they built a most beautiful fortified city with a rampart and gates, a church, and a strong citadel at the highest point of the hill.[1] Here Pope Nicholas II (1058-1061) held a synod, soon after the Norman conquest, to arrange the new state of things. The Pope arrived in July, 1059, with the subdeacon Hildebrand (afterwards Gregory VII), three Cardinals, and a large retinue. Robert Wiscard met him here, with Richard Count of Aversa and Capua,[2] and many soldiers. There were two objects in this synod. The first was to restore ecclesiastical discipline, especially in the matter of clerical celibacy. It is a case of the application of the principles of Cluny, of which later Gregory VII was to be the great champion, to Southern Italy, where celibacy was in a particularly dangerous state. Side by side with the Roman priests were those of the Byzantine rite, who could lawfully be married. Their example was always felt to be dangerous for the Latins. The other object of the synod was to arrange the treaty between the Normans and the Holy See. The Pope made severe laws in favour of clerical celibacy among the Latins; he then determined the limits of the Norman territories; invested Robert Wiscard with these lands; while he, for his part, took an oath of fidelity to the Pope, recognized that he held his lands as a fief of the Holy See, and promised various privileges to the clergy.[3]
But not all the bishoprics at once became Latin. Gerace (Hieracium) in Calabria, for instance, kept Byzantine bishops for some time after the Norman conquest.[4] Roger I of Sicily restored the See of Rossano to the Pope's jurisdiction and appointed a Latin bishop. Then, in 1092, he gave way to the feeling of the people and allowed them to have a Byzantine Metropolitan, too. By 1293 the Latin see had become an archbishopric; there remained two Ordinaries, the Latin Archbishop and the Byzantine Metropolitan, till the fifteenth century (p. 109).
St Severina had been made a Metropolis during the time of the Byzantine power. The Normans reduced it again to a simple bishopric; but the bishop remained a Greek till after
- ↑ There is a picture of Norman Melfi in Curtis, "Roger of Sicily" (Putnam, 1912), p. 46.
- ↑ This Richard was the chief of the other line of Norman adventurers, eventually crushed by the de Hautevilles; see p. 62.
- ↑ The Synod of Melfi in 1059 is one of the important Italian synods of the eleventh century. Its acts are in Mansi, xix, 919-922; See also Hefele-Leclercq, "Histoire des Conciles," iv (Pt. ii), pp. 1180-1189.
- ↑ See below, p. 98.
