which were to have repercussions throughout the Mediterranean. In 1080 Robert Guiscard swore fealty for his lands not to the Emperor Henry IV, who had offered imperial investiture in return for support against the papacy, but to Pope Gregory VII himself. In 1130 Roger II was crowned 'king of Sicily, the duchy of Apulia, and the principality of Capua'. In political terms papal recognition meant little; the Normans continued to follow the dictates of their own self-interest and in 1085, Gregory VII found himself a virtual prisoner in their hands after a request for aid against imperial forces marching on Rome had simply resulted in a Norman sack of the city. But in ideological terms the papal grant of the lands of southern Italy and Sicily were important steps in the Norman leaders' quest for international recognition. The establishment of a kingdom was the final stage in their progress from virtual obscurity to the heights of acquired aristocracy. The 'irresistible rise' of Norman power in southern Italy cannot merely be explained by the military prowess of their knights, though this was considerable. Only when Sicily, the richest of their prizes, was captured could their future be assured and it was the support of the Church in the achievement of this triumph over the infidel which provided the Normans with the respectability they craved. The campaigns against Byzantine lands in the Balkans led in the 1080s by Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemond of Taranto, confirmed the Normans in the view of many of their contemporaries as champions of the true faith who could be seen to be 'fighting the good fight' against schismatic Greeks. There might be moments of tension in the 'special relationship' between the Italian Normans and the papacy, but their enthusiasm both for the reform of the Church and for the spreading of the faith made them a natural source of recruitment when the First Crusade was preached in 1095. For those, like Bohemond, whose inheritances in Italy were problematic, the possibility of territorial gains in the east coupled with the opportunity to fight for Christendom, once more proved irresistible.

Unlike their counterparts in Spain, the Normans brought no settlers with them. They stood as a ruling élite above

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