The Kingdom in the Sun

by John Julius Norwich

THE END OF A REIGN

  Civis obit, inquit, multum majoribus impar

  Nosse modum juris, sed in hoc tamen utilis aevo.

  Gone is a citizen [he said] who though no peer

  Of those who disciplined the state of yore . . .

  Yet in this age irreverent of law

  Has played a noble part.

  From Cato's funeral oration on Pompey, as given by Lucan, Pbarsalia, Book IX; quoted, according to Hugo Falcandus, by the Bishop-elect of Syracuse on the death of William I.

  The revolts in the Sicilian heartland and in Apulia were serious but short-lived. In the former, the danger lay not so much in any direct threat to the safety of the King as in the ominously confessional turn which events had taken. The two nobles primarily responsible, Tancred of Lecce and Roger Sclavo, had left Caccamo just in time and withdrawn to the south of the island, taking Piazza1 and Butera and deliberately stirring up the local Lombard2 communities 1 Now more generally known as Piazza Armerina—a name derived from the fortified camp—castrum armorum—built by the Great Count Roger I on the nearby Piano Armerino. As a town it is now best known for the ruins of a third-century imperial Roman villa, the so-called Villa del Casale, probably destroyed by William in 1161 and rediscovered only in quite recent years. The floor-mosaics of this palace have justly made it one of the most popular tourist attrac­tions of all Sicily. Visitors to Piazza should not, however, overlook the lovely little priory of S. Andrea, a mile or two away to the north. It was built in 1096 by Simon, Count of Butera, cousin of Roger II through his mother Adelaide and probably—though Chalandon does not accept this—the natural father of Roger Sclavo.

  1 The past half-century had seen an enormous growth in the Lombard colonies originally introduced into Sicily by Roger I. Apart from Piazza and Butera, their principal centres were Randazzo, Nicosia, Capizzi, Aidone and Maniace. La Lumia, writing just a century ago, noted that the inhabitants of these areas still spoke a dialect more akin to those of North Italy than to normal Sicilian.

  against the Muslim peasantry. The terror spread as far as Catania and Syracuse. In many areas the Saracens escaped massacre only by disguising themselves as Christians and taking flight; even when order had been re-established, few returned to their former homes.

  On the mainland, too, the pot was back on the boil. Robert of Loritello, never inactive for long, had driven down into the Basili-cata—the instep of Italy—as far as Taranto and Oriolo; Andrew of Rupecanina was raising a similar revolt in Campania; Salerno, disloyal for the first time, had joined the insurgents; and now even Calabria, in the past the most reliable of all the King's dominions, had been aroused by the Countess Clementia—perhaps in revenge for William's treatment of her lover—and was taking up arms against him. Only a few barons in the entire peninsula had remained loyal— men like Bohemund of Manopello and the Queen's cousin Gilbert of Gravina who, despite their complicity in the plot against Maio, had recently been restored to favour.

  But however desperate things might become on the mainland, Sicilian problems must be dealt with first; William could only appeal to Gilbert to hold the situation there as best he could with such forces as were already available, while he himself marched against Tancred and Roger Sclavo. By the end of April he was in the field. Piazza, after a few weeks' siege, was sacked and levelled to the ground. Butera, his next objective, presented a more formidable challenge. The rebels, hoping that the troubles beyond the straits might at any moment force the King to raise the siege, fought with determination—even consulting astrologers to determine the most favourable occasions for sorties and counter-attacks. Since William was able, through his own astrologers, to predict the precise moments they would choose and make his dispositions accordingly, this method seems to have done more harm than good; nevertheless, winter was already closing in before shortage of food, combined with growing discontent on the part of the civilian population, persuaded them to surrender the town in return for their own safe conduct into exile. William accepted their terms and let them go; but on the town that had betrayed him twice in five years he had no pity. By Christmas the proud pinnacle where once Butera had stood bore nothing but a heap of smouldering ruins.

  After a pause in Palermo to keep the feast and to prepare for the coming campaign, the King crossed to the mainland early the follow-following March. As he pressed up through Calabria, the Countess Clementia and her family had retreated to their fortress of Taverna, up in the mountains due north of Catanzaro. They too fought hard, releasing quantitites of heavy barrels studded with spikes which trundled down the steep escarpments into the ranks of the besiegers, causing heavy and hideous casualties; but William's second assault was successful. The Countess's two uncles were executed; she and her mother were taken prisoner and sent back to an unknown fate in Palermo.

  Henceforth, as on his previous campaign, the opposition seemed to disintegrate at William's approach. He himself showed no mercy. When his Great Chamberlain, the eunuch Johar, was caught in the act of absconding with the royal seals, he had him drowned on the spot. At Taranto, which capitulated after the shortest of struggles, he hanged all the supporters of Robert of Loritello that he could find— though Robert himself had already fled to join Frederick Barbarossa in Lombardy. Up through Apulia, across the mountains into Cam­pania, everywhere it was the same story—quick surrenders followed by hangings, blindings and mutilations, occasionally commuted to the payment by a whole town or district of 'redemption money'—a compulsory imposition which, though it frequently ruined those upon whom it fell for many years to come, did much to replenish the King's own ransacked treasury.

  Sometime in the summer he reached Salerno. Many of the elders of the city who had identified themselves with the revolt had disappeared; but the remainder came out to greet their King with every protestation of affection and loyalty. William would not listen; he refused point-blank even to enter the city. His betrayal by his own capital was the ultimate treason, and it demanded the ultimate penalty. And indeed Salerno would undoubtedly have suffered the same fate as Bari half a dozen years before had it not been for the intervention of two powerful protectors. The first was its patron saint, St Matthew, who according to Archbishop Romuald suddenly sent out of a clear and cloudless noonday sky a tempest of such fury as to uproot the tents of the entire army, including William's own, in their camp outside the walls. Thus, it seems, was the King persuaded of the divine displeasure that he would incur if any harm came to the city. The second advocate was the saint's namesake and a native son of Salerno, Matthew the Notary, who persuaded Sylvester of Marsico and Richard Palmer to intercede on behalf of his birthplace.

  The combined efforts of the two Matthews had their effect. William contented himself with ordering a purge of all unreliable elements and hanging all those who were found guilty of conspiring against him. Salerno was saved.

  But though the immediate danger was over, the damage done could never be entirely repaired. When, in the late summer of 1162, William returned to Sicily, it was to find the island tormented and terrorised by confessional hatreds on a scale unprecedented in its history. He had left it in a hurry, knowing full well that many of those who had taken part in the Sicilian uprisings had not yet been brought to justice; and he had entrusted the task of tracking them down, together with the government of Palermo itself, to one of the palace Caids,1 a baptised eunuch called Martin. It had been a disastrous choice. Martin had narrowly escaped with his life when the rebels had stormed the palace in the previous year; his brother had been killed in the massacre that followed; and ever since that day he had nurtured a deep loathing for all Christians. Thus, on William's departure for the mainland the previous March, a veritable reign of terror had begun. Everywhere, those who had at any time plotted or even spoken against the King or his ministers were hunted down, and many an old score between Muslim and Christian must have been settled by a timely denunciation to the public investigators. Those on whom suspicion fell were subjected to various forms of trial by ordea
l which, since survival was usually equated with guilt, could be relied upon to eUminate all undesirables, however tenuous the case against them. The local authorities, ordered to institute purges in all areas under their control, were too frightened to disobey. Redemp­tion money was levied even in those towns and districts which had

  1 Cald, the Arabic word for master or leader, was the title given to the Muslim or originally Muslim administrative officials of the palace. In the Latin chronicles it usually takes the form of gaitus or gaytus.

  never wavered in their loyalty. Thus order was restored and the state coffers refilled—but at a heavy price. The respect which, despite every upheaval, the bulk of the local populations had felt for the central government was hereafter tinged with a new, unhealthy fear; and the harmony which the two Rogers had worked so hard to create between their Christian and their Muslim subjects was des­troyed for ever.

  Among the victims was Henry Aristippus. Falcandus claims that he had been party to the last plot and had forfeited any hope of a pardon by abducting certain ladies of the harem for his own delectation; considering Henry's age and record, it is hard to say which of the two charges is the more improbable. There is another, far simpler explanation for his downfall. He was a gentle scholar, suddenly swept up into a world of plot and counter-plot, of court intrigue at its most violent and vicious. His position in such a world was bound to make him enemies; and when it was time for those enemies to overthrow him they did so without a qualm, using weapons he did not understand and against which he had no defence. And so William's oldest friend and staunchest supporter shared the same fate as his bitterest and most unscrupulous adversary; like Matthew Bonnellus, Henry Aristippus ended his career in a dungeon cell, and never knew freedom again.

  The crisis was past. In the space of a single year William had suffered the loss of his most trusted counsellor, murdered in a public street; of his own son and heir, shot by an insurgent's arrow before his very eyes; of much of his country's wealth and nearly all his personal possessions; and, not least, of his reputation and his self-respect. He had survived two major attempts to dethrone him— one of which had very nearly succeeded and had resulted in his being held a captive, with his family, in hourly expectation of death—only to find both his island and his mainland Kingdom in a state of open revolt. Here, surely, was the ultimate vindication of Maio's policies, however unpopular they may have been; one short year after the Emir's death, Sicily must have seemed on the point of disintegration. Yet only one more year had sufficed for William to restore his authority, together with a large part of his finances; and by the time

  he returned to Palermo his grip on his country was firmer and more assured than ever it had been. A few months later, the prisoners in the palace dungeons made one more attempt at a mass escape as in 1161; they failed, and the King closed down the palace prison for ever. With that single exception, his reign was never again troubled with sedition or revolt.

  William was still young—a little over forty. He had shown himself to be a man of courage and strength, when these qualities were indis­pensable. But now that he could afford to relax he once more cut himself off from all the cares of kingship, leaving the govern­ment in the hands of a new triumvirate in which Henry Aristippus was replaced by the notary Matthew of Ajello, and old Count Sylvester—who died at about this time—by Cai'd Peter, that same slightly colourless eunuch who had made such an indifferent showing at Mahdia but who had now been promoted to the rank of Great Chamberlain of the Palace. Only one member remained unchanged—Richard Palmer, the still unconsecrated Bishop of Syracuse. Together, the three represented a wide cross-section of the King's subjects: the Italian-Lombard bourgeoisie, the Muslim bureaucracy and the Latin Church. Only two groups were pointedly omitted—the Greeks and the Norman aristocracy, who had if any­thing even less say in the government than before. But the import­ance of the Greeks was declining fast; and as for the Norman aristo­cracy, it had only itself to blame.

  And so William, 'having given strict orders to his ministers to tell him nothing that might disturb his peace of mind'—as the reader may suspect, we have to rely largely on Falcandus for such knowledge as we have of this period—relapsed once again into his private world of ease and pleasure. But not altogether into idleness; 'for,' writes Romuald of Salerno, 'in those days, King William built near Palermo a palace of considerable height, constructed with superb artifice, which he called the Zisa;1 and he surrounded it with beauti­ful fruit-bearing trees and pleasant gardens, and with divers water­courses and fish-pools he rendered it delectable.'

  The neighbourhood of the Zisa—out beyond the Porta Nuova to

  1 The word comes from the Arabic aziz or magnificent. The earliest versions of Romuald's chronicle wrongly transcribe it as Lisa.

  the north-west of the city—is now a good deal less salubrious than it was eight centuries ago; and those centuries have also taken their toll of the building itself. Recently, however, it has been carefully restored and it remains, after the Royal Palace, the most splendid of all the Norman secular buildings left to us. The exterior is, undeni­ably, somewhat forbidding; in the twelfth century palaces were still designed to do duty as fortresses should the occasion require, and William's experiences over the past few years were not such as to encourage him to make an exception. Though the little square towers at each end and the gently recessed blind arches do something to lighten the structure, the general effect at first sight is more awesome than attractive; and the crenellations along the roof, cut into the original entablature during the fifteenth or sixteenth century and making nonsense of the great Arabic inscription that formerly ran the length of the facade, hardly improve matters.

  But step now into the central hall of the palace. At once you are in a different world.1 Nowhere does Norman Sicily speak more per­suasively of the Orient; nowhere else on all the island is that specific­ally Islamic talent for creating quiet havens of shade and coolness in the summer heat so dazzlingly displayed. The ceiling is high and honeycombed, the three inner walls set with deep niches, roofed in their turn with those tumbling stalactites so dear to Saracen archi­tects. All around, zig-zagging in and out of the niches, runs a frieze of marble and multi-coloured mosaic, broadening out in the centre of the back wall into three medallions in which, against a background of exquisite decorative arabesques, confronted archers are busy shoot­ing birds out of a tree, while two pairs of peacocks peck dates, with studied unconcern, from conveniently stunted palms. It takes no great effort of the imagination to picture the King in this lovely room, taking his ease with his wise men or his concubines, and gazing out into his sunlit garden, while from a fountain in the wall comes the soothing plash of water, trickling down a marble incline into an ornamental channel and thence to the vivarium outside.

  But William never saw the Zisa completed. The finishing touches were left to his son; and it was William II who was to sum up what the building meant to him in the second magnificent

  1 Plate 17.

  Arabic inscription, raised in white stucco round the entrance arch.1

  Here, as oft as thou shaft wish, shaft thou see the loveliest posses­sion of this Kingdom,

  the most splendid of the world and of the seas.

  The mountains, their peaks flushed with the colour of narcissus...

  Thou shalt see the great King of his century in his beautiful dwelling-place,

  a house of joy and splendour which suits him well.

  This is the earthly paradise that opens to the view;

  this King is the Musta'iz;2 this palace the Aziz.

  Despite the restoration much remains to be done, both to the Zisa itself and to its surroundings, before it can once again live up to this description. The neglect of centuries cannot be repaired overnight, and an air of desolation still lingers over the bleak expanse where once the songbirds sang and the fish leaped lazily in the pools.

  From this gentle afternoon of William's reign only one more monument remains—thou
gh it too may have been completed after his death. It is a room on the second floor of the royal palace, now­adays irritatingly and misleadingly known as the Sala di Ruggero;1 a small room that could almost have been described as unassuming were it not for the mosaics with which its vault and upper walls are so sumptuously encrusted. Like those of the Zisa—the only other secular mosaics that have come down to us from Norman days4— they are decorative rather than devotional; and the emotions they evoke are those of sheer pleasure. Here are scenes of the country-

  1 The central part of this inscription was destroyed when the original high arch was removed and replaced by the lower one which appears, surmounted by a French window, in so many of the older photographs. Now the original proportions have been restored; but the missing words are lost for ever.

  2 The Glorious One. The title was used only by William II, hence the dating of the inscription.

  3 Plate 18.

  4 I do not count the few odd traces still clinging to the walls of the Sala degli Armigeri in another section of the palace. This hall, forty-five feet high and topped by a stalactite ceiling of considerably greater interest than the mosaic, forms part of the Torre Pisana, and probably served as a guardroom for the Tesoro nearby. It is not normally open to the public, but enthusiasts should have no difficulty in obtaining permission to visit it from the office of the Soprintendenza ai Monumenti on the first floor.

  side and the chase, Byzantine in their formal symmetry but Sicilian in their joyful portrayal of palms and orange-trees, and all radiant with a liveliness and humour that is wholly of the west. Here once more are the date-gobbling peacocks and the myopic archers, but now they have been joined by a pair of centaurs and a host of other fauna both probable and improbable, many of them with expressions on their faces that seem almost human—leopards consumed with guilt and suspicion, other peacocks frankly shocked, lions self-conscious, and two burly stags, affronted in both senses of the word, glowering at each other in innocent unawareness of the horrid fate that awaits them in the rear.