Background By 1060, only a few coastal cities in Apulia were still in Byzantine hands: during the previous few decades, the Normans had increased their possessions in southern Italy and now aimed to the complete expulsion of the Byzantines from the peninsula before concentrating on the conquest of
Sicily, then mostly
under Islamic domination. Large military units were thus called from Sicily and under Count
Geoffrey of Conversano laid siege to
Otranto.
The siege The next move was the arrival of Robert Guiscard, with a large corps, who laid siege to the Byzantine city of Bari on 5 August 1068. Within the city there were two parties: one wanting to preserve allegiance to the Byzantine empire, and another that was pro-Norman. When the Norman troops neared, the former had prevailed and the local barons shut the city's gates and sent an embassy led by
Bisantius Guirdeliku to emperor
Romanos IV Diogenes in order to seek military help. The negotiations offered by Robert were refused. Otranto fell in October, Romanos IV, whose generals had been repeatedly defeated by the Normans, and with few free troops to dispatch, sent twenty ships under the command of a Gocelin, a Norman rebel who had taken shelter in Constantinople.
Stephen Pateran, appointed as new catepan of Italy, came with him; however, the Normans intercepted the Byzantine ships off Bari and scattered them. The Norman sailors identified Gocelin's ship and, despite the loss of 150 men, finally captured it; Stephen Pateran was instead able to reach Bari. He soon recognized that the defence had become impossible; a local noble,
Argyritzos, was sent to negotiate with the Normans. The latter offered acceptable conditions, and Bari surrendered on April 1071.
Aftermath Stephen Pateran was initially imprisoned, but was later allowed to return to Constantinople with other Byzantine survivors. With the fall of Bari, the Byzantine presence in southern Italy ended after 536 years. Emperor Manuel I Komnenos tried to
reconquer southern Italy in 1156-1158, but the attempt turned into a failure. According to William of Apulia, Robert Guiscard "entrusted the city" to Argyritzos; however, the earliest document of Norman rule shows a certain Lizius, probably a Norman, as viscount and a
patrikios named Maurelianus, probably a native Bariot, as catepan. ==References==