Stephen du Perche
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Stephen du Perche (1137 or 1138 – 1169) was the
Stephen is described by the contemporary chronicler
Arrival in Italy
In 1166, Margaret appealed to her other cousin,
Conflict with Matthew of Ajello
In 1167, Margaret had Stephen elected as archbishop of Palermo, the highest ecclesiastic office in the land. He was ordained by
In that year as well,
Deposition and exile by a conspiracy
In March 1168, Stephen and his entourage, including the king, William II, and queen regent, arrived in Palermo, where the conspirators had already arrived. This time, Matthew was imprisoned and Gentile fled. He was arrested in Agrigento. But, though the Arabs of Palermo had been soothed, the Messinan Greeks had been riled by the past months and a rebellion consequently broke out in that city (on account of the criminal practices of one of Stephen's friends, Odo Quarrel). There, a mob commandeered some ships and sailed to Reggio, there to force the release of Henry of Montescaglioso. After Henry's arrival in Messina, Odo was arrested and brutally executed and all the Frenchmrn of the city massacred: an inglorious prelude to the more widespread Sicilian Vespers of 1282. Stephen prepared an army (largely of Lombards from the region of Etna) and was ready to march on Messina when the young king postponed the campaign on astrological grounds.
Matthew of Ajello, from prison, had organised the rebellion in Palermo and, seeing his opportunity, struck. And it was rumored that William II was murdered and the chancellor planned to marry his brother to
With the attempt of Margaret to recall him in vain, he arrived in Jerusalem the summer of 1169 and soon fell ill and died. According to William of Tyre, "he was buried with honour in Jerusalem in the chapter-house of the Temple of the Lord."
Sources
- William of Tyre. Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum. [1][permanent dead link] at Patrologia Latina.
- Norwich, John Julius. The Kingdom in the Sun 1130–1194. Longman: London, 1970. [ISBN missing]
Notes
- ^ Hiroshi Takayama, "Familiares Regis and the Royal Inner Council in Twelfth-Century Sicily", English Historical Review 104 (1989), 363.
- ^ G. A. Loud and Thomas E. J. Wiedemann, eds. and trans., The History of the Tyrants of Sicily by 'Hugo Falcandus', 1154–69, Manchester medieval Sources Series (Manchester University Press, 1998), 25.
- ^ Hugo Falcandus, Liber de regno Sicilie c. 55, ed. G. B. Siracusa, Fonti per la storia d'Italia 22 (1897) 150; T. Kolzer, Urkunden und Kanzlei der Kaiserin Konstanze, 8f.