Benevento

So Britain, much though I don't want to rain on the parade of the Bay of Tapestry, nor on the illustrious history of the Normans in Britain and the sort of the raising of the North and the massive amounts of violence they unleash here, the wealth and the connections across Europe are centred to the South and to the East.

And when the Normans come to southern Italy, they're stepping into a world of a patchwork of city-states, places like Salerno, Amalfi, Benevento, Capua, where there are rival dynasties that have sort of hinterlands around their cities that make them quite rich, but not very rich.

And that gives them plenty to want to fight about.

Further south of that, you've got a complex world that had been part This has all been part of the Roman Empire.

The Italian campaign stalled for much of the next year, and the final confrontation was chaotic.

The Romans encamped near Beneventum, and Pyrrhus sent forces to try and encircle or occupy the high ground while the Romans were still getting into position.

But moving through unfamiliar terrain by night, the Epirote host got caught and driven off.

This prompted an unprepared battle the next day, where Pyrrhus' elephants initially caused disarray in the Roman army, still unfamiliar with the large animals, but once the elephants were repulsed, they reportedly trampled through a section of Pyrrhus' army as well.

He remained at Mantua from November 1418 till February 1419, and passing by Ferrara and the Romagna without touching Bologna, which with a number of smaller towns had declared her independence, he arrived at Florence, then flourishing under the rule of the Guelph aristocracy.

As Rome and Beneventum were in the hands of the Neapolitans, he thought it better to remain in the capital of Tuscany, and in fact he stayed there for a year and a half.

He took up his abode in quarters specially prepared for him in the convent of Santa Novella, the church of which he consecrated in October 1420.

He obtained from the Duke of Bavaria the release of Baldassare Cossa from his long imprisonment.

One interesting modern phenomenon, there are quite a few Italian politicians on a national level who are Pugliese as well.

Consider that Puglia marks the end of the Appian Way, a 350-mile-long ancient highway that began in Rome, passed through Capua, then to Benevento, then to Venosa, then to Taranto, then to Oria, and then finally to Brindisi.

If you remember the story of Spartacus and that slave revolt, he and his revolting slaves, revolting not because they were [laughs] ugly, revolting because they were rebelling, were meant to meet their pirate transporters in Brindisi.

Brindisi was a tremendously important ancient Roman port.

Italy became a patchwork of power, a political mosaic that would define its history for centuries.

The Lombards established their kingdom in the north with their capital in Pavia and carved out powerful duchies like those of Spoleto and Benevento in the south.

However, the Byzantines managed to hold onto a few crucial coastal areas and cities, including Ravenna, Rome, Naples, and a sliver of land that would later become Venice.

This left Italy in a state of permanent fragmentation, a land with no single master.

With Italy fragmented and the Lombard kingdom established, a new sort of stasis settled over the peninsula.

The Lombards ruled from their capital at Pavia, but their power was a collection of semi-independent duchies, a testament to their initial piecemeal conquest.

The Duchy of Spoleto in the center and Benevento in the south acted almost like separate kingdoms, often pursuing their own policies and even their own alliances.

This political structure was a far cry from the centralized authority of the old Roman Empire, and it meant that Italy was never a single, unified power.

It's a Catholic church.

Uh, and also there are some manuscript, musical manuscript from this particular area, not very well known, like the latest Beneventon chants were written in Kotor, uh, 12th century book, in two 12th century books, uh, one of them now in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the other one in Berlin, Germany.

Mm.

Uh, and there are some music and also a couple of months, uh, so a manuscript from, uh, Kotor Franciscan Monastery with probably some unique or very rare pieces written there.

There were two consular armies in the field, and he meant to destroy one of them before the other could come to help it.

The farmer consul was camped near a town called Beneventum on high ground among the hills.

Pyrrhus decided to take him by surprise.

He chose his best soldiers and his best elephants, and he set out after dark to march round through the woods and fall on the Roman camp from above at first light.

Eight years later, the island he had called a wrestling ground for Carthage and Rome became exactly that, and the two cities fought over it for 23 years.

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the shield pyrrhus had hung in the temple of athena stayed where he left it with its boast about antigonus and all asia long after antigonus had taken macedonia back of cineas there is nothing more to tell the sources lose him on the road to sicily and they never find him again what he left behind was a single conversation written down by a Greek who lived more than three centuries later, and read ever since by people who have never heard of Tarentum or Asculum or Beneventum.

In it, a king sits at a table late at night, turning a cup in his hand, and lays out the whole world he means to conquer, one country after another.

The messengers of Agnes were hastened away from Kittim, bearing to their master the promise of the inhabitants that, uh, Jana would become his wife.

When Turnus, King of B- Benev- Vento, Benevento arrived on the same errand.

Okay, that's a very strange word.

Let's see where that is.

Let's search B- Benevento.

Uh Maybe let's look at, uh, fact book Benevento.

Okay, it's a city in southern Italy.

So w- we're getting around here, folks.