XXII. Magister Militum
Antichrist seated atop the Leviathan, 12th c. illustration
The Feast of Verona
The death of Emperor
Octavian in 989 left a boy just shy of eleven on the imperial throne, his only legitimate son
Constantine.
Agatha Porphyrogenita, now the dowager empress, easily assumed control of the imperial court and administration, which she had in large part been running already throughout her husband’s reign. Power in Italy, however, was not vested in the court or chancery, but in land, and in Lombardy many of the landowning nobility were deeply dissatisfied with the prospect of an Agathene regency.
Nevertheless, a rebellion was not immediately in the offing. The most likely competitor for the throne,
Sergius of Pavia – Octavian’s eldest bastard son and the Margrave of Carniola – had been distanced from Lombardy and the imperial court by his frontier appointment. Once Octavian was dead, Sergius appeared in Lombardy once more, but by April he had returned to Carniola. Constantine was not quite as precarious as he appeared – that Octavian, a popular and (mostly) victorious emperor had secured his son’s election and that Constantine had been crowned by the Pope (even if that pope was Constantine’s uncle) evidently counted for something. The Lombard nobility may even have been favorable to the idea of a regency, as a child emperor could hardly move to curtail the privileges they had amassed under Octavian.
While the Lombard nobility offered its tacit consent through its silence, the empress too held back from any overt act to consolidate power in Lombardy, and for nearly four months the kingdom was placid. The peace began to collapse only in the first week of July, a few days after the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29th. Margrave Sergius had come west to Verona to celebrate the feast, where he was hosted by a certain Count
Otharius.
[1] The principal Pro-Agatha chroniclers of the 11th century, Alcerius Aventinus and Arnulf of Milan, tell similar stories of the infamous “Feast of Verona” and its aftermath: that Otharius received the margrave in a “royal fashion,” demonstrating his pride and ambition, and that Sergius regaled the guests with stories of Agatha’s trickery and vice and suggested that Constantine himself was a bastard, a peasant’s child produced by Agatha (after, presumably, a faked pregnancy) as a grand scheme to retain the throne despite her barrenness. Even then, they claim, Agatha refused to act until it was revealed that Sergius was gathering men and arms to launch his own bid for the throne, at which point the empress demanded his submission. Sergius fled to his own principality, where he rallied his own forces and launched a war against his half-brother.
This is unlikely to be the unvarnished truth. In the first place, the story of the faked pregnancy and the peasant-child posing as heir is lifted almost verbatim from the account of Liutprand, in whose history it is Emperor Hugh who makes that allegation against his late mother, Bertha, in order to disown his half-brother Lambert of Tuscany that he might wed Marozia. While it is possible Sergius and his supporters may have cast aspersions on Constantine’s legitimacy, they are not known from other sources, and it seems unlikely that Sergius would have copied the same tale in full. The remainder of the story seems constructed to present Sergius as the perfect villain, prideful and rebellious yet also cowardly with his flight back to Carniola. It may well be that it was Agatha who made the first step towards civil war, misunderstanding the peace of Lombardy over the past few months to be a signal that she had a free hand to do with Sergius as she pleased. That Sergius fled to Carniola may be no more than his attempt to evade capture or worse after refusing a demand to give up his title.
The Nobles’ King
Whatever the truth of the matter, Agatha’s decision to depose Sergius was a serious blunder. The Lombard nobility had so far been content to allow her to run things her way in Tuscany as long as they continued in their independence, but the willingness of the empress to arbitrarily remove Sergius from power confirmed latent fears of her “Greek tyranny.” Even then, however, war was not as immediate as Alcerius and Arnulf claim. Realizing the gravity of the situation, Otherius attempted to present himself to the royal court, then in Pavia, to reconcile and negotiate on behalf of his recent guest and friend, but this mission seems to have come to nothing. Thereafter a larger group of northern counts sought an audience with Constantine – this was apparently in August, more than a month after the Feast of Verona – to advance their own agenda. While Alcerius claims that they were partisans of Sergius, the “Burgundinian Chronicle” of Aymon of Valence suggests that they were attempting to broker peace in Lombardy by asking for the recognition of various privileges, including imperial assent to the hereditary inheritance of landed titles, which had been
de facto the case for decades but which no king or emperor, even the most beleaguered of the
reguli, had explicitly acknowledged. If accurate, Aymon’s account suggests that these men were not so much boosters for Sergius as opportunists who were more than willing to leave the bastard to Agatha’s tender mercies in exchange for a solidification of their own positions. But Agatha, fearing a coup, absconded from Pavia with her son before the nobles could have their audience.
Agatha’s flight left a vacuum in Lombardy which Sergius was quick to fill. While this may have been the planned “invasion” that the Agathene chroniclers describe him preparing in Carniola, it is perhaps more likely – if the Burgundinian Chronicle can be believed – that Sergius simply saw an opportunity to take command over the dissatisfied noble faction that the dowager empress had left in the lurch. Even once in Pavia, surrounded by sympathetic counts, Sergius did not avail himself of the Iron Crown. Instead another delegation was sent to the imperial court, now in Lucca, and possibly another delegation thereafter to Rome to seek the intervention of Pope
Adeodatus III. Agatha, however, would not consider any demands dictated to her – as she thought – by the veiled threat of rebellion, and Adeodatus seems to have deferred to the empress (if indeed he was consulted). While the sources disagree on who took up arms first – Arnulf and Alcerius maintain that Sergius came to Pavia with an army – all agree that in September, Agatha dispatched an army under
Siconus, a Tuscan nobleman, to bring Lombardy to obedience.
[2]
Siconus failed miserably. First his army was struck by disease, and then after laying siege to Pavia a party of Lombard
milites swept down upon his camp, taking the general prisoner and scattering his army. Some of the soldiers evidently switched sides. Casualties were at this point still light, but by dispatching an army Agatha had crossed the Rubicon. A number of northern nobility who had been on the fence, including men with Roman heritage like Count
Leo of Como, joined the anti-Agathene cause. At first their aim was probably only to remove Agatha from power, not to depose Constantine, but Sergius found the nobles were coming around to the idea of alternative leadership and managed to effect a change of heart within several weeks of the military debacle. On October 4th the assembled Lombard nobles elected Sergius as King of Italy in the city of his birth.
The White Rebellion
Agatha’s mishandling of the situation had destroyed the fragile
modus vivendi between her and the Lombard nobles, and she seems to have been left with no significant support north of the Apennines. Tuscany was still hers, but it was Lombardy which fielded the greater military force, and she had already lost one army under Siconus. The strategy of Sergius was thus both straightforward and reasonably sound – to march on Lucca directly, forcing the dowager empress and her son to either capitulate or flee. Agatha had, after all, already fled Pavia when faced merely with a noble delegation.
Sergius was to be disappointed. While the Lombard army met no resistance in the field, Agatha held the walls of Lucca against them, and the city’s defenses were formidable. The prospect of a siege was not cherished by the Lombard noble party – it would certainly be a long and costly affair, both in blood and treasure. The idea of a negotiated end to the crisis must have been an attractive one to many in the besieging camp, and Sergius had to struggle to keep his coalition from fraying. His best ally was, paradoxically, Agatha, who even while huddling behind the walls of Lucca met their suggestions of negotiation with outrage and defiance.
The dowager empress had some reason for confidence. Realizing the hopelessness of her military situation but unwilling to meet the demands of the Lombards, she had instead sought the aid of
John Crescentius, the Duke of Spoleto, who thus far seems to have sat on the sidelines of this unfolding drama. While John had little sway in Lombardy, he controlled a large part of the country (Spoleto as its Duke, Capua-Benevento as effective regent, and Rome as the father-in-law of the
praefectus urbi Benedict of Sabina) and was the only great magnate with the power to intervene decisively in Agatha’s favor.
We have no reason to suspect that John and Agatha were close, but it can be surmised that John saw the crisis as a marvelous opportunity to make himself the effective master of Italy. John had installed himself as regent for his young nephew
Atenulf of Capua after the Battle of Salerno, and though Atenulf had since grown to manhood John had maintained the reigns of government firmly in his own hands. To legitimate this control, he had transitioned from the temporary designation of regent to the perpetual office of
magister militum (“master of the soldiers”), a title of ancient Roman lineage which had endured in central Italy up to the 10th century. It seems likely that John presumed he could be to Constantine what he had been (and still was) to Atenulf, the true power behind the throne - and Constantine’s throne was a good deal more grand than Atenulf’s.
Duke John entered Tuscany with his own army in late October or early November, making a show of force but not yet seeking a battle. He offered generous terms to the rebels, offering general amnesty and proposing to ratify many of their privileges, but there was one sticking point – Sergius. Had the bastard been content with merely Carniola, he argued (according to Alcerius), he could have enjoyed the same amnesty as the rest; but having claimed the title of king, he ceased to be an ordinary rebel and became a usurper. The Lombard nobility liked Sergius, but they did not relish a battle with John’s evidently formidable force any more than a long siege of Lucca, and by offering to fulfill many of their original demands John had deftly undercut the usurper-king’s support. Sergius, sensing that his moment was slipping away, exhorted the Lombards to battle, but his followers apparently preferred John’s conciliation to Sergius’s warmongering. John offered to be merciful to Sergius if he were to come over voluntarily, beg forgiveness, and accept the loss of Carniola, but Sergius had no faith that John (or, perhaps more importantly, Agatha) would keep that promise. Instead, he fled the camp before someone could hand him over to his enemies. His flight destroyed whatever remaining support he had among the Lombards, and an unnamed Lombard
miles apprehended him as he fled and handed him over to John in exchange for “a measure of silver coins.” The whole rebellion was thus wrapped up with hardly any bloodshed at all, though the resulting moniker of “the White Rebellion” is a post-Medieval invention. Even Sergius managed to survive, though he was made a prisoner and dispossessed of his lands. He was fortunate to be John's prisoner rather than Agatha's.
Magister Militum
Agatha’s victory was a pyrrhic one. She had called upon John in order to avoid having to make the very same concessions which he had thereafter given the Lombard counts anyway. More seriously, John had no intention of swooping in to her rescue and then returning quietly to Spoleto. She was soon to learn the lesson that a powerful strongman, once invited in as a savior, all too often becomes the true master. Leaving Spoleto to his son, also named
John,
[3] John Crescentius relocated to Lucca. That city, however, remained Agatha’s stronghold, and to curb her power it was necessary for emperor Constantine to be relocated to the old capital of Pavia. Agatha was apparently unable to prevent this, and was compelled to choose between abandoning her son to John or abandoning her secure base in Tuscany. Unwilling to leave the court, she chose the latter.
Having isolated Agatha, John then rapidly consolidated his control throughout the rest of the country. His brother
Crescentius the Younger, ransomed from Saracen captivity some years before, took control over Capua-Benevento. John appointed
Azus,
[4] the brother-in-law of his nephew (that is, the brother of the wife of Crescentius’s son,
Crescentius III), as Margrave of Carniola to replace Sergius. In 990 he married his daughter
Rogata to Leo of Como in an effort to enter himself into the elite society of Lombardy. In that same year he secured from Constantine the same title of
magister militum which he had enjoyed from Atenulf, which made his intentions clear. In a likely effort to further sideline Agatha, John appointed
Thrasonus, Bishop of Ancona, as his new
archicancellarius, the supreme administrative post which had been vacant (but
de facto held by Agatha) since Liutprand’s death.
John had succeeded in bringing peace to the empire and may well have saved Constantine’s rule, even if it was as yet a rule in name only. A formidable internal enemy, however, would soon emerge. In late 990, Benedict of Sabina died, leaving John bereft of a strong ally in Rome. His replacement was his son by his first marriage,
Benedict II, but by now a far more formidable man was making waves in the eternal city. The man in question was
Gratian of Praeneste, a clergyman of noble Roman blood and the bishop
cardinalis of Praeneste.
[5] Pope Adeodatus III had appointed him as the chancellor of the Papal Curia after hearing of his erudition and diligence. The curia was hardly a powerful political force in Italy, but if any man had the will to make it so it was Gratian, and his master was increasingly interested in letting him try.
The “long-haired star” of 1145 illustrated by Eadwine, an English monk, c. 1160.
The same comet had appeared for several weeks in the autumn of 989.
The Coming Apocalypse
By the time of Octavian’s death, Adeodatus had seized upon the notion that the end of the first millennium, now fast approaching, would herald the Second Coming of Christ or possibly some other apocalyptic event. It should be noted that the question of whether there was any widespread connection made in medieval Europe between the end of the millennium and a possible apocalypse is still hotly debated. It is unquestioned, however, that as the millennial year approached, the Bishop of Rome was a believer.
In fact the position of the Church, based on the letter of Paul to the Thessalonians - “concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” - was that it was both impossible and inappropriate to prognosticate as to the day of judgment. Nevertheless, Adeodatus seems to have found the writings of “certain monks” persuasive. Though not mentioned by name, it is very likely that one of these monks was his contemporary
Adso, abbot of Monteir-en-Der (d. 992), whose work
De Antichristo was a medieval favorite. Written for Gerberga, wife of King Louis IV, that work had professed the existence of the Carolingian monarchy as the bulwark against not only political chaos but the actual coming of the Antichrist:
“Therefore, the Apostle Paul says that Antichrist will not come into the world unless the apostasy comes first, that is, unless first all the kingdoms which long ago were subject to the Roman Empire secede from it. This time, however, is not yet come, because, even though we see that the Empire of the Romans is for the most part destroyed, nevertheless, as long as the kings of the Franks, who possess the Roman Empire by right, survive, the dignity of the Roman Empire will not perish altogether, because it will endure in the French kings.”
While Adso had the Franks and the line of Charlemagne in mind as the heirs of the Roman Empire “by right” – he was, after all, writing his treatise to the Queen of France – Adeodatus was naturally inclined to see his own family as having shouldered that burden.
Also popular at this time were the prophecies of the 4th century “Tiburtine Sibyl,” which held that a final emperor would come to unite Christendom, destroy the heathens, and trigger the beginning of the last days and eventual confrontation between Christ and Antichrist. The Sibyl had given the name of this final emperor as
Constans. In the Frankish world it had been common to identify this man with Charlemagne, who some believed would return in the last days to fulfill this prophetic role. Adeodatus, however, was inclined to take another view, perhaps because the similarity of
Constans and
Constantine was not lost on him. Just in case this was not enough, in the autumn of 989, as civil war seemed to threaten in Lombardy, a brilliant comet lit up the night sky for weeks, and shortly thereafter an earthquake was felt in the vicinity of Capua.
[A] Clearly the Apocalypse was near at hand, and clearly the fate of the Tusculani monarchy would play a central part in the contest between good and evil.
This conclusion seems to have made Adeodatus a bit unhinged. Alcerius writes (not entirely approvingly) that Adeodatus consulted astrologers to glean further hints from the heavens. He took to wearing a hair-shirt and otherwise leading a life that was alarmingly ascetic for a 10th century pope. He directed his chancery to begin many of his letters and official charters with
Appropinquante finem mundi (“Approaching the end of the world…”). The Romans expected their bishop to be at least minimally religious, but he was also supposed to be a civic leader, a political figure, and a man of pomp and dignity. They did not seem to know quite what to make of this man, who was the brother and uncle of emperors but buried his nose in astronomical texts, muttered about the end of the world, and on occasion had to be nursed back to health after carrying his fasting too far.
We do not know to what extent Chancellor Gratian agreed with the pope’s dire forecast, but he was too sober a man to be as consumed by prophecy as Adeodatus. Even if he was skeptical, however, his own political program dovetailed nicely with the pope’s millenarian apprehensions. Gratian’s aim was to empower the Papacy, and the first step to doing that was to overthrow its most proximate enemy, the prefect. That, in turn, meant the overthrow of John, the prefect’s master. It has been alleged by modern scholars that Gratian cynically used the millenarianism of Adeodatus to gain his support, perhaps suggesting to him that John intended to overthrow Constantine and thereby bring ruin to the empire and to Christendom. Yet it is not impossible that Adeodatus was just as conscious of the political situation as Gratian, and had both worldly and otherworldly motives for permitting his chancellor to take on the most powerful man in Italy.
The Petrine Crisis
Gratian’s initial challenge concerned the all-important matter of investiture. The Italian kings up to this point had appointed bishops at their whim; Papal approval for high positions was requested
pro forma by the kings of Christendom, including the King of Italy, but this was a request that was rarely denied. John, acting as the emperor’s regent, had usurped this power for himself and had begun introducing his own Spoletan and southern Lombard candidates into vacant sees. In February of 991, Gratian arranged the rejection of John’s candidate for the see of Forli, a certain
Peter, accusing him of pluralism as he enjoyed some other benefice at the time. John was probably not overly concerned by this, for he did nothing; he presumably expected the prefect to handle the matter for him. Gratian, however, refused to meet with the prefect. Benedict rashly attempted to seize the Lateran by force of arms, which was militarily speaking a trivial matter, but Gratian had seen to this already and stirred up a howling mob of Romans against him. By the time Benedict had regained control of the situation, Adeodatus and Gratian had fled to Tusculum, where they were received by
Landus, the
castaldus aulae.
The “gastald of the [royal] hall” had been charged with maintaining the emperor’s palace at Tusculum, but also to act as a counterbalance to the prefect. That “balance” was nevertheless highly unequal: Tusculum was a bucolic hilltop retreat, while Rome was a major city with the head of the whole Latin Church ensconced therein. Landus was no doubt aware of the power disparity, but he clearly also knew who his own people were. The
castaldus aulae was a Tuscan Lombard of relatively humble origins; we are told that his father was a
miles (possibly one of the
sodales) and that he himself was an “official,” possibly a steward or
notarius. In any case he owed his rise to power to Agatha, not John Crescentius, and when Adeodatus and Gratian came to his door he welcomed them.
The whole affair was an embarrassing debacle for John and Benedict. The prefect seems to have thought to end the deadlock with a quick and bloodless
coup de main but was now faced with the prospect of besieging an imperial stronghold. John, for his part, had no intention of starting a war – with the pope no less – over the appointment of the Bishop of Forli. When word reached him of the situation, he attempted to defuse it, ordering the prefect to do nothing further to antagonize Adeodatus. Ultimately when the pope triumphantly returned to Rome upon his horse, he was welcomed by the prefect on foot, who made a display of his penitence and submission before the people. Peter ultimately did become Bishop of Forli, but Gratian had achieved his aims – a demonstration to the kingdom that the Papacy was willing to exercise its veto power even in the face of the most powerful man in Italy, and a demonstration to Rome that the city’s true master was the pope, not the prefect.
Gratian did not engage in such brinksmanship constantly – having won his victory, he was content to turn his attention to local matters, expanding the revenues and patronage networks of the Papal Curia in opposition to the rather impotent Prefect Benedict. Yet he had not lost sight of his larger goal, and reached out to the seemingly powerless dowager empress to secure her as an ally. The loyalty of Landus had demonstrated that Agatha’s faction was not totally moribund, and Agatha was even more motivated than Gratian to remove the
magister militum from power. In fact, Agatha’s power was on the rise, for Constantine was by now in his teenage years and was more capable of asserting himself with each passing year. As it turned out, he was very much his mother’s son, and it seemed unlikely that John would be able to control him well into adulthood as he had done with Atenulf, particularly when Agatha remained by his side to encourage his independence.
The New Regency
If Gratian intended further grandstanding against John, he would not get the opportunity. In the winter of 992/3, just over three years after he assumed power, John Crescentius fell ill and died at the age of 52. Many later histories maintain that he was poisoned by Agatha. The only contemporary source which makes this claim is the Burgundinian Chronicle, which is generally hostile to Agatha and Constantine. The idea that Agatha would seek to kill the man who had usurped her regency is not completely implausible, but it should be remembered that the Burgundinian Chronicle also gives significant attention to the supposed poisoning of Emperor Hugh by Marozia, and its author was clearly attempting to further a narrative in which the Tusculani were dominated through the generations by dangerous and perfidious women. It is also unclear why Agatha would choose that particular time to kill John, more than three years after his rise; the chronicle explains that it was because John was planning to crown himself emperor, but given the antagonism between John and the Papacy at this time it seems unlikely that John could have managed this.
The years of John’s regency are frequently passed over by historical writers, considered merely a brief and undistinguished interlude between the death of Octavian and the civil war that followed John's own death. His accomplishments may be unsung, but they are not negligible. For over three years he kept the empire whole and at peace despite considerable internal schisms. We know very little of his “foreign policy” – the Italian monarchy seems to have turned inwards during this time and made little impact on the affairs of Europe – but no foreign power seriously challenged the empire’s integrity or attempted to seize the throne while he ruled. The only external threat seems to have been Saracen raids in the south, which had grown in range and frequency following the Battle of Salerno and the establishment of footholds in former Byzantine and Salernitan territory. Three years does not seem like an exceedingly long time, but the difference between an emperor of 11 and an emperor of 14 was not inconsiderable. The moment of tranquility he secured meant that Constantine, though still not fully a man, would not be a mere pawn in the contest to come.
Crescentii family members or in-laws still ruled in Spoleto, Capua-Benevento, Rome, Carniola, and Como, but these rulers – John II, Crescentius the Younger, Benedict II of Sabina, Azus, and Leo of Como, respectively
[6] – do not seem to have been able to coalesce around a single leader. John Crescentius had been a uniquely dominant figure, and no single man among his familial successors had the power, territory, or influence to take up the reigns of the government following his death. The result was the reversion of the regency to Agatha, who immediately fired John’s archchancellor Thrasonus and otherwise purged the administration of Crescentii loyalists.
The intervening years of John’s regency had not made the relationship between Agatha and the Lombard nobility any closer, and nobody was keener on exploiting that divide than Sergius of Pavia. Around the time of John's death he was imprisoned a monastery in Cecina on the Tuscan coast, but he soon gained his freedom by some means and made his way back into Lombardy. He succeeded in sparking a rebellion, but his move was premature – before word of his uprising could spread far, he was cornered along with a small force near Piacenza by Agatha’s loyalists, defeated, and recaptured. Agatha was not as lenient as John, and in true Byzantine fashion she had him tonsured, castrated, and shipped off to Capraia.
[7]
That shocking act neutralized Agatha’s foremost domestic nemesis, but Sergius was a figurehead, not the motive force behind the anti-Agathene movement, and his mutilation only made the Lombard aristocracy revile the dowager empress all the more. Shortly after the disgrace and exile of Sergius, a party of noblemen crossed over the mountains, arrived at the court of
Hugh II, the king of Provence, and implored him to take the crown of Italy from the boy-emperor and his tyrannical mother.
Next Time:
Hugh's Ambition
Endnotes (In Character)
[1] “Otharius” is certainly a version of Authari, the name of a 6th century Lombard king. The name suggests this count was a Lombard but nothing else about him is known.
[2] “Siconus,” sometimes rendered “Siconius,” is likely a Latinization of Siconulf, suggesting central/southern Lombard heritage. It is unclear why Siconus, who is not mentioned before Octavian’s death, came so soon into such a position of prominence as to lead Agatha’s forces. One suspects that he was chosen for his loyalty to Agatha rather than his martial skill or experience.
[3] Sometimes known as John II Crescentius or John the Younger.
[4] Sometimes rendered as Atto, Azzo, Azzus, or Azolenus.
[5] A distinguished Roman name from ancient times, the name of
Gratianus was still in regular (though not exactly common) use in 10th century Rome. Some scholars have suggested that Alberic’s naming of his son Octavian started something of a trend of antique Roman names among the aristocracy of 10th century Rome, but evidence for this is thin. Latinized Greek, Lombard, and various Biblical names remained popular.
[6] Strictly speaking, Benedict II of Sabina was neither one of the Crescentii nor one of their in-laws; he was the elder Benedict’s son by his adulterous first wife. John’s daughter Theoderanda was merely his stepmother, and she was probably only a few years older than Benedict II (if that). Nevertheless, he seems to have been adopted into the family and is referred to as a
nepos (nephew/cousin) of John Crescentius even before the death of the elder Benedict.
[7] As has been mentioned, Capraia – a Tyrrhenian island halfway between Italy and Corsica, at that time home to a handful of lonely monasteries – had by this time become the favorite long-term prison of the Tusculani, serving the same purpose as some of the more barren Aegean Islands did for Byzantine undesirables in the east. Agatha’s “innovation” was not shipping Sergius there, but castrating him, which was exceedingly rare in the west even as a punishment.
Timeline Notes (Out of Character)
[A] This is Halley’s Comet, which indeed appeared in the autumn of 989. Of course, in this timeline it’s rather unlikely that it would still be named “Halley’s Comet.” This was an unplanned coincidence on my part but I think it works out rather well to help explain why Adeodatus rather abruptly goes off the deep end. The earthquake happening in Capua-Benevento soon after is also historically attested.