When William of Apulia described the synod of Melfi of 1059, where Robert Guiscard was invested as duke, it was notable that he mentioned the ducal investiture almost as an afterthought. The pope, he said, ‘had come to this region to deal with ecclesiastical affairs’, and his discussion of the council concentrated on Nicholas II's efforts to encourage clerical celibacy. This account reminds us that papal concerns with southern Italy were not just with securing a political alliance with its rulers. The popes also sought to promote the reform and well-being of the south Italian Church, and one might well consider that this aspect was ultimately the more important of the two in their eyes. And, as William's description of the council at Melfi implied, there was in the mid-eleventh century a great deal within the Church in southern Italy that was in need of reform. He was concerned, or his account might suggest that Pope Nicholas was, primarily with the chastity of the clergy: ‘for the priests, levites and all the clergy of this area were openly joining themselves in marriage’, a state of affairs that the pope was determined to remedy. But while the papacy in the era of the Gregorian Reform was committed to the extirpation of clerical marriage, ‘so that the acceptable service of a white and spotless household may be offered to the bride of Christ who knows neither spot nor wrinkle’, there were other problems of the Church in southern Italy that were equally in need of attention.