oak sih2

74

In the Middle Ages, knights and men-at-arms often used very big swords; a few survive from thc Viking age, and the Sagas often speak of men using extra-large ones. An actual example of such a sword, dating probably from the mid-12th century, I have just referred to under type XIA.

Descriptions by modern historians of a ferocious battle fought out-side the walls of the city' of Civitate in Southern Italy, on 18th June 1053 nearly always include the mention of two-handed swords. This is simply explained by a misunderstanding, not a misreading or a mistrans-lation, of a long heroic verxe chronicie by an Italian writer, produced half a century after the event. This was a long chronicie or "Geste" cel-ebrating the deeds of one of the great heroes of the early Norman epic adventure, Robert de Hauteville, called by his contemporaries, Robert Guiscard (Robert the Wiły or sometimes Robert the Weasel), who by his extraordinary prowess as a warrior, diplomat, and buccaneer, carved out a dukedom for himself and a kingdom for his heirs in South Italy between 1020 and about 1050. At one point in his career, he was brought to bay and almost destroyed by his principal adversary, the Pope Leo IX.

This battle was decisive in establishing the Normans in Italy and leading to the foundation of a kingdom (the Kingdom of Naples, or The Two Sicilies) which survived until the 19th century; and William of Apulia, one of the chroniclers who described it, was chiefly concerned in celebrating the deeds of Robert Guiscard in his Gęsta Roberti Wiscardi written in elegant Latin hexameters late in the llth century. William's poem is perhaps the raciest account, but it can be checked for accuracy against a number of other writers' descriptions, for the events of this period are particularly well documented.

Space forbids detailed consideration of the strategie moves which led up to the battle, nor can I indulge in morę than a sketch of the tac-tics and events of the fight itself, so I must deal instead with sonie of the combatants. Leo IX was a particularly warlike Pope, and the army which he led personally into the south was a large but mixed array- a collection of adventurers, mercenaries, and criminals- verv much the sort of army which was commonplace throughout the Middle Ages.

The 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon exaggerated some-what in his own description of it, but he was never far off the mark in anything he wrote. He says:

"In its long progress from Mantua to Beneventum, a vile and promiscuous multitude of Italians was enlisted under the holy standard: the priest and the robber slept in the same tent: the pikes and crosses were intermingled in the front: and the martial saint repeated the lessons of his youth in the order of march, of encampment, and of combat". (Leo had himself been a warrior in his youth.)

This tatterdemalion host was stiffened, however, by a body of 700 trained mercenary men-at-arms from South Germany, which Leo's chan-cellor Frederick of Schwabia was able to hire for him; and

Figurę 67. Sword ofTypc XII. Museum fur Deutsche Geschichte, Berlin, c. 1100. BL: 77.4cm.

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