Melus of Bari

Meles (* 10th century, † April 23, 1020 in Bamberg), also Melus or Melo, Greek Μέλης was an Apulian separatist, who organized two uprisings against Byzantine rule. From Emperor Henry II, he was probably invested at Easter 1020 in Bamberg in the presence of Pope Benedict VIII as Duke of Apulia.

He belonged to the native Apulian elite in Bari. According to the testimony of William of Apulia, he was a Lombard, who followed the Byzantine fashion externally. With his wife and his brother- Maralda Dattus he was certainly connected with the Lombard nobility. That Meles the Armenian population in Apulia could have belonged, is considered as a possibility for occasional occurrence of the name. By 1000, the Armenians, however, had already joined the Lombard rights group. A Saracen origin is excluded.

The first attempt to give military expression of the dissatisfaction of the Apulian subjects of the Emperor, brought some 1009 first victory against the Byzantine forces, but ended in 1010 with the defeat against the Katepan Basil Mesardonites. The leaders withdrew to Lombard area. 1012 was the family that was left behind in Bari, deported to Constantinople Opel, from where Argyros was able to return in 1029.

Benedict VIII hired Norman mercenaries and sent them no later than early 1017 to Meles to Puglia. Their leader was Rainulf later as Count of Aversa, the first Norman independent prince. In early 1017 Meles was with this Norman contingent and Lombard troops in Nordapulien and could advance victoriously. Only the successor of Tornikios Kontoleon to stop the insurgency succeeded. After the defeat at Canne against the Katepan Basil Boioannes in October 1018 left Meles Puglia. About his stay until the emergence of the Bamberg meeting between Emperor and Pope is not known. As a gift, he handed the Emperor today in Bamberg Diocesan Museum preserved star jacket on which the client is named with the name Ismahel, which is unknown in the Byzantine and southern Italian sources. Testified explicitly is the identity between Meles and Ismahel by a diploma of Henry III. for his son Argyros of 1054 with the promise that in his tomb in the cathedral of Bamberg no other burials should take place. Whether this commitment in preparing a German intervention in Puglia, in the increasingly the Norman troops withdrew power in itself, should serve, can no longer be detected.