- Walter of the Mill
Walter of the Mill (fl. 1160–1191), Italianised as "Gualtiero Offamiglio" or "Offamilio" and Latinised as "Ophamilius" (subsequently Anglicised as "Ophamil" or "Offamil"), was the
archdeacon ofCefalù , dean ofAgrigento , andarchbishop of Palermo (1168–1191), called il primo ministro. He was long thought to be an Englishman who came toSicily withPeter of Blois andStephen du Perche at the direction ofRotrou, Archbishop of Rouen , cousin of QueenMargaret of Navarre , originally as a tutor to the royal children ofWilliam I of Sicily and Margaret. Today his sobriquet is thought to derive from the Latin "protofamiliaris", meaning "first confidante [of the king] ". His mother was Bona, a patron of theAbbey of Cluny and a "devota et fidelis nostra" of the king in 1172. His father is unknown.Walter's first appearance in the historical record is at court as the Latin tutor of the children of William I in 1160. He rose through the ranks until he was a canon of the
Cappella Palatina and a candidate for the vacant archiepiscopal throne of 1168, after the deposition ofStephen du Perche . According toHugo Falcandus , Walter succeeded "less by election than by violent intrusion." Nevertheless, without the support of thequeen regent or of the influentialThomas Becket , his faction bribedPope Alexander III into confirming his election and he was consecrated in theCathedral of Palermo on 28 September. He received distinctly double-edged congratulations from Peter of Blois, who refers in a letter to his "humble birth".Walter was a constant companion of the court of William II, whose tutor he had been. He accompanied William to
Taranto to await his Byzantine bride and, failing that, he crowned Joanna, daughter ofHenry II of England , as queen consort on13 February 1177 .In 1174, the first fruits of a plan of the king and the vice-chancellor,
Matthew of Ajello , began to flower. The pope issued the first of a short series of bulls favouring the cause of creating a new archdiocese in Sicily, centred on theBenedictine Cluniac abbey ofMonreale , a recent foundation of William's. The abbot of said abbey would automatically be consecrated archbishop by any prelate of the realm approved of the king. The tradition of the Hagia Kyriaka, the chapel of the oldGreek Orthodox metropolitans of Sicily, on the grounds of Monreale greatly strengthened the king's cause in an era when tradition was so valued. The archbishop of Palermo was greatly diminished in power by the consecration of the firstarchbishop of Monreale , in the spring of 1176. Walter began the construction of a new cathedral in Palermo at this time, to counter the effects of the beautiful Monreale, the new mausoleum of theHauteville dynasty . On William's death in 1189, Walter fought vainly against the archbishop of Monreale over the body of the king.In 1184, Walter gave his support to the marriage of Constance, daughter of
Roger II , with Henry, son ofFrederick Barbarossa . He was one of the only ones. At the request ofPope Clement III , he had to crownTancred of Lecce king in his cathedral in early January 1190. He died of natural causes early in 1191 and was buried in his rebuilt cathedral. Besides the cathedral, reworked so many times over the centuries, Walter left as architectural nods to his patronage of the arts the chapels of Santa Cristina and Santo Spirito. The latter is the "church of the Vespers," the church in front of which the first insult and the first murder of theSicilian Vespers took place in 1282.Richard of S. Germano called him and Matthew "the two firmest columns of the Kingdom." Modern historiography has been less kind.John Julius Norwich calls him "the most baleful influence on the kingdom," because "there is no evidence of his having taken a single constructive step to improve the Sicilian position or to advance Sicilian fortunes." He has been reckoned a leader of the feudatories against which all Sicilian kings fought for their royal prerogatives and, byFerdinand Chalandon , as an imperialist who supported Henry in order to stand opposed to the inevitable civil war.In literature, Walter, on the basis of his supposed English birth, was credited as the author of a Latin rudiments by
John Bale in the 1550s.Léopold Hervieux identified Walter with theAnglo-Norman authorGualterus Anglicus . He went so far as to suggest that Gualterus' (Walter's) Latin versifications ofAesop's fables were intended to instruct and entertain the young William II.ources
*Matthew, Donald J. A. (2004). [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28630 "Walter (d. 1190)".] "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed 8 July 2008.
*Norwich, John Julius (1970). "The Kingdom in the Sun 1130–1194". London: Longmans.External links
* [http://www.leeds.ac.uk/history/weblearning/MedievalHistoryTextCentre/ricsgermano.doc "Ryccardi di Sancto Germano Notarii Chronicon".] trans. G. A. Loud.
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