Description
Robert "Guiscard" de Hauteville , sometimes Robert "the Guiscard" ( ghee- SKAR, Modern French: [ɡiskaʁ]; c. 1015 – 17 July 1085), also nicknamed “ Terror Mundi ” (Latin: “Terror of the World”), was a Norman adventurer remembered for his conquest of southern Italy and Sicily in the 11th century.
Robert was born into the Hauteville family in Normandy, the sixth son of Tancred de Hauteville and his wife Fressenda. Through his mother, he was possibly a grandson of Richard the Fearless. He inherited the County of Apulia and Calabria in 1057, and in 1059 he was made Duke of Apulia and Calabria and Lord of Sicily by Pope Nicholas II. He was also briefly Prince of Benevento (1078–1081), before returning the title to the papacy.
Robert's sobriquet, in contemporary Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart , is often rendered "the Resourceful", "the Cunning", "the Wily", "the Fox", or "the Weasel". In Italian sources he is often identified as Roberto il Guiscardo or Roberto d'Altavilla (meaning Robert de Hauteville), while medieval Arabic sources call him simply Abārt al-dūqa (Duke Robert).
*[c.]: circa
