Byzantium and the Normans: How Pirates Captured Adriatic Cities and Ionian Islands | Start Media Corfu TV

Byzantium in its more than a thousand years of history is known to have faced many enemies. In our various articles we have referred to most of the conflicts of the Byzantines with their rivals. Until today, however, we had not dealt with the Normans who, from Scandinavia, first arrived in Italy and the Ionian Sea, then moved to the continental part of Byzantium and reached Thessaloniki, which they occupied and plundered.

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The Byzantines counter-attacked, achieved a series of victories against the Normans and forced them to abandon the lands they had occupied, except for Zakynthos and Cephalonia, which were definitively lost to Byzantium…

A particularly dangerous people who caused serious trouble in Byzantium in the 11th and 12th centuries were the Normans. They started as pirates from Norway, Denmark and Iceland and gradually reached Italy, where they settled in the Byzantine possessions serving as mercenaries and receiving land in exchange.

It was a happy juncture for Byzantium, the fact that in 1081 Alexios I Komnenos ascended the throne, a capable emperor who, however, had meager means and therefore turned to the Venetians who were also affected by the activities of the Normans. However, Alexios recaptured Corfu and took care of strengthening the morale of its inhabitants, promoting the Episcopate of Corfu to a Metropolis.

The capture of Durrës by the Normans

On June 17, 1081, the siege of Durres by the Normans began. The defender of the city was the capable commander George Palaiologos who had ensured its adequate fortification. At the same time, the Venetian fleet defeated the Norman one, thus breaking the siege from the sea. Alexios’ gratitude to the Venetians was manifested in many and rich gifts. Despite the initial success of the Palaiologos, however, with the repulse of the Normans in the first phase, the siege continued. So Alexius decided to lead a campaign against the Normans himself.

In October 1081 he was in Durres. Byzantines and Normans clashed on 19 October 1081, Alexios was defeated and almost captured.

They also seem to have learned from the Greeks the secret of wet fire, as a Norman chronicler, Geoffrey Malatera, describes how they poured this fire, called Greek and unquenchable with water, through underwater pipes. So they cunningly burned one of our ships beneath the waves of the sea. Against such tactics the Normans were powerless. Their decimated and disbanded fleet finally took the road of flight to the port.”

But the Norman army which had landed on the coast was prosperous. He defeated the Byzantines, but Durrës might not have fallen to the Normans if a Venetian merchant living in the city had not “arranged” for its gates to be opened, in exchange for the hand of one of Guiscard’s daughters (Robert Giscard v. Norwich ).

Fortunately for the Byzantines, Guiscard was forced in the spring of 1082 to hastily return to southern Italy, where a revolution had broken out. In his place he left his son, Bohemundus, as leader. He was put at the head of the Norman troops that invaded the imperial territories of Western Macedonia, capturing Kastoria and then advancing to Epirus and finally reaching Thessaly, where they failed to take possession of Larissa (1083).

The death of Guiscard – The second phase of the Norman raids

While Guiscard was in Italy suppressing the revolution that had broken out there, the Byzantines counter-attacked and forced the Normans to retreat, while the Venetians recaptured Durres.

But Roberto, after suppressing the revolution in Italy, returned. He occupied Cephalonia and planned to attack Central Greece and the Peloponnese. But he contracted malaria and died in 1085 in Cephalonia. The circumstances of his death are described by Anna Komneni, daughter of Alexios I in “Alexiada”.

This development was beneficial for the Byzantines as for about twenty years they were able to deal uninterruptedly with the other enemies of the empire. But in 1107 the second phase of the Norman raids began. The son of Robert Guiscardos Bohemundus, allied himself with French and Italian rulers and attacked Avlona first and then Durres.

This time, however, the Byzantines were better prepared and crushed the Normans of Bohemund, who with the Treaty of Devil in 1108 accepted to become a vassal of Alexius and in return received the hegemony of Antioch. The victory of the Byzantines was very important and consolidated the Byzantine rule in the Balkans.

Anna Komnini, who was then about 25 years old, was impressed by Bohemundos’ presentation style and describes him with admiration. Characteristic are what he writes at the beginning of her description: “A man like Vaimundus, to speak briefly, had never been seen before in the land of the Romans, neither barbarian nor Greek, it was a dazzle to the eyes if you saw him and a terror if you heard about him” .

New Norman raids against Byzantium

But the Norman raids against the Byzantine territories did not stop. In the years of John II Comnenus (1118 – 1143), son of Alexius, the Normans of southern Italy and Sicily experienced a new period of prosperity. Their new leader Roger II (1130-1154) was crowned king in Palermo, having united Apulia with Sicily.

In order to prevent any hostile actions from the Normans, John came to an agreement with the Holy Roman Emperor of Germany Lotharius II (1125-1137) and when he died, with Conrad (1138-1152). In 1147 Rogers attacked Corfu by surprise and captured it. He then attacked mainland Greece, striking Corinth and Thebes, which at that time were flourishing due to the cultivation of silk. Both cities were sacked and their inhabitants, skilled silk weavers, forcibly transferred to Palermo so that the Normans could compete with Byzantium in this field.

Emperor of Byzantium was Manuel I Komnenos (1143-1180), the youngest son of John II, who managed to take back Corfu with the help of the Venetians. However, Rogers was not satisfied with his raids, he also moved on a diplomatic level. He incited against the Byzantines the Hungarians (Magyars), a Turkic-speaking people of Central Europe who had converted to Roman Catholicism around 1,000 AD. and were developing into a force to be reckoned with, as well as the Serbs of the western Balkans. The death of Roger II and the problems that arose in the Norman kingdom gave Manuel I the opportunity to realize the old ambitions of Justinian I (527-565), to reconquer Italy.

After temporarily restoring order to the Balkans, he sent a fleet to Agona from where his operations would begin. Within a short time and with the help of Norman allies who defected, the Byzantines managed to bring under their control the area from Agona to Taranto. But the new king of the Normans William I (1154-1166) reacted by allying himself with the German Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (1152-1190), who did not take kindly to Manuel’s visions in Italy. But the Venetians also became worried and cut off their contacts with Manuel.

In 1156, William I defeated the Byzantines in the Battle of Brindisi. Manuel was forced to accept a humiliating peace, which deprived him of all the Italian possessions he had won.

The last attacks of the Normans – The capture of Thessaloniki

From 1185, the last wave of Norman attacks on the Byzantine lands began, led by William II (1166-1189) who began the advance on the Byzantine lands from Durres. The efforts of the new emperor Andronikos I Comnenus (1183-1185) to come to an understanding with Saladin, the Kurdish ruler of Egypt and the Venetians failed. The Normans captured Durres and moved towards Thessaloniki. At the same time, their fleet took action and conquered Corfu, Kefalonia and Zakynthos. Then they went to the port of Thessalonica and besieged the city by land and sea.

Constantinople was unable to offer help and its commander David Komnenos was unable to defend it. The looting and destruction experienced by Thessaloniki was enormous. Its inhabitants were tortured and killed in the most inhuman way. The Norman atrocities are described in detail by the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki Efstathios.

The end of the Norman peril

After the fall of Thessaloniki, the Norman army split up. One part of it moved towards Serres and another, the largest, towards Constantinople. As soon as this news reached Vasilevoussa, panic prevailed, as its inhabitants feared that they would suffer the fate of the inhabitants of Thessaloniki. The terror measures implemented by Andronikos I Komnenos combined with the anxiety of the inhabitants, led the latter to a terrible outbreak. Andronikos I, who was an idol for the common people, because of his pro-popular social measures, was overthrown and beheaded by the mob in the streets of Constantinople. In the end, the Norman threat did not prove fatal for Byzantium.

The Norman army degenerated due to its greed and abuses, while it was also hit by epidemics that caused significant losses in its ranks. Thus the Byzantines found the right moment for its final extermination. General Alexios Vranas defeated them first at Mossinopolis and later, in November 1085, at Dimitrizi of Serres. The Normans were forced to withdraw from Thessaloniki, as well as from Durres and Corfu. They remained only in Cephalonia and Zakynthos which were lost forever to the empire.

Epilogue

This was the fourth and last Norman raid against Byzantium. It was preceded by the definitive Schism of the two Churches (1054). Byzantium lost its possessions in Italy and was forced to give, for the first time, privileges to the Venetians to ally with it.

The Norman invasions lasted almost 130 years (1057-1185). The Third Crusade (1189-1192) followed and a little later the Fourth which led to the fall of Constantinople by the Latins (1204). The Norman raids are, in a way, a forerunner of these two Crusades. As this is an important chapter of Byzantine History, we will return to them with more and more detail in the future.