SALERNITAN POISONERS 991 
1084. Late in this year occurred the cure * by the Salernitan physicians, of Bohe- 
mond, the crusader,} who when wounded, ‘ was sent for his cure,’’ says Orderic, ‘* to 
the surgeons of Salerno, whose reputation for skill in medicine was established through- 
out the world.’’ Following this is his story of the wife of Robert Guiscard, Sichelgaita 
of Salerno,t as attempting to poison first Bohemond and then her husband. Orderic 
says, that in order to remove Bohemond out of the way of her son’s advancement, “ she 
prepared a deadly potion and sent it to the physicians of Salerno, among whom she had 
been brought up and éy whom she had been inst ucted in the use of poisons.’ 4 
*Ordericus Vitalis, 7, 7; or in Forester’s translation, 2 : 36 
ft Bohemond, later Prince of Antioch, son of Robert Guiscard and named in jest for 
et them by sea and though victorious was wounded and was brought to Salerno for cure. 
t Sichelgaita, Sichelgade or Sigelgaita, a princess of Salerno, daughter of Guaimar 
IV., sister of Geoffrey of Conversana, and of Gisulf II., last Prince of Salerno (1052- 
1077); married Robert Guiscard about 1059 and was at his side through his adventur- 
ous career; was with him at the head of the triumphal procession entering Palermo, 
Jan. 1072, on its conquest from the Saracens; and with him at Bari in 1073 when 
he lay long sick and was thought dying, so that she hastily assembled the Norman 
Knights, and caused them to choose her son Roger Bursa as successor, On this Pope 
Gregory VII. wrote her in condolence, professing his irremediable grief, sending her 
his good will and asking her to bring her son to Rome to receive confirmation of his 
Possessions. But Guiscard recovered. 
deric continues : ‘‘ The physicians lent themselves to the wishes of their lady 
the violence of the poison that his countenance was pallid all the rest of his life.’ 
However little truth there may be in this narrative, evidently embellished by the 
monks through whom it was transmitted (but narrated again by Meyer), there 1s oF 
tainly no truth, says Forester, in Orderic’ s following story of Sichelgaita’s terminating her 
husband’s life by slow poison soon after. The fact was that he did die soon after in the 
midst of an ex $5, at Durazzo in Ceph- 
aloni 
e 
ie their antidotes. An echo of Salernitan sureness as to just what plant woul “ee 
nd in Matteo Plateario’s promptness, in his Circa instans, to remark of fungi, that 
