Sichelgaita

Sichelgaita, Lombard princess and wife of Robert Guiscard was one of the most important figures in the history of Salerno. Born around 1036 to Prince Guaimaguro IV and sister of Gisulfo II, the one who would be the last Lombard to reign over Salerno, she had a quality education, which took place in a women’s convent, probably that of St. George’s, a classical education of the medieval type, namely adhering to the trivium and quadrivium (the liberal arts), but probably also medicine, as was typical of her city. And her reputation as a physician and an expert in poisons-which was the specialty of the Medical School, the one that made her famous throughout Europe-would cost her, as we shall see, a not-so-positive reputation.
Sichelgaita found herself, in the tumultuous century in which she lived, at the center of all the political and religious problems (which were then intertwined). She went to marry Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke who had put his arms at the service of the Lombards but then had become so powerful that he thought of undermining them from power. Hardly a discreet and hidden bride, she bore eight children to her husband, who had already married a Norman, by whom he had a son, Roger Borsa. Lady of a number of estates in Calabria and Apulia, she is always mentioned in the official letters the pope sends to her husband. At a time of great renewal of the Church, which was seeking moral reform on the one hand and the rediscovery of power autonomous from rulers and the emperor in particular on the other, she hosted with her husband in Melfi an important council at which Pope Nicholas II in 1059 set his reform.
Still by her husband’s side she took part – it is not known in what spirit – in the siege of her city against her brother Gisulph, a siege that ended in the defeat of the Lombard prince who went into exile in Rome, where in the meantime Pope Gregory VII, the most ardent supporter of papal power, had been elected and had come into conflict with Emperor Henry IV, who besieged him in Rome and only Guiscard’s intervention, at the head of a powerful army, succeeded in freeing him. But then, part guest and part hostage, Gregory followed Robert to Salerno, inaugurated the cathedral, where, shortly after, he was buried.
Meanwhile, Guiscard, restless and ambitious, was bent on the conquest of Constantinople, and Sichelgaita was always with him, even to the point of leading troops loyal to her in the battle of Durazzo, in which she was wounded by an arrow and contributed to her husband’s victory.
Upon Guiscard’s death, the inevitable clash broke out between Bohemond, his first-born son, and Sheikhlgaita’s son Roger Borsa, and here legend has it that Sheikhlgaita poisoned her stepson, and then, under threat, provided him with the antidote. Legend, but rooted in local history.
The quarrel between the two half-brothers was resolved, after clashes and battles, by dividing the estates, and entrusting the western part to Roger and the kingdom of Antioch, and then the East, to Bohemond.
Sichelgaita ended her life – full and adventurous – in the quiet of the Abbey of Monte Cassino in 1090.