As it has been before observed, Harold succeeded in England; Hardecanute, and his sons, in Denmark: for Magnus the son of Olave, whom I have mentioned in the history of our Canute, as having been killed by his subjects, had recovered Norway, which Canute had subdued. Harold dying in England, Hardecanute held both kingdoms for a short time. On his decease, Edward the Simple succeeded, who, satisfied with his paternal kingdom, despised his foreign dominions as burdensome and barbarous. One Sweyn, doubtlessly a most exalted character, was then made king of the Danes.[319] When his government had prospered for several years, Magnus, king of the Norwegians, with the consent of some of the Danes, expelled him by force, and subjected the land to his own will. Sweyn, thus expelled, went to the king of Sweden, and collecting, by his assistance, Swedes, Vandals, and Goths, he returned, to regain the kingdom: but, through the exertions of the Danes, who were attached to the government of Magnus, he experienced a repetition of his former ill-fortune. This was a great and memorable battle among those barbarous people: on no other occasion did the Danes ever experience severer conflict, or happier success. Indeed, to this very time, they keep unbroken the vow, by which they had bound themselves, before the contest, that they would consecrate to future ages the vigil of St. Lawrence, for on that day the battle was fought, by fasting and alms; and then also Sweyn fled, but soon after, on the death of Magnus, he received his kingdom entire.
[A.D. 1069.] DENMARK AND NORWAY.
To Magnus, in Norway, succeeded one Sweyn, surnamed Hardhand; not elevated by royal descent, but by boldness and cunning: to him Olave, the uncle of Magnus, whom they call a saint; to Olave, Harold Harvagre, the brother of Olave, who had formerly, when a young man, served under the emperor of Constantinople. Being, at his command, exposed to a lion, for having debauched a woman of quality, he strangled the huge beast by the bare vigour of his arms. He was slain in England by Harold, the son of Godwin. His sons, Olave and Magnus, divided the kingdom of their father; but Magnus dying prematurely, Olave seized the whole. To him succeeded his son Magnus, who was lately miserably slain in Ireland, on which he had rashly made a descent. They relate, that Magnus, the elder son of Harold, was, after the death of his father, compassionately sent home by Harold, king of England; and that in return for this kindness, he humanely treated Harold, the son of Harold, when he came to him after William’s victory: that he took him with him, in an expedition he made to England, in the time of William the younger, when he conquered the Orkney and Mevanian Isles,[320] and meeting with Hugo, earl of Chester, and Hugo, earl of Shrewsbury, put the first to flight, and the second to death. The sons of the last Magnus, Hasten and Siward, yet reign conjointly, having divided the empire: the latter, a seemly and spirited youth, shortly since went to Jerusalem, passing through England, and performed many famous exploits against the Saracens; more especially in the siege of Sidon, whose inhabitants raged furiously against the Christians through their connection with the Turks.
But Sweyn, as I have related, on his restoration to the sovereignty of the Danes, being impatient of quiet, sent his son Canute twice into England; first with three hundred, and then with two hundred, ships. His associate in the former expedition was Osbern, the brother of Sweyn; in the latter, Hacco: but, being each of them bribed, they frustrated the young man’s designs, and returned home without effecting their purpose. In consequence, becoming highly disgraced by king Sweyn for bartering their fidelity for money, they were driven into banishment. Sweyn, when near his end, bound all the inhabitants by oath, that, as he had fourteen sons, they should confer the kingdom on each of them in succession, as long as his issue remained. On his decease, his son Harold succeeded for three years: to him Canute, whom his father had formerly sent into England. Remembering his original failure, he prepared, as we have heard, more than a thousand vessels against England: his father-in-law, Robert Friso, the possessor of six hundred more, supporting him. But being detained, for almost two years, by the adverseness of the wind, he changed his design, affirming, that it must be by the determination of God, that he could not put to sea: but afterwards, misled by the suggestions of some persons, who attributed the failure of their passage to the conjurations of certain old women, he sentenced the chiefs, whose wives were accused of this transgression, to an intolerable fine; cast his brother, Olave, the principal of the suspected faction into chains, and sent him into exile to his father-in-law. The barbarians, in consequence, resenting this attack upon their liberty, killed him while in church, clinging to the altar, and promising reparation. They say that many miracles were shown from heaven at that place; because he was a man strictly observant of fasting and almsgiving, and pursued the transgressors of the divine laws more rigorously than those who offended against himself; from which circumstance, he was consecrated a martyr by the pope of Rome. After him, the murderers, that they might atone for their crime by some degree of good, redeemed Olave from captivity, for ten thousand marks. After ignobly reigning during eight years, he left the government to his brother Henry: who living virtuously for twenty-nine years, went to Jerusalem, and breathed his last at sea. Nicholas, the fifth in the sovereignty, still survives.[321]
[A.D. 1085.] ROBERT GUISCARD.
The king of Denmark then, as I have said, was the only obstacle to William’s uninterrupted enjoyment: on whose account he enlisted such an immense multitude of stipendiary soldiers out of every province on this side the mountains, that their numbers oppressed the kingdom. But he, with his usual magnanimity, not regarding the expense, had engaged even Hugo the Great, brother to the king of France, with his bands to serve in his army. He was accustomed to stimulate and incite his own valour, by the remembrance of Robert Guiscard; saying it was disgraceful to yield, in courage, to him whom he surpassed in rank. For Robert, born of middling parentage in Normandy, that is, neither very low nor very high, had gone, a few years before William’s arrival in England, with fifteen knights, into Apulia, to remedy the narrowness of his own circumstances, by entering into the service of that inactive race of people. Not many years elapsed, ere, by the stupendous assistance of God, he reduced the whole country under his power. For where his strength failed, his ingenuity was alert: first receiving the towns, and after, the cities into confederacy with him. Thus he became so successful, as to make himself duke of Apulia and Calabria; his brother Richard, prince of Capua; and his other brother, Roger, earl of Sicily. At last, giving Apulia to his son Roger, he crossed the Adriatic with his other son Boamund, and taking Durazzo, was immediately proceeding against Alexius, emperor of Constantinople, when a messenger from pope Hildebrand stopped him in the heat of his career. For Henry, emperor of Germany, son of that Henry we have before mentioned, being incensed against the pope, for having excommunicated him on account of the ecclesiastical investitures, led an army against Rome; besieged it; expelled Hildebrand, and introduced Guibert of Ravenna. Guiscard learning this by the letter of the expelled pope, left his son Boamund, with the army, to follow up his designs, and returned to Apulia; where quickly getting together a body of Apulians and Normans, he proceeded to Rome. Nor did Henry wait for a messenger to announce his approach; but, affrighted at the bare report, fled with his pretended pope. Rome, freed from intruders, received its lawful sovereign; but soon after again lost him by similar violence. Then too, Alexius, learning that Robert was called home by the urgency of his affairs, and hoping to put a finishing hand to the war, rushed against Boamund, who commanded the troops which had been left. The Norman youth, however, observant of his native spirit, though far inferior in number, turned to flight, by dint of military skill, the undisciplined Greeks and the other collected nations. At the same time, too, the Venetians, a people habituated to the sea, attacking Guiscard, who having settled the object of his voyage was now sailing back, met with a similar calamity: part were drowned or killed, the rest put to flight. He, continuing his intended expedition, induced many cities, subject to Alexius, to second his views. The emperor took off, by crime, the man he was unable to subdue by arms: falsely promising his wife an imperial match. By her artifices, he drank poison,[322] which she had prepared, and died; deserving, had God so pleased, a nobler death: for he was unconquerable by the sword of an enemy, but fell a victim to domestic treachery. He was buried at Venusium in Apulia, having the following epitaph:
Here Guiscard lies, the terror of the world,
Who from the Capitol Rome’s sovereign hurl’d.
No band collected could Alexis free,
Flight only; Venice, neither flight nor sea.
And since mention has been made of Hildebrand, I shall relate some anecdotes of him, which I have not heard trivially, but from the sober relation of a person who would swear that he had learned them from the mouth of Hugo abbat of Clugny; whom I admire and commend to notice, from the consideration, that he used to declare the secret thoughts of others by the prophetic intuition of his mind. Pope Alexander, seeing the energetic bent of his disposition, had made him chancellor[323] of the holy see. In consequence, by virtue of his office, he used to go through the provinces to correct abuses. All ranks of people flocked to him, requiring judgment on various affairs; all secular power was subject to him, as well out of regard to his sanctity as his office. Whence it happened, one day, when there was a greater concourse on horseback than usual, that the abbat aforesaid, with his monks, was gently proceeding in the last rank; and beholding at a distance the distinguished honour of this man, that so many earthly rulers awaited his nod, he was revolving in his mind sentiments to the following effect: “By what dispensation of God was this fellow, of diminutive stature and obscure parentage, surrounded by a retinue of so many rich men? Doubtless, from having such a crowd of attendants, he was vain-glorious, and conceived loftier notions than were becoming.” Scarcely, as I have said, had he imagined this in his heart, when the archdeacon, turning back his horse, and spurring him, cried out from a distance, beckoning the abbat, “You,” said he, “you have imagined falsely, wrongly deeming me guilty of a thing of which I am innocent altogether; for I neither impute this as glory to myself, if glory that can be called which vanishes quickly, nor do I wish it to be so imputed by others, but to the blessed apostles, to whose servant it is exhibited.” Reddening with shame, and not daring to deny a tittle, he replied only, “My lord, I pray thee, how couldst thou know the secret thought of my heart which I have communicated to no one?” “All that inward sentiment of yours,” said he, “was brought from your mouth to my ears, as though by a pipe.”
Again, entering a country church, in the same province, they prostrated themselves before the altar, side by side. When they had continued their supplications for a long period, the archdeacon looked on the abbat with an angry countenance. After they had prayed some time longer, he went out, and asking the reason of his displeasure, received this answer, “If you love me, do not again attack me with an injury of this kind; my Lord Jesus Christ, beautiful beyond the sons of men, was visibly present to my entreaties, listening to what I said and kindly looking assent; but, attracted by the earnestness of your prayer, he left me and turned to you. I think you will not deny it to be a species of injury to take from a friend the author of his salvation. Moreover, you are to know that mortality of mankind and destruction hang over this place; and the token by which I formed such a conclusion was my seeing the angel of the Lord standing upon the altar with a naked sword, and waving it to and fro: I possess a more manifest proof of the impending ruin, from the thick, cloudy air which, as you see, already envelopes that province. Let us make haste to escape, then, lest we perish with the rest.” Having said this, they entered an inn for refreshment; but, as soon as food was placed before them, the lamentations of the household took away their famished appetites: for first one, and then another, and presently many of the family suddenly lost their lives by some unseen disaster. The contagion then spreading to the adjoining houses, they mounted their mules, and departed, fear adding wings to their flight.
[A.D. 1085.] OF POPE GREGORY VII.