Sikelgaita, the warrior duchess of Salerno

What bizarre, zigzag chain of events-even for the Middle Ages-led to the unlikely sight, in May, 1076, of a fair young princess, clad in shining armor and astride her steed, riding next to her husband, Robert of Hauteville (known as Robert "Guiscard" - the Resourceful), right up to the walls of her own native city of Salerno, ruled by her own brother, and demanding its surrender?

Sikelgaita was born in 1035 into the ruling family of the Duchy of Salerno. She was the daughter of Gaimar V, who was murdered in a palace coup. Her brother, Gisulf, retook the Duchy, and she retook her place as the most privileged woman in the Duchy. She spent much of her time studying medicine and - an unlikely combination, perhaps - pursuing the "manly" arts of horseback-riding and swordplay.

Her native Lombard Duchy of Salerno was by 1050 already in trouble, at least potentially. It had held the ever-encroaching Byzantine forces at bay, but the Normans would be more difficult. The Normans had come on the southern Italian scene in the early 1000s. Depending on the source you choose to believe, they originally were either pilgrims who liked what they saw and decided to stay, or they were itinerant warriors who actually helped the Salernitans repel a Saracen (Arab) raid. The Normans were then asked to stay and did. Or, perhaps, they were simply following the same Norman nature that sent them out from Denmark centuries earlier, seeking worlds to conquer. In any event, by the mid-1000s, Robert Guiscard and a number of his Hauteville clan were firmly entrenched in the south. They set about taking over, piecemeal, what was left of Lombard holdouts, Byzantine enclaves, and brigand and pirate hideouts, as well as taking on the great Arab armies on the island of Sicily.

"Guiscard" is a by-name meaning "resourceful." Apparently, Robert was given the name of "Viscardus" somewhat ironically by his first wife's nephew (1) for knowing whom to marry and (2) for his uncanny ability to know when to be ruthless and when to be forgiving. There is no doubt that he had the rough-and-tumble Norman lust for battle, but he could also be diplomatic. His wisdom extended to not being vindictive in war; he was not driven by the petty need to brutalize those whom he had defeated. You fought, you won, and you consolidated, and you do that by turning enemies into ex-enemies and then into allies. But - here's the very wise Robert - why wage war against a formidable enemy, Salerno, when you could merge both your dynasties by marriage? Why not blend the ancient, noble Lombards of Salerno with the vigorous, warrior Normans? All you needed was a handsome, robust and willing groom-himself, and a beautiful, robust and willing bride-Sikelgaita.

There is no evidence that the young noblewoman, Sikelgaita, was dragged kicking and screaming into a marriage she detested. Quite the contrary, if sources are to be believed. Sure, it may have been an arranged marriage of convenience, and who knows if she was truly smitten, but - for Heaven's sake! - it was marriage to Robert of Hauteville, that great, good-looking, charismatic warrior and the one allmighty walker-on-water figure of the 11th century in Italy. She, herself, was astute and knew what her duchy stood to gain by such a union. She had seen the handwriting on the wall, and it was all writ large in Norman French. Now, at least, the Norman and Lombards might rule much of Italy together.

The marriage came about in 1058. It didn't exactly enjoy the blessings of Sikelgaita's brother, Gisulf, but he, too, was intelligent enough to know that his duchy could use some friendly Normans in the family. He was beset by the nearby Duchy of Capua as well as by marauding bands of very unfriendly Normans under the leadership of Robert's younger brother, William of Hauteville.

In order to enter the holy bond of matrimony to his Lombard princess, Robert had to have his first marriage annulled, which he managed to do by admitting to incest. Robert and his first wife, a Norman, were nowhere close to the forbidden degree of kinship that defines incest, but it was a ploy that worked. Robert took his new, young bride off to his capital city of Melfi.

The next 18 years of Sikelgaita's life leading up to the siege of her own home town of Salerno were spent as a constant companion of her husband, helping him solidify his hold on southern Italy. All accounts of her activities report that she was his trusted advisor in affairs of state and military matters. Also, she was very devout, which helped her smooth over Robert's difficulties with the Church. She was genuinely troubled over the fate of her husband's immortal soul, since he had the bad habit of getting himself excommunicated every now and then for his devil-may-care invasions of Papal land. Sikelgaita's diplomatic skill was crucial in straightening out many of these thorny problems. On one such occasion, Pope Nicolas II wound up blessing Robert as the rightful ruler of the land he had already taken (most of southern Italy), all this in return for Robert's oath of allegiance to the Pope and the Church.

When the time came, as it had to, for Robert of Hauteville to demand the surrender of Salerno, the last remaining large Lombard Duchy in the South, it was no doubt his wife who kept him from simply attacking her native city outright. And, thus, the opening scene of this story came to pass. Sikelgaita went into the city and begged her brother to surrender. He wouldn't, so Robert simply lay siege to Salerno and, bluntly, starved them out. It took months, but it was effective. Sikelgaita's had managed to save her brother's life. He went into exile in Rome.

Interestingly, the fortunes of Salerno took a turn for the better under the combined rule of Robert and his hometown princess, Sikelgaita. The medical school returned to its splendor of old when one of the great itinerant scholars of the Middle Ages, Constantine of Carthage, called the "African", was caught secretly wandering around the premises of the medical school, admiring it. He had seen the great medical schools of Islam, but he had not seen anything like this, he told Robert-at which point Robert hired him to teach there. Also, the Lombard-Normans built a new city wall and a new cathedral.

His ambitions, however, went well beyond southern Italy. Just as he had woven himself into the old and venerable Lombard line to fix his grip on the south, he and Sikelgaita in 1074 had arranged the marriage of their daughter, Olympiade, into the ruling Dukas dynasty of Constantinople. Such a marriage would set up Norman rule not just of southern Italy but of the entire Eastern Roman Empire. It would be a force without equal in Europe. Potentially, Robert saw, if not himself, then his children as the reuniters of the recently splintered Christian faith. (The great Schism between the eastern and western churches had occurred in 1054 when Pope Leo IX and the Greek patriarch, Michael Cerularius, mutually excommunicated each other.) There would again be a true empire, and here, some sources say, Robert spoke of his ambitions to conquer Persia, as had Alexander.

A palace coup in Greece, however, caused the new Byzantine dynasty to back out of the proposed merger of dynasties. Robert would have to do it the hard way, and it is in this adventure that Sikelgaita's reputation as a warrior is grounded. It is true that on a number of earlier occasions she had taken the field of battle with her husband. He trusted her to lead his men and she did so, successfully. But the oft-told story of the Valkyrie-like blonde berserker - the into-the-jaws-of-death princess, charging into battle, spitting fire and railing at her men to stand their ground and fight - comes from her heroics at the battle of Durazzo on the Albanian coast in October, 1081. Here the Normans set out to do militarily what they had failed to do through the diplomacy of marriage: conquer Byzantium.

The best description of Sikelgaita in battle on that occasion comes from Anna Comnena, the daughter of Alexis I Comnenus, the emperor of Constantinople at the time of Robert's invasion. She writes of the Norman invasion of Greece in her 15-volume history, The Alexiad, written a few decades after the events took place. The Norman invasion was massive, meant as it was to overthrow the rulers of Byzantium. They met forceful Greek resistance, however, at which point the Norman advance stalled, one front was commanded by Sikelgaita. Her men faltered, and, here, Comnena writes admiringly of her ferocious enemy:

In spite of being badly wounded, Sikelgaita fought valiently and held her part of the battlefield until Robert arrived with reinforcements. The battle was won, but the planned takeover of Byzantium had to be shelved. Matters back in Italy commanded Robert's attention. But in 1084, Sikelgaita again went with her husband to the battlefields of Greece to try and finish what they had started. They immediately met and defeated a combined Venetian-Byzantine fleet in a ferocious encounter; they took

The Abbey of Montecassino, where Sikelgaita spent much of her time in religious seclusion after Robert's death, has been destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly over the past centuries.

the island of Corfu and then Cefalonia. At that point, the story of Robert of Hauteville, this greatest of Norman conquerors (his better-known cousin, William the Conqueror, is said to have bolstered his own morale by thinking of Robert's exploits) comes to a sudden end. After the battle of Cefalonia, he took ill and died quickly in July of 1085. Sikelgaita was by his side when he died, and she arranged to have his mortal remains returned to Italy to rest in the Hauteville crypt in the Cathedral of Venosa in Puglia.

Sikelgaita died in March of 1090 in Salerno, the city of her birth. She had more or less "retired" after her husband's death and spent much of her time with her old teachers or in religious seclusion in the Abbey of Montecassino, a place to which she had a lifelong bond and devotion. She willed that she should be buried there.

Source: http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/blog24.html