RUGGERO I, Count of Calabria and Sicily. — The youngest son of Tancred of Hauteville, he arrived in Italy when his brother Robert was already Count of Apulia; he was sent by him to wage war in Calabria, completed its occupation with the capture of Reggio in 1060, and claimed a part of it as a feudal title (1062), by which time the conquest of Sicily had already been undertaken. This enterprise could appear as a crusade, but it was imposed by military, political, and economic necessities.
Robert the Guiscard (v.), who had promoted it, participated only at certain moments and invested R. with the lands occupied and to be occupied with the title of Count of Calabria and Sicily. The complete occupation of the island, however, required another twenty years of continuous struggle, because the surviving Muslim nuclei, reinforced by elements continually arriving from Africa, defended themselves fiercely, sometimes even taking the offensive, and could be considered concluded only in 1099 with the capture of Noto. At least in the early stages, R. did not participate in the First Crusade, but by securing from the weak successors of Robert the Guiscard the Calabrian and Sicilian territories that he had reserved for himself, in exchange for aid provided against rebellious subjects, he consolidated his Siculo-Calabrian lordship and devoted himself to organizing it, making use of Norman elements and indigenous elements, Latin, Greek, or Muslim.
The conquest of Sicily entailed the necessity of reorganizing ecclesiastical relations on the island, which Muslim rule had profoundly disrupted, and adapting them to the conditions created by the new circumstances. R. therefore turned to the Holy See. This, however, was still preoccupied by the struggles against Emperor Henry IV; thus, on 5 July 1098, Urban II granted R. the authority to proceed with the reorganization as apostolic legate, and this was the beginning of that institution which took the name of the Sicilian monarchy (v.) and endured even when the circumstances that had created it no longer existed.
He died at Mileto on 22 June 1101. Recent research shows how, while respecting existing private property, he reserved for the royal demesne the greater part of the lands that, under the Muslims, had belonged to the fisc, limiting feudal grants to a minimum, while the regular functioning of his sovereign authority caused the seeds of autonomous rule that had manifested themselves in the final period of Muslim domination to wither and die in the cities.