The Normans originally came to Italy and Sicily in the 11th and 12th centuries looking for adventure or a livelihood, but once there, found opportunity for fame and fortune. The story of the Norman conquest in Italy and Sicily is indeed one of knights and adventurers, great battles and lowly pillage, opportunism and statesmanship, and crusade and coexistence. This rich and often dramatic study focuses on the eight sons of Tancred of Hauteville, especially Robert Guiscard, who has been called "the most dazzling military ruler between Julius Caesar and Napoleon," and his youngest brother Roger, who conquered Sicily. It discusses how they expanded their lands throughout southern Italy, and then took Sicily from its Muslim rulers. The brothers, often in conflict with each other, challenged both the Papacy and the Byzantine Empire, became the main supporters of the reformed Papacy, and founded a rich, sophisticated kingdom that lasted until the nineteenth century.

"This book is not an effort to tell the whole story of the Normans in Italy. It attempts, instead, to follow the main threads of the early period: how these interlopers from northern Europe managed to find their historical role in the Italian provinces of the Byzantine Empire, how they succeeded in replacing the Byzantine and local rulers, and then how they drove the Arab rulers out of Sicily. In focusing on the protracted period of the conquest, that is, the second half of the eleventh century, this book sets out in particular an account of the achievements of that remarkable set of brothers, the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, who spearheaded the effort"--Preface.

Histories of medieval Europe have typically ignored southern Italy, looking south only in the Norman period. Yet Southern Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries was a complex and vibrant world that deserves to be better understood. In Before the Normans, Barbara M. Kreutz writes the first modern study in English of the land, political structures, and cultures of southern Italy in the two centuries before the Norman conquests. This was a pan-Meditteranean society, where the Roman past and Lombard-Germanic culture met Byzantine and Islamic civilization, creating a rich and unusual mix.

Betrifft die Handschrift Cod. 120.II der Burgerbibliothek Bern. - Abb. auf Umschlag: f. 101r.

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This book is written by two expert scholars. It tells a fascinating story about a period during the Middle Ages when cultures collided and made war on each other over issues of politics, religion, and wealth (much like the present day). With many views of the famous mosaics in Cefal, Monreale, and Palermo, its 275 color illustrations and four maps provide a beautiful visual complement to an authoritative text.

The Norman conquest of southern Italy and Sicily was one of the most dramatic events of the eleventh century. To understand the magnitude of the Normans' achievement, and especially those of Robert Guiscard and Richard of Aversa, it is essential to know something of the world in which they lived and the manner in which they were able to create a Norman state in territories with a very different cultural tradition.