this is a quasi-historical text that both documents and justifies the norman invasion of southern italy. unfortunately, as our sources for this period are not very good, we have no option but to rely on shoddy quasi-mythical histories and deductive logic to build an understanding of these events.
malaterra begins by providing a rational explanation for the migration: some of the twelve sons of tancred d'hauteville looked around their father's realm and decided that it could not be split up in a way that would provide enough land (and slaves, no doubt) for all of them. they decided that it would be in the benefit of all of them to look elsewhere for new land rather than to engage in conflicts with each other. this explanation of the norman migration south is certainly appealing in it's logic, as well as it's biblical simplicity, but does it hold up to careful scrutiny?
malaterra's narrative is actually really not that far removed from the contemporary explanation of the viking migrations and invasions as being driven by a combination of population growth and climate change. yet, why would they feel the need to go as far as italy? if they were truly such powerful warriors, why not subdue the land around them and build a great empire? the text provides an answer, actually: god led them to apulia. yet, i think that modern scholarship requires a better answer than that they were led by god. if we acknowledge the consistency between malaterra's explanation and the contemporary scientific explanation, we still haven't answered the question of "why did the normans go to italy?".
whatever the reasons for them leaving normandy were, they were first accepted into the employ of the prince of capua (pandulf IV), who paid them to attack the prince of salerno (guaimar IV)). in time, the prince of salerno offered a higher wage and the norman mercenaries instead attacked the prince of capua (in 1038).
so, the narrative actually breaks from the fictional background fairly quickly - the normans came to italy not as conquerors looking for land but as invited mercenaries in the employ of local aristocrats. the wealthy italian (lombard in background) princes were probably looking to build up their personal varangian guards to aid in defense and in conquest. having viking mercenaries in one's army was fashionable amongst the mediterranean despots of the period.
so, we can answer the question of "why italy?" with some certainty - because they were lured into a mercenary army by the promise of a steady pay check. it should also be noted that norman mercenary armies were already established in southern italy before any members of the de hauteville family arrived. so much for divine guidance.
the empire, of course, was very sensitive to the existence of large barbarian armies on it's peripheral. in general, it would prefer to avoid that altogether. yet, if these barbarian armies must exist then self-preservation demanded they be played off against each other. see, because barbarians are barbarians, it follows that they are easy to control through appealing to their barbaric nature. this is the fundamental axiom of greek military strategy over two thousand years worth of history. as such, the normans were convinced to attack the saracens in sicily, under the command of the general maniaces.
the diversion was initially successful, but it very quickly backfired. the normans did attack sicily, but they also attacked byzantine italy almost immediately afterwards. malaterra justifies this by arguing that the greek general refused to share the booty from the raid, but this is blatant whitewashing that is not at all consistent with byzantine strategy and makes almost no historical sense. rather, the invasion was called off by maniaces halfway through the conquest. the causes of the called-off invasion seem to be well understood and have to do with byzantine politics; the normans seem to have plundered italy simply because they were brought back there before they got the chance to plunder sicily. in any case, the empire walked out of this episode in barbarian management with no greater control of sicily and a new barbarian headache in southern italy that had to be addressed immediately. several attempts to expel the normans were met not just with failure but with greater losses; the byzantines eventually had to admit defeat, and it was with this defeat that italy was lost to constantinople forever.
the way things worked at the time was that if you didn't want to pledge allegiance to the emperor then you had to pledge allegiance to the pope (or face genocide). so, successfully expelling the byzantines meant inviting a papal invasion. while the normans, under humphrey, are said to have defeated the invading germans, they were also coerced into the roman church's hegemony (and out of constantinople's sphere) by the granting of a fief. see, when you defeat the church in battle that means that it must acknowledge your newfound right to be legally inferior to it. nor is there any debate on the subject - unless, of course, you'd like to pledge allegiance to the emperor. the normans responded to this by expanding their rule in central italy.
while humphrey was conquering the center of the peninsula, robert guiscard was conquering the south of it. when he shifts the narrative to the first of the two main characters of the text, malaterra brings out a truth that may have been lost up to that point - with all the conflict occurring between princes and churches, the italian masses may very well have met the normans as liberators (which is something they had no intent of being). when they rounded up the tax collectors and the wealthiest citizens for torture and plunder, they may very well have been cheered on. in the long run, however, the italian normans proved to be cruel and unpopular leaders that were constantly putting down revolts.
so, a conflict appears to be brewing between humphrey and guiscard. if one happened, the text is silent about it - guiscard is said to have been elected leader after humphrey died of an illness. see the pages on tancred d'hauteville and robert guiscard. the second main character that appears is roger of sicily, initially in an antagonistic role against guiscard, who was probably not actually his brother. malaterra spins a tale about roger being upset that he wasn't being taken seriously, but this isn't worth deconstructing. rather, questions about the nature of humphrey's death are relevant in the context of roger's alliance with geoffrey in their apparent resistance to his rule, as are questions about both the nature of the succession and the extent of guiscard's functional rule. guiscard put down several revolts of various character, often with the aid of roger.
in any case, roger and guiscard then unite in an uneasy alliance to finish the conquest of southern italy (apulia and calabria) from the byzantines, which led to guiscard accepting the title of duke from the pope. interestingly, sicily (then occupied by arabs) was in the area that guiscard was made duke over. what that actually means is that guiscard was given the pope's blessing to invade and conquer the island. this allowed him to eventually (the chronology is disputed) appoint roger as count of sicily.
so, we see that the conquests of these norman warlords consistently brought regions that were then lost to the papal sphere back into it. this would continue into the crusades. while the chroniclers want to present these norman warlords as independent agents, they seem to have been highly manipulated as mercenaries within a three-way (muslim, papal, byzantine) struggle for control of the mediterranean and to have ultimately largely been proxies of the pope. malaterra is careful to point out that the justification for the invasion of sicily was religious, but this is probably only a half-truth. on that note, the high number of norman warriors that were involved in the crusades is worth pointing out. were the crusades partially a pro-active way for the pope to rid himself of these barbarians, while trying to reclaim lost lands in the process?
leading up to the invasion, there was further conflict between roger and robert. malaterra again spins a story that isn't worth deconstructing, but the crux of the problem seemed to be about primacy and roger seems to have been the more popular ruler, despite the church's apparent preference for guiscard (at least at this point). an agreement was reached that gave roger more control over calabria, which gave him a safe base to leave his family and to attack sicily from. by appointing roger count of sicily, however, guiscard may have actually been trying to eliminate a challenger to his own power by sending him overseas. this reading is complicated by the alliance between the two men, which led to the need for roger to continually come back to the mainland to aid robert in putting down revolts. further, robert seems to have accompanied roger on some of the missions in sicily. due to the inefficacy of his brother's rule, roger wasn't able to complete the conquest of sicily until after his death in 1085.
guiscard even went so far as to launch a failed invasion of greece, with the aim of seizing the imperial throne. guiscard had "betrothed" his daughter to marry the son of the emperor but the emperor was deposed before the marriage took place, thereby taking guiscard out of the line of succession, which was no doubt the purpose of the whole arrangement. so, again, personal ambition aligns with papal ambition. the story states that guiscard was winning in greece (and that the war was lost by his soon-to-be disowned son, bohemund) until he had to go back to italy to save the pope from an attack by the german emperor, but the causality in that story is no doubt simplified to present guiscard in a heroic light. rather, guiscard probably abandoned a lesser battle over the title of eastern emperor for a shot at the greater title of western emperor. note that he also had to suppress a revolt by jordan of aversa, who had aligned with the emperor. malaterra immediately follows this with a story of revolt by roger's son, also named jordan, that seems more like a biblical parable than real history. the moral of the story is to obey your elders (or have your eyes gouged out with rusty spears). were there really two jordans that revolted almost simultaneously or is malaterra quietly suggesting that they're the same story? jordan did not live long enough to really distinguish.
the text finishes with a further description of further squabbles that don't strike me as all that important. if i revisit this in the future, i'll update. at this moment, i'm actually not very interested....
overall, this text functions as a church-sponsored founder myth for the italo-norman kingdom that pulled the south of the peninsula firmly into rome's permanent sphere (in inherited form) and lasted right up until the unification of italy. the idea of a "hauteville family" is probably an elaborate fiction. several dozen random, roving pirates fighting for control and plunder were packaged to the citizenry as a divinely inspired aristocracy fighting for it's inheritance to uphold the honour of the church. as it is primarily papal propaganda designed to uphold what would eventually become a feudal aristocracy, it can only be read highly critically. these people were probably not religious at all, unless it suited them politically. generally, however, it did suit them to align with the roman church. that's the key idea to pull out of it: there was a very strong alliance between norman pirates and the roman church to forcefully eliminate arab and byzantine influence in southern italy and realign the area into a papal vassal state.
full text:
http://www.medievalsicily.com/Docs/03_Norman_Conquest/Malaterra%20all%20text%20revised.pdf
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/DG/867.24.M3513/index.html