The Kingdom in the Sun (31 page)

So, at least, runs the Archbishop's account in the earliest extant version of his work. Other, later manuscripts, however, include before the last two sentences a long and sinister interpolation, utterly different both in style and subject from Romuald's bucolic idyll. This tells the story of Roger's treatment of his admiral, Philip of Mahdia. It is not a pleasant episode, and it raises far more questions than it answers; but since it constitutes almost the only clue we have to the internal state of the realm in the twilight of the King's life, it is worth looking at in some detail. We must make of it what we can.

The story as it appears in this curious passage runs, very briefly, as fellows. George of Antioch had been succeeded as Admiral by a certain eunuch, Philip of Mahdia, who had risen through long service in the Curia to be one of Roger's ablest and most trusted ministers. In the summer of
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5 3
he was despatched with a fleet to Bone on the North African coast, whose ruler had appealed to Roger for aid against an Almohad invasion from the west. Philip captured the city without difficulty, treated it much as his predecessor would have done, and returned triumphantly to Palermo. There, after a hero's welcome, he suddenly found himself thrown into prison on charges of having secretly embraced Islam. Arraigned before the Curia, he initially protested his innocence but finally admitted his guilt. The King then made a tearful speech, pointing out that while he would willingly have pardoned the friend whom he loved any crime committed against his own person, this was an offence against God and could consequently not be forgiven; whereupon the 'counts, justiciars, barons and judges' pronounced sentence of death. Philip was tied to the hoofs of a wild horse and dragged to the palace square, where he was burnt alive.

The manifest improbability of this account, coupled with the fact of its being so obviously a later interpolation in Romuald's manuscript, might almost justify our dismissing it as a complete fabrication. Roger had grown up with Arabs; he spoke their language; he had trusted them, even more than most of his fellow-Normans, all his life. Many of the highest offices in the central government were Muslim-staffed. Both the army and the navy relied on Saracen strength. Commercial prosperity was assured by Arab merchants, treasury and mint were under the control of Arab administrators. Arabic was an official language of the state. Just as his father had turned his back on the First Crusade, so Roger had refrained from playing any active part in the Second. Was it conceivable that he should now publicly impeach his Admiral on religious grounds, opening the way to almost certain confessional strife from which his country might never recover?

Unfortunately, this strange tale cannot be ignored; for it appears, in a slightly different version, in two independent Arab sources— Ibn al-Athir, writing towards the close of the century, and Ibn Khaldun some two hundred years later. These two chroniclers both adduce a second explanation for Philip's fate—the clemency he is alleged to have shown to certain respected citizens of Bone whom he had allowed, with their families, to leave the city after its capture. This reason is plainly no more convincing than the first. Not only does it contradict the version in Romuald's history, which specifically states that Philip returned after his expedition
cum triumpho etgloria;
but it also suggests that he was punished for a policy which, as we have seen, was almost invariably followed in all Roger's North African conquests. Ibn al-Athir even mentions that the citizens concerned were 'virtuous and learned men', a fact which would make Roger's conduct even more inexplicable since we know from several writers, including Ibn al-Athir himself, that Arab intellectuals were his favourite companions.

If, then, we are to accept that the story has some basis of fact, we must look for some other explanation. It must be remembered that Philip was not simply a Muslim; if, as his name implies, he was of Greek origin— the fact that he was surnamed 'of Mahdia' is no more indicative of his race than were the words 'of Antioch' in the name of his predecessor—it follows that he was also an apostate; and the Sicilian Kingdom, for all its tolerance, had always discouraged apostasy. We know, for example, that members of Count Roger's Saracen regiments were forbidden to receive Christian baptism,
¹
and conversions in the other direction were even less popular. In isolation, such a conversion could hardly have been sufficient cause for the vicious treatment that Philip received; but it has been inferred that, in his last years, Roger may have fallen victim—like many other rulers before and since—to some form of religious persecution mania, which might have led him to take violent or unreasoning measures of this kind. The most thorough modern biography
²
suggests that he simply gave in to the Latin clergy, which is known at this time to have been working to diminish Greek influence in the Curia. But both these theories ignore the fact that nearly all the Arab writings—and there are many—which testify so warmly to the King's pro-Muslim sympathies date from after the incident. We need take only one example, the preface to Edrisi's
Book of Roger,
which bears an Arabic date corresponding to mid-January
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54
—a few months after Philip's death and only a few weeks before the King's. In this Roger is referred to as 'governing his people with equity and impartiality'; later Edrisi speaks of 'the beauty of his actions, the elevation of his sentiments, the depth of his insight, the sweetness of his character and the justice of his spirit'. Some degree of hyperbole must be permitted to an oriental, writing of his royal friend and patron; but it is hardly likely that a pious Muslim could bring himself to use such terms immediately after so atrocious an
auto da fe.

The conclusion seems inescapable. If Philip was indeed put to death for either of the reasons given, it can only have been at a time when the King was incapacitated. (The possibility of his absence we can discount. There would almost certainly be a record of it, for one thing; for another, those responsible would never have dared to

¹
The Normans in the South,
pp. 275-6.

²
Caspar,
Roger II und die Griindung der Normannisch-Sicilischen Monarchic.

execute such a sentence on Roger's chief minister without first obtaining the royal assent.) We know that two and a half years earlier Roger, while still only in middle age, had had his son crowned as co-ruler; we know too that within months of Philip's condemnation he was dead. Hugo Falcandus's reference to a ' premature senility' might be quoted in support of this theory; alternatively the King may simply have suffered a series of strokes or heart attacks (Ibn al-Athir's 'angina') which gossiping tongues—and none were more venomous than Hugo's—ascribed to his private excesses. There seems, in any event, to have been a waning of his physical and mental faculties, which may well in the end have rendered him incapable of attending to state affairs.

Once this theory is accepted, the tragedy of Philip of Mahdia becomes credible. There remains the problem of why the interpolator of Romuald's history should have taken such pains to involve Roger personally; but his story—which, it is worth noting, contains no suggestion of criticism—seems to date from the very end of the century
¹
at a time when, as we shall see, it would have been in the interests not only of the Church of Rome but even of the rulers of Sicily themselves to present the greatest of the Norman Kings rather as a stalwart defender of the Christian faith than as an example of enlightened tolerance; and the two Arab writers might well have echoed them.

Yet even Ibn al-Athir himself betrays a certain lack of conviction; for elsewhere in his history we find another passage in which Roger is portrayed in a very different light. After describing the several Arabic innovations which the King introduced into the Sicilian court ceremonial, he concludes: 'Roger treated the Muslims with honour and respect. He was at his ease with them and protected them always, even against the Franks. Therefore they loved him in return.' From an Arab historian, the King could have asked for no finer epitaph; and it is with these words that his case must ultimately rest.

King Roger was buried in Palermo Cathedral. For nine years already a great porphyry sarcophagus had awaited him in his own

¹
U. Epifanio, whose article (see bibliography) is still, after more than sixty years, the fullest and most detailed study of the affair, tentatively puts the interpolation some half a century later still.

foundation of Cefalù; but during those nine years many things had changed. Palermo had grown in importance as a metropolitan see; Cefalù was only a bishopric and, worse still, one that had been founded
by
the anti-Pope Anacletus. In the minds of many, and particularly to the Roman Curia, it continued to symbolise Roger's long defiance of papal claims and his determination to be master in his own house. In consequence it was still not recognised in Rome.
¹
For many years to come the canons of Cefalù would indignantly assert that Palermo had been chosen only as a temporary resting-place for the King; William, they claimed, had promised that his father's body would be delivered into their care as soon as the status of their cathedral had been properly regulated. But this promise, if indeed it was ever made, was certainly never kept; and the sarcophagus stood empty for sixty years after Roger's death before being itself transferred to Palermo, there in due course to receive the mortal remains of his illustrious grandson, the Emperor Frederick II.
²

Meanwhile a new tomb, also of porphyry, had been prepared in Palermo for the dead King.
³
The cathedral in which it was erected has been repeatedly—and disastrously—rebuilt over the centuries, but the tomb itself still occupies its original place in the south aisle, where it now stands surrounded by those of his daughter, son-in-law and grandson. Of the four, his is the least ornate, a simple, gabled structure whose only decoration is in the twin supports of white marble, each carved to represent a pair of kneeling youths on whose shoulders the sarcophagus rests, and in the lovely classicising canopy, sparkling with Cosmatesque mosaic, which probably dates from the following century. The tomb has been opened more than once, to reveal Roger's body still dressed in the royal mantle and dalmatic, on its head the tiara with pearl pendants such as we see in the mosaic portrait in the Martorana. It was the King's last gesture towards Byzantium, the Empire he hated but whose concept of monarchy he adopted for his own.

The monarchy: this above all was Roger's gift to Sicily. From his father he had inherited a county; to his son he bequeathed a kingdom

¹
Not until
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66 did Pope Alexander III authorise the formal consecration of Bishop Boso of Cefalù, and then only as a suffragan to the Archbishop of Messina.

²
See p. 390.
          
³
Plate
11.

that embraced not just the island itself and a largely desolate tract of Calabria, but the entire Italian peninsula south-east of a line drawn from the mouth of the Tronto to that of the Garigliano—all the land ever conquered by the Normans in the South. Across the sea it stretched to Malta and Gozo, and then beyond to the whole North African coast, with its hinterland, between Bone and Tripoli. On his sword were engraved the words
'Apulus et Calaber, Siculus mihi servit et Afer'
¹
.
It was no more than the literal truth.

But Roger's achievements are not to be measured in terms of territory alone. No one knew better than he that if Sicily were to survive as a European power it must develop into something more than a group of widely differing ethnic, linguistic and religious communities. In the prevailing atmosphere of prosperity and success, these communities had cooperated astonishingly well; but who could tell whether they would maintain their solidarity in a crisis? The Norman baronage had proved itself faithless; what of the rest ? If, for example, the island itself had to face a full-scale invasion by the Byzantines, would the Greek community stay loyal? If the Almohads, in the name of Islam, were to launch a counter-attack through North Africa and thence press northward to Sicily, could the Muslims of Syracuse, Agrigento and Catania be trusted to resist them ?