ROBERT GUISCARD (The Cunning). - Son of Tancred of Hauteville, he came to Italy in the fourth decade of the 11th century. He was a valiant warrior and a most skillful politician.
He first entered the service of the Lombards of Capua, then passed into the service of his half-brother Drogo, count of Apulia, who sent him to fight on behalf of his other half-brother Humphrey, who had succeeded Drogo (1051). He took a valiant part in the battle of Civitate (1053) against Leo I, and on Humphrey's death he imposed himself as count of Apulia, excluding Humphrey's sons from the succession (Aug. 1057). In 1058, at a moment of truce with Gisulf of Salerno, he married his sister Sichelgaita. In 1059 he concluded with Nicholas II the agreement of Melfi, which made him a vassal of the Holy See for the territories he already possessed and for those he would conquer, with the title of duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. The occupation of Calabria was completed by the last of the Hauteville brothers, Roger (v. RUGGERO I, count of Sicily), with the capture of Reggio in 1060. The following year operations against the Muslims for the conquest of Sicily began. R., the promoter of the enterprise, intervened only at certain moments, taking part in the liberation of Messina (1061), in the conquest of Catania (1071) and of Palermo (1072), and he invested his brother with the Calabrian and Sicilian territories occupied and to be occupied, with the title of count of Calabria and Sicily, reserving for himself the high sovereignty and the direct dominion of half the city of Palermo, of half the city of Messina and of the Val D'Emone. Meanwhile R. marked the end of Byzantine domination in Italy with the surrender of Bari (1071), and with those of Salerno (1077) and Benevento (1078) the end of the respective Lombard princes.
In 1080 (29 June) R. renewed at Ceprano with Gregory VII the pact of Melfi and received from him the banner of St. Peter with the obligation to defend it against his enemies. In 1081, on the pretext of a Byzantine dynastic crisis that involved a daughter of his, who had married the son of Michael VII Ducas, but in reality to forestall any possible attempts at a recovery, he armed against the Eastern Empire an expedition which, through Epirus and Macedonia, reached as far as Thessalonica. Recalled to Italy by a revolt in 1082, while the expeditionary corps left in the East under the command of his son Bohemond was unable to hold the positions reached, he hastened to the aid of Gregory VII, besieged by Henry IV. The Norman army brought new and most grievous damage to the city, already sorely tried by the siege. In the autumn of 1082 he resumed the campaign against the Byzantines, but his death (17 July 1085) at Cephalonia and the civil war among his sons prevented the continuation of the enterprise.
The Norman and native lords and the city populations ill tolerated the supremacy of R., established in a brigand-like and ferocious manner, and frequent rebellions spread through the lands subject to him. Yet he made use of the feudal bond, firmly controlled by the sovereign authority, to bind to himself both independent Normans and natives. From Leo IX to Gregory VII, the popes feared his expansive force toward the north, but recognized in him the only support against the Empire and the prop for bringing back under the direct subjection of Rome the Churches that the Byzantine Empire had subjected to the patriarchate of Constantinople.
Bibliography12 works
Gina Fasoli