Luscombe D., Riley-Smith J. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 4: c. 1024-c. 1198, Part 2
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Norman Sicily in the twelfth century 451
fact Capuans who had defected from the prince to support the king, and re-
mained loyal to him. The new administrative arrangements for the principality
were to be the model for the local administration of the mainland as a whole
after 1139.
17
Another significant aspect of the consolidation of royal authority was a
considerable reorganization of landholding in both Apulia and Capua, with
the replacement of rebel nobles by men loyal to the king. Both Counts Rainulf
of Caiazzo and Hugh of Boiano had to surrender part of their lands to secure
the king’s pardon in 1134, and the property confiscated from Count Hugh and
his comital title were subsequently granted to a royalist supporter, Robert son of
Richard. After 1139 the counties of Caiazzo and Ariano were suppressed and the
lands of the former counts remained in the king’s hands.
18
In other cases new
counts were appointed to replace those imprisoned or exiled, as occurred with
the counties of Boiano, Conversano, Manopello and (somewhat later) Andria.
Often these new incumbents were royal relatives, or came from the king’s
hereditary dominions of Calabria and Sicily. The county of Conversano was
given to the king’s brother-in-law Adam in 1135, and soon afterwards (probably
because of Adam’s death) to another brother-in-law Robert of Bassonville.
Similarly in 1140 the king gave the frontier county of Manopello to a Calabrian
baron Bohemond of Tarsia. Strategic centres were also retained in the king’s
hands, like S. Agata di Puglia, which was confiscated from the former ducal
constable Richard son of Hoel, in 1133, although in this case, since he was not in
open rebellion against the king, its lord was compensated with lands elsewhere.
This process continued for some years after 1140.Inafew cases exiled rebels
managed to make their peace with the king and had their lands and titles
restored, as was the case with Hugh of Boiano, who recovered his county in
the early 1140s. (His supplanter Robert son of Richard was transferred to the
county of Civitate).
19
The county of Andria was not revived until c. 1147, and
that of Loritello not until 1154, when it was given to Robert II of Bassonville,
to hold along with Conversano. Indeed c. 1142 anumber of new counties were
created, as part of a wholesale reorganization of the defence of the mainland
provinces. The role of the counts after 1140 was primarily military.
20
But the
changes among the nobility stemmed from the resistance to the king in the
mid-1130s.
17
Jamison (1913), especially pp. 279–80, 306–7,remains fundamental, despite some modifications by
more recent scholars such as Caravale (1966), especially pp. 222–39.Joscelin had been the prince’s
chamberlain before 1130.
18
The later Count Malgerius of Alife, found in the Catalogus Baronum, held only a part of the former
possessions of Count Rainulf, and was not in any direct sense his successor.
19
Count Hugh and his successors were henceforth known as counts of Molise, a title which was
derived from his family name. His restoration probably occurred before 1142,Jamison (1929), p. 53.
20
SeeCuozzo (1989), especially pp. 105–20.
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452 g. a. loud
From 1139 onwards the mainland provinces remained peaceful. But despite
the treaty of Mignano of 1139 relations with the papacy had not been entirely
settled. Not only had Innocent II’s recognition of Roger as king been extorted
from him by force majeure – something which some at least of the cardinals very
much resented – but a number of other problems remained outstanding, not
least the reorganization of the episcopal structure on the island of Sicily, sanc-
tioned by Anacletus but rendered abortive by his rival’s victory in the schism.
Above all, in the early 1140s King Roger’s sons extended the Sicilian frontier in
the Abruzzi region northwards into papal territory, and by 1144 had overrun the
whole area (known to contemporaries as Marsia) from the River Sangro north-
wards as far as Pescara. Not surprisingly relations with the papacy wereto remain
strained, if not entirely sundered, until a settlement was finally reached in 1156.
The expansion of the kingdom’s northern frontier was part of a generally ag-
gressive foreign policy pursued in the 1140s. The Muslim cities of Tripolitania
and Tunisia were already heavily dependent on Sicilian grain supplies; now
King Roger turned what was already a virtual protectorate into direct rule.
Sicilian expeditions captured Tripoli in 1146, and Mahdia, Sfax and Sousa in
1148, thus securing both sides of the central Mediterranean ‘narrows’, and be-
ing in a position to control or interdict the trade of the entire region. The
motives for this may well have been primarily economic, but the north African
conquests served also to protect the coast of Sicily from Islamic piracy and
to prevent outside subversion among the island’s still largely Muslim popu-
lation.
21
The motives for the attack launched against Byzantium in 1147 are
more difficult to discern. The Byzantine chronicler John Kinnamos implied
that it was the Emperor Manuel’s refusal during diplomatic negotiations in the
mid-1140storecognize Roger’s royal title that led to this attack.
22
The capture
of Corfu in 1147 provided the Sicilians with a base from which they could
launch an offensive against the European provinces of the empire along the
ViaEgnatia, as Robert Guiscard had done in the 1080s (and indeed he had
secured Corfu as the essential preliminary to his attack). But in addition it gave
the Sicilians control of both sides of the mouth of the Adriatic. This, com-
bined with their hold over the ‘narrows’, ensured them a potential stranglehold
over the trade of the north Italian maritime cities, and could hence discourage
these cities from providing naval aid to the German emperor, without which
any attack on the Sicilian kingdom would be much less likely to succeed.
23
21
Abulafia (1985)provides a most valuable discussion.
22
John Kinnamos, Deeds of John and Manuel Komnenus,p.75.
23
Admittedly the Venetians aided the Byzantine emperor against Sicily in 1148,probably precisely
because they wanted to break the Sicilian stranglehold on the mouth of the Adriatic. But they later
(in 1155–6) showed themselves equally hostile to the Byzantines’ attempt to control both sides of the
Adriatic coast, Abulafia (1984), p. 198.
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Norman Sicily in the twelfth century 453
Naval raids on the Byzantine empire proper, on Thebes, Corinth and even
into the Bosphoros, were perhaps primarily spoiling operations, intended
to discourage the enemy and throw him off balance by demonstrating the
power of the Sicilian fleet. It may be too that with the breakdown of diplo-
matic negotiations King Roger anticipated and wished to forestall a Byzantine
attack on Apulia, over which the Byzantines had never relinquished their
claims.
Such wide-ranging strategic considerations were undoubtedly important,
for though internally peaceful the kingdom of Sicily was still, in the last years
of King Roger’s reign, very much under threat from its external foes. While
Conrad III of Germany’s participation in the Second Crusade removed the
most significant of these threats for a time, the alliance against Roger concluded
between him and Manuel Komnenos in 1147 put the kingdom into a potentially
very fraught position, and the presence of Sicilian exiles such as Prince Robert
of Capua at Conrad’s court and Count Alexander of Gravina at Manuel’s
cannot have made the king any happier. Two important counter-measures
were undertaken. In 1150 the king met Pope Eugenius at Ceprano on the border
between the kingdom and the Papal States, and an accord was concluded which,
for a time at least, restored good relations between king and pope. Secondly,
at about the same time a register was prepared of the military strength of
the kingdom, in preparation for any potential invasion, and reflecting the
reorganization of fiefs and military obligations which had taken place in the
1140s. The main part of this register, covering Apulia and the principalities of
Salerno and Capua, survives today in the text known as the ‘Catalogue of the
Barons’.
24
aperiod of instability, 1154–1168
The reign of William I (1154–66) and the early years of that of his son, William
II (1166–89), were marked by internal instability and external threat. The most
detailed contemporary chronicle, the History of the so-called ‘Hugo Falcandus’,
ascribed the problems of these years largely to the incapacity, sloth and sus-
picion (seemingly verging on paranoia) of the king himself. Too idle to take
an active role in government, William I allowed himself to be manipulated
by his Svengali-like minister, Maio of Bari, and the revolts within the Regno
were,so‘Falcandus’ suggests, largely directed against Maio, until the latter
was murdered in November 1160. Thereafter it was as much fear of the king’s
vengeance as any other factor which prolonged the immediate domestic crisis
24
Catalogus Baronum.For its purpose, Jamison (1971), especially pp. 3–7. Whether Calabria and Sicily
were also covered is not certain.
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454 g. a. loud
for some months more.
25
William II’s minority was riven by factional dispute,
and similar dislike of another over-powerful chief minister, Stephen of Perche.
William I’s posthumous reputation was certainly poor, and even a more
balanced contemporary than the prejudiced ‘Falcandus’ described him on his
death as ‘hateful to his kingdom and more feared than loved, very active in
collecting money but not very generous in dispensing it’.
26
He was to go
down to posterity as ‘King William the Bad’, although this nickname was only
coined some centuries later. But one might suggest that many of the problems
affecting the kingdom of Sicily in these years were in fact a legacy from the
time of Roger II, and indeed the circumstances in which the kingdom was
created. King Roger left his successor serious and unresolved difficulties.
27
The
kingdom was faced with the hostility of both eastern and western empires,
and (once again) of the papacy; for the accord patched up with the latter had
not survived the coronation, without papal agreement, of William as king and
co-ruler at Easter 1151.Furthermore, the events of 1155–6 showed how fragile
the unity of the kingdom still was. The nobility of the frontier provinces – the
principality of Capua and the Abruzzi borderlands conquered in the 1140s–for
the most part rose in revolt. The towns of Apulia were also still restive under
royal control. The citizens of Bari, for example, demolished the hated royal
citadel there. And King Roger had also left the problem of the exiles, who
looked to the two empires, but especially to the western emperor Frederick
Barbarossa, to support their cause. According to ‘Falcandus’ King Roger had
‘made efforts to administer justice in its full rigour on the grounds that it was
particularly necessary for a newly established realm’.
28
But the harshness of his
rule, however necessary it may have been, led to a reaction after his death.
Rebellion on the mainland was sparked off by the march of Frederick
Barbarossa to Rome in the spring of 1155 for his imperial coronation, and
by the defection, at the same time, of the king’s cousin Robert, created count
of Loritello only a year earlier. Robert’s revolt was probably motivated by jeal-
ousy of the influence of Maio at the centre of government. If we are to believe
‘Falcandus’, the king was also very suspicious of his relatives and ready to believe
the worst about them.
29
A bungled effort to arrest the count at Capua (c.May
25
La Historia o Liber de regno Sicilie di Ugo Falcando. The author’s alleged name, ‘Hugo Falcandus’, in
fact stemmed from a misreading by a Renaissance editor, Jamison (1957), pp. 191–6. The unknown
author was, however, almost certainly a member of the royal court, although none of the attempts
to identify him have been convincing, Loud and Wiedemann (1998), pp. 28–42.
26
‘regno suo odibilis et plus formidini quam amari, in congreganda pecunia multum sollicitus, in
expedenda non adeo largus’, Romuald of Salerno, Chronicon sive Annales,p.253.
27
Enzensberger (1980), pp. 386–96; Loud (1999a).
28
‘postremo sic iustitie rigorem ut novo regno perneccessarium studuit exercere’, La Historia o Liber
de regno Sicilie,p.6 (English translation, Loud and Wiedemann (1998), p. 58).
29
La Historia o Liber de regno Sicilie,pp.12–13, Loud and Wiedemann (1998), pp. 64–5.
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Norman Sicily in the twelfth century 455
1155) was the last straw which drove him into rebellion. Certainly the arrest
soon afterwards of the master constable of Apulia, Count Simon of Policastro,
another cousin of the king, was to have grave consequences on the island of
Sicily.
However, the seriousness of the rebellions in 1155–6 was largely due to two
factors beyond the control of the Sicilian government: the presence in Apulia
from the autumn of 1155 of a powerful Byzantine expeditionary force, and the
king’s illness at the same period, which not only incapacitated him for some
months but also spread rumours of his death which encouraged rebellion on
the mainland, just as the illness of King Roger had done in 1134–5.After his
recovery, the king’s presence was still required for some time in Sicily owing
to the rebellion which had broken out in the south-east of the island. The
mainland revolt flourished in the king’s absence, and collapsed once he took
charge on the mainland.
Revolt in Sicily itself was a new development – and of the various prob-
lems which beset William I’s government this was the one for which the king
and his minister were largely to blame. The centre of the revolt was Butera,
which was the caput of the Sicilian lordship of the imprisoned Count Simon
of Policastro. The rebels professed themselves loyal to the king but opposed to
Maio, whom they alleged to be a traitor.
30
The government found it necessary
to release Count Simon and offer lenient terms to secure Butera’s surrender.
However, once the Sicilian rebellion was quashed, it was relatively easy to re-
store royal authority on the mainland, even though, while the king had been
detained in Sicily, the Byzantine troops and their local allies had taken over
most of the coastal towns of Apulia, and Prince Robert and his cousin Andrew
of Rupecanina had, with papal backing, recovered most of the principality of
Capua. However, a number of important towns, including Naples, Amalfi and
Salerno, remained loyal to the king – or had been sufficiently well garrisoned
to prevent their defection – and in others, notably Brindisi, royal troops held
out in the citadel even if the town had been captured or had revolted. Further-
more, just as in the 1130s, the king’s opponents were divided and pursued their
own ends rather than combining effectively against him. Barbarossa provided
little or no effective support and speedily withdrew to northern Italy after his
coronation. The Byzantines soon alienated Robert of Loritello and the other
rebel barons. When the royal army confronted the Byzantines outside Brindisi
in May 1156 the Apulian rebels abandoned the Greeks and fled. Outnumbered,
the Byzantines were then catastrophically defeated. The Capuan rebellion col-
lapsed without a battle, and the prince was captured and subequently blinded.
30
La Historia o Liber de regno Sicilie,pp.18–19, Loud and Wiedemann (1998), pp. 71–2.‘Falcandus’
alleged, with a wealth of circumstantial (but unlikely) detail, that Maio was plotting to murder the
king. His account should be treated with scepticism.
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456 g. a. loud
Pope Adrian IV, hitherto intransigent, abandoned the contest and came to an
agreement with the king at Benevento only three weeks after the latter’s victory
at Brindisi.
Most of the counts installed by King Roger remained loyal in 1155–6. Richard
of Andria was, for example, killed fighting the Byzantines in September 1155.
Only the counts of Loritello, Civitate, the Principato and Avellino seem to
have taken part in the revolt, and the count of Avellino was subsequently
pardoned for betraying the exiled prince of Capua to the king.
31
The speedy
victory achieved once the main royal field army arrived on the mainland was
a testimony to the basic strength of the regime. Furthermore the government
moved effectively to defuse the threat from its external foes. A peace had been
agreed with Venice during the first year of the new reign, and a treaty was
concluded with Genoa in 1156. The treaty of Benevento settled almost all the
issues which had hitherto prevented agreement with the papacy, including the
recognition of the quasi-legatine rights of the king on the island of Sicily and
his rule over the disputed Abruzzi borderlands. Early in 1158 peace was settled
with Byzantium too. The international situation of the kingdom of Sicily was
thus much more secure than it had been at King Roger’s death. However,
internal problems continued, despite the harsh repression which followed the
revolt in 1156 (including the wholesale and deliberate destruction of the rebel
city of Bari). In part this was the product of the continued pressure from those
exiled. Andrew of Rupecanina penetrated deep into the principality of Capua
in 1158, and both he and Robert of Loritello took advantage of the domestic
problems in Sicily to launch a further invasion in 1161.But the crisis of the
Sicilian monarchy in 1160–1 was fundamentally the product of factional dispute
in Sicily itself, centred around the royal court.
The exaggeration and slanders of ‘Falcandus’ (by far the most detailed source
for these events) must clearly be treated with caution, but none the less it seems
very clear that, as the chronicler alleged, the root of the trouble lay in the pre-
eminent position at court of Maio of Bari. That this was no mere invention of
‘Falcandus’ is shown by the treaty of Benevento, where Maio was described as
the king’s familiarissimus.
32
From early in 1158 onwards the two master captains
of Apulia and Terra di Lavoro (the royal governors on the mainland) were
his brother Stephen and his brother-in-law Simon the Seneschal (the latter
had been in office from the summer of 1156). Potential rivals like Simon of
Policastro and the chancellor Asclettin had been disgraced and imprisoned.
Furthermore, Maio’s dominance represented the triumph of the bureaucrats
of the royal administration, whose influence as a group entirely outweighed
31
La Historia o Liber de regno Sicilie,p.22, Loud and Wiedemann (1998), pp. 74–5.
32
William I of Sicily, Guillelmi I regis diplomata,p.34 no. 12. Loud and Wiedemann (1998), p. 249.
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Norman Sicily in the twelfth century 457
that of the nobility and was correspondingly resented. The nobles were also
threatened by the suspicions which King William exercised towards those
related to him, several of whom, like his illegitimate half-brother Simon and
his nephew Tancred, had also been imprisoned.
In November 1160 Maio was murdered by a group of conspirators headed by
aSicilian noble, and erstwhile prot
´
eg
´
eofhis, Matthew Bonellus. So unpopular
was he that the king did not dare to revenge himself on the murderers, although
their fears that he would do so when the time was more favourable played their
part in the attempted coup which followed in March 1161.
33
The prisoners in the
dungeons of the royal palace, headed by the king’s relatives Simon and Tancred,
escaped, took over the palace and arrested the king, intending to replace him
by his eldest son Roger, a child of perhaps twelve. They were, however, too
few to resist the populace of Palermo who forced them to release the king;
and their fellow-conspirators from eastern Sicily never arrived in the capital to
reinforce them. The coup was speedily suppressed, and this time Butera, once
again the centre of the Sicilian rebellion, was destroyed. The leaders were exiled
or executed, and the king then speedily suppressed the revolt on the mainland,
once again driving out Robert of Loritello and his associates.
None the less, even though the attempted coup of 1161 quickly collapsed
and the exiles’ invasion of the mainland was defeated without serious fighting,
royal rule had been gravely threatened by these events. Not only had the king
himself been in imminent danger of assassination (and his son Roger had been
killed by a stray arrow during the fighting in Palermo), but his over-reliance
on Maio, and the diversion of patronage to Maio’s family and associates, had
alienated a substantial section of the nobility, including a number of counts
who had remained loyal during the earlier revolt of 1155–6.Furthermore, the
domestic problems of the Regno made it impossible to protect the Sicilians’
North African colonies against the Almohads of Morocco, who reconquered
Tripoli for Islam in 1158 and Mahdia in 1160.
34
During the disturbances of
1161 relations between Christians and Muslims on the island of Sicily had also
deteriorated, and both the Christians of Palermo and settlers from northern
Italy in the east of the island had taken advantage of the temporary slackening
of central authority to massacre their Muslim neighbours. Nor did the defeat
of the rebels necessarily ensure the safety of the kingdom. The German empire
remained hostile, and during 1163–4 Barbarossa was negotiating with both
Pisa and Genoa to secure naval aid for an attack on the kingdom of Sicily. The
northern border of the kingdom remained vulnerable to attacks by the exiles.
In October 1163 Pope Alexander III asked his ally the French king to warn
William I to be on his guard, ‘since his enemies are preparing themselves and
33
Romuald of Salerno, Chronicon sive Annales,p.246.
34
Abulafia (1985), pp. 41–4.
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458 g. a. loud
devoting their whole purpose towards entering his lands and wearing him out
with their continual harassment’.
35
To judge by the absence of recorded incident in the chroniclers, the kingdom
seems to have remained internally peaceful during the later years of William I.
36
Butonhis sudden death in May 1166 his eldest surviving son, also called
William, was still a child, just short of his thirteenth birthday. For some years
thereafter the boy’s mother, Queen Margaret, acted as regent. While the country
as a whole was relatively stable – aided by the regent’s conciliatory policy of
releasing political prisoners, recalling exiles and revoking the punitive fines
levied on a number of mainland towns in the wake of the 1161 rebellion –
the court was riven by faction. Nor for a while was the kingdom’s external
situation any less threatening, particularly with Barbarossa’s march on Rome
in 1167.‘Falcandus’ recorded how, probably some months earlier, Count Gilbert
of Gravina, the master captain of Apulia and Terra di Lavoro, was forced to
leave the court at Palermo and hurry to the mainland after a rumour (in the
event false) had been spread by his political opponents that the emperor was
about to invade the kingdom. He was instructed not only to raise an army, but
also to ensure the continued loyalty of the mainland towns, something which
clearly could not be taken for granted.
37
During William I’s later years the administration had been directed by a tri-
umvirate of familiares:Matthew of Salerno, a former royal notary and prot
´
eg
´
e
of Maio; Richard Palmer, the bishop-elect of Syracuse, an English immigrant;
and a senior financial official and convert from Islam Caid (Qa’id) Peter; and
their position was confirmed by the king’s will. (In a Sicilian context the word
familiaris should be translated as ‘minister’ and not merely ‘courtier’ or ‘favo-
urite’.) But Queen Margaret subsequently favoured Peter above his colleagues,
and doing so unleashed a series of factional disputes so virulent that within a few
months he fled for his own safety to North Africa. Thereafter the court polarized
between the two erstwhile familiares,Matthew, allied with a group of bishops
(hitherto largely excluded from the centre of power) and Bishop Richard, aided
by the powerful count of Gravina. To escape this dispute the queen first turned
to the royal constable, Richard of Mandra (who was granted the vacant county
of Molise), and then invited her cousin, Stephen of Perche, to her court, and
appointed him in rapid succession to be chancellor and archbishop of Palermo.
But while, to begin with at least, his rule was well received by the populace, his
pre-eminence alienated both the administrators of the court and the nobility.
In part this was because of his attempts to control abuses by officials, and
35
PL 200, col. 269.
36
This silence does not just apply to the chroniclers either. Only three charters of William I survive
from the years 1161–6,Enzensberger (1981), pp. 111–12.
37
La Historia o Liber de regno Sicilie,p.101, Loud and Wiedemann (1998), p. 149.
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Norman Sicily in the twelfth century 459
in part the result of the diversion of patronage to his allies and the members
of his (largely foreign) household. According to ‘Falcandus’: ‘the magnates of
the court ...saw that all the material advantages of the court were going to
the chancellor and his friends, and that from this wealth of gifts only a trickle
was left over for them’.
38
But fundamentally Stephen’s problem was the same as
that of Maio. The diversion of authority to one all-powerful minister inevitably
created resentment, and this became more acute when, feeling himself under
threat, he had potential rivals (including Richard of Molise and Matthew of
Salerno) arrested. In the spring of 1168 a popular revolt in Messina, sparked off
by the excesses of one of Stephen’s officials, led to a coup. Stephen was forced
into exile in the Holy Land where he died soon afterwards. His principal ally,
Gilbert of Gravina, was also exiled and dispossessed. The governing council
set up in the wake of the coup drew on all three of the chief parties in the
kingdom, the bishops, the court bureaucrats and the nobility. To assure con-
tinued stability, the most prominent of the exiles from William I’s reign, Count
Robert of Loritello, was recalled in 1169 and restored to his former position.
This policy of accommodation appears to have been entirely successful. The
direction of the government was fairly soon limited once again to a group of
three, or later four, familiares:Walter, the new archbishop of Palermo, Matthew
of Salerno and one (or from c. 1184 two) other bishops, but any rivalries within
this group were kept within bounds and did not de-stabilize the kingdom’s
government.
39
The external threat was also much diminished after Barbarossa’s
withdrawal from Rome in 1167.William II’s reign was indeed remembered
as a period of enviable stability and good government; a thirteenth-century
chronicler (conscious of the disorders after his death) recalled that ‘during his
lifetime such peace and justice existed in the kingdom that the like was not
recorded before or after him’.
40
the structures of government
Outside observers were prone, like ‘Falcandus’, to describe the king of Sicily as
a tyrant, though this observation had as much to do with the dubious circum-
stances of the acquisition of the royal title in 1130 – and hence the presumed
illegitimacy of the king’s rule – as the style of government. Such an accusation
was of course particularly levied by writers from the German empire, which
maintained its claims over southern Italy right through the twelfth century.
41
38
La Historia o Liber de regno Sicilie,p.118, Loud and Wiedemann (1998), p. 169.
39
For details, Takayama (1989), especially pp. 365–8.
40
‘Tanta Pax et iustitia extitit, eo vivente, in regno suo, quanta non recordatur fuisse ante eum nec
actenus post eum’, Chronicon Ignoti monachi Cisterciensis sanctae Mariae de Ferraria,p.32.
41
SeeWieruszowski (1963) here.
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None the less, the kings of Sicily faced a long and difficult task in imposing
their rule on the mainland, and resorted to harsh measures to make it effective.
But they also needed to create a viable and efficient administrative structure,
both to consolidate their rule in the newly acquired mainland dominions and
to govern and exploit their ancestral lands, Calabria and Sicily, to provide
the wealth which underpinned their rule, and for which they were generally
renowned.
In both Calabria and Sicily there seems to have been a fair degree of admin-
istrative continuity from the pre-Norman period. The Byzantine and Arabic
administrations in the two regions were appreciably more sophisticated and
bureaucratic than those in the contemporary west, and the Norman conquerors
continued to employ indigenous officials and their existing records, particu-
larly cadastral surveys. As early as 1087 a charter of Count Roger I made a grant
‘according to the old boundaries of the Saracens’.
42
Up to 1127 the comital
chancery issued charters almost exclusively in Greek (only seven comital char-
ters in Latin are known from this period) – though administrative documents,
notably the plateae or lists of serfs, might also be written in Arabic, and Arabic
land surveys were almost certainly revised and kept up to date. The majority
of officials in Sicily and Calabria at this period were, however, Greeks, as were
Roger II’s two successive chief ministers, Christodoulos (up to c. 1122) and
George of Antioch.
The extension of Roger’s rule to Apulia and Capua led to a number of ad-
ministrative developments. From 1127 onwards the chancery issued many more
documents in Latin, primarily for mainland recipients, although the Latin sec-
tion of the chancery only became the dominant one in the 1150s with the rule
of Maio of Bari, himself a former chancery official. In addition a proper admin-
istrative structure had to be developed for these new provinces, to bind them
firmly under royalrule. The disparate nature of these provinces,and particularly
the fragmentation of Apulia before 1127, meant that this governmental appara-
tus had largely to be created de novo. The ‘Romuald’ chronicler reported that in
1140 King Roger ‘instituted chamberlains and justiciars throughout the land to
preserve the peace [and] promulgated laws which he had newly drafted’.
43
The
chronicle’s dating is only approximate; the first installation of justiciars and
chamberlains came with the takeover of the principality of Capua in 1135, and
royal justificatores (an early title for justiciars) can also be found in Apulia in
1136, though it may have taken several years for the full extension of a network
of royal officials over the mainland as a whole. (Hostilities after all continued
42
‘secundum antiquas divisiones Saracenorum’, Diplomi della cattedrale di Messina,pp.2–3 no. 2.
43
‘pro conservanda pace camerarios et iusticiarios per totam terram instituit, leges a se noviter con-
didatos promulgavit’, Romuald of Salerno, Chronicon sive Annales,p.236.
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