ITALY AND SICILY IN THE NINTH CENTURY
(827-924)
Invasion of Sicily by the Moors: the Western half of the island
conquered—Civil wars in Southern Italy—The Moors invade Italy—Pope
Leo’s victory at Ostia—Quarrels of the Eastern and Western
Churches—The False Decretals—Campaigns of the Emperor Lewis II.
against the Moors—Anarchy in Italy after his death—The Byzantines
reconquer Southern Italy—The Moors in Campania—Civil wars of Wido
and Berengar—King Arnulf’s invasion of Italy—Long period of anarchy
after his departure.
On the fortunes of the kingdom of Italy, that is, of the old Lombard
realm, which had now become a province of the empire of Charles the
Great, we have already had occasion to touch on more than one occasion.
But while northern Italy with its king established at Pavia, and central
Italy with its pontiff and its turbulent Roman mob, have from time to
time claimed our attention, we have had little necessity to mention the
southern third of the peninsula, or the great island which faces it
across the straits of Messina.
[Sidenote: State of Southern Italy.] In the ninth century the bulk of
southern Italy, all those valleys of the Apennines, which had in ancient
days bred the warlike Samnite race, was still in the hands of the dukes
of Benevento. We have mentioned that they had more than once been forced
to pay homage to Charles the Great, but since his day the empire had
left the duchy alone. Two dukes, Sico and Sicard, had held Benevento
during the reign of Lewis the Pious, and had to do with his son Lothair,
the sub-king of Lombardy. Luckily for them the heir of the empire was
more set on maintaining a hold north of the Alps than on completing the
Frankish supremacy in Italy.
But it was not the whole of south Italy that the Beneventan dukes ruled.
The East-Roman emperors had never lost hold of the ‘toe and heel’ of the
peninsula (if we may use the familiar phrase that describes so well the
shape of Italy). In Brindisi dwelt a _strategos_, whose authority
extended over the southern part of the ancient Apulia. In Reggio another
governor ruled the ancient land of Bruttium, now known by the name of
Calabria. Beyond the straits of Messina a third military ruler had the
hard task of preserving from the Saracen the half-lost ‘theme’ of
Sicily, where since 828 an unending struggle with the Moslem invader had
been raging.
Beside the Beneventan duchy and the Byzantine themes, there were yet
more states in south Italy. Naples preserved a precarious independence
under a series of hereditary consuls: it still paid a shadowy allegiance
to the Eastern Empire, as did also the neighbouring Amalfi and Gaëta,
which, like Naples, had never fallen into the hands of the Lombards. But
these cities were rather allies than subjects of the Byzantines, and
paid no obedience to the governors of the neighbouring themes.
The one important element in the politics of southern Italy during the
ninth century must be sought in the approaching peril of conquest by the
Saracen. At first it was only the Byzantine possessions that were
endangered, but very soon the whole of the Christian states were
involved in the same trouble. The storm-cloud from the south, which had
threatened Constantinople in 720 and Gaul in 735, had now shifted its
position. The new attack was in the centre, not on the eastern or the
western flank of the line of defence of Christendom. For twenty years
Italy was to be in deadly peril, and there appeared every prospect that
Naples and Benevento, if not Rome also, would share the fate that had
fallen on Carthage and Toledo a hundred and fifty years before.
The trouble began with the landing of a Mussulman army in Sicily during
the year 827. They had been called in by a a traitor named Euphemius, a
turmarch in the Sicilian theme, who rebelled against the emperor Michael
the Amorian. [Sidenote: Euphemius rebels in Sicily, 827.] Euphemius had
carried off a nun from a convent, and the emperor had ordered the
_strategos_ of Sicily to punish him by cutting off his nose. But the
soldier, instead of submitting, slew the governor, induced his troops to
rebel, and seized Syracuse. His rising was put down by a fleet sent from
Constantinople, but Euphemius himself escaped by sea, and took refuge
with Ziadet-Allah, one of the Aglabite monarchs who ruled in northern
Africa since that land had shaken off its allegiance to the Caliph at
Bagdad.
[Sidenote: Euphemius calls in the Moors.] The Moor consented to lend
Euphemius his aid, not in order to replace him on the Sicilian throne,
but in the hope of winning Sicily for Islam, and adding it to his own
dominions. He proclaimed the holy war, and named as general
Ased-ibn-Forat, an aged doctor of law, who was worshipped as a saint by
all Africa. The preaching of Ased gathered a multitude of fanatical
adventurers—Arabs, Berbers, and Moors—to join the regular troops whom
his master placed under his orders. Taking Euphemius with them, in the
hope that the Sicilians would rise in his behalf, the Saracens landed at
Mazara, on the south coast of the island early in June 827. The natives
execrated the traitor, and refused to join him, but when the _strategos_
Photinus led the army of Sicily against the invaders he was completely
defeated. The fanatical fury of the Mussulmans swept all before it; we
are told that the aged Ased himself charged in the front rank in spite
of his seventy years, and slew so many Christians that the clotted blood
glued his lance to his hand. The army of Sicily was almost exterminated,
and its commander fled to Calabria, and died there.
The Mussulmans then seized Girgenti and marched to besiege Syracuse. But
before its walls, while they camped in the marshes of the Anapo, they
were smitten by the same deadly marsh-fever which has struck down so
many other besiegers of that ancient city. Ased died of the pestilence,
and his army fled from their plague-stricken camp, and fell back on
Castrogiovanni (Enna), to which they laid siege. Here the traitor
Euphemius fell—as he well deserved—himself the victim of treachery. He
was tampering with the officers of the garrison, to induce them to
surrender the place, when two brothers, who pretended to listen to his
offer, enticed him to meet them under the walls, and promptly cut off
his head when he came to the secret interview. [Sidenote: The Moors
repelled from Syracuse.] The siege of Enna was soon afterwards raised by
a force sent from Constantinople, and the Mussulmans fell back on the
fort of Mineo, where they were beleaguered by the Byzantines.
But just as victory seemed about to crown the East-Roman’s banners, the
whole aspect of the war was suddenly changed by the arrival of two new
Saracen hosts. A force despatched by Ziadet-Allah to aid his first army
fell upon Palermo and took it. A second force, composed of Moors of
Spain, a band of exiles driven out of their own land by civil war,
landed on the south coast, relieved their besieged co-religionists at
Mineo, and defeated the _strategos_ of Sicily in the open field.
For some time the emperor Theophilus, who had just succeeded his father
Michael on the Byzantine throne, continued to send succour to Sicily.
But in 832 he became involved in a desperate war with the caliph
Motassem, which distracted all his attention to the East. This war in
Asia proved the ruin of Sicily. The African Moors kept pouring in fresh
fanatical hordes, and gradually subdued all the cities of the western
half of the island. [Sidenote: The Moors conquer East Sicily.] For a
moment it seemed likely that Sicily would be permanently divided between
Greek and African, just as it had been twelve hundred years before, in
the days of Dionysius and Hiero II. But at last the stubborn defence of
the Byzantines was broken down by two fatal blows, the fall of Messina
in 842, and that of Enna, the strongest post in the centre of the
island, seventeen years later, in 859. This drove the East Romans back
to the eastern coast, where they retained no more than the sea-girt city
of Syracuse and the strong towns about the roots of Mount Etna—Taormina,
Catania, and Rametta. The Moslems, masters of the bulk of the island,
were now at leisure to turn their arms farther afield, and to cross the
Straits of Messina to invade the mainland.
In south Italy all the elements of disaster were ready and prepared.
Sicard duke of Benevento, a ruffian and an oppressor, had been
assassinated by his outraged subjects in 839. The Beneventans then
proclaimed a certain count Radelchis as their prince. But the important
towns of Capua and Salerno adhered to Siconulf, the brother of the
deceased tyrant. A civil war broke out between these two pretenders,
which was destined to last, with many variations of fortune, for no less
than twelve years. In the second year of the struggle (840) Radelchis,
hard pressed by his rival, had the unhappy inspiration of asking aid
from the Moslems of Sicily. The chance was too good to be lost, and a
Moorish army was landed at Bari, where it was received by the partisans
of Radelchis, and allowed to take possession of the town. Then Siconulf,
as mad as his enemy, answered evil with evil by sending to Crete to call
in to his aid the Saracen pirates of Candia. [Sidenote: The Dukes of
Benevento call in the Moors, 840.] They came, and the same sight was
seen which occurred six hundred years later, when the rival emperors of
Constantinople called in the Turks. The auxiliaries of each prince
sacked the towns held by his rival, and generally ended by garrisoning
them, and holding them on their own account. Apulia and Lucania were
overrun by the Moors and Cretans, while, at the same moment, the
Sicilian Saracens crossed the straits—Messina had just fallen—and swept
all over the Byzantine possessions in Calabria. Between 843 and 851 the
whole of Italy, from Reggio to the gates of Rome, was overrun by the
Moslem marauders, and it seemed as if Christendom was to lose the
southern part of the peninsula. Half its towns, Bari, Taranto, Reggio,
Brindisi, even the castle of Misenum at the very gates of Naples, had
now become Saracen fortresses. In 846 a great fleet from Africa appeared
at Ostia, and the pirates overran the Roman Campagna, and even sacked
the rich churches of St. Paul outside the Walls and St. Peter on the
Vatican. But for the solid ramparts of Aurelian they would have entered
the eternal city itself, and the town of Romulus and Gregory might have
become a Moslem stronghold.
But already the man to whom, above all others, Italy was to owe her
salvation, had crossed the Alps and taken up his life’s task. Lewis, the
eldest son of the unwise emperor Lothair, was appointed king of Italy by
his father in 844, soon after the Partition of Verdun, and appeared in
the next year before Sergius II., to be solemnly crowned at Rome. The
Pope made the young Frankish prince swear to protect the Church and all
its privileges, but when once crowned Lewis made Sergius and all the
nobles of Rome do him homage, and when in 847 Sergius died, and Leo IV.
followed him, the imperial right of confirmation was duly acknowledged.
Lewis and Leo, who lived in concord and amity, were the first to
discomfit the Saracens, and give some hope of salvation to Italian
Christendom. In 849 the African and Sicilian Moslems sent a second and
larger expedition against Rome. [Sidenote: Pope Leo’s victory at Ostia,
849.] Pope Leo took the field himself with the forces of the Roman and
Latin counts and barons, while the fleets of Naples and Amalfi, under
the consul Caesarius, guarded the harbour of Ostia. When the infidels
appeared battle was joined at sea, but a tempest arose, and drove most
of the African fleet ashore. Caught between the Neapolitan ships and the
Pope’s army, the Moors were crushed: the few who escaped death by the
sea and the sword became the slaves of the Romans, and were set to
labour on the wall which Leo built to protect the Vatican and St.
Peter’s—the new quarter of Rome, which got from him the name of the
Leonine city. The great fresco of Raphael representing this victory has
made pope Leo’s triumph the one ninth century event in Italy which is
well remembered by the world.
[Sidenote: Lewis II. pacifies south Italy.] In the next year the emperor
Lewis compelled the rival Beneventan dukes to come to terms. He marched
into Samnium and threatened to attack Radelchis if he refused to make
peace with his enemy Siconulf. Under this pressure a partition of the
duchy was made: Radelchis kept the capital and the eastern half of the
principality: Siconulf became ‘prince of Salerno,’ and ruled the
Campanian and Lucanian half. The conclusion of peace was celebrated by
the massacre of the Saracen auxiliaries of Radelchis, whom the duke
quietly betrayed to the sword of Lewis, now that he had no further need
for their aid (851).
But though the civil war in south Italy was ended, the situation was
still perilous. The whole coast from Bari to Reggio was still in the
hands of the Moslems, who were coalescing into a single state under
Mofareg-ibn-Salem, the pirate-king who governed Bari. He had taken the
title of Sultan, and the majority of his countrymen had done homage to
him. For eighteen years (853-71) he was the terror of south Italy, and
might have founded a kingdom and a dynasty, if he had not been opposed
by a warrior as active and obstinate as himself in the person of the
emperor Lewis.
The young Frankish Caesar was already making his power felt in Italy as
neither his sire nor his grandsire had done. Unlike most of his race, he
concentrated his mind on one kingdom, and devoted himself to its
defence. It resulted that he was an excellent ruler for Italy, but that
he never gained such a footing beyond the Alps as he might have claimed
in virtue of being the eldest heir of Charles the Great. Though a
crowned emperor he never reigned at Aachen, or held a foot of land
outside the peninsula, except the single county of Provence. But in
Italy his power was very real. He dealt most firmly with the Papacy.
When Benedict III. and Anastasius contested the Papal throne in 855, the
emperor’s legate held a court of inquiry in the Lateran and adjudged the
former to be the true successor of St. Peter. Nicolas I., the next
pontiff, was nominated by Lewis in opposition to the majority of the
Roman clergy; when he ventured to oppose his creator he saw his city
occupied by a Lombard army, and soon had to make his peace.
Hadrian II. who followed Nicolas was no less content to keep on good
terms with the emperor, whom he praised as ‘the sovereign who wars not,
like other kings, against Christians, but only against the sons of
Belial, the enemies of the Christian faith; wherefore the hand of the
Apostolic See will always be strong on the side of this most pious
emperor, and the great Dispenser of battles, through the intercession of
the chief of the apostles, will ensure his triumph.’
[Sidenote: Quarrel of Benedict and Photius.] The success of Lewis in
keeping the Papacy in hand was all the more notable because the three
popes Benedict, Nicolas, and Hadrian were all men of mark, who left
their impress for ever on the history of the Roman See. It was Benedict
who began that quarrel with the patriarch Photius of Constantinople
which brought about the final schism between the Eastern and the Western
Churches. Starting with a mere dispute as to the validity of the
election of Photius, it was soon complicated by wrangles about the
supremacy of the Roman See over the Illyrian and Macedonian bishoprics,
a supremacy which had ceased to be real since Leo the Isaurian had
declared them to owe no obedience save to Constantinople.[63] Benedict
died in 858, but his successor Nicolas kept up the struggle with vigour,
styling Photius an intruder and usurper, because his predecessor had
never legally resigned the patriarchate, and finally declaring him
deposed from his metropolitan throne. That one patriarch should venture
to remove and excommunicate another without the aid of a general
council, and merely in virtue of his power as the successor of Peter,
appeared monstrous to the Byzantine clergy. They paid no attention to
the letters of Nicolas, and the emperor Michael the Drunkard threatened
to make his arm felt in Italy, and to reclaim by the sword the right of
the successor of Justinian over Rome. [Sidenote: Breach between Eastern
and Western Churches.] Nicolas replied by comparing the Byzantine ruler
to Sennacherib, and by taunting him with the loss of Sicily and Calabria
to the Saracens, which had deprived him of any opportunity of exercising
his power west of the Adriatic. After seven years of wrangling the
division between East and West was finally formulated by the Synod of
Constantinople (866), where the patriarch, the emperor, and a thousand
bishops and abbots drew up the eight articles which declared the Roman
Church to have departed from the orthodox faith and discipline. Six of
the articles only dealt with small ritual matters, such as the
observance of Lent and the shaving of the clergy. But the third, which
denounced the enforced celibacy of the priesthood as a snare of Satan,
and the seventh, which condemned the Roman doctrine as to the procession
of the Holy Ghost, were all-important. The Eastern Church now formally
stated that the Western Church, by declaring that the Holy Spirit
proceeded both from the Father and the Son, fell into ‘a heresy so awful
as to deserve a thousand anathemas.’
Footnote 63:
See page 284.
Photius was soon afterwards deposed, but his fall did not heal the
breach between the churches, for the Byzantine emperors and clergy all
adhered to the statements of doctrine contained in the decree of the
Synod of Constantinople. To this day they are held by the Eastern
Church.
Nicolas I. was not only the pontiff who precipitated the quarrel with
the Eastern Church; he will also be remembered as the protector of the
injured queen Teutberga, and the chastiser of the adulterous king
Lothair of Lorraine, whose fortunes we have related in another
chapter.[64] [Sidenote: The False Decretals.] But he has won his
greatest fame from being the first Pope who used the famous ‘Forged
Decretals.’ Up to his time the collection of the letters and edicts of
the bishops of Rome, which all the Church knew and used, extended no
further back than those of Siricius. (A.D. 384.) But there was brought
to Rome about the year 860 a collection of fifty-nine decretals, which
purported to be those of the Popes of the second and third centuries,
and thirty-nine more which were interpolated among the real documents
extending from Siricius down to Gregory II. (384-731.) There was also in
this precious collection the celebrated donation of Constantine and the
acts of several councils. This wonderful series of documents, it was
said, had been discovered in Spain by Riculf, archbishop of Mainz. It
was at once incorporated in the authentic series of Acts of Councils,
edited by the great Isidore of Seville, and the new as well as the old
documents were in future called by his name.
Footnote 64:
See page 428.
To any one with a competent knowledge of early church history, or with a
turn for textual criticism, the False Decretals would have betrayed
their character at once. But these accomplishments were rare in the
ninth century, and the few who could have exposed the new decretals were
precisely the persons most interested in proving them to be authentic.
For, as was natural considering their origin, they were full of
authoritative decisions on the points in which the ninth century clergy
were interested. What could be more delightful than to find St. Clement
or St. Felix giving just such decisions on the questions of church lands
or clerical celibacy as would have been given by the reigning pontiff?
To inquire whether the Church had any lands in the first century, or
whether the idea of clerical celibacy had then been broached, would have
been not only impious but unwise. [Sidenote: Influence of the False
Decretals.] So the False Decretals with all their anachronisms and
confusions of persons and impossibilities of style and form were
greedily swallowed by the Pope and the whole clerical body, and promptly
turned into weapons of war against the civil power, the Eastern church,
and any other enemy for whose discomfiture they were suited. It is
impossible not to suppose that Nicolas I. knew what he was doing in
accepting the Decretals: he had in his own hands the genuine decrees of
the Popes from 384, preserved with care and accuracy; how was it
possible that more should exist in a corner of Spain than in the papal
chancery? Would the most important title-deeds of the Roman See, which
proved that from the days of the apostles downward the Popes had
exercised the power of legislating for the whole Western Church, have
been suffered to pass into oblivion? On such points Nicolas must have
had his own views: but the documents were too tempting to be neglected,
and from henceforward they were freely used as a basis for the monstrous
claims of the mediæval papacy.
Who forged the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals we shall never know. They were
first heard of at Mainz, and it would seem that it was either at Mainz
or at Rheims that they were composed. Rome, though she used them, did
not have the shame of framing them. Indeed they were originally intended
to serve the ends of the local bishops rather than those of the Pope.
The first time that they were used in a case of importance was in 866.
Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, had deposed Rothad, bishop of Soissons,
for incompetence. Rothad appealed to Nicolas I., on the plea that
according to the Decretals the power of deposing a bishop lay with the
Pope alone, and not with the archbishop. Nicolas then restored the
bishop of Soissons to his see to the great wrath of Hincmar, who would
have repudiated the decretals but for the unfortunate fact that he
himself had used them in the previous year. He had to content himself
with the cautious saying that the documents were ‘a mousetrap for
archbishops’—_circumposita omnibus metropolitanis muscipula_—because
they threw all power into the hands of the Roman pontiff.
But we must return to the secular affairs of Italy. In 853 the emperor
Lewis made the first of his attempts to expel the Saracens from the
peninsula; it failed owing to the slackness or treachery of the duke of
Benevento, who bought a private peace for himself from the Sultan of
Bari, and rejoiced to see the worst of the Moslem raids turned off
against his neighbours of Salerno. Naples also long remembered the day
when Mofareg forced his way to its very gates, and sat in triumph on a
heap of corpses by the bank of the Sebeto, while his soldiery laid the
heads of their victims at his feet.
[Sidenote: Success of Lewis II. over the Moors, 867-875.] Some years
later Lewis began a second series of campaigns against the infidel. At
first he met with many checks, but in 867 he forced the dukes of
Benevento and Salerno to do him homage and to join his Lombards in the
field. He took one after another many of the towns of Apulia, and at
last in 868 laid siege to Bari itself. The leaguer lasted no less than
three years, but while it was in progress Lewis was clearing Lucania and
Calabria of the enemy. Yet as long as the sea was open Bari never failed
to obtain provisions and reinforcements, and Lewis was forced to find
some naval power to back him. He asked the aid of the emperor Basil the
Macedonian, who had just succeeded Michael the Drunkard on the Byzantine
throne. Accordingly the admiral Nicetas Oriphas swept the Adriatic with
a hundred ships and drove the Moslems out of its recesses. He then
blockaded Bari for a space, but soon quarrelled with Lewis and withdrew.
The Sultan, however, deprived of the command of the sea, had been driven
to extremity, and in February 871 the emperor succeeded—even without
Byzantine aid—in storming the city. The garrison was put to the sword,
all save the Sultan, whom duke Adelgis of Benevento had captured in the
citadel.
Lewis now turned to seize Taranto, the last Saracen stronghold in
Apulia, and spoke of completing his work by clearing Calabria and
attacking Sicily. But treachery frustrated this grand and salutary
scheme. [Sidenote: Lewis kidnapped by duke Adelgis.] While the emperor
was paying a visit to Benevento, in company with his wife and daughter,
the new duke Adelgis treacherously seized him and threw him into a
dungeon. The traitor is said to have been persuaded by his prisoner the
Sultan of Bari that the further success of Lewis would mean the
annexation of all Italy to the imperial domain and the extinction of all
the southern principalities of the peninsula.
But punishment was at hand. On the news of the fall of Bari the Aglabite
monarch in Africa had resolved that Italy should not be lost to Islam,
and had prepared a vast expedition against southern Christendom. Duke
Adelgis had only kept his suzerain forty days in bonds when he heard to
his dismay that 30,000 Moors under a general named Abdallah, who styled
himself the _Wali_ of Italy, had landed at Taranto. In terror at this
approaching storm the duke liberated his august prisoner, after making
him swear to bear no rancour for his captivity. It was felt that Lewis
alone could save Italy, and the armies of the Lombards would be needed
to drive out the African. Meanwhile the Wali Abdallah laid siege to
Salerno, which its duke Waifer defended with great courage.
The moment that he was released the emperor summoned the hosts of
northern Italy to Rome: they mustered in great strength, eager to avenge
Lewis on the treacherous duke, and pope Hadrian II. at once declared the
oath that had been sworn at Benevento null and void, because extorted by
force. [Sidenote: Lewis routs the Moors, 872.] But before punishing the
traitor, Lewis was magnanimous enough to resolve to drive away the Moors
who lay before Salerno. His vanguard under count Gunther defeated, near
Capua, the covering army with which the besiegers were protecting their
main operation. Then the emperor himself came down on the Moorish camp:
after a short struggle the invaders fled to their ships. A tempest swept
down on them ere they had well got out to sea, and the whole armament
was engulfed. (Aug. 872.)
It was now time to deal with the traitor duke of Benevento. In the
spring of 873 Lewis, supported by the solemn blessing of pope John
VIII., marched into the duchy, overran it, and forced his way to the
gates of the capital. But his successful campaign did not end, as might
have been expected, by the annexation of Adelgis’ dominions. At the
intercession of the Pope the duke was admitted to pardon, and on doing
homage and penance was reinvested with the sovereignty of Benevento.
Lewis had now leisure to undertake his great scheme for expelling the
Moors from Calabria and Sicily. [Sidenote: Death of Lewis, 875.] But to
the grief of all his subjects, and the eternal misfortune of Italy, he
died in 875. To crown the disaster he left no male heir, but only a
daughter, and the princess Hermengarde was not yet married to any
stalwart count who could have championed her claim to her father’s
realm.
Lewis was by far the best of the later Karlings. Just, pious, and
forgiving like his grandfather and namesake, he was no weakling as the
elder Lewis had been, but a mighty man of war from his youth up. If he
had succeeded his father Lothair in all his kingdoms, the fall of the
empire of the Franks would have been stayed for another generation. If
he had lived longer and left male issue, a strong and compact kingdom of
Italy would probably have come into being. But when they bore him to
rest in the old basilica of St. Ambrose at Milan the hope of a united
Italy was buried in his grave, and the ‘Age of Iron,’ as it was
afterwards styled, set in for all the provinces of the peninsula.
We have narrated in another chapter the troubles which were brought upon
Italy and all the other kingdoms of the Frankish empire by the
extinction of the eldest line of the descendants of Charles the Great
and the vacancy of the imperial throne.[65] Charles the Bald became the
nominal successor of Lewis II., but while he was absent in Neustria, the
Saracens recovering from their fearful defeat of 872 began once more to
infest Apulia and Campania. They thrice defeated Adelgis of Benevento in
the open field, and it was in vain that he and pope John joined to beg
Charles the Bald to return and deliver them.
Footnote 65:
See page 432-433.
Deliverance, however, came not from the West but from the East. While
the Frankish emperor failed to appear, Basil the Macedonian had resolved
to take up the task of driving the Moors from Italy. His armies crossed
the Ionian Sea, and seized Bari in 875. They met with unbroken success.
The Apulian towns opened their gates one after another in order to get
succour from the infidel. [Sidenote: The Byzantines conquer south Italy,
875-94.] Two splendid naval victories annihilated for a space the
piratical fleets of the African and Sicilian Moors. Their stronghold of
Taranto was stormed, and then, in three years, the great general
Nicephorus Phocas, grandfather of the emperor of the same name, overran
Calabria, and left not a single Saracen on the eastern side of Italy
(884-87). The Byzantines then went on to attack the duchy of Benevento.
They swept over it with ease, and forced duke Urso to fly into exile.
For four years East-Roman governors ruled at Benevento itself; but in
894 Wido king of Italy drove them out of that city, and reconstituted
the Beneventan state on a smaller scale. Its south-eastern half, the
provinces which got from the Greeks the names of the Basilicata and
Catapanata, remained permanently in the hands of the eastern emperor. It
is strange to find that while the Byzantines were faring so well in
Italy, their fate in Sicily had been disastrous, unless, indeed, it was
success in one quarter that led to the neglect of the other. In 877 a
great horde of African and Sicilian Moslems laid siege to Syracuse, the
main post of the East-Romans in the island. It was defended stubbornly
by two forgotten worthies, John the Patrician and Nicetas of Tarsus, and
held out for ten months. [Sidenote: Syracuse taken by the Moors, 877.]
By May 878 the besieged were reduced to feed on grass, nettles, and
unclean animals, and the fainting troops could no longer man the walls.
The Moors burst in, and massacred the patrician and the remains of the
gallant garrison. Nothing now remained to the empire in Sicily save a
few forts among the roots of Etna and the single town of Catania. These
were held throughout the war, and only fell in the beginning of the next
century.
While the Byzantines were maintaining their struggle in south Italy and
Sicily with the Aglabite monarchs of the Moors, Lombardy and Rome had
troubles of their own. Much vexed by Saracen inroads on Campania, pope
John VIII. summoned Charles the Bald to return to Italy. The king of
Neustria did for once appear to vindicate his imperial claims in 877.
But it was only to fly in haste, and to expire while crossing the pass
of Mont Cenis.
The title of emperor and the kingdom of Lombardy were both now vacant;
several princes stepped forward to claim them. The majority of the North
Italians, headed by the bishop of Milan, chose to rule them Carloman,
the eldest son of Lewis the German, though the Pope tried to support the
claims of count Boso, a Burgundian noble, who had just married the
princess Hermengarde, the heiress of the good emperor Lewis II. But
Carloman never was able to make good his rule over Lombardy; soon after
his election he lost his health, and fell into a lethargy, which obliged
him to abandon all State affairs. Yet till his death in 880 he held the
title of king of Italy.
Meanwhile the peninsula fared very ill without the hand of a ruler to
guide it. While the East-Roman armies were evicting the Moors from the
Adriatic shore, the expelled infidels kept throwing themselves upon
Latium and Campania. Aided by new swarms from Africa they infested the
regions about Naples, Capua, and Gaëta, till, in despair, the Neapolitan
republic made a private peace with them, and bought immunity from their
ravages by allowing its harbour to become a base of operations for the
plunder of the neighbouring lands. [Sidenote: The Moors in Campania.] A
veritable colony of Mohammedans was soon established on the banks of the
Garigliano, and from 882 till 916 the central Italian powers were quite
unable to drive them out. Their ravages extended far and wide into the
Samnite Apennines, and even as far as Tuscany. Yet, strangely enough,
the adventurers never succeeded in capturing Gaëta or Capua or any other
of the strong towns around them. They were purely predatory, and showed
no signs of settling down into an organised state.
In his despairing search for an emperor who should save Rome and Italy,
pope John finally crowned Charles the Fat, the most unpromising
candidate upon whom he could possibly have pitched. But the incapable
and unwieldy monarch soon returned to Germany, and even took with him
for northern wars the Lombard levies which John had fondly hoped to use
for the extirpation of the Campanian Moslems (881).
Next year John VIII. died. He was the last of those able pontiffs of the
ninth century who did their best to defend Italy from the infidel, and
to strengthen and extend the Papal power over the Frankish kings and the
Frankish church. After his decease the same blight which had already
fallen on the house of Charles the Great seemed to descend on the
bearers of the Roman keys. Three Popes died in eight years, and men of
mark ceased to appear on the papal throne. The last fifteen years of the
century saw the first of those scandalous prelates who were for a
century to be the disgrace of Christendom.
The inglorious reign of Charles the Fat was no less fatal to Italy than
to the rest of the Frankish realms. The Moors of Sicily and their
colonists on the Garigliano sent their expeditions farther and farther
afield; their vessels were seen as far north as Pisa and Genoa.
[Sidenote: The Moors of Fraxinet, 888-975.] Another band from Spain
descended on the Provençal coast at the same moment, and seized the
sea-girt fortress of Fraxinet, where they established a strong colony,
which lasted nearly a hundred years (888-975). The raids of the Moors of
Fraxinet reached far inland, in despite of the kings of Arles and Upper
Burgundy. We read, to our surprise, of incursions which devastated the
whole valley of the Rhone, and reached as far as Lausanne and St.
Maurice in Switzerland. On one occasion a band of Provençal Saracens and
a band of Magyars from the Danube met and fought at Orbe in the land of
Vaud. It seemed as if the enemies of Europe had met at her central
point, and that Christendom was doomed to succumb.
After the deposition of Charles the Fat no more Karlings of legitimate
blood survived. Italy, like the other Frankish realms, had to seek a new
royal house. Two princes courted the suffrages of the Lombard Diet and
the blessing of the Pope—Wido, duke of Spoleto, the most powerful and
the most turbulent of the nobles of central Italy, and Berengar,
margrave of the march of Friuli, the Italian borderland toward the Slavs
of Illyria. Both claimed Karling blood on the spindle side. Berengar was
the son of Gisela, a daughter of Lewis the Pious and the empress Judith;
Wido’s mother was a daughter of Lothair I. and a sister of the good
emperor Lewis II. At first there appeared some chance that the two
competitors might not come to blows, for Wido had the bold idea of
crossing the Alps to seize the Lotharingian dominions of his grandfather
Lothair, in the general break-up of the empire which followed the
deposition of Charles the Fat. He agreed to allow Berengar to be crowned
king of Italy if he himself was aided in his Transalpine schemes. The
margrave of Friuli, therefore, was duly elected by the Lombard Diet, and
anointed king by the archbishop of Milan, while duke Wido entered
Burgundy, and got himself crowned at Langres. [Sidenote: Wars of Wido
and Berengar.] But after a short struggle with Odo of France the
Spoletan prince abandoned his hopes beyond the Alps and fell back on
Italy. Then, disregarding the oaths he had sworn to Berengar, he
commenced to intrigue with the counts of central Italy, and soon laid
claim to the crown. There followed four years of bitter war between
Berengar and Wido, the former supported by Lombardy, the latter by
Tuscany and all central Italy and backed by the Pope. Pretending that
the archbishop of Milan ought not to have crowned Berengar, the
privilege belonging to the Papal See alone, Stephen V. anointed Wido,
and proclaimed him Emperor as well as King of Italy (891). The struggle
between the rival kings ended in the victory of Wido, who took Pavia,
drove Berengar back into his own duchy of Friuli, and ruled all the
Lombard realm for three years. He made pope Formosus crown his son
Lambert as co-regent emperor with him, and thought that his dynasty was
firmly established.
[Sidenote: Arnulf invades Italy, 894.] The humbled Berengar sent over
the Alps to ask aid from Arnulf, king of Germany. That prince had always
claimed the primacy among the various rulers who now shared the empire
of Charles the Great between them, and was only too glad of an
opportunity to interfere in Italy. He crossed the Alps in 894, was
joined by Berengar, and laid siege to Bergamo, the strong cliff-built
city which dominates the Lombard plains from the last spur of the Alps.
The Germans stormed the town, and Arnulf hung count Ambrosius, the
governor, in his armour before the gate, after massacring the whole
garrison. The terror of this deed cowed the partisans of Wido, and all
Italy north of the Po did homage to Arnulf. The Spoletan emperor retired
southward to prepare to defend the line of the Apennines. There he died,
leaving his claims to his son Lambert.
Next year Arnulf returned in force, passed triumphantly through Tuscany,
and though disease much thinned the ranks of his army, appeared before
the walls of Rome. Not Lambert of Spoleto, but his mother Engeltrud
defended the Eternal city. [Sidenote: Arnulf takes Rome, 895.]
Inspirited by her the Romans held out for some days, but when Arnulf had
stormed the ‘Leonine City,’ the new quarter beyond the Tiber, the
empress and her warriors fled, and the Pope opened the gates. Formosus,
who had always opposed the Spoletans, looked on Arnulf as a deliverer,
and crowned him emperor with joy; but the violence and rapine of the
conquering soldiery disgusted the populace of Rome, whose confidence had
not been won by Arnulf’s first act—the beheading of thirty citizens who
had favoured the cause of Wido and Lambert.
Attacked by fever and a paralytic stroke, Arnulf returned to Germany
without having conquered Lambert’s hereditary duchy in the Umbrian
Apennines. The moment he was gone all central Italy rose in favour of
the Spoletan. Pope Formosus, Arnulf’s chief supporter, died at this
moment, and the new pope, Stephen VI., a rabid supporter of the faction
of Lambert, violated his predecessor’s sepulchre, declared him an
antipope and usurper, and cast his corpse into the Tiber (896).
Arnulf, stricken down by disease, returned no more to Italy, and in his
absence Berengar of Friuli once more became master of Lombardy, while
Lambert of Spoleto was acknowledged in Rome, Tuscany, and Umbria.
[Sidenote: Berengar sole king of Italy, 900.] Fortunately for Italy,
Lambert died eighteen months later, killed by a fall from his horse, and
his mother Engeltrud sent to Berengar to recognise him as sole king,
making no claim in behalf of her young grandchild, the son of Lambert.
Arnulf died a year later, and thus in the last year of the century (900)
Berengar was left without competitors.
That his reign was not likely to be happy may be gathered from the
preceding pages. The Saracens of Campania were still in the field; a new
scourge, the Magyars from the Danube, appeared for the first time in
Italy in 899, and raided as far as Verona, showing by their brutal
cruelty that Christendom might have even worse foes than the Moslem.
Rome meanwhile was a prey to anarchy; six Popes died in four years, nor
was their loss much to be deplored. Boniface VII. had been twice deposed
from the priesthood for profligacy. For Stephen VI., who showed his
disposition by his horrid treatment of the corpse of Formosus, we need
not much grieve, when we read that his enemies caught him and strangled
him in prison. Of the other Popes, creatures of a few months’ reign, we
know so little that it is hard to take any interest in their fate. They
represented nothing more than parties among the citizens of Rome or the
barons of Latium.
So closed the ninth century, with prospects as black for Italy as for
the other kingdoms which a hundred years before had joined in saluting
Charles the Great as emperor. The only favourable point in the outlook
was the hope that a national Lombard kingship might be once more
restored in the person of Berengar.
It was the unfortunate connection between the Pope, the Italian crown,
and the imperial title that was still to be Berengar’s bane. He had
hardly reigned a year in peace (900) when Pope Benedict IV. and the
remains of the party of Lambert of Spoleto found a new competitor to pit
against him. This was Lewis, king of Provence (or Arles), the son of
king Boso and the Italian princess Hermengarde, and therefore the
grandson of the good emperor Lewis II. Lewis won several successes over
Berengar, was crowned king of Lombardy at Pavia, and then received the
imperial crown at Rome in February 901. But he could not permanently
hold his own. After a year’s fighting Berengar succeeded in chasing him
beyond the Alps. [Sidenote: Berengar conquers the Moors.] He returned in
905, again called in by the rebellious counts of central Italy, and once
more won some fleeting advantages over the native king of the land. But
as he lay in Verona he was suddenly surrounded by an army of Berengar’s
partisans; the citizens of the place threw open the gates at night, and
the young Provençal emperor fell into his rival’s hands. Berengar bade
his servants blind the captive, and sent him back in sorry plight to
abide in his kingdom by the Rhone. ‘And so at last he firmly held the
Italian crown, which had cost so many princes their lives.’ But it was
only a precarious empire over the Lombard plain that Berengar enjoyed.
The Pope and the counts of central Italy, even when they did not raise
up any rival against him, systematically set his commands at nought. The
imperial title he either did not covet or could not obtain from the
Pope, till in 915 John X. bought his support against the Saracens of the
Garigliano by conferring on him the long-withheld dignity. In the
following year Italy was happily relieved from that band of marauders.
The troops of Berengar, of the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento, and of
the Pope were all for once united in the holy war, and when united they
proved invincible. The forts of the Mussulmans were stormed, their
armies beaten in the field, and the whole colony finally rooted out.
But after this triumph Berengar was not fated to die in peace. In his
old age his enemies stirred up against him yet another king from beyond
the Alps, Rudolf II. of Upper Burgundy. Berengar was once more deserted
by many of his followers, and once more saw the greater part of Lombardy
overrun by a Transalpine army. [Sidenote: Death of Berengar, 924.] But
this time he was not destined to survive his troubles. While besieged in
Verona in the year 924, he was murdered by traitors, and lost his life,
as well as the royal and imperial crown, for which he had so often
contended.
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