ABSTRACT
The recognition of Richard Quarrel as Prince of Capua in the spring of 1059 and of Robert Guiscard as Duke of Apulia a few months later meant a complete reversal of papal policy towards the Normans of southern Italy over the previous decade. Furthermore, when Nicholas II invested Guiscard as duke at the synod of Melfi in August 1059, he also potentially infringed the western empire’s claims to overlordship over southern Italy. These imperial rights were hardly a dead letter, for they had been exercised as recently as 1047 by Henry III. That the pope was in 1059 drawing on imperial precedent was made clear by his use of a banner to invest Guiscard with his lands, for this symbol was the insignia generally used by the emperors in the eleventh century when granting fiefs to their principal subjects: Conrad II had for example used a banner to invest Guaimar IV with the principality of Capua, and Rainulf I with the county of Aversa, in 1038. 1 The consequences of this agreement between the pope and the Norman leaders were to be profound and long-lasting. From the Normans being considered – as a contemporary set of Roman annals described them – the Agareni (children of Hagar [cf. Genesis, xxi.9–21] – ‘untouchables’/’pagans’ – the same word was often used to describe Muslims), they became among the principal allies and supporters of the Gregorian reform papacy in the dispute which developed with the Emperor Henry IV. So intertwined did the interests of the two become that when Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino was elected as pope in 1086–7 imperial supporters perceived him as simply a creature of the Normans. 2
