LVI. CHAP. the wanton and sacrilegious cruelties that were perpetrated in the sack of Thessalonica, the second city of the empire. The former deplore the fate of those invincible but unsuspecting warriors who were destroyed by the arts of a vanquished foe. The latter applaud, in songs of triumph, the repeated victories of their countrymen on the sea of Marmora or Propontis, on the banks of the Strymon, and under the walls of Durazzo. A revolution which punished the crimes of Andronicus, had united against the Franks the zeal and courage of the successful insurgents: ten thousand were slain in battle, and Isaac Angelus, the new emperor, might indulge his vanity or vengeance in the treatment of four thousand captives. Such was the event of the last contest between the Greeks and Normans: before the expiration of twenty years, the rival nations were lost or degraded in foreign servitude: and the successors of Constantine did not long survive to insult the fall of the Sicilian monarchy. A. D. 1154. Feb. 26... William I. The sceptre of Roger successively devolved to his son the Bad, and grandson: they might be confounded under the name king of Sicily, of William; they are strongly discriminated by the epithets of the bad and the good: but these epithets, which appear A.D.1166. to describe the perfection of vice and virtue, cannot strictly May 7. be applied to either of the Norman princes. When he was roused to arms by danger and shame, the first William did not degenerate from the valour of his race; but his temper was slothful; his manners were dissolute; his passions headstrong and mischievous; and the monarch is responsible, not only for his personal vices, but for those of Majo, the great admiral, who abused the confidence, and conspired against the life, of his benefactor. From the Arabian conquest, Sicily had imbibed a deep tincture of Oriental manners; the despotism, the pomp, and even the haram, of a sultan; and a Christian people was oppressed and insulted by the ascendant of the eunuchs, who openly professed, or secretly che rished, the religion of Mahomet. An eloquent historian of comes a respectable contemporary As he survived the emperor and the empire, he is above flattery: but the fall of Constantinople exasperated his prejudices against the Latins. For the honour of learning I shall observe that Homer's great commentator, Eustathius archbishop of Thessalonica, refused to desert his flock. LVI. II. the Good, A. D. May 7.... 1189, Nov. 16. the times 126 has delineated the misfortunes of his country:127 CHAP. the ambition and fall of the ungrateful Majo; the revolt and punishment of his assassins; the imprisonment and deliverance of the king himself; the private feuds that arose from the public confusion; and the various forms of calamity and discord which afflicted Palermo, the island, and the continent, during the reign of William the first, and the minority of his son. The youth, innocence, and beauty of William William the second,128 endeared him to the nation: the factions were reconciled; the laws were revived; and from the manhood to the premature death of that amiable prince, Sicily enjoyed a short season of peace, justice, and happiness, whose value was enhanced by the remembrance of the past, and the dread of futurity. The legitimate male posterity of Tancred of Hauteville, was extinct in the person of the second William; but his aunt, the daughter of Roger, had married the most powerful prince of the age; and Henry the sixth, the son of Frederic Barbarossa, descended from the Alps, to claim the Imperial crown and the inheritance of his wife. Against the unanimous wish of a free people, this inheritance could only be acquired by arms; and I am pleased to transcribe the style and sense of the historian Falcandus, who writes at the moment and on the spot, with the feelings of a patriot and the prophetic eye of a statesman. "Constantia, the daughter of Sicily, nursed from her cradle 126 The Historia Sicula of Hugo Falcandus, which properly extends from 1154 to 1169, is inserted in the seventh volume of Muratori's Collection (tom. vii. p. 259...344.) and preceded by an eloquent preface or epistle (p. 251...258.) de Calamitatibus Siciliæ. Falcandus has been styled the Tacitus of Sicily; and, after a just, but immense, abatement, from the first to the twelfth century, from a senator to a monk, I would not strip him of his title: his narrative is rapid and perspicuous, his style bold and elegant, his observation keen: he had studied mankind, and feels like a man. I can only regret the narrow and barren field on which his labours have been cast. 127 The laborious Benedictines (l'Art de verifier les Dates, p. 896) are of opinion, that the true name of Falcandus, is Fulcandus, or Foucault. According to them, Hugues Foucault, a Frenchman by birth, and at length abbot of St. Denys, had followed into Sicily his patron Stephen de la Perche, uncle to the mother of William II. archbishop of Palermo, and great chancellor of the kingdom. Yet Falcandus has all the feelings of a Sicilian: and the title of Alumnus (which he bestows on himself), appears to indicate, that he was born, or at least educated, in the island. 128 Falcand. p. 303. Richard de St. Germano begins his history from the death and praises of William II. After some unmeaning epithets, he thus continues: legis et justitiæ cultis tempore suo vigebat in regno; suâ erat quilibet forte contentus; (were they mortals?) ubique pax, ubique securitas, nec latronum metuebat viator insidias, nec maris nauta offendicula piratarum (Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii, p. 969). LVI. Lamenta. historian “ CHAP. "in the pleasures and plenty, and educated in the arts and manners, of this fortunate isle, departed long since to en"rich the Barbarians with our treasures, and now returns tion of the "with her savage allies, to contaminate the beauties of her Falcandus. venerable parent. Already I behold the swarms of angry "Barbarians: our opulent cities, the places flourishing in a "long peace, are shaken with fear, desolated by slaughter, consumed by rapine, and polluted by intemperance and "lust. I see the massacre or captivity of our citizens, the "rapes of our virgins and matrons. 129 In this extremity (he "interrogates a friend) how must the Sicilians act? By the "unanimous election of a king of valour and experience, Sicily and Calabria might yet be preserved;130 for in the "levity of the Apulians, ever eager for new revolutions, I 66 can repose neither confidence nor hope.131 Should Cala"bria be lost, the lofty towers, the numerous youth, and the "naval strength, of Messina, 32 might guard the passage "against a foreign invader. If the savage Germans coalesce "with the pirates of Messina; if they destroy with fire the "fruitful region, so often wasted by the fires of mount "Ætna,133 what resource will be left for the interior parts of "the island, these noble cities which should never be vio"lated by the hostile footsteps of a Barbarian ?134 Catana has "again been overwhelmed by an earthquake: the ancient "virtue of Syracuse expires in poverty and solitude;135 but 129 Constantia, primis a cunabulis in deliciarum tuarum affluentiâ diutius educata, tuisque institutis, doctrinis et moribus informata, tandem opibus tuis Barbaros delatura discessit; et nunc cum ingentibus copiis revertitur, ut pulcherrima nutricis ornamenta barbaricâ fœditate contaminet . . . . . Intueri mihi jam videor turbulentas barbarorum acies . . . . . civitates opulentas et loca diuturnâ pace fiorentiâ, metû concutere, cæde vastare, rapinis atterrere, et fædare luxuriâ: hinc cives aut gladiis intercepti, aut servitute depressi, virg nes constupratæ, matronæ, &c. 130 Certe si regem non dubia virtutis elegerint, nec a Saracenis Christiani dissentiant, poterit rex creatus rebus licet quasi desperatis et perditis subvenire, et incursus hostium, si prudenter egerit, propulsare. 131 In Apulis, qui, semper novitate gaudentes, novarum rerum studiis aguntur, nihil arbitror spei aut fiducia reponendum. 132 Si civium tuorum virtutem et audaciam attendas, . . . . . murorum etiam ambitum densis turribus circumseptum. 133 Cum crudelitate piraticâ Theutonum confligat atrocitas, et inter ambustos lapides, et Ethnæ flagrantis incendia, &c. 134 Eam partem, quam nobilissimarum civitatum fulgor illustrat, quæ et toti regno singulari meruit privilegio præminere, nefarium esset . . . vel barbarorum ingressû pollui. I wish to transcribe his florid, but curious, description of the palace, city, and luxuriant plain of Palermo. 135 Vires non suppetunt, et conatus tuos tam inopia civium, quam paucitas bellatorum elidunt. LVI. "Palermo is still crowned with a diadem, and her triple CHAP. "walls inclose the active multitudes of Christians and Saracens. If the two nations, under one king, can unite for "their common safety, they may rush on the Barbarians "with invincible arms. But if the Saracens, fatigued by a "repetition of injuries, should now retire and rebel; if they "should occupy the castles of the mountains and sea-coast, "the unfortunate Christians, exposed to a double attack, and "placed as it were between the hammer and the anvil, must "resign themselves to hopeless and inevitable servitude."136 We must not forget, that a priest here prefers his country to his religion; and that the Moslems, whose alliance he seeks, were still numerous and powerful in the state of Sicily. of the A. D. 1194. The hopes, or at least the wishes, of Falcandus, were at Conquest first gratified by the free and unanimous election of Tancred, kingdom the grandson of the first king, whose birth was illegitimate, of Sicily by the embut whose civil and military virtues shone without a blemish. peror During four years, the term of his life and reign, he stood in Henry VI. arms on the farthest verge of the Apulian frontier, against the powers of Germany; and the restitution of a royal captive, of Constantia herself, without injury or ransom, may appear to surpass the most liberal measure of policy or reason. After his decease, the kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle; and Henry pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo. The political balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and if the pope and the free cities had consulted their obvious and real interest, they would have combined the powers of earth and heaven to prevent the dangerous union of the German empire with the kingdom of Sicily. But the subtle policy, for which the Vatican has so often been praised or arraigned, was on this occasion blind and inactive; and if it were true that Celestine 136 At vero, quia difficile est Christianos in tanto rerum turbine, sublato regis timore Saracenos non opprimere, si Saraceni injuriis fatigati ab eis cœpe. rint dissidere et castella forte maritima vel montanas munitiones occupaverint; ut hiac cum Theutonicis summâ virtute pugnandum illinc Saracenis crebris insultibus occurrendum, quid putas acturi sunt Siculi inter has depressi angustias, et velut inter malleum et incudem multo cum discrimine constituti? hoc utique agent quod poterunt, ut se Barbaris miserabili conditione dedentes, in eorum se conferant potestatem. O utinam plebis et procerum, Christianorum et Saracenorum vota conveniant; ut regem sibi concorditer eligentes, barbaros totis viribus, toto conanime, totisque desideriis proturbare contendant. The Normans and Sicilians appear to be confounded. LVI. CHAP. the third had kicked away the Imperial crown from the head of the prostrate Henry,137 such an act of impotent pride could serve only to cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy. The Genoese, who enjoyed a beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened to the promise of his boundless gratitude and speedy departure:138 their fleet commanded the streights of Messina, and opened the harbour of Palermo; and the first act of his government was to abolish the privileges, and to seize the property, of these imprudent allies. The last hope of Falcandus was defeated by the discord of the Christians and Mahometans: they fought in the capital; several thousand of the latter were slain; but their surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above thirty years the peace of the island. By the policy of Frederic the second, sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera in Apulia. In their wars against the Roman church, the emperor and his son Mainfroy were strengthened and disgraced by the service of the enemies of Christ; and this national colony maintained their religion and manners in the heart of Italy, till they were extirpated, at the end of the thirteenth century, by the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou.139 All the calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored, were surpassed by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He violated the royal sepulchres, and explored the secret treasures of the palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom: the pearls and jewels, however precious, might be easily removed; but one hundred and sixty horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily.40 The young 137 The testimony of an Englishman, of Roger de Hoveden (p. 689.) will lightly weigh against the silence of German and Italian history (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. x. p. 156). The priests and pilgrims, who returned from Rome, exalted, by every tale, the omnipotence of the holy father. 138 Ego enim in eo cum Teutonicis manere non debeo (Caffari, Annal. Genuenses, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 367, 368). 139 For the Saracens of Sicily and Nocera, see the Annals of Muratori (tom. x. p. 149. and A. D. 1223. 1247), Giannone (tom. ii. p. 385.) and of the originals, in Muratori's Collection, Richard de St. Germano (tom. vii. p. 996-) Matteo Spinelli de Giovenazzo (tom. vii. p. 1064.) Nicholas de Jamsilla (tom. x. p. 494) and Matteo Villani (tom. xiv. I. vii. p. 103). The last of these insinuates, that in reducing the Saracens of Nocera, Charles II. of Anjou employed rather artifice than violence. 140 Muratori quotes a passage from Arnold of Lubec (1. iv c. 20.) Reperit thesauros absconditos, et omuem lapidum pretiosorum et gemmarum gloriam, ita ut oneratis 160 somariis, gloriose ad terram suam redierit. Roger de Hoveden, who mentions the violation of the royal tomb and corpses, computes the spoil of Salerno at 200,000 ounces of gold (p.746). On these occasions, I am |