Jordan I of Capua

Gisulf’s enmity with the Normans had soon cost him.

Robert Guiscard had sallied forth from his Calabrian castle at San Marco and captured the Salernitan town of Cosenza and several of its neighbors.

Gisulf had soon raised the ire of Count Richard I of Aversa and, only by alliance with the despised Almafitans, could he retain his throne.

The predations of William, Count of the Principate, a brother of Robert Guiscard, forces him to marry his sister Sikelgaita to Guiscard in return for protection.

(He will eventually marry his sister Gaitelgrima to Jordan, the son of Richard, recently prince of Capua.)

Sikelgaita’s marriage to Guscard takes place after Robert divorces his first wife Alberada, due to supposed consanguinity.

Her sister Gaitelgrima had earlier married Robert's half-brother Drogo.

The divorce from Alberada and the marriage of Sikelgaita are probably part of a strategy of alliance with the remaining Lombard princes, of whom Guaimar is chief.

Alberada, for her part, appears to have had no qualms about dissolving her marriage.

Desiderius, the great abbot of Monte Cassino, had in 1074 and 1075 acted as intermediary, probably as Gregory's agent, between the Norman princes, and even when the latter were at open war with the pope, they still maintained the best relations with Monte Cassino.

At the end of 1080, Desiderius had obtained Norman troops for Gregory.

In 1082, he had visited the Italian king and future Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV at Albano, while the troops of the Imperialist antipope were harassing the pope from Tivoli.

In 1083, the peace-loving abbot had joined Hugh of Cluny in an attempt to reconcile pope and emperor, and his proceedings seem to have aroused some suspicion in Gregory's entourage.

In 1084, when Rome was in Henry's hands and the pope besieged in Castel Sant'Angelo, Desiderius had announced the approach of Guiscard's army to both emperor and pope.

Though certainly a strong partisan of the Hildebrandine reforms, Desiderius belongs to the moderate party and cannot always see eye-to-eye with Pope Gregory VII in his most intransigent proceedings.

Yet when the latter lay dying at Salerno on May 25, 1085, the Abbot of Monte Cassino was one of those whom he had recommended to the cardinals of southern Italy as most fit to succeed him.

Under pressure from Prince Jordan I of Capua, to whom he has also rendered important service, Desiderius is elected Pope on May 24, 1086, taking the throne name of Victor III.

He is not at this time consecrated, owing to the presence of the Antipope Clement III in Rome.

Victor proceeds to Rome after celebrating Easter of 1087 in his monastery, and when the Normans have driven the soldiers of the Antipope Clement III (Guibert of Ravenna) out of St. Peter's, he is consecrated and enthroned.

Remaining only eight days in Rome, he returns to Monte Cassino, though with the help of Matilda and Jordan, he takes back the Vatican Hill.

Before May is out, he is once more in Rome in answer to a summons for the countess Matilda of Tuscany, whose troops hold the Leonine City and Trastevere, but when at the end of June the antipope once more gains possession of St. Peter's, Victor again withdraws at once to his Monte Cassino abbey.

A council or synod of some importance is held in August at Benevento, which renews the excommunication of the antipope Clement III and the condemnation of lay investiture, proclaims a kind of crusade against the Saracens in northern Africa and anathematizes Hugh of Lyons and Richard, Abbot of Marseilles.

When the council has lasted three days, Victor becomes seriously ill and retires to Monte Cassino to die.

Desiderius has himself carried into the chapter-house, issues various decrees for the benefit of the abbey, appoints with the consent of the monks the prior, Cardinal Oderisius, to succeed him in the abbacy, just as he himself had been appointed by Stephen IX, and proposes Odo of Ostia to the assembled cardinals and bishops as the next pope.

He dies on September 16, 1087 and is buried in the tomb he had prepared for himself in the abbey's chapter-house.

His successor is Pope Urban II.