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

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Speaker 1: Section fifteen 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 one of the widely separated lands which
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Speaker 1: make up the greater Normandy of the Middle Ages. None
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Speaker 1: have drifted farther apart than Norman England and Norman Sicily.
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Speaker 1: Founded about the same time and not greatly different in area,
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Speaker 1: these states have lost all common traditions, until the history
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Speaker 1: of the Southern Normans seems remote in time as in
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Speaker 1: space from their kinsmen of the North. With the widening
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Speaker 1: of the historical field, Southern Italy and Sicily no longer
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Speaker 1: occupy as in the Mediterranean days. This center of the
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Speaker 1: historic stage and the splendor of their early history has
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Speaker 1: been dimmed by earthquake and fever, by economic distress, and
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Speaker 1: by the debate traditions of centuries of misrule. Neither in language,
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Speaker 1: nor race, nor political traditions does England recognize relationship between
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Speaker 1: the country of the Black Hand and the mother of Parliaments. Yet,
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Speaker 1: if the English world has lost the feeling of kinship
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Speaker 1: for the people of the South. It is not lost
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Speaker 1: feeling for the land. It was no mere reminiscence of
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Speaker 1: Virgilian headlands and the thunders of the Odyssey that drew
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Speaker 1: Shelley to the Bay of Naples, Browning to Sorrento, or
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Speaker 1: to take a parallel example elsewhere, Dutta to the glowing
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Speaker 1: orange groves of Palermo. And it is not alone the
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Speaker 1: poet whose soul responds to a castle precipice incurled in
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Speaker 1: a gash of the wind greaved Apennine, or a seaside
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Speaker 1: house to the farther south with a big chicala dies
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Speaker 1: of drought and one sharp tree tis as Cyprus stands.
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Speaker 1: No land of the western Mediterranean has burnt itself so
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Speaker 1: deeply into the imagination and sentiment of the English speaking peoples.
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Speaker 1: Twice has this vivid land of the South played a
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Speaker 1: leading part in the world's life and thought. Once under
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Speaker 1: the Greeks of windswift thought and city founding mind, as
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Speaker 1: we may read in the marbles of Paistin and Salinus,
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Speaker 1: and in the deathless pages of Thucydides, and a second
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Speaker 1: time under the Norman princes and their Hoenstaufen successors, creators
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Speaker 1: of an extraordinarily vigorous and precocious state and a brilliant
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Speaker 1: cosmopolitan culture. If our interest in this brief period of
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Speaker 1: Sicilian greatness be not Norman, it is at least human,
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Speaker 1: as in one of the culminating points of Mediterranean civilization.
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Speaker 1: It must be emphasized at the outset that the history
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Speaker 1: of this Norman kingdom was brief. It had two rulers,
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Speaker 1: of Genius Roget the Second from eleven thirty to eleven
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Speaker 1: fifty four and his grandson Frederick the Second from eleven
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Speaker 1: ninety eight to twelve fifty, separated by the reigns of
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Speaker 1: William the Bad and William the Good, contemporaries of Henry
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Speaker 1: the Second of England, and neither so bad nor so good,
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Speaker 1: as their names might lead us to suppose. Concred of
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Speaker 1: Leche and his son William the Third, and Constance, Roget's
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Speaker 1: daughter and Frederick's mother, wife of the Hoenstaufen emperor Henry
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Speaker 1: the sixth. It is usual to consider the Norman period
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Speaker 1: as closing with the deposition of William the Third in
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Speaker 1: eleven ninety four, and to class Constance and Frederick the
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Speaker 1: Second with the Hoenstaufin. In the case of Constance, there
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Speaker 1: seems to be no possible reason for this, for she
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Speaker 1: was as Norman as any of her predecessors, and issued
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Speaker 1: documents in her own name throughout three men three years
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Speaker 1: of her husband's life, and during the few months of
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Speaker 1: eleven ninety seven and eleven ninety eight, by which she
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Speaker 1: survived him with their son Frederick the second, half Norman
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Speaker 1: and half Howenstaufen. The question is perhaps even, and the
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Speaker 1: science of genetics has not yet advanced far enough to
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Speaker 1: enable us to classify and trace to their source the
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Speaker 1: dominant and the recessive elements in his inheritance. No one, however,
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Speaker 1: can study him at close range without discovering marked affinities
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Speaker 1: with his Norman predecessors, notably the second Roget and the
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Speaker 1: whole trend of recent investigation goes to show that, in
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Speaker 1: the field of government, as in that of culture, his
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Speaker 1: policy is a continuation of the work of the Norman kings,
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Speaker 1: from whom much of his legislation is directly derived. Half
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Speaker 1: Norman by birth, Frederick was preponderantly Norman in his political heritage.
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Speaker 1: It was in Sicily that he grew up and began
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Speaker 1: to rule and in Sicily that he did his really
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Speaker 1: constructive work. To judge him as a Hoenstaufen is only
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Speaker 1: less misleading than to judge him as a German king,
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Speaker 1: for the center and aim of his policy lay in
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Speaker 1: the Mediterranean. In Frederic's sons, legitimate and illegitimate, the Norman
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Speaker 1: strain is still further attenuated. And as they had no
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Speaker 1: real opportunity to continue their father's work, it means little
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Speaker 1: whether we call them Normans or Hoenstaufen. The coming of
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Speaker 1: Charles of Anjou ends this epoch, and his victory at
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Speaker 1: Taliacozzo in twelve sixty eight seals the fate of the dynasty.
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Speaker 1: We may, if we choose, carry the Norman period to
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Speaker 1: this point for all real purposes. It ends with the
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Speaker 1: death of Frederick in twelve hundred and fifty. The preceding
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Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty years embrace the real life history
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Speaker 1: of the Norman kingdom. Brief as this is, it is
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Speaker 1: too long for a single lecture, and we must limit
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Speaker 1: ourselves to roget In the two Williams, touching on the
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Speaker 1: developments of the thirteenth century only in the most incidental fashion.
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Speaker 1: Throughout this period, the territorial extent of the realm remained
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Speaker 1: practically unchanged, comprising Sicily with Malta and the southern half
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Speaker 1: of the Italian Peninsula as far as Te Rachina on
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Speaker 1: the western coast and the River Toronto on the eastern.
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Speaker 1: There were, of course, times when the royal authority was
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Speaker 1: disputed within and attacked from without, feudal revolts, raids by
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Speaker 1: the peasans, expeditions of the German Emperor, diplomatic contests with
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Speaker 1: the Pope, but it was not permanently limited or shorn
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Speaker 1: of its territories. There were, on the other hand, moments
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Speaker 1: of expansion, particularly by sea, for Sicily was of necessity
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Speaker 1: and naval power, and early saw the importance of creating
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Speaker 1: a navy commensurate with its maritime position. The occupation of
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Speaker 1: Tripoli and Tunis by Roge the Second seized the Mediterranean
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Speaker 1: by the Throat. The possession of Corfu threatened the freedom
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Speaker 1: of the Adriatic, but neither conquest was permanent, and in
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Speaker 1: the main the Greek Empire and the powers of Northern
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Speaker 1: Africa succeeded in keeping the Sicilian kings within their natural boundaries.
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Speaker 1: In an area about four fists the size of England.
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Speaker 1: The Southern Kingdom showed far more diversity, both in the
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Speaker 1: land and in its inhabitants, Stretching from the subtropical gardens
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Speaker 1: of Sicily into the heart of the highest Apennines. It
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Speaker 1: was divided by mountain and sea into distinct natural regions,
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Speaker 1: between which communication continues difficult even today. The isolated valleys
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Speaker 1: of the Abruzi, the great plains of Apulia, the granite
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Speaker 1: citadel of Calabria, the rich fields of Campania, the commercial
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Speaker 1: cities of the Bay of Naples and Gulf of Salerno,
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Speaker 1: the contrasted mountains and shore lines of Sicily itself. The
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Speaker 1: difficulties of geography were increased by differences of race, religion,
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Speaker 1: and political traditions. The mass of the continental population was
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Speaker 1: of course of Italian origin, going back in part to
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Speaker 1: the Samnite shepherds of primitive Italy, and while it had
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Speaker 1: been modified in many places by the Lombard Conquest, it
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Speaker 1: retained its Latin speech and was subject to the authority
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Speaker 1: of the Latin Church. Calabria, however, was now Greek in
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Speaker 1: religion as in language, and the Greek element was considerable
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Speaker 1: in the cities of Apulia and flowed over into Sicily,
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Speaker 1: where the chief foreign constituent was African and Mohammedan. Politically,
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Speaker 1: there was a mixed inheritance of Lombard and Roman law,
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Speaker 1: of Greek in Saracen bureaucracy, of municipal independence, and of
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Speaker 1: Norman feudalism entrenched in the mountain fortresses of Upper Apulia
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Speaker 1: and the Abruzzi. While the diverse origins of the composite
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Speaker 1: state were expressed in the sovereign's official title King of Sicily,
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Speaker 1: of the Duchy of Apulia, of the Principality of Capua.
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Speaker 1: The union of these conflicting elements into a single strong
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Speaker 1: state was the test and the triumph of Norman statesmanship. Plainly,
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Speaker 1: the terms of this political problem were quite different from
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Speaker 1: that set the Norman rulers of England. Whatever local divergences,
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Speaker 1: careful study of Anglo Saxon England may still reveal. There
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Speaker 1: were no differences of religion or of general political tradition.
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Speaker 1: While the rapidity of the conquest at the hands of
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Speaker 1: a single ruler made possible a uniform policy throughout the
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Speaker 1: whole country, the convenient formula of forfeiture and regrant of
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Speaker 1: all the lad Land for example, created at once uniformity
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Speaker 1: of tenure and of social organization. Moreover, as we have
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Speaker 1: already seen back of the Norman conquest of England, lay
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Speaker 1: Normandy itself firmly organized under a strong duke who took
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Speaker 1: with him across the Channel his household, officers in his
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Speaker 1: lay and spiritual counselors to form the nucleus of his
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Speaker 1: new central government, which was in many respects one with
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Speaker 1: the central government of Normandy. In the south, none of
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Speaker 1: these favoring conditions prevailed. A country composed of many diverse
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Speaker 1: elements was conquered by different leaders and at different times,
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Speaker 1: so that there could be no question of uniformity of system. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: there could be no system at all, for the Normans
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Speaker 1: came as individual adventurers with no governmental organization behind them,
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Speaker 1: and the instruments of government which they used had to
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Speaker 1: be created as they went along. Whatever of Norman day
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Speaker 1: tradition reached the South could come only in the subdivided
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Speaker 1: and attenuated form of individual influences. Furthermore, the Norman ingredient
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Speaker 1: in the population continued relatively small. The scattered bands of
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Speaker 1: early days were of course reinforced as time went on,
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Speaker 1: but there was never any general migration, or any movement
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Speaker 1: that affected the mass of the population in town and country.
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Speaker 1: If we had any statistics, we should doubtless find that
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Speaker 1: some hundreds or at most a few thousands would cover
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Speaker 1: the entire Norman population of Italy and Sicily. These brought
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Speaker 1: with them their speech, their feudal tenures, probably some elements
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Speaker 1: of Norman customary law. But given their small numbers, they
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Speaker 1: could not hope to normanize a vast country where their
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Speaker 1: language soon disappeared and their identity was ultimately lost in
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Speaker 1: the general mass. Under such conditions, there could be no
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Speaker 1: general transplantation of Norman institutions. The rulers were Norman, as
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Speaker 1: were the holders of the Great Thiefs, But to speak paradoxically,
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Speaker 1: the most Norman thing about their government was its non
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Speaker 1: Norman character, that is to say, its quick assimilation of
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Speaker 1: alien elements and its statesmanlike treatment of native customs and institutions.
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Speaker 1: The Norman leaders were too wise to attempt an impossible Normanization.
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Speaker 1: The policy of toleration in political and religious matters had
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Speaker 1: its beginnings in the early days of the Norman occupation,
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Speaker 1: but it received a broad application only in the course
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Speaker 1: of the conquest of Sicily by the Great Count, and
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Speaker 1: was first fully and systematically carried out by his son,
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Speaker 1: rog the Second. In religion, this meant the fullest liberty
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Speaker 1: for Greeks, Jews and Mohammedans, and even the maintenance of
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Speaker 1: the hierarchy of the Greek Church and the encouragement and
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Speaker 1: enrichment of Basilian monasteries, along with the Benedictine Foundations, which
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Speaker 1: were marked objects of nor generosity. In law, it meant
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Speaker 1: the preservation of local rights and customs, and of the
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Speaker 1: usages of the several distinct elements in the population Latin
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Speaker 1: and Greek, Hebrew and Saracen. In local administration, it involved
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Speaker 1: the retention of the local dignitaries of the cities in
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Speaker 1: the Byzantine offices of the Stratagos and Catapan, as well
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Speaker 1: as the fiscal arrangements established by the Saracens in Sicily,
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Speaker 1: and finally in the central government itself. The need of
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Speaker 1: dealing wisely and effectively with the various peoples of the
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Speaker 1: kingdom necessitated the employment of men familiar with each of them,
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Speaker 1: and the maintenance of a secretarial bureau which issued documents
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Speaker 1: in Greek and Arabic as well as in Latin. It
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Speaker 1: was in the central administration that rogecond faced his freshest problem,
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Speaker 1: which was nothing less than the creation of a strong
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Speaker 1: central government for a kingdom which had never before been
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Speaker 1: united under a single resident ruler. His method was frankly eclectic.
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Speaker 1: We are told that he made a point of inquiring
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Speaker 1: carefully into the practices of other kings and countries, in
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Speaker 1: adopting anything in them which seemed to him valuable. In
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Speaker 1: that he drew to his court from every land, regardless
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Speaker 1: of speech and faith, men who were wise in counsel
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Speaker 1: or distinguished in war, among whom the brilliant Admiral George
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Speaker 1: of Antioch is a conspicuous example. Nevertheless, we should err
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Speaker 1: if we thought of him as making a mere artificial composite.
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Speaker 1: The Calabria of his youth had preserved a stiff tradition
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Speaker 1: of Byzantine administration, and the Mohammedans of Sicily had an
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Speaker 1: even stronger bureaucracy at work. Roger's capital was at Palermo,
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Speaker 1: and it was natural that the Greek and Saracen institutions
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Speaker 1: of Sicily and Calabria should prove the formative influences in
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Speaker 1: his government, as it was extended to the newly acquired
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Speaker 1: and less cent regions of the mainland. There was free
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Speaker 1: adaptation and use of experience, but the loose feudal methods
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Speaker 1: of the Normans were profoundly modified by the bureaucratic traditions
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Speaker 1: of the East. The central point in the government lay,
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Speaker 1: as in the states beyond the Alps, in the curia
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Speaker 1: of feudal vassals, and particularly in its more permanent nucleus
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Speaker 1: of household officials and immediate advisers of the king. But
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Speaker 1: whereas in the other parts of Western Europe, the feudal
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Speaker 1: baronage still prevailed exclusively and gave way but slowly, before
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Speaker 1: the growth of specialized training and competence. The professional element
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Speaker 1: was present in the Sicilian curia from an early period
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Speaker 1: in the logo thetes and Amirs, which Roge the second
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Speaker 1: had taken over from the earlier organization. The chancery, with
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Speaker 1: its Latin, Greek and Arabic branches, was inevitably a more
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Speaker 1: complicated institution than in the other Western kingdoms, and its
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Speaker 1: documents imitated Byzantine and papal usage even in externals. At
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Speaker 1: one point, however, it shows close parallelisms with the Anglo
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Speaker 1: Norman chancery, namely in the free use of those mandata
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Speaker 1: or administrative writs, which are still rare in the secular
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Speaker 1: states of the twelfth century. And if we remember that
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Speaker 1: their employment constitutes the surest index of the efficiency of
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Speaker 1: a medieval administrative system, we must conclude what is evident
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Speaker 1: in other ways, that the most vigorous governments of the
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Speaker 1: period were the two Norman kingdoms. In judicial matters, the
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Speaker 1: parallel is also instructive here. A professional class had existed
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Speaker 1: in the South from the outset, as an inheritance from
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Speaker 1: the Byzantine period, and it early makes its appearance in
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Speaker 1: the Curia in the person of a group of justices,
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Speaker 1: who in time seem completely to absorb the judicial functions
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Speaker 1: of the larger body. At the same time time, the
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Speaker 1: Norman barons were utilized for the royal judiciars, which King
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Speaker 1: Roge established throughout all parts of his kingdom. Parallel to
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Speaker 1: these provincial justices ran provincial chamberlains, and over them there
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Speaker 1: were later established master justices and master chamberlains for the
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Speaker 1: great districts of Apulia and Capua, all subject to the
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Speaker 1: Central Curia. The fiscal system was especially characteristic. Roge's biographer
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Speaker 1: tells us that the king spent his spare time in
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Speaker 1: close supervision of the receipts and expenditures of his government,
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Speaker 1: and that everything relating to the accounts was carefully kept
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Speaker 1: in writing. Beginning with his reign, we have documentary evidence
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Speaker 1: of a branch of the curia called an Arabic diwan
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Speaker 1: in Greek secreton and in Latin either duana or secretum,
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Speaker 1: and acting as a central financial body for the whole kingdom.
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Speaker 1: It kept voluminous registers called an Arabic de fetier, and
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Speaker 1: as its officers and clerks were largely Saracens, it seems
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Speaker 1: plainly to go back to Saracenic antecedents. There are, however,
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Speaker 1: some traces on the mainland of careful descriptions of lands
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Speaker 1: and serfs, like those which it extracted from its records
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Speaker 1: in Sicily under the name of Platei, so that Byzantine
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Speaker 1: survivals should also be taken into account in studying the
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Speaker 1: origin of the institution. Indeed, this whole system presupposes elaborate
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Speaker 1: surveys and registers of the land and its inhabitants, such
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Speaker 1: as were made in the Egypt of the Ptolemies, and
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Speaker 1: less completely in the Roman Empire, and such as meet
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Speaker 1: us in a ruder and simpler form in that unique
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Speaker 1: Northern record, the Doomsday Survey of ten eighty six itself
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Speaker 1: perhaps suggested by some knowledge of the older system in Italy.
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Speaker 1: No one can fail to note the striking analogies between
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Speaker 1: the Sicilian Duana and the Anglo Norman Exchequer, but the
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Speaker 1: disappearance of all records of the Southern Bureau precludes any
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Speaker 1: comparison of their actual organization and procedure. The only parallel
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Speaker 1: records which have reached us are the registers of feudal holdings,
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Speaker 1: which exhibit noteworthy similarities in the tenures of the two kingdoms.
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Speaker 1: Such feudal institutions were evidently a matter of common inheritance,
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Speaker 1: but any connections indicated by similar administrative arrangements were doubtless
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Speaker 1: due to later invitation from one side or the other.
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Speaker 1: Roge the Second in Sicily and Henry the First and
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Speaker 1: Henry the Second in England were at work upon much
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Speaker 1: the same sort of governmental problems, and Roget was not
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Speaker 1: alone in looking to other lands for suggestions. Among the
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Speaker 1: foreigners whom Roge drew into his service, we find Englishmen
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Speaker 1: such as his chancellor, rab of Selby and one of
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Speaker 1: his chaplains and fiscal officers, Thomas Brown, who later returned
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Speaker 1: to his native land to fill an honored place in
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Speaker 1: the exchequer of Henry the Second. There was constant intercourse
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Speaker 1: between the two kingdoms in the twelfth century, and abundant
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Speaker 1: opportunity to keep one government informed of the administrative experiments
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Speaker 1: of the other. In general, however, the Sicilian monarchy was
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Speaker 1: of a far more absolute and oriental type than is
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Speaker 1: found among the Northern Normans or anywhere else in Western Europe.
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Speaker 1: The king's court, with its harem and eunuchs, resembled that
20:36
Speaker 1: of the Fodamite caliphs. His ideas of royal power were
20:40
Speaker 1: modeled upon the Empire of Constantinople. The only contemporary portrait
20:45
Speaker 1: of King Roget which has reached us, the mosaic of
20:48
Speaker 1: the Church of the Martorana at Palermo, represents him clothed
20:52
Speaker 1: in the dalmatic of the Apostolic Legate and the imperial
20:57
Speaker 1: costume of Byzantium, and receiving the crown directly from the
21:01
Speaker 1: hands of Christ. And a similar portrayal of the coronation
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Speaker 1: of King William. The second shows that the scene was
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Speaker 1: meant to be typical of the divine right of the king,
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Speaker 1: responsible to no earthly authority. Theocratic in principle, The Sicilian
21:16
Speaker 1: monarchy drew its inspiration from the law books of Justinian,
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Speaker 1: as well as from the living example on the Eastern Throne.
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Speaker 1: The series of laws or as sizes issued by King
21:26
Speaker 1: Roget naturally reflects the composite character of the Norman state.
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Speaker 1: The mass of local custom is not superseded. The feudal
21:35
Speaker 1: obligations of the vassals are clearly recognized. Influences of canon
21:39
Speaker 1: law and Teutonic custom are clearly traceable. Indeed, the Northern
21:44
Speaker 1: conception of the king's peace may have been their starting point.
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Speaker 1: But the great body of these decrees flows directly from
21:51
Speaker 1: the Roman law as preserved and modified by the Byzantine emperors.
21:56
Speaker 1: The royal power is everywhere exalted, often in phrases where
21:59
Speaker 1: the king is substituted for the emperor of the Roman original,
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Speaker 1: and the law of treason is applied in detail to
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Speaker 1: the protection of royal documents, royal coins, and royal officers.
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Speaker 1: Even to question the king's ordinances or decisions is on
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Speaker 1: a par with sacrilege. The test of such phrases was
22:20
Speaker 1: the possession of adequate military and financial resources. Of the
22:25
Speaker 1: strength of King Roger's army. His long and successful wars
22:29
Speaker 1: offer sufficient evidence. The Great Register of his military fiefs,
22:33
Speaker 1: the so called Catalog of the Barons, indicates that the
22:36
Speaker 1: feudal service could be increased when necessity demanded. While contingents
22:41
Speaker 1: of Saracen troops were as valuable to him as they
22:44
Speaker 1: had been to his father, much the same can be
22:46
Speaker 1: said of his navy. For the safety of the Sicilian
22:49
Speaker 1: Kingdom and its position in Mediterranean politics depended in large
22:54
Speaker 1: measure upon sea power, and Roget's fleet has a distinguished
22:58
Speaker 1: record in his Italian and acts African campaigns. Army and navy,
23:02
Speaker 1: and civil service, however, rested ultimately upon the royal treasury
23:07
Speaker 1: and among its contemporaries. The Sicilian Kingdom enjoyed a deserved
23:12
Speaker 1: reputation for great wealth. Its resources consisted partly in the
23:17
Speaker 1: products of the soil, such as the grain and cotton
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Speaker 1: and peltry, which was exported from Sicily itself, partly in manufactures,
23:25
Speaker 1: as in the case of the silk industry which King
23:28
Speaker 1: Rogie developed in Palermo, and partly in the unrivaled facilities
23:32
Speaker 1: for trade which were presented by its many harbors and
23:36
Speaker 1: its advantageous location with respect to the Great Sea roots.
23:40
Speaker 1: Under the Norman kings, the commerce of the Southern Kingdom
23:43
Speaker 1: was passive rather than active. That is to say, it
23:47
Speaker 1: was carried on not mainly by its own cities such
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Speaker 1: as Bari and Amalfi, which had enjoyed great prosperity in
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Speaker 1: the Byzantine period and lost their local independence under the Normans,
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Speaker 1: but by commercial powers from without Pisa, Genoa, and Venice.
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Speaker 1: The relative importance of each of these varied with the
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Speaker 1: vicissitudes of Italian politics, but among them they shared the
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Speaker 1: external trade of the kingdom. We find the Venetians on
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Speaker 1: the eastern coast, the Genoese and peasants at Salerno and
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Speaker 1: the chief ports of Sicily, where they had special warehouses
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Speaker 1: and often considerable colonies, and the earliest commercial records of
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Speaker 1: Genoa and Pisa, notably the register of the Genoese notary
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Speaker 1: John the Scribe, enables us to follow their business from
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Speaker 1: merchant to merchant and from port to port. Sicily served
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Speaker 1: not only as a place for the exchange of exports
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Speaker 1: for foreign products, the cloth of northern Italy and France,
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Speaker 1: and the spices and fabrics of the East, but also
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Speaker 1: as a stage in the trade with the Orient by
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Speaker 1: the Great Highway of the Straits of Messina, or with
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Speaker 1: Africa and Spain by way of Palermo, and the ports
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Speaker 1: of the western and southern coast. From all this the
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Speaker 1: king took his toll without foregoing any of their feudal
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Speaker 1: or domainial revenues or extensive monopolies. Rogett and his successors
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Speaker 1: tapped this growing commerce by port dues and by tariffs
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Speaker 1: on exports and imports, thus securing their ready money from
25:18
Speaker 1: that merchant class upon which the future monarchies of Western
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Speaker 1: Europe were to build. The income from Palermo alone was
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Speaker 1: said to be greater than that which the King of
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Speaker 1: England derived from his whole kingdom end of Section fifteen.