Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/39

 HISTORY.] SICILY 25 places. The land was won bit by bit. One town was taken by storm ; another submitted on terms harsher or more favourable. The condition of the Christians varied from that of personal slaves to that of communities left free on the payment of tribute. The great mass were in the intermediate state usual among the non-Mohammedan sub- jects of a Mohammedan power. The dhimml of Sicily were in essentially the same case as the rayaJis of the Turk. While the conquest was going on, the towns that remained unconquered gained in point of local freedom. They be- came allies rather than subjects of the distant emperor. So did the tributary districts, as long as the original terms were kept. But, as ever, the condition of the subject race grew worse. After the complete conquest of the island, while the mere slaves had turned Mohammedans, there is nothing more heard of tributary districts. At the coming of the Normans the whole Christian population was in the state of rayahs. Still Christianity and the Greek tongue never died out ; churches and monasteries received and held property ; there still are saints and men of learning. Panonnus was specially Saracen ; yet a Christian religious guild could be founded there in 1048 (Tabularium Regies, Cap. Panorm., p. 1). We have its Greek foundation deed. It would be rash to deny that traces of other dialects may not have lingered on ; but Greek and Arabic were the two written tongues of Sicily when the Normans came. The Sicilian Saracens were hindered by their internal feuds from ever becoming a great power ; but they stood high among Mohammedan nations. Their advance in civili- zation is shown by their position under the Normans, and above all by their admirable style of architecture (see PALERMO). Saracens are always called in for any special work of building or engineering. They had a literature which Norman kings studied and promoted. The Normans in short came into the inheritance of the two most civilized nations of the time, and they allowed the two to flourish side by side. Norman The most brilliant time for Sicily as a power in the conquest. W orld begins with the coming of the Normans. Never before or after was the island so united or so independent. Some of the old tyrants had ruled out of Sicily ; none had ruled over all Sicily. The Normans held all Sicily as the centre of a dominion which stretched far beyond it. The conquest was the work of one man, Count Roger of the house of Hauteville, brother of the more famous Robert Wiscard (Guiscard). That it took him thirty years was doubtless owing to his being often called off to help his brother in Italy and beyond Hadria. The conquests of the Normans in Italy and Sicily form part of one enterprise ; but they altogether differ in character. In Italy they over- threw the Byzantine dominion ; their own rule was perhaps not worse, but they were not deliverers. In Sicily they were everywhere welcomed by the Christians as deliverers from infidel bondage. As in the Saracen conquest of Sicily, as in the Byzan- tine recovery, so in the Norman conquest, the immediate occasion was given by a home traitor. Count Roger had already made a plundering attack, when Becumen of Catania, driven out by his brother, urged him to serious invasion. Messina was taken in 1060, and became for a while the Norman capital. The Christians everywhere welcomed the conqueror. But at Traina they presently changed their minds, and joined with the Saracens to besiege the count in their citadel. At Catania Becumen was set up again as Roger's vassal, and he did good service till he was killed. Roger soon began to fix his eye on the Saracen capital. Against that city he had Pisan help, as the inscription on the Pisan duomo witnesses (cf. Geoff. Mai., ii. 3-4). But Palermo was not taken until 1071, and then only by the help of Duke Robert, who kept the prize to himself. Still its capture was the turning-point in the struggle. 1060-1090. Taormina (Tauromenium) was won in 1078. Syracuse, under its emir Benarvet, held out stoutly. He won back Catania by the help of a Saracen to whom Roger had trusted the city, and whom he himself punished. Catania was won back by the count's son Jordan. But progress was delayed by Jordan's rebellion and by the absence of Roger in his brother's wars. At last, in 1085, Syracuse was won. Next year followed Girgenti and Castrogiovanni, whose chief became a Christian. Noto, the Saracen Ra- metta, held out till 1090. Then the whole island was won, and Roger completed his conquest by a successful expedition to Malta. Like the condition of the Greeks under the Saracens, so Saracens the condition of the Saracens under the Normans differed under in different places according to the circumstances of each N rman conquest. The Mohammedan religion was everywhere tolerated, in many places much more. But it would seem that, just as under the Moslem rule, conversions from Christianity to Islam were forbidden. On the other hand, conversions from Islam to Christianity were not always encouraged ; Saracen troops were employed from the begin- ning, and Count Roger seems to have thought them more trustworthy when unconverted. At Palermo the capitula- tion secured to the Saracens the full enjoyment of their own laws ; Girgenti was long mainly Saracen ; in Val di Noto the Saracens kept towns and castles of their own. On the other hand, at Messina there were few or none, and we hear of both Saracen and Greek villains, the latter doubtless abiding as they were in Saracen times. But men of both races were trusted and favoured according to their deserts. The ecclesiastical relations between Greeks and Latins are harder to trace. At the taking of Palermo the Greek bishop was restored ; but his successors were Latins, and Latin prelates were placed in the bishoprics which Count Roger founded. Urban the Second visited Sicily to promote the union of the church, and he granted to the count those special ecclesiastical powers held by the counts and kings of Sicily as hereditary legates of the Holy See which grew into the famous Sicilian monarchy (Geoff. Mai., iv. 29). But Greek worship went on ; at Messina it lingered till the 14th and 15th centuries (Pirro, Sicilia Sacra, i. 420, 431, 449), as it has been since brought back by the Albanian colonists. But the Greeks of Sicily have long been united Greeks, admitting the authority of the see of Rome. In its results the Norman conquest of Sicily was a Latin conquest far more thorough than that which had been made by the Roman commonwealth. The Norman princes protected all the races, creeds, and tongues of the island, Greek, Saracen, and Jew. But new races came to settle Lin- alongside of them, all of whom were Latin as far as their guistic official speech was concerned. The Normans brought the. fl S*n French tongue with them ; it remained the court speech during the 12th century, and Sicily was thrown open to all speakers of French, many of whom came from England. There was constant intercourse between the two great islands, both ruled by Norman kings, and many natives of England filled high places in Sicily. But French was only a language of society, not of business or literature. The languages of inscriptions and documents are Greek, Arabic, and Latin, in private writings sometimes Hebrew. The kings understood Greek and Arabic, and their deeds and works were commemorated in both tongues. Hence comes the fact, at first sight so strange, that Greek, Arabic, and French have all given way to a dialect of Italian. But the cause is not far to seek. The Norman conquest opened Sicily to settlers from Italy, above all from the Norman possessions in Italy. Under the name of Lombards, they became an important, in some parts a dominant, element. XXII. 4