Sicilian Vespers, Sung in Norman French: the Unintended Consequences of Robber Barony
Written: Jul 13 '02 (Updated Nov 03 '02)
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Pros: The definitive and brilliant story of a great mediaeval adventure
Cons: Too few plates, and none in color
The Bottom Line: Profound, important, thrilling, and impeccably written: a book to cherish and treasure, on a subject of surprising importance ... and great resonance for today
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| mshawpyle's Full Review: The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South 10... |
Conquest has gotten a very bad name from some of its practitioners. Rightly enough, I suppose; but there have been some odd exceptions. Rome’s destiny was generally regarded – by Romans, at least – as being to impose peace, spare the conquered, ‘and, with war, the proud to overthrow.’ (Vergil said so.) Before Rome, Pericles laid out the same vision for Athens as a democracy in a sea of lesser states:
But before I praise the dead, I wish to set out the principles by which we rose to power, and under what institutions and through what manner of life our empire became great. For I conceive that such thoughts are not unsuited to the occasion, and that this numerous assembly of citizens and strangers may hear them with profit.
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors’s, but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is raised to public service, not by favor, but as the prize due to merit. And so magnificently and magniloquently on.
Yet, as Thucydides makes clear, Pericles is here speaking at the obsequies for casualties of the Syracuse expedition, one of Athens’s more aggressive episodes.
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Welcome to the July Multi- or ‘Cross’- Media Write-Off. Most Write-Offs are limited to a single item or at best a single category; today, though, a select group of writers are posting reviews in all major Media categories: books, music, and film. The only common thread is that the reviewed items are, well, media items, and involve War & Politics (including the current anti-terror campaign); the American South; History (general); or Baseball. Participants are expected to include:
- amykhar
- aggiebrett
- buffoonery
- CurtisEdmonds
- ebrown2
- ed_grover
- eplovejoy
- gracef
- Grouch
- hadassahchana
- jkkelley
- kcfoxy
- kurt_messick
- mkp51
- MrsNormanMaine
- PeterLRuden – who, for reasons best known to himself, is writing a review over in the Beer section (but it has a Ted Williams tie-in, so I cut him some slack)
- Psychovant
- Redlass
- Sordid-1
- Stephen_Murray
and
- theeye.
Please go to their member pages to see what surprises, from Christine Lavin to Ball Four to The Normans in Sicily, we have in store for you.
Your Write-Off host – which will explain why otherwise sane people are writing on such subjects as war and baseball – is, well, me, old mshawpyle-his-own-self: I am turning 39 again today, which was excuse enough for a Cerebration Celebration. (I refuse ever to be older than Jack Benny.) Try to enjoy the Write-Off anyway.
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In latter days, the British of the imperial moment took up the ‘White Man’s Burden’ hymned by Kipling, and Americans embarked upon their manifest destiny, in the firm belief that they were following Classical models, and that their interventions, annexations, and general obstreperousness constituted A Great Civilizing Task.
But of all the episodes – at least since Rome destroyed Carthage (and thank God Rome did, as GKC points out) – in which conquest has actually been a civilizing force, perhaps the most noteworthy and most overlooked is the Norman conquest of South Italy and Sicily. Not even the estimable Thomas Sowell gives this the attention it deserves; but then, there is little need for other writers to do so, so long as John Julius Norwich’s definitive work remains in print.
I cannot adequately convey the excitement that seized me when I saw, at the bookstore, that Lord Norwich’s two volumes on the rise and fall of the House of Hauteville were still back in print in a one-volume edition (as they have been since 1992) and were actually available (as is unprecedented). I can merely seek to explain why I was thus elated.
John Julius, 2d Viscount Norwich, is the son of Alfred Duff Cooper, Winston Churchill’s indispensable lieutenant in the struggle against Nazism, and Lady Diana Cooper, nee Manners, the society beauty who was the daughter of the duke of Rutland. This is worthy of mention only because Norwich’s background so informs his work, which is generally ‘all compound’ of high politics, statecraft, a cynical view of the great, and a profound ęsthetic sensibility.
Norwich is today best known as the Grand Old Man of Byzantine studies, and of Venetian history as well: rightly so. But he made his name, and may well have done his best work, when a self-deprecating notion of putting together a guidebook in English to the architectural and artistic remains of the Norman presence in the South of Italy seized him. Very shortly, this notion expanded into the writing of his first two, and still in many ways his best, histories: The Normans in the South and The Kingdom in the Sun.
The events detailed in these volumes are important, historically, beyond the measure of their treatment – or non-treatment – by most historians. The fatal mistake of Lombard ‘nationalists’ in the Capitanata, in Calabria and Apulia: a mistake comparable to that of Vortigern in importing Angle, Saxon, and Jute mercenaries to Britain under Hengist and Horsa: occurred in a chapel to St Michael the Archangel in the year 1016, half a century before William the Bastard would exchange that title for that of ‘the Conqueror’ by his seizure of England. A group of Norman pilgrims, the Normans being already famous for their prowess and rapacity, met a Lombard rebel against the Byzantine government, a fellow named Melus. He had a proposal to make….
Thus began one of the most phenomenal political and social events of the Middle Ages, the bringing of the Normans to the Italian South. It didn’t exactly redound to the benefit of the Lombard independence movement. Within the span of a man’s life, the Western and Eastern Empires, Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire, had been shorn of all influence in, much less holdings in, the southern half of Italy. The papacy, backed by Norman troops – troops perfectly capable of turning upon the popes, as indeed they did on occasion, whenever the Normans’s advantage dictated – the papacy thus supported cast off all deference to the Western Empire, and – in stark contrast to the Eastern patriarchate – became the rival and claimed suzerain, rather than the lieutenant and coadjutor, of the secular emperors.
Normans who had learnt the mercenary trade – and amphibious ops – in South Italy tipped the balance in the Norman invasion and conquest of England in 1066. And still more potent was the other weapon William deployed against Harold in that struggle: the backing of the pope. For any who have wondered why the Holy See, without bothering to get the English side of the story, supported William and made the conquest a crusade, Norwich, purely in passing, sets out the reason: the Normans in the South had become indispensable to the papacy and the maintenance of the Papal States, even if as allies they were as trustworthy as an adder.
The Normans in question were towering figures on the European stage, as a result. Mercenaries and free-booters, they made themselves dukes and counts. The sons and grandsons and nephews of an obscure Norman knight, Tancred of Hauteville, came to South Italy and recreated themselves. Robert ‘Guiscard’ – ‘the Guileful,’ ‘the Crafty’ – treated as an equal with kings, popes, emirs, and emperors. His wife Sichelgaita, a Lombard Valkyrie, was if anything more terrifying and remarkable. The Crusaders and heroes of chivalrous romance, Tancred and Bohemund, were sprigs of this astounding family. The Counts of Aquino, who would be forgotten but for their one unwarlike son, Thomas Aquinas, and his cousin Frederick Barbarossa, Stupor Mundi, the Astonishment of the World, were mere cadets of the Norman ascendancy, more unintended consequences of Norman aggression and greed.
But of course, the crowning achievement of the Normans in the Mediterranean was the creation of the Kingdom of Sicily under the great Roger 2d, nephew of the Guiscard: a kingdom composed of all of Southern Italy and the Island of Sicily, the superior at sea of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, the prop of the papacy, the equal of both Empires and all the caliphates.
A kingdom, also, of tolerance, a multi-cultural and open society under the rule of law, in which Greek and Latin Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived in peace and mutual tolerance, as equals. A place of civility and learning, of science and art, that astounded Cordova and shamed Constantinople. A beacon and example that stupefied and astounded the world far more than ever did the Emperor Frederick 2d, grandson of Barbarossa and Roger alike.
It lasted only sixty-four years.
The story of its rise and fall, and that of the Normans’s century-long path to power before the creation of that kingdom in 1130, is, as I have tried to suggest, perhaps the great story of the Middle Ages, and implicates every great event of the time from the Pope’s forcing an imperial penance in the snows of Canossa to the Norman Conquest of England to the decline of Byzantium to the creation of the Crusader kingdoms in Outremer. But even the best and most compelling of stories may be ill-told.
And here, I think, is where my elation is best grounded. Norwich writes with aplomb and cool discernment. He possesses a dry wit, a critical eye, and gifts both epigrammatic and aphoristic. His characters are drawn to riotous and vibrant life (Sichelgaita was the nearest ‘history has ever dared to produce of a Valkyrie’ Robert Guiscard flourished ‘by methods at once predatory and totally unscrupulous’ ‘[the Emperor’s] humility does not, however, seem to have inhibited him’ from plundering a Church shrine), against the riotous and vivid backdrop of their tumultuous times. His discernment and caution in the treatment of sources, and his gift for choosing the most plausible of conflicting chronicles, is superb.
Yet more than that: more than an eye for terrain and a sense for life as it is lived, more than an emotional understanding of his subjects and the gift to confer upon the reader that same understanding: there is this. Here, as is so often the case with an author’s first major books, Norwich is writing at the top of his bent, on a subject that engages all of him. The diplomat, the former naval rating (he refused a commission), the ęsthete, and the aristocrat are all at work here. The result is a work of high style and polish, deep sensibility, and profound learning, full of significance, crammed with irresistible incident and memorable prose.
Recommended:
Yes
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mshawpyle
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Member: Markham Shaw Pyle, JD
Location: Houston, Texas
Reviews written: 539
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About Me:
Historian, baseballing bon vivant, Boll Weevil, W&L man; and the Walter Mitty of field sports
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