Guaimar IV of Salerno

Guaimar IV (c. 1013 – 2, 3 or 4 June 1052) was Prince of Salerno (1027–1052), Duke of Amalfi (1039–1052), Duke of Gaeta (1040–1041), and Prince of Capua (1038–1047) in Southern Italy over the period from 1027 to 1052. From 1041 to 1052 the Duke of Napoli (John V of Naples) was his vassal. He was an important figure in the final phase of Byzantine authority in the Mezzogiorno and the commencement of Norman power. He was, according to Amatus of Montecassino, "more courageous than his father, more generous and more courteous; indeed he possessed all the qualities a layman should have—except that he took an excessive delight in women." Early conquests He was born around the year 1013, the eldest son of Guaimar III of Salerno by Gaitelgrima, daughter of Duke Pandulf II of Benevento. His elder half-brother, the son of Porpora of Tabellaria, John (III) reigned as co-prince from 1015. When he died in 1018, Guaimar was made co-prince. In 1022, the Emperor Henry II campaigned in southern Italy against the Greeks and sent Pilgrim, Archbishop of Cologne, to attack Pandulf IV of Capua, nicknamed the "Wolf of the Abruzzi", and Guaimar of Salerno. Pandulf was captured and Guaimar submitted, sending the younger Guaimar as a hostage. The emperor remanded him to Pope Benedict VIII and he was released. The younger Guaimar succeeded his father in Salerno in 1027 (at the age of fourteen or sixteen, possibly under the regency of his mother during his brief minority). He embarked then on a lifelong quest to control the whole of the southern third of the Italian Peninsula. In 1036, he received word that his uncle and erstwhile ally, Pandulf of Capua, had attempted to rape his niece, the daughter of his wife's sister and the Duke of Sorrento. He then received the homage of the defecting Rainulf Drengot, formerly a vassal of Pandulf. Thus, Guaimar won the support of the Normans in the Mezzogiorno. In 1037, Guaimar made the politically savvy request of arbitration to both the Holy Roman and Byzantine emperors over the issue of Pandulf's unfitness to rule. Emperor Conrad II accepted the invitation and traveled south in Spring 1038. He demanded hostages from Pandulf. However, the hostages escaped and Capua was promptly besieged. Having taken that principality, he gave it to Guaimar (May), who asked for a title of nobility for his new Norman vassal.