caveat bullshit
this is a quasi-historical text that both documents and
justifies
the norman invasion of southern italy. unfortunately, as our sources
for this period are not very good, we have no option but to rely on
shoddy quasi-mythical histories and deductive logic to build an
understanding of these events.
malaterra begins by providing a rational explanation for the migration: some of the twelve sons of
tancred d'hauteville
looked around their father's realm and decided that it could not be
split up in a way that would provide enough land (and slaves, no doubt)
for all of them. they decided that it would be in the benefit of all of
them to look elsewhere for new land rather than to engage in conflicts
with each other. this explanation of the norman migration south is
certainly appealing in it's logic, as well as it's biblical simplicity,
but does it hold up to careful scrutiny?
malaterra's narrative is actually really not that far removed from
the contemporary explanation of the viking migrations and invasions as
being driven by a combination of population growth and climate change.
yet, why would they feel the need to go as far as italy? if they were
truly such powerful warriors, why not subdue the land around them and
build a great empire? the text provides an answer, actually: god led
them to apulia. yet, i think that modern scholarship requires a better
answer than that they were led by god. if we acknowledge the consistency
between malaterra's explanation and the contemporary scientific
explanation, we still haven't answered the question of "why did the
normans go to
italy?".
whatever the reasons for them leaving normandy were, they were
first accepted into the employ of the prince of capua (pandulf IV), who
paid them to attack the prince of salerno (guaimar IV)). in time, the
prince of salerno offered a higher wage and the norman mercenaries
instead attacked the prince of capua (in 1038).
so, the narrative actually breaks from the fictional background
fairly quickly - the normans came to italy not as conquerors looking for
land but as invited mercenaries in the employ of local aristocrats. the
wealthy italian (lombard in background) princes were probably looking
to build up their personal varangian guards to aid in defense and in
conquest. having viking mercenaries in one's army was fashionable
amongst the mediterranean despots of the period.
so, we can answer the question of "why
italy?" with some
certainty - because they were lured into a mercenary army by the promise
of a steady pay check. it should also be noted that norman mercenary
armies were already established in southern italy before any members of
the de hauteville family arrived. so much for divine guidance.
the empire, of course, was very sensitive to the existence of large
barbarian armies on it's peripheral. in general, it would prefer to
avoid that altogether. yet, if these barbarian armies must exist then
self-preservation demanded they be played off against each other. see,
because barbarians are barbarians, it follows that they are easy to
control through appealing to their barbaric nature. this is the
fundamental axiom of greek military strategy over two thousand years
worth of history. as such, the normans were convinced to attack the
saracens in sicily, under the command of the general maniaces.
the diversion was initially successful, but it very quickly
backfired. the normans did attack sicily, but they also attacked
byzantine italy almost immediately afterwards. malaterra justifies this
by arguing that the greek general refused to share the booty from the
raid, but this is blatant whitewashing that is not at all consistent
with byzantine strategy and makes almost no historical sense. rather,
the invasion was called off by maniaces halfway through the conquest.
the causes of the called-off invasion seem to be well understood and
have to do with byzantine politics; the normans seem to have plundered
italy simply because they were brought back there before they got the
chance to plunder sicily. in any case, the empire walked out of this
episode in barbarian management with no greater control of sicily and a
new barbarian headache in southern italy that had to be addressed
immediately. several attempts to expel the normans were met not just
with failure but with greater losses; the byzantines eventually had to
admit defeat, and it was with this defeat that italy was lost to
constantinople forever.
the way things worked at the time was that if you didn't want to
pledge allegiance to the emperor then you had to pledge allegiance to
the pope (or face genocide). so, successfully expelling the byzantines
meant inviting a papal invasion. while the normans, under humphrey, are
said to have defeated the invading germans, they were also coerced into
the roman church's hegemony (and out of constantinople's sphere) by the
granting of a fief. see, when you defeat the church in battle that means
that it must acknowledge your newfound right to be legally inferior to
it. nor is there any debate on the subject - unless, of course, you'd
like to pledge allegiance to the emperor. the normans responded to this
by expanding their rule in central italy.
while humphrey was conquering the center of the peninsula, robert
guiscard was conquering the south of it. when he shifts the narrative to
the first of the two main characters of the text, malaterra brings out a
truth that may have been lost up to that point - with all the conflict
occurring between princes and churches, the italian masses may very well
have met the normans as liberators (which is something they had no
intent of being). when they rounded up the tax collectors and the
wealthiest citizens for torture and plunder, they may very well have
been cheered on. in the long run, however, the italian normans proved to
be cruel and unpopular leaders that were constantly putting down
revolts.
so, a conflict appears to be brewing between humphrey and guiscard.
if one happened, the text is silent about it - guiscard is said to have
been elected leader after humphrey died of an illness. see the pages on
tancred d'hauteville and
robert guiscard. the second main character that appears is
roger of sicily,
initially in an antagonistic role against guiscard, who was probably
not actually his brother. malaterra spins a tale about roger being upset
that he wasn't being taken seriously, but this isn't worth
deconstructing. rather, questions about the nature of humphrey's death
are relevant in the context of roger's alliance with geoffrey in their
apparent resistance to his rule, as are questions about both the nature
of the succession and the extent of guiscard's functional rule. guiscard
put down several revolts of various character, often with the aid of
roger.
in any case, roger and guiscard then unite in an uneasy alliance to
finish the conquest of southern italy (apulia and calabria) from the
byzantines, which led to guiscard accepting the title of duke from the
pope. interestingly, sicily (then occupied by arabs) was in the area
that guiscard was made duke over. what that actually means is that
guiscard was given the pope's blessing to invade and conquer the island.
this allowed him to eventually (the chronology is disputed) appoint
roger as count of sicily.
so, we see that the conquests of these norman warlords consistently
brought regions that were then lost to the papal sphere back into it.
this would continue into the crusades. while the chroniclers want to
present these norman warlords as independent agents, they seem to have
been highly manipulated as mercenaries within a three-way (muslim,
papal, byzantine) struggle for control of the mediterranean and to have
ultimately largely been proxies of the pope. malaterra is careful to
point out that the justification for the invasion of sicily was
religious, but this is probably only a half-truth. on that note, the
high number of norman warriors that were involved in the crusades is
worth pointing out. were the crusades partially a pro-active way for the
pope to rid himself of these barbarians, while trying to reclaim lost
lands in the process?
leading up to the invasion, there was further conflict between
roger and robert. malaterra again spins a story that isn't worth
deconstructing, but the crux of the problem seemed to be about primacy
and roger seems to have been the more popular ruler, despite the
church's apparent preference for guiscard (at least at this point). an
agreement was reached that gave roger more control over calabria, which
gave him a safe base to leave his family and to attack sicily from. by
appointing roger count of sicily, however, guiscard may have actually
been trying to eliminate a challenger to his own power by sending him
overseas. this reading is complicated by the alliance between the two
men, which led to the need for roger to continually come back to the
mainland to aid robert in putting down revolts. further, robert seems to
have accompanied roger on some of the missions in sicily. due to the
inefficacy of his brother's rule, roger wasn't able to complete the
conquest of sicily until after his death in 1085.
guiscard even went so far as to launch a failed invasion of greece,
with the aim of seizing the imperial throne. guiscard had "betrothed"
his daughter to marry the son of the emperor but the emperor was deposed
before the marriage took place, thereby taking guiscard out of the line
of succession, which was no doubt the purpose of the whole arrangement.
so, again, personal ambition aligns with papal ambition. the story
states that guiscard was winning in greece (and that the war was lost by
his soon-to-be disowned son, bohemund) until he had to go back to italy
to save the pope from an attack by the german emperor, but the
causality in that story is no doubt simplified to present guiscard in a
heroic light. rather, guiscard probably abandoned a lesser battle over
the title of eastern emperor for a shot at the greater title of western
emperor. note that he also had to suppress a revolt by jordan of aversa,
who had aligned with the emperor. malaterra immediately follows this
with a story of revolt by roger's son, also named jordan, that seems
more like a biblical parable than real history. the moral of the story
is to obey your elders (or have your eyes gouged out with rusty spears).
were there really two jordans that revolted almost simultaneously or is
malaterra quietly suggesting that they're the same story? jordan did
not live long enough to really distinguish.
the text finishes with a further description of further squabbles
that don't strike me as all that important. if i revisit this in the
future, i'll update. at this moment, i'm actually not very
interested....
overall, this text functions as a church-sponsored founder myth for
the italo-norman kingdom that pulled the south of the peninsula firmly
into rome's permanent sphere (in inherited form) and lasted right up
until the unification of italy. the idea of a "hauteville family" is
probably an elaborate fiction. several dozen random, roving pirates
fighting for control and plunder were packaged to the citizenry as a
divinely inspired aristocracy fighting for it's inheritance to uphold
the honour of the church. as it is primarily papal propaganda designed
to uphold what would eventually become a feudal aristocracy, it can only
be read highly critically. these people were probably not religious at
all, unless it suited them politically. generally, however, it did suit
them to align with the roman church. that's the key idea to pull out of
it: there was a very strong alliance between norman pirates and the
roman church to forcefully eliminate arab and byzantine influence in
southern italy and realign the area into a papal vassal state.
full text:
http://www.medievalsicily.com/Docs/03_Norman_Conquest/Malaterra%20all%20text%20revised.pdf
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/DG/867.24.M3513/index.html
