Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/232

 210 THE DECLINE AND FALL of the Latin world ^^•' might disclaim their new associate, unless he were consecrated by the authority of the supreme pontiff. First idng of The pride of Anacletus was pleased to confer a title which the lisoi^Dec^M' pride of the Norman had stooped to solicit ; ^-^^ but his own jiuy'ab"^^' legitimacy Avas attacked by the adverse election of Innocent the Second ; and, while Anacletus sat in the Vatican, the suc- cessful fugitive was acknowledged by the nations of Europe. The infant monarchy of Roger was shaken, and almost over- thrown, by the unlucky choice of an ecclesiastical patron ; and the sword of Lothaire the Second of Gennany, the excommunica- tions of Innocent, the fleets of Pisa, and the zeal of St. Bernard, were united for the ruin of the Sicilian robber. After a gallant resistance, the Norman prince was driven from the continent of Ital}^ ; a new duke of Apulia was invested by the pope and the emperor, each of whom held one end of the goiij'anou, or flag- staff, as a token that they asserted their right and suspended their quarrel. But such jealous friendship was of short and precarious duration ; the German armies soon vanished in disease and desertion ; ^-^ the Apulian duke, with all his adherents, was exterminated by a conqueror who seldom forgave either the dead or the living ; like his predecessor Leo the Ninth, the feeble though haughty pontiff became the captive and friend of the Normans ; and their reconciliation was celebrated by the eloquence of Bernard, who now revered the title and virtues of the king of Sicily. His conquests As a peuance for his impious war against the successor of St. A.D.^imlu52 Peter, that monarch might have promised to display the banner of the cross, and he accomplished with ardour a vow so propitious to his interest and revenge. The recent injuries of Sicily might provoke a just retaliation on the heads of the Saracens ; the Normans, whose blood had been mingled with so many subject streams, were encouraged to remember and emulate the naval 11'* The kings of France, England, Scotland, Castile, .rragon, Navarre, Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary. The three first were more ancient than Charlemagne; the three next were created by their sword, the three last by their baptism; and of these the king of Hungary alone was honoured or debased by a papal crown. 120 Fazellus, and a crowd of Sicilians, had imagined a more early and indepen- dent coronation (A. D. 1130, May i), which Giannone unwillingly rejects (tom. ii. p. 137-144). This fiction is disproved by the silence of contemporaries ; nor can it be restored by a spurious charter of Messina (Muratori, Annali d'ltalia, tom. i.. p. 340 ; Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. p. 467, 468). I'^i Roger corrupted the second person of Lothaire's army, who sounded, or rather cried, a retreat ; for the Germans (says Cinnamus, 1. iii. c. i. p. 51) are ig- norant of the use of trumpets. Most ignorant himself ! [Cinnamus says that they did not use a trumpet ; not that they were ignorant of it.]