held it lawful and pious to impose the Catholic faith on their subjects and neighbors; the coast of the Baltic, from Holstein to the Gulf of Finland, was invaded under the standard of the cross; and the reign of idolatry was closed by the conversion of Lithuania in the fourteenth century. Yet truth and candor must acknowledge, that the conversion of the North imparted many temporal benefits both to the old and the new Christians. The rage of war, inherent to the human species, could not be healed by the evangelic precepts of charity and peace; and the ambition of Catholic princes has renewed in every age the calamities of hostile contention. But the admission of the Barbarians into the pale of civil and ecclesiastical society delivered Europe from the depredations, by sea and land, of the Normans, the Hungarians, and the Russians, who learned to spare their brethren and cultivate their possessions.80 The establishment of law and order was promoted by the influence of the clergy; and the rudiments of art and science were introduced into the savage countries of the globe. The liberal piety of the Russian princes engaged in their service the most skilful of the Greeks, to decorate the cities and instruct the inhabitants the dome and the paintings of St. Sophia were rudely copied in the churches of Kiow and Novogorod : the writings of the fathers were translated into the Sclavonic idiom; and three hundred noble youths were invited or compelled to attend the lessons of the college of Jaroslaus. It should appear that Russia might have derived an early and rapid improvement from her peculiar connection with the church and state of Constantinople, which in that age so justly despised the ignorance of the Latins. But the Byzantine nation was servile, solitary, and verging to a hasty decline: after the fall of Kiow, the navigation of the Borysthenes was forgotten; the great princes of Wolodomir and Moscow were separated from the sea and Christendom; and the divided resonare : 80 Listen to the exultations of Adam of Bremen, (A. D. 1080,) of which the substance is agreeable to truth: Ecce illa ferocissima Danorum, &c., natio jamdudum novit in Dei laudibus Alleluia Ecce populus ille piraticus suis nunc fini-' bus contentus est. Ecce patria horribilis semper inaccessa propter cultum idolorum prædicatores veritatis ubique certatim admittit, &c., &c., (de Sitû Daniæ, &c., p. 40, 41, edit. Eizevir; a curious and original prospect of the north of Europe, and the introduction of Christianity.) monarchy was oppressed by the ignominy and blindness of Tartar servitude.81 The Sclavonic and Scandinavian kingdoms, which had been converted by the Latin missionaries, were exposed, it is true, to the spiritual jurisdiction and temporal claims of the popes; 82 but they were united, in language and religious worship, with each other, and with Rome; they imbibed the free and generous spirit of the European republic, and gradually shared the light of knowledge which arose on the western world. 81 The great princes removed in 1156 from Kiow, which was ruined by the Tartars in 1240. Moscow became the seat of empire in the xivth century. See the 1st and 2d volumes of Levesque's History, and Mr. Coxe's Travels into the North, tom. i. p. 241, &c. 82 The ambassadors of St. Stephen had used the reverential expressions of regnum oblatum, debitam obedientiam, &c., which were most rigorously interpreted by Gregory VII.; and the Hungarian Catholics are distressed between the sanctity of the pope and the independence of the crown, (Katona, Hist. Critica, tom. i. p. 20-25, tom. ii. p. 304, 346, 360, &c.) CHAPTER LVI. - THE SARACENS, FRANKS, AND GREEKS, IN ITALY. FIRST AD VENTURES AND SETTLEMENT OF THE NORMANS. СНАКАСFER AND CONQUEST OF ROBERT GUISCARD, DUKE OF APULIA. DELIVERANCE OF SICILY BY HIS BROTHER ROGER. VICTORIES OF ROBERT OVER THE EMPERORS OF THE EAST AND WEST. ROGER, KING OF SICILY, INVADES AFRICA AND GREECE. THE EMPEROR MANUEL COMNENUS. WARS OF THE GREEKS AND NORMANS. EXTINCTION OF THE NORMANS. THE three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy. The southern provinces, which now compose the kingdom of Naples, were subject, for the most part, to the Lombard dukes and princes of Beneventum ; 2 so powerful in war, that they checked for a moment the genius of Charlemagne; so liberal in peace, that they maintained in their capital an academy of thirty-two philosophers and grammarians. The division of this flourishing state produced the rival principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua; and the thoughtless ambition or revenge of the competitors invited the Sarcens to the ruin of their common inheritance. During For the general history of Italy in the ixth and xth centuries, I may properly refer to the vth, vith, and viith books of Sigonius de Regno Italiæ, (in the second volume of his works, Milan, 1732;) the Annals of Baronius, with the Criticism of Pagi; the viith and viiith books of the Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli of Giannone; the viith and viiith volumes (the octavo edition) of the Annali d' Italia of Muratori, and the 2d volume of the Abrégé Chronologique of M. de St. Marc, a work which, under a superficial title, contains much genuine learning and industry. But my long-accustomed reader will give me credit for saying, that I myself have ascended to the fountain head, as often as such ascent could be either profitable or possible; and that I have diligently turned over the originals in the first volumes of Muratori's great collection of the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. Camillo Pellegrino, a learned Capuan of the last century, has illustrated the history of the duchy of Beneventum, in his two books, Historia Principum Longobardorum, in the Scriptores of Muratori, tom. ii. pars i. p. 221-345, and tom. v. p 159-245. a calamitous period of two hundred years, Italy was exposed to a repetition of wounds, which the invaders were not capable of healing by the union and tranquillity of a perfect conquest. Their frequent and almost annual squadrons issued from the port of Palermo, and were entertained with too much indulgence by the Christians of Naples: the more formidable fleets were prepared on the African coast; and even the Arabs of Andalusia were sometimes tempted to assist or oppose the Moslems of an adverse sect. In the revolution of human events, a new ambuscade was concealed in the Caudine Forks, the fields of Cannæ were bedewed a second time with the blood of the Africans, and the sovereign of Rome again attacked or defended the walls of Capua and Tarentum. A colony of Saracens had been planted at Bari, which commands the entrance of the Adriatic Gulf; and their impartial depredations provoked the resentment, and conciliated the union, of the two emperors. An offensive alliance was con⚫ cluded between Basil the Macedonian, the first of his race, and Lewis the great-grandson of Charlemagne ;3 and each party supplied the deficiencies of his associate. It would have been imprudent in the Byzantine monarch to transport his stationary troops of Asia to an Italian campaign; and the Latin arms would have been insufficient if his superior navy had not occupied the mouth of the Gulf. The fortress of Bari was invested by the infantry of the Franks, and by the cavalry and galleys of the Greeks; and, after a defence of four years, the Arabian emir submitted to the clemency of Lewis, who commanded in person the operations of the siege This important conquest had been achieved by the concord of the East and West, but their recent amity was soon imbit. tered by the mutual complaints of jealousy and pride. The Greeks assumed as their own the merit of the conquest and the pomp of the triumph; extolled the greatness of their powers, and affected to deride the intemperance and sloth of the handful of Barbarians who appeared under the banners of the Carlovingian prince. His reply is expressed with the eloquence of indignation and truth: "We confess the magnitude of your preparation," says the great-grandson of Charlemagne. "Your armies were indeed as numerous as a cloud of summer locusts, who darken the day, flap their wings, 3 See Constantin. Porphyrogen. de Thematibus, l. ii. c. xi. in Vit Basil. c. 55, p. 181. and, after a short flight, tumble weary and breathless to the ground. Like them, ye sunk after a feeble effort; ye were vanquished by your own cowardice; and withdrew from the scene of action to injure and despoil our Christian subjects of the Sclavonian coast. We were few in number, and why were we few? Because, after a tedious expectation of your arrival, I had dismissed my host, and retained only a chosen band of warriors to continue the blockade of the city. If they indulged their hospitable feasts in the face of danger and death, did these feasts abate the vigor of their enterprise? Is it by your fasting that the walls of Bari have been overturned? Did not these valiant Franks, diminished as they were by languor and fatigue, intercept and vanquish the three most Dowerful emirs of the Saracens ? and did not their defeat precipitate the fall of the city? Bari is now fallen; Tarentum trembles; Calabria will be delivered; and, if we command the sea, the Island of Sicily may be rescued from the hands of the infidels. My brother," (a name most offensive to the vanity of the Greek,) "accelerate your naval succors, respect your allies, and distrust your flatterers." 4 These lofty hopes were soon extinguished by the death of Lewis, and the decay of the Carlovingian house; and whoever might deserve the honor, the Greek emperors, Basil, and his son Leo, secured the advantage, of the reduction of Bari. The Italians of Apulia and Calabria were persuaded or compelled to acknowledge their supremacy, and an ideal line from Mount Garganus to the Bay of Salerno, leaves the far greater part of the kingdom of Naples under the dominion of the Eastern empire. Beyond that line, the dukes or republics of Amalfi and Naples, who had never forfeited their voluntary allegiance, rejoiced in the neighborhood of their lawful sovereign; and Amalfi was enriched by supplying Europe with the produce and manufactures of Asia. But the Lombard princes of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, were 4 The original epistle of the emperor Lewis II. to the emperor Basil, a curious record of the age, was first published by Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A. D. 871, No. 51-71,) from the Vatican MS. of Erchempert, or rather of the anonymous historian of Salerno. See an excellent Dissertation de Republica Amalphitanâ, in the Appendix (p. 1-42) of Henry Brencman's Historia Pandectarum, (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.) • Your master, says Nicephorus, has given aid and protection prin. tipibus Capuano et Beneventano, servis meis, quos oppugnare dispono |