CNG 84, Lot: 1742. Estimate $500. Sold for $1300. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ITALY, Salerno. Gisulfo II. Prince, 1052-1077. Æ Follaro (18mm, 1.68 g, 4h). CISVLFV[...], Gisulfo, in Byzantine-style regalia, standing facing, holding labarum; [six-rayed star to right] / [O]PVLE/[N]TA SA/[LE]RNO in three lines. CNI XVIII 16-7; Travaini, Monetazione type 14; MEC 14, 17-22. VF, brown patina. Overstruck on Travaini type 13. Very rare.

According to the tenth-century Chronicon Salernitanum, the Principality of Salerno, formed in 851 out of the Lombardic Principality of Beneventum following a decade-long civil war, was a South Italian state centered around the important port city of Salerno and situated within the last Byzantine-held territories in Italy. Although technically allied to the Holy Roman Empire, it did, in fact, experience periods of independence as well as brief interludes as a vassal of the Byzantine Empire. At the same time, the political fortunes of South Italy created breakaway states, not only for Salerno, but also its neighbors, as well as a number of shifting alliances between one another. Early on, the county of Capua in 862 broke away under Pandone il Rapace (d. 862/3), who had seized the rule of the county of Capua, declared himself an independent prince. Over the course of the next two centuries, Capua was united with the Duchy of Beneventum. During that time, it began establishing alliances with its neighbors – especially Salerno – and attempted to weaken Byzantine authority in Campania and Apulia. Under Pandolfo Testadiferro (d. 981), who became Prince of Salerno in 978 (in addition to Duke of Spoleto and Camerino in 967), these territories were briefly reunited, providing a viable counterbalance to the Byzantines and the rising incursion of the Fatimids. After Pandolfo’s death, his holdings were divided among his sons; it was Pandolfo II who became Prince of Salerno. Almost immediately, however, he was attacked by the neighboring Duchi of Amalfi, a state which itself had been benefitting from recent events on the Italian Peninsula.

To the west of the Duchy of Salerno, the Duchy of Naples, which had begun in the early seventh century AD as a territory allied to the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna, began to splinter. There, the seaports of Gaeta, Amalfi, and Sorrento became largely autonomous, so that by the ninth century AD they too became independent duchies. Among the three, Amalfi became the most important, since it was economically the strongest. It was a prominent commercial center and, in 957, Mastalo II became its first Duke. In 981, Mansone I, taking advantage of the youth of Pandolfo II, used the opportunity to invade and conquer the Principality of Salerno, ruling over it until 983, when Salerno regained its independence. During the reign of Pandolfo IV (d. 1049/50), the Principality of Capua, which until then had been rebuilding its power following the death of Pandolfo Testadiferro through the assistance of the Byzantines, overtook its rivals in the region: the Duchy of Gaeta in 1032 and the Duchy of Amalfi in 1034. Over the next forty years and goaded by local Byzantines, Capua, Amalfi, and Salerno were embroiled in internecine struggles.Meanwhile, the Normans, who had been arriving in southern Italy and Sicily in ever greater numbers, began to exert a significant affect on the region’s political and social landscape. Two separate traditions, both based on near-contemporary eleventh-century sources, exist regarding their arrival in the region. According to the so-called “Salerno Tradition”, first mentioned in the Ystoire de li Normant of Amatus of Montecassino, the Norman influence began at Salerno in the very late tenth century AD, when the Duke of Salerno, Guaimario III, requested the presence of Norman knights in the Duchy to ward off Muslim invasions. The “Gargano Tradition”, related in the Gesta Roberti Wiscardi of William of Apulia, and the Chronica monasterii S. Bartholomaei de Carpineto of the monk Alexander, suggests that, in a meeting in about 1016 at the shrine of San Michele Arcangelo at Monte Gargano, an Apulian nobleman, Melo di Bari, sought Norman assistance in his rebellion for independence against the Byzantine Catapanate of Italy which at the time ruled southern Italy. Throughout the eleventh century AD, the Normans served as mercenaries for both the various competing princes in southern Italy and the Byzantines in Sicily, all of whom were trying to stave of the incursions of the Fatimids. Beginning around 1035, when Guglielmo Braccio di Ferro, a descendent of the Norseman, Tancred de Hautville, became Count of Apulia and Calabria, the Normans began to acquire their own territories to rule. Beginning the process of wresting Sicilia away from the Byzantines, in 1059 the Pope appointed Roberto il Guiscardo, Guglielmo’s brother, duke of the as yet unconquered island which, in 1071, Roberto invested upon his youngest brother, Ruggero Bosso (Ruggero I) along with the title, Count of Sicilia. Although Roberto’s younger brothers, Boemond I d’Antiochia and Ruggerio Borsa, fought over this inheritance, thereby precipitating a period of warfare, Ruggero Bosso (Ruggero I) was able to defeat them and strengthen his control in in Sicilia. When he died in 1101, the throne passed to his elder son, Simone. Simone, however, died shortly thereafter, and his younger brother, Ruggero (Ruggero II), became the new Count. Ruggero then set out to unite Sicilia with southern Italy, so that by 1130 when he was formally crowned King of Sicilia, Ruggero had united all of the disparate territories of southern Italy and Sicila into one kingdom with a strong centralized government. To maintain his control over his kingdom Ruggero II, like his uncle, Ruggero Bosso, before him, appointed close relatives to positions of power in the outlying principalities, though, unlike his uncle, these appointees were Ruggero’s sons – a policy which continued under his immediate successors – Guglielmo I, Guglielmo II, Tancredi, and Guglielmo III, the last of the Norman kings of Sicilia.

Gisulfo II (1052-1077), the last Lombard prince of Salerno and who had been co-ruler of Salerno and its allied states with his father, Guaimario IV, since 1042, became sole ruler when his father was assassinated in 1052. Soon thereafter, Gisulf was imprisoned in the city of Salerno by his father’s assassins. Assisted in his escape and restoration to power by his uncle Guy, the Count of Sorrento, as well as the Normans, Gisulf was forced, however, to accept the loss of his father’s territorial acquisitions and struggled to to hold on to Salerno itself, which he lost in 1078. Furthermore, he developed an enmity against his benefactors and although connected to them by marriage, his prolonged and bitter hatred turned him into a pirate and freebooter until his death in 1072.