The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1879]
[Footnote 79: In the year 1000, the ambassadors of St. Stephen received from Pope Silvester the title of King of Hungary, with a diadem of Greek workmanship. It had been designed for the duke of Poland: but the Poles, by their own confession, were yet too barbarous to deserve an angelical and apostolical crown. (Katona, Hist. Critic Regum Stirpis Arpadianae, tom. i. p. 1 - 20.)]
[Footnote 80: Listen to the exultations of Adam of Bremen, (A.D. 1080,) of which the substance is agreeable to truth: Ecce illa ferocissima Danorum, &c., natio ..... jamdudum novit in Dei laudibus Alleluia resonare ..... Ecce populus ille piraticus ..... suis nunc finibus contentus est. Ecce patria horribilis semper inaccessa propter cultum idolorum ... praedicatores veritatis ubique certatim admittit, &c., &c., (de Situ Daniae, &c., p. 40, 41, edit. Elzevir; a curious and original prospect of the north of Europe, and the introduction of Christianity.)]
[Footnote 81: The great princes removed in 1156 from Kiow, which was ruined by the Tartars in 1240. Moscow became the seat of empire in the xivth century. See the 1st and 2d volumes of Levesque's History, and Mr. Coxe's Travels into the North, tom. i. p. 241, &c.]
[Footnote 82: The ambassadors of St. Stephen had used the reverential expressions of regnum oblatum, debitam obedientiam, &c., which were most rigorously interpreted by Gregory VII.; and the Hungarian Catholics are distressed between the sanctity of the pope and the independence of the crown, (Katona, Hist. Critica, tom. i. p. 20 - 25, tom. ii. p. 304, 346, 360, &c.)]
Chapter LVI : The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.
Part I.
The Saracens, Franks, And Greeks, In Italy. - First Adventures And Settlement Of The Normans. - Character And Conquest Of Robert Guiscard, Duke Of Apulia - Deliverance Of Sicily By His Brother Roger. - Victories Of Robert Over The Emperors Of The East And West. - Roger, King Of Sicily, Invades Africa And Greece. - The Emperor Manuel Comnenus. - Wars Of The Greeks And Normans. - Extinction Of The Normans.
The three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy. ^1 The southern provinces, which now compose the kingdom of Naples, were subject, for the most part, to the Lombard dukes and princes of Beneventum; ^2 so powerful in war, that they checked for a moment the genius of Charlemagne; so liberal in peace, that they maintained in their capital an academy of thirty-two philosophers and grammarians. The division of this flourishing state produced the rival principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua; and the thoughtless ambition or revenge of the competitors invited the Saracens to the ruin of their common inheritance. During a calamitous period of two hundred years, Italy was exposed to a repetition of wounds, which the invaders were not capable of healing by the union and tranquility of a perfect conquest. Their frequent and almost annual squadrons issued from the port of Palermo, and were entertained with too much indulgence by the Christians of Naples: the more formidable fleets were prepared on the African coast; and even the Arabs of Andalusia were sometimes tempted to assist or oppose the Moslems of an adverse sect. In the revolution of human events, a new ambuscade was concealed in the Caudine Forks, the fields of Cannae were bedewed a second time with the blood of the Africans, and the sovereign of Rome again attacked or defended the walls of Capua and Tarentum. A colony of Saracens had been planted at Bari, which commands the entrance of the Adriatic Gulf; and their impartial depredations provoked the resentment, and conciliated the union of the two emperors. An offensive alliance was concluded between Basil the Macedonian, the first of his race, and Lewis the great-grandson of Charlemagne; ^3 and each party supplied the deficiencies of his associate. It would have been imprudent in the Byzantine monarch to transport his stationary troops of