Appendix III–1
Review of G. A. Loud, Church and society in the Norman principality of Capua, 1058–1197 (Oxford University Press, 1985) in Speculum, vol. 62 (1987), pp. 704–706
Loud sheds new light on a subject historians have paid little attention to: eleventh-and twelfth-century Capua. This book provides abundant information about the history of the Capuan church. Accepting Fernand Braudel’s model of the Mediterranean littoral as a series of isolated islands in contact with each other, and regarding the principality of Capua as “an entity with its own separate institutions and rulers,” Loud insists that “its history has its own separate themes” (p. 1). Loud’s main subject is the Capuan church between the creation of the Norman principality in 1058 and the death of Emperor Henry VI in 1197.
His leading motif is a “triangular relationship” among the Capuan church, the lay authority and the papacy. In the light of the changes in this relationship, Loud divides the history of the principality of Capua into four periods: Norman conquest and the established Norman principality of Capua (1058–1087); change in the “triangular relationship” (1087–1127); Roger’s conquest of the principality of Capua (1127–1140); and the principality of Capua as part of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily (1140–1197). In these four periods the complex political relationship is analyzed in detail, and the author attempts to focus on three major themes: a detailed local study of the church in three periods of political instability (the Norman conquest of Capua, the morcellement of the principality after the death of Prince Jordan I in 1090, and Roger’s conquest); the relations between the Capuan church and the papacy; and Capua and the papacy after the former’s absorption into the united regno (I assume that “Capua and the papacy after the latter’s absorption into the united regno” on page 7 is an error).
This “triangular relationship” was peaceful from 1058 to 1087. Loud attributes this to a coincidence of political interests. The prince needed papal recognition of the Norman conquest, papal aid against rebels, and papal acquiescence for the use of the church as a bulwark of princely power. He also needed the support of the Capuan church, especially the great monasteries, to assert his control. The papacy expected the prince to give military aid, to support papal political superiority and to secure its control over the Capuan church. The Capuan church also needed the protection and endowment which the prince could provide. Changes in the triangular relationship appear after 1087. Loud observes the “burgeoning of comital particularism” in Capua as well as “a similar progress toward de facto independence” (p. 94) in some counties of Apulia. He then directs our attention to the change in the papacy’s relationship with the prince. The papacy, “dependent on Norman military support,” began “aggressively seeking to extend its political and ecclesiastical hegemony” (p. 95). The third change is the growth of papal influence over temporal lords and, more importantly for Loud, over the Capuan church. This latter growth of papal influence was caused by the revival of episcopal activity, the papal policy to support episcopal efforts, the weakness of the princely power, the physical proximity of Rome and the series of disputes between religious houses. During the civil war of 1127–1140 the Capuan churches took an important role because they could give direct military aid, financial assistance, valuable power bases in disputed areas and a corps of administration. Loud thinks that Monte Cassino welcomed a victory of Roger II because it expected long-term political stability and effective protection and was grateful to him for his past acts. Thus he insists that the schism was less important than local political considerations in the principality during the civil war. Loud sees the writings of Alexander of Telese and Peter the Deacon as reflections of this situation. After the absorption of the principality of Capua into the Norman Kingdom in 1134–1135, the powerful and efficient royal administration benefited local churches. Summarizing this period, Loud states that “the domestic peace brought by the Hautevill kings was a real and positive benefit” (p. 192). To be sure, the relationship of the papacy and the king appears to have been quite stable, but this might be only a reflection of the strong royal power and control over the Capuan church.
The argument concerning the change in the triangular relationship is quite sound. However, Loud interrupts the flow of his argument with his detailed narration of the political struggle and lengthy presentation of examples. His analysis of the four periods is uneven. Most of his study concerns a political analysis of Capua before 1140, and as a result his analysis of the Capuan church as part of the kingdom of Sicily is sketchy and brief. The social aspects of the Capuan society are hardly discussed. An examination of the “entity of the principality of Capua” which Loud proposes would be almost impossible, given the limited scope of his investigation.
The chapter on the internal structure of the Capuan church provides important information about Capuan society. Loud points out the absence of effective episcopal government in the twelfth century and lists three important factors causing it: the lack of a metropolitan tradition, the smallness of the dioceses of Capua and the lack of a division between the property of bishop and chapter. The chapters remained tied to older traditions: The canons do not seem to have lived in common; they possessed property in their own right throughout the period; and many of them were married. However, the development of capitular offices and the gradual separation of bishop and chapter were seen in Capuan monasticism. At Monte Cassino subordinate offices evolved from the time of Desiderius, and the claims of property administration led to a similar process in other houses. In the twelfth century subordinate churches changed in both their function and status. They came to have baptismal rights in the latter half of the century. By the later twelfth century lay rights had been reduced to ones of patronage, primarily in the choice of the chaplain, and subordinate churches ceased to be pieces of property. Another remarkable change was economic: the growth of churches’ purchase of land. The growth took place primarily after 1140. Loud speculates about the reason and shows important factors: the stability after the civil war, which encouraged churches to invest; economic developments within the principality; the fall of the prince, which removed the chief source of endowment; and a rising population and increased pressure on land, which led to a diminution in donation of land to churches.
Loud emphasizes the conservative nature of the spiritual life of the Capuan church and states that it was unaffected by the currents of reform of the later eleventh century. Many of the lower clergy were married, and this custom was “largely accepted and institutionalized” (p. 236). Private property within the cloister was also ingrained. On the other hand, the virgin cult, which was “inherited from the Lombard period” (p. 240), was strong and important for nunneries. Loud sensibly concludes that “the Norman conquest may have changed some aspects of Capua, but its religious life remained firmly tied to the past” (p. 243).
In his conclusion, Loud summarizes the characteristics of the Capuan church in three phrases: “cyclical pattern,” “conservatism” and “particularism.” However, his conclusion seems a little hasty. It is true that the ecclesiastical politics of the Capuan church appear to have “followed an almost cyclical pattern” (p. 244), but it is difficult to believe that this cyclical pattern stemmed from the particular geography of Capua. I do not object to his statement that “the tightly defined geographical bounds of the principality may have isolated it from religious currents” (p. 244), but a similar political pattern would appear in a similar structure of power relationship at any time and place. It is difficult to determine whether this “conservatism” was peculiar to the Capuan church in this period or shared by other local churches. A similar question could be raised about “intense particularism,” which Loud lists as the third key aspect of the Capuan church: “The primary concern of the monks of Cassino was the temporal prosperity of their own monastery” (p. 245). But almost every church had more or less its own interests. The question is, therefore, whether particularism was really particular to the Capuan church or shared by other local churches.
This is a useful work on the Capuan church, albeit of limited geographic and chronological scope. If Loud had moved beyond political analysis of Capua and included social analysis of Capuan society, his study would have been more valuable.
Appendix III–2
Review of Joanna H. Drell, Kinship and conquest: family strategies in the principality of Salerno during the Norman period, 1077–1194 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002) in Speculum, vol. 81 (2005), pp. 1267–1268
The theme of this book is family relationships in the principality of Salerno during the Norman period, 1077–1194. The author’s motivational questions are threefold: What impact did the Norman settlement have on family structures and practices in the principality? What do family strategies in the principality reveal about the evolution of political power in eleventh- and twelfth-century southern Italy? How do the dynamics of kinship in the principality compare with what scholars have discovered for kin groups in other parts of Europe? In order to answer those questions, the author analyzes aspects of kinship concerns in the principality in three parts.
In the first part (“The Structure of the Society”), the author tries to identify the noble families of the principality of Salerno. According to Drell, two distinct subcategories of the nobility existed. The first was the principality’s top or upper aristocracy, who shared bonds of both blood and lordship. They were the descendants of a small group of intermarried and interrelated families, principally the sons of the Norman Tancred of Hauteville and the Lombard Guaimar III, and they consisted of seven kin groups. The second subcategory of the nobility was more diffuse and complex. Some of them had the title of count. “Count” was most often a personal title during the Lombard period, but it came to signify a territorial leader who bore a great military responsibility to the king by around 1142. The author argues that unlike other regions of medieval Europe, knights in Salerno were not obviously members of the nobility through the Norman period. They “more often served and attended the nobility than belonged to that social class” (p. 50). For the nobility as a whole, the author observes “significant changes in the definition of nobility” from the time of the Norman arrival to the period of the Normans’ dominance. During the early decades of the twelfth century, the nobility in the principality formed a cohesive group with fluid boundaries. In contrast, after Roger II’s attempt to exert tighter control over the noble or knightly class, “there seems to have been less mobility within and less access to the aristocracy” (p. 20).
In the second part (“Property and Kinship”), the author examines the exchange, donation, bequest and alienation of properties by and between family members in the principality. She observes noble families’ efforts “to limit the dispersal of family properties” in the sources of the first half of the twelfth century and considers that this trend continued with greater urgency in the second half of the twelfth century. Drell emphasizes women’s role as property owners and managers throughout the Norman period and states that women occupied a central place in estate administration as the recipients of dowries, marriage portions and inheritances. Drell also finds “the mixing of Lombard and Roman customs within a close kin group” in a large number of documents from the early twelfth century, and she concludes that “the family distribution of property and power in the south was affected by prevailing Lombard and Roman law customs” (p. 21). Meanwhile she observes that the great noble families practiced a variety of property-holding strategies to prevent the devolution of familial property. According to Drell, most aristocratic families practiced single-heir inheritance, especially by the second and third decades of the twelfth century, while others adopted more consortial forms of patrimonial management. Noble families had varied patterns of family property management, including joint and single tenure, which continued throughout the Norman period. The author considers that “the practice by noble families of protecting the integrity of their patrimonies was fairly well established prior to Roger’s coronation in 1130” (p. 121) and that the “shift from the common practice of partible inheritance during the Lombard period to more consolidated forms of property transmission” was not related to the establishment of Norman rule.
In the third and final part (“The Flexible Kinship Network”), the author tries to find patterns of kinship organization in the principality of Salerno. She observes documented efforts of people of Lombard descent, which endured into the 1180s, to assert their ties with past generations of Lombards, and she considers this a distinctly Lombard practice not adopted by people of Norman descent. However, Drell could not find any particular patterns of kinship organization in the principality: “it is virtually impossible to define precisely the composition of the kin group based on the lineage evidence since there is so much variation in the sources” (p. 145). No single model of family organization applies to the principality. What she found is a considerably varied kin network for high and lesser nobles alike, ranging from small families to large and extended families. Thus she concludes that people “operated on the basis of a fairly flexible definition of family which could include everyone from maternal cousins to fathers” throughout the Norman period. Since there were no “strict rules governing the organization and definition of ‘family,’ kinship could be manipulated in whatever form best served a particular need at a specific time. Circumstances determined who might be considered or used as a part of the family from one time to the next” (p. 158). The author believes these findings on family organization in the principality “pose a significant challenge to the long-standing kinship model of the emergence of the patrilineage” (p. 116) in the early eleventh century originally outlined by Georges Duby, as well as Duby’s findings that “the twelfth century witnessed a contraction of larger extended families” (p. 155).
This is one of the first English books focusing on the principality of Salerno during the Norman period and also one of the few books investigating family structure in southern Italy. It offers a good deal of detailed information related to kinship and property transactions based on charter sources in the archive of SS. Trinità at Cava de’ Tirreni near Salerno and successfully shows the richness of the sources in this archive. It would be useful for scholars interested in the family and southern Italy in the Middle Ages. Yet Drell’s arguments would be clearer and more convincing if she had paid greater attention to the changing position of the principality as well as the changing situations of nobles within the principality. The principality of Salerno was a rather solid political entity under Lombard princes, but it became a part of the dominion of the Norman dukes of Apulia after the conquest of Guiscard in 1077, and it simply constituted an administrative district under the Norman kings. It is not self-evident that the principality of Salerno can be used as a framework to define people (or families, or nobles) of the principality as those shared the same characteristics throughout the Norman period. The lords of the nobles in the principality changed from the princes of Salerno to the dukes of Apulia to the kings of Sicily. The nobles’ positions and situations in the principality could be changed largely according to their relationships with these lords. They could become almost independent when their lords lost power or when they opposed their lords. Nobles’ family structure and their property transactions could be affected by any such changes in their situations.
Appendix III–3
Review of Alex Metcalfe, The Muslims of medieval Italy (Edinburgh University Press, 2009) in English Historical Review, vol. 128 (2013), pp. 645–647
This book by Alex Metcalfe, the theme of which is the Muslims in Sicily and South Italy between 800 and 1300, should be much welcomed by English-language readers. It is more useful, with updated information and thoughtful analysis, than Aziz Ahmad’s A History of Islamic Sicily (1975), the only book in English on the subject for more than thirty years.
In the first four chapters, Metcalfe surveys the background of Muslim invasions into Byzantine Sicily and examines the island under the governance of the Aghlabid, Fatimid and Kalbite (Kalbid) Muslim rulers. His main concern is the transformation of Sicily, especially changes in the demographic structure in terms of languages and religion, caused by the conquest wars which continued intermittently for about 130 years. As the author states, most information about Sicily under Muslim rulers comes from Arabic sources written outside the island in a later period. Accordingly, our knowledge is biased toward political aspects in which later Muslim historians were interested or able to obtain. In order to compensate for this lack of information, Metcalfe cites various Arabic sources as precisely as possible, and utilizes recent archeological output, although Michele Amari’s work Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia (3 vols., 1858–1872; 2nd ed., 1933–1939), as well as his collections of Arabic sources Biblioteca arabo-sicula (1857–1887; Italian translations, 1880–1889), continue to be valid and indispensable sources. It is a pity that Metcalfe does not know of this reviewer’s studies on Muslim governors of Sicily published in AJAMES, vol. 7 (1992) and Mediterranean World, vol. 13 (1992).
The current state of research on Sicily and South Italy after the Norman conquest is quite different from the Islamic period. We have contemporary sources written in Latin, Greek and Arabic and an accumulation of research by international scholars. Metcalfe’s book, based on recent studies, surveys changing political circumstances and the Norman rulers’ administration and makes contributions to arguments about important issues concerning Muslims, among which I focus here on two of the author’s special concerns: dīwān, defined by the author as “a fiscal administration,” and villeins (villani).
According to Metcalfe, Muslims maintained their roles as bureaucrats charged with the management of the royal fiscal administration and palaces during the period of Norman state building, and came to serve in a reconstructed fiscal administration (the dīwān) in the newly created Norman Kingdom of Sicily. The offices of the royal dīwān were located at the palace and were staffed by Arabic-speaking eunuchs. Instrumental to the issuing of the grant renewals were two offices, the dīwān al-ma‘mūr and the dīwān al-taḥqīq al-ma‘mūr. The d īwān al-ma‘mūr, “in operation by 1136, generally oversaw the fiscal administration and its management of crown lands and men,” and “might also refer in an abstract sense to the whole Arabic sector of the administration.” On the other hand, the dīwān al-taḥqīq al-ma‘mūr, “operational by 1149 and probably earlier, supervised, composed and verified confirmations of royal grants of lands and/or men.”
The Arabic d īwān is a general word meaning “office,” but its transliteration duana/dohana/doana was used (in many cases, as a phrase such as duana de secretis and duana baronum) to indicate a specific office or organization in the Latin documents, and there is a long historiography and controversy over its real meaning, including over the relationships between duana de secretis, duana baronum, dīwān al-ma‘mūr, dīwān al-taḥqīq al-ma‘mūr, and the sekreton (R. Gregorio, M. Amari, A. Garufi, E. Jamison, M. Caravale, E. Mazzarese Fardella, H. Takayama, J. Johns, et al.). Metcalfe, whose understanding of the dīwān is based on the studies of Jeremy Johns, emphasizes the importance of the influence of Fatimid Egypt in the royal administration and the Norman kingship, as Johns has insisted. However, confirmation of the influence of a specific cultural element may not necessarily mean that it had an overwhelming influence on the royal administration. It is important for us to see how, and in what form, these cultural elements existed in the royal administration. For the corresponding relations between Latin, Greek and Arabic terms, further examination is necessary, since Metcalfe’s understanding that dīwān al-ma‘mūr was called sekreton in Greek and duana de secretis in Latin is contradicted by a bilingual Greek-Arabic document issued in 1161, in which the Greek word sekreton corresponds to dīwān al-taḥqīq al-ma‘mūr in Arabic.
The other important issue of particular concern to the author, the villeins (villani) in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, has been studied before by a number of scholars (including F. Chalandon, A. Garufi, I. Peri, H. Bresc, V. d’Alessandro, P. Corrao, F. Panero, J.-M. Martin and G. Petralia). Many of these authorities seem to have concluded that the villeins were classified into two basic groups – those who owed hereditary service in person (intuitu personae) and those who owed service with respect to the terms of their tenure of land (respectu tenimentorum), although there is no agreement of opinion on which word in Arabic, Greek and Latin documents relates to which category of villeins. Those scholars who have recently examined the Arabic documents in detail, including A. Nef, A. de Simone, Johns and Metcalfe himself, also seem to share the idea of the classification of the villeins into two groups. According to Metcalfe, many terms were used synonymously across three languages to refer to villeins, and those in Arabic and Greek can be resolved into two basic categories: families who were “registered” and those who were “unregistered.” Following Johns’ idea, he explains that those who were “registered” were called ḥursh (“rough men”), or rijāl (ahl) al-jarā’id in Arabic, and enapographoi in Greek, while those who were “unregistered” were called muls (“smooth men”) in Arabic, and exōgraphoi in Greek.
This book, focused on Muslims, amply shows the fascinating history of medieval Sicily and South Italy with their many layers of different cultures, and reveals various aspects of cross-cultural activities under the Normans. Uncovering the real picture of this complicated past requires painstaking effort and skills, including analysis of multilingual parchments, but such research will undoubtedly provide us with more opportunities to reexamine the frameworks and concepts often used unconsciously and without serious examination by generations of scholars. Furthermore, the special position of medieval Sicily and South Italy, at the borders of three cultural zones, makes possible the analysis of three different cultural elements within the same context, and offers a valuable and rare vantage point from which to grasp the picture of a larger geographical unity in which these different cultures interacted.