The essay aims to reconstruct the context of relations between the Bari urban patriciate, the Normans and the Byzantines in the late 11th and early 12th centuries in light of the events surrounding the translation of St Nicholas’ relics. The hypothesis pursued consists in considering the permanence of the new domination within the Byzantine Commonwealth as not necessarily incompatible: a solution to which the patriciate of Bari would have looked favourably, like the rest of the Norman exponents determined not to bow to the dominance of Guiscardo and then Roger Borsa and Bohemond. Neither the Hauteville themselves nor the Church of Rome at the time of Urban II would have been strangers to this prospect. Urban II, for his part, decided to attempt to recompose the tensions of the Schism of 1054, also in order to involve Byzantium in a common anti-Saljūqid front. In spite of the events of the First Crusade and in particular the siege of Antioch, at least until the middle of the 12th century this situation of permeability between Norman affirmation and Constantinopolitan influences, of mediation between Greek and Latin instances, would in fact be maintained. And it is precisely in the light of this particular climate of interaction between coexisting influences that the transfer of a distinctly oriental cult to Apulia should also be read.
San Nicola a Bari. Identità urbana e geopolitica mediterranea tra Bizantini e Normanni (1087-1111)
Violante, Francesco
2024-01-01
Abstract
The essay aims to reconstruct the context of relations between the Bari urban patriciate, the Normans and the Byzantines in the late 11th and early 12th centuries in light of the events surrounding the translation of St Nicholas’ relics. The hypothesis pursued consists in considering the permanence of the new domination within the Byzantine Commonwealth as not necessarily incompatible: a solution to which the patriciate of Bari would have looked favourably, like the rest of the Norman exponents determined not to bow to the dominance of Guiscardo and then Roger Borsa and Bohemond. Neither the Hauteville themselves nor the Church of Rome at the time of Urban II would have been strangers to this prospect. Urban II, for his part, decided to attempt to recompose the tensions of the Schism of 1054, also in order to involve Byzantium in a common anti-Saljūqid front. In spite of the events of the First Crusade and in particular the siege of Antioch, at least until the middle of the 12th century this situation of permeability between Norman affirmation and Constantinopolitan influences, of mediation between Greek and Latin instances, would in fact be maintained. And it is precisely in the light of this particular climate of interaction between coexisting influences that the transfer of a distinctly oriental cult to Apulia should also be read.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
