PANTALEONE DI MAURO (1074)

Merchant and statesman of Amalfi (south of Naples) whose farsighted efforts to thwart the Norman conquest of southern Italy were frustrated by local power struggles.

A member of an old patrician and son of Mauro, a wealthy merchant known for his founding of churches and hospitals both in Amalfi and in pre-Crusades Muslim Jerusalem and Antioch, he presided for many years over the Amalfian colony in Constantinople.

In 1062 he tried to establish a common front against the Normans and Pope Alexander II among the Holy Roman emperor Henry IV, the Byzantine emperor Constantine X Ducas and the antipope Honorius II. To promote the entente, the Lombard prince Gisulph II of Salerno although an old enemy of Amalfi visited the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople where Pantaleone was his host. When the projected alliance failed to materialize Gisulph began to wage pirate wargare against Amalfi in which one of Pantaleone´s nephew was killed and another taken prisoner.

In 1071 an attempt at peace led only to the of Pantaleone´s nephew without reason. Two years later Amalfi placed itself under Norman protection ending its existence as an independent state.

The first Italian businessman of the Middle Ages of whom any information survives Pantaleone is known not only for his diplomatic activities but also for his philanthropy donating such artistic monuments as the Church of St. Michael on Monte Gargano in Apulia and the bronze doors of St. Paul´s Outside the Walls at Rome.