and conventual buildings, perfected the products of the scriptorium and re-established monastic discipline, so that there were 200 monks in the monastery in his day. On 1 October 1071, the new Basilica of Monte Cassino was consecrated by Pope Alexander II. Desiderius' reputation brought gifts and exemptions to the abbey. The money was spent on church ornaments, including a great golden altar front from Constantinople adorned with gems and enamels and "nearly all the church ornaments of Victor II, which had been pawned here and there throughout the city". Peter the Deacon gives a list of some seventy books Desiderius had copied at Monte Cassino, including works of Augustine of Hippo, Ambrose, Bede, Basil of Caesarea, Jerome, Gregory of Nazianzus and Cassian, the histories of Josephus, Paul Warnfrid, Jordanes and Gregory of Tours, the Institutes and Novels of Justinian, the works of Terence, Virgil and Seneca, Cicero's De natura deorum, and Ovid's Fasti. Desiderius had been appointed papal vicar for Campania, Apulia, Calabria and the Principality of Beneventum with special powers for the reform of monasteries. So great was his reputation with the Holy See that he "...was allowed by the Roman Pontiff to appoint Bishops and Abbots from among his Benedictine brethren in whatever churches or monasteries he desired, of those that had lost their patron". Within two years of the consecration of the Cassinese Basilica, Alexander II died and was succeeded by Hildebrand as Pope Gregory VII. Desiderius was able to call forth the help of the Normans of southern Italy repeatedly in favour of the Holy See. Already in 1059 he had persuaded Robert Guiscard and Richard of Capua to become vassals of St. Peter for their newly conquered territories: now Gregory VII immediately after his election sent for him to give an account of the state of Norman Italy and entrusted him with the negotiation of an interview with Robert Guiscard on 2 August 1073, at Benevento. In 1074 and 1075 he acted as intermediary, probably as Gregory's agent, between the Norman princes themselves, and even when the latter were at open war with the pope, they still maintained the best relations with Monte Cassino. At the end of 1080 Desiderius obtained Norman troops for Gregory. In 1082 he visited the Italian king and future Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV at Albano, while the troops of the Imperialist antipope were harassing the pope from Tivoli. In