The succession to this important see during the reign of Roger II had significant repercussions for both royal and papal policy towards the Church, but unfortunately it appears to be both particularly complex, and poorly documented. Insofar as this is possible, this note will attempt to clarify the situation.

Archbishop Hugh (I) is attested in February 1130, consenting to a property exchange involving one of the city churches, and again in November of that year, when Anacletus II revoked an earlier bull making the nunnery of St John the Baptist subject to the archbishop, which he claimed the latter had persuaded him to grant fraudulenter. (This nunnery had in fact long been subject to Montecassino.) Which, therefore, leaves it unclear whether Hugh had recognised Anacletus as pope.

The next reference we have to an incumbent of this see comes in 1135, when Alexander of Telese described how a delegation of the clergy and laity of Capua, with King Roger's advice, elected a cleric called William, ‘a man well endowed with both Divine and secular knowledge’, to the archbishopric, adding that his predecessor had been deposed for simony. A plausible reconstruction of the chronology of Alexander's account suggests that this took place at the very end of August 1135. Alexander did not, however, name this predecessor of William who had been deposed, which leaves it unclear whether this was Hugh (I) or some unknown successor.