The Kingdom in the Sun

by John Julius Norwich

  The papal schism was just such an issue. Bernard declared himself unhesitatingly for Innocent, and from that moment on the die was cast. His reasons, as always, were emotional. Cardinal Aimeri, the papal Chancellor whose intrigues on Innocent's behalf had been directly responsible for the whole dispute, was a close personal friend. Anacletus on the other hand was a product of Cluny, a monastery which Bernard detested on the grounds that it had betrayed its reformist ideals and had succumbed to those very temptations of wealth and worldliness that it had been founded to eradicate. Worse still, he was of Jewish antecedents; as Bernard was later to write to the Emperor Lothair, 'it is to the injury of Christ that the offspring of a Jew should have seized for himself the throne of St Peter'. The question of St Peter's own racial origins does not seem to have occurred to him.

  When, in the late summer of 1130, King Louis VI, 'the Fat', of France summoned a Church council at Etampes to advise him which of the two candidates he should support, Bernard was ready to strike. Rightly sensing that any enquiry into the canonicity of the elections themselves might do his cause more harm than good, he stuck firmly to personalities and immediately embarked on a campaign of such vituperation that, in the minds of his audience, a senior and generally respected member of the Sacred College was transformed, almost overnight, into Antichrist. Though no actual record of the proceed­ings at Etampes has come down to us, one of the abbot's letters dating from this time probably reflects his words accurately enough.

  The adherents of Anacletus, he writes, 'have made a covenant with death and a compact with hell. . . . The abomination of desolation is standing in the Holy Place, to gain possession of which he has set fire to the sanctuary of God. He persecutes Innocent and with him all who are innocent. Innocent has fled from his face, for when the Lion [a play on the name of Pierleoni] roars, who shall not be afraid? He has obeyed the words of the Lord: When they persecute you in one city, flee unto another. He has fled, and by the flight that he has endured after the example of the Apostles he has proved himself truly an apostle.'

  Nowadays it is hard to believe that this sort of casuistical invective should have been taken seriously, far less that it should have had any lasting effect. Yet Bernard dominated Etampes, and it was thanks to him that the claims of Innocent II received official recognition in France. Henry I of England presented even less difficulty. He too had hesitated at first; Anacletus had been a papal legate at his court and was still a personal friend. Bernard, however, paid him a special visit to discuss the matter and Henry's resistance crumbled. In January 1131 he loaded Innocent with presents and did homage to him in Chartres Cathedral.

  There remained the problem of the Empire. Lothair of Supplinburg, King of Germany, was in a difficult position. A strong, proud, stubborn man of sixty, he had begun life as a comparatively incon­sequential noble; his election to the monarchy in 1125 had been largely due to the influence of the papal party working closely with Cardinal Aimeri. He should therefore have been favourably disposed towards Innocent. On the other hand Anacletus had recently sent extremely civil letters to himself, his queen, and to the clergy and laity of Germany and Saxony, informing them of how his brother cardinals 'with a wonderful and stupendous unanimity' had raised him to the supreme dignity of the pontificate; and he had followed up the letters by excommunicating Lothair's arch-enemy, Conrad of Hohenstaufen, who was also laying claim to the German throne. Lothair knew that his victory over Conrad could never be assured till he had had himself crowned Emperor in Rome; whatever the claims of the rival Popes he was unwilling to antagonise the one who actually had control of the Holy City. He decided to defer a decision as long as possible, and left Anacletus's letters unanswered.

  But he soon found that he could not sit on the fence for long; the situation was developing too fast. Throughout western Europe the Innocentian faction was gathering momentum, and at Etampes it had received yet further impetus. Already by the autumn of 1130 it was strong enough to force Lothair's hand; a council of sixteen German bishops met at Wiirzburg in October and declared for Innocent; and at the end of March 1131 the latter appeared with full retinue at Liege to receive the King's homage.

  Lothair could not go against his bishops; besides, it was plain that Innocent was now the generally accepted Pope. Among all the Euro­pean princes, there remained to Anacletus only one adherent—Roger of Sicily. This fact alone would have been enough to lose him any imperial support that he might otherwise have enjoyed; for by what right could any Pope, legitimate or otherwise, crown some Norman upstart King over territories which properly belonged to the Empire ? Since Roger's coronation there could have been no more serious doubts in Lothair's mind: Innocent it would have to be. And yet—perhaps as much to save his face as for any other reason—he still tried to impose one condition: that the right of investiture of bishops with ring and crozier, lost to the Empire nine years previ­ously, were now restored to himself and his successors.

  He had reckoned without the Abbot of Clairvaux. Bernard had accompanied Innocent to Liege; this was just the sort of crisis in which he excelled. Leaping from his seat, he subjected the King to a merciless castigation before the entire assembly, calling upon him then and there to renounce his pretensions and pay unconditional homage to his rightful Pope. As always, his words—or, more prob­ably, the force of his personality behind them—had their effect. This was Lothair's first encounter with Bernard; it is unlikely that he had ever been spoken to in such a way before. He was not lacking in moral fibre, but this time he seems instinctively to have realised that his position was no longer tenable. He gave in. Before the Council broke up he had made his formal submission to Innocent, and had reinforced it with an undertaking that the Pope probably found even more valuable—to lead him, at the head of an imperial German army, to Rome.

  Already at the time of his coronation Roger must have been aware of the pressures that were building up against Anacletus and—since he had now irrevocably thrown in his lot with the anti-Pope— against himself. He had taken a gamble and he knew it. His crown might indeed have been a political necessity, but he had paid for it by bringing down upon himself the wrath of half a continent. To some extent this was unavoidable; the appearance of a new power, strong and ambitious, is rarely welcome on the international scene, and Roger had after all set himself up over a land still claimed by both the Western and the Byzantine Empires. It was unfortunate, never­theless, that at this of all moments he should have had to antagonise not just the temporal forces of Europe but the spiritual as well— particularly when they were represented by such men as Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbot Peter of Cluny. In those first months after the election he would surely have been able to strike a similar bargain with either of the two papal pretenders; how much brighter the future would have looked if it had been Innocent, rather than Anacletus, who had appealed to him for help. As matters stood, Roger must have had an uncomfortable feeling that he had backed the wrong horse.

  But Empire and Church, threatening as they might appear, were not the only enemies of the new king. Others, just as dangerous, were considerably nearer to hand. There were the barons, who had already constituted the principal obstacle to order and unity in the peninsula for over a hundred years—since before the Hautevilles were even thought of—and there were the towns. Only in Calabria, where no urban conglomerations of any size or importance existed, were the townsfolk content to accept royal domination. In Cam­pania, the main centres may have been politically less evolved than their northern counterparts where the revival of trade, the loosening of the imperial grip and the beginnings of organised industry had already led to the establishment of those independent mercantile city-states, democratically governed, that were to be so characteristic a feature of later mediaeval Italy; but they too had been ruffled by the breeze of communal self-government, and the variety of forms which this had taken was a significant reflection of the prevailing disunity. In Apulia it was much the same. Bari had become a 'signory', ruled by the nobles of
the city under a constitu­tional prince; Troia had a similar system under its bishop; Molfetta and Trani were communes. None had any wish, if they could avoid it, to be swept up into a disciplined and highly centralised monarchy. It was not long before they were able to make their attitude clear. During his whirlwind progress through the mainland duchies three years before, Roger had occasionally allowed the towns through which he passed, in return for their quick submission, to retain control of their walls and citadels. At the time the arrangement had served its purpose; but he could no longer afford such concessions. From now on his authority, if it were to survive at all, would have to be absolute. In February 1131, he formally requested the citizens of Amalfi to relinquish the command of their own defences and hand over to him the keys of their castle.

  And they refused. Their argument that the King was riding rough­shod over the terms on which they had surrendered in 1127 was true but, so far as Roger was concerned, irrelevant. To him this was an act of outright defiance, and one which could not be tolerated. George of Antioch, the young Levantine Greek now on the thres­hold of his career as the most brilliant of Sicilian admirals, was despatched with the fleet to blockade the city from the sea and seize all Amalfitan ships in the roadstead; simultaneously another Greek, the Emir John, approached with an army from the mountains behind. Against such might the beleaguered citizens were powerless. They held out for a time, but when they saw Capri and all the neighbouring strong-points in Sicilian hands they could only surrender.

  Twenty-five miles away in Naples, Duke Sergius VII had followed these developments with an anxiety which rapidly gave place to alarm. At one moment he had considered sending help to Amalfi; but when he heard the size of the Sicilian force he hastily changed his mind. And so, as the Abbot of Telese smugly records, the city 'which, since Roman times, had hardly ever been conquered by the sword now submitted to Roger on the strength of a mere report'.1 At last all the territories bestowed on him by Anacletus the previous September were safely in the hands of the King.

  Sailing back to Palermo that summer with three Neapolitan ships as his escort, Roger was suddenly overtaken by a violent tempest. After two days, during which it seemed that he and his crews must perish, he made a vow; if they were spared, then at whatever point they should be brought safely to shore he would build a cathedral to Christ the Saviour. The next day—it was the feast of the

  1 Alex. Telese, II, xii.

  Transfiguration—the wind dropped, and the vessels glided to a quiet anchorage in the bay of Cefalù, under the huge rock that still dominates much of the sea-coast east of Palermo. At one time this rock had sheltered a prosperous litde town, the seat of a Greek bishop in Byzantine days; but it had declined in importance during the Saracen occupation and in 1063 it had been sacked and largely destroyed by the Great Count. Now it was for his son to make amends. Stepping ashore, he ordered a chapel to be built near the landing-place in honour of St George, whom he claimed to have seen in a vision during the height of the storm;1 then he called for measuring-rods and set to work at once to survey a site for his cathedral.

  So, at least, runs the legend. Its veracity has been argued by local scholars for a century and more. The sceptics point out that it is attested by none of the local chroniclers—not even by the Abbot of Telese who, besides being Roger's most adulatory biographer, had a particular penchant for stories of this kind. The romantics, on the other hand, adduce a contemporary document discovered in the 1880s among the Aragonese archives in Barcelona which, they claim, leaves no further room for doubt.2 Their case is strong, but not conclusive. All we can know for certain is that on 14 September 1131 Cefalù was once more given a bishop of its own—a Latin one this time—and that already, by that date, the building had begun.

  The face of Sicily is changing fast. She is, alas, no more immune than anywhere else in Europe to the attentions of land speculators and property developers, and many are the Arcadian landscapes now ruined by cement-factory or motel. But the island possesses two architectural masterpieces which, viewed from afar as well as in close-up, still have power to catch the breath. The first is the Greek temple of Segesta—the distant prospect of which, however, owes much of its impact to the beauty of the site; one is struck above all by the placing of the building on its eminence, the relation of that

  1 It was not the first time that St George had given moral support to the Normans in moments of crisis; readers of The Normans in the South may remember his appearance with Roger's father at the battle of Cerami in 1063.

  2 Rosario Salvo di Pietraganzili, 'La leggenda della tempesta e il voto del Re Ruggiero per la costruzione del Duomo di Cefalù'. In La Sicilia Artistica ed Archeoiogica, vol. II, Palermo, June-July 1888.

  eminence to the surrounding hills, the grandeur, the isolation and the silence. This is not to detract from the temple itself; it is superb. But then so are nearly all Greek temples, and one—the fact must be faced—is apt to be very like another.

  The second is Cefalù; and Cefalù is unique. Seen first, as it should be, from the coast road to the west,1 its setting yields nothing to that of Segesta. A gently curving beach fringed with pine and prickly pear leads the eye along to a confusion of roofs, clustered at the far corner of the bay. Above and behind, but still very much a part of the town, rises Roger's cathedral, dominating the houses below as effortlessly as its sisters at Lincoln or Durham. Beyond the cathedral again is the rock that gave the place its name. The ancient Greek inhabitants seem to have seen it as a gigantic head, but it is really more like a pair of great, broad shoulders, four-square and massive, giving the town protection and reassurance. Not so imminent as to be menacing, not so distant as to be incidental, rock merges with town until the two become parts of a single grand design, each complementing the other. And the cathedral forms the link between them.

  Such is the first impression. But it is only on arrival in the central piazza that the full splendour of Cefalù is revealed.2 Now for the second time, but for different reasons, one is astonished by the perfection of its placing. The slope of the rock on which it is built sets it, a little obliquely, on a higher level than the square; it must thus be approached, like the Parthenon, at a slight angle and from below. And, as one approaches, so the realisation grows that here is not just the loveliest Norman exterior in Sicily, but one of the love­liest cathedrals in the world. The facade as we see it, with its twin towers—fraternal rather than identical—and the blind interlaced arcading that runs between them, dates from 1240—a century after Roger's time. By then, that fusion of eastern and western styles so typical of earlier Norman-Sicilian architecture had disappeared; and we are left with a perfect, sunny, southern romanesque, uncluttered but never austere.

  So, at least, it seems on the outside. But the great miracle of Cefalù is yet to come. Climb the steps now, pass between two curiously

  1 Plate 1 (top). 2 Plate 1 (bottom).

  endearing baroque bishops in stone, cross the inner courtyard to the triple-arched portico—a fifteenth-century accretion, but none the worse for that—and enter the church itself. At first glance it may look a trifle disappointing: the effect of the slender arches—their shape an unmistakable reminder of the proximity of Islam—on the two rows of antique Roman columns is nearly lost under the dead­weight of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century decoration. But soon your eyes forget the sunshine they have left and readjust themselves to the cathedral twilight; they follow the march of the columns towards the sanctuary; from there they are led up, past the high altar and the saints, the angels and the archangels ranged above it; until at last, high in the conch of the great eastern apse, they are met by those of Christ.1

  He is the Pantocrator, the Ruler of All. His right hand is raised to bless; in his left he carries a book, open at the text beginning 'I am the Light of the World'. It is written in Latin and Greek—and rightly so; for this mosaic, the glory of a Roman church, is itself of the purest Byzantine style and workmanship. Of the master who wrought it we know not
hing, except that he was probably sum­moned by Roger himself from Constantinople and that he was un­questionably a genius. And at Cefalù he produced the most sublime representation of the Pantocrator—perhaps of Christ in any form— in all Christian art. Only one other, at Daphni near Athens, can be said even to rival it; but, near contemporaries though they are, the contrast between the two could hardly be greater. The Christ of Daphni is dark, heavy with menace; the Christ of Cefalù, for all his strength and majesty, has not forgotten that his mission is to redeem. There is nothing soft or syrupy about him; yet the sorrow in his eyes, the openness of his embrace, even the two stray locks of hair blown gently across his forehead, bespeak his mercy and compassion. Byzantine theologians used to insist that religious artists, in their representations of Jesus Christ, should seek to reflect the image of God. It was no small demand; but here, for once, the task has been triumphantly accomplished.

  Beneath, his mother stands in prayer. Such is the splendour of her son, the proximity of the four archangels flanking her and the glare

  1 Plate 2.

  from the window below, that she can easily pass unnoticed: a pity, since if she were standing in isolation amid the gold—as she does, for example, in the apse of Torcello—she too would be hailed as a masterpiece. (The archangels, be it noted, are dressed like Byzantine Emperors, even to the point of carrying the orb and labarum of the imperial office.) Further down still are the twelve apostles, less frontal and formalised than so often in eastern iconography, turning a little towards each other as if in conversation. Finally, on each side of the choir, stand two thrones of white marble, studded with Cosmatesque inlays, red and green and gold. One is the bishop's; the other was that of the King.