Europe · High and late Middle Ages
Norman Italy
1017–1130
Beginning around 1017, Norman adventurers — most importantly the sons of Tancred of Hauteville — entered southern Italy as mercenaries and became conquerors. Robert Guiscard and his brothers carved out lordships in Apulia and Calabria.
- Existed
- 1017–1130
- Shown on the map
- 1040–1138
- Peak area
- 79k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
Beginning around 1017, Norman adventurers — most importantly the sons of Tancred of Hauteville — entered southern Italy as mercenaries and became conquerors. Robert Guiscard and his brothers carved out lordships in Apulia and Calabria. At the Battle of Civitate (1053) the Normans defeated and captured Pope Leo IX; rather than being destroyed, they were subsequently legitimized. At Melfi in 1059, Pope Nicholas II invested Robert Guiscard as Duke of Apulia, Calabria and (prospectively) Sicily, turning former enemies into papal vassals. Robert's younger brother Roger I ("the Great Count") conquered Muslim Sicily between 1061 and 1091 (Palermo fell 1072). By 1130 the scattered Norman conquests were united under Roger I's son, Roger II.
Common questions
- What was Norman Italy?
- Beginning around 1017, Norman adventurers — most importantly the sons of Tancred of Hauteville — entered southern Italy as mercenaries and became conquerors. Robert Guiscard and his brothers carved out lordships in Apulia and Calabria.
- When did Norman Italy exist?
- Norman Italy existed 1017–1130. On this map it is drawn 1040–1138.
- How large was Norman Italy?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, Norman Italy covered about 79,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia and the scholarship of Donald Queller, Thomas Madden and Jonathan Harris on the Fourth Crusade, whose post-conspiracy reading of 1204 this document follows. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Norman conquest of southern Italy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_southern_Italy
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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