Roger II of Sicily
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Roger II (1093 – February 26, 1154) was King of Sicily, son of Roger I of Sicily and successor to his brother Simon. He began his rule as Count of Sicily in 1105, later became Duke of Apulia (1127), then King of Sicily (1130). It is Roger II's distinction to have united all the Norman conquests in Italy into one kingdom, and to have granted them a scientific, personal and centralized government.
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[edit] Background
- See also Normans in the Mediterranean
In the early decades of the 11th century, Norman adventurers came to southern Italy, initially to fight against the Saracens or the Byzantine Empire. These mercenaries not only fought the enemies of the Italian city-states, but in the following century they gradually became the rulers of the major polities south of the Rome.
At the time of the birth of his youngest son, in 1093, Roger I ruled the County of Sicily, his nephew, Roger Borsa, was the Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and a distant nephew, Richard II of Capua, was the Prince of Capua. When Roger I died in 1101 the throne was assumed by his young son, Simon of Hauteville, who himself died but four years later.
[edit] Reign
[edit] Rise to power in Sicily
On the death of his elder brother, Simon of Hauteville in 1105, Roger inherited the County of Sicily under the regency of his mother, Adelaide del Vasto. During this time the mother was assisted by such notables as Christodulus, the emir of Palermo.
In 1112, Roger attained his age of majority and began his personal rule. In 1117, his mother, who had married Baldwin I of Jerusalem, returned to Sicily, and Roger married his first wife, Elvira, daughter of Alfonso VI of Castile and his Moorish concubine or wife, Zaida.
In 1122, William II, the Duke of Apulia, son of Roger Borsa and grandson of Robert Guiscard, offered Roger Calabria and the halves of Messina and Palermo which were technically his. Thus, Roger received all of the island. Roger, in exchange, crossed the Straits of Messina to subjugate the duke's vassal Count Jordan of Ariano. He penetrated the Basilicata and took Montescaglioso.
[edit] Rise to power in the southern Italy
When William II of Apulia died childless in July of 1127, Roger claimed all Hauteville family possessions in the peninsula as well as the overlordship of the Principality of Capua, which had been nominally given to Apulia almost thirty years earlier. However, the union of Sicily and Apulia was resisted by Pope Honorius II and by the subjects of the duchy itself.
[edit] Royal investiture
At Capua in December, the pope preached a crusade against Roger, setting Robert II of Capua and Ranulf II of Alife (his own brother-in-law) against him. However this coalition failed, and in August 1128 Honorius invested Roger at Benevento as Duke of Apulia. The baronial resistance, which was backed by Naples, Bari, Salerno, and other cities whose aim was civic freedom, gave way. In September 1129 Roger was generally recognized as duke of Apulia by Sergius VII of Naples, Robert of Capua, and the rest. He began at once to enforce order in the duchy, where the ducal power had long been fading.
The death of Pope Honorius in February 1130 brought two claimants to the papal throne. Roger supported Antipope Anacletus II against Innocent II. The reward was a crown, and, on 27 September 1130, and Anacletus' papal bull made Roger king of Sicily. He was crowned in Palermo on the Christmas Day 1130.
[edit] Peninsular rebellions
This plunged Roger into a ten-year war. The famous Bernard of Clairvaux, Innocent's champion, built up a coalition against Antipope Anacletus and his "half-heathen king." He was joined by Louis VI of France, Henry I of England, and the Lothair III, Holy Roman Emperor. Meanwhile southern Italy revolted. In 1132, Roger sent Robert II of Capua and Ranulf II of Alife to Rome in a show of force in support of Anacletus. While they were away, Roger's half-sister Matilda, the wife of Ranulf, fled to Roger claiming abuse. Simultaneously, Roger annexed Ranulf's brother's County of Avellino. Ranulf demanded the restitution of both wife and countship. Both were denied, and Ranulf left Rome against orders, with Robert following.
First Roger dealt with a rebellion in Apulia, where he defeated and deposed Grimoald, Prince of Bari, replacing him with his second son Tancred. Meanwhile, Robert and Ranulf took papal Benevento. Roger went to meet them but was defeated at the Battle of Nocera on 25 July 1132. Roger retreated to Salerno.
The next year, Lothair III came down to Rome for his imperial coronation. The rebel leaders met with him there, but they were refused help because Lothair's force was too small.[1] With the emperor's departure, divisions in his opponents' ranks allowed Roger to reverse his fortunes. By July 1134, Roger's troops had forced Ranulf, Sergius, and the other ringleaders to submit, while the prince, Robert, was expelled from Capua with Roger installing his second son, Alfonso of Hauteville as Prince of Capua, and his eldest son Roger on the Apulian (1134)decal throne.
Meanwhile, Lothair's contemplated attack upon Roger had gained the backing of Pisa, Genoa, and the Byzantine emperor, each of whom feared the growth of a powerful Norman kingdom. A Pisan fleet led by the exiled prince of Capua laid anchor in Naples (1135). Ranulf joined him there, in Sergius' city. The old rebels were back together, encouraged by news coming from Sicily that Roger was fatally ill or even already dead. The important fortress of Aversa, among others, passed to the rebels, and only Capua resisted under the royal chancellor. On June 5, however, Roger disembarked in Salerno, much to the surprise of the whole mainland provinces. The royal army, split in several forces, easily conquered Aversa and even Alife, the base of the natural rebel leader, Ranulf. Most of the rebels took refuge in Naples, which was besieged in July, but despite the poor health conditions within the city, Roger was not able to take it, and returned to Messina late in the year.
[edit] Imperial invasion
In 1136, the long-awaited imperial army, led by Lothair and the duke of Bavaria, Henry the Proud, descended the peninsula to support the three rebels. Henry, Robert, and Ranulf took a large contingent of troops to besiege the peninsular capital of the kingdom, Salerno. Roger remained in Sicily, leaving its mainland garrisons helpless under the chancellor Robert of Selby, while even the Byzantine emperor John II Comnenus sent subsidies to Lothair. Salerno surrendered, and the large army of Germans and Normans marched to the very south of Apulia. There, in June 1137, Lothair besieged and took Bari. At San Severino, after the victorious campaign, he and the pope jointly invested Ranulf as duke of Apulia (August 1137), and the emperor then retired to Germany. Roger, freed from the utmost danger, immediately disembarked in Calabria, at Tropea, with 400 knights and other troops, probably mostly Muslims. After having been welcomed by the Salernitans, he recovered ground in Campania, sacking Pozzuoli, Alife, Capua, and Avellino. Sergius, terrified, was forced to acknowledge him as overlord of Naples and sway his allegiance to Anacletus: that moment marked the fall of an independent Neapolitan duchy, and thereafter the ancient city was fully integrated into the Norman realm.
Thence Roger moved to Benevento and northern Apulia, where Duke Ranulf, although steadily losing his bases of power, had some German troops plus some 1,500 knight from the cities of Melfi, Trani, Troia, and Bari, who were "ready to die instead to lead a miserable life." On 30 October 1137, at the Battle of Rignano (next to Monte Gargano), the younger Roger and his father, with Sergius of Naples, met the defensive army of Duke Ranulf. It was the greatest defeat of Roger II's career. His son fought with courage, and Sergius died honourably in battle, but Roger himself fled the field to Salerno. It capped the meteoric career of Ranulf: twice victor over Roger. Anacietus II died in January of 1138, but Innocent II refused to reconcile with the King.
In Spring 1138, the royal army invaded the Principality of Capua, with the precise intent of avoiding a pitched battle and of dispersing Ranulf's army with a series of marches along sharp terrain. While the count of Alife lacked decision, Roger, now supported by Benevento, destroyed all the rebels' castles in the region, capturing an immense booty. Ranulf himsefl, who had taken refuge in Troia, his capital, was killed by a malaric fever on 30 April 1139. Later, Roger exhumed him from the Troian cathedral in which he was buried and threw him in a ditch, only to later repent and rebury him decently.
At this time, Sergius being dead, Alfonso was elected in his place and together with his brother Roger, went off to conquer the Abruzzi.
[edit] Consolidation of kingship
After the death of Anacletus in January 1138, Roger had sought the confirmation of his title from Innocent. However, the pope wanted an independent Principality of Capua as a buffer state between the Kingdom of Sicily and the Papal States, something Roger would not accept.[2] In the summer of 1139, Innocent II invaded the kingdom with a large army, but was ambushed at Galluccio on (22 July 1139),[3] southeast of present-day Cassino, by Roger's son and was captured. Three days later, by the Treaty of Mignano, the pope proclaimed Roger II as rex Siciliae ducatus Apuliae et principatus Capuae. The boundaries of his regno were only later fixed by a truce with the pope in October 1144. These lands were for the next seven centuries to constitute the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily.
In 1139, Bari, where during the wars of the past year 50,000 inhabitants had remained unscathed behind the massive walls, decided to surrender: the excellentissimus princeps Jaquintus, who had led the rebellion of the city, was hanged together with many of his followers, but the city avoided a sack. His execution of the prince and his counsellors was perhaps the most violent act of Roger's life.
While his sons overcame pockets of resistance on the mainland, on 5 November 1139 Roger returned to Palermo to plan a great act of legislation: the Assizes of Ariano an attempt to establish his dominions in southern Italy as a coherent state. He returned to check up on his sons' progress in 1140 and then went to Ariano, a town central to the peninsular possessions (and a centre of rebellion under his predecessors). There he promulgated the great law regulating all Sicilian affairs. It invested the king and his bureaucracy with absolute powers and reduced the authority of the often rebellious vassals. While there, centralising his kingdom, Roger declared a new standard coinage, named after the duchy of Apulia: the ducat.
[edit] Later reign: the peaceful years
Roger had now become one of the greatest kings in Europe. At Palermo, Roger drew round him distinguished men of various races, such as the famous Arab geographer Idrisi and the Greek historian Nilus Doxopatrius. The king welcomed the learned, and he practised toleration towards the several creeds, races and languages of his realm. He was served by men of nationality as dissimilar as the Englishman Thomas Brun, a kaid of the Curia, and, in the fleet, first by Christodulus and then George of Antioch, whom he made in 1132 ammiratus ammiratorum or "Emir of Emirs," in effect prime vizier. This title gave way to the English word admiral.
Roger made Sicily the leading maritime power in the Mediterranean. A powerful fleet was built up under several admirals, or "emirs", of whom the greatest was George, formerly in the service of the Muslim prince of Mahdia. Mainly thanks to him, a series of conquests were made on the African coast (1135–1153). Tripoli was captured in 1146 and Cape Bona in 1148. These conquests were lost in the following reign and never formed an integral part of the kingdom.
The Second Crusade (1147–1148) offered Roger an opportunity to revive the attacks against the Byzantine Empire, the traditional Norman enemy to the East. Roger never went himself on an expedition against Byzantium, handing over the command to the skillful George. In 1147, George set sail from Otranto with seventy galleys to assault Corfu. According to Nicetas Choniates, the island capitulated thanks to George's bribes (and the tax burden of the imperial government), welcoming the Normans as their liberators. Leaving a garrison, George sailed on to the Peloponnesus. He sacked Athens and quickly moved on to the Ionian Islands. He ravaged the coast all along Euboea and the Gulf of Corinth and penetrated as far as Thebes, where he pillaged the silk factories and carried off the Jewish damask, brocade, and silk weavers and took them back to Palermo, where they formed the basis for the Sicilian silk industry. George capped the expedition with a sack of Corinth, in which the relics of Saint Theodore were stolen, and then returned to Sicily. In 1149, however, Corfu was retaken. George went on a punitive expedition against Constantinople, but couldn't land and instead defied the Byzantine emperor by firing arrows against the palace windows. Yet the attack on the empire had no enduring results.
The king died at Palermo on 26 February 1154, and was buried in the Cathedral of Palermo. He was succeeded by his fourth son William. Roger II's elaborate coronation cloak, later used by the Holy Roman Emperors, is now in the Imperial Treasury (Schatzkammer) in Vienna[1].
[edit] Family
Roger II's first marriage was to Elvira of Castile, a daughter of King Alfonso VI of Castile. When she died in 1135, rumors flew that Roger had died as well, as his grief had made him a recluse. Their sons were:
- Roger (died 12 May 1148), heir, Duke of Apulia (from 1135), possibly also Count of Lecce
- Tancred (died 1138), Prince of Bari (from 1135)
- Alfonso (died 1144), Prince of Capua (from 1135) and Duke of Naples
- William (died 7 May 1166), his successor, Duke of Apulia (from 1148)
- Henry, died in infancy
Roger II married secondly to Sibyl of Burgundy, daughter of Hugh II, Duke of Burgundy, but she died a year later in 1150. His third marriage was to Beatrix of Rethel, a grandniece of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem. Beatrix bore him a posthumous daughter, Constance of Sicily. In addition, Roger had several bastard children, one of whom was a daughter who married the great admiral Margaritus of Brindisi and another, Simon, who was Prince of Taranto.
[edit] Jolly Roger
In his book Pirates and The Lost Templar Fleet, David Hatcher Childress claims that the term Jolly Roger refers to King Roger, supposedly the first man to fly the flag, a view not accepted by most etymologists.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Matthew, Donald. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks), 1992
- Norwich, John Julius. The Normans in the South 1016-1130. Longmans: London, 1967.
- Norwich, John Julius. The Kingdom in the Sun 1130-1194. Longman: London, 1970.
- Pierre Aubé, Roger II de Sicilie (2001)
- Houben, Hubert (translated by Graham A. Loud and Diane Milburn). Roger II of Sicily: Ruler between East and West. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
| Preceded by: Simon |
Count of Sicily 1105–1130 |
Succeeded by: became King of Sicily |
| Preceded by: William II |
Duke of Apulia 1127–1130 |
|
| Preceded by: — |
King of Sicily 1130–1154 |
Succeeded by: William I |
| Preceded by: Bohemond II |
Prince of Taranto 1128–1132 |
Succeeded by: Tancred |
