The Battle of Civitate was fought on 18 June 1053 in southern Italy, between the Normans, led by the Count of Apulia Humphrey of Hauteville, and a Swabian-Italian-Lombard army, organised by Pope Leo IX and led on the battlefield by Gerard, Duke of Lorraine, and Rudolf, Prince of Benevento. The Norman victory over the allied papal army marked the climax of a conflict between the Norman mercenaries who came to southern Italy in the eleventh century, the de Hauteville family, and the local Lombard princes. By 1059 the Normans would create an alliance with the papacy, which included a formal recognition by Pope Nicholas II of the Norman conquest in south Italy, investing Robert Guiscard as Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and Count of Sicily.
Background
The arrival of the Normans in Italy
The Normans had arrived in Southern Italy in 1017, in a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of St. Michael Archangel in Monte Sant'Angelo sul Gargano (Apulia). These warriors had been used to counter the threat posed by the Saracens, who, from their bases in Sicily, raided South Italy without much resistance from the Lombard and Byzantine rulers of the affected lands.
The availability of this mercenary force (the Normans were famous for being militariter lucrum quaerens, "seeking wealth through military service") could not escape the notice of the Christian rulers of Southern Italy, who employed the Normans in their internal wars. The Normans took advantage of this turmoil; in 1030, Rainulf Drengot obtained the County of Aversa.
After this first success, many other Normans sought to expand into Southern Italy. Among their most important leaders were Hauteville family members. In short time, the Hauteville created their own state: William Iron Arm became, in 1042, Count of Apulia.
The anti-Norman coalition
The Norman advances in southern Italy had alarmed the papacy for many years, though the impetus for the battle itself came about for several reasons. First, the Norman presence in Italy was more than just a case of upsetting the power balance, for many of the Italian locals did not take kindly to the Norman raiding and wished to respond in kind, regarding them as little better than brigands. An abbot from Normandy, John of Fécamp, for example wrote of such local sentiments in a letter to Pope Leo himself:
The raiding activities which brought about such hatred also occurred in the see of Benevento, a deed not emphasized in the Norman chronicles, but for Pope Leo this was the more significant concern in the political instability of the region. In fact, according to Graham Loud, the Beneventians, who previously had been approached by both the German Emperor Henry III and by the Pope previously to swear fealty, finally appealed and submitted to Leo to personally take over the control of the city (as well as lifting a previous excommunication) in 1051. Nevertheless, there was certainly a strong reaction to Drogo's death, with his brother Humphrey taking over the leadership position and in response scoured the countryside for his enemies: