plots, suppressed their rebellicns, and punished the guilty with death or exile: but in these domestic feuds, his years, and After the national strength, were unprofitably consumed. the defeat of his foreign enemies, the Greeks, Lombards, and Saracens, their broken forces retreated to the strong and populous cities of the sea-coast. They excelled in the arts of fortification and defence; the Normans were accustomed to serve on horseback in the field, and their rude attempts could only succeed by the efforts of persevering courage. The resistance of Salerno was maintained above eight months; the siege or blockade of Bari lasted near four years. In these actions the Norman duke was the foremost in every danger; in every fatigue the last and most patient. As he pressed the citadel of Salerno, a huge stone from the rampart shattered one of his military engines; and by a splinter he was wounded in the breast. Before the gates of Bari, he lodged in a miserable hut or barrack, composed of dry branches, and thatched with straw; a perilous station, on all sides open to the inclemency of the winter and the spears of the enemy.4 45 The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the present kingdom of Naples; and the countries united by his arms have not been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years.46 The monarchy has been composed of the Greek provinces of Calabria and Apulia, of the Lombard principality of Salerno, the republic of Amalphi, and the inland dependencies of the large and ancient duchy of Beneventum. Three districts only were exempted from the common law of subjection; the first forever, the two last till the middle of the succeeding century. The city and immediate territory of Benevento had been transferred, by gift or exchange, from the German emperor to the Roman pontiff; and although this holy land was sometimes invaded, the name of St. Peter was finally more potent than the sword of the Normans. Their first colony of Aversa subdued and held the state of Capua; and her princes were reduced to beg Read the life of Guiscard in the second and third books of the Apulian, the first and second books of Malaterra. The conquests of Robert Guiscard and Roger I., the exemption of Benevento and the xii provinces of the kingdom, are fairly exposed by Giannone in the second volume of his Istoria Civ le, 1. ix. x. xi. and l. xvii. p. 460-470. This modern division was not established before the time of Frederic II. their bread before the palace of their fathers. The dukes of Naples, the present metropolis, maintained the popular freedom, under the shadow of the Byzantine empire. Among the new acquisitions of Guiscard, the science of Salerno,47 and the trade of Amalphi,48 may detain for a moment the curiosity of the reader. I. Of the learned faculties, jurisprudence implies the previous establishment of laws and property; and theology may perhaps be superseded by the full light of religion and reason. But the savage and the sage must alike implore the assistance of physic; and, if our diseases are inflamed by luxury, the mischiefs of blows and wounds would be more frequent in the ruder ages of society. The treasures of Grecian medicine had been communicated to the Arabian colonies of Africa, Spain, and Sicily; and in the intercourse of peace and war, a spark of knowledge had been kindled and cherished at Salerno, an illustrious city, in which the men were honest and the women beautiful.49 school, the first that arose in the darkness of Europe, was consecrated to the healing art: the conscience of monks and bishops was reconciled to that salutary and lucrative profes sion; and a crowd of patients, of the most eminent rank, and most distant climates, invited or visited the physicians of Salerno. They were protected by the Norman conquerors; and Guiscard, though bred in arms, could discern the merit and value of a philosopher. After a pilgrimage of thirty-nine years, Constantine, an African Christian, returned from Bagdad, a master of the language and learning of the Arabians; and A 47 Giannone, (tom. ii. p. 119–127,) Muratori, (Antiquitat. Medii Evi, tom. iii. dissert. xliv. p. 935, 936,) and Tiraboschi, (Istoria della Letteratura Italiana,) have given an historical account of these physicians; their medical knowledge and practice must be left to ow physicians. At the end of the Historia Pandectarum of Henry Brenckman, (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.,) the indefatigable author has inserted two dissertations, de Republicâ Amalphitana, and de Amalphi à Pisanis direptâ, which are built on the testimonies of one hundred and forty writers. Yet he has forgotten two most important passages of the embassy of Liutprand, (A. D. 969,) which compare the trade and navigation of Amalphi with that of Venice. Urbs Latii non est hâc delitiosior urbe, Gulielmus Appulus, 1. iii. p. 267 Balerno was enriched by the practice, the lessons, and the writings of the pupil of Avicenna. The school of medicine has long slept in the name of a university, but her precepts are abridged in a string of aphorisms, bound together in the Leonine verses, or Latin rhymes, of the twelfth century.50 II. Seven miles to the west of Salerno, and thirty to the south of Naples, the obscure town of Amalphi displayed the power and rewards of industry. The land, however fertile, was of narrow extent; but the sea was accessible and open the inhabitants first assumed the office of supplying the western world with the manufactures and productions of the East; and this useful traffic was the source of their opulence and freedom. The government was popular, under the adminis tration of a duke and the supremacy of the Greek emperor. Fifty thousand citizens were numbered in the walls of Amalphi; nor was any city more abundantly provided with gold, silver, and the objects of precious luxury. The mariners who swarmed in her port, excelled in the theory and practice of navigation and astronomy: and the discovery of the compass, which has opened the globe, is due to their ingenuity or good fortune. Their trade was extended to the coasts, or at least to the commodities, of Africa, Arabia, and India: and their settlements in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, acquired the privileges of independent colonies.51 After three hundred years of prosperity, Amalphi was oppressed by the arms of the Normans, and sacked by the jeal 50 Muratori carries their antiquity above the year (1066) of the death of Edward the Confessor, the rex Anglorum to whom they are addressed. Nor is this date affected by the opinion, or rather mistake, of Pasquier (Recherches de la France, 1. vii. c. 2) and Ducange (Glossar. Latin.) The practice of rhyming, as early as the viith cen tury, was borrowed from the languages of the North and East, (Muratori, Antiquitat. tom. iii. dissert. xl. p. 686-708.) si The description of Amalphi, by William the Apulian, (1. iii. p 267,) contains much truth and some poetry, and the third line may be applied to the sailor's compass :— Nulla magis locuples argento, vestibus, auro Regis, et Antiochi. Gens hæc freta plurima transit Hac gens est totum prope nobilitata per orbem, Et mercando ferens, et amans mercata referre. ousy of Pisa; but the poverty of one thousand fishermen yet dignified by the remains of an arsenal, a cathedral, and the palaces of royal merchants. Roger, the twelfth and last of the sons of Tancred, had been long detained in Normandy by his own and his father's age. He accepted the welcome summons; hastened to the Apulian camp; and deserved at first the esteem, and afterwards the envy, of his elder brother. Their valor and ambition were equal; but the youth, the beauty, the elegant manners, of Roger engaged the disinterested love of the soldiers and people. So scanty was his allowance for himself and forty followers, that he descended from conquest to robbery, and from robbery to domestic theft; and so loose were the notions of property, that, by his own historian, at his special command, he is accused of stealing horses from a stable at Melphi.52 His spirit emerged from poverty and disgrace from these base practices he rose to the merit and glory of a holy war; and the invasion of Sicily was seconded by the zeal and policy of his brother Guiscard After the retreat of the Greeks, the idolaters, a most audacious reproach of the Catholics, had retrieved their losses and possessions but the deliverance of the island, so vainly undertaken by the forces of the Eastern empire, was achieved by a small and private band of adventurers.53 In the first attempt, Roger braved, in an open boat, the real and fabulous dangers of 67 Latrocinio armigerorum suorum in multis sustertabatur, quod quidem ad ejus ignominiam non dicimus; sed ipso ita præcipiente adhuc viliora et reprehensibiliora dicturi sumus ut pluribus patescat, quam laboriose et cum quantâ angustiâ a profundâ paupertate ad summum culmen divitiarum vel honoris attigerit. Such is the preface of Malaterra (1. i. c. 25) to the horse-stealing. From the moment (1. i. c. 19) that he has mentioned his patron Roger, the elder brother sinks into the second character. Something similar in Velleius Paterculus may be observed of Augustus and Tiberius. 53 Duo sibi proficua deputans animæ scilicet et corporis si terram Idolis deditam ad cultum divinum revocaret, (Galfrid Malaterra, l. ii. c. 1.) The conquest of Sicily is related in the three last books, and he himself has given an accurate summary of the chapters, (p. 544— 546.) • Amalfi had only one thousand inhabitants at the commencement of the 18th century, when it was visited by Brenckmann, (Brenckmann de Rep. Amalph. Diss. i. c. 23.) At present it has six or eight thousand Hist des Rep Ital. tom. i. p. 304.-G. Scylla and Charybdis; landed with only sixty soldiers on a hostile shore; drove the Saracens to the gates of Messina ; and safely returned with the spoils of the adjacent country. In the fortress of Trani, his active and patient courage were equally conspicuous. In his old age he related with pleasure, that, by the distress of the siege, himself, and the countess his wife, had been reduced to a single cloak or mantle, which they wore alternately; that in a sally his horse had been slain, and he was dragged away by the Saracens ; but that he owed his rescue to his good sword, and had retreated with his saddle on his back, lest the meanest trophy might be left in the hands of the miscreants. In the siege of Trani, three hundred Normans withstood and repulsed the forces of the island. In the field of Ceramio, fifty thousand horse and foot were overthrown by one hundred and thirty-six Christian soldiers, without reckoning St. George, who fought on horseback in the foremost ranks. The captive banners, with four camels, were reserved for the successor of St. Peter; and had these barbaric spoils been exposed, not in the Vatican, but in the Capitol, they might have revived the memory of the Punic triumphs. These insufficient numbers of the Normans most probably denote their knights, the soldiers of honorable and equestrian rank, each of whom was attended by five or six followers in the field; 54 yet, with the aid of this interpreta. tion, and after every fair allowance on the side of valor, arms, and reputation, the discomfiture of so many myriads will reduce the prudent reader to the alternative of a miracle or a fable. The Arabs of Sicily derived a frequent and powerful succor from their countrymen of Africa: in the siege of Palermo, the Norman cavalry was assisted by the galleys of Pisa; and, in the hour of action, the envy of the two brothers was sublimed to a generous and invincible emulation. After a war of thirty years,55 Roger, with the title of great count, obtained the sovereignty of the largest and most fruitful See the word Milites in the Latin Glossary of Ducange. Of odd particulars, I learn from Malaterra, that the Arabs had introduced into Sicily the use of camels (1. i. c. 33) and of carrierpigeons, (c. 42;) and that the bite of the tarantula provokes a windy disposition, quæ per anum inhoneste crepitando emergit; a symptom most ridiculously felt by the whole Norman army in their camp near Palermo, (c. 36.) I shall add an etymology not unworthy of the xith century: Messana is divided from Messis, the place from whence the harvests of the isle were sent in tribute to Rome, (1. ii. c. 1.) |