Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/41

 HISTORY.] SICILY 27 Xot one of these Latin writers was a native of the island, and we have no record from any native Greek. Occasional notices we of course have in the Byzantine writers, and Archbishop Eustathios's account of the taking of Thessa- lonica is more than occasional. And the close connexion between Sicily and England leads to many occasional refer- ences to Sicilian matters in English writers. The relations between the various races of the islands are most instructive. The strong rule of Roger kept all in order. He called himself the defender of Christians ; others, on account of his favour to the Saracens, spoke of him as a pagan. He certainly encouraged Saracen art and literature in every shape. His court was full of eunuchs, of whom we hear still more under William the Bad. Under William the Good the Saracens, without any actual oppres- sion, seem to be losing their position. Hitherto they had been one element in the land, keeping their own civiliza- tion alongside of others. By a general outbreak on the death of William the Good, the Saracens, especially those of Palermo, were driven to take shelter in the mountains, where they sank into a wild people, sometimes holding points of the island against all rulers, sometimes taking military service under them. The Jews too begin to sink into bondmen. Sicily is ceasing to be the land of many nations living side by side on equal terms. Emperor The Germans who helped Henry to win the Sicilian Freder- crown did not become a new element in the island, but ick II. on iy a source o f confusion during the minority of his son. Frederick presently to be the renowned emperor Freder- ick the Second, "Fridericus stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis" was crowned at Palermo in 1198; but the child, deprived of both parents, was held to be under the protection of his lord Pope Innocent the Third. During his minority the land was torn in pieces by turbulent nobles, revolted Saracens, German captains seeking settlements, the maritime cities of Italy, and professed French deli- verers. In 1210 the emperor Otho the Fourth, who had overrun the continental dominions, threatened the island. In 1212, just when Frederick was reaching an age to be of use in his own kingdom, he was called away to dispute the crown of Germany and Rome with Otho. Eight years more of disorder followed ; in 1220 the emperor-king came back. He brought the Saracens of the mountains back again to a life in plains and cities, and presently planted a colony of them on the mainland at Nocera, when they be- came his most trusty soldiers. His necessary absences from Sicily led to revolts. He came back in 1233 from his crusade to suppress a revolt of the eastern cities, which seem, like those of Italy, to have been aiming at repub- lican independence. A Saracen revolt in 1243 is said to have been followed by a removal of the whole remnant to Nocera. Some however certainly stayed or came back ; but their day was over. Under Frederick the Italian or Lombard element finally prevailed in Sicily. Of all his kingdoms Sicily was the best-beloved. He spoke all its tongues ; he protected, as far as circumstances would allow, all its races. He legis- lated for all in the spirit of an enlightened and equal des- potism, jealous of all special privileges, whether of nobles, churches, or cities. The heretic alone was persecuted ; he was the domestic rebel of the church; Saracen and Jew were entitled to the rights of foreigners. Yet Frederick, patron of Arabic learning, suspected even of Moslem belief, fails to check the decline of the Saracen element in Sicily. The Greek element has no such forces brought against it. It is still a chief tongue of the island, in which Frederick's laws are put forth as well as in Latin. But it is clearly a declining element. Greek and Saracen were both becom- ing survivals in an island which was but one of the many kingdoms of its king. No wonder that the Italian element advanced at the cost of all others. Frederick chose it as 1197-1282 the court speech of Sicily, and he made it more than a court speech, the speech of a new-born literature. Sicily, strangely enough, became the cradle of Italian song. Two emperors had now held the Sicilian crown. On Frederick's death in 1250 the crown passed to his son Conrad, not emperor indeed, but king of the Romans. He was nominal^ succeeded by his son Conradin. The real ruler under both was Frederick's natural son Manfred. Manfred. In 1258, on a false rumour of the death of Conradin, Manfred was himself crowned king at Palermo. He had to found the kingdom afresh. Pope Innocent the Fourth had crossed into Sicily, to take advantage of the general discontent. The cities, whose growing liberties had been checked by Frederick's legislation, strove for practical, if not formal, independence, sometimes for dominion over their fellows. The 5th century B.C. seemed to have come back. Messina laid waste the lands of Taormina, because Taormina would not obey the bidding of Messina. Yet, among these and other elements of confusion, Manfred succeeded in setting up again the kingly power, first for his kinsmen and then for himself. His reign continued that of his father, so far as a mere king could continue the reign of such an emperor. The king of Sicily was the first potentate of Italy, and came nearer than any prince since Louis the Second to the union of Italy under Italian rule. He sought dominion too beyond Hadria : Corfu, Durazzo, and a strip of the Albanian coast became Sicilian possessions as the dowry of Manfred's Greek wife. But papal enmity was too much for him. His overlord claimed to dispose of his crown, and hawked it about among the princes of the West. Edmund of England bore the Sicilian title for a moment. More came of the grant of Urban the Fourth (1264) to Charles, count of Anjou, and through his wife sovereign count of Provence. Charles, crowned Charles by the pope in 1266, marched to take possession of his of Anjou. lord's grant. Manfred was defeated and slain at Bene- vento. The whole Sicilian kingdom became the spoil of a stranger who was no deliverer to any class of its people. The island sank yet lower. Naples, not Palermo, was the head of the new power ; Sicily was again a province. But a province Sicily had no mind to be. In the con- tinental lands Charles founded a dynasty ; the island he lost after sixteen years. His rule was not merely the rule of a stranger king surrounded by stranger followers ; the degradation of the island was aggravated by gross oppres- sion, grosser than in the continental lands. The conti- nental lands submitted, with a few slight efforts at resist- ance. The final result of the Angevin conquest of Sicily was its separation from the mainland. Sicilian feeling was first shown in the support given to the luckless expedition of Conradin in 1268. Frightful executions in the island followed his fall. The rights of the Swabian house were now held to pass to Peter (Pedro), king of Aragon, husband of Manfred's daughter Constance. The connexion with Spain, which has so deeply affected the whole later history of Sicily, now begins. Charles held the Greek possessions of Manfred and had designs both on Epeiros and on Constantinople. The emperor Michael Palaiologos and Peter of Aragon became allies against Charles ; the famous John of Procida acted as an agent be- tween them ; the costs of Charles's Eastern warfare caused great discontent, especially in an island where some might still look to the Greek emperor as a natural deliverer. Peter and Michael were doubtless watching the turn of things in Sicily ; but the tale of a long-hidden conspiracy between them and the whole Sicilian people has been set aside by Amari. The actual outbreak of 1282, the famous Sicilian Vespers, was stirred up by the wrongs of the moment. A gross case of insult offered by a Frenchman