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Louis Hamilton on the Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and The Graham A. Loud. The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest. The Medieval World. Essex: Longman, 2000. xii + 329pp. $26.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-582-04529-3. Reviewed by Louis I. Hamilton Published on H-Italy (August, 2001) Graham Loud is one of the most important excellent resource for future students of southern scholars of Norman Italy in the English speaking Italy in general and Norman Italy in particular. world today and his Age of Robert Guiscard is es‐ While The Age of Robert Guiscard has weakness‐ pecially welcome. Eleventh-century southern Italy es, the significance of the subject, the gap in the is of increasing interest to scholars today as the historiography, as well as the quality of the schol‐ origin of the "twelfth-century renaissance," the arship are such that any institution where me‐ launching point of European expansion east, and dieval Italy is studied should have a copy of this an important basis for the reforming papacy's work. conflict with imperial partisans. It is a fascinating The strengths of Loud's scholarship are politi‐ culture in its own right where Latin, Greek, and cal and social and the work reflects these. Loud Arab worlds met and (as Loud demonstrates re‐ provides the reader with a very useful overview peatedly) often coexisted fruitfully. For at least of "Southern Italy before the Normans" (chapter I, these reasons, Robert Guiscard has been the sub‐ pp. 12-48) prior to a long discussion of the arrival ject of recent monographs in French and German of the Normans and their "conquest" of the south‐ (Jean-Marie Martin, Italie Normandes XIe- XIIe ern Italian peninsula and Sicily (chapters II- IV, siecles [Paris, 1994]; Huguette Tavianni-Carozzi, pp. 60-165). The remaining two chapters are sepa‐ La terreur du monde; Robert Guiscard et la con‐ rate essays on "The Normans, the papacy, and the quete normande en Italie [Paris, 1996]; and two empires"(chapter V, pp. 186-223), and "Gov‐ Richard Bunemann, Robert Guiskard 1015-1085, ernment and society in Norman Italy" (chapter VI, Ein Normanne erobert Suditalien [Koln, 1997]). In pp. 234- 278). A brief conclusion, genealogical ta‐ Italian there is Paolo Delogu, I Normanni in Italia: bles, fve maps, and a bibliographic essay com‐ Cronache della conquista e del regno (Naples, plete the work. 1984). Anglophone readers, meanwhile, have Robert Guiscard's career was an exciting one, been hampered by the lack of a reliable mono‐ even if it was, as Loud observes, "something of a graph on the topic and Loud's work provides an H-Net Reviews dead end" (p. 294). There can be little doubt that study. As a result, in a book where military mat‐ his legacy left a permanent mark on Southern ters lie behind so many of the events, and where Italy and the Mediterranean, destabilizing both ninety-two pages are given over to the subject of Byzantine and Arab control of the Mediterranean, "conquest" there is no detailed military descrip‐ and merging Norman with Lombard Italy. That tion of any of the numerous battles, of Guiscard's his was not a conquest of Southern Italy per se, forces, or how he deployed them. It will be hard however, has everything to do with the gradual to write such a history since the sources are often "infiltration" of Normans in the early eleventh greatly in conflict in their description of military century and the need for Guiscard to assert him‐ matters, and very often untrustworthy. Students self as the leader of established rulers rather than of that other Norman Conquest might fnd this ab‐ their equal. His constant campaigning in Southern sence surprising. Italy and the Mediterranean emerges here in If Loud had chosen to commit a chapter to the great political detail as a struggle not between sources themselves he would have greatly helped Lombards and Normans, Greeks and Latins, Mus‐ the reader understand why he chose one source lims and Christians, or empires and insurgents, in preference of another in military or other mat‐ but rather as a whole series of permutations of ters. A study of the Norman historians exists (Ken‐ these possible relationships (pp. 235 and 268 for neth B. Wolf, Making History the Normans and examples). The variability in the alliance between their Historians in the Eleventh Century [Philadel‐ Guiscard and Gregory VII, or between Desiderius, phia, 1995]) that Loud describes as "interesting the Lombard abbot of Montecassino, and Guis‐ but flawed" without explanation (p. 320). card, for example, can now be more fully appreci‐ Also absent from the work is any substantial ated in terms of the shifts in Italian, Mediter‐ treatment of the use of ritual or architecture to ranean, or pan-European political dynamics that create or enforce the power of Guiscard. And were always their context. Thus, Loud fnds "no even though San Matteo, the Duomo Guiscard evidence that there was any long-term papal poli‐ built and Gregory VII dedicated in Salerno, graces cy" toward the Normans, and that too much has the cover of the work it is never considered in de‐ been made of the oath of fealty, or lack thereof, to tail (H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Age of Abbot Desiderius; the papacy (pp. 207-208). Loud's study is most suc‐ Montecassino, the Papacy, and the Normans in cessful in tracing out just these sorts of shifting the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries [New dynamics, and so avoiding unnecessary teleolo‐ York, 1983] provides some useful comments). It is gies. He has also very helpfully laid out the fve also surprising that while Loud is concerned with basic kin-groups in Norman Italy that should en‐ Latin and Greek rites he makes no suggestions to able the reader to work in the sources with simi‐ the reader concerning the liturgy of Southern lar dexterity (pp. 246-252). Italy in his bibliography. Closer attention to Guis‐ Loud concludes the body of this work by card's building campaigns and use of ritual will proposing that another book ("Social Change in help future scholars define the shift from military Norman Italy") would be required to fully detail raids to actual conquest and kingdom building his discussion of Italo-Norman society. This is en‐ more closely. (For questions of Southern Italian tirely appropriate as much work remains to be liturgy and architecture in the eleventh century a done on Norman Italy and the "defects" in The useful beginning might be made via the essays in Age of Robert Guiscard can largely be ascribed to Thomas F. Kelly, ed., La cathedrale de Benevent gaps in our knowledge of the period. For example, [Ghent, 1999]; and Helene Toubert, _Une art I know of no reliable, full-length military study of the Italo-Normans, neither does Loud cite such a 2 H-Net Reviews dirige: Reforme gregorienne et iconographie [Paris, 1990]). Nor does Sichelgaita, a powerful leader in her own right, receive extended scrutiny. Interested readers may consult Dorotea Memoli Apicella, Sichelgaita: tra longobardi e normanni (Salerno, 1997). Much work remains to be done on eleventh- century Southern Italy and Loud often points out cases where more work is needed. This is an im‐ portant period for students of medieval Italy, and Graham Loud has provided a much-needed over‐ view of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy that will serve as the fertile ground for many fu‐ ture studies. If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-italy Citation: Louis I. Hamilton. Review of Loud, Graham A. The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest. H-Italy, H-Net Reviews. August, 2001. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5390 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3.
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