The Kingdom in the Sun (22 page)

Innocent's long struggle with Anacletus had cost him dear; in those eight years of wandering he had suffered far more than his rival, comfortably entrenched in Rome. Even his allies had proved a mixed blessing. Lothair, once safely crowned, had shown him scant consideration, Henry the Proud still less. Bernard of Clairvaux had been loyal but, deliberately or not, had seemed bent on stealing his thunder at every opportunity. His final triumph had been made possible only by the death of Anacletus; and almost at once it had

¹
Quoted by Otto of Freising in
Gesta Friderici I Imperaioris,
I. Translated by C. C. Mierow.

been turned to dust by the rout at Galluccio. He had accepted this humiliation as gracefully as he could—even going so far as to ascribe it to some working of the divine providence for the restoration of peace—and he had made terms with the Sicilian King; but he had been ill repaid. Within a year Roger—emboldened by the years of schism when he had done what he liked and Anacletus had never dared to take issue with him—was acting more arrogantly than ever, creating new dioceses, appointing new bishops, barring the Pope's envoys from entering the Kingdom without his consent and even refusing to allow Latin churchmen in his dominions to obey papal summonses to Rome. Meanwhile his two sons were for ever nibbling away at the southern frontiers of the Papal State, their father never lifting a finger to stop them.

Yet even this was not all. At the very end of his life poor Innocent found himself faced with even more serious problems nearer home. For a century and longer, the inexorable movement towards republican self-government had been gathering momentum among the towns of Italy. In Rome itself successive Popes and the old aristocracy had done their best to save their city from the general contagion, and for a time they had managed to do so; but the recent schism had weakened their hold. Innocent in particular had never enjoyed general popularity; coming from Trastevere he had always been considered one degree less of a Roman than Anacletus, and he was known to be a good deal less generous. When, therefore, they learned that Innocent had made a separate peace with the enemy, the Romans seized the opportunity to denounce the temporal power of the Pope, revive the ancient Senate on the Capitol, and declare a Republic. Innocent resisted as best he could, but he was an old man—probably well over seventy—and the effort was too much for him. A few weeks later he was dead.

On the second day after his death there was held an election which, although somewhat hurried because of conditions in the capital, was nevertheless the first perfectly undisturbed papal election that Rome had seen for eighty-two years. Unfortunately the new Pope was almost as old as his predecessor and equally unable to cope with the problems he had inherited. Consecrated in the name of Celestine II, he was that same Guido of Castello who with St Bernard had pleaded Innocent's cause at Salerno six years before; unlike Bernard, however, he had not been particularly impressed by the King. The Treaty of Mignano had shocked and horrified him, and on his accession he refused to ratify it. Roger, in his eyes, would ever remain a usurper and a tyrant.

It was a foolish stand, and he lived—though only just—to regret it. Roger's chancellor and effective viceroy on the mainland was still that same Robert of Selby who had distinguished himself at Salerno during Lothair's siege. Since then his reputation had grown steadily, and in various directions. John of Salisbury, the English scholar and diplomat, writes of his compatriot that he was an able administrator and, although without any great learning, extremely shrewd, ready of speech beyond most of the provincials and in eloquence the equal of any, feared by all because of his influence with the Prince, and respected for the elegance of his life—this being the more remarkable in those regions since among the Lombards, who are known to be the most frugal, not to say miserly, of men, he spent prodigiously on sumptuous living and displayed the magnificence characteristic of his nation; for he was an Englishman.
¹

Misers, all too often, tend to associate extravagant living with slackness or indolence. It is unlikely, however, that the Lombards of South Italy ever nurtured so dangerous a delusion in their dealings with Robert of Selby. Almost as soon as the new Pope's decision was announced, the papal city of Benevento found itself under attack by a Sicilian force. The citizens, caught unawares, naturally protested that the privileges granted them in their royal charter were being infringed. Robert arrived in the King's name, strode into the palace and demanded to be shown the document in question. The Beneventans handed it to him. They never saw it again. Furious, they sent their archbishop to complain to the Pope; but scarcely was he outside the city gates than he was taken prisoner. As reports of these developments trickled back to Rome, the Pope saw that

¹
Policraticus,
VII, ch. 19. John had had personal and, one suspects, embarrassing experience of Robert's hospitality. In a letter written at about this time to the Abbot of La Celle, he ruefully relates how he was persuaded by the chancellor to drink with him 'to my own undoing and the detriment of my health'. (Letter 85.)

he had gone too far. Without any proper army of his own and beset by steadily increasing pressures from the Roman commune, he had no choice but to give in. Soon afterwards, swallowing his pride, he sent Censius Frangipani and Cardinal Octavian of S. Cecilia off to Palermo to discuss terms.

It would be nice to know more about Robert of Selby.
¹
The only other story we know about him concerns the efforts of three Campanian churchmen to secure the vacant bishopric of Avella. Each—once again according to John of Salisbury—secretly offered the Chancellor a large sum of money; Robert, apparently nothing loath, bargained hard until he had agreed with each in turn on a splendid price.

A
day was appointed for holding the election, solemnly and in due form. But when that day arrived and the archbishops, bishops and many venerable persons had assembled, the chancellor set forth the pretensions of the competitors, described all that had taken place and announced that he was now ready to proceed in accordance with the opinion of the bishops. They condemned all three simoniac competitors ; and a poor monk, ignorant of the whole affair, was canonically elected, confirmed and installed. The others were compelled to pay the amounts to which they had bound themselves, down to the very last farthing.
²

From both these stories it is clear that Robert's administrative methods were as unorthodox as his way of life. He emerges as a far more cheerful and extrovert character than his master, yet the two seem to have had much in common and it is easy to see why the King should have so admired and trusted him. For both, ends counted more than means. Those ends were above all law, order and tranquillity; the peace of the mainland kingdom during these years and the silence of the chroniclers are the best testimonials of how well, thanks largely to Robert of Selby, they were achieved.

The Pope's two representatives, trying to negotiate with Roger in Palermo, were in a weak enough position from the outset. Their

¹
His entry in the
Dictionary of National Biography
must be treated with caution; it is inaccurate in several important respects, particularly where the chronology is concerned.

2 Policraticus,
VII, 19.

embarrassment must have been complete when, one day in the middle of March
1144,
they arrived in the King's presence to be informed that Pope Celestine was dead and had already been succeeded by Cardinal Gerard of Bologna—henceforth to be known as Lucius II—a moderate man and, it appeared, one of Roger's personal friends.
¹
Since their own special powers had expired with Celestine's death, there was no option for them but to muster what dignity they could and to return to Rome; but they took back to Lucius a proposal from the King for an early meeting.

It was held the following June, at Ceprano; and it failed miserably. After a fortnight's abortive negotiations the two sides separated in an atmosphere of disillusion and bitterness. The friendship of which so much had been expected was over. It was the Pope's loss. Had he and his negotiators shown just a little more realism and flexibility, they might have secured a Norman alliance which would have been a match for the commune in Rome. Instead, by bringing upon themselves a new enemy, they were encouraging the old one to make ever more arrogant demands. The 'senators' now began to insist that the Pope surrender all his temporal rights both inside and outside the city and support himself, as the early fathers of the Church had done, on tithes and offerings. Meanwhile, instead of rallying to his assistance, the young Norman princes aided by Robert of Selby had renewed their forays and were penetrating ever deeper into the papal territories.

Within a matter of weeks after leaving Ceprano Lucius was forced

¹
There is something of a problem here. Romuald of Salerno tells us of the King's joy at hearing the news, because Lucius was his
computer et amicus.
If, as Chalandon and Bernhardi both maintain—though I can find no contemporary confirmation—this was the same Gerard who had been the pro-Innocentian Rector of Benevento during the schism and subsequently, with his papal predecessor, one of Innocent's delegates to the Salerno tribunal, this friendship would seem a little hard to explain. If we give the word
compater
its usual meaning of godfather, the problem becomes harder still. Mann suggests that the new Pope was in fact godfather to one of Roger's children, but this is equally improbable. Throughout the lifetime of Queen Elvira he seems to have been in Rome or acting as Legate in Germany. Elvira had died in
11
3 5 and the King was not to marry again till 1149; he is hardly likely to have asked a Prince of the Church to stand sponsor to one of his bastards. Conceivably they were fellow-godfathers at some baptism in Salerno, but whose ? Duke Roger of Apulia did not marry till 1140.

to sue for peace; and in October—though only after his son Alfonso had been killed in a skirmish—Roger reluctantly agreed to a seven-year truce. But it was too late. As
1144
drew to its close the situation in Rome reached flash-point; fighting between the republicans and the papalists broke out in many parts of the city. In January
1145
we find the Pope writing to Peter of Cluny of how he had been unable to ride from the Lateran to S. Saba on the Aventine for the ordination of the monastery's new abbot. Then, in early February, feeling his back to the wall, he decided to take the offensive. Assisted by his Frangipani allies—to whom he had made over the Circus Maximus as a fortress—he personally led an armed attack on the Capitol. It was a heroic action, but it ended in disaster. A stone flung by one of the defenders struck him on the head; mortally wounded, he was carried by the Frangipani to Gregory the Great's old monastery of St Andrew on the Caelian; and there, on
15
February, he died.

Fifteen years before, almost to the day, Pope Honorius II had breathed his last in that same monastery. His death and the events which followed it had given birth to the Kingdom of Sicily, but they had had dire consequences for Rome. Those consequences, it appeared, were not yet over.

Apart from his unwilling ratification of his sons' truce the previous October, Roger had made no effort to help his old friend—if such Pope Lucius really was—in his distress. At first sight this indifference seems to stand out in unedifying contrast to the attitude of previous Norman leaders—Robert Guiscard, to take but one example, whose memorable march on Rome with twenty thousand followers in 1084 had saved Pope Gregory VII from an equally critical situation, even if he had destroyed a good deal of the city in the process. The Guiscard, however, was answering a call to the aid of his rightful suzerain, from whom he had formally received all his honours and titles at Ceprano four years before. Roger had also gone, at his own request, to Ceprano in the sincere hope—and probably the confident expectation—of a similar investiture. He had asked no more than he had already been granted by Innocent, but he had been rebuffed. He had received nothing at the papal hands, and had done no homage in return. The Pope no longer had any claim on his loyalty.