The series unites original texts, documents, and critical studies on Medieval Europe with special regard to the Norman civilisation and its various manifestations in the different national contexts. Against the background of the great European and Mediterranean history, Giuseppe Galasso evokes a crucial period for the Mezzogiorno, from Italy's division into Longobardian and Byzantine areas to Arabian, papal and Germanic pressures and interferences, up to the great history of the Norman and Swabian monarchies. In a broad affresco, the perennial dialectic between internal dynamics, closures or openings, mediations or adaptation to the outside world, initiatives and passivity, successes and failures-all shedding light on the nature, specificity and historic role of the Mezzogiorno in those centuries and beyond.