Early & Medieval History

Early History (1000 BC-AD 500)
The Middle Ages (500-1500)

Early History

If you want to discover the history and culture of Western civilization by visiting a single place, Sicily is a perfect choice. Sicily's diversity is reflected in its architecture. You'll discover Greek temples and amphitheaters, Roman settlements, unique Norman-Arab churches and palaces (whose style is somewhat similar to Moorish but with Byzantine Greek elements), Byzantine (Orthodox) churches, Early Gothic churches, fortified medieval castles, Catalonian Gothic palaces, Baroque churches and mansions, and even a Chinese Revival villa built in the first years of the nineteenth century. The foundations of Phoenician buildings have been discovered beneath some of the Roman structures of Old Palermo, the hilltop temple at Cefalù is thought to be Sicanian, and the museum at Termini Imerese houses the stone Arabic inscriptions of ninth-century Saracen palaces.

We've already described the prehistoric inhabitants of Sicily and their descendants, the Sicani and Siculi. With the arrival of the Greeks, these peoples were absorbed in every way into Hellenistic society. Usually dated from the foundation of Zancle (now Messina) in 756 BC, the incursion of the Greeks into the eastern part of the island marked a new phase in its social development. The newcomers founded Naxos, near Taormina, in 734 BC, and Catania in 729. Siracusa (Syracuse) was founded in 733 BC, Gela in 688 BC and Agrigento in 580 BC. In the three centuries following, Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula would be completely colonized by Greeks, earning the region the name Magna Graecia (Greater Greece) because it boasted more Greeks (and probably more Greek temples) than Greece itself.

But a Phoenician influence had made itself felt since around 700 BC in western Sicily, where this seafaring people founded Palermo, Erice, Mozia and Solunto, coastal settlements that facilitated commerce and trade. The Carthaginians also made incursions into the same areas. They founded Himera (near Termini Imerese) around 650 BC but were defeated there by Greeks in 480 BC.

It was the Greeks whose mythology and folklore would assert the greatest influence on Sicily, and Sicily's museums are filled with religious artifacts and statues reflecting the important culture whose language, philosophy and law would form the very foundations of Western civilization. Archimedes, the great mathematician and engineer, was born in Syracuse in 287 BC.

Greek myths associate the cult of Demeter, goddess of grain, with the city of Enna, high in the mountains of central Sicily; her daughter, Persephone, was abducted in a valley nearby. The Cyclops, the single-eyed monster that menaced Odysseus (and later Aeneas), is identified with Mount Etna. Scylla and Carybdis threatened the intrepid Odysseus at the Strait of Messina, which Hercules is said to have swum and the Argonauts are said to have sailed. When Daedalus fled Crete, it was in Sicily that he found refuge with King Kokalos of the Sicans, an equally mythological figure. And when Artemis changed Arethusa into a spring of water to escape the river god Alpheus, the beautiful maiden emerged on the island of Ortygia, in Syracuse, where a spring bears her name.

By 262 BC, the Greeks had begun to make peace with the Romans, who sought to annex Sicily as the Empire's first province. They eventually succeeded, but only after much bloodshed in the Punic Wars. With Hannibal's defeat in 201 BC, the Romans consolidated their power not only in Sicily and Northern Africa, but over the entire Western Mediterranean. In 70 BC, Cicero was called to Sicily to argue against the island's corrupt governor, Gaius Verres, who fled in anticipation of being tried by the great orator. The trial is little more than a footnote to history, but Cicero's lengthy indictment of the governor contains many useful descriptions of the Sicily of those times.

Roman Sicily was prosperous. Only during the reign of Augustus was any attempt made to introduce the Latin language to any meaningful extent, and then only among the privileged classes and ruling elite.

Christianity made its first serious inroads into Sicily sometime after 200 AD, and a number of Sicilians were martyred in the century to follow. In 313, Emperor Constantine lifted the prohibition against Christians as the Roman Empire shifted its focus to the East, to Constantinople. Christianity grew rapidly in Sicily during the next two centuries.

Some Barbarian invasions followed as Vandals and Ostrogoths sacked the coasts, though these invaders remained, at most, for a few years. Goths also arrived but their influence was not a lasting one.

The Middle Ages

In 515, Sicily fell to the Byzantine general Belisarius. Naturally, the Christian Church in Sicily remained Eastern, which is to say Orthodox. It remained so until the twelfth century.

By the ninth century, Moors (Arabs) from North Africa were raiding Sicily. In 827, they attacked in force at the western end of the island and another conquest had begun. By 903, all of Sicily was in Saracen hands, controlled principally by three emirs, and Islam was the official religion. The Saracens were an Arab people, originally nomadic, related to the the Moors. They tolerated Christianity and Judaism in Sicily, without encouraging either. In Sicily, the Saracens were rulers rather than colonizers, masters rather than governors. Because Islamic law could be harsh to non-believers, many Sicilian Orthodox converted, though precise numbers are not known. However, it must be said Arabic society and culture were advanced; under the Saracens the city of Panormus became Palermo and its splendor was said to rival that of Baghdad. For the first time in Sicily's history, the lemon and the orange were cultivated, complex irrigation systems were developed, and sophisticated mathematics introduced.

In 1061, a Norman lord named Roger de Hauteville crossed the Strait of Messina with his brothers and several hundred knights from Normandy, Lombardy and Southern Italy, defeating the Saracen garrison and establishing a foothold under cover of darkness. Unlike their Viking forebears, the Normans were unaccustomed to naval combat. Therefore, the conquest of Messina against Arab foes would serve as the blueprint for the battle at Hastings against the Saxons a few years later, and several knights actually fought at both battles. This was Roger's second attempt to land at Messina and, though it was successful, Palermo was still far away. It was captured only in 1071 following another epic battle. Sicily was again part of Europe.

Styled "Count of Sicily" by his knights, Roger brought the feudal system to his new dominion. His rule also brought with it religious freedom, multicultural artistic expression and national sovereignty. There was no serfdom and very little slavery. There were mosques, synagogues and plenty of churches, English bishops and Saracen imams. The Sicilians who didn't speak Sicilian or Arabic dialects spoke Norman French, and court decrees were issued in several languages, including Latin, Greek and Arabic. Count Roger's son, Roger II, was crowned King of Sicily in 1130 and ruled a dominion that included most of Italy south of Rome, with Palermo as its capital. It was the wealthiest realm of Europe, whose monarch wore Byzantine robes in the manner of an Eastern Emperor and kept a private harem in the style of an Arab emir. A mosaic in the Martorana Church depicts Roger clad as a Byzantine monarch wearing a robe of golden fleurs-de-lis on a blue field, the earliest known representation of what eventually became the heraldic symbol of the French kings. His descendant, King William II of Sicily, wed Joan, daughter of Henry II of England.

Idris, an Arab geographer in the court of Roger II, travelled across Sicily and authored what may be considered its first travel guide. He observed that castles had sprung up everywhere. The Golden Age of Sicily had begun.

In 1198, Frederick II von Hohenstaufen, a descendant of the last Norman King of Sicily through a female line, ascended the throne and ruled for more than half a century. By now, the Golden Age of Sicily was in full flower. From Palermo's splendid royal palace, the enlightened Frederick ruled most of Italy and also parts of Germany as Holy Roman Emperor, though in truth he spent little time in Sicily. It was a peaceful era, and very few Sicilian knights took part in the Crusades and the other wars of the day. Stupor Mundi was the Latin nickname given to the brilliant Emperor admired across the Mediterranean and across the world.

Usually tolerant of Islam, Frederick and his German barons were unwilling to accomodate the many demands of the Muslims who still inhabited the Sicilian interior. For some years before 1220, Ibn Abbad, a Saracen leader, had acted as an independent sovereign, only to have his ambitions suppressed by the real sovereign of Sicily. But though Sicily's Church was gradually becoming Latinized, and the Pope approved of the local crusade against the Muslims (and Frederick's own Crusade to the Holy Land), the Papacy was not always happy with the sovereign's use of power.

Frederick's heirs proved themselves less able than he, and Sicilian independence came to an end with the defeat of the last Hohenstaufen at the Battle of Benevento in 1266. The Angevin dynasty of France ruled the island from Naples until 1282, when a bloody uprising, the War of the Sicilian Vespers, expelled Angevin troops and nobles from Sicily.

The political reasons for this war, described at length by Sir Steven Runciman in The Sicilian Vespers (Cambridge 1958), considered the landmark work on this historical period, were indeed rather complex. The local aristocracy was certainly involved, but so were several European monarchs and even the Pope. The Sicilian conflicts mirrored those between Guelphs and Ghibellines elsewhere in Italy. In the wake of the Vespers, during which the Sicilians had slaughtered most of the Angevins on their island, the barons offered their nation's Crown to Peter of Aragon, who gladly accepted. This led to the island's being ruled, except for brief periods, from Spain for the next four centuries.

Owing to various factors, particularly a dynastic interregnum, the Chiaramonte family seized a certain degree of feudal power for a time after 1350. Their wealth derived from confiscated estates that had belonged to the displaced Angevin feudatories before the Vespers, but with the King so far away, families like the Chiaramonte and d'Alagona vied for local power. The situation was only resolved in 1392, when Martin, grandson of the King of Aragon, arrived in Sicily to ascend the Throne and restore order among the unruly barons. Andrea Chiaramonte, the leader of the rebels, was executed at the castle now called the Steri, in Palermo's Piazza Marina, and a parliament was called. It wasn't the first and it would not be the last, but it was not particularly effective, and it led to few real reforms.