In his monumental The Making of Europe, Robert Bartlett wrote that “one of the more striking aspects of the expansionary activity of the tenth to thirteenth centuries was the movement of western European aristocrats from their homelands into new areas where they settled and, if successful, augmented their fortunes”. He was referring to the medieval aristocratic expansion from the core of Europe's old “Carolingian lands” into its periphery – eastern and southern Europe and, of course, the Middle East. Undoubtedly, therefore, in any history of the Norman people the kingdom of Sicily, the most cosmopolitan of all their conquests, demands an important place. Whether we consider the year 1017 as a cut-off point marking the advent of the Norman presence in Italy and Sicily, thus inaugurating a new era of invasion, interaction, and integration in the Mediterranean, is a moot point. Whatever we decide, the millennial anniversary is significant, and while the idea behind this collective volume was conceived in 2017, the moment offers an ideal opportunity to explore the story of the Norman exploits in the South about a thousand years ago.

Regrettably, the bibliography on the topic of warfare in the Norman South has been overshadowed by the achievements of their cousins in the North. Only in the last two decades or so has there been a steady increase in the number of works that focus on the strategies and battle tactics, military organisation and equipment, expansion and consolidation of power, negotiation and diplomacy of the Normans in the Mediterranean Some of the established scholars who have been working on these topics for many years, like Bennett, Stanton, and Russo, have been kind enough to participate in this collective volume. To their contributions I have to add my own monograph, a study that examines the clash of two distinct Christian military cultures: the bold and chivalrous Normans versus the cautious and calculating Byzantines.