Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/415

Rh Bk. VIII. Ch. VIII. THE SARACENS. 399 built as the Sicilians had been accustomed to build, and decorated as they could decorate them, better than their masters and con- querors. All this, when properly understood, lends an interest to the history of tills little branch of architecture, wholly indejjendent of its artistic merit ; but the art itself is so beautiful and so instructive, from its being one of the styles where polychromy was universally employed and is still preserved, that notwithstanding all that has been done it still merits more atteniKu. It is extremely difficult, in a limited space, to give a clear account of the Sicilian pointed style, owing to the fusion of the three styles of which it is composed being far from complete or simultaneous over the whole island, and there being no one edifice in which all three are mixed in anything like equal proportions. Each division of the island, in fact, retains a predilection for that style which characterized the majority of its inhabitants. Thus Messina and the northern coast as far as Cefalu remained Italian in the main, and the churches there have only the smallest possible admixture of either Greek or Saracenic work. The old parts of the Nunziatella at Messina might be found at Pisa, while the cathedral there and at Cefalu would hardly be out of place in Apulia, except indeed that Cefalu displays a certain early predilection for pointed arches, and something of Greek feeling in the decoration of the choir. In like manner in Syracuse and the southern angle of the island, the Greek feeling prevails almost to the exclusion of the other two. In Palermo, on tlie other hand, and the western parts, the ai'chitecture is so strongly Saracenic that hardly any antiquary has yet been able to admit the possibility of such buildings as the Cuba and Ziza having been erected by the Norman kings. There is, however, little or no doubt that the. latter was built by William I. (1154-llS9), and the other about the same time, though by whom is not so clear. Both these buildings were erected after a century of Norman dominion in the island ; still the Moorish influence, so predominant in them, need not astonish us, when we consider the immeasurable superiority of the Moors in art and civilization, not only to tlieir new rulers, but to all the other inhabitants. It was therefore only natural that they should be employed to provide for the Norman Counts such buildings as they alone had the heart to erect and adorn. A still more remarkable instance of the prevalence of Saracenic ideas is represented in Woodcut No. 830, being the Church of San Giovanni degli Ereraiti at Palermo. Here we find a building erected beyond all doubt as late as the year 1132, by King Roger, for the purposes of Christian worship, which would in no respect, except the form of its tower, be out of place as a mosque in the streets of Delhi or Cairo. In fact, were we guided by architectural considerations