Guiscard,
Robert
Guiscard,
Robert (1015-1085), Norman adventurer, born near Coutances in Normandy
(Normandie). Like many other impoverished Norman knights, Guiscard went
to Italy, arriving there about 1046. After serving in the forces of
the prince of Capua, he organized an army to secure possessions for
himself in Calabria. When Pope Leo IX attempted to expel the Normans
from Italy in 1053, Guiscard played an important role in defeating the
papal forces at Civitate, near the modern city of San Severo.
After
the death of his older brother Humphrey Guiscard, Robert became leader
of the Normans in Italy. The pope, seeking independence from the Holy
Roman Empire, decided to enlist the Normans as allies. In 1059 Pope
Nicholas II created Robert "by the Grace of God and Saint Peter,
duke of Apulia and Calabria and, with their help, hereafter of Sicily."
In return, Robert acknowledged the pope as his feudal overlord. Sicily
was in Byzantine hands at the time and so Robert and his brother Roger
I embarked on a series of campaigns, capturing Messina in 1061 and Palermo
in 1072.
Turning
his attention to the Balkans in 1081, Robert gained a great victory
over the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus at Durrës, Albania.
His campaigns at Macedonia and Thessalía were being carried on,
meanwhile, by his son Bohemond I. Robert was recalled from his victorious
campaigns in 1085 to go to the aid of Pope Gregory VII, who was besieged
in the castle of Sant'Angelo by Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Robert
drove Henry from Rome, and reduced one-third of the city to ashes. Because
of the unpopularity of Gregory VII in Rome, he took the pope to Monte
Cassino. Robert then went to the support of Bohemond in the Greek campaign,
but died of fever at Kefallinía a few weeks later.
