Before this, Robert had not even visited Muslim
Sicily. Yet he now engineered a reconquest increasingly
dominated by his younger brother, Roger. Messina fell
in 1061, followed by Palermo in 1072. But rebellions
in Italy forced Robert to return there, effectively leav-
ing Sicily to Roger. Robert, meanwhile, trained his eye
on Byzantium, made enticingly vulnerable by dynastic
struggles and the advance of the Seljuk Turks. Emperor
Michael VII, desperate for aid from the Normans, had
even betrothed his son to Robert’s daughter. After Mi-
chael was dethroned in a coup in 1078, Robert invoked
kinship as a pretext for invading Byzantium. Yet once
again Italy drew him back from the campaign, this
time to rescue Pope Gregory VII from the Holy Roman
emperor Henry IV, who had seized Rome and deposed
Gregory. In a mission notorious for its violence and
for the alleged burning of Rome, Robert retrieved the
pope and took him to Salerno, where he died in May
- Robert resumed his Byzantine offensive, taking
Corfu while his younger son Roger accompanied Nor-
man forces to the mainland. But Robert died suddenly,
on 17 July 1085, when an epidemic of typhoid fever
swept through his army. Roger’s army promptly de-
serted, while Sichelgaita took Robert’s body to Venosa
for burial next to his older brothers in the church of the
Holy Trinity. In the twelfth century, his grave attracted
a suitable epitaph, which began: “Here lies the terror of
the world, Guiscard.”
See also Bohemond of Taranto; Gregory VII, Pope;
Leo IX, Pope
Further Reading
Editions
Amatus. Storia de’ Normanni di Amato di Montecassino, ed. Vin-
cenzo de Bartholomaeis. Fonti per la Storia d’Italia, Scrittori.
Secolo, 11(76). Rome: Tipografi a del Senato, 1935.
Geoffrey Malaterra. De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Sicliae
comitis et Roberti Guiscardi ducis fratris eius, ed. Ernesto
Pontieri. In Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 2nd ed., Vol. 5(1).
Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1925–1928.
William of Apulia. La geste de Robert Guiscard, ed. Marguerite
Mathieu. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e
Neoellenici, 1961.
Critical Studies
Chalandon, Ferdinand. Histoire de la domination normande
en Italie et en Sicile, 2 vols. Paris: A. Picard et Fils, 1907.
(Reprint, New York: B. Franklin, 1960.)
Douglas, David C. The Norman Achievement, 1050–1100. Berke-
ley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969.
Loud, G. A. The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the
Norman Conquest. Essex: Pearson Education, 2000.
Norwich, John Julius. The Other Conquest. New York: Harper
and Row, 1967. (Published in England as The Normans in
the South, 1016–1130.)
Taviani-Carozzi, Huguette. La terreur du monde: Robert Guiscard
et la conquête normande en Italie—Mythe et histoire. Paris:
Fayard, 1996.
Wolf, Kenneth Baxter. Making History: The Normans and Their
Historians in Eleventh-Century Italy. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
Emily AlbuROBERT OF ANJOU
(1278–1343; r. 1309–1343)
Robert of Anjou, king of Naples (“the Wise”) was the
third son of Charles II of Anjou. Robert was held hostage
by the Aragonese from 1285 to 1295. He was created
duke of Calabria and vicar of the Regno for his father in
1297, and he became prince of Salerno in 1304. Robert
succeeded as king of Sicily and count of Piedmont,
Provence, and Forcalquier in 1309, despite the claims
of his eldest brother’s son, Carobert. Robert’s two wives
were Violante of Aragon, sister of James II; and Sancia
of Aragon, daughter of James II. Robert was survived by
two daughters, Joanna and Maria; the former succeeded
him, becoming Queen Joanna I of Naples.
Robert became king as Emperor Henry VII was pre-
paring an expedition to Italy to be crowned. The Guelf
party, which opposed Henry’s plans, looked to Robert
for leadership, but initially he supported Pope Clement
V, who hoped to form a partnership with Henry to bring
peace to Italy. Clement, recognizing Robert’s support,
made him rector of the Romagna (excluding Bologna)
in 1310 and supported a marriage alliance between
Robert’s heir and Henry’s daughter. This alliance was
never achieved, and relations worsened when Robert
refused to do homage to Henry in person for Piedmont,
Provence, and Forcalquier. Robert did not prevent
Henry from reaching Rome and being crowned; but
as the Guelfs’ opposition to Henry grew, an army sent
by Robert hastened the emperor’s withdrawal. Robert
became captain of the Guelf league in February 1313
and soon afterward accepted the lordship of numerous
communes. In April 1313 he became lord of Florence for
fi ve years. Henry responded by condemning Robert, but
Henry died in 1313 while marching on Florence, where
an army sent by Robert was preparing to oppose him.
Meanwhile Frederick of Sicily, supporting Henry in
this quarrel (which he had helped to precipitate), invaded
Calabria, thereby breaking the peace of Caltabellotta.
Robert repulsed him and thereafter made several unsuc-
cessful attempts (in 1314, 1316, 1325–1326, 1335, and
1339–1342) to recover Sicily; these attempts further
impoverished his already troubled realm, and despite
his sincere efforts to impose good justice and admin-
istration, Robert perpetuated corruption and disorder.
The degree of Robert’s failure to impose his ideal of
good government is disputed, but that he failed is not
in question.
Robert continued throughout his reign to be involved
in politics farther north. In 1317, the Florentines re-ROBERT GUISCARD