page_title: Roger II of Sicily
section_title: Imperial invasion
hierarchical_section_title: Roger II of Sicily / Reign / Rise to power in southern Italy / Imperial invasion
caption_attribution_description: English: Copy of Al Idrisi Tabula Rogeriana with arabic names translitterated into the roman alphabet.
context_page_description: Roger II was King of Sicily and Africa, son of Roger I of Sicily and successor to his brother Simon. He began his rule as Count of Sicily in 1105, became Duke of Apulia and Calabria in 1127, then King of Sicily in 1130 and King of Africa in 1148. By the time of his death at the age of 58, Roger had succeeded in uniting all the Norman conquests in Italy into one kingdom with a strong centralized government.
context_section_description: In 1136, the long-awaited imperial army, led by Lothair and the duke of Bavaria, Henry the Proud, descended the peninsula to support the three rebels. Henry, Robert, and Ranulf took a large contingent of troops to besiege the peninsular capital of the kingdom, Salerno. Roger remained in Sicily, leaving its mainland garrisons helpless under the chancellor Robert of Selby, while even the Byzantine emperor John II Comnenus sent subsidies to Lothair. Salerno surrendered, and the large army of Germans and Normans marched to the very south of Apulia. There, in June 1137, Lothair besieged and took Bari. At San Severino, after the victorious campaign, he and the pope jointly invested Ranulf as duke of Apulia in August 1137, and the emperor then retired to Germany. Roger, freed from the utmost danger, immediately disembarked in Calabria, at Tropea, with 400 knights and other troops, probably mostly Muslims. After having been welcomed by the Salernitans, he recovered ground in Campania, sacking Pozzuoli, Alife, Capua, and Avellino. Sergius was forced to acknowledge him as overlord of Naples and switch his allegiance to Anacletus. This moment marked the fall of an independent Neapolitan duchy, and thereafter the ancient city was fully integrated into the Norman realm.
  From there Roger moved to Benevento and northern Apulia, where Duke Ranulf, although steadily losing his bases of power, had some German troops plus some 1,500 knights from the cities of Melfi, Trani, Troia, and Bari, who were "ready to die rather than lead a miserable life." On 30 October 1137, at the Battle of Rignano (next to Monte Gargano), the younger Roger and his father, with Sergius of Naples, met the defensive army of Duke Ranulf. It was the greatest defeat of Roger II's career. Sergius died and Roger fled to Salerno. It capped Ranulf's meteoric career: twice victor over Roger. Anacletus II died in January 1138, but Innocent II refused to reconcile with the King.
  In spring 1138, the royal army invaded the Principality of Capua, with the precise intent of avoiding a pitched battle and of dispersing Ranulf's army with a series of marches through difficult terrain. While the count of Alife hesitated, Roger, now supported by Benevento, destroyed all the rebels' castles in the region, capturing an immense booty. Ranulf himself, who had taken refuge in his capital Troia, died of malarial fever on 30 April 1139. Later, Roger exhumed his body from his grave in Troia cathedral and threw it in a ditch, only to repent subsequently and rebury him decently.
  At this time, with Sergius dead, Alfonso was elected to replace him and together with his brother Roger went off to conquer the Abruzzi.
caption: The Tabula Rogeriana, an ancient world map drawn by Muhammad al-Idrisi for Roger II of Sicily in 1154. The north is at the bottom, and so the map appears "upside down" compared to modern cartographic conventions.
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