The Golden One - June 23, 2023


The Factions of Southern Italy During the 1100s. Excerpt From The Greatest Podcast Episode 33.

Hosted by
Marcus Follin
Mentioned
Saracens Sicily John Julius Norwich Vlad Dracula Manzikert Norman Greeks Sunmax
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Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

140.91

Word count

1,578

Sentence count

79

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I discuss the role of the Lombards, the Byzantine Empire, and the Papal forces in the Middle Ages. I also discuss the schism between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires and the fall of the Roman Empire.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:00.200 Now, I suppose most of you have listened to my episode titled The Gothic Heirs of Rome.
00:00:08.160 Now, I didn't have the heart to tell you what happened after Theoderic's death during the 500s.
00:00:17.160 So basically, his glorious kingdom, his empire, his successor state to the Western Roman Empire,
00:00:25.180 it fell to the blasphemous Byzantines. 1.00
00:00:30.300 They launched a reconquest, or rather conquest, campaign against Italy.
00:00:35.860 And yeah, they shattered the flourishing Austro-Gothic kingdom to my great sorrow and lament.
00:00:44.680 But it is what it is. That is how history goes.
00:00:47.540 So anyway, the Gothic kingdom there, it didn't survive the centuries to come.
00:00:55.380 Now, of course, they did flourish more in Spain until they got conquered by the Moors. 1.00
00:01:01.700 And I would say, though, that the Gothic spirit, it survived in the Spanish nobility,
00:01:06.900 and they ultimately reconquered the Iberian Peninsula,
00:01:11.740 and both Portugal and Spain would embark on a great Faustian conquest and exploration spree,
00:01:21.220 which I will detail in another episode, or many different episodes, I suppose,
00:01:26.260 because those adventures and stories, they deserve to be retold.
00:01:30.480 Now, anyway, back to Italy.
00:01:33.580 The Byzantines, they established control there for a while.
00:01:37.440 But then another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, came down and conquered much of Italy.
00:01:43.760 And usually, of course, if you hear the name the Lombards,
00:01:47.340 you think of Lombardy in northern Italy.
00:01:49.420 And it's true that the northern Italians, they have more Germanic blood in general,
00:01:54.840 and Lombard blood in particular, especially in that area, of course, in Lombardy.
00:02:00.480 But they also ventured south and established some dukedoms of their own,
00:02:06.900 thus creating an ethnicity which we can call what the author of the book,
00:02:12.940 John Julius Norwich, he calls Italo Lombard.
00:02:16.220 So that is one of these players at a stage of southern Italy at the time.
00:02:24.860 So those are the local nobility.
00:02:27.820 So Lombards, Germanic people, travel down to Italy, 1.00
00:02:31.700 establishing themselves as an aristocracy ruling caste there.
00:02:37.280 So that is one of the players that the Normans will encounter.
00:02:42.880 Then, of course, you still have the Byzantines, 1.00
00:02:46.060 which, you know, they still have some holdings left in Italy at this stage.
00:02:51.540 Now keep in mind that the Byzantines,
00:02:53.700 they embarked upon their conquest of Italy almost 500 years earlier.
00:02:59.220 So a lot of things have happened since then.
00:03:01.940 But the Byzantines, even during the 11th century,
00:03:05.060 still a force to be reckoned with,
00:03:06.940 although things are going worse for them after this time,
00:03:11.100 especially after the defeat at Manzikert by the Seljuk Turks.
00:03:14.820 But that is another story.
00:03:17.060 So two of the players there,
00:03:18.740 Italo Lombards, local nobility,
00:03:20.680 and Byzantines still wanting to be an influential player in that part of Europe.
00:03:27.940 Then you have the papacy, the papal forces,
00:03:31.220 of course, based in Rome.
00:03:33.380 And I'm going on a tangent now,
00:03:35.220 but this will be important for this story as it unfolds.
00:03:39.400 So during this time in 1054,
00:03:43.480 the great schism between Constantinople and Rome,
00:03:47.480 in terms of Christianity I'm talking about,
00:03:49.360 so the split between Catholicism and Orthodoxy,
00:03:52.960 it occurs during this time.
00:03:55.620 And as the author notes in this particular book I'm referencing,
00:03:59.640 that was an inevitable split.
00:04:03.080 Then there were some intrigues that made it happen then and there,
00:04:06.600 but I am very much inclined to agree that it would happen sooner or later,
00:04:10.680 because you can't really have two poles of great power,
00:04:15.220 so Rome and Constantinople.
00:04:16.900 And, of course, this split,
00:04:18.720 it goes back to the split of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire itself.
00:04:24.180 And then, of course, it continues with the papacy in Rome
00:04:26.440 and the patriarch in Constantinople.
00:04:29.360 So this happens at least,
00:04:30.660 and, of course, makes the Byzantine Empire
00:04:33.580 and the Latins of the West go different ways.
00:04:36.960 And this would be very important for later crusades.
00:04:40.060 During the Fourth Crusade,
00:04:42.680 the Latins, under the influence of the mischievous Venetians, 1.00
00:04:47.740 they sack Constantinople and establish a kingdom there. 0.98
00:04:50.860 But, yeah, I am going on a proper tangent now.
00:04:54.240 I just wanted to have that said
00:04:55.660 so you understand the difference between Christian forces.
00:04:59.960 So you have the Orthodox Byzantines 0.85
00:05:02.080 and the Catholic Latin powers.
00:05:05.320 So then we have the Italo-Lombards, 1.00
00:05:07.860 we have the papal forces,
00:05:09.760 and we have the Byzantines.
00:05:11.400 And then, of course, we have, in the north,
00:05:14.280 the great empire of Charlemagne.
00:05:17.500 Now, this empire has been split by this stage,
00:05:20.400 so you have what would be France
00:05:22.160 and what would be Germany
00:05:23.540 and what would be Germany,
00:05:25.560 the Holy Roman Empire.
00:05:26.520 That is the main player in Italy during the Middle Ages.
00:05:31.060 And something interesting here as well
00:05:33.020 is that during this time,
00:05:35.160 so the 11th century,
00:05:37.300 the Pope,
00:05:38.320 so the papal forces of Rome
00:05:39.720 and the German Emperor,
00:05:42.300 they were actually allied.
00:05:44.580 And this is interesting
00:05:45.400 if you are an astute disciple,
00:05:47.860 if you are an enjoyer of this podcast
00:05:50.700 and an enjoyer of my book reviews,
00:05:52.980 and if you are also an enjoyer of Julius Evola,
00:05:55.780 you will remember that
00:05:56.920 one of the main conflicts
00:05:59.580 during the Middle Ages
00:06:00.680 was that between the Holy Roman Emperor
00:06:03.320 in Germany and the Pope.
00:06:06.140 So at this stage,
00:06:07.380 they had a still sound relationship,
00:06:09.540 but this relationship would soon turn sour,
00:06:13.000 as we shall discover later on.
00:06:15.780 Anyway, in setting the stage
00:06:17.700 for the Norman conquest of Italy,
00:06:21.080 the Emperor and the Pope,
00:06:22.540 they were still friends.
00:06:23.660 So we are continuing the count of factions
00:06:27.460 in this cauldron
00:06:28.880 that was southern Italy back in the day.
00:06:32.280 So we have the Italo-Lombard nobility,
00:06:36.120 we have the papal forces,
00:06:38.440 we have the Byzantine forces,
00:06:39.880 we have the,
00:06:41.120 we can call them Germans,
00:06:43.240 so the forces of the imperial forces.
00:06:45.780 And then, of course,
00:06:47.780 we have not to forget
00:06:49.460 the very same forces
00:06:50.840 that I just mentioned,
00:06:52.460 that so viciously conquered
00:06:55.880 the glorious Visigothic kingdom of Iberia.
00:07:00.060 We have the Saracens.
00:07:01.300 Now, of course,
00:07:01.760 there are different types of Saracens.
00:07:04.300 The Moors that conquered Iberia, 1.00
00:07:06.940 they were at this stage
00:07:08.020 not the same entity
00:07:10.040 as the ones who raided Sicily
00:07:13.520 in southern Italy,
00:07:14.400 but still global south Muslims.
00:07:17.040 So these Arabs, 1.00
00:07:17.940 they had embarked upon,
00:07:20.480 had I been Muslim,
00:07:21.660 had I been Arab myself,
00:07:23.100 I would have said
00:07:24.140 a heroic and epic conquest campaign.
00:07:27.180 That I can reluctantly admit
00:07:29.680 that for them,
00:07:30.900 it was, of course,
00:07:31.620 for the other players in the area,
00:07:34.060 it was a catastrophic defeat.
00:07:36.780 So you can take in the East,
00:07:38.560 the Eastern Roman Empire,
00:07:40.160 the Byzantine Empire,
00:07:41.520 when the Muslims,
00:07:43.660 they exploded onto the world scene
00:07:46.080 with the Arab conquests of the 600s.
00:07:50.400 So the Byzantine Empire 0.87
00:07:52.240 and the Persian Empire
00:07:53.340 had spent many centuries
00:07:55.360 fighting each other.
00:07:56.500 They were exhausted.
00:07:57.540 And then in that vacuum of power,
00:07:59.720 the Arabs come to conquer. 0.99
00:08:01.940 And as already noted twice now,
00:08:05.660 I don't want to blackpill you 1.00
00:08:06.940 by reminding you of it,
00:08:08.140 but they did conquer Spain
00:08:09.360 and they did conquer Sicily
00:08:11.320 and they raided the southern coasts
00:08:15.700 of Europe for many centuries.
00:08:17.920 They would continue to do so
00:08:19.200 and for the purpose of setting the stage here
00:08:22.340 for the Normans,
00:08:23.320 they did raid Italy quite severely
00:08:26.400 and thus the Saracens,
00:08:28.720 they constitute the last
00:08:30.540 of the major players
00:08:31.800 of this particular drama.
00:08:34.260 So now that we have introduced
00:08:35.980 both the different factions
00:08:39.460 and the landscape itself,
00:08:41.540 we can introduce the Normans themselves.
00:08:44.580 So basically,
00:08:45.940 southern Italy at this time
00:08:47.520 was a cauldron,
00:08:49.160 a place of total chaos and war
00:08:51.220 where no strong authority
00:08:54.560 could keep the peace
00:08:56.120 because these Lombard princes,
00:08:58.560 they weren't strong enough
00:08:59.600 to stave off influence from abroad.
00:09:02.280 So they sort of had to,
00:09:04.300 you know,
00:09:04.540 make deals,
00:09:05.340 alliances and,
00:09:06.680 of course,
00:09:07.540 other entities,
00:09:08.780 they wanted to expand
00:09:09.880 their influence there as well.
00:09:11.620 So in a similar way,
00:09:12.980 as I've talked about before,
00:09:14.520 similar way as Wallachia,
00:09:16.160 during the time of Vlad Dracula,
00:09:18.100 they were stuck between
00:09:19.580 the Hungarians and the Ottomans.
00:09:21.380 They sort of had to
00:09:22.360 wheel and deal
00:09:23.380 to get the best
00:09:25.600 out of a bad situation.
00:09:27.700 And now on a last note
00:09:29.400 regarding the ethnic composition
00:09:31.780 of the southern Italians.
00:09:34.220 They were Greek.
00:09:35.400 Always had been,
00:09:36.560 well,
00:09:36.960 almost always.
00:09:38.280 Southern Italy and Sicily
00:09:39.540 were colonized by Greeks
00:09:41.500 during the heyday
00:09:43.800 of ancient Hellas.
00:09:45.380 So both Sicily
00:09:47.240 and southern Italy,
00:09:48.160 they had been under
00:09:49.000 Roman rule
00:09:50.560 for many centuries,
00:09:52.220 but the culture
00:09:53.060 was still
00:09:53.540 a bit distinct.
00:09:54.960 And this is something
00:09:55.700 I've talked about
00:09:56.440 many times before
00:09:57.760 that you have in
00:09:58.660 southern Italy
00:09:59.800 and northern Italy,
00:10:01.160 stemming back from
00:10:02.040 even before
00:10:03.240 the Germanic
00:10:04.260 invasions
00:10:05.100 of
00:10:05.500 the later stages
00:10:06.960 of the Roman Empire,
00:10:07.840 you have still
00:10:08.580 a difference between
00:10:09.520 the more Greek
00:10:11.260 south
00:10:11.880 and the more
00:10:12.800 Latin north.
00:10:14.900 So even though
00:10:15.660 the ruling caste,
00:10:18.160 the nobility
00:10:19.260 of southern Italy
00:10:20.500 at the time,
00:10:21.120 they were
00:10:21.440 the aforementioned
00:10:22.700 Lombards,
00:10:23.520 Italo-Lombards, 0.75
00:10:24.920 the general population
00:10:26.260 for the most part
00:10:27.500 were still Greek.
00:10:29.420 So yeah,
00:10:30.100 that's something
00:10:30.620 I thought to mention
00:10:31.600 as well.
00:10:32.620 Of course,
00:10:33.040 the population's
00:10:34.560 attitude towards
00:10:35.760 greater powers
00:10:36.800 also come into play
00:10:38.520 whenever we're
00:10:39.180 talking about
00:10:39.920 this.
00:10:40.720 and speaking
00:10:42.400 of which,
00:10:43.240 I will get into
00:10:44.180 this later as well,
00:10:45.080 but the Normans,
00:10:46.080 they were quite
00:10:46.620 heavy-handed
00:10:47.220 and this resulted
00:10:48.460 in resentment
00:10:49.860 by the local
00:10:50.980 population,
00:10:51.980 so the regular
00:10:52.740 Greeks.
00:10:53.680 But now,
00:10:55.020 anyway,
00:10:55.700 I have introduced
00:10:56.720 the main players
00:10:58.420 on the scene.
00:10:59.540 I will go out
00:11:00.260 and Sunmax,
00:11:01.440 take a music break
00:11:03.080 and then we'll get
00:11:03.800 back and I will
00:11:05.000 elaborate.
00:11:06.520 I will share
00:11:07.020 the great story
00:11:08.580 of how the Normans
00:11:09.900 first came to be
00:11:11.080 in Italy.