Pope+Antipope=?

Books read this week: The Normans in the South (John Julius Norwich) 8/10

I always enjoy Norwich's books; his history of Byzantium is superb, and his history of Venice is fascinating. I don't think there is a better work on the later middle ages in England than Shakespeare's Kings. So I was very happy when I picked up The Normans in the South in the Oxfam bookshop last week. This is Norwich's first book; it covers the history of the Normans in southern Italy from their arrival in 1016 until the establishment of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130. There is a second volume on the Kingdom of Sicily itself, but I haven't read that yet. I found this particularly interesting, as I have read (and enjoyed) Runciman's Sicilian Vespers, which details the end of the independent Kingdom of Sicily - so it was nice to find out how it began.

The most interesting thing about the progress of the Normans in Italy was how easy it was to take over a sizable chunk of the peninsula; initially invited as mercenaries, the Normans quickly seized land and began playing the (many) different sides involved against one another. They (almost accidentally) destroyed the last vestiges of Byzantine power in Italy, expelling the very last of the Romans from the country where their empire was born. The main thrust of the narrative focuses on the descendants of Tancred de Hauteville, a minor Norman baron whose enormous family (13 sons that we know of) rose to lead the entire Norman army in Italy. Two of them in particular, Robert Guiscard (the Crafty) and Roger displayed enormous cunning and skill and (especially in the case of the Guiscard) a certain amount of style. Norwich even says that when William the Conqueror would regularly ask himself "What would Guiscard do?". The contrast between the violent and repressive rule of the Conqueror in England and the more enlightened policy of the Guiscard is quite fascinating - as is the question: just why were the Normans so good at conquering things? They had no military innovations, and they were very prone to destructive infighting, and yet they repeatedly triumphed over larger, more established forces. Unfortunately, that's a question this book doesn't try to answer - they massive martial superiority of the Norman knights is taken for granted (although the Byzantine Emperor's Varangian Guard - comprised at this point almost entirely of exiled Englishmen - gave them a serious run for their money at Durazzo).

Norwich's prose is (as always) very free flowing and easy to read, shot through with a very dry wit: one particular passage, where he describes the bull issued by papal legates to the Patriarch of Constantinople (the document which officially began the schism between the Orthodox and Catholic churches) is a joy to read: the footnotes to the practices of the Orthodox church officially condemned in the bull run: Not true. Not true. Also not true. The exact opposite of the truth. Done by the early church. Also done by the Pope. A practice endorsed by scripture.

The sections on the papacy also make entertaining reading - whilst the papacy was not at it's lowest ebb (say hello to the "Papal pornocracy" of the 8th and 9th centuries and the reign of the first (Antipope) John XXIII - the Pirate Pope) the throne of St Peter was seesawing wildly between being a plaything of the Roman aristocracy and being held by humorless zealots so there were frequently multiple Popes (well, technically speaking there's only ever one Pope at a given time and a bunch of Antipopes but that does beg the question of what happens when you bring a Pope and an Antipope into contact. Presumably there's an annihilation reaction leading to the production of a bunch of high energy encyclicals.....). This of course makes Italian politics far more interesting. Although (and this was probably one of their strengths) the Normans never seem to have taken much interest in the pronouncements of the Pope: the Guiscard was excommunicated, and when he took no notice, excommunicated again (just in case he didn't notice the first time round). We're also introduced to the Pope Benedict IX, who became pontiff at the age of 12 and (after selling the papacy to his uncle) is generally believed to have poisoned at least 6 other popes. (Dude knew how to live). As the sections on the papacy are by far the most interesting (and funny) parts of the book, I'm very happy to see that Norwich's next project is a history of the Papacy.