ROBERTO the GUISCARD (the ASTUTE). — Son of Tancred of Hauteville, he came to Italy in the fourth decade of the 11th century. He was a valiant warrior and a highly skilled politician.
He initially entered the service of the Lombards of Capua, then passed into the service of his half-brother Drogone, count of Apulia, who sent him to fight on behalf of his other half-brother Unfredo, who succeeded Drogone (1051). He took a valiant part in the battle of Civitate (1053) against Leone I and, upon Unfredo’s death, established himself as count of Apulia, excluding his sons from the succession (Aug. 1057). In 1058, during a period of truce with Gisulfo of Salerno, he married his sister Sichelgaita. In 1059 he concluded the agreement of Melfi with Niccolò II, which made him a vassal of the Holy See for the territories he already possessed and 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, Ruggero (v. Sicilia), with the capture of Reggio in 1060. The following year operations against the Muslims began for the conquest of Sicily. R., promoter of the undertaking, intervened only at certain points, taking part in the liberation of Messina (1061) and the conquest of Catania (1071) and Palermo (1072); he invested his brother with the Calabrian and Sicilian territories occupied and still to be occupied, with the title of count of Calabria and Sicily, reserving to himself supreme sovereignty and direct rule over half the city of Palermo, half the city of Messina, and the Val D'Emone. Meanwhile, R. brought Byzantine domination in Italy to an end with the surrender of Bari (1071), and with those of Salerno (1077) and Benevento (1078), he ended the rule of their respective Lombard princes.
In 1080 (29 June), R. renewed the pact of Melfi with Gregorio VII at Ceprano and received from him the standard of St Peter, with the obligation of defending it against his
enemies. In 1081, under the pretext of a Byzantine dynastic crisis involving one of his daughters, who had married the son of Michele VII Duca, but in reality in order to forestall possible attempts at reconquest, he armed an expedition against the Eastern Empire which, passing through Epirus and Macedonia, reached the vicinity of Thessalonica. Recalled to Italy by a revolt in 1082, while the expeditionary force remaining in the East under the command of his son Boemondo was unable to hold the positions it had reached, he hastened to the aid of Gregorio VII, who was besieged by Enrico IV. The Norman army inflicted further grave damage on the city, already severely battered 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 undertaking.
The Norman and indigenous lords and the urban populations poorly tolerated R.’s supremacy, established in a brigand-like and ferocious manner, and frequent rebellions spread throughout the lands subject to him. Nevertheless, he made use of the feudal bond, firmly controlled by sovereign authority, to bind both independent Normans and indigenous peoples to himself. From Leone IX to Gregorio VII, the popes feared his expansionist power toward the north, but recognized in him the sole support against the Empire and the means of bringing back under Rome’s direct authority the Churches that the Byzantine Empire had subjected to the patriarchate of Constantinople.