Download PDF | The Norman Conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily,By Gordon S. Brown (Author), McFarland & Company 2003.
259 Pages
Preface
The story of the Normans in Southern Italy and Sicily is much better known in Europe than in the United States. Most American readers have at least some familiarity with one Norman conquest, namely that by William of Normandy, who invaded England in 1066 to assert his claim to the throne. But the same readers are often surprised to learn that other Normans were successfully engaged in Italy, even before William’s great enterprise, in wresting a kingdom of their own from the Byzantine Empire, the local princes, and the Arab rulers of Sicily.
Yet this other conquest by the warrior knights from Normandy, descendants of the Vikings, had great importance in its time, and even long afterwards. No more at the beginning than a disorganized movement by young, ambitious, and land hungry knights, it turned into a historical creation. The southern Italian state founded by the Norman knights soon became one of the richest, most cosmopolitan and most powerful states of the late medieval period, one which contributed greatly to the opening up of the Mediterranean and the crusading movement. In the great struggle between pope and emperor of the period, Norman power and wealth at first offered the reforming popes their most muscular support, but later provided emperors with the wealth to confront the papacy. Even though the Normans ruled as kings for only a hundred years, the state they had founded lasted for another six hundred and fifty, unfortunately growing weaker and more backward with time.
This book is not an effort to tell the whole story of the Normans in Italy. It attempts, instead, to follow the main threads of the early period: how these interlopers from northern Europe managed to find their historical role in the Italian provinces of the Byzantine Empire, how they succeeded in replacing the Byzantine and local rulers, and then how they drove the Arab rulers out of Sicily. In focusing on the protracted period of the conquest, that is, the second half of the eleventh century, this book sets out in particular an account of the achievements of that remarkable set of brothers, the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, who spearheaded the effort.
The story of the Normans’ historical role in the south came alive for me as I discovered lingering traces of their presence in a variety of Mediterranean countries that I had the pleasure to live in or visit during an earlier career. In trying to bring that story alive to an American audience, I have drawn on my previous diplomatic experience to try to explain the political acts of the eleventh century protagonists in ways that make sense to a modern reader. While this approach has undoubtedly shortchanged the elements of faith and superstition that were such an important part of medieval thought and action, I would contend that the Normans were, above all, a practical and pragmatic people driven by a kind of self-interest that is fully understandable in today’s times.
I can claim no major research breakthroughs in this presentation. The all but definitive research and analysis performed many years ago by the noted French scholars Chalandon and Gay has served as the basis of my analysis— as indeed it has for modern scholars much more deeply grounded in the period than I. I am indebted to their work, as I am to the more contemporary books of Lord Norwich, whose witty and colorful rendition of Norman and Byzantine history cannot but influence other writers—vide the use of the phrase “this other conquest” above. I can only regret that the meticulous scholarship of G.A. Loud’s book was available in print only after I had finished most of the research for this work. Finally, I am grateful to Professors Barbara Kreutz and Joanna Drell for encouraging me, an outsider to the medievalist profession, to try my hand at making this fascinating history more accessible.
Introduction
They did not, at first, intend to conquer. The young Norman knights who went south to Italy in the first half of the eleventh century did so simply to earn a living, to find adventure, or even to escape the confines of their own society and justice. Daring, ambitious, and hardy, those young men embodied the nascent energy of a northern Europe that was poised for growth and progress. Over the coming centuries, that energy would bring about great economic and commercial expansion, inspire a great surge of cathedral building, spawn the reconquista in Spain and the Crusades, and lead to the flowering of the high medieval period.
Those Norman adventurers found in southern Italy not only possibilities for employment, but opportunities for maneuver and personal advancement. The region, even more than usual for Europe at the time, lacked strong central authority, harbored competition between the major powers, and was the scene of continual conflict among the minor local states. It was a situation full of possibilities for observant and opportunistic adventurers.
The Norman knights, trained in warfare and accustomed to interpreting the law imaginatively to their own ends, were ready to take advantage. In Italy, they soon learned that they might do better than simply make their living. The lucky ones might well earn, or steal (the two were often synonymous), that greatest prize: a fiefdom for themselves. The military prowess of these knights, their audacity, persistence and lack of scruples fueled their initial successes. A few leaders soon became significant actors in the local military balance. Soon, constantly reinforced by new recruits from their homeland, they began to be brokers of power as well. They had become a permanent part of the political and military landscape of the region, but their efforts remained individual and uncoordinated.
Gradually, the Normans gained their own lands and vigorously, even ruthlessly, expanded their power. Inevitably, they also increased the number of their enemies and the threats against them. Their own political leadership evolved in response, and eventually coalesced around two poles: a group at Aversa, north of Naples, and a group centered at Melfi, in northern Apulia. Just before mid-century, two remarkable young leaders came to Italy, where their family connections eventually allowed them to become leaders of the two groups: Richard Dregnot at Aversa, and Robert Guiscard in Apulia. Robert was one of the many sons of Tancred of Hauteville, and his brothers had already opened the way for him by their election as counts of Apulia. He and Richard would lead the Normans into a new phase in their occupation of the area.
Eventually, conquest became an option. Unlike the Norman conquest of England, deliberately planned by the Duke of Normandy with the resources of his state behind him, the Norman conquest of southern Italy grew out of incremental opportunities. Robert and Richard may have had the vision, but they had to wait for the opportune moments, the mistakes of their opponents, or the weaknesses of their enemies to make the vision a reality. They both had ambition in surplus, but it was Robert, at first launched by his elder brothers and then assisted by his younger ones, who wound up more powerful.
With increased power came a greatly enlarged role in the politics, not just of the immediate region, but Europe. The lawless freebooters of the early days gradually were obliged to become adept at statecraft, and in so doing they changed their role in history. The adventurers matured; they laid the foundations of a great and prosperous state, and established a lasting and historically significant alliance with the papacy.
The disorganized plunder of the early years was gradually surpassed by a planned program of expansion, led by the sons of Tancred. Robert Guiscard’s often conflictual partnership with his youngest brother Roger provided the leadership as well as the necessary force. Eventually, they subdued the previous occupiers, Byzantines and Muslims, as well as their own fractious fellow Normans. The Byzantine empire, heir to Rome, was driven out of its lands in Italy, while the Arabs who had occupied Sicily for over two centuries were expelled soon afterwards. The sons of Tancred had founded a state that, with changes of dynasties, would last over seven hundred years.
The life of these amazing military adventurers has come down to us through contemporary records and, most importantly, the vivid accounts of the chroniclers. Key research done by French scholars in the early years of the last century has gone a long way to reconcile the differing versions of events put forth in the chronicles, and the broad outlines and even most specifics of the story are by now unmistakable. But a key gap remains: what we have is largely stereotyped images of the major actors, who emerge from the chronicles as either paragons of virtue or objects of hatred. The often intriguing female protagonists, alas, get even more incomplete treatment. Reconstruction of personalities, motivations, and interactions can only be informed guesswork. We will always want to know more.
These men and women shaped the history of their times, and left a lasting imprint on the future. But they themselves could afford no such long view of their achievements. Their progress was piecemeal and their frustrations continuous, yet in the end their success was enduring. That they succeeded was due to audacity, luck, and great personal qualities, demonstrating once again that exceptional individuals can change the course of history.
I, Civitate
The pope’s army was destroyed, the terrible Normans victorious. The devastating charge of Richard of Aversa’s Norman knights had routed the pope’s Italian foot soldiers. They had fled ignominiously, that morning’s boasts about their numerical superiority and holy cause forgotten in the rout. Even the seemingly invincible German swordsmen had been slaughtered to the last man by Norman horsemen led by Humphrey and Robert, two sons of Tancred of Hauteville. The field of battle theirs, moreover, the Normans had pressed their advantage relentlessly. Pillaging and burning the outbuildings, they had brought their troops up to the very walls of the town from which the pope had watched the battle.
The pope was left with neither army nor allies. The town elders, not wanting to suffer a crippling attack in defense of a lord who was theirs only in his spiritual capacity, pleaded with him to depart and leave them in peace. He had little choice. Reluctantly, he recognized that he would have to put himself in the hands of the very Normans whom he had determined to bring to heel.
For four years since his elevation to the papacy, Pope Leo had tried to bring the unruly and avaricious Normans under control, to stop their depredations and exactions against the population, and particularly against the properties of the Church. He had tried at first to reason and treat with them. But, he had found, the promises made by the nominal Norman leaders were of little use; they couldn’t in truth control the many independent knight-freebooters who terrorized the region. The complaints against Norman acts of plunder, exaction, rape and murder flowing to Rome had, in fact, only increased.
The pope’s frustration was immense. His priority upon ascending reluctantly to the papacy had been to reform the Church, beset as it was by so many weaknesses. Yet he had been obliged to spend too much of his time in office
dealing with problems created in southern Italy by the Normans. He had, perhaps unwisely, even compounded his problems by agreeing to be lord and protector of Benevento, one of the areas most directly harassed by those troublesome knights. Having added this new secular obligation to his existing spiritual duty to defend the rights of the Church, Pope Leo’s indignation and frustration over the Normans’ behavior had grown still greater. He had some time previously concluded that the Normans would not change their expansionist ways as a result of peaceful persuasion. He needed to subdue them. First, he had tried to form a coalition of local and regional rulers against them, only to see it fall apart when the Normans’ few but important local allies stood firmly at their side.
Pope Leo, still, was a determined man. Unexpectedly, he had been given a new opportunity. The Norman leader was assassinated in an uprising of his resentful and rebellious new subjects, and shortly afterwards a similar fate befell the Normans’ chief regional ally, who was struck down by his own fractious family. Then the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople had offered to send an army to help crush their common Norman enemy. The pope had jumped at the chance. He had personally led his army into battle. Perhaps, in retrospect, he had been too rash, too confident.
Certainly, nothing had worked out. The Normans had quickly elected a new leader and rallied their forces, while the Byzantine army had shown little backbone and had allowed itself to be outmaneuvered. Now, the army that the pope had brought to battle had been humiliated by Norman determination and valor. The pope would have to swallow his anger, even his desire for revenge, and submit—or at least make pretence of submission. Resignedly, he prepared to leave the protection of the town walls and put himself into the hands of those he had made his enemies.
Pope Leo and his retinue emerged from the town gate, resplendent in their best robes, displaying the full panoply of his high office, but ready for their dose of humility. They were not, however, met by a spiteful and triumphant army. The Normans, showing for once the softer side of a nature that combined ruthlessness and piety, received Leo as their spiritual lord, not as the defeated leader of a punitive expedition. The very knights who had been cursed by the pope just yesterday as little better than infidels, who had been taunted by his (now dead) German allies as puny and insignificant warriors, and who had in
effect been given an ultimatum of expulsion or death, now submitted themselves to the man whom they had just defeated. The blood-stained Normans even prostrated themselves before the pope, vowed their loyalty to the Church, and begged his pardon for their sins.
This astonishing submission—even if much of it was feigned—could not of course hide the facts of the situation, which remained embarrassingly clear. The pope, defeated even if honored by the victors, had become a virtual prisoner of the Normans. They would escort him in honor to his own city of Benevento—but they would not ease up their pressure until he met their terms.
This dramatic scene of victory and statesmanship took place in June of 1053, on the road outside a small town in southern Italy called Civitate. The medieval town, which no longer exists, lay within sight of the River Fortore and near the modern town of San Severo, in the north of the province of Apulia. The pope was Leo IX, the first of those great reform popes of the eleventh century who would bring the Church to the pinnacle of its power. His opponents, the Normans, had established themselves in southern Italy only relatively recently, but had, within the previous ten years, begun to expand their landholdings so dramatically as to present a real threat to the existing order in the area. What was at stake in this struggle between the papacy and the Normans was not just the present behavior and misdeeds of these landhungry knights, but the future of the entire region and the awkward balance of power which existed there.
Southern Italy and Sicily at the time presented a rich but jumbled mosaic of political entities and cultures. Successive waves of conquerors and settlers— Greeks, Romans, Lombards, Byzantines, Arabs—had, over the centuries, added their blood, their customs, laws, and religions to the mix. The diversity was political as well, with the result that the region was indifferently governed. The claimants to ancient Rome’s authority vied for position and dominance, but neither the Basileus (who still used the title Emperor of the Romans, but ruled over the Byzantine state from Constantinople), nor the selfstyled Roman emperors, the heirs of Charlemagne, exercised continuous or consistent control over those lands they claimed. Their power in this, to them, peripherally important area was generally delegated to local officials or vassal princes, who took advantage of the situation to squabble endlessly amongst themselves. The popes, in Rome, had a greater degree of interest in the stability of the region because of their position as neighbors, but exercised little authority unless they could enlist the force of their allies, the Holy Roman emperors.
Only Sicily, early in the eleventh century, enjoyed a degree of political unity under its Muslim rulers. In southern Italy, real central authority had died out with the Roman Empire many centuries earlier. Borders were not fixed and fringe areas changed hands frequently; the rulers often controlling little beyond the areas around the major towns, and exerting their rights in the often mountainous hinterland largely through periodic tax gathering. In this situation, local governors, landholders, or nobles had succeeded in carving out a goodly measure of autonomy, even as communal movements were nurturing a spirit of independence in the major towns.
The political reality was the mosaic, but a shifting and unstable one. Three rival Lombard principalities, the remnants of a Germanic Lombard kingdom that had had its heyday in the eighth century, ruled in the rich farming area around Naples now known as the Campania. Those states—Benevento, Capua, and Salerno—acknowledged allegiance, as circumstances made convenient, to emperor, pope, or Basileus. Three other entities, the rich trading city-states of Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta, acknowledged ties to Constantinople but acted with virtual independence. Sicily had been lost to the Arabs over two centuries earlier. In the remainder of southern Italy— essentially the modern provinces of Apulia, Basilicata, and Calabria—the major political power was Byzantium, which possessed the territory as a direct legacy from the old Roman Empire, but ruled it indifferently.
In the early eleventh century, Byzantium was ascendant in the region. Under the strong leadership of the Macedonian dynasty and particularly Emperor Basil the Bulgar Slayer, Constantinople had reestablished its authority in Italy, driven out the remaining Lombard and Arab forces, established new garrison colonies, and seemed poised to dominate the region. Unfortunately, Basil’s death in 1025 ushered in a period of weak and rapidly changing rulers, under which the empire’s hold gradually collapsed.* Over the next decades, periodic efforts were made to reassert Byzantine power in Italy, most notably in an effort to regain the long-lost territory of Sicily. But, by mid-century, imperial attention increasingly was directed toward its own appallingly degenerate internal political struggles, as well as toward a crucial strategic threat in the east, posed by invading Pechnegs and Turks. Left increasingly to their own resources, Byzantine administrators in southern Italy had neither the power nor the autonomy—being constantly second-guessed by Constantinople and at the mercy of court intrigue—to maintain the steady dominion that would fend off either internal or external challenges. There would be both.
Against Byzantium’s claims and actual possession of southern Italy, the Holy Roman emperor and his spiritual ally the pope advanced their own separate claims. Emperor and pope, locked in an uncomfortable relationship as the temporal and spiritual guardians, respectively, of the west, had overlapping claims. The popes, by virtue of an eighth century document called the Donation of Constantine—known now to have been a forgery, but generally accepted at the time—claimed overlordship of southern Italy and the Mediterranean islands for the papacy. The emperors, on the other hand, asserted rights over southern Italy as a legacy from Charlemagne, who had conquered the Lombard Kingdom of Italy and acquired its claims to rule the entire southern part of the peninsula.
dependence was real: the popes needed the power of the emperors to give authority to papal decrees, for a pope’s temporal power was virtually nonexistent outside of Rome and a limited band of land in the center of Italy that he controlled as a lay ruler. Equally, every emperor needed to make himself acceptable to the current pope, because without a papal coronation as emperor, he was no more than the elected king of Germany and of Italy. This mutual dependence led to an uneasy cooperation, but by no means to harmony. Pope and emperor had different requirements, and often very different political constituencies. When a pope was selected by the Germans (as Leo had been), any differences were generally manageable, but when the powerful Roman aristocratic families or other groups succeeded in having their own candidate chosen bishop of Rome and pope, conflicts could and often did arise. The papacy, moreover, had become spectacularly corrupt in the first half of the eleventh century. The office had degenerated into a political prize, with rival Roman families fighting each other to obtain the benefit; sale of Church offices was widespread, vows of clerical celibacy not enforced.
Nonetheless, as far as overall strategy toward southern Italy and Sicily went, pope and emperor were generally in agreement. Both wanted to see the Arabs driven out of previously Christian lands, and to reduce the power and influence of the rival Byzantine empire. Each, however, saw his own institution as the lead instrument by which to achieve those common aspirations. Their rivalry, with each other and with the Basileus, allowed the small states of the region to play them off against each other in seemingly endless rounds of intrigue and petty warfare.
In this kaleidoscope of strategic conflicts and tactical opportunities, the recently arrived Normans had become the unpredictable new factor. Their decade-long campaign of expansion and plunder in Apulia had not only made them feared, it had upset the fragile status quo in ways which the major regional actors chose, each in his own way, to deflect or turn to their own advantage. Pope Leo had tried to crush them, and had failed. After his defeat in battle at Civitate, the question for him became what to do next.
For the Normans, united in victory if not generally in action, the question was how to turn their astounding victory to their long-term advantage.
Pope Leo would have a goodly amount of time to ponder his choices. Even though the Normans, after their victory at Civitate, accompanied him in honor to Benevento and allowed him freedom in his city, they were camped around the gates. Their glowering presence there made it quite clear that, however free the pope might be in his chambers, he would not be at liberty until he gave them satisfaction. The contemporary chroniclers tell us virtually nothing of the negotiations that must have taken place between the two parties, but the fact that they lasted for nine months before Leo was allowed to continue his journey indicates that they were certainly protracted, if not necessarily intense.
In captivity, the pope continued to conduct the Holy See’s business without apparent interference. He made it clear by his actions, however, that he had in no way dropped his hostility to his captors or to their aspirations. Nor, after the promises of good behavior which he had wrung from the Normans two years earlier had been so openly flouted, did he have any reason to trust their word with respect to the future. He tried to buy time, to seek another opportunity to deal with his infuriating opponents.
All the same, the pope’s political options were limited, his supporters few. It appears that there was subtle but pointed criticism from his own supporters about his role in the recent debacle; hints were made that he had overstepped his role as leader of the Church by captaining a punitive army for worldly purposes. His relative and main supporter, Emperor Henry III, was preoccupied with other matters closer to home in Germany, where he had just put down a rebellion of the Saxons and Bavarians and was dealing with a breakaway Hungary. The emperor’s only contribution to the papal army had been the contingent of Swabian swordsmen (now embarrassingly slaughtered), and his current difficulties made it unlikely that he would provide any new aid.
The Byzantines, too, had proven uncertain allies. They had been better at stirring up an anti-Norman uprising in Apulia the year before than they had been as military allies when actually needed. Some in the papal party thought, in fact, that the Greeks had played a treacherous game. Be that as it may, Byzantine cooperation would still be essential to any effective anti-Norman strategy: not only was it their territory in Apulia that the Normans had been arrogating to themselves, but they were the only local power that could raise enough troops to oppose the Normans. So Leo tried to renew his alliance with Byzantium, this time by sending a high-ranking delegation directly to Constantinople to negotiate with the Basileus. Unfortunately, whatever hopes he had for that negotiation soon paled, as both his own negotiators and those of the Basileus proved to be remarkably inept—the latter allowing themselves to be completely outmaneuvered by the anti-Roman party in the Byzantine capital. The denouement of those negotiations, however, came in July, months after the pope’s release from his virtual captivity.
The constant pressure of the Normans outside the walls eventually had had its effect, and in March Leo agreed to terms that would permit his departure. Agreement finally having been reached, the Normans, headed by Humphrey Hauteville, accompanied Pope Leo and his party in state to Capua.
The terms of the pope’s release were not made known, and appear to have been ambiguous. Papal historians of the time described the act as a victory for Leo: he had secured the submission of the Normans, they claimed. That may have been true after a fashion; the Normans did indeed submit to the pope in matters spiritual, and as his vassals for the Italian lands that they had recently conquered. But the cold fact was that the Normans had gotten the most they could reasonably expect. Instead of being outlaws, holding uncertain title to their recent acquisitions, reviled by the Church and the target of a concerted effort aimed at their elimination, the Normans had now been invested in their conquests by the head of the Church himself. In return, they had made certain —also unpublished—promises of good behavior and loyalty to the Church.
Ever realistic and opportunistic, the Normans had reason to be satisfied. They were now recognized as major players in the future of the region that they had decided to settle, and had achieved a major step up the ladder to legitimate control of the territories they had seized. As to their promises, well, they would see what the limits to their action were by testing them.
The Normans’ satisfaction was bitter to Leo. Their earlier successes in grasping and extending their territory had, after all, motivated his drive to crush them. Perversely, his campaign had only resulted in giving the upstarts a greater success, and greater legitimacy to boot.
The pope would not have time to ponder his revenge, for he fell ill in Capua and died shortly thereafter, in April 1054, in Rome. He left the prospect of retribution against these unwelcome and dangerous Norman invaders of southern Italy to his eventual successors in the chair of Saint Peter.
Notes
1. The term Holy Roman Empire did not actually gain usage until subsequent centuries, but will be used here to distinguish the western emperor (who was also king of the Germans and king of the Italians) from the eastern emperor, or Basileus.
2. Basil’s name survives in southern Italy, since the province of Basilicata, created in recent times, was named after him. (The area of the new province is also known by its ancient name of Lucania.) In Byzantine times, its territory was split administratively between Apulia—then called Langobardia in recognition of the Lombard nature of much of its population—and Calabria.
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