Although the presence of the imperial administration and
court in Sicily was brief, Constantinople continued to send officials,
messengers, and administrators to Sicily on a regular basis. Many official
visits to Sicily from Constantinople were occasioned by violent incidents and
rebellions on the island, much like the one following Constans II’s
assassination. For example, Theophanes the Confessor (d. 818) notes in his
Chronographia that in 718 Emperor Leo III (r. 717–741) dispatched to Sicily a
man named Paul, whom he appointed to be the stratēgos (general) for the island.
Paul traveled with a group of imperial guards charged with regaining control
over the island after Sergius, the previous governor, had rebelled against
Constantinople and declared a rival emperor in Syracuse. This Sicilian
rebellion took place during a massive Muslim siege of Constantinople (717–718),
but the emperor was nonetheless willing and able to dispatch officers to quell
it and thus maintain control over the government of Sicily. He clearly
considered it to be in the empire’s best interest to deploy the resources
necessary to do so, even in the face of threats to the imperial capital, a
conclusion suggesting that the loss of the western frontier would also threaten
the center of Byzantium.
The final outcome of this story, and its analysis by
Theophanes, shows that the maintenance of order in and control of Sicily was of
central importance for the entirety of Byzantium’s western possessions. The
rebel Sergius fled to the Lombards in Calabria, leaving behind his puppet
emperor Basil (renamed Tiberius), whom the imperial appointee Paul beheaded
alongside the rebellious generals. Those heads were sent back to Constantinople
while Paul remained on the island to enforce order. According to Theophanes,
“As a result, great order prevailed in the western parts … all the western
parts were pacified.” Pacifying Sicily was thus equated with bringing order to
all of Byzantium’s western holdings.
Sergius’s rebellion was not the only such uprising on the
part of the Sicilian Greek leaders. Sicily’s significant distance from
Constantinople, and its position at the edge of the empire, meant that, despite
imperial efforts to control the island, it was in a prime location for those
wishing to break free from Byzantine central authority. Likewise, the relative
independence from Constantinople of the southern Italian Greek cities may have
provided a model for the aspirations of Sicilian governors hoping for greater
local power. In 780/781, for example, the Sicilian ruler Elpidios rebelled
against imperial authority after having been in office only a few months. In
response, the empress Irene (regent, 780–797, regnant, 797–802) commanded a
spatharios (a member of the imperial guard) named Theophilos to sail to Sicily
and arrest Elpidios, but the Sicilians refused to hand the latter over. The
following year, Irene sent to Sicily an entire fleet, led by an official named
Theodore, to put down the revolt; the Byzantine forces at last triumphed over
the rebels.
The latter rebellion took place during a period of peace
between Byzantine Sicily and Muslim North Africa—a pause in the semiregular
raids on Sicily’s southern shores. This peace between Syracuse and Qayrawān was
one of several treaties that halted the regular raiding parties from Egypt and
Ifrīqiya that had been attacking the island for around a century by that point.
The initial aim of these raids does not appear to have been the conquest of the
island, but rather the collection of booty and slaves. Nonetheless, Greek
Sicily was facing regular security threats that prompted Constantinople to
increase its grip on the island. The late eighth century was a time when
Constantinople tried to preserve Sicily as a Byzantine stronghold in the
Mediterranean, perhaps fearing that the island’s loss would spell the end of
Byzantine power in the western Mediterranean. At the time, Byzantium maintained
only loose control over other formerly Greek lands in Italy, having lost direct
influence in the majority of southern Italy. Even the Exarchate of Ravenna had
been drifting away from Greek control and functioned independently in many
arenas; it would fall to the Lombards in 751, leaving Sicily as the last
holdout of direct Byzantine power in the West. Despite Irene’s successful
defense of Sicily against internal rebellion, less than fifty years later the
island would fall under Muslim control, and Constantinople would never again
wield great influence in the western Mediterranean. The imperial government
could not know this future, however, and the continued efforts (even until the
eleventh century) to reclaim the island demonstrate Sicily’s centrality in the
Byzantine agenda.
That said, not all of the acts of travel between
Constantinople and Syracuse indicate the island’s importance to the empire; in
fact, some imply nearly the opposite. At several points during the eighth
century’s political tumult, for example, Sicily served as a place of exile for
political rebels whom the Byzantine ruler wanted to keep far away from the
political center of Constantinople. Theophanes’s Chronographia mentions several
cases of political exiles who were sent to Sicily so that they could not
continue to cause trouble in the imperial capital. Despite the island’s history
as a site of repeated rebellions, Sicily presented itself to some emperors as
an expedient spot for marginalizing political troublemakers. In these cases,
the distance between the two locations was key to the effectiveness of the
political move.
In 789/790 both Emperor Constantine VI (780–797) and his
mother, Empress Irene, banished their political rivals to Sicily. Constantine
VI likewise sent rebels to exile on this and other islands in the year 792/793.
Distance and relative inaccessibility were vital for keeping an exiled person
far from the center of political power. However, because Constantinople
maintained regular communications with Syracuse, it was possible for the rulers
to remain aware of the activities of their exiles. It is important to note that
Sicily was not the only location chosen for receiving political deportees, as
there were many islands closer to Asia Minor that routinely served as places of
exile, such as the Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmara and Aegean islands
such as Patmos. In some cases, Sicily may have been preferred because a
particular governor of Sicily was deemed to be trustworthy in safeguarding
against rebel activities. In any event, the island was both geographically far
from the capital and conceptually near to it—near enough that the imperial
government could keep a close watch on its rivals’ actions, by means of
established networks of communication. Thus, it seems, Sicily could be
considered both close to and far from Constantinople, depending on the
political need.
While geographically distant from Constantinople, the island
was directly adjacent to Greek-claimed territories in southern Italy. Proximity
to these Greek regions of southern Italy was thus another advantage Sicily had
in its political utility for Constantinople. During its years under Byzantine
rule, Sicily often functioned as a link between Constantinople and the
Byzantine territories in mainland Italy, both as a transit point for messengers
and as a base for enforcing order in Italy, particularly when the mainland
Greek cities were more successful in their efforts to establish their
independence from imperial rule. Greek imperial officers often sailed to Sicily
and stayed there briefly before taking the land or sea route to Greek lands in
Italy.
One example of Constantinople’s use of Sicilian government
officials against Byzantine territories in Italy occurred around the year 709.
Felix, archbishop of Ravenna (r. 705–723), attempted to liberate his city from
Byzantine rule, and so Emperor Justinian II (669–711, r. 685–695 and 705–711)
sent the governor of Sicily, Theodorus, to take hold of Felix and the rebels.
Theodorus and the Greek fleet sailed from Sicily to Ravenna to carry out the
order. He arrested and shackled the rebels aboard a ship, alongside the riches
they had purportedly stolen, and sent them to Constantinople. Felix was exiled
to Pontus until around 712, when the next emperor, Philippicus, restored him to
the church in Ravenna and had him sent back there with an escort, again by way
of Sicily. Sicily does not necessarily lie on the most obvious route between
Ravenna and Constantinople, and, notably, other trips between the two cities
did not always involve Sicily. Therefore, on these trips there must have been
compelling but unstated reasons for the entourage to stop on the island. It is
not clear from the text if Sicilian officials were involved in this return trip
or why Sicily was the chosen route between Constantinople and Ravenna.
Nonetheless, this anecdote allows us to see Sicily and its officials as key
factors in Constantinople’s attempts to maintain power in southern Italy, even
when geography was not the determining reason for using Sicily as a way station
along the journey.
The Royal Frankish Annals contain a reference to similar
activity in the year 788. It is recorded that Emperor Constantine VI ordered
the governor Theodorus to destroy the city of Benevento in revenge for the
emperor not having received Charlemagne’s daughter as his wife. The Byzantine
forces traveled from Sicily to Calabria, where they met the Frankish-allied
Beneventan troops in battle but were defeated. Thus we again see a Sicilian
governor tasked with carrying out imperial edicts on the mainland. While its
placement close to mainland Italy certainly made the island useful
geographically, the presumed ability of the island’s officials to raise
appropriate armies and attack the mainland, along with the trust the emperor
placed in those distant representatives to carry out such campaigns,
demonstrates the island’s conceptual utility to the Byzantine Empire. Sicily
was not simply a distant province at the periphery of the empire but was at
times an integral extension of the central authority of Constantinople.
In general, then, early medieval Sicily’s communications
with Constantinople show the island in a number of important roles: a site of
political rebellion and exile, an agent of imperial authority within Italy, and
a stronghold of Byzantine power along the vulnerable three-way border at the
far western edge of the empire. Sicily and its governors acted in the West as
an extension of Constantinople, relying on a steady stream of officials, news,
messengers, and troops between the capital and the island. The island also
functioned as a specific site of imperial authority when it was the temporary
capital of the empire under Constans II, and even though this was a brief and
isolated instance, it demonstrates the multiple ways in which Sicily was deemed
central to the goals and safety of the Byzantine Empire as a whole. As the
bulwark of Byzantine power in the central Mediterranean, Sicily both protected
the empire’s western edge and represented imperial authority in the region.
And, in the case of revolt against Constantinople, the island could serve as a
base for rival power and as a stepping-stone to the center of the empire: if
rebels were to gain power on the island, they might be able to use the
established relationship between Syracuse and Constantinople to assert their
claim to authority over all of Byzantium. Even when the emperors were
distracted by business closer to home, the imperial authorities strenuously
worked to maintain their hold over Sicily. By keeping control of this island
borderland, the Byzantines were able to use Sicily in the enforcement of their
will in Italy as well as in diplomatic relationships with sites of power in the
Latin world, Rome, and the Frankish court (represented by Aachen) and, after
the mid-seventh century, with the new centers of Muslim power in North Africa.
While Sicily functioned as an important Byzantine borderland
in the western Mediterranean and maintained close communications with
Constantinople, ties between Sicily and Rome and the Latin world also remained strong.
Having been a Roman province for several centuries, the island featured a
population with many Latin speakers and numerous Latin churches. Due also to
the persistence of communication networks between Rome and Sicily, the island
was never fully detached from the Latin West in terms of culture, religion,
and, to some degree, politics. Simply because the island shifted from Roman to
Germanic and then to Greek administration does not mean that cultural or social
connections between the island and Rome were severed. The endurance of these
links is partly due to the continued presence of a Latin population and the
maintenance of papal estates on the island, and many Sicilians remained
adherents of the Latin Church. Simultaneous connections to Rome and to Constantinople
allowed the island to function, in some ways, as part of both the Latin and
Greek worlds and therefore as a vital point of connection between them. Thus,
in addition to functioning as a link between Constantinople and the
Byzantine-claimed territories in mainland Italy—both as a transit point for
messengers and as a base for enforcing order in Italy—Sicily could serve as a
mediator in communications between Constantinople and Rome.
Indeed, Sicily functioned as an important node in the networks
of communication that existed between emperors in Constantinople and popes,
kings, and emperors in the West. In terms of papal-imperial business and
diplomacy, Sicily appears to have been a regular stop on the route between
Constantinople and Rome, although it was not the only path for information or
messengers between the two places. Official and political business between Rome
and Constantinople was conducted often by way of Sicily and, it appears, less
often via an overland route. Many early medieval travelers between
Constantinople and Italy made Sicily a way station on their travels, even if
their business did not directly involve the island. For example, in 653 Pope
Martin I (649–655) was arrested in Rome and taken by ship to Constantinople. The
journey, which lasted from the middle of June until mid-September, followed a
route through Sicily as well as many other Mediterranean ports. In this case,
even though the affair had nothing to do with Sicily, a Sicilian Byzantine
official was involved in the delegation sent to Ravenna. A similar journey took
place in 709, when Pope Constantine (708–715) answered a summons by the
Byzantine emperor Justinian II to appear at Constantinople. The papal party, as
detailed in the pope’s vita in the Liber Pontificalis, journeyed to the
Byzantine capital by way of Sicily, although their return trip did not follow
the same route, and they skipped Sicily on that second leg. Evidently,
therefore, various itineraries were available for travelers between mainland Italy
and the Byzantine capital during the early eighth century. Sicily was, however,
an obvious choice of route when the pope and his entourage were traveling on
the orders of the Byzantine emperor or through the political agency of Sicilian
officials—even when they did not have any particular business to transact on
the island. This fact may have been due to a larger number of
Constantinople-bound ships sailing from Sicilian ports than from other ports in
Italy. Likewise, Sicily’s importance as a transit point for papal-imperial
business may have resulted from the involvement of Greek Sicilian officials as
representatives of the imperial government. In either case, officials
frequently chose routes involving Sicily over other routes to Constantinople;
that is, Sicily often found itself at the nexus of Byzantine-Latin
relationships even when a stopover there was not necessitated by the
involvement of Sicilian personnel.
There is also evidence that, during the seventh through
ninth centuries, Roman Church officials traveled to Sicily on administrative
business that did not involve transactions with Greeks. Representatives of the
Latin Church at Rome traveled to the island to govern the Latin churches there
and the agricultural lands in papal estates. The papal patrimony in Sicily was
concentrated in the cities of Syracuse and Palermo, and some Sicilian lands
were also held by the churches of Milan, Ravenna, and other mainland Italian
cities.33 Latin sources show that early medieval popes frequently traveled to Sicily,
either personally or via their officials, on routine affairs of land and church
administration. Papal visits to Sicily are recorded from the sixth century and
continued at least through the eighth century. One of the earliest papal
visitors, Pope Vigilius (537–555), arrived on the island very soon after
Justinian’s reconquest of Sicily from the Goths: he traveled from Rome to the
Sicilian city of Catania, where he appointed priests and deacons. He then
sailed to Constantinople in order to negotiate with the emperor Justinian I (r.
527–565) and empress Theodora (500–548) about a dispute over ecclesiastical
leadership. Later, after an illness, Vigilius died in Syracuse, whence his body
was taken to Rome for burial. Vigilius obviously deemed the island useful both
as a stopover en route to the eastern Mediterranean and as a significant place
within the wider Latin Church. Other popes and their officials, throughout the
sixth through ninth centuries, likewise traveled to Sicily regularly,
demonstrating the island’s integral position in the Mediterranean system and
its role as a node of Rome-Constantinople communications.
This integration of Greek-ruled Sicily with the church in
Rome is most evident in the corpus of letters written by Gregory the Great (pope
from 590 to 604). Pope Gregory maintained continuous contact with Sicily and
left a series of letters concerning the island that serves as the most
important source of information about Sicily in the sixth century. For example,
one of Gregory’s earliest extant letters, written in 590, was sent to all of
the island’s bishops, and in it he appointed Peter as his subdeacon on the
island, in charge of administering the Sicilian patrimony on the pope’s behalf.
Throughout his letters, Gregory shows himself to have been deeply concerned
with the political, ecclesiastical, and economic affairs of the island. Also
the personal owner of extensive lands and the founder of several monasteries in
Sicily, Gregory remained, throughout his papacy, in regular contact with his
agents and with the Roman clergy on the island. He intervened often in the
affairs of the Sicilian churches, appointed and corresponded with local
bishops, founded monasteries and convents on Sicily, and kept a watchful eye on
the Greek praetors who ruled the island on behalf of Constantinople. For
example, he wrote a letter in 590 to Justin, the praetor of Sicily, in which he
noted that he would be closely observing Justin’s administration of the island.
The connection between Greek Sicily and the church at Rome
continued throughout the seventh and eighth centuries, even at the highest
level of church authority.40 In fact, several popes from those years were born
and educated on the island, some from the Latin population and some from the Greek.
Pope Agatho (r. 678–681) was originally from Sicily (natione Sicula), although
very little is known of his life there; he seems not to have maintained a
particularly close relationship with the island. Likewise born in Sicily was
Pope Leo II the Younger (682–683), who was renowned for his knowledge of both
Greek and Latin; his biographer asserts that he translated into Latin the acts
of the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681), which condemned
Monothelitism. Another seventh-century pope, Conon (686–687), was born in
Greece but was raised and educated in Sicily before he traveled to Rome and
took leadership of the Latin Church. Also raised and educated in Sicily was
Pope Sergius I (687–701), whose father, Tiberius, was of Syrian origin, having
migrated to Palermo (called at the time Panormus; see figure 2) from Antioch.
Likewise, Pope Stephen III (768–772) was born in Sicily and moved as a youth to
Rome, where he became a cleric and a monk in St. Chrysogonus’s monastery before
ascending to the papacy. Despite having been transferred to Greek political
control, Sicily was, to some significant degree, still considered part of the
Latin Church, such that the island could be the source of so many popes during
these centuries. The island may have served as a convenient source of
Greek-educated candidates during a period in which Constantinople continued to
try—increasingly unsuccessfully—to appoint and approve the election of the
popes. Sicily, with its connections to both churches, may have been an easy
place for emperors to find candidates for the papacy with enough familiarity
with the two traditions to serve the interests of both institutions.
Some of the relations between Byzantium and the leaders of
western Europe, as directed through Sicily, were more hostile. For example, the
vita of Pope John VI (r. 701–705) records that the Byzantine exarch of Italy,
Theophilactus (r. 701/702–709), traveled from Sicily to Rome for unknown
reasons and encountered there a violent reception. In Rome he was met by the
local military troops (“militia totius Italiae”), who attempted to kill him.
The pope sheltered the Byzantine official, thus demonstrating his commitment to
maintaining an amiable relationship with the Byzantine emperor, even if the
local population was less welcoming to the Greek envoy. A more detailed account
of hostile relations between Rome and Constantinople being negotiated via
Sicily concerns a confrontation that took place in 732, during the first
iconoclastic period. Pope Gregory III (731–741) sent a representative named
George to the Byzantine capital with a condemnation of Emperor Leo’s position
on iconoclasm. George failed in his mission the first time he traveled from
Rome to Constantinople, so he was sent a second time. This second attempt to
deliver the pope’s message was disrupted by George’s yearlong detention in
Sicily, and the letter never made it to Constantinople. Later, the pope tried
again to send the Byzantine emperor a condemnation of iconoclasm, this time
with Constantine the defensor. On his way to Constantinople, he passed through
Sicily where he and his party were arrested and imprisoned by Sergius, the
stratēgos of Sicily, who was acting on the emperor’s orders. Sergius
confiscated the letter and held Constantine captive for nearly a year. In this
extended episode, the Sicilian Byzantine official obstructed the ability of
Rome to communicate with Constantinople its displeasure on the divisive issue
of iconoclasm. Sicily, as a regular stopping point on Rome-to-Constantinople
journeys, was well situated to act as a regional representative of the emperor
and his policies, as well as an intermediary in the relationship between pope
and emperor—whether that enhanced or limited the actual communication between
the two parties.
Like these popes, the Frankish ruler Charlemagne also used
Sicily as a locus of political leverage with the Byzantine Empire. In this, he
appears to have been following the established pathways of East-West
communication by way of Sicily. One potential point of tension between
Charlemagne and Constantinople was the political and military opportunity the
island presented to western rulers: one could invade Sicily to claim it as his
own and thus gain a foothold in a Byzantine territory with strong connections
to Constantinople. This suggestion is not found in Latin sources, however, but
only in Greek ones: for the year 800/801, Theophanes recorded that Charlemagne
had planned a naval attack on Byzantine Sicily in order to conquer the island
for his new empire. The chronicle stated that the Frankish emperor then
abandoned this plan and decided instead to seek the hand of Empress Irene as
his wife and thus sent ambassadors to Constantinople on that mission. Even if
this story was fabricated by the Greeks in their response to Charlemagne’s
claim to be the Roman emperor, it demonstrates that they recognized the
possibility that Sicily could potentially be used as a stepping-stone between
West and East. Another example of Sicily as a locus of political conflict
between eastern and western claimants to the Roman imperial title concerns a
Byzantine official from Sicily who defected to the court of Charlemagne in the
year 800, for an unknown reason. He stayed in Charlemagne’s service for ten
years before requesting that he be sent back to Sicily. The story of this
official may reflect the competition between East and West over claims to
authority. Both of these examples, however tenuous, suggest that Sicily served,
to some western political leaders, as a nearby representative of the Byzantine
Empire and thus as a mediator of both diplomacy and potential aggression.
Charlemagne’s supposed choice between conquering the island and marrying the
empress suggests that the island could, in fact, be as much of a key to uniting
the two empires as could a marriage alliance.
Sometimes the Rome-to-Constantinople route through Sicily is
only implied in the extant sources by notifications about the transmission of
news. Several early sources relate that western leaders received important
messages from Constantinople by means of ambassadors sent to Rome by Greek
Sicilian officials, but we learn nothing else about the trips to and from
Sicily. For example, in 713 a messenger arrived in Sicily from Constantinople
and announced that Anastasius II (713–715) had deposed Philippicus (711–713)
and replaced him as emperor; this news then traveled from Sicily to Rome.
Another similar incident is found in the brief notice that in 799 Michael, the
governor of Sicily, sent a representative named Daniel to the court of
Charlemagne, although the business he was charged with conducting between
Charlemagne and Sicily’s governor is unknown. He may have been carrying news or
orders on behalf of Sicily or, like many of the other messengers found in the
sources, on behalf of Constantinople via Sicily’s Byzantine officials. It is
likely that other such travel between the two courts occurred but was not
documented, as the arrival of a Sicilian envoy to Charlemagne’s court was not
recorded as an incident out of the ordinary. Most travel by messengers is only
implied in our sources, through the record of the news that was transmitted or
by a report that envoys appeared as passengers on ships on which other
travelers were sailing. For example, there is a brief reference in a saint’s
life to both imperial and papal envoys sailing on the same ship from
Constantinople to Sicily as the holy man, but we learn nothing of the missions
on which these messengers traveled. The travels of these particular envoys are
not known from other sources, and it is likely that many other such journeys
took place but were not recorded in surviving texts.
Two letters dated November 813, written by Pope Leo III
(795–816) to Charlemagne, also provide evidence that news traveled from
Constantinople to both Rome and the Frankish imperial court via Sicily. In the
first, Leo mentions a letter sent to him on Charlemagne’s behalf by the
Sicilian stratēgos, Gregory, in response to one that the pope had delivered.
The pope’s letter conveys that the Byzantine emperor Michael (Michael I
Rangabe, r. 811–813) had entered a monastery and had been replaced on the
imperial throne. Leo explains to Charlemagne in the letter that he had learned
the news from a papal representative who had traveled from Rome to Gregory’s
court in Sicily. The second letter from Leo continues the discussion of the
events in Constantinople, bringing news about the ascension of Leo V, “the
Armenian,” (r. 813–820) to the imperial throne. These two pieces of
correspondence indicate that at times both Rome and the emperor’s court relied
on Sicilian officials for news from Constantinople and that Sicilian envoys
were accustomed to taking such news to Europe. The movement of information via
Sicily also suggests that travel both between Constantinople and Sicily and
between Sicily and Rome was routine: Sicily stayed regularly connected to both
the Greek and Latin Christian worlds, simultaneously sending messengers to and
receiving them from multiple places.
On the other hand, some accounts of communications between
Constantinople and Rome highlight the fact that Sicily was not the only route
by which information or envoys traveled between Constantinople and the West. In
797, the emissary Theoctistos, sent by Nicetas, the stratēgos of Sicily,
arrived at Aachen with a letter for Charlemagne from an emperor (Constantine
VI, r. 780–797) who had in the meantime been deposed in Constantinople (by his
mother, Empress Irene, r. 797–802). That vital piece of information had already
reached Aachen by another route before the Sicilian messenger arrived, making
the deposed emperor’s message obsolete before it even arrived at Aachen. This
anecdote shows that the overland route was sometimes faster than the sea route
through Sicily. This, then, suggests that Sicily acted as a significant node in
the communication linkage between Rome, the Frankish court, and Constantinople
not simply for its geographical expedience but for other reasons as well.
Indeed, if messages could reach Rome or Aachen more quickly by routes not
involving Sicily, then the utilization of the island as a stopover in other
instances must have been related to other factors, such as the perceived
reliability of particular Sicilian officials or the ease of finding passage to
the island’s ports from the eastern Mediterranean. The use of Sicily as a
transit point reflected official needs and communication patterns, not simply
the necessity to transmit information in the fastest way possible, meaning that
in certain instances Sicily could serve as a proxy for imperial authority
within the western Mediterranean and a point of connection between East and
West. At the edge of the empire, Sicily was also a useful mediator of the
relationships between Byzantium and the societies at its borders.
