Sergius VII of Naples
Sergius VII was the last duke of Naples, the thirty-ninth ruler of a state that had governed itself since the Byzantine dukes stopped answering to Constantinople three centuries before, and he ended it by kneeling to a Norman. He succeeded his father John VI in 1122 over a city that was by then the only independent duchy left on the Tyrrhenian coast. Amalfi, Gaeta and Sorrento had gone to the Normans, and Naples survived by its walls, its fleet and its usefulness to whoever was fighting whom in Campania. What he faced was Roger II of Sicily, who had inherited Apulia and Calabria in 1127 and was made king of all of it by the antipope Anacletus in 1130, and who wanted Naples as the last piece. Sergius joined the coalition against him - the pope, the emperor Lothair, Robert of Capua, Rainulf of Alife - and in 1131, with Roger at his walls, submitted, did homage, and became his vassal. The Neapolitan chronicler recorded it with the observation that the city had never before bowed to anyone. He changed sides in 1134 when the coalition looked stronger, held the city through a siege in 1135 in which the population starved, and was relieved by Lothair's army in 1137. It was the last year. He died in October 1137 at the battle of Rignano, fighting in Rainulf's army against Roger, who lost the battle and won the war. Rainulf died of fever in 1139, Roger took Naples without a fight that summer, and the city that had been a republic in all but name for four hundred years became a provincial town of the kingdom of Sicily, and then, four centuries later, its capital.
- Nationality: Neapolitan
- Roles: duke, monarch, head_of_state
