the first Council of Orleans ordered that the three days preceding Ascension Day should be celebrated as rogation days with fasting and rogationes. All work was to be suspended that all might join in the processions. Leo III. (pope 795–816) introduced rogation days, but without the fasting, at Rome. St Augustine had earlier introduced the custom into the English Church, learning it on his way through Gaul. The Council of Clovesho in 747 confirmed Augustine’s injunction, and ordered that the rogation days be kept up “according to the way of our fathers.” The place-name “Gospel Oak,” which occurs in London and elsewhere, is a relic of these rogation processions, the gospel of the day being read at the foot of the finest oak the parish boasted. After the Reformation the processions gradually ceased to be ecclesiastical in England, and are now practically secularized into the perambulation of the parish boundaries on or about Ascension Day.
See also Procession and Litany.
ROGER I. (1031–1101), ruler of Sicily, was the youngest son
of Tancred of Hauteville. He arrived in Southern Italy soon
after 1057. Malaterra, who compares Robert Guiscard (see
Guiscard, Robert) and his brother to “Joseph and Benjamin
of old,” says of Roger: “He was a youth of the greatest beauty,
of lofty stature, of graceful shape, most eloquent in speech and
cool in counsel. He was far-seeing in arranging all his actions,
pleasant and merry all with men; strong and brave, and furious
in battle.” He shared with Robert Guiscard the conquest of
Calabria, and in a treaty of 1062 the brothers in dividing the
conquest apparently made a kind of “condominium” by
which either was to have half of every castle and town in
Calabria.[1] Robert now resolved to employ Roger’s genius in
reducing Sicily, which contained, besides the Moslems, numerous
Greek Christians subject to Arab princes who had become all
but independent of the sultan of Tunis. In May 1061 the
brothers crossed from Reggio and captured Messina. After
Palermo had been taken in January IO72 Robert Guiscard, as
suzerain, invested Roger as count of Sicily, but retained Palermo,
half of Messina and the north-east portion (the Val Demone).
Not till 1085, however, was Roger able to undertake a systematic
crusade. In March 1086 Syracuse surrendered, and
when in February 1091 Noto yielded the conquest was complete.
Much of Robert’s success had been due to Roger’s support.
Similarly the latter supported Duke Roger, his nephew, against
Bohemund, Capua and his rebels, and the real leadership
of the Hautevilles passed to the Sicilian count. In return
for his aid against Bohemund and his rebels the duke surrendered
to his uncle in 1085 his share in the castles of Calabria,
and in 1091 the half of Palermo. Roger’s rule in Sicily was
more real than Robert Guiscard’s in Italy. At the enfeoffments
of 1072 and 1092 no great undivided fiefs were created,
and the mixed Norman, French and Italian vassals owed
their benefices to the count. No feudal revolt of importance
therefore troubled Roger. Politically supreme, the count
became master of the insular Church. While he gave full
toleration to the Greek Churches, he created new Latin bishoprics
at Syracuse and Girgenti and elsewhere, nominating the
bishops personally, while he turned the archbishopric of Palermo
into a Catholic see. The Papacy, favouring a prince who had
recovered Sicily from Greeks and Moslems, granted to him
and his heirs in 1098 the Apostolic Legateship in the island.
Roger practised general toleration to Arabs and Greeks, allowing
to each race the expansion of its own civilization. In the
cities the Moslems, who had generally secured such terms of
surrender, retained their mosques, their kadis, and freedom
of trade; in the country, however, they became serfs. He
drew from the Moslems the mass of his infantry, and St Anselm
visiting him at the siege of Capua, 1098, found “the brown
tents of the Arabs innumerable.” Nevertheless the Latin
element began to prevail with the Lombards and other Italians
who flocked into the island in the wake of the conquest, and
the conquest of Sicily was decisive in the steady decline from
this time of Mahommedan power in the western Mediterranean.
Roger, the “Great Count of Sicily,” died on the 22nd of Tune
1101 in his seventieth year and was buried in S. Trinita of
Mileto. His third wife, Adelaide, niece of Boniface, lord of
Savona, gave him two sons, Simon and Roger, of whom the
latter' succeeded him.
See E. Caspar, Roger II. und die Gründung der normannisch-sicilischen Monarchie (Innsbruck, 1904). (E. Cu.)
ROGER II. (1093–1154), king of Sicily, son of the preceding,
began personally to rule in 1112, and from the first aimed
at uniting the whole of the Norman conquests in Italy. In
June 1127, William, duke of Apulia, grandson of Robert Guiscard,
died childless, having apparently made some Vague
promise of the succession to Roger. In any case Roger claimed
at once, not only all the Hauteville possessions, but also the
over lordship of Capua, for which Richard II. in 1098 had sworn
Homage to Duke Roger. The union of Sicily and Apulia,
however, was resisted by Honorius II. and by the subjects of
the duchy itself, averse from any strong ducal power, and the
pope at Capua (Dec. 1127) preached a crusade against the
claimant, setting against him Robert II. of Capua and Ranulf
of Alife, or Avellino, brother-in-law of Roger, who proved
himself the real leader of the revolt. The coalition, however,
failed, and in August 1128 Honorius invested Roger at Benevento
as duke of Apulia. The baronial resistance, which was
backed by Naples, Bari, Salerno and other cities, whose aim
was civic freedom, also gave way, and at Melfi (Sept. 1129)
Roger was generally recognized as duke by Naples, Capua and
the rest. He began at once to enforce order in the Hauteville
possessions, where the ducal power had long been falling to
pieces. For the binding together of all his states 'the royal
name seemed essential, and the death of Honorius in February
1130, followed by a double election, seemed the decisive moment.
While Innocent II. fled to France, Roger, with deep design, supported
Anacletus II. The price was a crown, and on the 27th
of September 1130 a bull of Anacletus made Roger king of
Sicily. He was crowned in Palermo on the 25th of December
1130.
This plunged Roger into a ten years’ war. Bernard of Clairvaux, Innocent’s champion, built up against Anacletus and his “half heathen king” a coalition joined by Louis VI. of France, Henry I. of England and the emperor Lothar. Meanwhile the forces of revolt in South Italy drew to a head again. The rebels under Ranulf shamefully defeated the king at Nocera on the 24th of July 1132. Nevertheless, by July 1134 his terrific energy and the savagery of his Saracen troops forced Ranulf, Sergius, duke of Naples, and the rebels to submit, while Robert was expelled from Capua. Meanwhile Lothar’s contemplated attack upon Roger had gained the backing of Pisa, Genoa and the Greek emperor, all of whom feared the growth of a powerful Norman kingdom. In February 1137 Lothar began to move south and was joined by Ranulf and the rebels; in Tune he besieged and took Bari. At San Severino, after a victorious campaign, he and the pope jointly invested Ranulf as duke of Apulia (Aug. 1137), and the emperor then retired to Germany. Roger, freed from the utmost danger, recovered ground, sacked Capua and forced Sergius to acknowledge him as overlord of Naples. At Rignano the indomitable Ranulf again utterly defeated the king, but in April 1139 Ranulf died, leaving none to oppose Roger, who subdued pitilessly the last of the rebels.
The death of Anacletus (25 ]an. 1138) determined Roger to seek the confirmation of his title from Innocent. The latter, invading the kingdom with a large army, was skilfully ambushed at Galuccio on the Garigliano (22 July 1139). This secured the king’s object; on the 25th July the pope invested him as “Rex Siciliae ducatus Apuliae et principatus Capuae.” The boundaries of the “regno” were finally fixed, by a truce with the pope in October 1144, at a line south of the Tronto and east of Terracina and Ceprano.
Roger, now become one of the greatest kings in Europe, made Sicily the leading maritime power in the Mediterranean. A powerful fleet was built up under several “admirals,” or
- ↑ See Chalandon, La Domination normande, vol. i. p. 200.
