Roger I, Count of Calabria and Sicily

ROGER I, Count of Calabria and Sicily. - The last son of Tancred of Hauteville, he arrived in Italy when his brother Robert was already count of Apulia; by him he was sent to wage war in Calabria, completed its occupation with the capture of Reggio in 1060, and claimed a part of it on feudal title (1062), when the conquest of Sicily had already been undertaken. This enterprise could appear as a crusade, but it was imposed by military, political and economic necessity.

Robert Guiscard (v.), who had promoted it, took part in it only at certain moments and invested R. with the lands occupied and to be occupied under the title of count of Calabria and of Sicily. The complete occupation of the island, however, required another twenty years of continuous struggle, because the surviving Muslim nuclei, reinforced by elements continually flowing in from Africa, defended themselves stubbornly, at times even taking the offensive, and it could be called concluded only in 1099 with the capture of Noto. Averse to risky adventures, R. did not take part in the first Crusade, but by having the weak successors of Robert Guiscard cede to him the Calabrian and Sicilian territories that the latter had reserved for himself, in exchange for the aid supplied against rebellious subjects, he consolidated his Sicilian-Calabrian lordship and set about organizing it, availing himself of Norman elements and of indigenous elements, Latin, Greek or Muslim.

The conquest of Sicily entailed the necessity of ordering in the island the ecclesiastical relations that the Muslim conquest had profoundly disturbed and of making them correspond 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; therefore Urban II on 5 July 1098 granted R. the right to proceed with the settlement as apostolic legate, and this was the beginning of that institution which took the name of the Sicilian monarchy (v.) and lasted even when the circumstances that had created it no longer existed.

He died at Mileto on 22 June 1101. Recent research shows how he, respecting existing private property, reserved to the royal domain the greatest part of the lands that under the Muslims had belonged to the fisc, limiting feudal concessions to a minimum, while the regular functioning of his sovereign authority caused those seeds of an autonomous regime that had appeared in the last period of Muslim domination to languish and die out in the cities.

Gina Fasoli