The Kingdom in the Sun (48 page)

¹
Just as, six centuries later, Marie Antoinette was to be known as
'L'Autrichienne'
in the streets of Paris.

And now, at the worst possible moment—which was in itself typical of him—there arrived in Palermo another of the Queen's more disreputable relations. Gilbert had been bad enough; the newcomer was more unattractive still. Not only the timing of his arrival but everything about him seemed inept and tactless—even his birth. In theory at least, he was Margaret's brother; Falcandus on the other hand
is
at pains to point out that it was common knowledge—and admitted as such even by the gang of Navarrese adventurers whom the young man had brought with him—that King Garcia had never accepted him as a son, believing him to be the child of one of his wife's prodigious collection of lovers. Then there was his name, Rodrigo, which sounded so barbarous and indeed ridiculous to Sicilian ears that his sister at once made him change it to Henry. Finally we have Falcandus's description of his appearance, character and way of life.

This Henry was short in stature; his beard was extremely thin, his complexion unpleasantly swarthy. He was imprudent and of poor conversation, a man who had no interests but dice and gaming, no wants but a partner to play against and plenty of money to lose; he would spend wildly, with neither forethought nor consideration. Having passed some little time in Palermo, during which by his immoderate spending he had soon squandered the immense sums given him by the Queen, he announced his intention of crossing to Apulia; but on his arrival at Messina he at once fell in with many fellows of the kind he found congenial. Now this city, which is largely given over to foreigners, predators and pirates, harbours almost every kind of man within its walls: persons expert in every villainy, acquainted with every vice, men who esteem nothing illicit which lies within their power to achieve. Thus he was soon surrounded by thieves, pirates, buffoons, yes-men and criminals of all descriptions, carousing by day and spending whole nights gambling. When these things reached the ears of the Queen, she wrote him a severe reprimand, ordering him to cross the straits without delay. And so, though hardly able to tear himself away, he took his comrades' advice and set off for Apulia.

Soon after his arrival in Sicily, Margaret had given up her original idea of marrying him off to an illegitimate daughter of Roger II, and had instead bestowed upon him the County of Montescaglioso— just as she had given Gilbert that of Gravina—with the deliberate object of keeping him as far as possible from the capital. When at last she received word of his safe arrival in his fief, she may ruefully have reflected that he had already done just about all the damage he could. If so, she was soon to discover that she was wrong; but not before the advent of yet a third member of her family, as different from the other two as it was possible to imagine and distinctly more promising.

When Archbishop Rothrud of Rouen received his cousin Margaret's appeal for help, he acted swiftly. His brother, Robert of Newburgh, seems to have had little inclination to involve himself in Sicilian affairs; but Margaret's other suggestion, young Stephen du Perche, was immediately attracted to the idea. The invitation reached him just in time, as he was on the point of setting out, with a suite of no less than thirty-seven, for the Holy Land. When he left France, this was still his ultimate objective; but he saw no reason not to stop off for a few months in Palermo on his way.

After a short stay in Apulia with Gilbert—who presumably gave him a highly tendentious account of the Sicilian political scene— Stephen arrived in Palermo towards the end of the summer, to an enthusiastic, even effusive, welcome from Queen Margaret. One of the first things that struck the Palermitans about him was his extreme youth. He can have been only in his early twenties at most, while the fact that Falcandus and William of Tyre describe him with the words
puer
and
adolescens
—this in an age when men were often leading armies before they were out of their teens—suggests that he may have been even younger. Such a supposition, on the other hand, raises a new problem. Rothrud II, Count of Perche, whom Margaret referred to as his father, is known to have died in 1143; if Stephen were in fact his son, he could not in September 1166 be less than twenty-two—a little old for boyhood or adolescence. But we also know that soon after Rothrud's death his widow was married again, this time to Robert of Dreux, brother of Louis VII—who, in a letter to his fellow-ruler William II, was later to refer to Stephen as
caro et sanguis noster,
'our own flesh and blood'. It has therefore been argued that Stephen was not of the family of Perche at all, but a nephew of the French King. If he were, however, why did he not say so and take advantage of the fact, and why is it mentioned by none of the contemporary chroniclers? As Chalandon characteristically puts it,
Von ne peut pas sortir du domaine de I'hypothese;
the question must remain unresolved.
¹

Man or boy, Stephen seems to have appeared to the Queen just the person she needed to support her in her tribulations; and she in turn had little difficulty in persuading him, with promises of power, riches and honours for himself and his companions, to postpone his pilgrimage indefinitely and to share with her the government of the realm. From the outset he seemed able and energetic; just as important—and even rarer in Sicily—he proved personally incorruptible. Margaret was delighted with him. In November 1166, scarcely two months after his arrival in Palermo, she appointed him Chancellor.

The news of the appointment, as might have been expected, called forth a storm of protest. It was now over a century since the Normans had invaded the island, thirty-six years since the founding of the Kingdom. The Sicilians were beginning to feel themselves a nation, and to resent seeing more and more of the senior—and most profitable—positions in the land being given to foreign newcomers. Matthew of Ajello, it now appeared, was not the only one in the palace to have had his eye on the Chancellorship. Besides, while the office remained vacant its revenues had been divided among the members of the inner council. Stephen's appointment thus not only blighted their hopes; it reduced their incomes too.

Nor was it the new Chancellor alone who aroused such feelings. He had arrived, it will be remembered, with an entourage of thirty-seven ; in the months that followed others came out from France to

¹
A genealogical table showing the two possible relationships between Queen Margaret and Stephen du Perche will be found on p. 395. The theory of Stephen's royal parentage was first put forward, by Brequigny, as long ago as 1780
(Memoires de l'Academic des Inscriptions,
vol. XLI). It is strongly contested by La Lumia, while Chalandon, as we have seen, sits firmly on the fence. My own opinion, for what it is worth, is that Stephen was what he purported to be—a younger son of the Count of Perche—and that the phrase of Louis VII must be dismissed as a figure of speech, not too far-fetched in the circumstances. It seems in any case unlikely that he would have been made both Chancellor and Archbishop if he had not been at least in his twenties—hardly more than boyhood for the two highest posts in the kingdom.

join him: and before long the court and many sections of the administration seemed more French than Sicilian. It was perhaps natural that the young man should prefer to surround himself with people he knew, whose native language he understood; but it was natural too that those who suffered by the change should resent it, the more so since many of his friends-—especially those who had received Sicilian fiefs—behaved with curious tactlessness, treating the country folk around them as a subject race and everywhere imposing French habits and customs without regard for local susceptibilities.

On the other hand, Stephen was a genuine idealist. He may have lacked sensitivity and finesse, but he sincerely wished to make Sicily a better place and lost no time in instituting the reforms he considered necessary. He turned his attention first to the notaries— thus antagonising Matthew of Ajello, the Protonotary, of one of whose relations he made a public example; then, in rapid succession, he dealt with judges, local officials and castellans, clamping down on injustice wherever he saw it. 'He never,' says Falcandus, 'allowed powerful men to oppress their subjects, nor ever feigned to overlook any injury done to the poor. In such a way his fame quickly spread throughout the Kingdom
...
so that men looked on him as a heavensent angel of consolation who had brought back the Golden Age.'

Even when we make due allowance for exaggeration, tendentious reporting and the sad scarcity of reliable source material, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Margaret was initially justified in her decision to bring in an outsider to govern the Kingdom. Reforms were obviously overdue; and in the prevailing atmosphere of discord and mistrust it would have been virtually impossible for any Sicilian—whether by birth or by long-term adoption—to bring them about. Stephen, impartial and uncommitted, was in a position to do so, and because he did not lack moral courage he succeeded. But in the process, however much favour he gained with the masses, it was inevitable that he should have made himself hated by his Sicilian subordinates; and though his preference for Frenchmen around him may have gratuitously provided additional grounds for resentment, his own presence and power in the land would have been more than enough to ensure his lasting unpopularity.

And was this unpopularity so bad a thing ? Nothing unites a people like a common enemy, and in a country so torn by factional strife any unifying force, even an oppressive and corrupt tyranny, might have had an ultimately beneficial effect. Stephen was neither oppressive nor corrupt; he was simply disliked. And it is at least arguable that the greatest benefit he conferred on the Kingdom lay not in any of his administrative reforms but in the solidarity he gave to his opponents, reminding them that they were above all Sicilians, and Sicilians with a job to do—to rid their country of foreign intruders.

Just how successfully they did it will be told in a later chapter. Meanwhile there appeared on the horizon another intruder, compared with whom Stephen du Perche and his friends must have seemed petty irritations indeed. Within weeks of their coming to power, news reached Palermo that the Emperor was once again on the march.

15

THE SECOND SCHISM

Quid facts insane     pa trie mors, Octaviane!

Cur presumpsisti     tunicam dividere Christi?

Jamjam pubis eris;    modo vivis, eras morieris.

(Octavian, by what aberration

Do you seek to bring Rome to damnation ?

How were you ever enticed

So to sever the tunic of Christ ?

You too will be dust by and
by;

As you lived, so tomorrow you'll die.)

Britto, a pamphleteer of Rome

W
hen
, at the close of the year
11
66, Frederick Barbarossa led his immense army southward on the new campaign, he had before him three distinct objectives. First, he intended to liquidate the unofficial Byzantine outpost at Ancona; next, he would march against the Pope in Rome, whom he was resolved to replace on the throne of St Peter by an anti-Pope of his own choosing; finally, as always, there was the Norman Kingdom of Sicily to be smashed. Separate as these three targets were, the reasons which led the Emperor to attack them were closely interrelated; to understand them, however, we must cast a quick retrospective glance at the progress of the imperial-papal duel during the seven years since the death of Pope Adrian—and, in particular, at the melancholy farce which had attended the election of his successor.