The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (17 page)

His supreme monument is the Palatine Chapel, which he built during the 1130s and 1140s on the first floor of the royal palace of Palermo. In plan it is on the traditional Latin model, with a central nave flanked by two aisles, and steps leading up into an apsed sanctuary. The floor and lower walls are Latin too, though of astonishing opulence and sumptuousness, their creamy white marble inlaid with gold leaf and polychrome
opus alexandrinum
. Every square inch of the upper walls, on the other hand, is completely covered with Byzantine mosaics, nearly all of the same date and of superb quality,
⁶³
clearly the work of Greek mosaicists expressly imported from Constantinople. These alone would be enough to mark the chapel as a jewel, rare and utterly unique, but they are not alone. Soaring above them is a painted stalactite roof of purest Arabic workmanship–a roof that would do credit to Cordoba or Damascus. Roger’s most astonishing political achievement was to weld together the three great civilisations of the Mediterranean–Latin, Greek and Arab–so that they worked together in peace and harmony, and to do so in a century in which they were everywhere else at each other’s throats: the century of the Crusades, and less than a hundred years after the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. Here, in this one small building, we find that same achievement expressed quite spectacularly in visual terms. We see it too in the King’s other great foundation at Cefalù. There the Arabic influence may be rather less evident, but the wholly Byzantine mosaic of Christ Pantocrator–the Ruler of All–in the high eastern apse is surely the greatest portrait of the Redeemer in all Christian art.

Meanwhile, the wind of change, having already swept through northern Italy, was moving slowly south to Rome. In 1143 a civil insurrection broke out in the city and a Senate was once again established. The Papacy fought back–in 1145 Pope Lucius II actually died of wounds sustained while storming the Capitol–but the communal movement steadily gained ground, particularly after the arrival of a certain Arnold of Brescia, a fiery young monk in whom an extreme asceticism was buttressed by a new approach to religious thinking: scholastic philosophy. This had grown up during the past century in France, under theologians such as Arnold’s old master Peter Abelard, and it was now taking root in Italy. Essentially a trend away from the old mysticism towards a spirit of logical, rationalistic enquiry in spiritual matters, it was one of the two dominant influences in Arnold’s life. The other was the revived interest in Roman law now being expounded at the University of Bologna. From these two influences he had developed his theory, which he preached tirelessly through the streets and piazzas of Rome, that the Church should subject itself entirely in all things temporal to the civil authority of the state, renouncing all worldly power and reverting to the pure and uncompromising poverty of the early fathers. Here was dangerous stuff; to St Bernard, who preached diametrically opposite views with equal force and who had already condemned Abelard and Arnold together at the great Council of Sens in 1140, it was anathema. But not even Bernard could loosen Arnold’s hold on Rome. This was to be the joint achievement of two other towering figures of their century, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Nicholas Breakspear who, as Pope Adrian (or Hadrian) IV, was the only Englishman ever to occupy the throne of St Peter.

Adrian made it clear from the outset that he intended to take orders from no one. When, therefore, he found that the Roman commune, supported by Arnold, was barring him access to the Lateran, his reply was swift. Early in 1155 all Rome was placed under an interdict, to continue until Arnold had been expelled from the city. No Pope had ever dared to take such a step before, but it proved triumphantly successful. Holy Week was approaching; a godless Easter was unthinkable; and popular feeling rose sharply against the commune. Suddenly Arnold disappeared, and Adrian at last found himself free once more. On Easter Day he presided, as planned, at High Mass in the Lateran.

Frederick of Hohenstaufen, King of the Romans and thus Emperor-elect
⁶⁴
since 1152, kept the feast at Pavia. He had recently received the iron crown of Lombardy–in a ceremony even more symbolic than usual since several of the Lombard towns, led by Milan, were now in open opposition to the Empire–and was heading south to his imperial coronation in Rome. Near Siena he was met by papal legates with an urgent request: his assistance in capturing Arnold of Brescia, who had taken refuge in a neighbouring castle. For Frederick’s army this presented no difficulty. Arnold soon gave himself up and was returned to Rome. Condemned by the prefect of the city, he was first hanged, then burned; finally his ashes were cast into the Tiber.

Still, the prospect of Frederick’s imminent arrival in Rome was beginning to cause concern in the curia. Not without difficulty–for neither party trusted the other an inch–a meeting was arranged between King and Pope near Sutri. It nearly ended in fiasco when for two days Barbarossa refused to perform the symbolic act of holding Adrian’s bridle and stirrup as he dismounted, but at last agreement was reached and the two rode on to Rome together. They were soon intercepted by some tight-lipped envoys from the commune; if Frederick wished to enter the city he would have to pay tribute and guarantee all the citizens their civic liberties. The King refused point-blank and the envoys sullenly returned; but Adrian, scenting trouble, quickly despatched a heavy advance force to take over the Leonine City. The next morning at first light he and Frederick secretly slipped into Rome, and a few hours later the new Emperor had been crowned. The news reached the commune while it was meeting to discuss how best to prevent the coronation. Furious at having been tricked, mob and militia together attacked the Vatican. All day the fighting went on, with heavy slaughter on both sides, but by evening the imperial forces had prevailed and the remaining attackers withdrew across the river.

Frederick, having got what he wanted, now returned to Germany. For Adrian, however, it had been an empty victory. Without the Emperor’s troops to protect him he could not remain in Rome, and he had failed utterly to mobilise Frederick’s support against King William I ‘the Bad’ of Sicily, Roger II’s son and successor, whom he still refused to recognise. His best hope of achieving the downfall of the Sicilian kingdom now lay with the Apulian barons, once again in revolt and this time supported by a Byzantine army. But his luck had deserted him. William did not deserve his nickname, which seems to have been due more to his swarthy and sinister appearance and his Herculean physical strength than to any serious defects of character. True, he was lazier and still more pleasure-loving than his father, but he had retained the Hauteville gift of galvanising himself and all those around him when faced with a crisis. He now swept up from Sicily at the head of his Saracen shock-troops, smashed the Greeks and the Apulian insurgents at Brindisi and then went on to besiege Adrian at Benevento. For the third time the Normans had a great Pope at their mercy. In June 1156, forced to capitulate, Adrian confirmed William in his Sicilian kingdom.

Humiliating as it was, the Pope soon had cause to be glad of his action, for Barbarossa was proving more of a menace to the Papacy than William had ever been. During the summer of 1158 he returned to Italy in strength, and at the Diet of Roncaglia left the Italian cities in no doubt as to his own concept of imperial sovereignty, as four celebrated savants from Bologna–a university to which he had always shown especial favour–demolished all their beloved ideals of municipal independence, showing them to be totally devoid of legal foundation. Henceforth, he declared, every city would be subjected, through a foreign governor (
podestà
), to complete imperial control. Throughout Lombardy the effect was electric; but Frederick had come prepared for trouble. In 1159, at Crema, he tied fifty hostages, including children, to his siege engines to prevent the defenders from counter-attacking; in 1162 he at last brought the Milanese to their knees and destroyed their city so completely that for the next five years it lay deserted and in ruins. But he only stiffened the cities’ resistance. Past rivalries now forgotten, they formed the great Lombard League to defend their liberties.

Pope Adrian had died in 1159. Clearly, from Frederick’s point of view, much depended on the choice of his successor, and he was well aware that by far the most likely candidate was Cardinal Roland Bandinelli, who was, like Adrian, strongly opposed to his claims. To what degree he was responsible for what followed is uncertain; it can only be said that the investiture which was held two days after Roland’s election in St Peter’s on 7 September was the most grotesquely undignified in papal history. The scarlet mantle of the Papacy was produced and the new Pope, after the customary display of reluctance, bent his head to receive it. At that moment Cardinal Octavian of S. Cecilia suddenly dived at him, snatched the mantle and tried to don it himself. A scuffle ensued, during which he lost it again, but his chaplain instantly brought forward another–having presumably foreseen just such an eventuality–which Octavian this time managed to put on, unfortunately back to front, before anyone could stop him.

There followed a scene of scarcely believable confusion. Wrenching himself free from the furious supporters of Roland who were trying to tear the mantle forcibly from his back, Octavian–whose frantic efforts to turn it right way round had succeeded only in getting the fringes tangled round his neck–made a dash for the papal throne, sat on it and proclaimed himself Pope Victor IV. He then charged off through the basilica until he found a group of minor clergy, whom he ordered to give him their acclamation–which, seeing the doors burst open and a band of armed cut-throats swarming into the church, they obediently did. For the moment at least, the opposition was silenced; Roland and his adherents slipped out while they could and took refuge in the fortified tower of St Peter’s. Meanwhile, with the cut-throats looking on, Octavian was enthroned a little more formally than on the previous occasion and escorted in triumph into the Lateran–having, we are told, been at some pains to adjust his dress before leaving.

However undignified its execution, the coup could now be seen to have been meticulously planned in advance, and on a scale that left no doubt that the Empire must have been actively implicated. Octavian had long been known as an imperial sympathiser, and his ‘election’ was immediately recognised by Frederick’s two ambassadors in Rome, who at the same time launched a vigorous campaign against Roland. This proved unsuccessful; before long public opinion in Rome swung firmly behind the rightful Pope, who, on 20 September at the little town of Ninfa, at last received his formal consecration as Pope Alexander III. The Church remained effectively in schism, but gradually Octavian lost his support. He died in 1164 in Lucca, where he had been keeping alive on the proceeds of not very successful brigandage and where the local hierarchy would not even allow him burial within the walls.

Venice, Sicily and–as soon as he was able–Pope Alexander lent their active support to the Lombard League, and soon Frederick began to feel, for the first time, the full weight of Italian opposition. Soon, too, his luck began to turn. In 1167 a march on Rome was brought to nothing when plague broke out in the imperial army; the Emperor was obliged to retreat, almost defenceless, through hostile Lombardy, and barely managed to drag his pale survivors back over the Alps. In 1174 he returned, but the momentum had gone; on 29 May 1176 his German knights were routed at Legnano by the forces of the League. It was the end of Frederick’s ambitions in Lombardy. At the Congress of Venice in the following year he publicly kissed Pope Alexander’s foot at the entrance to St Mark’s
⁶⁵
and in 1183, at Constance, the Venetian truce became a treaty. Though imperial suzerainty was technically preserved, the cities of Lombardy (and to some extent Tuscany also) were henceforth free to manage their own affairs. It was hardly the solution Frederick had foreseen at Roncaglia, but consolation was soon at hand. The Empire, which had fought so vainly and so long for control over Lombardy, was now to acquire Sicily with hardly a struggle.

Roger II, who died in 1154, was unfortunate in his descendants. His son, William the Bad, despite his triumph over the Pope, had a basically undistinguished reign of only twelve years, after which he was succeeded in turn by his son, William II. Genetically, the new king was a throwback; unlike his father, who was described as a huge ogre of a man, ‘whose thick black beard lent him a savage and terrible aspect which filled many people with fear’, the younger William was fair-haired and outstandingly handsome. It was somehow inevitable that he should be called William the Good, though in fact as a ruler he turned out to be rather worse than his father: weak and ineffectual, always striving after effect but hardly ever achieving it. His only true inheritance from Roger was a passion for building, and his immense cathedral of Monreale in the hills above Palermo, the vast expanse of its interior walls a blaze of dazzling mosaic, stands as an unforgettable monument to Sicily’s last legitimate Norman king.

For when William the Good died, aged thirty-six, on 18 November 1189, the Hauteville line died out. His wife, Joanna–she was the daughter of Henry II of England
⁶⁶
–had borne him no children, and the throne passed to, of all people, his aunt: Constance, the posthumous daughter of Roger II–she was in fact a year younger than her nephew the King–who, nearly four years before, had been given in marriage to Henry, son and heir of Frederick Barbarossa. Why William and his advisers had ever contemplated such an idea for a moment will never be understood, since it meant that were the King to die childless Sicily would fall into the Emperor’s lap, its separate existence at an end. Admittedly, there was plenty of time yet for Joanna to conceive; in 1186 she was still only twenty, her husband thirty-two. But life in the twelfth century was a good deal more uncertain than it is today, infant mortality was high, and to take such a risk before the succession was properly assured was, by any standards, an act of almost criminal folly.