king, and a mere count must have, for form’s sake at least, a feudal superior. And this part, strangely enough, was taken by the Pope. The relations of the Normans with the Papacy form not the least remarkable chapter in the extraordinary history of their dominion in the south. This period of expansion coincided with the great movement of revival and reform in the church which was taken up with vigor by the German Popes of the middle of the century and culminated some years later in the great pontificate of Gregory VII. So far as the Italian policy of the Papacy was concerned, the movement seems to have had two aspects, an effort to put an end to the disorders produced by simony and by the marriage of the clergy, evils aggravated in the south by the conflicting authority of the Greek and Latin bishops, and a desire to extend the temporal power and influence of the Pope in the peninsula. In both of these directions the conquests of the Normans seemed to threaten the papal interests, and we are not surprised to find the first of this vigorous series of Popes, Leo IX, interfering actively in the ecclesiastical affairs of the region and acting as the defender of the native population, which appealed to him and, in the case of Benevento, formally placed itself under his protection. Finally, with a body of troops collected in Germany and in other parts of Italy, he met the Normans in battle at Civitate, in 1053, and suffered an overwhelming defeat which clearly established the Norman supremacy in Italy. The Normans could not, however, follow up their victory as if it had been won over an ordinary enemy; indeed they seem to have felt a certain embarrassment in the situation, and after humbling themselves before the Pope, they treated him with respect and deference which did not prevent their keeping him for some months in honorable detention at Benevento. Plainly the Normans were not to be subdued by force of arms, and it soon became evident to the reforming party that they would be useful allies against the Roman nobles and the unreformed clergy, as well as against the dangerous authority of the German emperor. Accordingly in 1059, the year in which the college of cardinals received its first definite constitution as the electors of the Pope, Nicholas II held a council at the Norman hill-fortress of Melfi, attended by the higher clergy of the south and also by the two chief Norman princes, Richard of Aversa and Robert Guiscard. In return for the Pope’s investiture of their lands, these princes took an oath of allegiance and fealty to the Holy See and agreed to pay an annual rent to the Pope for their domains; in Robert’s oath, which has been preserved, he styles himself “by the grace of God and St. Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, with their help, hereafter of Sicily.” As duke and vassal of the Pope, the cattle-thief of the Calabrian mountains had henceforth a recognized position in feudal society.