could bring in a society which, like that of Spain, was geared for war. Hautevilles were present in the force of three hundred Normans which joined a large Byzantine expedition which unsuccessfully attacked Sicily in 1038. When the riches of the emirates proved for the moment unobtainable, many Normans took service with the emperor in Constantinople, but others, including the Hautevilles, turned against their erstwhile employers and in 1040 inflicted a series of defeats upon them. At this stage, some semblance of loyalty to the local rulers still remained. William de Hauteville, elected Norman count in 1042, accepted the Lombard Prince Gaimar of Salerno as his overlord, and Robert Guiscard (his half-brother) made an advantageous marriage to the formidable Lombard Princess Sichelgaita. But the characteristic Norman skill of benefiting from rival claims to authority soon manifested itself.
At an assembly held at Capua in 1047, in the presence of the Emperor Henry III, the Norman claims to rights and possessions in the south were confirmed. This action, though clearly intended to emphasize imperial rights of disposition in Italy, in reality provided a crucial de jure recognition of the territorial presence of the Normans, regardless of the rights of those whose lands they had usurped. The papacy, alarmed at the prospect of a rapprochement of these dangerous newcomers with the empire, was also compelled to grant recognition. Pope Leo IX ( 1049-54) had hoped to take advantage of the confused political situation to reassert long-held papal claims to the territory of Benevento. But his forces were ignominiously defeated by the Normans at the battle of Civitate in 1053 and six years later, at the Synod of Melfi ( 1059), Pope Nicholas II confirmed Richard of Aversa (Rainulf's nephew) as prince of Capua and Robert Guiscard as the holder of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily when (as was confidently expected) the island would fall to Christian forces. In fact, it was another thirty years before Sicily was entirely subdued by Robert's brother Roger 'the Great Count', although the great city of Palermo fell in 1072 and the emirate of Taormina in 1079.
Two events mark the final confirmation of Norman power in southern Italy and the formation of important new alliances
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