Kreutz - Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries

THIS BOOK has been many years on the way, and I have incurred many debts to many people. The list must certainly begin with the late Robert L. Reynolds of the University of Wisconsin, who long ago (despairing of luring me to Genoa) suggested a dissertation involving Norman southern Italy. An exceptional man, Robert Reynolds left his mark on all his students, and this study owes a great deal to himnot least his insistence that one come to know intimately the physical terrain of the region under study. In the end, however, I moved back in time, before the Normans, and I soon became deeply indebted to David Herlihy, who succeeded Robert Reynolds at Wisconsin. He wisely cautioned against excessive ambition with my dissertation (do the big book later); and his determined questioning of my evidence saved me from many egregious errors and taught me invaluable lessons for the future. Moreover, without his gentle prodding over the past twenty years, the big book might never have been completed.

In the 1970s, I began to plan a comprehensive treatment, making as many trips to Italy as circumstances permitted. In 197980, thanks to the support and encouragement of David Herlihy, Archibald Lewis, and A. L. Udovitch, I had the luxury of a year's Fellowship in History at Radcliffe's Bunting Institute. That made it possible to start shaping the book in earnest, and my debts escalated: to the Bunting Institute and my fellow Fellows, particularly the late Laila Zamuelis Gross; to the staff of Harvard's Widener Library (the best resource in this country for south Italian materials); and to Professor Ernst Kitzinger, who generously took time to aim me in the right art-historical direction, vital for my region.

In the 1980s, other duties delayed completion, but my debts went on mounting. Various notions were tested in papers at conferences, here and abroad; Bryn Mawr College helped make possible participation in two major foreign meetings. In Italy, scholarly contacts were, as always, stimulating and pleasurable, and I am grateful to those there who have helped keep me aware of new developments, and especially to the Centro di Cultura e Storia Amalfitana. In this country, new ideas came from many sources. Early on, S. D. Goitein, whose magisterial studies illumined many dark corners of the Mediterranean, had urged that I not overlook southern Italy's Jewish communities; Maria Raina Fehl pointed me toward the most recent investigations. Academic friends and acquaintances around the country patiently answered scores of questions, and Petra Lent helped speed my progress at some crucial moments. At Bryn Mawr, my colleagues in many disciplines continuously sharpened my perceptions, as had, in the previous decade, my multidisciplinary colleagues and friends at the University of Wisconsin.

South Italian material is not easy to come by in this country, and time at the Vatican Library has always rushed by too quickly. In recent years I have therefore been fortunate in having the University of Pennsylvania's libraries as a resource, as well as the New York Public Library Research Division, the Morgan Library, and the Firestone Library at Princeton. But I am especially indebted to the staff of the Bryn Mawr College libraries: Eileen Markson of the Art and Archaeology Library and, in Canaday, Charles Burke (Interlibrary Loan), Jane McGarry (Acquisitions), and Ann Denlinger and Trudy Reed.

I need also to thank the two anonymous scholars who served as readers for the manuscript of this study; their perceptive comments and suggestions have unquestionably led to a better book. And I must thank as well Yvonne Holman, who created the complex maps the book required.

Finally, this study would have been difficult to accomplish (and certainly far less enjoyable) had I not, over the years, had generous help and stimulation from others in this country who have ventured into medieval southern Italy, particularly Robert P. Bergman, Robert Brentano, Armand Citarella, Dorothy Glass, Margaret Frazer, Paul Mosher, Father Anthony P. Via, Tom Walker, and Henry Willard. Some have now abandoned southern Italy for other pursuits, but this book embodies my gratitude to all of them.

It also carries with it my boundless gratitude to my family, who have borne with exemplary patience and goodwill my decades-long preoccupation with southern Italy. To my extraordinary husband, in particular, who has helped in countless ways, I can only promise, for the future, time in that splendid region with no note-taking and no waiting for the small boy to find the old lady who knows the man who may have the key to the tenth-century ruin.