Robert Guiscard - Religion

Religion

Robert Guiscard, through his conquest of Calabria and Sicily, was instrumental in bringing Latin Christianity to an area which historically followed the Byzantine rite. Guiscard laid the foundation of a new cathedral in Salerno and of a Norman monastery at Sant'Eufemia in Calabria. This latter monastery, famous for its choir, began as a community of eleven monks from Saint-Evroul in Normandy under the abbot Robert de Grantmesnil.

Though his relationship with the pope was rocky, Guiscard preferred to be on good terms with the papacy and he made a gesture of abandoning his first wife in response to church law. Though the popes were often fearful of his growing power, they preferred the strong and independent hand of a Catholic Norman to the rule of a Byzantine Greek. Guiscard received his investment with Sicily at the hands of Pope Nicholas II, who feared the opposition of the Holy Roman Emperor to the Papal reforms more. Guiscard supported the reforms, coming to the rescue of a besieged Pope Gregory VII, who had once excommunicated him for encroaching on the territory of the Papal States. After the Great Schism of 1054, the polarized religious atmosphere served to strengthen Guiscard's alliance with papal forces, resulting in a formidable papal-Norman opposition to the Eastern Empire.