Everything about Melus Of Bari totally explained
Melus (also
Milus or
Meles,
Melo in
Italian) (died
1020) was a
Lombard nobleman from the
Apulian town of
Bari, whose ambition to carve for himself an autonomous territory from the
Byzantine catapanate of Italy in the early
11th century inadvertently sparked the
Norman presence in southern Italy.
Melus and his brother-in-law
Dattus rebelled in
1009 and quickly took Bari itself. In
1010, they took
Ascoli and
Troina, but the new
catapan,
Basil Mesardonites, gathered a large army, and on
11 June 1011 Bari fell. Melus fled to the protection of Prince
Guaimar III of Salerno and Dattus to the Benedictine abbey of
Montecassino, where the anti-Greek monks, at the insistence of
Pope Benedict VIII, gave him a fortified tower on the
Garigliano. Melus' family, however, was captured and carted off to
Constantinople.
In 1016, according to the Norman chronicler
William of Apulia, Melus went to the shrine of
Saint Michael at
Monte Gargano to intercept some
Norman pilgrims. There he petitioned
Rainulf Drengot and a band of Norman exiles to aid in his rebellion, assuring them of the ease of victory and the abundance of spoils. By 1017, Norman adventurers were already heading south. They joined with the Lombard forces under Melus at
Capua and marched into
Apulia immediately, trying to catch the Byzantines off-guard. Successful in an encounter in May on the banks of the Fortore against forces sent by the
catapan Leo Tornikios Kontoleon, they'd seized all the territory between the Fortore and
Trani by September and were ravaging Apulia; in October, however, they experienced a stunning reverse.
The new
catapan,
Basil Boiannes, had garnered a massive force of reserves and a contingent of the famed
Varangian Guard from Emperor
Basil II. He met the Norman and Lombard hosts on the
Ofanto at the site of the famous defeat dealt the
Romans by
Hannibal in
216 BC:
Cannae. This
second battle of Cannae was a disaster both for the Normans, who lost their leader
Gilbert, and for the Lombards, whose leaders fled: Melus to the "Samnite lands" (Amatus) of the
Papal States and Dattus to Montecassino and the tower again.
Melus continued wandering through south and central Italy and finally northwards to
Germany. He ended up at the imperial court of
Henry II in
Bamberg. Though greatly honoured (he was given the empty title Duke of Apulia by the emperor), he died a broken man only two years later, just after Pope Benedict arrived in Bamberg at
Eastertide to discuss an imperial response to the Byzantine victories. He was given a lavish funeral and an ornate tomb in the new
Bamberg Cathedral by his old ally, the emperor. His son
Argyrus would carry on the struggle for Lombard independence in Apulia after his return from imprisonment in Constantinople.
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