ABSTRACT
To begin with, it may be useful to give a brief chronological overview of the history of the Normans in southern Italy. e rst knights arrived in the South around the year 1000.1 During the following decades they served as mercenaries in the armies of the local princes (of Salerno and Naples) and of the Byzantine governors.2 By the early forties of the eleventh century, having observed the endemic instability and political weakness of the various local states, they decided to conquer those territories for themselves. In contrast to the contemporary Norman conquest of England, the Norman adventure in southern Italy was not a dynastic but a private aair. Only in 1059, aer their rst stunning military successes, did Pope Nicholas II assign the conquered territories as a ef to the Norman leader, Duke Robert Guiscard.3 Shortly aerwards Robert invested his younger brother Roger with the county of Calabria and Sicily, the latter still to be conquered.4 In the early 1090s the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily, except for Naples, was concluded. In 1130 the son of the rst Count Roger, Roger II, was crowned king of Sicily. e death of King Tancred in 1194 marks the end of the Norman adventure in Italy. All this is well known.
