Ivanhoe, the Norman Swordsman Ivanhoe, the Norman Swordsman Ivanhoe, the Norman Swordsman () is a 1971 peplum film directed by Roberto Mauri. After the death of King Henry I in 12th-century England, the throne is taken by Stephen Cunningham who claims to possess the mythical "Sword of Normandy." A man named Ivanhoe returns from years in the Holy Land knowing that Henry I's son, the rightful heir to the throne, died in the Crusades, and that Cunningham's sword is a fake. After forging alliances with a group of highwaymen and a band of traveling thespians, Ivanhoe reclaims the real sword that will topple Cunningham.
The Boy Who Was in history, connected only by Nino's involvement. Chapter 3, "Poseidon and the Greeks", covers the building of the temple of Poseidon in Paestum. Chapter 4, "The Romans and the Volcano", tells of the destruction of Pompeii. Chapter 5, "The Last of the Goths", is a highly romanticized view of the fall of the Ostrogothic kingdom in southern Italy which followed the western Roman empire and was in turn followed by the Lombards. Chapter 6, "The Normans and the Saracens", has Nino telling Robert Guiscard's army about a group of Norman soldiers sixty years earlier who repelled a Saracen pirate attack