Argyros
Part of The Encyclopedia of Southern Italy.
Argyros (Ital: Argiro): (b. cAD 1000; d. aft. 1058, poss. at Bari). Lombard nobleman. The son of Melus of Bari, he was sent to Constantinople during his father’s first revolt against the Byzantines in Apulia. In 1029, he returned to Italy where he soon began to lead revolts of his own. In 1042, he was joined by several Norman mercenaries. In August of that year, he he reconciled with the Byzantines, entering into an alliance with them to fight their common enemy, the rebel general George Maniakes. In 1045 he was called to Constantinople where he helped to defeat Leo Tornikios. While there he became the enemy of the Patriarch Michael I Keroularios. In 1051, Argyros, returned to Bari as the first Lombard Governor (magister, vestes, and doux of Italy, Calabria, Sicily and Paphlagonia). Now championing the Byzantines, he attempted to halt the advances of the Normans in southern Italy by forming an alliance with Pope Leo IX. This alliance, however, collapsed when, in 1053, the Normans defeated the papal and Byzantine armies in separate battles. Leo was taken prisoner by the Normans and during his period of captivity dispatched Cardinal Humbert as an envoy to Patriarch Michael I Keroularios in Constantinople. In 1054, while Humbert was enroute on his journey, he stopped at Bari. Later, when the Cardinal reached his goal, it was found that he carried letters that were highly offensive to Keroularios. The latter believed that these letters were actually the work of Argyros rather than the pope. He ordered the arrest Agryros’s son and son-in-law who were both in Constantinople. Argyros made some further attempts to create a new alliance with the papacy, but was unsuccessful. He was finally relieved of his offices in mid-1058.