Roger of Sicily and the Normans in Lower Italy 1016-1154

WHEN Melus lit the fire of revolt in Bari, he could count upon the Lombard dynasts to back up his cause. Gaimar IV of Salerno and the Pandulfs of Benevento and Capua believed that the hour was come for the expulsion of the Greeks; they entered into terms with the armed levies of the Apulian towns, and communicated with the rebels by the defiles between Benevento and Ascoli. The revolt, however, had at first little to show; the Catapan Basil recovered Bari in 1010, and Melus was driven into exile, first to the Lombard princes, then to the court of Henry II whom he begged to intervene. Again returning in 1015 to his native country, he made the pilgrimage to Monte Gargano, and there at the end of the year he had that interview with a band of Norman pilgrims which was to bear such astonishing fruit. 

One of the most eventful meetings in history had a befitting background. The shrine of St. Michael on the great mountain promontory of Monte Gargano, “the spur of Italy”, was one of the most famous objects of pilgrimage in the West. A bishop to whom the Archangel had appeared in visions founded there in 493 a church from which the cult of St. Michael spread over Western Europe. Of its daughters the most famous was the chapel on Mont St. Michel on the Norman coast, raised by Bishop Aubert of Avranches in 710 AD. When the Normans became masters of the northern province of France and ceased to be pagans, the cult of St. Michael whose shrine on the island citadel was in their hands came to have the deepest appeal for them; restless fighters as they were and the most militant of Christians, they showed an especial affection for him who had led the legions of God in battle against the powers of Darkness...