Robert "Guiscard" of Hauteville, duke of Apulia & Calabria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Guiscard

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/85584905/robert-de-guiscard

• went on to become Count of Apulia and Calabria (1057–1059),
• and then Duke of Apulia and Calabria and lord of Sicily (1059–1085),
• and briefly Prince of Benevento (1078–1081) before returning the title to the Pope.

Robert Guiscard (c. 1015 – 17 July 1085) was a Norman adventurer remembered for the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. Robert was born into the Hauteville family in Normandy, went on to become Count of Apulia and Calabria (1057–1059), and then Duke of Apulia and Calabria and Duke of Sicily (1059–1085), and briefly Prince of Benevento (1078–1081) before returning the title to the Pope.

His sobriquet, in contemporary Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, is often rendered "the Resourceful", "the Cunning", "the Wily", "the Fox", or "the Weasel". In Italian sources he is often Roberto il Guiscardo or Roberto d'Altavilla (from Robert de Hauteville)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Guiscard
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hauteville
• http://genealogics.org/getperson.php?personID=I00080255&tree=LEO
• http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/505335/Robert
• http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/SICILY.htm#RobertGuiscarddied1085B
• https://prabook.com/web/robert.guiscard/729890
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/italian-history-biograp...
• https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/MSZC-Z12
• https://www.worldhistory.org/Robert_Guiscard/
• https://ims.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2019/02/William...

Roberto Guiscardo

(?, c. 1015-Cefalonia, 1085) Militar y aventurero normando. Conde (1057-1059) y luego duque de Apulia y Calabria, y de Sicilia (1059-1085). La conquista de Calabria le dio la supremacía sobre la zona, una vez derrotadas las tropas de León IX (1053). Arrojó a los bizantinos del S de Italia (1060-1071) y emprendió la conquista de la Sicilia musulmana (toma de Palermo, 1072). Constituido el futuro reino de Sicilia, implantó una administración centralizada. Sus incursiones en los territorios pontificios obligaron a Gregorio VII a excomulgarlo (1075), hasta que en 1080 se declaró vasallo de la Santa Sede. En 1081 se dirigió a Iliria y derrotó a los bizantinos. Rescató al papa Gregorio del asedio del castillo de Sant'Angelo (1084).

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Robert Guiscard From Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, or the Fox — most closely related to the archaism wiseacre) (c. 1015 – 1085) was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. He was Count (1057-1059) and then Duke (1059-1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his brother Humphrey's death

From 999 to 1042 the Normans in Italy were mainly mercenaries, serving at various times the Byzantines and a number of Lombard nobles. Then Sergius IV of Naples, by installing the leader Rainulf Drengot in the fortress of Aversa in 1029, gave them their first base, allowing them to begin an organized conquest of the land.

In 1035 there arrived William Iron-Arm and Drogo, the two eldest sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a petty noble of the Cotentin in Normandy. The two joined in the revolt of the Lombards against Byzantine control of Apulia. By 1040 the Byzantines had lost most of that province. In 1042 Melfi was chosen as the Norman capital, and in September of that year the Normans elected as their count William Iron-Arm, who was succeeded in turn by his brothers Drogo, Comes Normannorum totius Apuliae e Calabriae ("the Count of all Normans in Apulia and Calabria"), and Humphrey, who arrived about 1044.

[edit] Early years

Robert Guiscard was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville and eldest by his second wife Fressenda. According to the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, he left Normandy with only five mounted riders and thirty followers on foot. Upon arriving in Langobardia in 1047, he became the chief of a roving robber-band. Anna Comnena also leaves a physical description of Guiscard:

“ This Robert was Norman by descent, of minor origin, in temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning, brave in action, very clever in attacking the wealth and substance of magnates, most obstinate in achievement, for he did not allow any obstacle to prevent his executing his desire. His stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen, his shoulders were broad, his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire, and in frame he was well-built ... this man's cry it is said to have put thousands to flight. Thus equipped by fortune, physique and character, he was naturally indomitable, and subordinate to no one in the world. ”

Lands were scarce in Apulia at the time and the roving Guiscard could not expect any grant from Drogo, then reigning, for Humphrey had just received his own county of Lavello. Guiscard soon joined Prince Pandulf IV of Capua in his ceaseless wars with Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno (1048). The next year, however, Guiscard left Pandulf, according to Amatus of Montecassino because Pandulf reneged on a promise of a castle and his daughter's hand. Guiscard returned to his brother Drogo and asked to be granted a fief. Drogo, who had just finished campaigning in Calabria, gave Guiscard command of the fortress of Scribla. Dissatisfied with this position, Guiscard moved to the castle of San Marco Argentano (after which he later named the first Norman castle in Sicily, at the site of ancient Aluntium). During his time in Calabria, Guiscard married his first wife, Alberada of Buonalbergo, the daughter of Lord Girard of Buonalbergo.

Guiscard soon rose to distinction. The Lombards turned against their erstwhile allies and Pope Leo IX determined to expel the Norman freebooters. His army was defeated, however, at the Battle of Civitate sul Fortore (1053) by the Normans, united under Humphrey. Humphrey commanded the centre against the pope's Swabian troops. Early in the battle Count Richard of Aversa, commanding the right van, put the Lombards to flight and chased them down, then returned to help rout the Swabians. Guiscard had come all the way from Calabria to command the left. His troops were held in reserve until, seeing Humphrey's forces ineffectually charging the pope's centre, he called up his father-in-law's reinforcements and joined the fray, distinguishing himself personally, even being dismounted and remounting again three separate times according to William of Apulia. Honored for his actions at Civitate, Guiscard succeeded Humphrey as count of Apulia in 1057, over his elder half-brother Geoffrey. In company with Roger, his youngest brother, Guiscard carried on the conquest of Apulia and Calabria, while Richard conquered the principality of Capua.

[edit] Rule

Soon after his succession, probably in 1058, Guiscard separated from his wife Alberada because they were related within the prohibited degrees. Shortly after, he married Sichelgaita, the sister of Gisulf II of Salerno, Guaimar's successor. In return for giving him his sister's hand, Gisulf demanded of Guiscard that he destroy two castles of his brother William, count of the Principate, which had encroached on Gisulf's territory.

The Papacy, foreseeing the breach with the Holy Roman Emperor (the Investiture Controversy), then resolved to recognize the Normans and secure them as allies. Therefore at the Council of Melfi, on 23 August 1059, Pope Nicholas II invested Guiscard as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, and Richard of Aversa as prince of Capua. Guiscard, now "by the Grace of God and St Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, if either aid me, future lord of Sicily", agreed to hold his titles and lands by annual rent of the Holy See and to maintain its cause. In the next twenty years he undertook a series of conquests, winning his Sicilian dukeship.

[edit] Subjection of Calabria

At the time of the opening of the Melfitan council in June, Guiscard had been leading an army in Calabria, the first strong attempt to subjugate that very Byzantine province since the Iron-Arm's campaigns with Guaimar. After attending the synod for his investiture, he returned to Calabria, where his army was besieging Cariati. After Guiscard's arrival, Cariati submitted and, before winter was out, Rossano and Gerace also. Only Reggio was left in Byzantine hands when Guiscard returned to Apulia. In Apulia, he worked to remove the Byzantine garrisons from Taranto and Brindisi, before, largely in preparation for his planned Sicilian expedition, he returned again to Calabria, where Roger was waiting with siege engines.

The fall of Reggio, after a long and arduous siege, and the subsequent capitulation of Scilla, an island citadel to which the Reggian garrison had fled, opened up the way to Sicily. Roger first led a tiny force to attack Messina but was repulsed easily by the Saracen garrison. The large invading force which could have been expected did not materialise, for Guiscard was recalled by a new Byzantine army, sent by Constantine X, ravaging Apulia. In January 1061, Melfi itself was under siege and Roger too was recalled. But the full weight of Guiscard's forces forced the Byzantines to retreat and by May Apulia was calm.

[edit] Sicilian campaigns

Invading Sicily with Roger, the brothers captured Messina (1061) with comparable ease: Roger's men landed unsighted during the night and surprised the Saracen army in the morning. The Guiscard's troops landed unopposed and found Messina abandoned. Guiscard immediately fortified Messina and allied himself with Ibn at-Timnah, one of the rival emirs of Sicily, against Ibn al-Hawas, another emir. The armies of Guiscard, his brother, and his Moslem friend marched into central Sicily by way of Rometta, which had remained loyal to al-Timnah. They passed through Frazzanò and the pianura di Maniace, where George Maniakes and the first Hautevilles distinguished themselves twenty-one years prior. Guiscard assaulted the town of Centuripe, but their resistance was strong, and he moved on. Paternò fell and he brought his army to Enna (then Castrogiovanni), a formidable fortress. The Saracens sallied forth and were defeated, but Enna itself did not fall. Guiscard turned back, leaving a fortress at San Marco d'Alunzio, named after his first stronghold in Calabria. He returned to Apulia with Sichelgaita for Christmas.

He returned in 1064, but bypassed Enna taking straight for Palermo. However, his campsite was infested with tarantulas and had to be abandoned. The campaign was unsuccessful this time, though a later campaign, in 1072, saw Palermo fall and for the rest of Sicily it was only then a matter of time.

[edit] Against the Byzantines

Bari was reduced (April 1071), and the Byzantine forces finally ousted from southern Italy. The territory of Salerno was already Guiscard's; in December 1076 he took the city, expelling its Lombard prince Gisulf, whose sister Sichelgaita he had married. The Norman attacks on Benevento, a papal fief, alarmed and angered Gregory VII, but pressed hard by the emperor, Henry IV, he turned again to the Normans, and at Ceprano (June 1080) reinvested Guiscard, securing him also in the southern Abruzzi, but reserving Salerno.

Guiscard's last enterprise was his attack on the Byzantine Empire, a rallying ground for his rebel vassals, such as Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo. In this enterprise Guiscard crossed swords with his most redoubtable opponent, the only one worthy of himself, in a clash of swords that would become legendary in the years after. In this struggle he met his nemesis in the person of the greatest man of the age: Emperor Alexius. He contemplated seizing the throne of the Basileus and took up the cause of Michael VII, who had been deposed in 1078 and to whose son his daughter had been betrothed. He sailed with 16,000 men of which 1,300 were Norman knights against the empire in May 1081, and by February 1082 had occupied Corfu and Durazzo, defeating the Emperor Alexius in front of the latter (Battle of Dyrrhachium, October 1081). He was, however, recalled to the aid of Gregory VII, besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo by Henry IV (June 1083).

Marching north with 36,000 men he entered Rome and forced Henry to retire, but an émeute of the citizens led to a three days' sack of the city (May 1084), after which Guiscard escorted the pope to Rome. His son Bohemund, for a time master of Thessaly, had now lost the Byzantine conquests. Guiscard, returning with 150 ships to restore them, occupied Corfu and Kefalonia, but died along with 500 Norman knights of fever in the latter on July 15 1085, in his 70th year. He was buried in S. Trinità at Venosa. The town of Fiscardo on Kefalonia is named after him.

Guiscard was succeeded by Roger Borsa, his son by Sichelgaita; Bohemund, his son by an earlier Norman wife Alberada, being set aside. He left two younger sons: Guy, Duke of Amalfi, and Robert Scalio, neither of whom made any trouble for their elder brothers. At his death Guiscard was duke of Apulia and Calabria, prince of Salerno and suzerain of Sicily. His successes had been due not only to his great qualities but to the "entente" with the Papal See. He created and enforced a strong ducal power which, however, was met by many baronial revolts, one being in 1078, when he demanded from the Apulian vassals an "aid" on the betrothal of his daughter. In conquering such wide territories he had little time to organize them internally. In the history of the Norman kingdom of Italy Guiscard remains essentially the hero and founder, though his career ended in "something of a dead end,"[1] while his nephew Roger II is the statesman and organizer.

[edit] Religion

Robert Guiscard, through his conquest of Calabria and Sicily, was instrumental in bringing Latin Christianity to those regions most affected by Greek Orthodoxy and Islam. Nevertheless, though he encouraged the Latin rite in preference to anything Greek, he did not force his Moslem subjects to convert or leave and rather used them (as did his successors) as mercenaries. He laid the foundation of a new cathedral in Salerno and of a Norman monastery at Sant'Eufemia in Calabria. This latter monastery began as a community of eleven monks from Saint-Evroul in Normandy under the abbot Robert de Grantmesnil. They had a famous choir.

Though his relationship with the pope was rocky, Guiscard preferred to be on good terms with the papacy and he made a gesture of abandoning his first wife in response to church law. Though the popes were often fearful of his growing power, they preferred the strong and independent hand of a Catholic Norman to the rule of a Byzantine Greek. Guiscard received his investment with Sicily at the hands of Pope Nicholas II, who feared the opposition of the Holy Roman Emperor to the Papal reforms more. Guiscard supported the reforms, coming to the rescue of a besieged Pope Gregory VII, who had once excommunicated him for encroaching on the territory of the Papal States.

Guiscard achieved enough martial and political success for Dante Alighieri, in The Divine Comedy, to place the spirit of Guiscard in Heaven's sphere of Mars with history's greatest Christian warriors. In Inferno, he describes a field of mutiliated shades stretching out to the horizon as what Guiscard's enemies would look like after a battle.

---

Robert Guiscard From Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, or the Fox — most closely related to the archaism wiseacre) (c. 1015 – 1085) was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. He was Count (1057-1059) and then Duke (1059-1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his brother Humphrey's death

From 999 to 1042 the Normans in Italy were mainly mercenaries, serving at various times the Byzantines and a number of Lombard nobles. Then Sergius IV of Naples, by installing the leader Rainulf Drengot in the fortress of Aversa in 1029, gave them their first base, allowing them to begin an organized conquest of the land.

In 1035 there arrived William Iron-Arm and Drogo, the two eldest sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a petty noble of the Cotentin in Normandy. The two joined in the revolt of the Lombards against Byzantine control of Apulia. By 1040 the Byzantines had lost most of that province. In 1042 Melfi was chosen as the Norman capital, and in September of that year the Normans elected as their count William Iron-Arm, who was succeeded in turn by his brothers Drogo, Comes Normannorum totius Apuliae e Calabriae ("the Count of all Normans in Apulia and Calabria"), and Humphrey, who arrived about 1044.

[edit] Early years

Robert Guiscard was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville and eldest by his second wife Fressenda. According to the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, he left Normandy with only five mounted riders and thirty followers on foot. Upon arriving in Langobardia in 1047, he became the chief of a roving robber-band. Anna Comnena also leaves a physical description of Guiscard:

“ This Robert was Norman by descent, of minor origin, in temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning, brave in action, very clever in attacking the wealth and substance of magnates, most obstinate in achievement, for he did not allow any obstacle to prevent his executing his desire. His stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen, his shoulders were broad, his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire, and in frame he was well-built ... this man's cry it is said to have put thousands to flight. Thus equipped by fortune, physique and character, he was naturally indomitable, and subordinate to no one in the world. ”

Lands were scarce in Apulia at the time and the roving Guiscard could not expect any grant from Drogo, then reigning, for Humphrey had just received his own county of Lavello. Guiscard soon joined Prince Pandulf IV of Capua in his ceaseless wars with Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno (1048). The next year, however, Guiscard left Pandulf, according to Amatus of Montecassino because Pandulf reneged on a promise of a castle and his daughter's hand. Guiscard returned to his brother Drogo and asked to be granted a fief. Drogo, who had just finished campaigning in Calabria, gave Guiscard command of the fortress of Scribla. Dissatisfied with this position, Guiscard moved to the castle of San Marco Argentano (after which he later named the first Norman castle in Sicily, at the site of ancient Aluntium). During his time in Calabria, Guiscard married his first wife, Alberada of Buonalbergo, the daughter of Lord Girard of Buonalbergo.

Guiscard soon rose to distinction. The Lombards turned against their erstwhile allies and Pope Leo IX determined to expel the Norman freebooters. His army was defeated, however, at the Battle of Civitate sul Fortore (1053) by the Normans, united under Humphrey. Humphrey commanded the centre against the pope's Swabian troops. Early in the battle Count Richard of Aversa, commanding the right van, put the Lombards to flight and chased them down, then returned to help rout the Swabians. Guiscard had come all the way from Calabria to command the left. His troops were held in reserve until, seeing Humphrey's forces ineffectually charging the pope's centre, he called up his father-in-law's reinforcements and joined the fray, distinguishing himself personally, even being dismounted and remounting again three separate times according to William of Apulia. Honored for his actions at Civitate, Guiscard succeeded Humphrey as count of Apulia in 1057, over his elder half-brother Geoffrey. In company with Roger, his youngest brother, Guiscard carried on the conquest of Apulia and Calabria, while Richard conquered the principality of Capua.

[edit] Rule

Soon after his succession, probably in 1058, Guiscard separated from his wife Alberada because they were related within the prohibited degrees. Shortly after, he married Sichelgaita, the sister of Gisulf II of Salerno, Guaimar's successor. In return for giving him his sister's hand, Gisulf demanded of Guiscard that he destroy two castles of his brother William, count of the Principate, which had encroached on Gisulf's territory.

The Papacy, foreseeing the breach with the Holy Roman Emperor (the Investiture Controversy), then resolved to recognize the Normans and secure them as allies. Therefore at the Council of Melfi, on 23 August 1059, Pope Nicholas II invested Guiscard as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, and Richard of Aversa as prince of Capua. Guiscard, now "by the Grace of God and St Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, if either aid me, future lord of Sicily", agreed to hold his titles and lands by annual rent of the Holy See and to maintain its cause. In the next twenty years he undertook a series of conquests, winning his Sicilian dukeship.

[edit] Subjection of Calabria

At the time of the opening of the Melfitan council in June, Guiscard had been leading an army in Calabria, the first strong attempt to subjugate that very Byzantine province since the Iron-Arm's campaigns with Guaimar. After attending the synod for his investiture, he returned to Calabria, where his army was besieging Cariati. After Guiscard's arrival, Cariati submitted and, before winter was out, Rossano and Gerace also. Only Reggio was left in Byzantine hands when Guiscard returned to Apulia. In Apulia, he worked to remove the Byzantine garrisons from Taranto and Brindisi, before, largely in preparation for his planned Sicilian expedition, he returned again to Calabria, where Roger was waiting with siege engines.

The fall of Reggio, after a long and arduous siege, and the subsequent capitulation of Scilla, an island citadel to which the Reggian garrison had fled, opened up the way to Sicily. Roger first led a tiny force to attack Messina but was repulsed easily by the Saracen garrison. The large invading force which could have been expected did not materialise, for Guiscard was recalled by a new Byzantine army, sent by Constantine X, ravaging Apulia. In January 1061, Melfi itself was under siege and Roger too was recalled. But the full weight of Guiscard's forces forced the Byzantines to retreat and by May Apulia was calm.

[edit] Sicilian campaigns

Invading Sicily with Roger, the brothers captured Messina (1061) with comparable ease: Roger's men landed unsighted during the night and surprised the Saracen army in the morning. The Guiscard's troops landed unopposed and found Messina abandoned. Guiscard immediately fortified Messina and allied himself with Ibn at-Timnah, one of the rival emirs of Sicily, against Ibn al-Hawas, another emir. The armies of Guiscard, his brother, and his Moslem friend marched into central Sicily by way of Rometta, which had remained loyal to al-Timnah. They passed through Frazzanò and the pianura di Maniace, where George Maniakes and the first Hautevilles distinguished themselves twenty-one years prior. Guiscard assaulted the town of Centuripe, but their resistance was strong, and he moved on. Paternò fell and he brought his army to Enna (then Castrogiovanni), a formidable fortress. The Saracens sallied forth and were defeated, but Enna itself did not fall. Guiscard turned back, leaving a fortress at San Marco d'Alunzio, named after his first stronghold in Calabria. He returned to Apulia with Sichelgaita for Christmas.

He returned in 1064, but bypassed Enna taking straight for Palermo. However, his campsite was infested with tarantulas and had to be abandoned. The campaign was unsuccessful this time, though a later campaign, in 1072, saw Palermo fall and for the rest of Sicily it was only then a matter of time.

[edit] Against the Byzantines

Bari was reduced (April 1071), and the Byzantine forces finally ousted from southern Italy. The territory of Salerno was already Guiscard's; in December 1076 he took the city, expelling its Lombard prince Gisulf, whose sister Sichelgaita he had married. The Norman attacks on Benevento, a papal fief, alarmed and angered Gregory VII, but pressed hard by the emperor, Henry IV, he turned again to the Normans, and at Ceprano (June 1080) reinvested Guiscard, securing him also in the southern Abruzzi, but reserving Salerno.

Guiscard's last enterprise was his attack on the Byzantine Empire, a rallying ground for his rebel vassals, such as Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo. In this enterprise Guiscard crossed swords with his most redoubtable opponent, the only one worthy of himself, in a clash of swords that would become legendary in the years after. In this struggle he met his nemesis in the person of the greatest man of the age: Emperor Alexius. He contemplated seizing the throne of the Basileus and took up the cause of Michael VII, who had been deposed in 1078 and to whose son his daughter had been betrothed. He sailed with 16,000 men of which 1,300 were Norman knights against the empire in May 1081, and by February 1082 had occupied Corfu and Durazzo, defeating the Emperor Alexius in front of the latter (Battle of Dyrrhachium, October 1081). He was, however, recalled to the aid of Gregory VII, besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo by Henry IV (June 1083).

Marching north with 36,000 men he entered Rome and forced Henry to retire, but an émeute of the citizens led to a three days' sack of the city (May 1084), after which Guiscard escorted the pope to Rome. His son Bohemund, for a time master of Thessaly, had now lost the Byzantine conquests. Guiscard, returning with 150 ships to restore them, occupied Corfu and Kefalonia, but died along with 500 Norman knights of fever in the latter on July 15 1085, in his 70th year. He was buried in S. Trinità at Venosa. The town of Fiscardo on Kefalonia is named after him.

Guiscard was succeeded by Roger Borsa, his son by Sichelgaita; Bohemund, his son by an earlier Norman wife Alberada, being set aside. He left two younger sons: Guy, Duke of Amalfi, and Robert Scalio, neither of whom made any trouble for their elder brothers. At his death Guiscard was duke of Apulia and Calabria, prince of Salerno and suzerain of Sicily. His successes had been due not only to his great qualities but to the "entente" with the Papal See. He created and enforced a strong ducal power which, however, was met by many baronial revolts, one being in 1078, when he demanded from the Apulian vassals an "aid" on the betrothal of his daughter. In conquering such wide territories he had little time to organize them internally. In the history of the Norman kingdom of Italy Guiscard remains essentially the hero and founder, though his career ended in "something of a dead end,"[1] while his nephew Roger II is the statesman and organizer.

[edit] Religion

Robert Guiscard, through his conquest of Calabria and Sicily, was instrumental in bringing Latin Christianity to those regions most affected by Greek Orthodoxy and Islam. Nevertheless, though he encouraged the Latin rite in preference to anything Greek, he did not force his Moslem subjects to convert or leave and rather used them (as did his successors) as mercenaries. He laid the foundation of a new cathedral in Salerno and of a Norman monastery at Sant'Eufemia in Calabria. This latter monastery began as a community of eleven monks from Saint-Evroul in Normandy under the abbot Robert de Grantmesnil. They had a famous choir.

Though his relationship with the pope was rocky, Guiscard preferred to be on good terms with the papacy and he made a gesture of abandoning his first wife in response to church law. Though the popes were often fearful of his growing power, they preferred the strong and independent hand of a Catholic Norman to the rule of a Byzantine Greek. Guiscard received his investment with Sicily at the hands of Pope Nicholas II, who feared the opposition of the Holy Roman Emperor to the Papal reforms more. Guiscard supported the reforms, coming to the rescue of a besieged Pope Gregory VII, who had once excommunicated him for encroaching on the territory of the Papal States.

Guiscard achieved enough martial and political success for Dante Alighieri, in The Divine Comedy, to place the spirit of Guiscard in Heaven's sphere of Mars with history's greatest Christian warriors. In Inferno, he describes a field of mutiliated shades stretching out to the horizon as what Guiscard's enemies would look like after a battle.

---

Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and Calabria, from Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, the Fox, or the Weasel (c. 1015 – 17 July 1085) was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. Robert was from the noble Maison d'Hautville of the Hauteville family, he went to become Count (1057-1059) and then Duke (1059-1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his brother Humphrey's death.From 999 to 1042 the Normans in Italy were mainly mercenaries, serving at various times the Byzantines and a number of Lombard nobles. Then Sergius IV of Naples, by installing the leader Rainulf Drengot in the fortress of Aversa in 1029, gave them their first base, allowing them to begin an organized conquest of the land.

In 1035 there arrived William Iron-Arm and Drogo, the two eldest sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a petty noble of the Cotentin in Normandy. The two joined in the revolt of the Lombards against Byzantine control of Apulia. By 1040 the Byzantines had lost most of that province. In 1042 Melfi was chosen as the Norman capital, and in September of that year the Normans elected as their count William Iron-Arm, who was succeeded in turn by his brothers Drogo, Comes Normannorum totius Apuliæ e Calabriæ ("the Count of all Normans in Apulia and Calabria"), and Humphrey, who arrived about 1044.Robert Guiscard was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville and eldest by his second wife Fressenda. According to the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, he left Normandy with only five mounted riders and thirty followers on foot. Upon arriving in Langobardia in 1047, he became the chief of a roving robber-band. Anna Comnena also leaves a physical description of Guiscard:

This Robert was Norman by descent, of minor origin, in temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning, brave in action, very clever in attacking the wealth and substance of magnates, most obstinate in achievement, for he did not allow any obstacle to prevent his executing his desire. His stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen, his shoulders were broad, his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire, and in frame he was well-built ... this man's cry it is said to have put thousands to flight. Thus equipped by fortune, physique and character, he was naturally indomitable, and subordinate to no one in the world.

Lands were scarce in Apulia at the time and the roving Guiscard could not expect any grant from Drogo, then reigning, for Humphrey had just received his own county of Lavello. Guiscard soon joined Prince Pandulf IV of Capua in his ceaseless wars with Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno (1048). The next year, however, Guiscard left Pandulf, according to Amatus of Montecassino because Pandulf reneged on a promise of a castle and his daughter's hand. Guiscard returned to his brother Drogo and asked to be granted a fief. Drogo, who had just finished campaigning in Calabria, gave Guiscard command of the fortress of Scribla. Dissatisfied with this position, Guiscard moved to the castle of San Marco Argentano (after which he later named the first Norman castle in Sicily, at the site of ancient Aluntium). During his time in Calabria, Guiscard married his first wife, Alberada of Buonalbergo, the daughter of Lord Girard of Buonalbergo.

Guiscard soon rose to distinction. The Lombards turned against their erstwhile allies and Pope Leo IX determined to expel the Norman freebooters. His army was defeated, however, at the Battle of Civitate sul Fortore (1053) by the Normans, united under Humphrey. Humphrey commanded the centre against the pope's Swabian troops. Early in the battle Count Richard of Aversa, commanding the right van, put the Lombards to flight and chased them down, then returned to help rout the Swabians. Guiscard had come all the way from Calabria to command the left. His troops were held in reserve until, seeing Humphrey's forces ineffectually charging the pope's centre, he called up his father-in-law's reinforcements and joined the fray, distinguishing himself personally, even being dismounted and remounting again three separate times according to William of Apulia. Honored for his actions at Civitate, Guiscard succeeded Humphrey as count of Apulia in 1057, over his elder half-brother Geoffrey. In company with Roger, his youngest brother, Guiscard carried on the conquest of Apulia and Calabria, while Richard conquered the principality of Capua.

[edit]Rule

Soon after his succession, probably in 1058, Guiscard separated from his wife Alberada because they were related within the prohibited degrees. Shortly after, he married Sichelgaita, the sister of Gisulf II of Salerno, Guaimar's successor. In return for giving him his sister's hand, Gisulf demanded of Guiscard that he destroy two castles of his brother William, count of the Principate, which had encroached on Gisulf's territory.

The Papacy, foreseeing the breach with the Holy Roman Emperor (the Investiture Controversy), then resolved to recognize the Normans and secure them as allies. Therefore at the Council of Melfi, on 23 August 1059, Pope Nicholas II invested Guiscard as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, and Richard of Aversa as prince of Capua. Guiscard, now "by the Grace of God and St Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, if either aid me, future lord of Sicily", agreed to hold his titles and lands by annual rent of the Holy See and to maintain its cause. In the next twenty years he undertook a series of conquests, winning his Sicilian dukedom.Subjection of Calabria

At the time of the opening of the Melfitan council in June, Guiscard had been leading an army in Calabria, the first strong attempt to subjugate that very Byzantine province since the Iron-Arm's campaigns with Guaimar. After attending the synod for his investiture, he returned to Calabria, where his army was besieging Cariati. After Guiscard's arrival, Cariati submitted and, before winter was out, Rossano and Gerace also. Only Reggio was left in Byzantine hands when Guiscard returned to Apulia. In Apulia, he worked to remove the Byzantine garrisons from Taranto and Brindisi, before, largely in preparation for his planned Sicilian expedition, he returned again to Calabria, where Roger was waiting with siege engines.

The fall of Reggio, after a long and arduous siege, and the subsequent capitulation of Scilla, an island citadel to which the Reggian garrison had fled, opened up the way to Sicily. Roger first led a tiny force to attack Messina but was repulsed easily by the Saracen garrison. The large invading force which could have been expected did not materialise, for Guiscard was recalled by a new Byzantine army, sent by Constantine X, ravaging Apulia. In January 1061, Melfi itself was under siege and Roger too was recalled. But the full weight of Guiscard's forces forced the Byzantines to retreat and by May Apulia was calm.

[edit]Sicilian campaigns

Invading Sicily with Roger, the brothers captured Messina (1061) with comparable ease: Roger's men landed unsighted during the night and surprised the Saracen army in the morning. The Guiscard's troops landed unopposed and found Messina abandoned. Guiscard immediately fortified Messina and allied himself with Ibn at-Timnah, one of the rival emirs of Sicily, against Ibn al-Hawas, another emir. The armies of Guiscard, his brother, and his Moslem friend marched into central Sicily by way of Rometta, which had remained loyal to al-Timnah. They passed through Frazzanò and the pianura di Maniace, where George Maniakes and the first Hautevilles distinguished themselves twenty-one years prior. Guiscard assaulted the town of Centuripe, but their resistance was strong, and he moved on. Paternò fell and he brought his army to Enna (then Castrogiovanni), a formidable fortress. The Saracens sallied forth and were defeated, but Enna itself did not fall. Guiscard turned back, leaving a fortress at San Marco d'Alunzio, named after his first stronghold in Calabria. He returned to Apulia with Sichelgaita for Christmas.

He returned in 1064, but bypassed Enna taking straight for Palermo. However, his campsite was infested with tarantulas and had to be abandoned. The campaign was unsuccessful this time, though a later campaign, in 1072, saw Palermo fall and for the rest of Sicily it was only then a matter of time.

Bari was reduced (April 1071), and the Byzantine forces finally ousted from southern Italy. The territory of Salerno was already Guiscard's; in December 1076 he took the city, expelling its Lombard prince Gisulf, whose sister Sichelgaita he had married. The Norman attacks on Benevento, a papal fief, alarmed and angered Gregory VII, but pressed hard by the emperor, Henry IV, he turned again to the Normans, and at Ceprano (June 1080) reinvested Guiscard, securing him also in the southern Abruzzi, but reserving Salerno.

Guiscard's last enterprise was his attack on the Byzantine Empire, a rallying ground for his rebel vassals, such as Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo. In this enterprise Guiscard crossed swords with his most redoubtable opponent, the only one worthy of himself, in a clash of swords that would become legendary in the years after. In this struggle he met his nemesis in the person of the greatest man of the age: Emperor Alexius. He contemplated seizing the throne of the Basileus and took up the cause of Michael VII, who had been deposed in 1078 and to whose son his daughter had been betrothed. He sailed with 16,000 men of which 1,300 were Norman knights against the empire in May 1081, and by February 1082 had occupied Corfu and Durazzo, defeating the Emperor Alexius in front of the latter (Battle of Dyrrhachium, October 1081). He was, however, recalled to the aid of Gregory VII, besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo by Henry IV (June 1083).

Marching north with 36,000 men he entered Rome and forced Henry to retire, but a short-lived rebellion or seditious tumult (émeute) of the citizens led to a three days' sack of the city (May 1084), after which Guiscard escorted the pope to Rome. His son Bohemund, for a time master of Thessaly, had now lost the Byzantine conquests. Guiscard, returning with 150 ships to restore them, occupied Corfu and Kefalonia, but died along with 500 Norman knights of fever in the latter on 17 July 1085, in his 70th year.[1][2] He was buried in the Hauteville family mausoleum of the Trinity Abbey (SS. Trinità) at Venosa. The town of Fiscardo on Kefalonia is named after him.

Guiscard was succeeded by Roger Borsa, his son by Sichelgaita; Bohemund, his son by an earlier Norman wife Alberada, being set aside. He left two younger sons: Guy, Duke of Amalfi, and Robert Scalio, neither of whom made any trouble for their elder brothers. At his death Guiscard was duke of Apulia and Calabria, prince of Salerno and suzerain of Sicily. His successes had been due not only to his great qualities but to the "entente" with the Papal See. He created and enforced a strong ducal power which, however, was met by many baronial revolts, one being in 1078, when he demanded from the Apulian vassals an "aid" on the betrothal of his daughter. In conquering such wide territories he had little time to organize them internally. In the history of the Norman kingdom of Italy Guiscard remains essentially the hero and founder, though his career ended in "something of a dead end,"[3] while his nephew Roger II is the statesman and organizer.

[edit]Religion

Robert Guiscard, through his conquest of Calabria and Sicily, was instrumental in bringing Latin Christianity to an area which historically followed the Byzantine rite. Guiscard laid the foundation of a new cathedral in Salerno and of a Norman monastery at Sant'Eufemia in Calabria. This latter monastery, famous for its choir, began as a community of eleven monks from Saint-Evroul in Normandy under the abbot Robert de Grantmesnil.

Though his relationship with the pope was rocky, Guiscard preferred to be on good terms with the papacy and he made a gesture of abandoning his first wife in response to church law. Though the popes were often fearful of his growing power, they preferred the strong and independent hand of a Catholic Norman to the rule of a Byzantine Greek. Guiscard received his investment with Sicily at the hands of Pope Nicholas II, who feared the opposition of the Holy Roman Emperor to the Papal reforms more. Guiscard supported the reforms, coming to the rescue of a besieged Pope Gregory VII, who had once excommunicated him for encroaching on the territory of the Papal States. After the Great Schism of 1054, the polarized religious atmosphere served to strengthen Guiscard's alliance with papal forces, resulting in a formidable papal-Norman opposition to the Eastern Empire.[4]

Such was Guiscard's martial and political success that Dante Alighieri recorded it in his Divine Comedy, placing his spirit in Heaven's sphere of Mars with history's greatest Christian warriors. In Inferno, Dante describes Guiscard's enemies as a field of mutilated shades stretching out to the horizon.

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Robert Guiscard (from Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, or the Fox — most closely related to the archaism wiseacre) (c. 1015 – 1085) was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. He was Count (1057-1059) and then Duke (1059-1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his brother Humphrey's death.

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Robert Guiscard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Guiscard (from Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, or the Fox — most closely related to the archaism wiseacre) (c. 1015 – 1085) was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. He was Count (1057-1059) and then Duke (1059-1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his brother Humphrey's death.

Background

From 999 to 1042 the Normans in Italy were mainly mercenaries, serving at various times the Byzantines and a number of Lombard nobles. Then Sergius IV of Naples, by installing the leader Rainulf Drengot in the fortress of Aversa in 1029, gave them their first base, allowing them to begin an organized conquest of the land.

In 1035 there arrived William Iron-Arm and Drogo, the two eldest sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a petty noble of the Cotentin in Normandy. The two joined in the revolt of the Lombards against Byzantine control of Apulia. By 1040 the Byzantines had lost most of that province. In 1042 Melfi was chosen as the Norman capital, and in September of that year the Normans elected as their count William Iron-Arm, who was succeeded in turn by his brothers Drogo, Comes Normannorum totius Apuliae e Calabriae ("the Count of all Normans in Apulia and Calabria"), and Humphrey, who arrived about 1044.

Early years

Robert Guiscard was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville and eldest by his second wife Fressenda. According to the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, he left Normandy with only five mounted riders and thirty followers on foot. Upon arriving in Langobardia in 1047, he became the chief of a roving robber-band. Anna Comnena also leaves a physical description of Guiscard:

“ This Robert was Norman by descent, of minor origin, in temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning, brave in action, very clever in attacking the wealth and substance of magnates, most obstinate in achievement, for he did not allow any obstacle to prevent his executing his desire. His stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen, his shoulders were broad, his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire, and in frame he was well-built ... this man's cry it is said to have put thousands to flight. Thus equipped by fortune, physique and character, he was naturally indomitable, and subordinate to no one in the world. ”

Lands were scarce in Apulia at the time and the roving Guiscard could not expect any grant from Drogo, then reigning, for Humphrey had just received his own county of Lavello. Guiscard soon joined Prince Pandulf IV of Capua in his ceaseless wars with Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno (1048). The next year, however, Guiscard left Pandulf, according to Amatus of Montecassino because Pandulf reneged on a promise of a castle and his daughter's hand. Guiscard returned to his brother Drogo and asked to be granted a fief. Drogo, who had just finished campaigning in Calabria, gave Guiscard command of the fortress of Scribla. Dissatisfied with this position, Guiscard moved to the castle of San Marco Argentano (after which he later named the first Norman castle in Sicily, at the site of ancient Aluntium). During his time in Calabria, Guiscard married his first wife, Alberada of Buonalbergo, the daughter of Lord Girard of Buonalbergo.

Guiscard soon rose to distinction. The Lombards turned against their erstwhile allies and Pope Leo IX determined to expel the Norman freebooters. His army was defeated, however, at the Battle of Civitate sul Fortore (1053) by the Normans, united under Humphrey. Humphrey commanded the centre against the pope's Swabian troops. Early in the battle Count Richard of Aversa, commanding the right van, put the Lombards to flight and chased them down, then returned to help rout the Swabians. Guiscard had come all the way from Calabria to command the left. His troops were held in reserve until, seeing Humphrey's forces ineffectually charging the pope's centre, he called up his father-in-law's reinforcements and joined the fray, distinguishing himself personally, even being dismounted and remounting again three separate times according to William of Apulia. Honored for his actions at Civitate, Guiscard succeeded Humphrey as count of Apulia in 1057, over his elder half-brother Geoffrey. In company with Roger, his youngest brother, Guiscard carried on the conquest of Apulia and Calabria, while Richard conquered the principality of Capua.

[edit]Rule

Soon after his succession, probably in 1058, Guiscard separated from his wife Alberada because they were related within the prohibited degrees. Shortly after, he married Sichelgaita, the sister of Gisulf II of Salerno, Guaimar's successor. In return for giving him his sister's hand, Gisulf demanded of Guiscard that he destroy two castles of his brother William, count of the Principate, which had encroached on Gisulf's territory.

The Papacy, foreseeing the breach with the Holy Roman Emperor (the Investiture Controversy), then resolved to recognize the Normans and secure them as allies. Therefore at the Council of Melfi, on 23 August 1059, Pope Nicholas II invested Guiscard as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, and Richard of Aversa as prince of Capua. Guiscard, now "by the Grace of God and St Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, if either aid me, future lord of Sicily", agreed to hold his titles and lands by annual rent of the Holy See and to maintain its cause. In the next twenty years he undertook a series of conquests, winning his Sicilian dukeship.

[edit]Subjection of Calabria

At the time of the opening of the Melfitan council in June, Guiscard had been leading an army in Calabria, the first strong attempt to subjugate that very Byzantine province since the Iron-Arm's campaigns with Guaimar. After attending the synod for his investiture, he returned to Calabria, where his army was besieging Cariati. After Guiscard's arrival, Cariati submitted and, before winter was out, Rossano and Gerace also. Only Reggio was left in Byzantine hands when Guiscard returned to Apulia. In Apulia, he worked to remove the Byzantine garrisons from Taranto and Brindisi, before, largely in preparation for his planned Sicilian expedition, he returned again to Calabria, where Roger was waiting with siege engines.

The fall of Reggio, after a long and arduous siege, and the subsequent capitulation of Scilla, an island citadel to which the Reggian garrison had fled, opened up the way to Sicily. Roger first led a tiny force to attack Messina but was repulsed easily by the Saracen garrison. The large invading force which could have been expected did not materialise, for Guiscard was recalled by a new Byzantine army, sent by Constantine X, ravaging Apulia. In January 1061, Melfi itself was under siege and Roger too was recalled. But the full weight of Guiscard's forces forced the Byzantines to retreat and by May Apulia was calm.

[edit]Sicilian campaigns

Invading Sicily with Roger, the brothers captured Messina (1061) with comparable ease: Roger's men landed unsighted during the night and surprised the Saracen army in the morning. The Guiscard's troops landed unopposed and found Messina abandoned. Guiscard immediately fortified Messina and allied himself with Ibn at-Timnah, one of the rival emirs of Sicily, against Ibn al-Hawas, another emir. The armies of Guiscard, his brother, and his Moslem friend marched into central Sicily by way of Rometta, which had remained loyal to al-Timnah. They passed through Frazzanò and the pianura di Maniace, where George Maniakes and the first Hautevilles distinguished themselves twenty-one years prior. Guiscard assaulted the town of Centuripe, but their resistance was strong, and he moved on. Paternò fell and he brought his army to Enna (then Castrogiovanni), a formidable fortress. The Saracens sallied forth and were defeated, but Enna itself did not fall. Guiscard turned back, leaving a fortress at San Marco d'Alunzio, named after his first stronghold in Calabria. He returned to Apulia with Sichelgaita for Christmas.

He returned in 1064, but bypassed Enna taking straight for Palermo. However, his campsite was infested with tarantulas and had to be abandoned. The campaign was unsuccessful this time, though a later campaign, in 1072, saw Palermo fall and for the rest of Sicily it was only then a matter of time.

Against the Byzantines

Bari was reduced (April 1071), and the Byzantine forces finally ousted from southern Italy. The territory of Salerno was already Guiscard's; in December 1076 he took the city, expelling its Lombard prince Gisulf, whose sister Sichelgaita he had married. The Norman attacks on Benevento, a papal fief, alarmed and angered Gregory VII, but pressed hard by the emperor, Henry IV, he turned again to the Normans, and at Ceprano (June 1080) reinvested Guiscard, securing him also in the southern Abruzzi, but reserving Salerno.

Guiscard's last enterprise was his attack on the Byzantine Empire, a rallying ground for his rebel vassals, such as Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo. In this enterprise Guiscard crossed swords with his most redoubtable opponent, the only one worthy of himself, in a clash of swords that would become legendary in the years after. In this struggle he met his nemesis in the person of the greatest man of the age: Emperor Alexius. He contemplated seizing the throne of the Basileus and took up the cause of Michael VII, who had been deposed in 1078 and to whose son his daughter had been betrothed. He sailed with 16,000 men of which 1,300 were Norman knights against the empire in May 1081, and by February 1082 had occupied Corfu and Durazzo, defeating the Emperor Alexius in front of the latter (Battle of Dyrrhachium, October 1081). He was, however, recalled to the aid of Gregory VII, besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo by Henry IV (June 1083).

Marching north with 36,000 men he entered Rome and forced Henry to retire, but an émeute of the citizens led to a three days' sack of the city (May 1084), after which Guiscard escorted the pope to Rome. His son Bohemund, for a time master of Thessaly, had now lost the Byzantine conquests. Guiscard, returning with 150 ships to restore them, occupied Corfu and Kefalonia, but died along with 500 Norman knights of fever in the latter on July 15 1085, in his 70th year. He was buried in the Hauteville family mausoleum of the Trinity Abbey (SS. Trinità) at Venosa. The town of Fiscardo on Kefalonia is named after him.

Guiscard was succeeded by Roger Borsa, his son by Sichelgaita; Bohemund, his son by an earlier Norman wife Alberada, being set aside. He left two younger sons: Guy, Duke of Amalfi, and Robert Scalio, neither of whom made any trouble for their elder brothers. At his death Guiscard was duke of Apulia and Calabria, prince of Salerno and suzerain of Sicily. His successes had been due not only to his great qualities but to the "entente" with the Papal See. He created and enforced a strong ducal power which, however, was met by many baronial revolts, one being in 1078, when he demanded from the Apulian vassals an "aid" on the betrothal of his daughter. In conquering such wide territories he had little time to organize them internally. In the history of the Norman kingdom of Italy Guiscard remains essentially the hero and founder, though his career ended in "something of a dead end,"[1] while his nephew Roger II is the statesman and organizer.

[edit]Religion

Robert Guiscard, through his conquest of Calabria and Sicily, was instrumental in bringing Latin Christianity to an area which historically followed the Byzantine rite. Guiscard laid the foundation of a new cathedral in Salerno and of a Norman monastery at Sant'Eufemia in Calabria. This latter monastery, famous for its choir, began as a community of eleven monks from Saint-Evroul in Normandy under the abbot Robert de Grantmesnil.

Though his relationship with the pope was rocky, Guiscard preferred to be on good terms with the papacy and he made a gesture of abandoning his first wife in response to church law. Though the popes were often fearful of his growing power, they preferred the strong and independent hand of a Catholic Norman to the rule of a Byzantine Greek. Guiscard received his investment with Sicily at the hands of Pope Nicholas II, who feared the opposition of the Holy Roman Emperor to the Papal reforms more. Guiscard supported the reforms, coming to the rescue of a besieged Pope Gregory VII, who had once excommunicated him for encroaching on the territory of the Papal States. After the Great Schism of 1054, the polarized religious atmosphere served to strengthen Guiscard's alliance with papal forces, resulting in a formidable papal-Norman opposition to the Eastern Empire.[2]

Such was Guiscard's martial and political success that Dante Alighieri recorded it in his Divine Comedy, placing his spirit in Heaven's sphere of Mars with history's greatest Christian warriors. In Inferno, Dante describes Guiscard's enemies as a field of mutiliated shades stretching out to the horizon.

[edit]Sources

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Chalandon, F. Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicile. (Paris, 1907).

von Heinemann, L. Geschichte der Normannen in Unteritalien (Leipzig, 1894).

Loud, Graham A. The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000. ISBN 0-582-04529-0

Norwich, John Julius. The Normans in the South 1016-1130. Longmans: London, 1967.

Savvides, Alexios G.C. (2007). Byzantino-Normannica: The Norman Capture of Italy (to A.D. 1081) and the First Two Invasions in Byzantium (A.D. 1081-1085 and 1107-1108). Leuven, Belgium; Dudley, MA: Peeters. ISBN 9789042919112.

Medieval History Texts in Translation ;

Coin with Guiscard's effigy.

Notes

^ Loud, 294.

^ Savvides 2007, 35.

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Robert Guiscard (from Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, or the Fox — most closely related to the archaism wiseacre) (c. 1015 – 1085) was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. He was Count (1057-1059) and then Duke (1059-1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his brother Humphrey's death.

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Como otros muchos caballeros normandos empobrecidos, Guiscardo marchó a Italia, a donde llegó hacia el año 1046. Después de servir en las fuerzas del Príncipe de Capua, organizó un ejército para crear sus propias posesiones en Calabria.

Cuando el papa León IX intentó expulsar a los normandos de Italia en 1053, Guiscardo tuvo un importante papel en la derrota de las tropas del Papa en Civitate, localidad próxima a la actual ciudad de San Severo. A la muerte de su hermano mayor, Unfrido, Roberto se convirtió en líder de los normandos establecidos en Italia. El Papa, que buscaba deshacerse de la tutela del Sacro Imperio Romano Germánico, decidió acercarse a líderes normandos presentes en el sur de Itàlia. En 1059 el papa Nicolás II nombró a Roberto por la gracia de Dios y de san Pedro, duque de Apulia y Calabria y de aquí en adelante, con la ayuda de los dos, duque de Sicilia. A cambio, Roberto Guiscardo reconoció al Papa como su señor feudal.

En esa época, Sicilia estaba en manos de los bizantinos, por lo que él y su hermano Roger se embarcaron en una serie de campañas militares y conquistaron Messina en el año 1061 y Palermo en el 1072. Después dirigió su atención hacia los Balcanes, y en 1081 obtuvo una gran victoria sobre el emperador bizantino Alejo I Comneno en Durazzo (Albania). Entre tanto, sus campañas en Macedonia y en Tesalia fueron dirigidas por su hijo Bohemundo.

Roberto fue llamado en 1083 para que acudiese en auxilio del papa Gregorio VII, que estaba asediado en el castillo Sant'Angelo por Enrique IV, emperador del Sacro Imperio, por lo que tuvo que abandonar sus victoriosas campañas. En 1084, Roberto expulsó de Roma al Emperador y redujo a cenizas un tercio de la ciudad. Roberto volvió en apoyo de su hijo Bohemundo en la campaña de Grecia, pero murió de fiebres en Cefalonia unas semanas más tarde en julio del 1085 (Fiebre tifoidea), dejando como sucesor a su hijo Roger Borsa.

Wikipedia, Roberto Guiscardo

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Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Guiscard

Robert Guiscard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to:navigation, search

Coin of Robert Guiscard.

Robert Guiscard, from Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, the Fox, or the Weasel (c. 1015 – 17 July 1085) was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. Robert was from the noble Maison d'Hautville of the Hauteville family, he went to become Count (1057-1059) and then Duke (1059-1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his brother Humphrey's death.

Contents

[show]

   * 1 Background

* 2 Early years
* 3 Rule
o 3.1 Subjection of Calabria
o 3.2 Sicilian campaigns
o 3.3 Against the Byzantines
* 4 Religion
* 5 Marriage and issue
* 6 Sources
* 7 Notes
[edit] Background

From 999 to 1042 the Normans in Italy were mainly mercenaries, serving at various times the Byzantines and a number of Lombard nobles. Then Sergius IV of Naples, by installing the leader Rainulf Drengot in the fortress of Aversa in 1029, gave them their first base, allowing them to begin an organized conquest of the land.

In 1035 there arrived William Iron-Arm and Drogo, the two eldest sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a petty noble of the Cotentin in Normandy. The two joined in the revolt of the Lombards against Byzantine control of Apulia. By 1040 the Byzantines had lost most of that province. In 1042 Melfi was chosen as the Norman capital, and in September of that year the Normans elected as their count William Iron-Arm, who was succeeded in turn by his brothers Drogo, Comes Normannorum totius Apuliæ e Calabriæ ("the Count of all Normans in Apulia and Calabria"), and Humphrey, who arrived about 1044.

[edit] Early years

Robert Guiscard (standing), with his brother Count Roger. 19th century print.

Robert Guiscard was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville and eldest by his second wife Fressenda. According to the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, he left Normandy with only five mounted riders and thirty followers on foot. Upon arriving in Langobardia in 1047, he became the chief of a roving robber-band. Anna Comnena also leaves a physical description of Guiscard:

   This Robert was Norman by descent, of minor origin, in temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning, brave in action, very clever in attacking the wealth and substance of magnates, most obstinate in achievement, for he did not allow any obstacle to prevent his executing his desire. His stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen, his shoulders were broad, his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire, and in frame he was well-built ... this man's cry it is said to have put thousands to flight. Thus equipped by fortune, physique and character, he was naturally indomitable, and subordinate to no one in the world.

Lands were scarce in Apulia at the time and the roving Guiscard could not expect any grant from Drogo, then reigning, for Humphrey had just received his own county of Lavello. Guiscard soon joined Prince Pandulf IV of Capua in his ceaseless wars with Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno (1048). The next year, however, Guiscard left Pandulf, according to Amatus of Montecassino because Pandulf reneged on a promise of a castle and his daughter's hand. Guiscard returned to his brother Drogo and asked to be granted a fief. Drogo, who had just finished campaigning in Calabria, gave Guiscard command of the fortress of Scribla. Dissatisfied with this position, Guiscard moved to the castle of San Marco Argentano (after which he later named the first Norman castle in Sicily, at the site of ancient Aluntium). During his time in Calabria, Guiscard married his first wife, Alberada of Buonalbergo, the daughter of Lord Girard of Buonalbergo.

Guiscard soon rose to distinction. The Lombards turned against their erstwhile allies and Pope Leo IX determined to expel the Norman freebooters. His army was defeated, however, at the Battle of Civitate sul Fortore (1053) by the Normans, united under Humphrey. Humphrey commanded the centre against the pope's Swabian troops. Early in the battle Count Richard of Aversa, commanding the right van, put the Lombards to flight and chased them down, then returned to help rout the Swabians. Guiscard had come all the way from Calabria to command the left. His troops were held in reserve until, seeing Humphrey's forces ineffectually charging the pope's centre, he called up his father-in-law's reinforcements and joined the fray, distinguishing himself personally, even being dismounted and remounting again three separate times according to William of Apulia. Honored for his actions at Civitate, Guiscard succeeded Humphrey as count of Apulia in 1057, over his elder half-brother Geoffrey. In company with Roger, his youngest brother, Guiscard carried on the conquest of Apulia and Calabria, while Richard conquered the principality of Capua.

[edit] Rule

Soon after his succession, probably in 1058, Guiscard separated from his wife Alberada because they were related within the prohibited degrees. Shortly after, he married Sichelgaita, the sister of Gisulf II of Salerno, Guaimar's successor. In return for giving him his sister's hand, Gisulf demanded of Guiscard that he destroy two castles of his brother William, count of the Principate, which had encroached on Gisulf's territory.

The Papacy, foreseeing the breach with the Holy Roman Emperor (the Investiture Controversy), then resolved to recognize the Normans and secure them as allies. Therefore at the Council of Melfi, on 23 August 1059, Pope Nicholas II invested Guiscard as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, and Richard of Aversa as prince of Capua. Guiscard, now "by the Grace of God and St Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, if either aid me, future lord of Sicily", agreed to hold his titles and lands by annual rent of the Holy See and to maintain its cause. In the next twenty years he undertook a series of conquests, winning his Sicilian dukedom.

[edit] Subjection of Calabria

At the time of the opening of the Melfitan council in June, Guiscard had been leading an army in Calabria, the first strong attempt to subjugate that very Byzantine province since the Iron-Arm's campaigns with Guaimar. After attending the synod for his investiture, he returned to Calabria, where his army was besieging Cariati. After Guiscard's arrival, Cariati submitted and, before winter was out, Rossano and Gerace also. Only Reggio was left in Byzantine hands when Guiscard returned to Apulia. In Apulia, he worked to remove the Byzantine garrisons from Taranto and Brindisi, before, largely in preparation for his planned Sicilian expedition, he returned again to Calabria, where Roger was waiting with siege engines.

The fall of Reggio, after a long and arduous siege, and the subsequent capitulation of Scilla, an island citadel to which the Reggian garrison had fled, opened up the way to Sicily. Roger first led a tiny force to attack Messina but was repulsed easily by the Saracen garrison. The large invading force which could have been expected did not materialise, for Guiscard was recalled by a new Byzantine army, sent by Constantine X, ravaging Apulia. In January 1061, Melfi itself was under siege and Roger too was recalled. But the full weight of Guiscard's forces forced the Byzantines to retreat and by May Apulia was calm.

[edit] Sicilian campaigns

Invading Sicily with Roger, the brothers captured Messina (1061) with comparable ease: Roger's men landed unsighted during the night and surprised the Saracen army in the morning. The Guiscard's troops landed unopposed and found Messina abandoned. Guiscard immediately fortified Messina and allied himself with Ibn at-Timnah, one of the rival emirs of Sicily, against Ibn al-Hawas, another emir. The armies of Guiscard, his brother, and his Moslem friend marched into central Sicily by way of Rometta, which had remained loyal to al-Timnah. They passed through Frazzanò and the pianura di Maniace, where George Maniakes and the first Hautevilles distinguished themselves twenty-one years prior. Guiscard assaulted the town of Centuripe, but their resistance was strong, and he moved on. Paternò fell and he brought his army to Enna (then Castrogiovanni), a formidable fortress. The Saracens sallied forth and were defeated, but Enna itself did not fall. Guiscard turned back, leaving a fortress at San Marco d'Alunzio, named after his first stronghold in Calabria. He returned to Apulia with Sichelgaita for Christmas.

He returned in 1064, but bypassed Enna taking straight for Palermo. However, his campsite was infested with tarantulas and had to be abandoned. The campaign was unsuccessful this time, though a later campaign, in 1072, saw Palermo fall and for the rest of Sicily it was only then a matter of time.

[edit] Against the Byzantines

The beach of Atheras (north of Lixouri, where Guiscard died)

Hauteville family mausoleum, where Robert Guiscard was buried. Trinity Abbey in Venosa, Italy.

Bari was reduced (April 1071), and the Byzantine forces finally ousted from southern Italy. The territory of Salerno was already Guiscard's; in December 1076 he took the city, expelling its Lombard prince Gisulf, whose sister Sichelgaita he had married. The Norman attacks on Benevento, a papal fief, alarmed and angered Gregory VII, but pressed hard by the emperor, Henry IV, he turned again to the Normans, and at Ceprano (June 1080) reinvested Guiscard, securing him also in the southern Abruzzi, but reserving Salerno.

Guiscard's last enterprise was his attack on the Byzantine Empire, a rallying ground for his rebel vassals, such as Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo. In this enterprise Guiscard crossed swords with his most redoubtable opponent, the only one worthy of himself, in a clash of swords that would become legendary in the years after. In this struggle he met his nemesis in the person of the greatest man of the age: Emperor Alexius. He contemplated seizing the throne of the Basileus and took up the cause of Michael VII, who had been deposed in 1078 and to whose son his daughter had been betrothed. He sailed with 16,000 men of which 1,300 were Norman knights against the empire in May 1081, and by February 1082 had occupied Corfu and Durazzo, defeating the Emperor Alexius in front of the latter (Battle of Dyrrhachium, October 1081). He was, however, recalled to the aid of Gregory VII, besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo by Henry IV (June 1083).

Marching north with 36,000 men he entered Rome and forced Henry to retire, but a short-lived rebellion or seditious tumult (émeute) of the citizens led to a three days' sack of the city (May 1084), after which Guiscard escorted the pope to Rome. His son Bohemund, for a time master of Thessaly, had now lost the Byzantine conquests. Guiscard, returning with 150 ships to restore them, occupied Corfu and Kefalonia, but died along with 500 Norman knights of fever in the latter on 17 July 1085, in his 70th year.[1][2] He was buried in the Hauteville family mausoleum of the Trinity Abbey (SS. Trinità) at Venosa. The town of Fiscardo on Kefalonia is named after him.

Guiscard was succeeded by Roger Borsa, his son by Sichelgaita; Bohemund, his son by an earlier Norman wife Alberada, being set aside. He left two younger sons: Guy, Duke of Amalfi, and Robert Scalio, neither of whom made any trouble for their elder brothers. At his death Guiscard was duke of Apulia and Calabria, prince of Salerno and suzerain of Sicily. His successes had been due not only to his great qualities but to the "entente" with the Papal See. He created and enforced a strong ducal power which, however, was met by many baronial revolts, one being in 1078, when he demanded from the Apulian vassals an "aid" on the betrothal of his daughter. In conquering such wide territories he had little time to organize them internally. In the history of the Norman kingdom of Italy Guiscard remains essentially the hero and founder, though his career ended in "something of a dead end,"[3] while his nephew Roger II is the statesman and organizer.

[edit] Religion

Robert Guiscard, through his conquest of Calabria and Sicily, was instrumental in bringing Latin Christianity to an area which historically followed the Byzantine rite. Guiscard laid the foundation of a new cathedral in Salerno and of a Norman monastery at Sant'Eufemia in Calabria. This latter monastery, famous for its choir, began as a community of eleven monks from Saint-Evroul in Normandy under the abbot Robert de Grantmesnil.

Though his relationship with the pope was rocky, Guiscard preferred to be on good terms with the papacy and he made a gesture of abandoning his first wife in response to church law. Though the popes were often fearful of his growing power, they preferred the strong and independent hand of a Catholic Norman to the rule of a Byzantine Greek. Guiscard received his investment with Sicily at the hands of Pope Nicholas II, who feared the opposition of the Holy Roman Emperor to the Papal reforms more. Guiscard supported the reforms, coming to the rescue of a besieged Pope Gregory VII, who had once excommunicated him for encroaching on the territory of the Papal States. After the Great Schism of 1054, the polarized religious atmosphere served to strengthen Guiscard's alliance with papal forces, resulting in a formidable papal-Norman opposition to the Eastern Empire.[4]

Such was Guiscard's martial and political success that Dante Alighieri recorded it in his Divine Comedy, placing his spirit in Heaven's sphere of Mars with history's greatest Christian warriors. In Inferno, Dante describes Guiscard's enemies as a field of mutilated shades stretching out to the horizon.

[edit] Marriage and issue

Married in 1051 to Alberada of Buonalbergo (1032 – aft. June 1122) and had two children:

   * Bohemund

* Emma (b. 1052 or after), married to Odo the Good Marquis
Married in 1058 or 1059 to Sichelgaita and had 8 children:

   * Matilda (also Mahalta, Maud, or Maude; 1059 – aft. 1085), married Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona

* Roger Borsa
* Mabile, married to William de Grantmesnil
* Eria, married to Hugh V of Maine
* Robert Scalio
* Guy, Duke of Amalfi
* Sibylla, (married to Ebles de Ramerupt, 4th Count of Roucy and had 8 children)
* Olympias (or Helen), betrothed to Konstantios Doukas, son of Michael VII in August 1074, contract broken off in 1078
[edit] Sources

   * Chalandon, F. Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicile. (Paris, 1907).

* von Heinemann, L. Geschichte der Normannen in Unteritalien (Leipzig, 1894).
* Loud, G. A. The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000. ISBN 0-582-04529-0
* Norwich, John Julius. The Normans in the South 1016-1130. Longmans: London, 1967.
* Savvides, Alexios G.C. (2007). Byzantino-Normannica: The Norman Capture of Italy (to A.D. 1081) and the First Two Invasions in Byzantium (A.D. 1081-1085 and 1107-1108). Leuven, Belgium; Dudley, MA: Peeters. ISBN 9789042919112.
* Medieval History Texts in Translation at Leeds University
* Coin with Guiscard's effigy.
* Foundation for Medieval Genealogy on Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia
[edit] Notes

  1. ^ James van Wyck Osborne, The Greatest Norman Conquest (1937), page 396.

2. ^ G. A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (2000), page 223.
3. ^ Loud, 294.
4. ^ Savvides 2007, 35.
Preceded by

Humphrey Duke of Apulia

1057–1085 Succeeded by

Roger Borsa

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BIOGRAPHY: b. c. 1015,, Normandy [France]

d. July 17, 1085, near Cephalonia, Greece, Byzantine Empire

byname ROBERT GUISCARD, OR ROBERT DE HAUTEVILLE, Italian ROBERTO GUISCARDO, OR ROBERTO D'ALTAVILLA, Norman adventurer who settled in Apulia, in southern Italy, about 1047 and became duke of Apulia (1059). He eventually extended Norman rule over Naples, Calabria, and Sicily and laid the foundations of the Kingdom of Sicily.

Arrival in Apulia

Robert was born into a family of knights. Arriving in Apulia, in southern Italy, around 1047 to join his half brother Drogo, he found that it and Campania, though they were southern Italy's most flourishing regions, were plagued by political disturbances. These regions attracted hordes of fortune-seeking Norman immigrants, who were to transform the political role of both regions in the following decades.

In Campania, the Lombards of Capua were launching wars against the Byzantine dukes of Naples in order to gain possession of that important seaport. In Apulia, William ("Iron Arm") de Hauteville, Robert's eldest half brother, having successfully defeated the Byzantine Greeks who controlled that region, had been elected count of Apulia in 1042. In 1046 he had been succeeded by his brother Drogo.

When Robert joined his brothers, they sent him to Calabria to attack Byzantine territory. He began his campaign by pillaging the countryside and ransoming its people. In 1053, at the head of the combined forces of Normans from Apulia and Campania, he defeated the haphazardly led forces of the Byzantines, the Lombards, and the papacy at Civitate. Because of the deaths of William and Drogo and of his third half brother, Count Humphrey, in 1057, Robert returned to Apulia to seize control from Humphrey's sons and save the region from disgregating internal conflicts. After becoming the recognized leader of the Apulian Normans, Robert resumed his campaign in Calabria. His brother Roger's arrival from Normandy enabled him to extend and solidify his conquests in Apulia.

In his progression from gang leader to commander of mercenary troops to conqueror, Robert emerged as a shrewd and perspicacious political figure. In 1059 he entered into a concordat at Melfi with Pope Nicholas II. Until that time the papacy had been hostile toward the Normans, considering them to be an anarchist force that upset the political structure in southern Italy--a structure based on a balance of power between the Byzantines and the Lombards of northern Italy. The schism that took place between the Greek and Latin churches in 1054 worsened the relations between the Byzantine emperors and the papacy, and eventually the papacy realized that Norman conquests over the Byzantines could work to its advantage. Robert's plan to expel the Arabs from Sicily and restore Christianity to the island also found favour in Nicholas' eyes. This expedition into Sicily got under way in 1060, as soon as the conquest of Calabria was completed. Robert entrusted the command of the expedition to his brother Roger, but on particularly difficult occasions--e.g., the siege of Palermo in 1071--he came to his brother's aid.

Until this time, Robert's relations with Roger had not always been amicable, since Roger, aware of both his own talent and Robert's dependency on him, would not settle for the subordinate role allotted him. Their differences were resolved when Robert invested Roger, after he had recognized Robert's supreme authority, with "the County of Sicily and Calabria" along with the right to govern and tax both counties.

Copyright © 1994-2001 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc

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Robert Guiscard (from Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, or the Fox — most closely related to the archaism wiseacre) (c. 1015 – 1085) was a Norman adventurer who conquered Southern Italy and Sicily. He was count (1057-1059) and then duke (1059-1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his brother Humphrey's death.

From 999 to 1042 the Normans in Italy were mainly mercenaries, serving at various times the Byzantines and a number of Lombard nobles. Then Sergius IV of Naples, by installing the leader Rainulf Drengot in the fortress of Aversa in 1029, gave them their first base, allowing them to begin an organized conquest of the land.

In 1035 there arrived William Iron-Arm and Drogo, the two eldest sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a petty noble of the Cotentin in Normandy. The two joined in the revolt of the Lombards against Byzantine control of Apulia. By 1040 the Byzantines had lost most of that province. In 1042 Melfi was chosen as the Norman capital, and in September of that year the Normans elected as their count William Iron-Arm, who was succeeded in turn by his brothers Drogo, Comes Normannorum totius Apuliae e Calabriae ("the Count of all Normans in Apulia and Calabria"), and Humphrey, who arrived about 1044.

[edit] Early years

Robert Guiscard was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville and eldest by his second wife Fressenda. According to the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, he left Normandy with only five mounted riders and thirty followers on foot. Upon arriving in Langobardia in 1047, he became the chief of a roving robber-band. Anna Comnena also leaves a physical description of Guiscard:

“ This Robert was Norman by descent, of minor origin, in temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning, brave in action, very clever in attacking the wealth and substance of magnates, most obstinate in achievement, for he did not allow any obstacle to prevent his executing his desire. His stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen, his shoulders were broad, his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire, and in frame he was well-built ... this man's cry it is said to have put thousands to flight. Thus equipped by fortune, physique and character, he was naturally indomitable, and subordinate to no one in the world. ”

Lands were scarce in Apulia at the time and the roving Guiscard could not expect any grant from Drogo, then reigning, for Humphrey had just received his own county of Lavello. Guiscard soon joined Prince Pandulf IV of Capua in his ceaseless wars with Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno (1048). The next year, however, Guiscard left Pandulf, according to Amatus of Montecassino because Pandulf reneged on a promise of a castle and his daughter's hand. Guiscard returned to his brother Drogo and asked to be granted a fief. Drogo, who had just finished campaigning in Calabria, gave Guiscard command of the fortress of Scribla. Dissatisfied with this position, Guiscard moved to the castle of San Marco Argentano (after which he later named the first Norman castle in Sicily, at the site of ancient Aluntium). During his time in Calabria, Guiscard married his first wife, Alberada of Buonalbergo, the daughter of Lord Girard of Buonalbergo.

Guiscard soon rose to distinction. The Lombards turned against their erstwhile allies and Pope Leo IX determined to expel the Norman freebooters. His army was defeated, however, at the Battle of Civitate sul Fortore (1053) by the Normans, united under Humphrey. Humphrey commanded the centre against the pope's Swabian troops. Early in the battle Count Richard of Aversa, commanding the right van, put the Lombards to flight and chased them down, then returned to help rout the Swabians. Guiscard had come all the way from Calabria to command the left. His troops were held in reserve until, seeing Humphrey's forces ineffectually charging the pope's centre, he called up his father-in-law's reinforcements and joined the fray, distinguishing himself personally, even being dismounted and remounting again three separate times according to William of Apulia. Honored for his actions at Civitate, Guiscard succeeded Humphrey as count of Apulia in 1057, over his elder half-brother Geoffrey. In company with Roger, his youngest brother, Guiscard carried on the conquest of Apulia and Calabria, while Richard conquered the principality of Capua.

[edit] Rule

Soon after his succession, probably in 1058, Guiscard separated from his wife Alberada because they were related within the prohibited degrees to marry Sichelgaita, the sister of Gisulf II of Salerno, Guaimar's successor. In return for giving him his sister's hand, Gisulf demanded of Guiscard that he destroy two castles of his brother William, count of the Principate, which had encroached on Gisulf's territory.

The Papacy, foreseeing the breach with the Holy Roman Emperor (the Investiture Controversy), then resolved to recognize the Normans and secure them as allies. Therefore at the Council of Melfi, on 23 August 1059, Pope Nicholas II invested Guiscard as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, and Richard of Aversa as prince of Capua. Guiscard, now "by the Grace of God and St Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, if either aid me, future lord of Sicily", agreed to hold his titles and lands by annual rent of the Holy See and to maintain its cause. In the next twenty years he undertook a series of conquests, winning his Sicilian dukeship.

[edit] Subjection of Calabria

At the time of the opening of the Melfitan council in June, Guiscard had been leading an army in Calabria, the first strong attempt to subjugate that very Byzantine province since the Iron-Arm's campaigns with Guaimar. After attending the synod for his investiture, he returned to Calabria, where his army was besieging Cariati. After Guiscard's arrival, Cariati submitted and, before winter was out, Rossano and Gerace also. Only Reggio was left in Byzantine hands when Guiscard returned to Apulia. In Apulia, he worked to remove the Byzantine garrisons from Taranto and Brindisi, before, largely in preparation for his planned Sicilian expedition, he returned again to Calabria, where Roger was waiting with siege engines.

The fall of Reggio, after a long and arduous siege, and the subsequent capitulation of Scilla, an island citadel to which the Reggian garrison had fled, opened up the way to Sicily. Roger first led a tiny force to attack Messina but was repulsed easily by the Saracen garrison. The large invading force which could have been expected did not materialise, for Guiscard was recalled by a new Byzantine army, sent by Constantine X, ravaging Apulia. In January 1061, Melfi itself was under siege and Roger too was recalled. But the full weight of Guiscard's forces forced the Byzantines to retreat and by May Apulia was calm.

[edit] Sicilian campaigns

Invading Sicily with Roger, the brothers captured Messina (1061) with comparable ease: Roger's men landed unsighted during the night and surprised the Saracen army in the morning. The Guiscard's troops landed unopposed and found Messina abandoned. Guiscard immediately fortified Messina and allied himself with Ibn at-Timnah, one of the rival emirs of Sicily, against Ibn al-Hawas, another emir. The armies of Guiscard, his brother, and his Moslem friend marched into central Sicily by way of Rometta, which had remained loyal to al-Timnah. They passed through Frazzanò and the pianura di Maniace, where George Maniakes and the first Hautevilles distinguished themselves twenty-one years prior. Guiscard assaulted the town of Centuripe, but their resistance was strong, and he moved on. Paternò fell and he brought his army to Enna (then Castrogiovanni), a formidable fortress. The Saracens sallied forth and were defeated, but Enna itself did not fall. Guiscard turned back, leaving a fortress at San Marco d'Alunzio, named after his first stronghold in Calabria. He returned to Apulia with Sichelgaita for Christmas.

He returned in 1064, but bypassed Enna taking straight for Palermo. However, his campsite was infested with tarantulas and had to be abandoned. The campaign was unsuccessful this time, though a later campaign, in 1072, saw Palermo fall and for the rest of Sicily it was only then a matter of time.

[edit] Against the Byzantines

Bari was reduced (April 1071), and the Byzantine forces finally ousted from southern Italy. The territory of Salerno was already Guiscard's; in December 1076 he took the city, expelling its Lombard prince Gisulf, whose sister Sichelgaita he had married. The Norman attacks on Benevento, a papal fief, alarmed and angered Gregory VII, but pressed hard by the emperor, Henry IV, he turned again to the Normans, and at Ceprano (June 1080) reinvested Guiscard, securing him also in the southern Abruzzi, but reserving Salerno.

Guiscard's last enterprise was his attack on the Byzantine Empire, a rallying ground for his rebel vassals, such as Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo. In this enterprise Guiscard crossed swords with his most redoubtable opponent, the only one worthy of himself, in a clash of swords that would become legendary in the years after. In this struggle he met his nemesis in the person of the greatest man of the age: Emperor Alexius. He contemplated seizing the throne of the Basileus and took up the cause of Michael VII, who had been deposed in 1078 and to whose son his daughter had been betrothed. He sailed with 16,000 men of which 1,300 were Norman knights against the empire in May 1081, and by February 1082 had occupied Corfu and Durazzo, defeating the Emperor Alexius in front of the latter (Battle of Dyrrhachium, October 1081). He was, however, recalled to the aid of Gregory VII, besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo by Henry IV (June 1083).

Marching north with 36,000 men he entered Rome and forced Henry to retire, but an émeute of the citizens led to a three days' sack of the city (May 1084), after which Guiscard escorted the pope to Rome. His son Bohemund, for a time master of Thessaly, had now lost the Byzantine conquests. Guiscard, returning with 150 ships to restore them, occupied Corfu and Kephalonia, but died along with 500 Norman knights of fever in the latter on July 15 1085, in his 70th year. He was buried in S. Trinità at Venosa. The town of Fiskardo on Kephalonia is named after him.

Guiscard was succeeded by Roger Borsa, his son by Sichelgaita; Bohemund, his son by an earlier Norman wife Alberada, being set aside. He left two younger sons: Guy, Duke of Amalfi, and Robert Scalio, neither of whom made any trouble for their elder brothers. At his death Guiscard was duke of Apulia and Calabria, prince of Salerno and suzerain of Sicily. His successes had been due not only to his great qualities but to the "entente" with the Papal See. He created and enforced a strong ducal power which, however, was met by many baronial revolts, one being in 1078, when he demanded from the Apulian vassals an "aid" on the betrothal of his daughter. In conquering such wide territories he had little time to organize them internally. In the history of the Norman kingdom of Italy Guiscard remains essentially the hero and founder, though his career ended in "something of a dead end,"[1] while his nephew Roger II is the statesman and organizer.

[edit] In literature

Robert Guiscard achieved enough martial and political success for Dante Alighieri, in The Divine Comedy, to place the spirit of Guiscard in Heaven's sphere of Mars with history's greatest Christian warriors. In Inferno, he describes a field of mutiliated shades stretching out to the horizon as what Guiscard's enemies would look like after a battle.

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Robert Guiscard, from Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, the Fox, or the Weasel (c. 1015 – 1085) was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. He was Count (1057-1059) and then Duke (1059-1085) of Apulia and Calabria after his brother Humphrey's death.

Background

From 999 to 1042 the Normans in Italy were mainly mercenaries, serving at various times the Byzantines and a number of Lombard nobles. Then Sergius IV of Naples, by installing the leader Rainulf Drengot in the fortress of Aversa in 1029, gave them their first base, allowing them to begin an organized conquest of the land.

In 1035 there arrived William Iron-Arm and Drogo, the two eldest sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a petty noble of the Cotentin in Normandy. The two joined in the revolt of the Lombards against Byzantine control of Apulia. By 1040 the Byzantines had lost most of that province. In 1042 Melfi was chosen as the Norman capital, and in September of that year the Normans elected as their count William Iron-Arm, who was succeeded in turn by his brothers Drogo, Comes Normannorum totius Apuliæ e Calabriæ ("the Count of all Normans in Apulia and Calabria"), and Humphrey, who arrived about 1044.

Early years

Robert Guiscard (standing), with his brother Count Roger. 19th century print.Robert Guiscard was the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville and eldest by his second wife Fressenda. According to the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, he left Normandy with only five mounted riders and thirty followers on foot. Upon arriving in Langobardia in 1047, he became the chief of a roving robber-band. Anna Comnena also leaves a physical description of Guiscard:

This Robert was Norman by descent, of minor origin, in temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning, brave in action, very clever in attacking the wealth and substance of magnates, most obstinate in achievement, for he did not allow any obstacle to prevent his executing his desire. His stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen, his shoulders were broad, his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire, and in frame he was well-built ... this man's cry it is said to have put thousands to flight. Thus equipped by fortune, physique and character, he was naturally indomitable, and subordinate to no one in the world.

Lands were scarce in Apulia at the time and the roving Guiscard could not expect any grant from Drogo, then reigning, for Humphrey had just received his own county of Lavello. Guiscard soon joined Prince Pandulf IV of Capua in his ceaseless wars with Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno (1048). The next year, however, Guiscard left Pandulf, according to Amatus of Montecassino because Pandulf reneged on a promise of a castle and his daughter's hand. Guiscard returned to his brother Drogo and asked to be granted a fief. Drogo, who had just finished campaigning in Calabria, gave Guiscard command of the fortress of Scribla. Dissatisfied with this position, Guiscard moved to the castle of San Marco Argentano (after which he later named the first Norman castle in Sicily, at the site of ancient Aluntium). During his time in Calabria, Guiscard married his first wife, Alberada of Buonalbergo, the daughter of Lord Girard of Buonalbergo.

Guiscard soon rose to distinction. The Lombards turned against their erstwhile allies and Pope Leo IX determined to expel the Norman freebooters. His army was defeated, however, at the Battle of Civitate sul Fortore (1053) by the Normans, united under Humphrey. Humphrey commanded the centre against the pope's Swabian troops. Early in the battle Count Richard of Aversa, commanding the right van, put the Lombards to flight and chased them down, then returned to help rout the Swabians. Guiscard had come all the way from Calabria to command the left. His troops were held in reserve until, seeing Humphrey's forces ineffectually charging the pope's centre, he called up his father-in-law's reinforcements and joined the fray, distinguishing himself personally, even being dismounted and remounting again three separate times according to William of Apulia. Honored for his actions at Civitate, Guiscard succeeded Humphrey as count of Apulia in 1057, over his elder half-brother Geoffrey. In company with Roger, his youngest brother, Guiscard carried on the conquest of Apulia and Calabria, while Richard conquered the principality of Capua.

Rule

Soon after his succession, probably in 1058, Guiscard separated from his wife Alberada because they were related within the prohibited degrees. Shortly after, he married Sichelgaita, the sister of Gisulf II of Salerno, Guaimar's successor. In return for giving him his sister's hand, Gisulf demanded of Guiscard that he destroy two castles of his brother William, count of the Principate, which had encroached on Gisulf's territory.

The Papacy, foreseeing the breach with the Holy Roman Emperor (the Investiture Controversy), then resolved to recognize the Normans and secure them as allies. Therefore at the Council of Melfi, on 23 August 1059, Pope Nicholas II invested Guiscard as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, and Richard of Aversa as prince of Capua. Guiscard, now "by the Grace of God and St Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, if either aid me, future lord of Sicily", agreed to hold his titles and lands by annual rent of the Holy See and to maintain its cause. In the next twenty years he undertook a series of conquests, winning his Sicilian dukedom.

Subjection of Calabria

At the time of the opening of the Melfitan council in June, Guiscard had been leading an army in Calabria, the first strong attempt to subjugate that very Byzantine province since the Iron-Arm's campaigns with Guaimar. After attending the synod for his investiture, he returned to Calabria, where his army was besieging Cariati. After Guiscard's arrival, Cariati submitted and, before winter was out, Rossano and Gerace also. Only Reggio was left in Byzantine hands when Guiscard returned to Apulia. In Apulia, he worked to remove the Byzantine garrisons from Taranto and Brindisi, before, largely in preparation for his planned Sicilian expedition, he returned again to Calabria, where Roger was waiting with siege engines.

The fall of Reggio, after a long and arduous siege, and the subsequent capitulation of Scilla, an island citadel to which the Reggian garrison had fled, opened up the way to Sicily. Roger first led a tiny force to attack Messina but was repulsed easily by the Saracen garrison. The large invading force which could have been expected did not materialise, for Guiscard was recalled by a new Byzantine army, sent by Constantine X, ravaging Apulia. In January 1061, Melfi itself was under siege and Roger too was recalled. But the full weight of Guiscard's forces forced the Byzantines to retreat and by May Apulia was calm.

Sicilian campaigns

Invading Sicily with Roger, the brothers captured Messina (1061) with comparable ease: Roger's men landed unsighted during the night and surprised the Saracen army in the morning. The Guiscard's troops landed unopposed and found Messina abandoned. Guiscard immediately fortified Messina and allied himself with Ibn at-Timnah, one of the rival emirs of Sicily, against Ibn al-Hawas, another emir. The armies of Guiscard, his brother, and his Moslem friend marched into central Sicily by way of Rometta, which had remained loyal to al-Timnah. They passed through Frazzanò and the pianura di Maniace, where George Maniakes and the first Hautevilles distinguished themselves twenty-one years prior. Guiscard assaulted the town of Centuripe, but their resistance was strong, and he moved on. Paternò fell and he brought his army to Enna (then Castrogiovanni), a formidable fortress. The Saracens sallied forth and were defeated, but Enna itself did not fall. Guiscard turned back, leaving a fortress at San Marco d'Alunzio, named after his first stronghold in Calabria. He returned to Apulia with Sichelgaita for Christmas.

He returned in 1064, but bypassed Enna taking straight for Palermo. However, his campsite was infested with tarantulas and had to be abandoned. The campaign was unsuccessful this time, though a later campaign, in 1072, saw Palermo fall and for the rest of Sicily it was only then a matter of time.

Against the Byzantines

The beach of Atheras (north of Lixouri) where Guiscard died)

Hauteville family mausoleum, where Robert Guiscard was buried. Trinity Abbey in Venosa, Italy. Bari was reduced (April 1071), and the Byzantine forces finally ousted from southern Italy. The territory of Salerno was already Guiscard's; in December 1076 he took the city, expelling its Lombard prince Gisulf, whose sister Sichelgaita he had married. The Norman attacks on Benevento, a papal fief, alarmed and angered Gregory VII, but pressed hard by the emperor, Henry IV, he turned again to the Normans, and at Ceprano (June 1080) reinvested Guiscard, securing him also in the southern Abruzzi, but reserving Salerno.

Guiscard's last enterprise was his attack on the Byzantine Empire, a rallying ground for his rebel vassals, such as Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo. In this enterprise Guiscard crossed swords with his most redoubtable opponent, the only one worthy of himself, in a clash of swords that would become legendary in the years after. In this struggle he met his nemesis in the person of the greatest man of the age: Emperor Alexius. He contemplated seizing the throne of the Basileus and took up the cause of Michael VII, who had been deposed in 1078 and to whose son his daughter had been betrothed. He sailed with 16,000 men of which 1,300 were Norman knights against the empire in May 1081, and by February 1082 had occupied Corfu and Durazzo, defeating the Emperor Alexius in front of the latter (Battle of Dyrrhachium, October 1081). He was, however, recalled to the aid of Gregory VII, besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo by Henry IV (June 1083).

Marching north with 36,000 men he entered Rome and forced Henry to retire, but a short-lived rebellion or seditious tumult (émeute) of the citizens led to a three days' sack of the city (May 1084), after which Guiscard escorted the pope to Rome. His son Bohemund, for a time master of Thessaly, had now lost the Byzantine conquests. Guiscard, returning with 150 ships to restore them, occupied Corfu and Kefalonia, but died along with 500 Norman knights of fever in the latter on July 15 1085, in his 70th year. He was buried in the Hauteville family mausoleum of the Trinity Abbey (SS. Trinità) at Venosa. The town of Fiscardo on Kefalonia is named after him.

Guiscard was succeeded by Roger Borsa, his son by Sichelgaita; Bohemund, his son by an earlier Norman wife Alberada, being set aside. He left two younger sons: Guy, Duke of Amalfi, and Robert Scalio, neither of whom made any trouble for their elder brothers. At his death Guiscard was duke of Apulia and Calabria, prince of Salerno and suzerain of Sicily. His successes had been due not only to his great qualities but to the "entente" with the Papal See. He created and enforced a strong ducal power which, however, was met by many baronial revolts, one being in 1078, when he demanded from the Apulian vassals an "aid" on the betrothal of his daughter. In conquering such wide territories he had little time to organize them internally. In the history of the Norman kingdom of Italy Guiscard remains essentially the hero and founder, though his career ended in "something of a dead end," while his nephew Roger II is the statesman and organizer.

Religion

Robert Guiscard, through his conquest of Calabria and Sicily, was instrumental in bringing Latin Christianity to an area which historically followed the Byzantine rite. Guiscard laid the foundation of a new cathedral in Salerno and of a Norman monastery at Sant'Eufemia in Calabria. This latter monastery, famous for its choir, began as a community of eleven monks from Saint-Evroul in Normandy un