The Normans: beyond 1066
HistoryExtra podcast
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What's the Story of Italy?
Italy is an ara where perhaps our listeners won't be as familiar. The time line starts actually 50 years before ten 66. And there are normans around in italy. Some groups are pilgrims, others are mercenaries. They fight for whoever will pay them. Eventuallya one group is given a tow hold in land near naples and from that they begin to expand. But the comments of contemporaries, the chroniclers and the popes, are horrified at the banditry and the way they enslave people. So it's not a heroic story. It doesn't end by unifying south italy. That was an old idea, that they create a united italy of the
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