CANOSSA AND THE ALBANIANS – Dielli

Dr. Etleva LALA

Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary

The Walk to Canossa in 1077 is the most important turning point in the history of the Western Europe. In January 1077 Pope Gregory VII (1015-1085) excommunicated the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV (1050-1106), who then was forced to traveled to Canossa in order to be absolved. The excommunication of the Emperor meant the excommunication of the whole empire, and of course in that time, people feared God more than the Emperor.

The reason for the excommunication of the Emperor Henry IV was the refusal of the emperor to obey papal commands, disrupting thus the traditional harmony between the papacy and the emperor. In January 1076, Henry IV and the German and northern Italian bishops renounced their obedience to the pope and called him to abdicate. As a result, Gregory VII deposed the emperor and excommunicated him and the bishops. For the reconciliation, Henry IV appeared as a penitent sinner seeking the pope’s forgiveness in January 1077, but the official end of the investiture controversy ended only in 1122 in the Concordat of Worms.

The division of ecclesiastical authority from the secular authority, which reached its zenith in 1077, had an everlasting influence in the Western civilization in every respect as I will highlight in the following. The Civil Law and the Canon Law which had been walking hand in hand until Canossa, suffered a drastic rupture, developing in different ways. The Canon Law continued to be the same in the whole Western Europe, but the Civil Law developed in an unprecedented way. For didactic purposes I am grouping the various forms of the Civil Law into three main directions:

Statutes. Every town and city in the Western medieval Europe developed their own statutes, which were all different from each-other and often were the basis for competition between the cities and also of identity. The city statutes became the foundation for the development of the cities, and for the greatness of some of them such as the Republic of Venice, of Genoa, Florentine Republic, and also the Republic of Ragusa among others. It was also the basis for the development of other entities like universities, schools, confraternities, and the basis of every society, institution and also employment activity. The Albanian cities also developed their own statutes, especially Durrës, Drishti and Shkodra.

The Royal Laws. Magna Carta Libertatum (The Great Charter of Freedoms), the royal charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215, is the first royal law, which was issued without any permission or influence of the Pope or of the Emperor. Magna Carta was followed in the continent by the Golden Bull of the Hungarian King Andrew II in 1222. This was also the first time in the continent that a king took the liberties of creating his own laws and ratifying them without any external legal approval from emperor or church. Other kingdoms in Western Europe followed these examples and created their owns royal laws in a fully autonomous way, which strengthened the independence and the royal identity of each kingdom.

Customary Laws. The local rules and customs profited also from the liberties that the split of Civil Law from the Canon Law offered. Not only were they finally written down in Latin, as it was the case of Siena in 1309, but they were even written down in local languages such as the Sachsenspiegel, which was written in German von Eike von Repkow in 1220-1230 and it was followed with all sorts of Spiegels (mirrors) in German speaking communities, like Schwabenspiegel (1275), Deutschenspiegel (1275), Frauenspiegel etc. The German miners who went to Eastern Europe took these vernacular laws with themselves and used it to keep their identity and lifestyle in the new habitats.

The division of Civil Law from the Canon Law affected not only the development and changes of the Civil Law, but also the usage of the Latin as a language. Until the eleventh century, Latin was mainly a tool in the hands of the ecclesiastic or imperial scribes and hence a sense of ‘holiness’ was attached to it. After having the Civil Law liberated from the Canon Law, the Latin became a simple tool of communication, loosing this sense of ‘holiness,’ and thus getting all sorts of deformation, which often were done on purpose, when the local identity was strong and the usage of a local jargon of Latin contributed to the sense of independence and identity, as it is the case of Venice and even Ragusa.

Latin was not limited to anyone, any setting, or any specific purpose. The contracts between people working together profited mostly by the wide use of Latin. Many Latin sources that have survived are working contracts, or agreements between people, but of course, not only. These Latin sources which are thousands of them with regard to Albanians, and purer as sources for us historians. A working contract was never written for a third audience: the parties did not care about the document after they finished their deal. To us, as historians, this contract is a great source as it has personal names of otherwise anonymous people, dates and place names, and very often the whole activity described in a normal and not a pompous style.

In order to better understand the full impact of the Walk to Canossa, and of the split between the Civil and Canon Law, let us have a glance at the Byzantine world, which did not experience any Walk to Canossa, i.e. any division of the ecclesiastical power from the secular power in the middle ages. Canon Law and Civil Law went so well hand in hand in the Byzantine Empire, that they were even written down in only one legal document, which was called nomocanon(Greek: Νομοκανών, Nomokanōn; from the Greek nomos – law and kanon – a rule), and was considered the highest code in the Empire. Because of its holiness that was attached to it, the Byzantine nomocanon was not allowed to copied in any kind of settings and by everyone, but only on well-established ones, which were considered holy places and accompanied with certain rites.

The Nomocanon was for the first time translated and complemented in Old Church Slavonic by St. Sava in 1208 at Mont Athos. Old Church Slavonic was considered a holy language just like the Greek language, because it was introduced by Cyril and Methodius, when Slavs were targeted as a foreign group, which needed a special attention for their integration into Christianity. By giving them the Cyrillic letters, Cyril and Methodius gave them an identity different from the peoples and nations of the Byzantine Empire. The translation of St. Sava, the Zakonopravilo, not only became the first Serbian constitution since 1219, but it was also taken over by the Bulgarian and Russians who also used it in the same way to create the foundational legal basis of their own empires. Since the Nomocanon was the civil law and canon law in one, there was no space for any deviation or special development of the civil law, that is why there are no city statutes in these Eastern Empires, no royal laws and of course no customary laws were allowed to be written in any unofficial language.

The rigidness of using official languages only for certain purposes and by certain agents, created a different map of written evidence in the Eastern Byzantine World. The texts produced were either of a religious or of an imperial nature. With religious I mean treatises, codices, commentaries, letters and other texts written for religious purposes. Imperial were not only the administrative and fiscal documents, but also the chronicles, which following the biblical example, addressed a third audience, having thus a hidden agenda. In most of the cases the chronicles were written for the purpose of showing to the future generations how glorious the emperor was. In order to reach the desired effect, very often the bad enemy was a must, and hence wars have a good part in these chronicles.

The lack of parish sources or any other registration of population is thus not a coincidence in Byzantine sources. Writing down the names of the newborns, the date and place of birth, and other important events like baptismal data, or the date and place of death as it was a norm in the Western Christendom in every remote village, was never done in the Byzantine world. To understand why, we have to keep in mind first of all the usage of the official language, which was limited only to a number of people, and it was not accessible to everybody through public schools as it was in the West.

Another reason why there is no evidence of the anonymous people, should be searched in the very names Orthodox vs. Catholic, since nomen est omen. Orthodox, meaning right, is also a worldview: the spirituals in the Orthodox word strive to be as right as possible in order to establish the desired contact with God, and for that purpose sinnershad to be avoided, since they can lead to temptation. Hence the huge number of the hermitages or monastic complexes. Trying to be as religious and right and orthodox as possible, the priest also had to limit his preaching only to reading the Bible in its official language. Preaching or explaining in an understandable way or in a local language was beyond his competences and hence did not dare to make the Christian message accessible to his audience.

Catholic, meaning universal, sets its priority on reaching others for Christ. To a Catholic Christian it is more important to reach others for Christ through Evangelization in an understandable way. For that reason, they are not only urged to overcome the feelings of being a sinner by traveling to other places and preaching and reaching other people. Building a community through the religious instruments was very important, and hence schools are religious houses are open to everybody. It is also interesting to note that in extreme cases, when the parish priest could not be present in the early baptizing of the newborn, his mother could baptize the baby in the vernacular language, which is never the case in the Byzantine world.

This is the theoretical framework, which helps us understand why the Albanians appear so often and doing various activities in the Latin sources, whereas in the few Byzantine (Greek or Old Church Slavonic) sourced in which Albanians appear most of the time as a group, we have a black and white picture of them, as I will show in the following.

In the Byzantine sources, Albanians are mentioned as a group of people already in the eleventh century, when Michael Attaleiates, wrote in his “History” that the Albanians had existed already in Byzantine Empire, but were not visible in the sources, because they belonged to the Byzantine Empire:

“Unfortunately, the people who had once been our allies and who possessed the same rights as citizens and the same religion, i.e. the Albanians and the Latins, who live in the Italian regions of our Empire beyond Western Rome, quite suddenly became enemies when Michael Dokenianos insanely directed his command against their leaders…”[1]

“Once he (the Protoprohedros Duke Basiliakes) had ensured that he had indeed assembled a large army and forces fit for action, composed of Byzantine Greeks, Bulgarians and Albanians and of his own soldiers, he set off and hastened to Thessalonika…”[2]

The ‘History’ of Attaleiates is the typical written Byzantine source that I described in the theoretical framework above. Attaleiates was a Byzantine lawyer and historian who rose to high office under the emperors Romanus IV (r. 1067-1071) and Michael VII (r. 1071-1078) and wrote chronicles with a hidden agenda, that is to show how glorious these emperors had been in their lifetimes. In the case of these Emperors, he blames the Albanians as having become enemies. Who the Albanians were, is certainly a question that requires another analysis, as it is certain that no Albanian women and children participated in this war.

In 1081, Anna Comnena (1083- ca. 1153)mentioned also the Albanians in her “Alexiada.”

“To the best of his (Palaeologus) ability he ensured the safety of the inhabitants and entrusted the protection of the citadel to the Venetian officers who had migrated there. All the rest of the city was put under the command of Komiskortes, a native of Albania (τῷ ἔξ Αρβανῶν ὁρμωμένῳ), to whom he gave profitable advice for the future in letters.”

“ … for Robert (Guiscard) was being shot at from all directions, by the Albanians (ἀρβανιτῶν) and by Bodinus’ men from Dalmatia. But of course fault-finders stand out of weapon range and the acid darts they fire at the contestants come from their tongues.”[3]

Anna Comnena was also a Byzantine historian, who is famous for her chronicle named after her father Alexiada. As the daughter of Emperor Alexius I Comnenus (reg. 1081-1118) and Irene Ducas, Anna was married to the historian Nicephorus Bryennius (1062-1138) and after the death of her father she, her mother and her husband prepared a plot to prevent her younger brother, John II Comnenus (reg. 1118-1143), from succeeding to the throne. When the plot was discovered and avoided, she and her mother were forced to retire in a convent, where they spent the rest of their lives. During these days, she devoting her energies to erudition and scholarship, continuing the work of her husband after his death in 1138. Her chronicle in eight books, known as the Alexiad, is devoted to the memory of her father, describing in great clarity the events of his life, among others also the Norman invasion of Albania led by Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia (reg. 1057-1085), who was a rival of her father. Guiscard laid siege to Durrës in 1081 and defeated the Byzantine emperor there. His men then set off in pursuit of Alexius.

Another mentioning of the Albanians in the Byzantine sources comes from another Byzantine historian, namely, George Acropolites (1217-1282). He was the tutor of Emperor Theodore II Lascaris (r. 1254-1258) and later became rector of the university in Constantinople. His “Chronicle” of the Nicaean Empire, based to a good degree on first-hand information and personal observations, covers the years 1203-1261.[4]

“I set off for Albania. Passing through Serbia, Kastoria and the Achrida (Ohrid) region, I arrived in Albania and from there, reached Dyrrachion (Durrës) with the notables of that region.” “Upon my arrival there, I received word of a most distressing event, i.e. the following: Constantine Chabaron, who had been given supreme command over Albania by the emperor, had been taken prisoner by the Despot Michael, and this, due to the intrigues of Maria, his wife’s sister.”“I then decided to set off for Albania myself to bring the situation in that country back under control and to find out what the sewer had actually accomplished. On my departure from Albania, I took the sewer and all the forces with me because the Albanian people had acted in advance and had already carried through with their uprising.”[5]

From these sources one can easily understand that with the concept ‘Albanian’ these chronicles mean warriors, who for some reason turn out to become their enemies. It is already proven by various western sources also that the Albanian mercenaries were famous and skilled in the Middle Ages and as such were appropriate enemies against Byzantine emperors either in order to make their victories more glorious, or to justify their defeats against real enemies.

Targeting Albanians as the enemy escalated especially in the fourteenth century through John IV Cantacuzene (r. 1347-1355). The “History” of Cantacuzene covers the years 1320-1356 and he does not spare any negative words to describe the Albanians as wild and unruly nomads living in mountainous regions in the summer months and migrating to the lowlands in the winter months.[6]

“While the emperor was spending about eight days in Achrida (Ohrid), the Albanian nomads living in the region of Deabolis (Devoll) appeared before him, as well as those from Koloneia (Kolonja) and those from the vicinity of Ohrid.”

“While the emperor was staying in Thessaly, the unruly Albanians living in the Thessalian mountains appeared before him who, according to their tribal leaders, are called Malakasians, Buians and Mesarites and whose numbers reach 12,000. They paid homage to the emperor and promised to serve him, for they were afraid of being annihilated by the Byzantines at the onset of winter, living as they do, not in towns, but in the mountains and in inaccessible regions.”

“A short time thereafter, it was reported by the governors of the western parts of the empire that the Albanians nomads from Balagrada (Berat) and Kanina, who are quick to rise to arms and are restless by nature, had violated the treaties with the emperor, attacking and pillaging the towns there in a savage manner.”

“Since the Dux John, ruler of Acarnania, was already dead at this time, the emperor hurried to reach the west for he hoped to bring Acarnania under his control. During preparations, he thought it a good idea to bring in an auxiliary force of Turkish infantrymen from Ionia to put down the Albanians.”

“They were nonetheless attacked by light-armed Turkish forces and archers, who operate admirably in inaccessible regions, and were easily overcome, not only because they were unarmed, but also because they were thrown into a panic by the unexpected attack of the barbarians. Many Albanians were killed or taken prisoner. Those who managed to escape, left behind their wives, children and possessions, and took refuge in remote regions.”[7]

In these descriptions of the Albanians, there is obviously a tendency to put them in a negative light and if keep in mind the context, it is only done to justify his defeats that he lit from Stephen Dušan and also to justify his decision to involve Turkish infantrymen as an auxiliary force against the real enemy of the Byzantine Empire in this time, who was Stephen Dušan.

As soon as Dušan was crownedKing of All Serbian and Maritime Lands in the first week of September 1331,[8] he started to attack and occupy all the neighboring territories, predominantly Byzantine Empire. In 1342, Dušan launched systematic attacks and conquered all Byzantine territories in the Western Balkans as far as Kavala, except for the Peloponnesus and Thessaloniki, which he could not besiege due to his small fleet. The Byzantines sought allies in the Ottoman Turks and in May 1344, Dušan lost a battle against the Turkic force at Stefaniana,[9] but did not stop him from the conquest of Macedonia.[10]

Making a covenant with non-Christians and accepting their help was totally unacceptable for the Christians in the Middle Ages. A simple contact with a non-Christian automatically made a Christian fall into excommunication, not to mention calling them on purpose for helping against other Christians.In order to justify himself in front of the Christian world for turning to the Turks, Cantakuzenus is using the Albanians as a scapegoat.

If we read the source without this negativity attached to it, we certainly can retract very important information from that. “Many Albanians were killed or taken prisoner. Those who managed to escape, left behind their wives, children and possessions, and took refuge in remote regions.”[11]This sentence is telling us that the wives, children and possessions did not take refuge in remote regions, but only those young men who were persecuted. That is an evidence that the regular Albanians, those who were not targeted as ‘Albanians’, did not live in the mountains and were not nomads as he is suggesting in the first place. We can also safely figure out that many other inhabitants of the cities and areas mentioned in his description, did not dare to call themselves ‘Albanians’ in the face of such an atrocity, as long as they did not want to commit suicide.

It is interesting to note that Albanians were also living in Thessaly according to Cantakuzenus: “While the emperor was staying in Thessaly, the unruly Albanians living in the Thessalian mountains appeared before him who, according to their tribal leaders,”[12]including Ohrid and the whole South including Acarnania. This detailed description of the territories in which the Albanians were living and of course ‘being naughty’ to the Byzantine Emperor, does a great service to the Albanian historiography, as it shows which areas were the Albanians inhabiting in this period in the south. As I explained in the theoretical framework above, better sources are not to be expected from Byzantine historians, as there are no almost no neutral sources coming the imperial historians.

In the Latin sources, it is possible to find a variety of activities that Albanians are engaged in. One of my favorite Latin sources which shows how detailed with personal names and places of origin a Latin source can be is the following one:

Antonius de Drivasto, 1385; Antonius de Durachio, 27 july 1391, Dimitrius (Dymitrius) de Drivasto, 1385, Dymitrius de Antibaro, 1391, Dominicus Albanensis 1385; D. Petrus episcopus Suacensis, 1385; Georgius de Polato, 1385; Johannes de Albania, 1391, Gion de Albania 1391, Johannes (Zivan) de Polato, Allesius de Drivasto, 1385; Lexius (Aleksa) de Drivasto, 1391, Margaritus de Drivasto, 1391, Marinus de Dulcinio1385, 1391, Marchus de Albania 1385, Marcus de Novabrda, 1385, Martinus de Drivasto, 1385; Michael de Drivasto, 1385; Andreas cog. Paulus de Durachio 1391, Andreas de Polato, 1385; Andreas de Scutaro 1391, Nicola de Polato 1391, Paulus de Polato, 1385, 1391, Pelegrinus de Dulcinio, Petrus de Polato, 1385, Theodorus de Drivasto, 1385, etc.[13]

The beauty of the Latin sources, especially of Ragusan archival charters consists on every single name that mattered for them. In the medieval chancellery of the Republic of Ragusa (today: Dubrovnik) and other Dalmatian cities and towns, the place of origin for each person is almost always attached as a surname to the Albanians. In some cases, when there are two people with the same name, then the name of the father or the name of some relative is also attached to it.

Architects and sculptures, stonemasons, smiths, spade-smiths, and producers of other weapons, sailors, botarius and cuparius, carpenters, silversmiths, shoemakers, leather-ware producers, centurarium, tailors, barbers, tabernarius, teachers, musicians, and of course the biggest number of them were ecclesiastics are some of the professions of the Albanians in Ragusa. The Albanian scholar Edmond Malaj, presented in two of his articles, most of the professions that the Albanians were recorded doing in Ragusa.[14]To the sources we will come back in another article.

[1]Extracts from: Michaelis Attaliotae, Historia (Bonn 1853), 8, 18, 297. Translated by Robert Elsie. First published in Robert Elsie, Early Albania, a Reader of Historical Texts, 11^th – 17^th Centuries (Wiesbaden 2003), 4-5.http://www.albanianhistory.net/1038_Attaleiates/ (Accessed: December 2021); Koço Bozhori, Lufta shqiptaro-turke në shekullin XV: burime bizantine. Instituti i Historisë dhe i Gjuhësisë (Tirana: Universiteti Shtetëror i Tiranës, 1967); Koço Bozhori, Filip Liço, Burime tregimtare Bizantine për historinë e Shqipërisë: shek. X-XV (Tirana: Akademia e Shkencave e RPSH, Instituti i Historisë, 1975); Koço Bozhori, Dokumente të periudhës bizantine për historinë e Shqipërisë (shek. 7-15) (Tirana: Akademia e Shkencave e RPSSH, Instituti i Historisë, 1978).

[2]Ibidem.

[3]Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, IV 7-8, Bonn 1836, p. 215‑221 and p. 293-294. Translated from the Greek by E. R. A. Sewter in: The Alexiad of Anna Comnena(London 1969), 149‑153 and p. 195. Reprinted in Robert Elsie: Early Albania, a Reader of Historical Texts, 11th-17th Centuries(Wiesbaden 2003), 6-9. http://www.albanianhistory.net/1081_AnnaComnena/index.html (Accessed: December 2021)

[4] Robert Elsie, “1257 George Acropolites: An Albanian Uprising” http://www.albanianhistory.net/1257_Acropolites/index.html (Accessed: December 2021).

[5] Georgii Acropolitae: Opera, Leipzig 1903, p. 140 143. Translated by Robert Elsie. First published in R. Elsie: Early Albania, a Reader of Historical Texts, 11th – 17th Centuries(Wiesbaden 2003), 10-11. Robert Elsie, “1257 George Acropolites: An Albanian Uprising” http://www.albanianhistory.net/1257_Acropolites/index.html (Accessed: December 2021).

[6] Robert Elsie, “1328, 1332, 1336 John Cantacuzene: Unruly Nomads Pay Homage to the Emperor.” http://www.albanianhistory.net/1328_Cantacuzene/index.html (Accessed: December 2021).

[7] John Cantacuzenus: Geschichte(Stuttgart 1982), I, p. 190 = Book 1, 55, p. 279, lines 22sq.; II, p. 107 = Book II, 28, p. 474, lines 9-19; II, p. 120-123 = Book II, 32, p. 495-499. Translated by Robert Elsie. First published in R. Elsie: Early Albania, a Reader of Historical Texts, 11th – 17th Centuries(Wiesbaden 2003), 14-17.] Robert Elsie, “1328, 1332, 1336 John Cantacuzene: Unruly Nomads Pay Homage to the Emperor.” http://www.albanianhistory.net/1328_Cantacuzene/index.html (Accessed: December 2021).(Henceforth: Cantakuzenus).

[8]John Jr. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994), 274. (Henceforth: Fine)

[9]Fine, 303.

[10]George Christos Soulis, The Serbs and Byzantium during the Reign of Tsar Stephen Dusan (1331-1355) and His Successors(Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Library and Collection, 1984), 25.

[11]Cantacuzenus.

[12]Cantacuzenus,.

[13]DAD, Distributiones Testamentorum, lib. V, 1385-1395, f. 8.^r-v

[14] Edmond Malaj, Mjeshtërit dhe zejtarët shqiptarë në Raguzë gjatë mesjetës [Albanian masters and handcraftsmen in Ragusa during the Middle Ages], Studime Historike 1-2 (Tirana, 2020): 7-36; Ibid. „Prania dhe veprimtaria e klerit shqiptar në Raguzë gjatë mesjetës.“ Studime Historike 3-4 (Tirana, 2019): 7-35.