of Savona. She had married Roger as his third wife in 1089, when her husband was approaching sixty and, despite an undoubted virility to which his two sons and a dozen-odd daughters bore more than adequate testimony, still without any suitable male heir. Jordan, whom he loved and who had inherited all the Hauteville qualities, had been born out of wedlock;

  1 See photograph opposite p. 257.

  while Geoffrey, his only legitimate son, was a leper who lived secluded in a remote monastery. For a time it had looked as though Adelaide were going to fail in her duty; and when, two years after the marriage and with the young Countess still as slim as ever, the news spread through Sicily that Jordan had died of a fever at Syracuse,1 Roger's hopes of founding a dynasty seemed bleak indeed. At last, however, his prayers were answered. In 1093 Adelaide was brought to bed of a son, Simon; and two years later, on 22 December 1095, she presented him with another, whom, with justifiable pride —for he was now sixty-four—he called Roger.

  The succession no longer gave cause for concern; but the future of Sicily still looked bleak, and many of the congregation that day in the SS. Trinita must have found their minds wandering from the words of the Requiem to dwell on the difficult years ahead. Simon was just eight years old, Roger barely five and a half; a long regency was inevitable. Adelaide was young and inexperienced, and a woman. A North Italian from Liguria, she had no deep hold on the loyalties of any of the peoples whom she was now asked to control —Normans, Greeks, Lombards or Saracens. Her knowledge of languages is unlikely to have stretched further than Italian, Latin and a smattering of Norman French. How could she possibly cope with the government of one of the most complex states of Europe ?