title: Religion in Australia

text: Sectarianism in Australia tended to reflect the political inheritance of Britain and Ireland. Until 1945, the vast majority of Catholics in Australia were of Irish descent, causing the British majority to question their loyalty to the British Empire. The first Catholic priests arrived in Australia as convicts in 1800, but the Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804 alarmed the British authorities and no further priests were allowed in the colony until 1820, when London sent John Joseph Therry and Philip Connolly. In 1901, the Australian Constitution guaranteed Separation of Church and State. A notable period of sectarianism re-emerged during the First World War and the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland, but sectarian division declined after World War II. There was a diversification of Christian churches (especially with the growth of Greek, Macedonian, Serbian and Russian Orthodox churches), together with an increase in ecumenism among Christians through organisations such as the National Council of Churches in Australia, as well as an increase in non-religious adherence.


title: Religion in Australia

text: One of the most visible signs of the historical importance of Christianity to Australia is the prominence of churches in most Australian towns and cities. Among Australia's oldest are Ebenezer Chapel and the Anglican St Matthew's, Windsor, St Luke's, Liverpool, St Peter's, Campbelltown and St James Church, Sydney, built between 1819 and 1824 by Governor Macquarie's architect, Francis Greenway. St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, was built to a design by William Wardell from a foundation stone laid in 1868; the spires of the cathedral were not finally added until the year 2000. Wardell also worked on the design of St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne – among the finest examples of ecclesiastical architecture in Australia. The Anglican St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, in the iconic hub of the city opposite Flinders Street station. Adelaide is known as the "City of Churches", but churches extend far into the Australian Outback, as at the historic Lutheran Mission Chapel at Hermannsburg, Northern Territory. Along with community attitudes to religion, church architecture changed significantly during the 20th century. Urban churches, such as the Wayside Chapel (1964) in Sydney, differed markedly from traditional ecclesiastical designs. In the later 20th century, distinctly Australian approaches were applied at places such as Jambaroo Benedictine Abbey, where natural materials were chosen to "harmonise with the local environment" and the chapel sanctuary is of glass overlooking rainforest. Similar design principles were applied at Thredbo Ecumenical Chapel built in the Snowy Mountains in 1996.


title: Religion in Australia

text: The Christian festivals of Christmas and Easter are national public holidays in Australia. Christmas, which recalls the birth of Jesus Christ, is celebrated on 25 December during the Australian summer (although on 7 January by some Eastern Orthodox) and is an important cultural festival even for many non-religious Australians. The European traditions of Christmas trees, roast dinners, carols and gift giving are all continued in Australia, but they might be conducted between visits to the beach.


title: Religion in Australia

text: The first contacts that Islam had with Australia was when Muslim fishermen native to Makassar, which is today a part of Indonesia, visited North-Western Australia long before British settlement in 1788. This contact of South East Asian ethnic groups of Islamic faith can be identified from the graves they dug for their comrades who died on the journey, being that they face Mecca (in Arabia), in accordance with Islamic regulations concerning burial, as well as evidence from Aboriginal cave paintings and religious ceremonies which depict and incorporate the adoption of Makassan canoe designs and words.


title: Religion in Australia

text: In later history, throughout the 19th century following British settlement, other Muslims came to Australia including the Muslim 'Afghan' cameleers, who used their camels to transport goods and people through the otherwise unnavigable desert and pioneered a network of camel tracks that later became roads across the Outback. Australia's first mosque was built for them at Marree, South Australia in 1861. Between the 1860s and 1920s around 2000 cameleers were brought from Afghanistan and the north west of British India (now Pakistan) and perhaps 100 families remained in Australia. Other outback mosques were established at places like Coolgardie, Cloncurry, and Broken Hill – and more permanent mosques in Adelaide, Perth and later Brisbane. A legacy of this pioneer era is the presence of wild camels in Outback and the oldest Islamic structure in the southern hemisphere, at Central Adelaide Mosque. Nonetheless, despite their significant role in Australia prior to the establishment of rail and road networks, the formulation of the White Australia policy at the time of Federation made immigration difficult for the 'Afghans' and their memory slowly faded during the 20th century, until a revival of interest began in the 1980s.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Successive Australian governments dismantled the White Australia Policy in the Post-WW2 period. From the 1970s onwards, under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Australia began to pursue multiculturalism. Australia in the later 20th century became a refuge for many Muslims fleeing conflicts including those in Lebanon, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan. General immigration, combined with religious conversion to Islam by Christians and other Australians, as well as Australia's participation in UN refugee efforts has increased the overall Muslim population. Around 36% of Muslims are Australian born. Overseas born Muslims come from a great variety of nations and ethnic groups – with large Lebanese and Turkish communities.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Following the 11 September attacks, associations drawn between the political ideology of Osama Bin Laden and the religion of Islam have stirred debate in some quarters in Australia regarding Islam's relationship with the wider community – with some advocating greater emphasis on assimilation, and others supporting renewed commitment to diversity. The deaths of Australians in bombings by militant Islamic fundamentalists in New York in 2001, Bali in 2002–5 and London in 2005; as well as the sending of Australian troops to East Timor in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003; the arrest of bomb plotters in Australia; and concerns about certain cultural practices such as the wearing of the Burkha have all contributed to a degree of tension in recent times A series of comments by a senior Sydney cleric, Sheikh Taj El-Din Hilaly also stirred controversy, particularly his remarks regarding "female modesty" following an incident of gang rape in Sydney Australians were among the targets of Islamic Fundamentalists in the Bali bombings in Indonesia and attack on Australian Embassy in Jakarta and the South East Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah has been of particular concern to Australians.


title: Religion in Australia

text: The Australian government's mandatory detention processing system for asylum seekers became increasingly controversial after the 11 September attacks. A significant proportion of recent Asylum seekers arriving by boat have been Muslims fleeing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. Some Islamic leaders and social commentators claim that Islam has suffered from unfair stereotyping Violence and intimidation was directed against Muslims and people of Middle Eastern appearance during southern Sydney's Cronulla riots in 2005.


title: Religion in Australia

text: In 2005, the Howard Government established the Muslim Community Reference Group to advise on Muslim community issues for one year, chaired by Ameer Ali. Inter-faith dialogues were also established by Christian and Muslim groups such as The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils and the National Council of Churches in Australia. Australia and Indonesia co-operated closely following the Bali-bombings, not only in law-enforcement but in improving education and cross-cultural understanding, leading to a marked improvement in relations. After a series of controversies, Sheikh Taj El-Din Hilaly retired as Grand mufti of Australia in 2007 and was replaced by Fehmi Naji El-Imam AM.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Today, over 604,000 people in Australia identify as Muslim, with diverse communities concentrated mainly in Sydney and Melbourne. More than half are non-practising cultural Muslims. Since the 1970s Islamic schools have been established as well as more than 100 mosques and prayer centres. Many notable Muslim places of worship are to be found in large Australian cities, including the Central Adelaide Mosque, which was constructed during the 1880s; and Sydney's Classical Ottoman style Auburn Gallipoli Mosque, which was largely funded by the Turkish community and the name of which recalls the shared heritage of the foundation of modern Turkey and the story of the ANZACs. 1,140 people identified as Aboriginal Muslims in the 2011 census, almost double the number recorded in the 2001 census. Notable Australian Muslims include boxer Anthony Mundine; community worker and rugby league star Hazem El Masri; cricketer Usman Khawaja and academic Waleed Aly. In 2013, Labor MP Ed Husic became Australia's first Muslim member of Cabinet, briefly serving as Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Broadband in the short lived Second Rudd Government.


title: Religion in Australia

text: At least eight Jewish convicts are believed to have been transported to Sydney aboard the First Fleet in 1788, when the first British settlement was established on the continent. An estimated 110,000 Jews currently live in Australia, the majority being Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European descent, with many being refugees and Holocaust survivors who arrived during and after World War II.


title: Religion in Australia

text: The Jewish population has increased slightly in recent times due to immigration from South Africa and the former Soviet Union. The largest Jewish community in Australia is in Melbourne, with about 60,000, followed by Sydney with about 45,000 members. Smaller communities are dispersed among the other state capitals.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Following the conclusion of the British colonial period, Jews have enjoyed formal equality before the law in Australia and have not been subject to civil disabilities or other forms of state-sponsored anti-Semitism which exclude them from full participation in public life.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Sydney's gothic design Great Synagogue, consecrated in 1878, is a notable place of Jewish worship in Australia. Notable Australian Jews have included the Sir John Monash, the notable World War I general who opened the Maccabean Hall in Sydney in 1923 to commemorate Jews who fought and died in the First World War and who is currently featured on the Australian $100 note; and Sir Isaac Isaacs who became the first Australian born governor general in 1930. Sir Zelman Cowen also served as Governor-General, between 1977 and 1982. The Sydney Jewish Museum opened in 1992 to commemorate The Holocaust "challenge visitors' perceptions of democracy, morality, social justice and human rights".


title: Religion in Australia

text: Until the 1930s, all synagogues in Australia were nominally Orthodox, with most acknowledging leadership of the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom. To this day the vast majority of synagogues in Australia are Orthodox. However, there is a wide range of Orthodox congregations, including Mizrachi, Chabad and Adass Israel congregations. There are also Sephardi congregations.


title: Religion in Australia

text: There had been short-lived efforts to establish Reform congregations as early as the 1890s. However, under the leadership of Ada Phillips, a sustained liberal congregation, Temple Beth Israel, was established in Melbourne. Subsequently, another synagogue linked to the United States Reform Movement, Temple Emanuel, was established in Sydney. Following these two congregations, a number of other Liberal synagogues have been founded in other cities.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Since 1992 Conservative (Masorti) services have been held as an alternative service usually in the Neuweg, the smaller second synagogue within Temple Emanuel, Woollahra, Sydney. In 1999, Kehilat Nitzan, Melbourne's first Conservative (Masorti) congregation was established, with foundation president John Rosenberg. The congregation appointed its first rabbi, Ehud Bandel in 2006. In 2010 Beit Knesset Shalom became Brisbane's first Conservative (Masorti) synagogue.


title: Religion in Australia

text: In 2012, the first humanistic Jewish congregation, known as Kehilat Kolenu, was established in Melbourne with links to the cultural Jewish youth movement Habonim Dror. Later in 2012, a similar congregation was established in Sydney, known as Ayelet HaShachar. The services are loosely based on the Humanistic Jewish movement in the United States and the musical-prayer group Nava Tehila in Israel.


title: Religion in Australia

text: The Baháʼí Faith first arrived in Australia in 1922, and at less than 0.1% of the total population, is one of the smaller religious minorities. The Sydney Baháʼí Temple is situated in Ingleside, a northern suburb of Sydney. According to Jennifer Taylor, a historian at Sydney University, it is among Sydney's four most significant religious buildings constructed in the twentieth century. Dedicated in 1961, it was also the world's fourth Baháʼí House of Worship to be completed.


title: Religion in Australia

text: The 1996 Australian Census lists Baháʼí membership at just under 9,000. In 2001, the second edition of "A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services" added the Baháʼí Faith to its coverage of religions in Australia and noted that the community had grown to over 11,000. The Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on "World Christian Encyclopedia") estimated some 17,700 Baháʼís in 2005, and over 19,300 in 2010. However, census data from 2016 reported a much lower population of only 13,988.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Hindus numbered 684,000 in the 2021 census, making Hinduism the fourth largest religious or non-religious affiliation one of the fastest growing religions in Australia (12.0% per year since 2011). In the 19th century, Hindus first came to Australia to work on cotton and sugar plantations. Many who remained worked in small business, as camel drivers, merchants and hawkers, selling goods between small rural communities. Their population increased dramatically from the 1960s and 1970s and more than doubled between the 1996 and 2006 census to around 148,000 people. Most were migrants from countries such as Fiji, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa. At present many Hindus are well-educated professionals in fields such as medicine, engineering, commerce and information technology. Among Australia's best-known Hindus is the singer Kamahl. There are around forty-three Hindu temples in Australia, the Sri Mandir Temple in Auburn, Sydney being the first established in 1977.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Buddhists began arriving in Australia in significant numbers during the goldrush of the 1850s with an influx of Chinese miners. However, the population remained low until the 1960s. Buddhism is now one of the fastest growing religions in Australia. Immigration from Asia has contributed to this, but some people of non-Asian origin have also converted. The three main traditions of Buddhism—Theravada, East Asian and Tibetan—are now represented in Australia. According to the 2021 census, Buddhism has 615,800 adherents: 2.4% of the total population.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Buddhist temples can be very active. Quang Minh Temple in Braybrook, Melbourne, Victoria gets about 2,000 people through every Sunday and gives a free vegetarian meal to about 600 people. For important events, more than 20,000 people come. Even more come to the Nan Tien Temple, or "Southern Paradise Temple", in Wollongong, New South Wales, began construction in the early 1990s, adopting the Chinese palace building style and is now the largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere. This temple follows the Venerable Master Hsing Yun of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist order. Bodhinyana Monastery is a Theravadin Buddhist monastery in the Thai Forest Tradition located in Serpentine, Western Australia.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Sikhism has been one of the fastest growing religions in Australia in recent years. According to census data, Australia's Sikh population grew from 72,000 to 210,400 between 2011 and 2021, an average growth rate of 14.8% per year. Around 42% of Australia's Sikhs live in the state of Victoria.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Jainism is currently the fourth fastest growing religion in Australia, recording 4,050 adherents in 2016 and growing an average of 7.7% per year. The overwhelming majority (94.7%) of Jains live inside the state capitals, primarily Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Australia is one of the least religious nations in the developed world, with religion not described as a central part in many people's lives. This view is prominent among Australia's youth, who were ranked as the least religious worldwide in a 2008 survey conducted by "The Christian Science Monitor". In the 2021 census, the ABS categorised ~9,887,000 Australians (38.9%) as having no religion, up 16.6% in real terms from 4,796,800 (22.3%) in 2011. This category includes agnosticism, atheism, humanism, rationalism, and people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion.


title: Religion in Australia

text: While people with no religion are more than 30% of the Australian population, the Australian Bureau of Statistics does not provide information in the annual "1301.0 – Year Book Australia" on religious affiliation as to how many people fall into each sub-category. Data on religious affiliation is only collected by the ABS at the five yearly population census. Atheist interests in Australia are represented nationally by the Atheist Foundation of Australia. Humanist interests in Australia are represented nationally by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. Rationalist interests in Australia are represented nationally by the Rationalist Society of Australia. The Global Atheist Convention, a prominent atheist event, has been held in Melbourne.


title: Religion in Australia

text: The 2006 census shows 53 listed groups down to 5000 members, most of them Christian denominations, many of them national versions such as Greek, Serbian Orthodox and Assyrian Orthodox. Of the smaller religions, Pagan religions 29,328, the Baháʼí Faith at 12,000, Humanism about 7000. Between 1000 and 5000, are the following religions—Taoism, Druse, Satanism, Zoroastrian, Rationalism, Creativity, Theosophy, Jainism. There are also adherents of Tenrikyo, Shinto, Unitarian Universalism, Eckankar, Cao Dai, Rastafari, Pantheism, Scientology and Raelianism.


title: Religion in Australia

text: In general, non-Christian religions and those with no religion have been growing in proportion to the overall population. With fewer classifications, data from 1996 and 2001 showed Aboriginal religion decreasing from 7000 to 5000 while Baháʼí grew from just under 9,000 to over 11,000 and the rest of the "Other" category growing from about 69,000 to about 92,000.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Alexandrian Wiccans and Gardnerian Wiccans arrived in Australia from England and the United States around the late 1960s.


title: Religion in Australia

text: In the 2011 census, 32,083 Australians identified their religion as a Pagan religion including 8,413 people who identified their religion as Wicca or Witchcraft.


title: Religion in Australia

text: Interfaith efforts between various religious institutions occur. Since the early 2000s, the Abraham Conference convenes as an annual interfaith event between Christians, Muslims, and Jews.


title: Peter Rodger

text: Peter Anthony Rodger (born 6 April 1965) is a British filmmaker and photographer. Rodger is known for his 2009 documentary film "Oh My God", as well as his work as a second unit director on "The Hunger Games" (2012). Rodger has won a number of awards, including from the Houston International Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, the Telly Awards, the Mobius Awards, and the US International Film and Video Festival.


title: Peter Rodger

text: Rodger was born on 6 April 1965 as the second son of British photojournalist George Rodger and his American assistant wife, Lois "Jinx" Rodger (née Witherspoon). Through his mother, he is a distant cousin of American actress Reese Witherspoon.


title: Peter Rodger

text: Rodger married Li Chin Tye, a Malaysian Chinese nurse who worked on film sets and later a research assistant for a film company. They had two children, Elliot and Georgia.


title: Peter Rodger

text: After his divorce, Rodger married Moroccan actress Soumaya Akaaboune, with whom he had a third child, Jazz.


title: Peter Rodger

text: In 2014, his eldest son, Elliot Rodger, murdered six people and injured fourteen others in Isla Vista, California, then killed himself.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The Norman conquest of southern Italy lasted from 999 to 1139, involving many battles and independent conquerors.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1130, the territories in southern Italy united as the Kingdom of Sicily, which included the island of Sicily, the southern third of the Italian Peninsula (except Benevento, which was briefly held twice), the archipelago of Malta, and parts of North Africa.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Itinerant Norman forces arrived in southern Italy as mercenaries in the service of Lombard and Byzantine factions, communicating news swiftly back home about opportunities in the Mediterranean. These groups gathered in several places, establishing fiefdoms and states of their own, uniting and elevating their status to "de facto" independence within 50 years of their arrival.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Unlike the Norman Conquest of England (1066), which took a few years after one decisive battle, the conquest of southern Italy was the product of decades and a number of battles, few decisive. Many territories were conquered independently, and only later were unified into a single state. Compared to the conquest of England, it was unplanned and disorganised, but equally complete.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: There is little evidence for Viking activity in Italy as a precursor to the arrival of the Normans in 999, but some raiding is recorded. Ermentarius of Noirmoutier and the Annales Bertiniani provide contemporary evidence for Vikings based in Frankia proceeding to Iberia and thence to Italy around 860.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Some modern scholars have connected this event with a much later account by the infamously unreliable Dudo of Saint-Quentin, who had a Viking fleet led by one Alstingus land at the Ligurian port of Luni and sacking the city. The Vikings then move another down the Tuscan coast to the mouth of the Arno, sacking Pisa and then, following the river upstream, also attack the hill-town of Fiesole above Florence and win other victories around the Mediterranean (including in Sicily and North Africa). Building modern speculation on medieval invention, some scholarship has identified the leaders of this expedition as Björn Ironside and Hastein. Dudo's account, however, probably adds no historically reliable information to the brief contemporary annals.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Other contact between Italy and the Viking world occurred via Eastern Scandinavians coming to Italy via the "Austrvegr" (the river routes from the Baltic to the Black Sea) and working as Varangian mercenaries fighting for Byzantium. In particular, three or four eleventh-century Swedish Runestones mention Italy, memorialising warriors who died in 'Langbarðaland', the Old Norse name for southern Italy (Langobardia Minor). Varangians may first have been deployed as mercenaries in Italy against the Arabs as early as 936.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The earliest reported date of the arrival of Norman knights in southern Italy is 999, although it may be assumed that they had visited before then. In that year, according to some traditional sources of uncertain origin, Norman pilgrims returning from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem via Apulia stayed with Prince Guaimar III in Salerno. The city and its environs were attacked by Saracens from Africa demanding payment of an overdue annual tribute. While Guaimar began to collect the tribute, the Normans ridiculed him and his Lombard subjects for cowardice, and they assaulted their besiegers. The Saracens fled, booty was confiscated and a grateful Guaimar asked the Normans to stay. They refused, but promised to bring his rich gifts to their compatriots in Normandy and tell them about possibly lucrative military service in Salerno. Some sources have Guaimar sending emissaries to Normandy to bring back knights, and this account of the arrival of the Normans is sometimes known as the "Salerno (or Salernitan) tradition".


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The Salerno tradition was first recorded by Amatus of Montecassino in his "Ystoire de li Normant" between 1071 and 1086. Much of this information was borrowed from Amatus by Peter the Deacon for his continuation of the "Chronicon Monasterii Casinensis" of Leo of Ostia, written during the early 12th century. Beginning with the "Annales Ecclesiastici" of Baronius in the 17th century, the Salernitan story became the accepted history. Although its factual accuracy was questioned periodically during the following centuries, it has been accepted (with some modifications) by most scholars since.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Another historical account of the arrival of the first Normans in Italy, the "Gargano tradition", appears in primary chronicles without reference to any previous Norman presence. According to this account Norman pilgrims at the shrine to Michael the Archangel at Monte Gargano in 1016 met the Lombard Melus of Bari, who persuaded them to join him in an attack on the Byzantine government of Apulia.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: As with the Salerno tradition, there are two primary sources for the Gargano story: the "Gesta Roberti Wiscardi" of William of Apulia (dated 1088–1110) and the "Chronica monasterii S. Bartholomaei de Carpineto" of a monk named Alexander, written about a century later and based on William's work. Some scholars have combined the Salerno and Gargano tales, and John Julius Norwich suggested that the meeting between Melus and the Normans had been arranged by Guaimar. Melus had been in Salerno just before his visit to Monte Gargano.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Another story involves the exile of a group of brothers from the Drengot family. One of the brothers, Osmund (according to Orderic Vitalis) or Gilbert (according to Amatus and Peter the Deacon), murdered William Repostel (Repostellus) in the presence of Robert I, Duke of Normandy after Repostel allegedly boasted about dishonouring his murderer's daughter. Threatened with death, the Drengot brother fled with his siblings to Rome and one of the brothers had an audience with the pope before joining Melus (Melo) of Bari. Amatus dates the story to after 1027, and does not mention the pope. According to him, Gilbert's brothers were Osmund, Ranulf, Asclettin and Ludolf (Rudolf, according to Peter).


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Between 1016 and 1024, in a fragmented political context, the Lombard was usurped by a group of Norman knights headed by Gilbert and hired by Melus. The County, which replaced the pre-existing chamberlainship, is considered to be the first political body established by the Normans in the South of Italy.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Repostel's murder is dated by all the chronicles to the reign of Robert the Magnificent and after 1027, although some scholars believe "Robert" was a scribal error for "Richard" (Richard II of Normandy, who was duke in 1017). The earlier date is necessary if the emigration of the first Normans was connected to the Drengots and the murder of William Repostel. In the "Histories" of Ralph Glaber, "Rodulfus" leaves Normandy after displeasing Count Richard (Richard II). The sources disagree about which brother was the leader on the southern trip. Orderic and William of Jumièges, in the latter's "Gesta Normannorum Ducum", name Osmund; Glaber names Rudolph, and Leo, Amatus and Adhemar of Chabannes name Gilbert. According to most southern-Italian sources, the leader of the Norman contingent at the Battle of Cannae in 1018 was Gilbert. If Rudolf is identified with the Rudolf of Amatus' history as a Drengot brother, he may have been the leader at Cannae.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: A modern hypothesis concerning the Norman arrival in the Mezzogiorno concerns the chronicles of Glaber, Adhemar and Leo (not Peter's continuation). All three chronicles indicate that Normans (either a group of 40 or a much-larger force of around 250) under "Rodulfus" (Rudolf), fleeing Richard II, came to Pope Benedict VIII of Rome. The pope sent them to Salerno (or Capua) to seek mercenary employment against the Byzantines because of the latter's invasion of papal Beneventan territory. There, they met the Beneventan "primates" (leading men): Landulf V of Benevento, Pandulf IV of Capua, (possibly) Guaimar III of Salerno and Melus of Bari. According to Leo's chronicle, "Rudolf" was Ralph of Tosni. If the first confirmed Norman military actions in the south involved Melus' mercenaries against the Byzantines in May 1017, the Normans probably left Normandy between January and April.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: On 9 May 1009, an insurrection erupted in Bari against the Catapanate of Italy, the regional Byzantine authority based there. Led by Melus, a local Lombard, the revolt quickly spread to other cities. Late that year (or early in 1010) the "katepano", John Curcuas, was killed in battle. In March 1010 his successor, Basil Mesardonites, disembarked with reinforcements and besieged the rebels in the city. The Byzantine citizens negotiated with Basil and forced the Lombard leaders, Melus and his brother-in-law Dattus, to flee. Basil entered the city on 11 June 1011, reestablishing Byzantine authority. He did not follow his victory with severe sanctions, only sending Melus' family (including his son, Argyrus) to Constantinople. Basil died in 1016, after years of peace in southern Italy.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Leo Tornikios Kontoleon arrived as Basil's successor in May of that year. After Basil's death, Melus revolted again; this time, he used a newly arrived band of Normans, sent by Pope Benedict, who met him (with or without Guaimar's aid) at Monte Gargano. Tornikios sent an army, led by Leo Passianos, against the Lombard-Norman coalition. Passianos and Melus met on the Fortore at Arenula; the battle was either indecisive (William of Apulia) or a victory for Melus (Leo of Ostia and Amatus). Tornikios then took command, leading his forces into a second encounter near Civita. This second battle was a victory for Melus, although Lupus Protospatharius and the anonymous chronicler of Bari recorded a defeat. A third battle (a decisive victory for Melus) took place at Vaccaricia; the region from the Fortore to Trani was in his hands, and in September Tornikios was replaced by Basil Boioannes (who arrived in December). According to Amatus, there were five consecutive Lombard and Norman victories by October 1018.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: At Boioannes' request, a detachment of the elite Varangian Guard was sent to Italy to fight the Normans. The armies met at the Ofanto near Cannae, the site of Hannibal's victory over the Romans in 216 BC, and the Battle of Cannae was a decisive Byzantine victory; Amatus wrote that only ten Normans survived from a contingent of 250. After the battle, Ranulf Drengot (one of the Norman survivors) was elected leader of their company. Boioannes protected his gains by building a fortress at the Apennine pass, guarding the entrance to the Apulian plain. In 1019 Troia (as the fortress was known) was garrisoned by Boioannes' Norman troops, an indication of Norman willingness to fight on either side. With Norman mercenaries on both sides, they would obtain good terms for the release of their brethren from their captors regardless of outcome.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Alarmed by the shift in momentum in the south, Pope Benedict (who may have initiated Norman involvement in the war) went north in 1020 to Bamberg to confer with Holy Roman Emperor Henry II. Although the emperor took no immediate action, events the following year persuaded him to intervene. Boioannes (allied with Pandulf of Capua) marched on Dattus, who was garrisoning a tower in the territory of the Duchy of Gaeta with papal troops. Dattus was captured and, on 15 June 1021, received the traditional Roman "poena cullei": he was tied up in a sack with a monkey, a rooster and a snake and thrown into the sea. In 1022, a large imperial army marched south in three detachments under Henry II, Pilgrim of Cologne and Poppo of Aquileia to attack Troia. Although Troia did not fall, the Lombard princes were allied with the Empire and Pandulf removed to a German prison; this ended the Lombard revolt.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1024, Norman mercenaries under Ranulf Drengot were in the service of Guaimar III when he and Pandulf IV besieged Pandulf V in Capua. In 1026, after an 18-month siege, Capua surrendered and Pandulf IV was reinstated as prince. During the next few years Ranulf would attach himself to Pandulf, but in 1029 he joined Sergius IV of Naples (whom Pandulf expelled from Naples in 1027, probably with Ranulf's assistance).


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1029, Ranulf and Sergius recaptured Naples. In early 1030 Sergius gave Ranulf the County of Aversa as a fief; that seigniory was long considered to be the first Norman lordship in southern Italy, although this primacy is currently attributed to the which was officially recognized by the Emperor Henry II since 1022. Sergius also gave his sister, the widow of the duke of Gaeta, in marriage to Ranulf. In 1034, however, Sergius' sister died and Ranulf returned to Pandulf. According to Amatus:


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: For the Normans never desired any of the Lombards to win a decisive victory, in case this should be to their disadvantage. But now supporting the one and then aiding the other, they prevented anyone being completely ruined.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Norman reinforcements and local miscreants, who found a welcome in Ranulf's camp with no questions asked, swelled Ranulf's numbers. There, Amatus observed that the Norman language and customs welded a disparate group into the semblance of a nation. In 1035, the same year William the Conqueror would become Duke of Normandy, Tancred of Hauteville's three eldest sons (William "Iron Arm", Drogo and Humphrey) arrived in Aversa from Normandy.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1037, or the summer of 1038 (sources differ), Norman influence was further solidified when Emperor Conrad II deposed Pandulf and invested Ranulf as Count of Aversa. In 1038 Ranulf invaded Capua, expanding his polity into one of the largest in southern Italy.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1038 Byzantine Emperor Michael IV launched a military campaign into Muslim Sicily, with General George Maniaches leading the Christian army against the Saracens. The future king of Norway, Harald Hardrada, commanded the Varangian Guard in the expedition and Michael called on Guaimar IV of Salerno and other Lombard lords to provide additional troops for the campaign. Guiamar sent 300 Norman knights from Aversa, including the three Hauteville brothers (who would achieve renown for their prowess in battle). William of Hauteville became known as William Bras-de-Fer ("William Iron Arm") for single-handedly killing the emir of Syracuse during that city's siege. The Norman contingent would leave before the campaign's end due to the inadequate distribution of Saracen loot.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: After the assassination of Catapan Nikephoros Dokeianos at Ascoli in 1040 the Normans elected Atenulf, brother of Pandulf III of Benevento, their leader. On 16 March 1041, near Venosa on the Olivento, the Norman army tried to negotiate with Catapan Michael Dokeianos; although they failed, they still defeated the Byzantine army in the Battle of Olivento. On 4 May 1041 the Norman army, led by William Iron Arm, defeated the Byzantines again in the Battle of Montemaggiore near Cannae (avenging the Norman defeat in the 1018 Battle of Cannae). Although the catapan summoned a large Varangian force from Bari, the battle was a rout; many of Michael's soldiers drowned in the Ofanto while retreating.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: On 3 September 1041 at the Battle of Montepeloso, the Normans (nominally under Arduin and Atenulf) defeated Byzantine catepan Exaugustus Boioannes and brought him to Benevento. Around that time, Guaimar IV of Salerno began to attract the Normans. In February 1042, Atenulf negotiated the ransom of Exaugustus and then fled with the ransom money to Byzantine territory. He was replaced by Argyrus, who was bribed to defect to the Byzantines after a few early victories.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The revolt, originally Lombard, had become Norman in character and leadership. In September 1042, the three principal Norman groups held a council in Melfi which included Ranulf Drengot, Guaimar IV and William Iron Arm. William and the other leaders petitioned Guaimar to recognize their conquests, and William was acknowledged as the Norman leader in Apula (which included Melfi and the Norman garrison at Troia). He received the title of Count of Apulia from Guiamar, and (like Ranulf) was his vassal. Guaimar proclaimed himself Duke of Apulia and Calabria, although he was never formally invested as such by the Holy Roman Emperor. William was married to Guida (daughter of Guy, Duke of Sorrento and Guaimar's niece), strengthening the alliance between the Normans and Guaimar.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: At Melfi in 1043, Guaimar divided the region (except for Melfi itself, which was to be governed on a republican model) into twelve baronies for the Norman leaders. William received Ascoli, Asclettin Drengot received Acerenza, Tristan received Montepeloso, Hugh Tubœuf received Monopoli, Peter received Trani, Drogo of Hauteville received Venosa and Ranulf Drengot (now the independent Duke of Gaeta) received Siponto and Monte Gargano.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: During their reign William and Guaimar began the conquest of Calabria in 1044, and built the castle of Stridula (near Squillace). William was less successful in Apulia, where he was defeated in 1045 near Taranto by Argyrus (although his brother, Drogo, conquered Bovino). At William's death, the period of Norman mercenary service ended with the rise of two Norman principalities owing nominal allegiance to the Holy Roman Empire: the County of Aversa (later the Principality of Capua) and the County of Apulia (later the Duchy of Apulia).


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1046 Drogo entered Apulia and defeated the catepan, Eustathios Palatinos, near Taranto while his brother Humphrey forced Bari to conclude a treaty with the Normans. Also that year, Richard Drengot arrived with 40 knights from Normandy and Robert "Guiscard" Hauteville arrived with other Norman immigrants.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1047 Guaimar (who had supported Drogo's succession and the establishment of a Norman dynasty in the south) gave him his daughter, Gaitelgrima, in marriage. Emperor Henry III confirmed the county of Aversa in its fidelity to him and made Drogo his vassal, granting him the title "dux et magister Italiae comesque Normannorum totius Apuliae et Calabriae" (duke and master of Italy and count of the Normans of all Apulia and Calabria, the first legitimate title for the Normans of Melfi). Henry did not confirm the other titles given during the 1042 council; he demoted Guiamar to "prince of Salerno", and Capua was bestowed upon Pandulf IV for the third (and final) time. Henry, whose wife Agnes had been mistreated by the Beneventans, authorised Drogo to conquer Benevento for the imperial crown; he did so in 1053.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1048 Drogo commanded an expedition into Calabria via the valley of Crati, near Cosenza. He distributed the conquered territories in Calabria and gave his brother, Robert Guiscard, a castle at Scribla to guard the entrance to the recently conquered territory; Guiscard would later abandon it for a castle at San Marco Argentano. Shortly thereafter he married the daughter of another Norman lord, who gave him 200 knights (furthering his military campaign in Calabria). In 1051 Drogo was assassinated by Byzantine conspirators and was succeeded by his brother, Humphrey. Humphrey's first challenge was to deal with papal opposition to the Normans. The Norman knights' treatment of the Lombards during Drogo's reign triggered more revolts. During the unrest, the Italo-Norman John, Abbot of Fécamp was accosted on his return trip from Rome; he wrote to Pope Leo IX:


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The hatred of the Italians for the Normans has now reached such a pitch that it is almost impossible for any Norman, albeit a pilgrim, to journey in the towns of Italy, without being assailed, abducted, robbed, beaten, thrown in irons, even if fortunate enough not to die in a prison.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The pope and his supporters, including the future Gregory VII, called for an army to oust the Normans from Italy.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: On 18 June 1053, Humphrey led the Norman armies against the combined forces of the pope and the Holy Roman Empire. At the Battle of Civitate the Normans destroyed the papal army and captured Leo IX, imprisoning him in Benevento (which had surrendered). In 1054 Peter II, who succeeded Peter I in the region of Trani, captured the city from the Byzantines. Humphrey died in 1057; he was succeeded by Guiscard, who ended his loyalty to the Empire and made himself a papal vassal in return for the title of duke.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: During the 1050s and 1060s, there were two centres of Norman power in southern Italy: one at Melfi (under the Hautevilles) and another at Aversa (under the Drengots). Richard Drengot became ruler of the County of Aversa in 1049, beginning a policy of territorial aggrandisement to compete with his Hauteville rivals. At first he warred with his Lombard neighbours, who included Pandulf VI of Capua, Atenulf I of Gaeta and Gisulf II of Salerno. Richard pushed back the borders of Salerno until there was little left of the once-great principality but the city of Salerno itself. Although he tried to extend his influence peacefully by betrothing his daughter to the oldest son of Atenulf of Gaeta, when the boy died before the marriage he still demanded the Lombard dower from the boy's parents. When the duke refused, Richard seized Aquino (one of Gaeta's few remaining fiefs) in 1058. However, the chronology of his conquest of Gaeta is confusing. Documents from 1058 and 1060 refer to Jordan (Richard's oldest son) as Duke of Gaeta, but these have been disputed as forgeries (since Atenulf was still duke when he died in 1062). After Atenulf's death, Richard and Jordan took over the rule of the duchy and allowed Atenulf's heir—Atenulf II—to rule as their subject until 1064 (when Gaeta was fully incorporated into the Drengot principality). Richard and Jordan appointed puppet, usually Norman, dukes.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: When the prince of Capua died in 1057, Richard immediately besieged the comune. This chronology is also unclear. Pandulf was succeeded at Capua by his brother, Landulf VIII, who is recorded as prince until 12 May 1062. Richard and Jordan took the princely title in 1058, but apparently allowed Landulf to continue ruling beneath them for at least four years more. In 1059 Pope Nicholas II convened a synod at Melfi confirming Richard as Count of Aversa and Prince of Capua, and Richard swore allegiance to the papacy for his holdings. The Drengots then made Capua their headquarters for ruling Aversa and Gaeta.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Richard and Jordan expanded their new Gaetan and Capuan territories northwards toward Latium, into the Papal States. In 1066 Richard marched on Rome, but was easily repelled. Jordan's tenure as Richard's successor marked an alliance with the papacy (which Richard had attempted), and the conquests of Capua ceased. When Jordan died in 1090, his young son Richard II and his regents were unable to hold Capua. They were forced to flee the city by a Lombard, Lando, who ruled it with popular support until he was forced out by the combined Hauteville forces in the siege of Capua in 1098; this ended Lombard rule in Italy.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1077 the last Lombard prince of Benevento died, and in 1078 the pope appointed Robert Guiscard to succeed him. In 1081, however, Guiscard relinquished Benevento. By then, the principality comprised little more than Benevento and its environs; it had been reduced in size by Norman conquests during the previous decades, especially after the Battle of Civitate and after 1078. At Ceprano in June 1080 the pope again gave Guiscard control of Benevento, an attempt to halt Norman incursions into it and associated territory in the Abruzzi (which Guiscard's relatives had been appropriating).


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: After the Battle of Civitate, the Normans began the conquest of the Adriatic coast of Benevento. Geoffrey of Hauteville, a brother of the Hauteville counts of Melfi, conquered the Lombard county of Larino and stormed the castle Morrone in the region of Samnium-Guillamatum. Geoffrey's son, Robert, united these conquests into a county, Loritello, in 1061 and continued his expansion into Lombard Abruzzo. He conquered the Lombard county of Teate (modern Chieti) and besieged Ortona, which became the goal of Norman efforts in that region. Loritello soon reached as far north as the Pescara and the Papal States. In 1078 Robert allied with Jordan of Capua to ravage the Papal Abruzzo, but after a 1080 treaty with Pope Gregory VII they were obligated to respect papal territory. In 1100 Robert of Loritello extended his principality across the Fortore, taking Bovino and Dragonara.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The conquest of the Molise is poorly documented. Boiano (the principal town) may have been conquered the year before the Battle of Civitate by Robert Guiscard, who had encircled the Matese massif. The county of Boiano was bestowed on Rudolf of Moulins. His grandson, Hugh, expanded it eastward (occupying Toro and San Giovanni in Galdo) and westward (annexing the Capuan counties of Venafro, Pietrabbondante and Trivento in 1105).


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: After roughly 100 years of Arab control (following the Saracen defeat of Byzantine forces in 965), Sicily was inhabited by a mix of Christians, Arab Muslims, and Muslim converts at the time of its conquest by the Normans. Arab Sicily had a thriving trade network with the Mediterranean world, and was known in the Arab world as a luxurious and decadent place. It had originally been under the rule of the Aghlabids and then the Fatimids, but in 948 the Kalbids wrested control of the island and held it until 1053. During the 1010s and 1020s, a series of succession crises paved the way for interference by the Zirids of Ifriqiya. Sicily was wracked by turmoil as petty fiefdoms battled each other for supremacy. Into this, the Normans under Robert Guiscard and his younger brother Roger Bosso came intending to conquer; the pope had conferred on Robert the title of "Duke of Sicily", encouraging him to seize Sicily from the Saracens.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Robert and Roger first invaded Sicily in May 1061, crossing from Reggio di Calabria and besieging Messina for control of the strategically vital Strait of Messina. Roger crossed the strait first, landing unseen overnight and surprising the Saracen army in the morning. When Robert's troops landed later that day, they found themselves unopposed and Messina abandoned. Robert immediately fortified the city and allied himself with the emir, Ibn al-Timnah, against his rival Ibn al-Hawas. Robert, Roger, and at-Timnah then marched into the centre of the island by way of Rometta, which had remained loyal to at-Timnah. They passed through Frazzanò and the "Pianura di Maniace" (Plain of Maniakes), encountering resistance to their assault of Centuripe. Paternò fell quickly, and Robert brought his army to Castrogiovanni (modern Enna, the strongest fortress in central Sicily). Although the garrison was defeated the citadel did not fall, and with winter approaching Robert returned to Apulia. Before leaving, he built a fortress at San Marco d'Alunzio (the first Norman castle in Sicily). Roger returned in late 1061 and captured Troina. In June 1063 he defeated a Muslim army at the Battle of Cerami, securing the Norman foothold on the island.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Robert returned in 1064, bypassing Castrogiovanni on his way to Palermo; this campaign was eventually called off. In 1068 Roger struck another defeat against the Muslims at the Battle of Misilmeri. In August 1071, the Normans began a second and successful siege of Palermo. The city of Palermo was entered by the Normans on 7 January 1072 and three days later the defenders of the inner-city surrendered. Meanwhile, in 1066, William the Conqueror had become the first Norman King of England. Robert invested Roger as Count of Sicily under the suzerainty of the Duke of Apulia. In a partition of the island with his brother Robert retained Palermo, half of Messina, and the largely Christian Val Demone (leaving the rest, including what was not yet conquered, to Roger).


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1077 Roger besieged Trapani, one of the two remaining Saracen strongholds in the west of the island. His son, Jordan, led a sortie which surprised guards of the garrison's livestock. With its food supply cut off, the city soon surrendered. In 1079 Taormina was besieged, and in 1081 Jordan, Robert de Sourval and Elias Cartomi conquered Catania (a holding of the emir of Syracuse) in another surprise attack.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Roger left Sicily in the summer of 1083 to assist his brother on the mainland; Jordan (whom he had left in charge) revolted, forcing him to return to Sicily and subjugate his son. In 1085, he was finally able to undertake a systematic campaign. On 22 May Roger approached Syracuse by sea, while Jordan led a small cavalry detachment north of the city. On 25 May, the navies of the count and the emir engaged in the harbour – where the latter was killed – while Jordan's forces besieged the city. The siege lasted throughout the summer, but when the city capitulated in March 1086 only Noto was still under Saracen dominion. In February 1091 Noto yielded as well, and the conquest of Sicily was complete.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1091, Roger invaded Malta and subdued the walled city of Mdina. He imposed taxes on the islands, but allowed the Arab governors to continue their rule. In 1127 Roger II abolished the Muslim government, replacing it with Norman officials. Under Norman rule, the Arabic spoken by the Greek Christian islanders for centuries of Muslim domination became Maltese.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The fall of Amalfi and Salerno to Robert Guiscard were influenced by his wife, Sichelgaita. Amalfi probably surrendered as a result of her negotiations, and Salerno fell when she stopped petitioning her husband on behalf of her brother (the prince of Salerno). The Amalfitans unsuccessfully subjected themselves to Prince Gisulf to avoid Norman suzerainty, but the states (whose histories had been joined since the 9th century) ultimately came under Norman control.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: By summer 1076, through piracy and raids Gisulf II of Salerno incited the Normans to destroy him; that season, under Richard of Capua and Robert Guiscard the Normans united to besiege Salerno. Although Gisulf ordered his citizens to store two years' worth of food, he confiscated enough of it to starve his subjects. On 13 December 1076, the city submitted; the prince and his retainers retreated to the citadel, which fell in May 1077. Although Gisulf's lands and relics were confiscated, he remained at liberty. The Principality of Salerno had already been reduced to little more than the capital city and its environs by previous wars with William of the Principate, Roger of Sicily and Robert Guiscard. However, the city was the most important in southern Italy and its capture was essential to the creation of a kingdom fifty years later.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1073 Sergius III of Amalfi died, leaving the infant John III as his successor. Desiring protection in unstable times, the Amalfitans exiled the young duke and summoned Robert Guiscard that year. Amalfi, however, remained restless under Norman control. Robert's successor, Roger Borsa, took control of Amalfi in 1089 after expelling Gisulf (the deposed Prince of Salerno, whom the citizens had installed with papal aid). From 1092 to 1097 Amalfi did not recognise its Norman suzerain, apparently seeking Byzantine help; Marinus Sebaste was installed as ruler in 1096.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Robert's son Bohemond and his brother Roger of Sicily attacked Amalfi in 1097, but were repulsed. During this siege, the Normans began to be drawn by the First Crusade. Marinus was defeated after Amalfitan noblemen defected to the Norman side and betrayed him in 1101. Amalfi revolted again in 1130, when Roger II of Sicily demanded its loyalty. It was finally subdued in 1131 when Admiral John marched on it by land and George of Antioch blockaded it by sea, establishing a base on Capri.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: While most of Apulia (except the far south and Bari) had capitulated to the Normans in campaigns by the fraternal counts William, Drogo and Humphrey, much of Calabria remained in Byzantine hands at Robert Guiscard's 1057 succession. Calabria was first breached by William and Guaimar during the early 1040s, and Drogo installed Guiscard there during the early 1050s. However, Robert's early career in Calabria was spent in feudal infighting and robber baronage rather than organised subjugation of the Greek population.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: He began his tenure with a Calabrian campaign. Briefly interrupted for the Council of Melfi on 23 August 1059 (where he was invested as duke), he returned to Calabria—and his army's siege of Cariati—later that year. The town capitulated at the duke's arrival, and Rossano and Gerace also fell before the end of the season. Of the peninsula's significant cities, only Reggio remained in Byzantine hands when Robert returned to Apulia that winter. In Apulia, he temporarily removed the Byzantine garrison from Taranto and Brindisi. The duke returned to Calabria in 1060, primarily to launch a Sicilian expedition. Although the conquest of Reggio required an arduous siege, Robert's brother Roger had siege engines prepared.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: After the fall of Reggio the Byzantine garrison fled to Reggio's island citadel of Scilla, where they were easily defeated. Roger's minor assault on Messina (across the strait) was repulsed, and Robert was called away by a large Byzantine force in Apulia sent by Constantine X late in 1060. Under the catapan Miriarch, the Byzantines retook Taranto, Brindisi, Oria, and Otranto; in January 1061, the Norman capital of Melfi was under siege. By May, however, the two brothers had expelled the Byzantines and calmed Apulia.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Geoffrey, son of Peter I of Trani, conquered Otranto in 1063 and Taranto (which he made his county seat) in 1064. In 1066 he organised an army for a marine attack on "Romania" (the Byzantine Balkans), but was halted near Bari by a recently landed army of Varangian auxiliaries under the catapan Mabrica. Mabrica briefly retook Brindisi and Taranto, establishing a garrison at the former under Nikephoros Karantenos (an experienced Byzantine soldier from the Bulgar wars). Although the catapan was successful against the Normans in Italy, it was the last significant Byzantine threat. Bari, the capital of the Byzantine catapanate, was besieged by the Normans beginning in August 1068; in April 1071 the city, the last Byzantine outpost in western Europe, fell.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: After expelling the Byzantines from Apulia and Calabria (their theme of Langobardia), Robert Guiscard planned an attack on Byzantine possessions in Greece. The Byzantines had supported Robert's nephews, Abelard and Herman (the dispossessed son of Count Humphrey), in their insurrection against Robert; they had also supported Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo, who recognised Byzantine suzerainty in his county, against him.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1073-75 Robert's vassal, Peter II of Trani, led a Balkan expedition against the Kingdom of Croatia's Dalmatian lands. Peter's cousin Amico (son of Walter of Giovinazzo) attacked the islands of Rab and Cres, taking Croatian king Petar Krešimir IV captive. Although Petar was ransomed by the Bishop of Cres, he died shortly afterwards and was buried in the church of Saint Stephen in the Fortress of Klis.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Robert undertook his first Balkan expedition in May 1081, leaving Brindisi with about 16,000 troops. By February 1082 he captured Corfu and Durazzo, defeating the Emperor Alexius I at the Battle of Dyrrhachium the previous October. Robert's son Mark Bohemond temporarily controlled Thessaly, unsuccessfully trying to retain the 1081–82 conquests in Robert's absence. The duke returned in 1084 to restore them, occupying Corfu and Kephalonia before his death from a fever on 15 July 1085. The village of Fiskardo on Cephalonia is named after Robert. Bohemond did not continue pursuing Greek conquests, returning to Italy to dispute Robert's succession with his half-brother Roger Borsa.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The Duchy of Naples, nominally a Byzantine possession, was one of the last southern Italian states to be attacked by the Normans. Since Sergius IV asked for Ranulf Drengot's help during the 1020s, with brief exceptions the dukes of Naples were allied with the Normans of Aversa and Capua. Beginning in 1077, the incorporation of Naples into the Hauteville state took sixty years to complete.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In summer 1074, hostilities flared up between Richard of Capua and Robert Guiscard. Sergius V of Naples allied with the latter, making his city a supply centre for Guiscard's troops. This pitted him against Richard, who was supported by Gregory VII. In June Richard briefly besieged Naples; Richard, Robert and Sergius soon began negotiations with Gregory, mediated by Desiderius of Montecassino.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1077 Naples was again besieged by Richard of Capua, with a naval blockade by Robert Guiscard. Richard died during the siege in 1078, after the deathbed lifting of his excommunication. The siege was ended by his successor, Jordan, to insinuate himself with the papacy (which had made peace with Duke Sergius).


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1130, the Antipope Anacletus II crowned Roger II of Sicily king and declared the fief of Naples part of his kingdom. In 1131, Roger demanded from the citizens of Amalfi the defences of their city and the keys to their castle. When they refused, Sergius VII of Naples initially prepared to aid them with a fleet; George of Antioch blockaded Naples' port with a large armada and Sergius, cowed by the suppression of the Amalfitans, submitted to Roger. According to the chronicler Alexander of Telese, Naples "which, since Roman times, had hardly ever been conquered by the sword now submitted to Roger on the strength of a mere report (i.e. Amalfi's fall)."


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: In 1134 Sergius supported the rebellion of Robert II of Capua and Ranulf II of Alife, but avoided direct confrontation with Roger and paid homage to the king after the fall of Capua. On 24 April 1135 a Pisan fleet with 8,000 reinforcements, captained by Robert of Capua, anchored in Naples and the duchy was the centre of the revolt against Roger II for the next two years. Sergius, Robert and Ranulf were besieged in Naples until the spring of 1136, by which time starvation was widespread. According to historian (and rebel sympathiser) Falco of Benevento Sergius and the Neapolitans did not relent, "preferring to die of hunger than to bare their necks to the power of an evil king." The naval blockade's failure to prevent Sergius and Robert from twice bringing supplies from Pisa exemplified Roger's inadequacy. When a relief army commanded by Emperor Lothair II marched to Naples, the siege was lifted. Although the emperor left the following year, in return for a pardon Sergius re-submitted to Roger in Norman feudal homage. On 30 October 1137, the last Duke of Naples died in the king's service at the Battle of Rignano.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The defeat at Rignano enabled the Norman conquest of Naples, since Sergius died without heir and the Neapolitan nobility could not reach a succession agreement. However, it was two years between Sergius' death and Naples' incorporation by Sicily. The nobility apparently ruled during the interim, which may have been the final period of Neapolitan independence from Norman rule. During this period Norman landowners first appear in Naples, although the Pisans (enemies of Roger II) retained their alliance with the duchy and Pisa may have sustained its independence until 1139. That year, Roger absorbed Naples into his kingdom; Pope Innocent II and the Neapolitan nobility acknowledged Roger's young son, Alfonso of Hauteville, as duke.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Although the conquest of Sicily was primarily military, Robert and Roger also signed treaties with the Muslims to obtain land. Hindered by Sicily's hilly terrain and a relatively small army, the brothers sought influential, worn-down Muslim leaders to sign the treaties (offering peace and protection for land and titles). Because Sicily was conquered by a unified command, Roger's authority was not challenged by other conquerors and he maintained power over his Greek, Arab, Lombard and Norman subjects. Latin Christianity was introduced to the island, and its ecclesiastical organisation was overseen by Roger with papal approval. Sees were established at Palermo (with metropolitan authority), Syracuse and Agrigento. After its elevation to a Kingdom of Sicily in 1130, Sicily became the centre of Norman power with Palermo as capital. The Kingdom was created on Christmas Day, 1130, by Roger II of Sicily, with the agreement of Pope Innocent II, who united the lands Roger had inherited from his father Roger I of Sicily.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: These areas included the Maltese Archipelago, which was conquered from the Arabs of the Emirates of Sicily; the Duchy of Apulia and the County of Sicily, which had belonged to his cousin William II, Duke of Apulia, until William's death in 1127; and the other Norman vassals.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: With the invasion of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor on behalf of his wife, Constance, the daughter of Roger II, eventually prevailed, the kingdom fell in 1194 to the House of Hohenstaufen. Through Constance, the Hauteville blood was passed to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, who succeeded as King of Sicily in 1198.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The Norman conquest of southern Italy began an infusion of Romanesque (specifically Norman) architecture. Some castles were expanded on existing Lombard, Byzantine or Arab structures, while others were original constructions. Latin cathedrals were built in lands recently converted from Byzantine Christianity or Islam, in a Romanesque style influenced by Byzantine and Islamic designs.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Public buildings, such as palaces, were common in larger cities (notably Palermo); these structures, in particular, demonstrate the influence of Siculo-Norman culture.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The Normans rapidly began the construction, expansion and renovation of castles in southern Italy. By the end of the Norman period, most wooden castles were converted to stone.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: After the Lombard castle at Melfi, which was conquered by the Normans early and augmented with a surviving, rectangular donjon late in the 11th century, Calabria was the first province affected by Norman encastellation. In 1046 William Iron Arm began construction of Stridula (a large castle near Squillace), and by 1055 Robert Guiscard built three castles: at Rossano, on the site of a Byzantine fortress; at Scribla, the seat of his fief guarding the pass of the Val di Crati, and at San Marco Argentano (donjon built in 1051) near Cosenza. In 1058, Scalea was built on a seaside cliff.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: Guiscard was a major castle-builder after his accession to the Apulian countship, building a castle at Gargano with pentagonal towers known as the Towers of Giants. Later, Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo built a castle at nearby Castelpagano. In the Molise the Normans built many fortresses into the naturally defensible terrain, such as Santa Croce and Ferrante. The region of a line running from Terracina to Termoli has the greatest density of Norman castles in Italy. Many sites were originally Samnite strongholds reused by the Romans and their successors; the Normans called such a fortress a "castellum vetus" (old castle). Many Molisian castles have walls integrated into the mountains and ridges, and much of the quickly erected masonry demonstrates that the Normans introduced the "opus gallicum" into the Molise.


title: Norman conquest of southern Italy

text: The encastellation of Sicily was begun at the behest of the native Greek inhabitants. In 1060, they asked Guiscard to construct a castle at Aluntium. The first Norman building on Sicily, San Marco d'Alunzio (named after Guiscard's first castle at Argentano in Calabria), was erected; its ruins survive. Petralia Soprana was then built near Cefalù, followed by a castle at Troina in 1071; in 1073 a castle was built at Mazara and another at Paternò . At Adrano (or Aderno) the Normans built a plain, rectangular tower whose floor plan illustrates 11th-century Norman design. An outside stairway leads to the first-storey entrance, and the interior is divided lengthwise down the middle into a great hall on one side and two rooms (a chapel and chamber) on the other.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Yakubu Dan-Yumma 'Jack' Gowon (born 19 October 1934) is a retired Nigerian Army general and military leader. As Head of State of Nigeria, Gowon presided over a controversial Nigerian Civil War and delivered the famous "no victor, no vanquished" speech at the war's end in an effort to promote healing and reconciliation. The Nigerian Civil War is listed as one of the deadliest in modern history, with some accusing Gowon of crimes against humanity and genocide. Gowon maintains that he committed no wrongdoing during the war and that his leadership saved the country.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: An Anglican Christian from a minority Ngas family of Northern Nigeria, Gowon is a Nigerian nationalist, and a believer in the unity and oneness of Nigeria. Gowon's rise to power following the July 1966 counter-coup cemented military rule in Nigeria. Consequently, Gowon is the longest serving contiguous head of state of Nigeria, ruling for almost nine years until his overthrow in the coup d'état of 1975 by Brigadier Murtala Mohammed.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Gowon is a Ngas (Angas) from Lur, a small village in the present Kanke Local Government Area of Plateau State. His parents, Nde Yohanna and Matwok Kurnyang left for Wusasa, Zaria as Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionaries in the early days of Gowon's life. His father took pride in the fact that he married the same day as the future Queen Mother Elizabeth married the future King George VI. Gowon was the fifth of eleven children. He grew up in Zaria and had his early life and education there. At school, Gowon proved to be a very good athlete: he was the school football goalkeeper, pole vaulter, and long-distance runner. He broke the school mile record in his first year. He was also the boxing captain.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Gowon joined the Nigerian Army in 1954, and received his commission as a second lieutenant on 19 October 1955, his 21st birthday. He was trained in the prestigious Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK (1955–56), Staff College, Camberley, UK (1962) as well as the Joint Staff College, Latimer, 1965. He saw action in the Congo as part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, both in 1960–61 and in 1963. He advanced to battalion commander rank by 1966, at which time he was still a lieutenant colonel.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: In January 1966, he became Nigeria's youngest military chief of staff at the age of 31, because a military coup d'état by a group of junior officers under Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu led to the overthrow of Nigeria's civilian government. In the course of this coup, mostly northern and western leaders were killed, including Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria's Prime Minister; Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of the Northern Region; and Samuel Akintola, Premier of the Western Region, Lt Col Arthur Unegbe and so many more. The then Lieutenant Colonel Gowon returned from his course at the Joint Staff College, Latimer UK two days before the coup – a late arrival that possibly exempted him from the plotters hit list. The subsequent failure by Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi (who was the head of state following the January 1966 coup-with Gowon his Chief of Staff) to meet Northern demands for the prosecution of the coup plotters further inflamed Northern anger. There was significant support for the coup plotters from both the Eastern Region as well as the mostly left-wing "Lagos-Ibadan" press.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Then came Aguyi Ironsi's Decree Number 34, which proposed the abolition of the federal system of government in favor of a unitary state, a position which had long been championed by some Southerners-especially by a major section of the Igbo-dominated National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroon (NCNC) This was perhaps wrongly interpreted by Northerners as a Southern (particularly Igbo) attempt at a takeover of all levers of power in the country. The North lagged badly behind the Western and Eastern regions in terms of education (partially due to Islamic doctrine-informed resistance to western cultural and social ethos), while the mostly-Igbo Easterners were already present in the federal civil service.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: The original intention of Murtala Mohammed and his fellow coup-plotters seems to have been to engineer the secession of the Northern region from Nigeria as a whole, but they were subsequently dissuaded of their plans by several advisors, amongst which included a number of high-ranking civil servants and judges, and importantly emissaries of the British and American governments who had interests in the Nigerian polity. The young officers then decided to name Lieutenant Colonel Gowon, who apparently had not been actively involved in events until that point, as Nigerian Head of State. On ascent to power Gowon reversed Ironsi's abrogation of the federal principle.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: In 1966, Gowon was chosen to become head of state. Up until then, Gowon remained strictly a career soldier with no involvement whatsoever in politics, until the tumultuous events of the year suddenly thrust him into a leadership role, when his unusual background as a Northerner who was neither of Hausa nor Fulani ancestry nor of the Islamic faith made him a particularly safe choice to lead a nation whose population was seething with ethnic tension.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Gowon promoted himself twice as Nigerian Head of State. Gowon was a Lt. Colonel upon his ascendancy to the top of the new Federal military government of Nigeria on August 1, 1966 however other senior military officers such as Commodore Joseph Wey, Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, and Colonel Robert Adebayo were a part of the government and their military seniority to Gowon was awkward. To stabilize his position as Head of State, Gowon promoted himself to Major-General just before the start of the civil war hostilities in 1967 and to full General at the end of the civil war in 1970.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: In anticipation of eastern secession, Gowon moved quickly to weaken the support base of the region by decreeing the creation of twelve new states to replace the four regions. Six of these states contained minority groups that had demanded state creation since the 1950s. Gowon rightly calculated that the eastern minorities would not actively support the Igbos, given the prospect of having their own states if the secession effort were defeated. Many of the federal troops who fought in the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War, to bring the Eastern Region back to the federation, were members of minority groups.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: The war lasted thirty months and ended in January 1970. In accepting Biafra's unconditional cease-fire, Gowon declared that there would be no victor and no vanquished. In this spirit, the years afterward were declared to be a period of rehabilitation, reconstruction, and reconciliation. The oil-price boom, which began as a result of the high price of crude oil (the country's major revenue earner) in the world market in 1973, increased the federal government's ability to undertake these tasks.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: There arose tension between the Eastern Region and the northern controlled federal government led by Gowon. On 4–5 January 1967, in line with Ojukwu's demand to meet for talks only on neutral soil, a summit attended by Gowon, Ojukwu and other members of the Supreme Military Council was held at Aburi in Ghana, the stated purpose of which was to resolve all outstanding conflicts and establish Nigeria as a confederation of regions. The outcome of this summit was the Aburi Accord. The Aburi Accord did not see the light of the day, as the Gowon led government had huge consideration for the possible revenues, especially oil revenues which were expected to increase given that reserves having been discovered in the area in the mid-1960s. It has been said without confirmation that both Gowon and Ojukwu had knowledge of the huge oil reserves in the Niger Delta area, which today has grown to be the mainstay of the Nigerian economy.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: In a move to check the influence of Ojukwu's government in the East, Gowon announced on 5 May 1967 the division of the 3 Nigerian regions into 12 states: North-Western State, North-Eastern state, Kano State, North-Central State, Benue-Plateau State, Kwara State, Western State, Lagos State, Mid-Western State, and, from Ojukwu's Eastern Region, a Rivers State, a South-Eastern State, and an East-Central State. The non-Igbo South-Eastern and Rivers states which had the oil reserves and access to the sea, were carved out to isolate the Igbo areas as East-Central state. One controversial aspect of this move was Gowon's annexing of Port Harcourt, a large city in the Niger Delta, in the South of Nigeria (the Ikwerres and Ijaws), sitting on some of Nigeria's largest reserves, into the new Rivers State, emasculating the migrant Igbo population of traders there. The flight of many of them back to their villages in the "Igbo heartland" in Eastern Nigeria where they felt safer was alleged to be a contradiction for Gowon's "no victor, no vanquished" policy, when at the end of the war, the properties they left behind were claimed by the Rivers State indigenes.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Minority ethnicities of the Eastern Region were rather not sanguine about the prospect of secession, as it would mean living in what they felt would be an Igbo-dominated nation. Some non-Igbos living in the Eastern Region either refrained from offering active support to the Biafran struggle, or actively aided the federal side by enlisting in the Nigerian army and feeding it intelligence about Biafran military activities. However, some did play active roles in the Biafran government, with N.U. Akpan serving as Secretary to the Government, Lt. Col (later Major-General) Philip Effiong, serving as Biafra's Chief of Defence Staff and others like Chiefs Bassey and Graham-Douglas serving in other significant roles.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: On 30 May 1967, Ojukwu responded to Gowon's announcement by declaring the formal secession of the Eastern Region, which was now to be known as the Republic of Biafra. This was to trigger a war that would last some 30 months, and see the deaths of more than 100,000 soldiers and over a million civilians, most of the latter of which would perish of starvation under a Nigeria-imposed blockade. The war saw a massive expansion of the Nigerian army in size and a steep increase in its doctrinal and technical sophistication, while the Nigerian Air Force was essentially born in the course of the conflict. However, significant controversy has surrounded the air operations of the Nigerian Forces, as several residents of Biafra, including Red Cross workers, foreign missionaries and journalists, accused the Nigerian Air Force of specifically targeting civilian populations, relief centers and marketplaces. Gowon has steadfastly denied those claims, along with claims that his army committed atrocities such as rape, wholesale executions of civilian populations and extensive looting in occupied areas; however, one of his wartime commanders, Benjamin Adekunle seems to give some credence to these claims in his book, while excusing them as unfortunate by-products of war.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: The end of the war came about on 13 January 1970, with Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo's acceptance of the surrender of Biafran forces. The next day Obasanjo announced the situation on the former rebel radio station Radio Biafra Enugu. Gowon subsequently declared his famous "no victor, no vanquished" speech, and followed it up with an amnesty for the majority of those who had participated in the Biafran uprising, as well as a program of "Reconciliation, Reconstruction, and Rehabilitation", to repair the extensive damage done to the economy and infrastructure of the Eastern Region during the years of war. Unfortunately, some of these efforts never left the drawing board. In addition to this, Gen. Gowon's administration's policy of giving 20 pounds to Biafrans who had a bank account in Nigeria before the war, regardless of how much money had been in their account, was criticised by foreign and local aid workers, as this led to an unprecedented scale of begging, looting and robbery in the former Biafran areas after the war.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Another decision made by Gowon at the height of the oil boom was to have what some considered negative repercussions for the Nigerian economy in later years, although its immediate effects were scarcely noticeable – his indigenization decree of 1972, which declared many sectors of the Nigerian economy off-limits to all foreign investment, while ruling out more than minority participation by foreigners in several other areas. This decree provided windfall gains to several well-connected Nigerians but proved highly detrimental to non-oil investment in the Nigerian economy.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: The post-civil-war years saw Nigeria enjoying a meteoric, oil-fuelled, economic upturn in the course of which the scope of activity of the Nigerian federal government grew to an unprecedented degree, with increased earnings from oil revenues. Unfortunately, however, this period also saw a rapid increase in corruption, mostly bribery, of and by federal government officials; and although the head of State himself, Gen. Gowon, was never found complicit in the corrupt practices, he was often accused of turning a blind eye to the activities of his staff and cronies.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: On 1 October 1974, in flagrant contradiction to his earlier promises, Gowon declared that Nigeria would not be ready for civilian rule by 1976, and he announced that the handover date would be postponed indefinitely. Furthermore, because of the growth in bureaucracy, there were allegations of rise in corruption. Increased wealth in the country resulted in fake import licenses being issued. There were stories of tons of stones and sand being imported into the country, and of General Gowon himself saying to a foreign reporter that "the only problem Nigeria has is how to spend the money she has."


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: The corruption in Gowon's administration culminated in the notorious "cement armada" affair in the summer of 1975, when the port of Lagos became jammed with hundreds of ships trying to unload cement. Somehow, agents of the Nigerian government had signed contracts with 68 different international suppliers for the delivery of a total of 20 million tons of cement in "one year" to Lagos, even though its port could only accept one million tons of cargo per year. Even worse, the poorly drafted cement contracts included demurrage clauses highly favorable to the suppliers, meaning that the bill began to skyrocket if the ships sat in port waiting to unload (or even if they sat in their home ports waiting for permission to depart for Nigeria). The Nigerian government did not fully grasp the magnitude of its mistake until the port of Lagos was so badly jammed that basic supplies could not get through. By that time it was too late. Its attempts to repudiate the cement contracts and impose an emergency embargo on all inbound shipping tied up the country in litigation around the world for many years, including a 1983 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: These scandals provoked serious discontent within the army. On 29 July 1975, while Gowon was attending an OAU summit in Kampala, a group of officers led by Colonel Joe Nanven Garba announced his overthrow. The coup plotters appointed Brigadier Murtala Muhammed as head of the new government, and Brigadier Olusegun Obasanjo as his deputy.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Gowon subsequently went into exile in the United Kingdom, where he acquired a Ph.D. in political science as a student at the University of Warwick. His main British residence is on the border of north London and Hertfordshire, where he has very much become part of the English community in his area. He served a term as Churchwarden in his parish church, St Mary the Virgin, Monken Hadley.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: In February 1976, Gen. Murtala Mohammed was assassinated in an unsuccessful coup d'état led by Lt. Col Buka Suka Dimka, who implicated Gowon. According to Dimka's "confession", he met with Gowon in London and obtained support from him for the coup. In addition, Dimka mentioned before his execution that the purpose of the Coup d'état was to re-install Gowon as Head of State. As a result of the coup tribunal findings, Gowon was declared wanted by the Nigerian government, stripped of his rank "in absentia" , and had his pension cut off.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Gen. Gowon was finally pardoned (along with the ex-Biafran President, Emeka Ojukwu) during the Second Republic under President Shehu Shagari. Gowon's rank (of general) wasn't restored until 1987 however by General Ibrahim Babangida.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: After earning his doctorate at the University of Warwick, Gowon became a professor of political science at the University of Jos in the mid-1980s. Gowon founded his own organization in 1992 called the Yakubu Gowon Centre. The organization is said to work on issues in Nigeria such as good governance as well as infectious disease control including HIV/AIDS, guinea worm, and malaria. Furthermore, Gen. Gowon is also involved in the Guinea Worm Eradication Programme as well as the HIV Programme with Global Fund of Geneva.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: In November 2020, Tom Tugendhat, an MP propagating in support of the 2020 police riots in Nigeria, accused Gowon of looting "half of the Central Bank of Nigeria" after his overthrow in the coup d'etat of 1975. The statement, the first-ever attempt to link Gowon with corruption, was faced with considerable backlash within Nigeria, with Bishop Matthew Kukah writing in the national major "Daily Trust" describing the seemingly ridiculous comment as "It is difficult to understand how a Member of the revered British Parliament worth his salt, could have left himself open to ridicule by leveling the unfounded, irrational and bizarre allegations of corruption against General Yakubu Gowon, our former Head of State and to the hilt, the nation’s poster face of probity in public life." Following an official demand for an apology by the Nigerian government, the Foreign Office later disassociated itself from the comment stating that, “the said comment of the MP does not reflect the views of Her Majesty’s Government and the British Government has no mechanism for controlling the actions and speeches of members of the Parliament.


title: Yakubu Gowon

text: Gowon married Miss Victoria Zakari, a trained nurse in 1969 at a ceremony officiated by Seth Irunsewe Kale at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music written, according to its oldest extant sources, by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). The piece opens with a toccata section, followed by a fugue that ends in a coda. Scholars differ as to when it was composed. It could have been as early as . Alternatively, a date as late as the 1750s has been suggested. To a large extent, the piece conforms to the characteristics deemed typical of the north German organ school of the Baroque era with divergent stylistic influences, such as south German characteristics.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: Despite a profusion of educated guesswork, there is not much that can be said with certainty about the first century of the composition's existence other than that it survived that period in a manuscript written by Johannes Ringk. The first publication of the piece, in the Bach Revival era, was in 1833, through the efforts of Felix Mendelssohn, who also performed the piece in an acclaimed concert in 1840. Familiarity with the piece was enhanced in the second half of the 19th century by a fairly successful piano version by Carl Tausig, but it was not until the 20th century that its popularity rose above that of other organ compositions by Bach. That popularity further increased, due for example to its inclusion in Walt Disney's "Fantasia" (in Stokowski's orchestral transcription), until this composition became, by far, the best known work of the eighteenth-century organ repertoire.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: A wide, and often conflicting, variety of analyses has been published about the piece: for instance, in literature on organ music, it is often described as some sort of program music depicting a storm, while in the context of Disney's "Fantasia", it was promoted as absolute music, nothing like program music depicting a storm. In the last quarter of the 20th century, scholars such as Peter Williams and Rolf-Dietrich Claus published their studies on the piece and argued against its authenticity. Bach scholars like Christoph Wolff defended the attribution to Bach. Other commentators ignored the doubts over its authenticity, or considered the attribution issue undecided.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: The only extant near-contemporary source for BWV 565 is an undated copy by Johannes Ringk. According to the description provided by the Berlin State Library, where the manuscript is kept, and similar bibliographic descriptions, e.g. in the RISM catalogue, Ringk created his copy between 1740 and 1760. As far as known, Ringk produced his first copy of a Bach score in 1730 when he was 12. According to Dietrich Kilian, who edited BWV 565 for the New Bach Edition, Ringk penned his copy of the Toccata and Fugue between 1730 and 1740. In his critical commentary for Breitkopf & Härtel's 21st-century revised edition of the score, Jean-Claude Zehnder narrows the time of origin of the manuscript down to around the middle of the first half of the 1730s, based on an analysis of the evolution of Ringk's handwriting. At the time Ringk was a student of Bach's former student Johann Peter Kellner at Gräfenroda, and probably faithfully copied what his teacher put before him. There are some errors in the score such as note values not adding up to fill a measure correctly. Such defects show a carelessness deemed typical of Kellner, who left over 60 copies of works by Bach.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: The title page of Ringk's manuscript writes the title of the work in Italian as "Toccata con Fuga", names Johann Sebastian Bach as the composer of the piece, and indicates its tonality as "ex. d. #.", which is usually seen as the key signature being D minor. However, in Ringk's manuscript the staves have no symbol at the key (which would be the usual way to write down a piece in D minor). In this sense, in Ringk's manuscript, the piece is written down in D Dorian mode. Another piece listed as Bach's was also known as Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and was equally entitled to the "Dorian" qualification. It was that piece, BWV 538, that received the "Dorian" nickname, that qualifier being effectively used to distinguish it from BWV 565. Most score editions of BWV 565 use the D minor key signature, unlike Ringk's manuscript.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: Ringk's manuscript does not use a separate stave for the pedal part, which was common in the 18th century (notes to be played on the pedal were indicated by "p." being written at the start of the sequence). Printed editions of the BWV 565 organ score invariably write the pedal line on a separate stave. In Ringk's manuscript the upper stave is written down using the soprano clef (as was common in the time when the manuscript originated), where printed editions use the treble clef.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: All other extant manuscript copies of the score date from at least several decades later: some of these, written in the 19th century, are related with each other in that they have similar solutions to the defects in the Ringk manuscript. Whether these derive from an earlier manuscript independent from Ringk's (possibly in the C. P. E. Bach/Johann Friedrich Agricola/Johann Kirnberger circle) is debated by scholars. These near-identical 19th-century copies, the version Felix Mendelssohn knew, use the treble clef and a separate stave for the pedal. In general, the later copies show a less excessive use of fermatas in the opening measures and are more correct in making the note values fit the measures, but that may as well be from polishing a defective source as from deriving from a cleaner earlier source. In the later copies the work is named for instance "Adagio" and "Fuga" (for the respective parts of the work), or "Toccata" for the work as a whole.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: The name "Toccata" is most probably a later addition, similar to the title of Toccata, Adagio and Fugue, BWV 564, because in the Baroque era such organ pieces would most commonly be called simply "Prelude" ("Praeludium", etc.) or "Prelude and Fugue". Ringk's copy abounds in Italian "tempo" markings, fermatas (a characteristic feature of Ringk's copies) and staccato dots, all very unusual features for pre-1740 German music.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: German organ schools are distinguished into north German (e.g. Dieterich Buxtehude) and south German (e.g. Johann Pachelbel). The composition has stylistic characteristics from both schools: the stylus phantasticus, and other north German characteristics are most apparent. However, the numerous recitative stretches are rarely found in the works of northern composers and may have been inspired by Johann Heinrich Buttstett, a pupil of Pachelbel, whose few surviving free works, particularly his Prelude and Capriccio in D minor, exhibit similar features. A passage in the fugue of BWV 565 is an exact copy of a phrase in one of Johann Pachelbel's D minor fantasias, and the first half of the subject is based on this Pachelbel passage as well. At the time it was however common practice to create fugues on other composers' themes.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: BWV 565 exhibits a typical simplified north German structure with a free opening (toccata), a fugal section (fugue), and a short free closing section.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: The Toccata begins with a single-voice flourish in the upper ranges of the keyboard, doubled at the octave. It then spirals toward the bottom, where a diminished seventh chord appears (which actually implies a dominant chord with a minor 9th against a tonic pedal), built one note at a time. This resolves into a D major chord:


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: Three short passages follow, each reiterating a short motif and doubled at the octave. The section ends with a diminished seventh chord which resolved into the tonic, D minor, through a flourish. The second section of the Toccata is a number of loosely connected figurations and flourishes; the pedal switches to the dominant key, A minor. This section segues into the third and final section of the Toccata, which consists almost entirely of a passage doubled at the sixth and comprising reiterations of the same three-note figure, similar to doubled passages in the first section. After a brief pedal flourish, the piece ends with a D minor chord.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: The subject of the four-voice fugue is made up entirely of sixteenth notes, with an implied pedal point set against a brief melodic subject that first falls, then rises. Such violinistic figures are frequently encountered in Baroque music and that of Bach, both as fugue subjects and as material in non-imitative pieces. Unusually, the answer is in the subdominant key, rather than the traditional dominant. Although technically a four-part fugue, most of the time there are only three voices, and some of the interludes are in two, or even one voice (notated as two). Although only simple triadic harmony is employed throughout the fugue, there is an unexpected C minor subject entry, and furthermore, a solo pedal statement of the subject—a unique feature for a Baroque fugue. Immediately after the final subject entry, the fugue resolves to a sustained B major chord.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: A multi-sectional coda follows, marked "Recitativo". Although only 17 bars long, it progresses through five tempo changes. The last bars are played "Molto adagio", and the piece ends with a minor plagal cadence.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: The performance time of the piece is usually around nine minutes, but shorter performance times (e.g. 8:15) and execution times of over 10:30 exist. The first section of the piece, the Toccata, takes somewhat less than a third of the total performance time.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: As was common practice for German music of the 17th century, the intended registration is not specified, and performers' choices vary from simple solutions such as "organo pleno" to exceedingly complex ones, like those described by Harvey Grace.


title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

text: In the first century of its existence the entire reception history of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor consists of being saved from oblivion by maybe not more than a single manuscript copy. Then it took about a century from its first publication as a little known organ composition by Johann Sebastian Bach to becoming one of the signature pieces of the composer. The composition's third century took it from Bach's most often recorded organ piece to a composition with an unclear origin. Despite Mendelssohn's opinion that it was "at the same time learned and something for the people", followed by a fairly successful piano transcription in the second half of the 19th century, it was not until the 20th century that it rose above the average notability of an organ piece by Bach. The work's appearance (in an orchestral transcription by Stokowski) in the 1940s Walt Disney film "Fantasia" contributed to its popularity, around which time scholars started to seriously doubt its attribution to Bach.