This book will examine the political, religious, and economic structures of southern Italy and Sicily in the early Middle Ages (c. 600-1100) and will present a unified narrative of the region based on a variety of sources, including archival documents, secondary literature, and archaeological reports.  Its uniqueness will be that it examines the region as a whole, comparing and contrasting the histories of Latin, Lombard, Greek, and Arab states.  Traditionally, southern Italy has been studied regionally since it was politically and culturally fragmented.  Yet despite the variation, recent research has shown a number of commonalities that cut across political borders, and has demonstrated that the various ethnic communities lived side-by-side and were in constant contact.  For this reason, the region can now be studied as a single unit, and placed within a broader context of both Mediterranean and European history.  The book will thus be a synthesis of the growing body of research being carried out by Italian and European scholars, that also integrates primary source materials which are now more easily accessible due to the growing number of printed editions available.  Although I am at the beginning of this project, much of the research carried out for my previous book, “The Transformation of a Religious Landscape: Medieval Southern Italy, 850-1150,” will be applicable to this new one, especially the chapters on religious life and organization. 

Part I will look at the sixth century, generally seen as a watershed in Italian history as it marked the end of the western Roman empire.  According to the traditional historiography, the wars waged by the emperor Justinian to regain the western provinces plunged the area into a period of violence and political anarchy, while a deadly plague and various environmental disasters brought further damage, leading to economic depression, the abandonment of cities, and a demographic decline.  Yet recent archaeological surveys have brought to light a more complex picture of the sixth century, demonstrating that areas such as southern Italy were, in fact, made up of micro-regions that responded in different ways to the political and economic transformations characteristic of the era.  Rather than merely painting a bleak picture of decadence and decline, new archeological research thus creates a more nuanced view that shows innovations and new beginnings as well.  Part I will also use recent research to present a detailed narrative of the Lombard conquest of southern Italy, again based on recent research that shows how the southern duchies were established independently of the northern kingdom.   Although there was always contact between the Lombard states, the duchies in the south had their own unique history. 

Part II will focus on an analysis of the political structures of the new Lombard duchies, the Arab conquest of Sicily and the establishment of the emirate of Bari, the Byzantine resurgence of the tenth century, and the independent maritime states of Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta.  It will end with a discussion of the Norman takeover of the region which brought political fragmentation to an end and integrated southern Italy more firmly into Latin Christian society.  Throughout Part II, special attention will be given to the similarities of both the modes of conquest and the methods of governance.  All of the foreign conquerors who arrived in southern Italy in the early Middle Ages came in small numbers and quickly assimilated with the local population, often through marriage.  Infiltration rather than conquest characterized the period.  In addition, the local rulers governed autonomously, even when they were nominally under the authority of Byzantine emperors, Carolingian kings, or Arab caliphs.  Other similarities include urban-based administration, weak central authority which stressed horizontal rather than vertical relationships, and military techniques based on small armies and siege warfare.  “Incastellamento,” the building of castles or fortifying of towns, was also a phenomenon common throughout the region, and led to the creation of territorial lordships beginning in the tenth century.   

Part III will examine religious life and organization, the economy, and the movement of peoples and goods.  Once again many striking similarities can be detected, despite political fragmentation.  For example, church organization was regionalized and marked by an absence of ecclesiastical hierarchies.  Religion was community based and small, independent proprietary foundations dominated the landscape in both Christian and Muslim regions.  Christian churches and churchmen were directly connected neither to the pope in Rome nor the patriarch of Constantinople, and traditions and liturgy tended to develop locally.  Likewise in Sicily, Muslim practices took on a local flavor, and Arab geographers such as Ibn Hawqal declared Muslims here to be only marginally orthodox since they prayed and purified themselves in a non-canonical manner, neglected to pay alms or go on the hajj, observed the fast of Ramadan incorrectly, and, most glaring, married Christian women without requiring their conversion to Islam.  Latin sources also speak of intermarriage between Christians, Muslims, and Jews as widespread, and note a mixing of religious observances and laws.  In some places Christians celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday, and in other places Christians followed Islamic rather than Christian laws.  Although such behavior horrified the educated religious leaders who observed it, other documents suggest that for the local population such mingling was acceptable, and that the lines between the three monotheistic religions was not as well pronounced as it would become later on.  Furthermore, the diversity of populations and governments in the region did not prevent the movement of peoples or goods.  Christian, Jewish, and Muslim merchants traveled freely from one region to another, and all three groups participated in the expansion of international commerce that began in the ninth century.  Thus, political boundaries did not limit mobility, and the cultural fragmentation of southern Italy that outsiders remarked on so frequently may not have been viewed as so radical by the inhabitants themselves.  Ethnic differences, too, might not have divided people as much as they do today.   

The book that will emerge from this research will be the first one that examines southern Italy and Sicily as a whole in the early Middle Ages.  Because the region lay on the periphery of the three great early medieval empires, it has often been ignored by historians or viewed as an anomaly.  Yet southern Italy is interesting precisely because of its status as a border region that combined elements of Byzantine, Frankish, and Muslim government and culture.  Its history is fascinating not only in and of itself, but also because it helps us to understand better the histories of the great Christian and Islamic empires of the time.  Moreover, since variety and highly localized societies were the norm even within the empires themselves, the idiosyncrasies of what some see as a peripheral and somewhat exceptional region can alternatively be viewed as an example of the widespread diversity characteristic of all areas of the medieval world. 

• Valerie Ramseyer vramseye@wellesley.edu
• Created: November, 20, 2004
• Expires: November, 20, 2007
• Last Modified: March 15, 2007

 

Lombards and Greeks, Arabs and Normans:
Southern Italy in the Early Middle Ages