chancellor
Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...
of the
Kingdom of Sicily
The Kingdom of Sicily ( la, Regnum Siciliae; it, Regno di Sicilia; scn, Regnu di Sicilia) was a state that existed in the south of the Italian Peninsula and for a time the region of Ifriqiya from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 un ...
(1166–68) and Archbishop of Palermo (1167–68) during the early regency of his cousin, the queen dowager Margaret of Navarre (1166–71).
Stephen is described by the contemporary chronicler Hugo Falcandus as "a son of the count of Perche", Rotrou III. He was a young man when he entered politics, born at the earliest in 1137 or 1138. He may have been named after King Stephen of England, at the time ruling the Duchy of Normandy.
Arrival in Italy
In 1166, Margaret appealed to her other cousin, Rotrou, Archbishop of Rouen, to send her a family member to aid and support her in government. Coincidentally, Stephen was at that moment preparing to go on
crusade
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were i ...
to the
Holy Land
The Holy Land; Arabic: or is an area roughly located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Eastern Bank of the Jordan River, traditionally synonymous both with the biblical Land of Israel and with the region of Palestine. The term "Holy ...
and so decided to visit
Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...
, the capital of Sicily, for a few months. There he ended up staying for two years. He was very young at the time, described as ''puer'' and ''adolescens'' by William of Tyre, and may have still been in his teens. Nevertheless, in November, Margaret appointed him chancellor. His appointment was resented by the local nobility. His chancellorship was noted, according to Hugo Falcandus, in that "he never allowed powerful men to oppress their subjects, nor ever feigned to overlook any injury done to the poor. In such a way his fame quickly spread throughout the Kingdom . . . so that men looked on him as a heaven-sent angel of consolation who had brought back the Golden Age". The opinion of Falcandus probably coincides better with that of the lower classes than Stephen's fellow aristocrats.
Conflict with Matthew of Ajello
In 1167, Margaret had Stephen elected as archbishop of Palermo, the highest ecclesiastic office in the land. He was ordained by
Romuald, Archbishop of Salerno
Romuald Guarna (between 1110 and 1120 – 1 April 1181/2) was the Archbishop of Salerno (as Romuald II) from 1153 to his death. He is remembered primarily for his ''Chronicon sive Annales'', an important historical record of his time.
Life ...
, only days before his elevation and it deeply rankled the old noblesse. Romuald and Richard Palmer,
bishop of Syracuse
The Archdiocese of Siracusa, also known as Syracuse, ( la, Archidioecesis Syracusana) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Sicily. It became an archdiocese in 1844.Matthew of Ajello, a notary whom he had offended the year previous. Stephen went so far as to try and seize Matthew's mail, but nothing indicating conspiracy was ever proven against the notary. Stephen was never consecrated, perhaps because had not attained the canonical age of thirty.
In that year as well,
Henry, Count of Montescaglioso
Henry (before 1144–1173×77), born Rodrigo according to Hugo Falcandus, was an alleged son of the Navarrese king García Ramírez and his wife, Margaret of L'Aigle, and brother of the Sicilian queen dowager Margaret, who made him Count of Mon ...
, the queen's brother, returned from the peninsula on the counsel of his friends, who had goaded him into making a complaint to his sister about the rank of Stephen. Stephen won Henry over, for a while, but rumours of an affair between Stephen and Margaret was enough to push him into a conspiracy. Most of the Moslem staff of the palace and the eunuchs were involved in the plots and, on 15 December, Stephen promptly moved the court to
Messina
Messina (, also , ) is a harbour city and the capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of more than 219,000 inhabitants in ...
, to where he had implored his nephew Gilbert, Count of Gravina, to go with an army. The plotters, led by Matthew of Ajello and
Gentile, Bishop of Agrigento Gentile (or Gentilis) (died 1171) was the bishop of Agrigento in Sicily from 1154 to his death. He has been described as a ''prélat aventureux et vagabond'', an "adventurous and vagabond prelate" (Chalandon 1907).
A Tuscan by birth, he originally ...
, went to Messina, but Henry, for reasons unknown, gave them up to a local judge. At a meeting of the entire court, Gilbert accused Henry of treason and the latter was imprisoned in
Reggio Calabria
Reggio di Calabria ( scn, label= Southern Calabrian, Riggiu; el, label= Calabrian Greek, Ρήγι, Rìji), usually referred to as Reggio Calabria, or simply Reggio by its inhabitants, is the largest city in Calabria. It has an estimated popul ...
. By allowing Matthew to go free, however, Stephen prepared the way for future plots against his life.
Deposition and exile by a conspiracy
In March 1168, Stephen and his entourage, including the king, William II, and queen regent, arrived in Palermo, where the conspirators had already arrived. This time, Matthew was imprisoned and Gentile fled. He was arrested in Agrigento. But, though the Arabs of Palermo had been soothed, the Messinan Greeks had been riled by the past months and a rebellion consequently broke out in that city (on account of the criminal practices of one of Stephen's friends, Odo Quarrel). There, a mob commandeered some ships and sailed to Reggio, there to force the release of Henry of Montescaglioso. After Henry's arrival in Messina, Odo was arrested and brutally executed and all the Frenchman of the city massacred: an inglorious ''prélude'' to the more widespread Sicilian Vespers of 1282. Stephen prepared an army (largely of Lombards from the region of Etna) and was ready to march on Messina when the young king postponed the campaign on astrological grounds.
Matthew of Ajello, from prison, had organised the rebellion in Palermo and, seeing his opportunity, struck. And it was rumored that William II was murdered and the chancellor planned to marry his brother to Princess Constance, who was confined to Santissimo Salvatore, Palermo as a nun from childhood due to a prediction that "her marriage would destroy Sicily", to claim the throne, despite the existence of Henry younger brother of William.Hugo Falcandus, ''Liber de regno Sicilie'' c. 55, ed. G. B. Siracusa, Fonti per la storia d'Italia 22 (1897) 150; T. Kolzer, ''Urkunden und Kanzlei der Kaiserin Konstanze'', 8f. Stephen was finally forced to flee. The chancellor-archbishop was forced to take refuge in the
campanile
A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...
, there he held out until offered terms. In return for his safety, he agreed to embark at once for the Holy Land. He was deposed as archbishop and
Walter of the Mill
Walter Ophamil or Offamil (fl. 1160–1191), italianised as Gualtiero Offamiglio or Offamilio from Latin ''Ophamilius'', was the archdeacon of Cefalù, dean of Agrigento, and archbishop of Palermo (1168–1191), called "''il primo minis ...
was elected to replace him. Gilbert of Gravina and his family were forced to do the same and they all left for the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
With the attempt of Margaret to recall him in vain, he arrived in Jerusalem the summer of 1169 and soon fell ill and died. According to William of Tyre, "he was buried with honour in Jerusalem in the chapter-house of the Temple of the Lord."
Sources
* William of Tyre. ''Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum'' at
Patrologia Latina
The ''Patrologia Latina'' (Latin for ''The Latin Patrology'') is an enormous collection of the writings of the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1841 and 1855, with indices published between ...
.
* Norwich, John Julius. ''The Kingdom in the Sun 1130–1194''. Longman: London, 1970.