Rome -- medieval

Kingdom of Italy

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Appearance

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Geography

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History

• 1084 - The city of Rome is attacked by the Normans.
  • The Sack of Rome of May 1084 was a Norman sack, the result of the pope's call for aid from the duke of Apulia, Robert Guiscard. Pope Gregory VII was besieged in the Castel Sant'Angelo by the Emperor Henry IV in June 1083. He held out and called for aid from Guiscard, who was then fighting the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus in the Balkans. He returned, however, to the Italian Peninsula and marched north with 36,000 men. He entered Rome and forced Henry to retire, but a riot of the citizens led to a three days sack, after which Guiscard escorted the pope to the Lateran. The Normans had mainly pillaged the old city, which was then one of the richest cities in Italy. After days of unending violence, the Romans rose up causing the Normans to set fire to the city. Many of the buildings of Rome were gutted on the Capitol and Palatine hills along with the area between the Colosseum and the Lateran. In the end the ravaged Roman populace succumbed to the Normans.
• 1108 - The church of San Clemente is in this year rebuilt.
• 1140 - The church of Santa Maria in Trastevere is restored.
• 1200 - The city becomes an independent commune
• 1232 - The cloisters in the Basilica of St. John Lateran are finished.
• 1300 - Pope Boniface VIII proclaims the First Holy Year.
• 1309 - The Papacy is moved to Avignon under Pope Clement V
• 1347 - The patriot and rebel Cola di Rienzo tries to restore the Roman Republic.
• 1348 - As in most of Europe, the Black Death strikes Rome.

Though seat of the papacy, condition that assured to the city a certain number of inhabitants, the population of Rome, that in the 4th century was estimated at about 500,000, soon underwent a precipitous decline. During the Middle Age, the built-up area shrank until Romans settlement was confined to the shore of the Tiber, where water was available. Only one of the ancient aqueducts was still operating. The decline was momentarily arrested under Pope Gregory I (590-604), whose pontificate signed the first step towards the temporal power of the Church. His work of conversation did not follow a despotic design, and eventually contributed to improve the contacts between Rome and the barbaric peoples. His papacy marked the foundation of medieval Rome, although not much is known about the city in this period since little archeological evidence has survived. For a while Italy underwent a period of peace but soon became a battleground again. In the 6th century, the possession of the city was still disputed by Goths and Byzantines. But in the 7th century Rome passed under the temporary protection of the popes, who ruled the city up until the 19th century, period in which the history of the papacy is intricately connected with the history of Rome. When Pope Stephen III was threatened by the Lombards, he appealed for help to Pepin, king of the Franks. He defeated the barbars and granted the Pope a portion of Lombard territory (754), marking the beginning of the temporal power of the popes over the States of the Church. The 25th of December 800, Pepin's son, Charlemagne, was crowned by Leo III in Saint Peter's as Augustus and Emperor. The Holy Roman Empire survived until the abdication of Francis II of Austria in 1806. The walls of the Leonine City, built to defend the Borgo and St Peter's, date from the 9th century. The strength of the papacy increased under Pope Nicholas I (858-67) but with his death the prestige of the popes declined and the German emperors took an active part in the papal elections throughout the 10th and early 11th centuries. Gregory VII (1073-85), helped by some Roman noble families, reasserted papal authority, but turned out to be unable to prevent the Norman Robert Guiscard from conquering Sicily and devasting Rome in 1084.

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Population

• Annual Census, 1100 A.D.: 35,350

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Citizens

Pope Urban II

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Creaturae ex Superno Romae

• Dryadales

• Figura Mutante

• Magus Princeps

• Fraternitatem Noctis

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