Goffredo Malaterra

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Goffredo (or Geoffrey) Malaterra was an eleventh century Benedictine monk and chronicler of Norman origin. He moved to the Mezzogiorno as a youth and entered the monastery of Sant'Eufemia and later that of Sant'Agata at Catania, on the isle of Sicily.

He wrote a Latin chronicle, one of three major chronicles of the feats of the Normans in the Mediterranean, dealing mostly with the Sicilian expeditions of Roger I the Great Count, whom he personally knew. He recounts the early career of Roger based on oral traditions he has heard and he is often the only source for Roger's Sicilian wars. After his account of Robert Guiscard's Byzantine campaign, he writes only of Roger. His account ends in 1099 and can be regarded as a court history of Roger I of Sicily.

[edit] Sources

• Malaterra. The Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily and of Duke Robert Guiscard his brother, Books One, Two, Three, and Four.