The Age of Chivalry (8 page)

A
BOVE
A presentation is made to the
doge
of Venice in this 1534 painting by Paris Bordone (1495–1570)
.

Aristocratic factionalism, popular rebellions and the relationship between Italian and German culture all combined to ensure the long-term use of the terms “Guelph” and “Ghibelline.”
Welf,
the family name of Bavaria's dukes, and
Waiblingen,
the Staufer family's castle in Swabia, may have been used as rallying cries during the Battle of Weinsberg (1140) fought during the German civil war that broke out when these two great dynasties competed for the imperial title
.

The Italian campaigns of Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1152–90) a generation later saw the two terms crossing the Alps and assuming an Italianate form. Barbarossa was a Staufer and his followers, who embraced the cause of the empire, became known as the Ghibellini. Defenders of the Italian cities' independence adopted the term Guelph as a label describing an anti-Staufer, and hence anti-imperial, position. The papacy's association with the cities in opposing the Staufen meant that Guelph became a label denoting those who supported the papal cause in general. The words subsequently became part of the internal Italian political struggle and were used as party labels with different cities competing against each other in the late 12th and throughout the 13th century.

Geography and strategy, rather than consistent ideology, determined whether a city should be “Guelph” or “Ghibelline.” Either label could be used so long as it helped to define and defend a city's pursuit of its independence. A city in the north, where the empire was a real threat, tended to be Guelph. But a central Italian city threatened by an expansion of papal territorial power was more likely to call itself Ghibelline. Size as well as regional position determined affiliations. Florence was far enough from Rome to call itself Guelph, and the much smaller Siena—threatened by the expansion of its neighbor—was therefore Ghibelline.

The removal of the Staufer dynasty from the imperial throne in the mid-13th century ended one particular external threat, but Italy's Guelph-Ghibelline struggle continued. Different occupational groups, guilds and areas within the cities were now using the labels to describe and justify their factionalism, and these vicious conflicts supplemented the traditional intercity struggle. Florence was now riven between the two parties, and it was here that the Guelphs themselves split in reaction to the election in 1294 of Benedetto Caetani as Pope Boniface VIII. Black Guelphs still supported the papacy, but the White Guelphs, who included Dante Alighieri, opposed Boniface's particularly aggressive exposition of the papacy's temporal power. Dante was exiled when the Black Guelphs seized power in Florence in 1302, and his eventual disillusion with the entire political scene supplies the immediate background to his composition
The Divine Comedy
.

A map illustration of the town of Weinsberg in 1578
.

At the beginning of the 11th century Norman mercenaries had begun to reach the southern Italian mainland—a region where the Greek empire was facing rebellions from local Lombard leaders. Conflicts between Lombard princes, as well as the ultimately successful struggle to eject the Greeks from the south, gave the Norman knights their opportunity. In recognition of their military service they were granted fiefdoms that became the basis of their own independent power and led to the establishment of a Norman kingdom that included the island of Sicily as well as the southern Italian peninsula
.

Before the Norman intervention, Puglia and Calabria, located respectively at the “heel” and “toe” of the Italian peninsula, constituted a Byzantine province. They were separated, however, by the southern half of the independent Lombard principality of Salerno. To the north of these territories lay two other Lombard principalities, Benevento and Capua, as well as the duchy of Amalfi, an area along the western coast that was effectively independent despite owing allegiance to Byzantium. The eastern port of Bari was the Greek province's capital, and the rebellion that started here in 1016 was the first example of military action by a joint Lombard-Norman force. The Greeks retaliated by building the military fortress of Troia at the Apennine Pass in order to guard access to the Puglian plain. This fortification greatly alarmed the papacy which, as the representative of Latin Christianity, had its own cultural and religious reasons for wishing to expel the Greeks from Italy. The earliest Norman mercenaries to arrive in Italy may indeed have enjoyed some papal support as a result. Troia symbolized a resurgent Byzantium, and some Lombard princes had submitted to the Greeks following the counter-offensive. Pope Benedict therefore appealed to the German emperor to send an army to the south, and although the campaign of 1022 failed to take Troia, Henry II was able to reassert imperial authority over his Lombard vassals.

Subsequent military disputes between the Lombards gave employment to opportunistic Norman knights whose sole consistent aim was to prevent the dominance of any single Lombard prince. The year 1030 saw the creation of the first Norman principality in southern Italy when Sergius IV, duke of Naples and a nominal vassal of the Greeks, granted the county of Aversa as a fiefdom to his ally Ranulf Drengot. This concession was a tremendous coup for the Normans, and the county became a convenient rendezvous for the arriving mercenaries. A further honor awaited Ranulf in 1037 when the emperor Conrad II recognized his title and, consequently, the countship of Aversa was held directly from the emperor. In the following year Ranulf invaded Capua, and as a result his territory became part of the Capuan principality.

R
IGHT
A mosaic depicts the coronation of Roger II by Christ, in the church of St. Mary of the Admiral, commonly know as
“La Martonora,”
Palermo, Sicily. King of Sicily from 1130, he was the second son of Count Roger I of Sicily (1031–1101)
.

By this stage, however, another Norman clan, the Hauteville family, were having an impact on the south of Italy. Guaimar IV, ruler of Salerno, had employed some of its members in the campaign of 1038–40 waged by the Greek army and his own Lombard force against Arab-ruled Sicily, and William de Hauteville gained his nickname of “Iron Arm” during that struggle. On the mainland, however, it was the fight against the Greeks that mattered, and a Norman force gained a major victory over the Byzantine army at the Battle of Monte Maggiore, fought near Cannae on March 16, 1041. Guaimar remained a key Norman ally but the mercenaries were also now coalescing around William Iron Arm, and in September 1042 he was elected their leader. The deal that was subsequently struck suited all parties. William de Hauteville and his circle proclaimed Guaimar as “duke of Apulia and Calabria,” while they in turn received lands in the region surrounding Melfi that were divided into 12 baronies and held as fiefs.

The Hauteville brothers, William, Drogo and Humphrey, were therefore now territorial nobles rather than mere mercenaries. Two Norman dynasties had been established in the south, and the de Hautevilles, like the Drengots, became direct vassals of the Holy Roman Emperor. The brothers pursued the southern campaigns against Byzantium, and their victories in Calabria also empowered their half-brother, Robert “Guiscard” (“the resourceful”), who was destined to take his family's fortunes to new heights. The papacy, alarmed by the rise of Norman power, sponsored a coalition force that included equally disenchanted Lombard leaders, and it was this army that confronted the united Normans at Civitate on June 18, 1053. Robert Guiscard's strategic brilliance and personal bravery played a key role in a Norman victory, and papal realism dictated an eventual rapprochement. In 1057, on succeeding Humphrey as count of Apulia, Robert Guiscard abandoned his loyalty to the empire and became a vassal of the pope, who in return granted him the title of duke.

B
ELOW
This detail from the illuminated manuscript
Nuova Cronica
written by the Florentine author Giovanni Villani
(c.
1275–1348), depicts Pope Nicholas II investing Robert Guiscard as duke of Apulia and Calabria
.

Richard Drengot had succeeded to the countship of Aversa in 1049, and continued his relative's policy of aggression against neighboring Lombard territories. He conquered both Gaeta and Capua and then pushed at the Salerno principality's northern borders. As prince of Capua, Richard pursued alternately aggressive and peaceful policies in relation to the papacy whose lands he bordered to the north, but his ineffective successors became dependent on Hauteville patronage by the late 11th century. Benevento to the east of Capua succumbed to the Hautevilles by stages following the victory at Civitate. It then became a base for the clan's penetration of contiguous papal territories that continued until 1080, when the Hautevilles undertook to respect papal territory.

THE NORMANS IN SICILY

1016
Outbreak of a Lombard-Norman rebellion in Bari, capital of the Greek empire's province in southern Italy.

1030
The county of Aversa becomes the first Norman-held principality in southern Italy.

1041
A Norman army defeats the Byzantine force at the Battle of Monte Maggiore.

1061
Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger expel a Greek military expedition that had been besieging Melfi, Puglia.

1071
Bari, the last Western European outpost of Greek power, falls to the Normans.

1072
Palermo falls to Robert Guiscard, whose brother Roger is then granted the title “count of Sicily.”

1077
Robert Guiscard de Hauteville, duke of Apulia, conquers the Lombard principality of Salerno.