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17 - Normans in European History by Charles Homer Haskins · Normans in European History

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Speaker 1: Section sixteen of The Normans in European History by Charles
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Speaker 1: Homer Haskins. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain
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Speaker 1: recording by Pamel and Agami, Chapter eight The Norman Kingdom
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Speaker 1: of Sicily, Part two. It is evident even from this
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Speaker 1: brief outline that the Sicilian state was not only a
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Speaker 1: skillful blending of political elements of diverse origin, but also
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Speaker 1: that it stood well in advance of its contemporaries in
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Speaker 1: all that goes to make a modern type of government.
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Speaker 1: Its kings legislated at a time when lawmaking was rare.
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Speaker 1: They had a large income and money, when other sovereigns
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Speaker 1: lived from feudal dues and the produce of their domains.
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Speaker 1: They had a well established bureaucracy when elsewhere both central
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Speaker 1: and local government had been completely feudalized. They had a
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Speaker 1: splendid capital when other courts were still ambulatory. Its only
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Speaker 1: rival in these respects, the Anglo Norman Kingdom of the North,
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Speaker 1: was inferior in financial resources and had made far less
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Speaker 1: advance in the development of the class of trained officials
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Speaker 1: through whom the progress of European administration was to be realized.
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Speaker 1: Judged by these tests, it is not too much to
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Speaker 1: call the kingdom of Roget and his successors the first
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Speaker 1: modern state. Just as Roget's non feudal policy, far sightedness
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Speaker 1: and diplomatic skill have sometimes won for him the title
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Speaker 1: of the first modern king, this designation I am well
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Speaker 1: aware has more commonly been reserved for the younger of
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Speaker 1: Sicily's two baptized sultans, Frederic the Second. Footnote the phrases
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Speaker 1: Amari's Storia de Muselmani di Sichilia, Volume three, page three
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Speaker 1: sixty five and footnote Frederic the Second stupor mundi et
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Speaker 1: imuta tor nirabilis the wonder of the world, any marvelous innovator.
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Speaker 1: No one can follow the career of this most gifted
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Speaker 1: and fascinating figure without feeling the modern elements in his
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Speaker 1: character and in his administration of the Sicilian state. His
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Speaker 1: government stands ahead of its contemporaries in the thirteenth century,
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Speaker 1: as does that of Roget in the twelfth, and the
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Speaker 1: more recent naturally seems the more modern. It is, not, however,
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Speaker 1: clear that the relative superiority was greater. In recent studies
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Speaker 1: have made plain what was not at first realized that
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Speaker 1: considerable portions of Frederick's legislation and of his administrative system
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Speaker 1: go back to his Norman predecessors, some of them to
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Speaker 1: Roget himself. After all, it is not the historian's business
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Speaker 1: to award prize for being modern, especially when it is
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Speaker 1: not always plain in what modernity consists. The main point
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Speaker 1: is to recognize the striking individuality of the Sicilian state
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Speaker 1: in directions which other states were in time to follow,
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Speaker 1: and to remember that this individuality was a continuous thing
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Speaker 1: and not a creation of the second Frederick. Moreover, as
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Speaker 1: we shall shortly see, what is true in the field
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Speaker 1: of government is also true in the field of civilization.
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Speaker 1: The brilliant cosmopolitan culture of the thirteenth century is a
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Speaker 1: direct development from similar conditions under King Roget. The culture
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Speaker 1: of the Norman kingdom was even more strikingly composite than
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Speaker 1: its government. Both historically and geographically, Sicily was the natural
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Speaker 1: meeting point of Greek, Arabic and Latin civilization, in a
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Speaker 1: natural avenue for the transmission of Eastern art and learning
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Speaker 1: to the West. Moreover, in the intellectual field, the splendor
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Speaker 1: of the Sicilian kingdom coincides with that movement which is
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Speaker 1: often called the Renaissance of the twelfth century, and which
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Speaker 1: consisted inconsiderable measure in the acquisition of new knowledge from
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Speaker 1: the Greeks of the East and the Saracens of Sicily
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Speaker 1: and Spain. Sicily was not the only channel through which
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Speaker 1: the wisdom of the East flowed westward, for there were
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Speaker 1: scholars from northern Italy who visited Constantinople, and there was
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Speaker 1: a steady diffusion of Saracen learning through the schools of Spain.
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Speaker 1: Nowhere else, however, did Latin, Greek and Arabic civilization live
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Speaker 1: side by side in peace and toleration. And nowhere else
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Speaker 1: was the spirit of the Renaissance more clearly expressed in
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Speaker 1: the policy of the rulers. The older Latin culture of
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Speaker 1: the Southern Kingdom had its center and enlarge measure its
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Speaker 1: source at Monte Cassino, mother of the Benedictine monasteries throughout
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Speaker 1: the length and breadth of Western Christendom. Founded by Saint
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Speaker 1: Benedict in five twenty nine. This establishment still maintains the
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Speaker 1: unique record of fourteen centuries of monastic history, and more
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Speaker 1: than forty generations of followers of the Benedictine rule, keeping
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Speaker 1: age after age, their vigils of labor, prayer and fasting,
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Speaker 1: but resisting their uncloistered eyes peliogialmeno non vio closura. Upon
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Speaker 1: the massive ranges of the Central Apennines and the placid
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Speaker 1: value of Gadiliano, the land of labor and the land
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Speaker 1: of rest. Its golden age was the eleventh and early
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Speaker 1: twelfth centuries, when its relations with the Normans and the
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Speaker 1: papacy kept it in the front of Italian politics, when
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Speaker 1: two of its abbots sat upon the throne of Saint Peter,
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Speaker 1: and when the greatest of them, Disiderius as Pope known
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Speaker 1: as Victor the Third, built a great basilica, which was
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Speaker 1: adorned by workmen from Constantinople with mosaics and with the
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Speaker 1: great bronze doors, which are the chief surviving evidence of
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Speaker 1: its early splendor. Men of learning were drawn to the monastery,
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Speaker 1: like the monk Constantine, the African, skilled in the science
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Speaker 1: of the Greek and Arabic physicians, whose works he translated
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Speaker 1: into Latin. Manuscripts of every sort were copied in the
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Speaker 1: characteristic South Italian hand, the Beneventin script, which serves as
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Speaker 1: a sure index of the intellectual activity throughout the southern
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Speaker 1: half of the Peninsula in the period sermons and service books,
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Speaker 1: theological commentaries and lives of the saints, but also the
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Speaker 1: law books of Justinian and thes writings of the Latin
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Speaker 1: poets and historians with their commentators. Indeed, without the scribes
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Speaker 1: of Monte Cassino, the world would have lost some of
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Speaker 1: its most precious monuments of antiquity in the early Middle Ages,
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Speaker 1: including on the medieval side the oldest of the papal registers,
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Speaker 1: that of John the Eighth, and on the classical Varro Apulaeus,
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Speaker 1: and the greater part of the works of Tacitus. Nowhere
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Speaker 1: else is the work of the monasteries, as the preservers
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Speaker 1: of ancient learning more manifest. The home of Greek learning
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Speaker 1: in Italy was likewise to be found in monasteries in
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Speaker 1: those Basilian foundations which spread over Calabria and the Basilicata
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Speaker 1: in the ninth and tenth centuries, and now under Norman protection,
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Speaker 1: sent out new colonies like the Abbey of San Salvatore
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Speaker 1: at Messina, enriched with lands and rents and feudal holdings.
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Speaker 1: They also set themselves to the building up of libraries
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Speaker 1: by copies and by manuscripts brought from the East. But
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Speaker 1: so far as we can judge from the ancient catalogs
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Speaker 1: and from the scattered fragments which survived their dispersion, these
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Speaker 1: collections were almost entirely biblical and theological in character, including, however,
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Speaker 1: splendid examples of calligraphy, such as the text of the
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Speaker 1: Gospels written in silver letters on purple vellum and adorned
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Speaker 1: with beautiful miniatures, which is still preserved in the Cathedral
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Speaker 1: of Rosano. Meanwhile, and largely as a result of the
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Speaker 1: constant relations between Southern Italy and the Greek East, learning
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Speaker 1: had spread beyond monastery walls and ecclesiastical subjects and had
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Speaker 1: begun to attract the attention of men from the north.
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Speaker 1: In English scholar Adelarde of Fath, who visited the South
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Speaker 1: at the beginning of the twelfth century, found a Latin
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Speaker 1: bishop of Syracuse skilled in all the mathematical arts, a
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Speaker 1: Greek philosopher of Magna Graichia who discoursed on natural philosophy,
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Speaker 1: and the greatest medical school of Europe in the old
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Speaker 1: Lombard capital at Salerno, early famed as the city of
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Speaker 1: Hippocrates and the seat of the oldest university in the West.
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Speaker 1: A generation later, another Englishman, the humanist John of Salisbury,
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Speaker 1: studies philosophy with a Greek interpreter in Apulia and drinks
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Speaker 1: the heavy wines of the Sicilian Chancellor, while still others
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Speaker 1: profit by translations of Greek philosophical and mathematical works from
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Speaker 1: the Italian libraries. The distinctive element in Southern learning lay, however,
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Speaker 1: not on the Latin side, but in its immediate contact
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Speaker 1: with Greek and Arabic scholarship. In the chief meeting point
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Speaker 1: of these varied currents of culture was the royal court
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Speaker 1: at Palermo, direct heir to the civilization of Saracen Sicily.
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Speaker 1: The Sicilian court, like the kingdom, was many tonguedan cosmopolitan,
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Speaker 1: its praises being sung alike by Arabic travelers and poets,
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Speaker 1: by Grave Byzantine ecclesiastics, and by Latin scholars of Italy
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Speaker 1: and the North. A Greek ar commandrite Nilos Doxopatrios produced,
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Speaker 1: at King Roget's request a history of the Five Patriarchates,
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Speaker 1: directed against the supremacy of the Pope of Rome. A
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Speaker 1: Saracen Adrizi prepared under his direction the greatest treatise of
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Speaker 1: Arabic geography, celebrated long afterwards as King Roget's Book. Under
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Speaker 1: William the First, the chief literary figures are likewise connected
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Speaker 1: with the court Eugenie the Amir, a Greek poet thoroughly
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Speaker 1: conversant with Arabic and deeply versed in the mathematics and
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Speaker 1: astronomy of the ancients. And Hendricus Aristipus, archdeacon of Catania
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Speaker 1: and for a time chief minister of the king, a
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Speaker 1: collector of manuscripts, a translator of Plato, Aristotle, and Diogenes Laertis,
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Speaker 1: and an investigator of the phenomena connected with the eruption
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Speaker 1: of Etna in a spirit which reminds us less of
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Speaker 1: the age of schoolmen than of the death of the
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Speaker 1: younger Pliny. Such a literary atmosphere was peculiarly favorable to
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Speaker 1: the production of translations from the Greek and Arabic into Latin,
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Speaker 1: and we can definitely connect with sicily the versions which
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Speaker 1: made known to Western Europe the Meno and phido of Plato,
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Speaker 1: portions of the Meteorology and of certain other works of Aristotle,
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Speaker 1: the more advanced writings of Euclid, and the almagest of Ptolemy,
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Speaker 1: the greatest of ancient and medieval treatises on astronomy. In
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Speaker 1: a very different field, we have from Roget's reign a
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Speaker 1: Greeco Arabic psalter and an important group of New Testament manuscripts.
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Speaker 1: While we Germans were in many respects barbarians, says Springer,
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Speaker 1: the ruling classes in Sicily enjoyed the almost over ripe
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Speaker 1: fruits of an ancient culture and combined Norman vigor of
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Speaker 1: youth with Oriental refinement of life. Footnote Builder als der
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Speaker 1: neueren Kunskieschichte, Volume one, page one fifty nine and footnote.
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Speaker 1: There were lacking in the twelfth century the poetic and
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Speaker 1: imaginative elements which flourished in the court of Frederick the Second,
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Speaker 1: But on the scientific and philosophical sides there is clear
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Speaker 1: continuity in the intellectual history of the South, from Roger
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Speaker 1: the second and William to Frederick the Second and Manfred.
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Speaker 1: At one point it is even probable that an actual
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Speaker 1: material connection can be traced. For the collection of Greek
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Speaker 1: manuscripts upon which Manfred set great store seems to have
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Speaker 1: had its origin in coteses brought from Constantinople to Palermo
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Speaker 1: under the first Norman kings, and as Manfred's library probably
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Speaker 1: passed into the possession of the popes, it became the
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Speaker 1: basis of the oldest collection of Greek manuscripts in the
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Speaker 1: Europe of the humanists. Within its limits, the intellectual movement
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Speaker 1: at the court of King Rogie and his son had
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Speaker 1: many of the elements of a Renaissance, and like the
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Speaker 1: Great Revival of the fourteenth century, it owed much to
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Speaker 1: princely favor. It was at the King's request that translations
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Speaker 1: were undertaken and the works of Nilos and Adrisi rewritten,
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Speaker 1: and it was no accident that two such scholars as
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Speaker 1: Aristippus and Eugene of Palermo occupied high places in the
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Speaker 1: royal administration. In their patronage of learning as well as
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Speaker 1: in the enlightened and anti pudal character of their government.
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Speaker 1: The Sicilian sovereigns, from roget to Frederick the Second belonged
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Speaker 1: to the age of the new state craft and the
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Speaker 1: humanistic revival. The art of the Sicilian kingdom, like its
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Speaker 1: learning and its government, was the product of many diverse elements,
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Speaker 1: developing on the mainland into a variety of local and
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Speaker 1: provincial types, but in Sicily combined and harmonized under the
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Speaker 1: guiding will of the royal court. Traces of direct Norman
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Speaker 1: influence occur as in the towers and exterior decoration of
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Speaker 1: the cathedral of Cafalux, or in the plan of that
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Speaker 1: great resort of Norman pilgrims, the Church of Saint Nicholas
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Speaker 1: at Barti. But in the main the Normans, in Berto's phrase,
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Speaker 1: contributed little more than the cement which bound together the
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Speaker 1: artistic materials furnished by others footnote La donlitai meridional, page
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Speaker 1: three forty four and footnote These materials were abundant and various,
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Speaker 1: the Roman basilica and the Greek cupola, the bronze doors
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Speaker 1: and the brilliant mosaics of Byzantine craftsmen, the domes, the
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Speaker 1: graceful arches and ceilings, and the intricate arabesques of Saracen art.
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Speaker 1: Yet in the churches and palaces of Sicily, they were
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Speaker 1: fused into a beautiful and harmonious hole, which still dazzles
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Speaker 1: us with its splendor. The chief examples of this Norman
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Speaker 1: style are to be found at Cappalou, King Roget's cherished foundation,
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Speaker 1: where he prepared his last resting place in the great
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Speaker 1: Porphyry sarcophagus, later transported to Palermo, and where Byzantine artists
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Speaker 1: worked in blue and gold wonderful pictures of Christ and
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Speaker 1: the Virgin, and stately figures of archangels and saints of
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Speaker 1: the Eastern Church at Montreale, the Royal Mount of William
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Speaker 1: the Second command the inexhaustible wealth of Palermo's golden shell,
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Speaker 1: and serving as the incomparable site of a great cathedral
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Speaker 1: with storied mosaics of every color, covering its walls and
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Speaker 1: vaulted ceiling like an illuminated missile, and with cloisters of
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Speaker 1: rare and piercing beauty, and between them in space and time.
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Speaker 1: The palaces and churches of Palermo, the Church of the Martorana,
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Speaker 1: built in the Byzantine style and endowed with a Greek
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Speaker 1: library by Rogge's Admiral George of Antioch, the Saracenic edifices
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Speaker 1: of San Catalo and San Giovanni Delieemiti, and the unsurpassed
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Speaker 1: glories of the Capella Palatina, all set against the brilliant
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Speaker 1: background of the Sicilian capital, which owes to the Norman
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Speaker 1: kings its unique place in the history of art, welcoming
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Speaker 1: merchants and strangers of every land and race, containing within
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Speaker 1: itself organized community tees of Greek's, Mohammedans and Jews, each
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Speaker 1: with its own churches, mosques and synagogues. The Palermo of
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Speaker 1: the twelfth century was a great cosmopolitan city and the
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Speaker 1: natural center of a Mediterranean art, midway between Cordova and Constantinople,
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Speaker 1: between Africa and Italy. It laid them all under contribution.
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Speaker 1: Travelers celebrated the luxuriant gardens of the city and its
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Speaker 1: surrounding plain, with the vast fields of sugar cane, and
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Speaker 1: groves of orange, fig and lemon, olive and palm and pomegranate,
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Speaker 1: its commodious harbor, in its spacious and busy streets, its
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Speaker 1: gorgeous fabrics and abundance of foreign wares, its walls and
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Speaker 1: palaces and places of worship. A stupendous city, says the
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Speaker 1: Spanish traveler ib and Giobert footnote. His description is translated
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Speaker 1: by Amari Biblioteca Arabo Ciccola, eighteen eighty eight, Volume one,
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Speaker 1: pages one fifty five in following, and by Schiaparelli IBN
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Speaker 1: jubaert Rome, nineteen o six pages three hundred and twenty
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Speaker 1: eight in following. See also weren medieval Sicily pages sixty
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Speaker 1: four in following, and footnote elegant, graceful, and splendid, rising
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Speaker 1: before one like a temptress, in offering its king, May
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Speaker 1: Allah take them from him every pleasure in the world
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Speaker 1: in artists city too distinguished by the qualities which Gerta
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Speaker 1: saw on it, the purity of its light, the delicacy
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Speaker 1: of its lines and tones, the harmony of earth and
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Speaker 1: sea and sky. From the highest point in the capital
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Speaker 1: rose the Royal Palace, which still retains, in spite of
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Speaker 1: the transformations of eight centuries, something of the massiveness in
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Speaker 1: the splendor of its Norman original, of which it preserves.
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Speaker 1: The Great peas and Tower, once the repository of the
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Speaker 1: Royal Treasure, the Royal Chapel, and one of the state
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Speaker 1: apartments of King Roget's time. Its terraces and gardens have
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Speaker 1: long since disappeared, with their marble lions and plashing fountains
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Speaker 1: which resembled the Alhambra or the great pleasure grounds of
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Speaker 1: the Mohammedan East. But we can easily call them to
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Speaker 1: life with the aid of the Saracen poets, and the
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Speaker 1: remains of the other royal residences, which surrounded the city
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Speaker 1: like a necklace of pearls. Here Amid his harem and
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Speaker 1: his eunuchs, the officers of his court, and his retinue
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Speaker 1: of Mohammedan servants. The king lived much after the manner
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Speaker 1: of an Oriental potentate. On state occasions he donned the
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Speaker 1: purple and gold of the Greek emperors, or the sumptuous
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Speaker 1: vestiments of red Samite embroidered with golden tigers and camels
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Speaker 1: and Arabic invocations to the Christian Redeemer, which are still
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Speaker 1: preserved among the treasures of the Holy Roman Empire at Vienna,
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Speaker 1: and when on festivals he entered the palace chapel Latin
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Speaker 1: in its ground plant, Greek and Arabic in its ornamentation.
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Speaker 1: The atmosphere was likewise Oriental, as described at its dedication
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Speaker 1: in eleven forty, with the starry heavens of its ceiling
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Speaker 1: and the flowery meadows of its pavement. The chapel preserves
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Speaker 1: its fundamental features to day. Dome and choir are dominated
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Speaker 1: by great Byzantine figures of Christ, accompanied by Byzantine saints,
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Speaker 1: and scenes with Greek inscriptions, all executed with the fullest
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Speaker 1: brilliancy of which mosaics are capable, while the stalactite ceiling tripping,
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Speaker 1: with all the elaborate richness of Saracen art, seems to
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Speaker 1: recreate some forgotten vision of the Arabian nights, harmonious in
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Speaker 1: design yet infinitely varied in detail, rich beyond belief in
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Speaker 1: color and in line, reflecting alike the dim rays of
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Speaker 1: its pendent lamps or the full light of the southern sun.
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Speaker 1: The Capella pallatina is the fullest and most adequate expression
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Speaker 1: of the many sided art of the Norman Kingdom and
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Speaker 1: the unifying force of the Norman kings. Brilliant but ephemeral, precocious,
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Speaker 1: but lacking in permanent results, Such are the judgments commonly
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Speaker 1: passed upon the Sicilian Kingdom and its civilization. At best,
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Speaker 1: the kingdom seems to reach no farther than Frederick the Second,
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Speaker 1: and of him, Freeman has said that, though qualified by
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Speaker 1: Genius to start some great movement or begin some new era,
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Speaker 1: he seemed fated to stand at the end of everything
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Speaker 1: which he touched, the Medieval Empire, the Sicilian Kingdom, the
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Speaker 1: Norman Hoenstaufen line, footnote the Emperor Frederic the Second in
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Speaker 1: Historical Essays, first Series, page two hundred ninety one, and
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Speaker 1: footnote in the field of government. These statements are in
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Speaker 1: the main true. The rapid changes of dynasties and the
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Speaker 1: deep political decline into which the South ultimately fell destroyed
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Speaker 1: the unity of its political development and nullified the work
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Speaker 1: of Norman state building, so that the enduring results of
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Speaker 1: Norman statesmanship and Norman law must be sought in the
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Speaker 1: North and not in Italy. That, however, is not the
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Speaker 1: whole of the story, and in the field of culture,
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Speaker 1: influences less palpable and nonetheless real flowed from the Norman
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Speaker 1: stream into the general currents of European civilization. So long
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Speaker 1: as the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was
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Speaker 1: looked upon as simply the negation of the Middle Ages
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Speaker 1: by a return to classical antiquity, figures such as King
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Speaker 1: Roget and Frederick the Second were merely sports isolated flashes
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Speaker 1: of genius and modernity, without any relation to their own
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Speaker 1: times or to the greater movement which followed. Since, however,
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Speaker 1: we have come to view the Renaissance in its larger
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Speaker 1: aspect as far more than a classical revival. Its relations
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Speaker 1: to the Middle Ages are seen to have been much
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Speaker 1: more intimate and important than was once supposed. The evolution
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Speaker 1: is at times rapid, but the Trecento grows out of
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Speaker 1: the centuries which preceded as naturally as it grew into
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Speaker 1: the quatrocento which followed. The place of Italy in this
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Speaker 1: process is universally recognized. The place of southern Italy is
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Speaker 1: sometimes overlooked. We are too prone to forget that Niccolo
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Speaker 1: Pizzano was also called Nicholas of Apulia, that Petrarch owed
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Speaker 1: much to his sojourn at the Neapolitan court, that Boccaccio
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Speaker 1: learned his Greek from a Calabrian, that the first notes
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Speaker 1: of a new Italian literature were sounded at the court
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Speaker 1: of Frederic the Second. Many phases of the relation between
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Speaker 1: South and North in this transitional period are still obscure,
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Speaker 1: but of the significance of the Southern contribution there is
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Speaker 1: now reasonable assurance. Moreover, the continuity between the intellectual movement
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Speaker 1: under Roget and William the First and that under Frederick
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Speaker 1: the Second and later can be followed in some detail
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Speaker 1: in the history of individual manuscripts and authors. When humanists
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Speaker 1: like petrarch An Salutati read Plato's Fato or Ptolemy's Almajest,
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Speaker 1: their libraries showed that they used the Latin versions of
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Speaker 1: the Sicilian translators of the twelfth century. The learning of
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Speaker 1: the Southern Kingdom may have been a faint light, but
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Speaker 1: it was handed on, not extinguished. For our general understanding
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Speaker 1: of the Normans and their work, it is well that
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Speaker 1: we should trace them in the lands where their direct
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Speaker 1: influence grows faint and dim, as well as in those
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Speaker 1: where their descendants still rule. Only a formal and mechanical
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Speaker 1: view of history seeks to ticket off particular races against
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Speaker 1: particular regions as the sole sources of population and power.
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Speaker 1: Only false national pride conceives of any people. As continually
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Speaker 1: in the vanguard of civilization, races are mixed things. Institutions
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Speaker 1: and civilizations are still more complex, and no people can
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Speaker 1: claim to be a unique and permanent source of light
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Speaker 1: and strength. Outside of Normandy. The Normans were but a
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Speaker 1: small folk, and sooner or later they inevitably lost their identity.
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Speaker 1: They did their work pre eminently, not as a people apart,
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Speaker 1: but as a group of leaders and energizers. The little
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Speaker 1: leaven that leveneth the whole lump. Wherever they went, they
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Speaker 1: showed a marvelous power of initiative and assimilation. If the
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Speaker 1: initiative is more evident in England, the assimilation is more
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Speaker 1: manifest in Sicily. The penalty for such activity is rapid
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Speaker 1: loss of identity. The reward is a large share in
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Speaker 1: the general development of civilization. If the Normans paid the penalty,
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Speaker 1: they also reaped the reward, and they were never more
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Speaker 1: Norman than in adopting the statesmanlike policy of toleration and
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Speaker 1: assimilation which led to their ultimate extinction. Plu Saint Change
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Speaker 1: plu se le Meme shows end of section sixteen recording
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Speaker 1: by Pamelinagami. End of the Normans in European History by
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Speaker 1: Charles Homer Haskins