he friendship or enmity of a powerful vassal. The sacred spot
of Benevento was respectfully spared, as the patrimony of St. Peter;
but the reduction of Capua and Naples completed the design of his uncle
Guiscard; and the sole inheritance of the Norman conquests was possessed
by the victorious Roger. A conscious superiority of power and merit
prompted him to disdain the titles of duke and of count; and the Isle of
Sicily, with a third perhaps of the continent of Italy, might form the
basis of a kingdom [99] which would only yield to the monarchies of
France and England. The chiefs of the nation who attended his coronation
at Palermo might doubtless pronounce under what name he should reign
over them; but the example of a Greek tyrant or a Saracen emir was
insufficient to justify his regal character; and the nine kings of the
Latin world [100] might disclaim their new associate, unless he were
consecrated by the authority of the supreme pontiff. The pride of
Anacletus was pleased to confer a title, which the pride of the Norman
had stooped to solicit; [101] but his own legitimacy was attacked by the
adverse election of Innocent the Second; and while Anacletus sat in
the Vatican, the successful fugitive was acknowledged by the nations of
Europe. The infant monarchy of Roger was shaken, and almost overthrown,
by the unlucky choice of an ecclesiastical patron; and the sword of
Lothaire the Second of Germany, the excommunications of Innocent, the
fleets of Pisa, and the zeal of St. Bernard, were united for the ruin of
the Sicilian robber. After a gallant resistance, the Norman prince was
driven from the continent of Italy: a new duke of Apulia was invested by
the pope and the emperor, each of whom held one end of the gonfanon,
or flagstaff, as a token that they asserted their right, and suspended
their quarrel. But such jealous friendship was of short and precarious
duration: the German armies soon vanished in disease and desertion:
[102] the Apulian duke, with all his adherents, was exterminated by a
conqueror who seldom forgave either the dead or the living; like his
predecessor Leo the Ninth, the feeble though haughty pontiff became
the captive and friend of the Normans; and their reconciliation was
celebrated by the eloquence of Bernard, who now revered the title and
virtues of the king of Sicily.

[Footnote 97: The reign of Roger, and the Norman kings of Sicily,
fills books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone, (tom. ii. l.