A new pope had taken the seat of Saint Peter in Rome, a man who rapidly showed that he was not only interested in the situation in southern Italy, but intended to do something about it. The Normans’ political isolation began to be uncomfortable. The new pope had been chosen by Emperor Henry, the third pope he had selected in his reign. He had made a seemingly safe bet: Bruno, Bishop of Toul and his own second cousin. But this active and zealous bishop, who took office as Leo IX, was cut from a different cloth than that of his docile predecessors. To start with, he insisted that he assume office only after acclamation by the Roman clergy. This small act of independence (if not yet of defiance) was a subtle challenge to his cousin the emperor’s presumption in having named a pontiff single-handedly, a sign that this was a pope who intended to fight for the Church’s rights. Leo of course was neither in a position to challenge the powerful emperor directly, nor did he wish to: they agreed on the priority to be given to reform of the corrupt and discredited Church.
Both Leo and Henry had been strongly influenced by the reformist teachings of the Benedictine monks of Cluny, in France, who for over fifty years had argued the need to return to celibacy in the priesthood, to eliminate the sale of Church offices, and for other reforms designed to strengthen the Church’s moral standing as well as its autonomy. Leo in time made those reforms the centerpiece of his tenure, and his actions while in office paved the way for the later flowering of the reform movement. The emperor, on the other hand, sincere as he may have been in an abstract wish for reform, did have something to lose by its reality. In feudal Germany, a large measure of his power and influence came from the ability to appoint Church officials, even to sell them their offices. So for the new Pope Leo, anxious to begin reform, a direct assault on simony in Germany was not a sensible place to start. He had to look elsewhere.
Leo’s initial focus was on the situation of the Church in southern Italy, which was both near at hand and rife with abuses needing correction. In early 1050 he held a synod in Siponto,1 near the shrine of Saint Michael in Monte Gargano, an area in which Norman abuses had disrupted both the local Church properties and the pilgrimage traffic. In Siponto and at a subsequent synod at Salerno, Leo moved cautiously—being careful to respect the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople over the Greek rite churches in Apulia, as well as to recognize the peculiar status of the Lombard metropolitans. But he was determined to bring the Latin rite churches of the area back into Rome’s orbit, and for that reason he reviewed the election of certain bishops, insisted on payment of tithes to Rome, and in general sought to reestablish the Holy See’s authority in the region. He could not do so, however, without also showing himself to be the protector of local Church property, and in that connection he was obliged to hear first-hand of the Norman confiscations and pillage of the region’s monasteries and churches. There were ecclesiastical complaints against the Normans, as well: they had sold both Church offices and dignities, refused to pay tithes, and generally bucked the tide of reform. Leo was not yet ready to take on the Normans, limiting his intervention for the moment to internal Church affairs. Nonetheless, he let his frustration show in his correspondence with fellow rulers, in which he accused the Normans of impiety and pagan behavior.
After consultations over the winter with his cousin the emperor, Pope Leo returned to the south in the following summer. This time he intended to deal more directly with the problems caused by Normans, and indeed he had a new and pressing reason to do so. He had just become the lord and protector of the state of Benevento, itself under attack by Norman barons (including Guiscard’s father-in-law Girard of Buonalbergo), who had occupied substantial portions of its territory. The pope had been invited by the commune to be lord of Benevento after they had thrown out the feckless Lombard ruling family, which had passively overseen a disintegration of the state’s power. The commune knew only too well that their state badly needed a strong protector, one who could defend them against both the distant but angry Emperor Henry, and the nearby and predatory Normans to whom he had given such a free hand. The only alternative for the Beneventans was the protection of Constantinople, clearly a poor choice as its power in the region continued to wane. Leo was entirely willing to accept the rich prize, which the papacy had long claimed, even though it would require considerable effort to protect such a weak state. In July 1051, the pope entered his new domain to obtain its homage and to install his rector. He summoned Guaimar of Salerno and his vassal Drogo, Count of Apulia, to his court to recognize his new holding and responsibilities in the region
The pope’s immediate demands were that the Normans cease their depredations against Church property (now including all Benevento), respect the peace, and apply the reform measures. His broader aim, which was to maintain the existing political balance and reassert Rome’s authority in southern Italy, was unstated but equally clear, and equally antithetical to the Norman desire for continued expansion. However, Leo could only use persuasion to bring the Normans into line. He was, of course, supported by the authority of his position, but by no threat of force: Emperor Henry, potentially the sword of the Church, was all too clearly occupied with his problems in Germany, and not overly concerned over the Normans’ behavior in any event. Both sides recognized the conflict of their aims, but wanted to avoid a break. Leo reviewed for Guaimar and Drogo the Church’s complaints, and, in the end, obtained some satisfaction: they solemnly promised that they and their followers would respect papal and Church property in the future.
For the upstart Count Drogo, semi-legitimate leader of a new, contested, and disorganized frontier county, refusing such an appeal from the Holy Father in person was all but unthinkable. Like most of the Normans, Drogo was pious if not necessarily dutiful; his respect for the pope’s august office obliged that he at least attempt to honor his word. But his realism—another Norman trait—allowed him to qualify the extent of his obedience. In fact, he controlled the behavior of few of his nominal barons, who had spread their private wars throughout the province of Apulia and even, to the north, into lands belonging to the state of Benevento and the Lombard gastaldts of the Abruzzi region. It is scarcely surprising that few of them paid heed to what Drogo had promised the pope.
Within a very short time, petitions concerning new incidents of Norman aggression flowed in to the papal secretariat. The pope was furious, and complained to Prince Guaimar about the perfidy of his vassal and son-in-law. Guaimar, putting a good face on the circumstance, tried to explain how little control Drogo actually exercised over his barons, but was unable to appease the disappointed and angry pontiff.
Whether the situation would have escalated under Drogo’s diplomatic and cautious leadership is moot, for within a month he was dead, assassinated in his private chapel. Responsibility for the deed was unclear, as the assassins died in the ensuing fight, but the fact that a number of other prominent Normans were killed at the same time, in what appears to have been a concerted attempt at a general uprising, pointed the finger at the Byzantine authorities. If conspiracy it was, the lead had been taken by the newly appointed Byzantine governor—none other than the Normans’ erstwhile leader, Argyrus the son of Melo.
Argyrus, the first Italian to have been elevated to the rank of katapan, had developed a close relationship with Basileus Constantine during a long stay in the capital city. In the Byzantine court, he had argued against those who still hoped that the Normans could be managed, or their threat diverted, by the time-hallowed Byzantine tactics of co-optation and bribery. He had not, however, won that argument, and his initial instructions as katapan were to try to buy off the Normans by offering them lucrative service in the imperial armies in Asia. Argyrus’ efforts to that end evidently failed, and it seems indeed that he had pursued them only half-heartedly. Neither co-optation nor a popular uprising could, in his opinion, drive the Normans out of Byzantine Italy. He had become convinced that the Norman advance could only be stopped by a military alliance with the papacy. With the support of Constantine, Argyrus now proposed an alliance with Rome and—following the pope’s disappointment with broken Norman promises—found a ready ear.
The pope had good reason to be angry, since Drogo’s assassination had loosed the Norman barons on a new spate of aggressions, as each knight tried to take advantage of the situation to extend his holdings, or simply to raid his neighbors. Norman knights raided into Beneventan territories even while the pope was in residence, and complaints to Rome reached a new crescendo. The pope and his advisors, among them a rising young functionary called Hildebrand, had already come to the conclusion that the Normans had to be put in their place, and now agreed that a grand alliance including the Greeks was necessary for the purpose. In spite of the ecclesiastical differences between the two churches, the pope wanted to cooperate with Constantinople in protecting Christian interests in southern Italy, and was prepared to countenance a possible Byzantine resurgence in Italy as a cost of their aid in controlling the troublesome Normans. By the beginning of the year the alliance was beginning to take shape, as papal diplomacy, with Byzantine support, gathered promises of troops from most of the rulers of the south, and some from north of the Alps as well.
The lone regional holdout to this Papal-Byzantine alliance was Guaimar. The Prince of Salerno could scarcely abandon his Norman allies, with whom he had had a successful collaboration for over fifteen years—and who, incidentally, might not take a defection on his part passively. Nor could he acquiesce in the formation of a Rome-Constantinople axis that would surely, if it successfully put down the Normans, then turn on Salerno. Guaimar rejected the pope’s overtures, and his opposition proved fatal to the alliance. Neither Capua nor Benevento could provide the troops or the lines of communication necessary to attack the Normans, and by late spring Argyrus and the pope had to shelve their plans, at least for the moment. Guaimar, patron and protector of the Normans, had performed a last vital service. He had gained them a reprieve.
The Normans, under pressure of the impending expedition against them, had elected a new leader. The new count was Drogo’s brother Humphrey, but the election of a Hauteville had once again been strongly contested by the sons of Ami. Humphrey’s success probably owed more to the external threat, his familiarity with Drogo’s policies, his connection with Salerno (he had married Guaimar’s sister), and a lack of enemies, than to any particular qualities of brilliance or statesmanship. With his election, the sons of Tancred had succeeded in maintaining their leadership of the Normans in Apulia.
The title of count still gave its holder little real ability to govern effectively—real power in the Norman-held areas of the province remained too divided among the fractious and opportunistic barons. What the title of Count of Apulia did provide, however, was the potential of patronage, and the authority to raise Norman armies for the common defense. For the plain, blunt, and soldierly Humphrey, the latter power in particular would work to his great advantage over the coming years of challenges.
Almost immediately, a Norman expeditionary force was needed, although not to defend Apulia against a papal coalition. A more immediate problem had arisen. Less than a year after Drogo’s assassination, Prince Guaimar was in turn murdered. The loss of their patron, the man whom they almost universally respected and called their “father,” was a severe blow to the Normans. If a hostile leader emerged in Salerno, it would leave them perilously isolated both politically and militarily. They had to intervene.
Guaimar’s death had come at the hands of his own family, or more specifically four brothers-in-law. They had joined with the Amalfitans in a pro–Byzantine plot to overthrow Guaimar and his house, to make Amalfi independent again, and to install the eldest brother, the Count of Teano, on the princely seat. They were all but successful, assassinating Guaimar and capturing the major part of his family. But Guaimar’s brother Guy had been able to escape, and rode off to rally the Normans. He found Humphrey (who was his brother-in-law) already in the field with a small army. Humphrey moved rapidly, and within a week the leaders of thecoup found themselves besieged in the citadel of Salerno. The speed of the Normans’ counterattack had been such that they even succeeded in capturing some of the rebels’ family members, whom they used as bargaining chips to obtain the release of Guaimar’s son, Gisulf. The Normans would have preferred to see Guy assume the rule, as he was much more inclined to maintain the old alliance than young Gisulf, who was not known to be friendly. But when Guy deferred to his nephew as legal heir to the slain Guaimar—Lombard tradition was strongly in favor of patrilineal succession—the Normans reluctantly acquiesced. They dutifully did homage to Gisulf, but at the same time weakened him by seeing that Guy was made lord of Sorrento, virtually removing that town from Salerno’s control. Gisulf in turn confirmed them in such fiefdoms as they held in Salerno’s territory and thereby, at least in form, renewed Salernitan-Norman solidarity. But it would never be the same. The Normans, who had respected and honored Guaimar as their patron, distrusted Gisulf and had become strong enough to dominate the relationship.
With both the political and military circumstances thus turned decisively against them, the leaders of the coup had little choice but to yield their citadel stronghold. Gisulf and Guy, showing remarkable magnanimity for the times, considering in particular the brutal way in which their relative had been butchered in the prime of his life, agreed to spare the plotters’ lives. But Humphrey and the Normans, enraged by the murder of their patron and employing a Norman trait of self-serving lawyerly argumentation, claimed that they themselves had made no promises, and struck. They were vindictive in addition, killing not only the brothers but as many of their followers as there had been knife wounds in Guaimar’s body—thirty-six. Brutal tactics indeed, but useful in terms of cowing any remaining opposition, and in convincing their many opponents that they were ready to fight.
Fight, it appeared, they would have to do, for during the winter of 1052-3 the pope and his Byzantine allies had cobbled together a new coalition, preparing to come south and settle affairs with the Normans once and for all. Humphrey did not wait passively, but instead took the offensive against the Byzantines in both Apulia and Calabria. He defeated Argyrus’ force in an engagement near Taranto, while Robert Guiscard bested another Byzantine detachment near Crotone on the southern coast. While neither of these engagements was decisive, together they proved that the Normans were still capable of working together against their foes, and that they remained a formidable force on the field of battle. The Norman successes most probably occasioned the remarkable lack of initiative shown by the Byzantine armies in the coming campaign.
Pope Leo came south with a numerically superior but motley force. Emperor Henry had not, in spite of promises, contributed any fighting men to the expedition. In fact, it was only through the efforts of the papal chancellor, the warlike Frederick of Lorraine, that the pope had recruited any contingents at all from north of the Alps. That, however, was a satisfactory nucleus for an army: a detachment of some seven hundred Swabian infantry, huge warriors who fought in tight masses, using their two-handed swords with deadly effect. Around this German core, the pope had gathered as he proceeded south an array of allies from the Lombard and Italian states of the central and southern peninsula. Although numerous, these contingents fought largely under their individual banners and were, in the event, poorly coordinated and led.
The papal force did have a key advantage: it could count on the neutrality of Salerno, since the newly installed Prince Gisulf cautiously had decided to stay on the sidelines for the coming showdown. His excuse was his engagement in the continuing struggle with Amalfi, but more than a dash of anti–Norman opportunism can also be discerned. Be that as it may, Salernitan neutrality, a role that Guaimar had refused to play, protected the flank of the papal progress and allowed the army to move easily into Apulia. The pope, who had led armies in the field before, planed to link up with a promised Byzantine force somewhere near Siponto.
To face this threat, the Normans had rallied virtually every knight of theirs who could ride. Guiscard brought his men from their strongholds in Calabria, fresh from their victory at Crotone. Humphrey led the vanguard of knights from Apulia, which included even his rivals—so great was the threat to the Normans collectively—Pierre and Gauthier the sons of Ami. Richard of Aversa as well, recognizing that the Norman cause in southern Italy could well be decided by the outcome of the coming battle, hastened to put his knights under Humphrey’s overall command. The Norman leaders decided to move rapidly, in an effort to confront the hostile army before it could join up with the Byzantine one. In that they were successful, with the result that the Greek army was maneuvered into a position of passivity—some said treachery—and wound up playing no role in the battle.
Nonetheless, the Norman army that finally intercepted the papal army near Civitate was not in peak condition. The men were exhausted from weeks of forced marches in the summer heat. They were also hungry, because the hostile citizens of the area had hidden provisions or refused to provide them to their persecutors. The chroniclers tell us that the knights and soldiers, the evening before the battle, had to make do with eating grain fresh from the fields, dried before the fires to make it somewhat edible. They knew that, if obliged to fight, they had to win—any other conclusion would almost surely end the glorious freedom, and license to enrich themselves, from which they had profited over the past decade.
The day before the battle was occupied with parleys, initiated by the Normans. Perhaps they needed the rest; perhaps they sincerely wanted to avoid a pitched battle against a superior army led by the Vicar of Christ. Their efforts to explain their position and promise future loyalty and obedience however were derided by the hard-liners in the pope’s entourage. Of course, the Normans didn’t offer very much, either; they promised, for example, to do homage for the Beneventan lands they had seized—but not to return them. Nonetheless, their overtures were rejected in a manner that they considered offensive, while their warrior qualities were mocked by the cocky Swabians. The chroniclers tell us that the Normans felt that they had been given a virtual ultimatum: surrender and agree to give up their conquests, or be destroyed in battle. Never lacking in self-confidence, the Normans felt that there was still a better alternative. They drew up plans to fight early on the following morning.
Their attack came early, and was fiercely effective. It began, the pope’s apologists were later to claim, before the parleys were over. In view of the fact that the pope was playing for time in the hope that the Byzantine army would make its promised appearance, however, the papal complaints are unconvincing. Given the scope of the pope’s defeat, they sound even more like sour grapes. The battle of Civitate, contrary to most expectations, turned into a total victory for the Normans.
The key to the Norman victory was not their superiority as heavy cavalry—they were known to be almost unmatched in that element of warfare. Nor was it their ferocity or will to prevail, even though the chroniclers tell us of extraordinary feats by Norman heroes—such as the repeated charges by Humphrey’s knights against the Swabians’ unbreakable ringof steel, or Guiscard’s three returns to the melee after having horseskilled beneath him. Ultimately, the prize for valor should have gone tothe Swabians who fought to the last man, even after their lines had finally been broken. The main reason why the Normans finally won the day was, rather, because they could fight a battle of maneuver while maintaining good battlefield discipline. Guiscard’s decision to bring his horsemen from the left wing into the struggle at the center cracked the Swabian lines at a crucial moment. The Normans’ ability to break out of the melee six times, rally and charge again showed remarkable battlefield cohesion. Most importantly, Richard of Aversa’s routing of the Italian contingents in the early stages of the battle could easily have turned into a disorganized pursuit, but did not. The Norman knights, even if belatedly, regrouped and then rejoined the fiercely contested main battle just in time tomake the fatal difference. The Normans had earned their victory on the field.
As we have seen, victory was not immediately translated into a political triumph. Indeed, months later when Leo finally did submit to Norman demands and acknowledge their territorial holdings in southern Italy, he did so in an obscure and grudging manner. The Normans were recognized, but not invested, in their conquered territories. Of course, the pope had no actual right to dispose of Byzantine or Lombard lands in any event, other than through the hoary and somewhat suspect terms of the Donation of Constantine. He could scarcely enfeoff the Normans in their new conquests nor, for that matter, did he wish to. Emperor Henry had, six years earlier, relied on his right as King of the Italians and successor to the Lombards in all Italy to grant fiefs and titles to the Normans, but the pope apparently chose not even to confirm those in public. The reason was not hard to discern: Leo would not legitimize the Norman conquests any more than he absolutely had to. He wanted revenge, and until his death was actively engaged in efforts to set the stage for another assault on the upstarts who had defeated his army. Reinforcing the alliance with Byzantium became his first priority to that end.
Pope Leo’s political efforts, however, were to bear no more fruit than his military ones. Throughout his virtual captivity in Benevento, he maintained contact with the Byzantines in the hope of keeping the anti-Norman alliance alive. Constantine and his party, which included Argyrus, favored the alliance for strategic reasons. But the Basileus was ill and the alliance’s opponents were powerful, headed by Patriarch Cerularius, who not only opposed the policy of reconciliation, but the Latin Church in general. The doctrinal and theological differences between the two churches had indeed grown over the years and were deep-seated, but what Cerularius opposed above all was Rome’s assertion of papal supremacy. The Bishop of Rome was seen by the Patriarch as simply another bishop, perhaps the first among equals, but certainly not the head of a universal church.
Cerularius took the offensive with a long broadside in which he charged the pope with duplicity. The very Normans whom the pope was trying to drive out of Apulia were, he claimed, virtual agents of Rome in ecclesiastical terms, because they had forced the Greek parishes there to follow Latin practices such as the use of unleavened bread. In retaliation, he demanded that all Latin communities in Byzantine territory follow the Greek rite or be shut down. The pope and his counselors were all too ready to pick up this gauntlet; intemperate responses were considered and drafted. But in the end they were constrained by their need for the alliance, as well as by the arrival of conciliatory letters from Emperor Constantine and, surprisingly, Cerularius himself. A confrontation was avoided, temporarily.
Pope Leo then decided to send a high-ranking delegation to Constantinople in an effort to resolve both ecclesiastical and political issues, but he made a crucial error when he named emissaries chosen for their ability to stand up to the redoubtable Patriarch. The tragedy was that they did so all too well. The papal legates included his chancellor Frederick of Lorraine and Peter, Archbishop of Amalfi. Both had fought at Civitate, where to their previously held anti–Norman sentiments they appear to have had added resentment at what they considered to be an all but treacherous Greek performance in missing the battle. The third legate was the pope’s secretary, Bishop Humbert of Mourmoutiers, anti–Greek and hardheaded, who scarcely added the necessary balance to this crucial delegation. Anxious to put their case before the Basileus and avoid being undercut by Cerularius, they immediately got off to a bad start in Constantinople—storming out of their initial meeting with the Patriarch over alleged protocol slights. They then made the fatal mistake of releasing the text of the original, but never approved, papal response to Cerularius’ charges, which was both quarrelsome in the extreme and offensive to the Patriarch’s personal sense of dignity. From then on, their mission was scarcely redeemable, in spite of the efforts of the emperor’s party. Popular sentiment had been aroused by the legates’ arrogance, the Patriarch was able to expose them to ridicule, and the legates’ argumentation with the Greek bishops became increasingly intemperate and inflammatory.
Even when the legates learned of the death of Leo, which could have allowed them to bring their mission to an end inconclusively but honorably, they doggedly persisted. Finally, frustrated undoubtedly by Emperor Constantine’s unwillingness to openly take their side, as well as by the Patriarch’s delaying tactics, the legates lost their composure entirely. Clad in the full panoply of their offices, they interrupted the Eucharist service of Santa Sophia in July 1054 to deliver, on the High Altar, a bull of excommunication against dignitaries of the Greek Church, including, of course, Patriarch Cerularius.
The damage was done. Even though the bull, in addition to being tendentious and inaccurate, was without authority because there was no living pope in whose name it was issued, it caused a permanent break in the relations between the two Churches. Rather than obtain a rapprochement between the two capitals and two Churches, the ineptness of the papal legates, assisted indirectly by the equal obstinacy and fanaticism of Patriarch Cerularius, had created a schism of historic proportions.
For the Normans, the schism was the culmination of an amazing year. Their victory at Civitate, thirteen months earlier, had guaranteed military possession of their existing territorial gains. They consequently stood poised, with an enhanced reputation for invincibility, to successfully increase pressure on their neighbors. Pope Leo, their determined opponent, had been humiliated and then died. And now, as the result of the tragi-comic confrontation in Constantinople, they were forever relieved of the threat of a military alliance against them by the only two regional powers that had the ability to restrain them. Their opponent Argyrus had been disgraced by the failure of his policy of entente with Rome, while the incessant power struggles in Constantinople virtually ruled out any meaningful Byzantine intervention in Italy. The schism between the two Churches provided another benefit, moreover to the Normans, for it suddenly offered them the opportunity to transform themselves, in Rome’s eyes, from persecutors of the Church, to its champions in those areas of Italy still under the waning domination of Constantinople.
1. Siponto, settled since Roman times, was the main seaport of northern Apulia in the early Middle Ages, but had to be abandoned in the thirteenth century because of earthquakes, tectonic subsidence which created marshes, and the consequent spread of malaria. Only ruins and a cathedral remain.