Pope Urban II

Urban II and Sicily

Far more subtle than the Crusades, but far more successful over the long run, was Urban's program of bringing Campagna and Sicily firmly into the Catholic sphere, after generations of control from the Byzantine Empire and the hegemony of Arab emirs in Sicily. His agent in the Sicilian borderlands was the Norman ruler Roger I. In 1098 Urban bestowed on Roger extraordinary prerogatives, some of the very same rights that were being withheld from temporal sovereigns elsewhere in Europe. Roger was to be free to appoint bishops ("lay investiture"), free to collect Church revenues and forward them to the papacy (always a lucrative middle position), and free to sit in judgment on ecclesiastical questions. Roger was to be virtually a legate of the pope within Sicily. In re-Christianizing Sicily, seats of new dioceses needed to be established, and the boundaries of sees established, with a church hierarchy re-established after centuries of Muslim domination. Roger's Lombard consort Adelaide brought settlers from the valley of the Po to colonize eastern Sicily. Roger as secular ruler seemed a safe proposition, as he was merely a vassal of his kinsman the Count of Apulia, himself a vassal of Rome, so as a well-tested military commander it seemed safe to give him these extraordinary powers, which were later to come to terminal confrontations between Roger's Hohenstaufen heirs and the 13th-century Papacy.

Related Topics:
Campagna - Sicily - Byzantine Empire - Emir - Borderlands - Roger I - 1098 - Diocese - Sees - Lombard - Po - Hohenstaufen - 13th-century

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