Normans of the South

Independent of duke William's conquest of England, poor Norman knights sought and found landed fortune in southern Italy, defeating the Byzantines, Saracens on Sicily and even a papal army. The result was the Neapolitan kingdom of Sicily, for centuries a beacon of tolerance and patronage, where the Normans again were absorbed into a culturally rich mixture. Tancred and Bohemund, junior members of the emigrated Norman noble family de Hauteville, played a crucial part in the first crusade and established short-lived crusader principalities in Antioch and Tiberias (Galilee).