Littell's Living Age/Volume 129/Issue 1664/The Norman Kingdom in Sicily

From The Quarterly Review.

THE NORMAN KINGDOM IN SICILY^[1].

The completion of Signor Amari's "History of the Mussulmans in Sicily" is a matter of congratulation, not only to the historical student, but to the learned world of Europe. It is not too much to say that it will take rank with the very first literary works of the century. Signor Amari adds another name to that distinguished list of Italian exiles who have devoted their banishment to the study of the past with a view to the illustration of the present. And he shows his pre-eminent qualifications for the task by selecting that period of his country's history (Signor Amari, we believe, is a Sicilian) which to the superficial eye may appear to be a break in its continual development. His book is a vindication of the continuity of Sicilian life and history. Not that he gives any support to the old notions of a Sicilian nationality with an existence ever since the time of the Siculi. Rather he does for Sicily the work which M. de Tocqueville has done for modern France in the "Ancien Régime." He shows that much of what it has been customary to attribute to Greek, Norman, and Aragonese origin or influence has often really been the creation of the infidel rulers of the land. What at present, however, we desire to call attention to is the subject of Signor Amari's last volume: the Norman conquest of Sicily and southern Italy, and the Norman kingdom. Putting aside its connection with European politics, papal and imperial — a subject comparatively well known — we would rather illustrate the remarkable union in that state of the diverse elements of civilization which Sicily then possessed — Greek, Arabic, Italian, and Norman. Signor Amari will himself be our principal authority, but we shall make use also of the old work of Gregorio — a work by no means superseded — and of that distinguished series of contemporary chroniclers, the most cultivated and most readable of mediæval historians, Malaterra, Falcandus, the Monk of Telesia, and others.

First of all, therefore, we shall endeavour to estimate the character of the conquerors and the nature of their conquest. We shall then proceed to illustrate the mingling of diverse civilizations and races in the state, and show what really was the condition of these subject nationalities.

The Norman conquest of southern Italy and Sicily occupies a mean position between a barbarian inroad of Vandals in Africa or Saxons in England and a modern political conquest of Schleswig or Alsace. We cannot help comparing it with another and almost contemporary Norman conquest, that of England by William. Both were exploits of the same race, and started from the same soil. And yet in their circumstances and results there is an equally great resemblance and diversity. The armament that sailed from St. Valéry was a national enterprise commanded by the national chief. The Normans of the south were knights-errant, owing allegiance to no recognized head. William before he started for the conquest of his island-kingdom had by dint of his own energy and perseverance acquired for himself a political and military superiority in his dominions that no man dared to gainsay. Amongst soldiers of fortune, on the other hand, one man is the equal of another, and it was after the supremacy of the race had been established that the house of Hauteville had to win its hardest victory, over its own fellow-conquerors. On the field of Hastings, England met Normandy, Harold met William; Harold was defeated and slain, England was conquered once for all. In the south it was far otherwise. There were divers races to contend with and to vanquish in detail. The first attempt to expel the Greeks ends in discomfiture; thirty years elapse between the settlement at Aversa and the assumption of the ducal title by Guiscard; thirty years are necessary for the conquest of Sicily. But when the work is done the results are similiar. Norman impress on the subject peoples forms firm and united nations. The conquerors adapt themselves to the conquered and become their champions. The existence of the Mediterranean kingdom was brilliant, but short-lived. It had shot forth into its brightest bloom and was already on the point of perishing before the northern realm had asserted its national unity.

The conquerors themselves in north and south were essentially the same men. Both are described by implication in a well-known and often-quoted passage of Malaterra^[2]. Nevertheless the Sicilian princes have a character of their own, and it is a character that appears to have risen with their fortunes. There is a distinct progress from Robert to Roger, and from Roger the great count to Roger the king. Here is a description of the latter by a contemporary, the Monk of Telesia — "He was a lover of justice, and most severe avenger of crime. He abhorred lying, did everything by rule, and never promised what he did not mean to perform. He was energetic, but not rash ,guarded in language, and self-controlled in action. He never persecuted his private enemies, and in war he endeavoured on all occasions to gain his point without shedding of blood, and to avoid risking the lives even (sic) of his own soldiers. He tempered his affability in such a way that familiarity might not breed contempt. Justice and peace were universally observed throughout his dominions." He possessed, too, the invariable Norman characteristic of attracting to his court men of learning and distinction of whatever race or language. His great compatriot, the first Norman king of England, may have surpassed him in the constancy of his married life, though Roger, judged by the standard of his country as well as of his age, was above the average in domestic morality. In other respects the Sicilian bears away the palm from the Englishman. The praises with which Williams latest panegyrist^[3] has loaded him apply with equal force to the king of Sicily. And his memory is not sullied by a deed of cruel vengeance for a personal affront at Alençon, nor did he receive his death-wound amid the ashes of a Mantes.

Such was the Siculo-Norman character at its best, and we have but to turn to Roger's son to see it at its worst. William, not without reason called the Bad, was at once treacherous, vindictive, and cruel. He placed unbounded confidence in unscrupulous favourites, not so much through weakness as through indolence. He disregarded all the duties of his position, and made use of it merely as affording the means for giving himself up to the pleasures of the chase and the harem. When roused by danger from his sensual seclusion he showed himself an undoubted son of the house of Hauteville in the vigour and determination with which he attacked and subdued his enemies. But it was in his wiles alone that he resembled Guiscard, and his punishments were merciless without being just. It may perhaps safely be assumed that the average character of the Norman baron was midway between the vices of William and the virtues of Roger.

As regards the number of the conquering race Signor Amari estimates it at not more than one per cent. of the population,^[4] and the immigrants belonged exclusively to the higher classes of feudatories and barons. An Arab chronicler describes the result of the conquest of Sicily as consisting in the establishment of the "Franks and Romans" in the island beside the Mahometans.^[5] The Norman chroniclers are generally silent as regards the important part played by these foreign auxiliaries. Yet no immigration of knights or adventurers from Normandy proper appears to have taken place subsequent to 1060. Nay, the contemporary testimony of William of Apulia is of itself conclusive. The original Norman settlement at Aversa is described by him as an asylum for all bold and lawless spirits of whatever nationality: —

Si quis vicinorum pernitiosus ad illos

Confugiebat, eum gratanter suscipiebant.

Other states have had a not more distinguished origin, followed by a not less glorious history.

These lands which the Norman warriors conquered had ever been the debatable ground between East and West. In former ages the contest had been between Greek and Phœnician, Roman and Carthaginian, Aryan and Semite; latterly it had been between Christian and Moslem, Latin and Greek, Catholic and Orthodox. Southern Italy and Sicily had played the part of a Southern "middle-rice" between the lords 'of the old and the new Rome. The work of Belisarius on the mainland was speedily undone by the Lombards. Their power, weakened by the might of Charlemagne and internal dissensions, was finally broken by a combination between the Eastern and Western emperors. The allied empires were victorious; but owing to the untimely death of Lewis the fruits of victory remained with the Greeks, and captured Bari became the capital of the restored theme of Longobardia. Great in nominal extent, the Greek power had little reality except in the immediate neighbourhood of Bari and of the Terra di Otranto. Further Calabria had never been won by the barbarians, but it was subject to perpetual harryings by the Arabs of Sicily. Naples and Amalfi, virtually independent republics, acknowledged the distant supremacy of the Byzantine emperor rather than the protection of any neighbouring count — a protection which might too easily be converted into a tyranny. The Lombards retained their own laws and customs, but they were despised by their Greek lords, and ground down by fiscal oppression. Hence arose perpetual revolts, perpetual attempts to expel the foreigner. The Saxon emperors came to the aid of those whom they affected to consider their own oppressed subjects; but without success. The first two Othos had to retire discomfited, the third died in Campania in the bloom of youth. The Lombards now sought help from the warrior-pilgrims who had landed on their shores, and yet the first attempt of the Normans also ended in signal disaster. And when the day of deliverance came at Melfi, the natives merely underwent a change of rulers. Southern Italy was regained for the West; the new masters of the Lombards were of like race with their subjects, and the Normans, if not more liked, were perhaps less hated than the Greeks.

The previous history of Sicily had been different. Owing to its position the island remained in possession of the Greeks from the time of Belisarius till its conquest by the Arabs in the ninth century. After being subject to the African caliphs for one hundred years, it acquired independent emirs of its own. Under infidel dominion respect was had for the laws and customs of the previous inhabitants; art and science flourished; but political dissensions which ensued after the separation from Africa weakened the powers of defence, and the resistance which Roger encountered, though often determined, was never united.

Such being the character of the conquerors and the circumstances of the subject peoples, it is easy to understand the peculiar features of the conquest itself; and both in manner and in result the conquest of the mainland differed greatly from that of the island kingdom.

We cannot follow the chroniclers into the details of the conquest. It will suffice to call attention to the nature of the foundation at Melfi. It was based on a federative principle. Each of the twelve chiefs obtained a city and district of his own, and each a distinct quarter in the federal capital. There too all general councils were to be held, thence all general edicts promulgated. William of the Iron Hand, the eldest of the sons of Tancred, was chief of the confederacy — chief by election of his peers. He acknowledged a titular supremacy in the Lombard prince of Salerno, whilst his brother and successor, Drogo, four years afterwards, following the example of the early Norman counts of Aversa, received investiture from the hands of the Western emperor. The original conquest of Apulia, therefore, was at once feudal and federal. Not so that of Sicily. Feudal institutions and customs were introduced into the island by the conquerors for the regulation of their own political and social life, but federalism never.

Furthermore, these many masters at Melfi were a perpetual source of weakness to the Norman power. Guiscard reduced them to subjection. but on his death the minority of his children — that curse of the Norman-Sicilian kingdom — undid his work. Each successive sovereign had to recover this supremacy for himself, and the desertion of the Apulian barons at the battle of Benevento was but the last act in a long drama of treachery.

Whilst on the mainland the Normans affected to be champions of liberty against foreign oppressors, in Sicily they assumed the character of crusaders. The conquest of the island was a holy war of Christian against infidel. "I would desire," says Guiscard to his knights, "to deliver the Christians and the Catholics from their subjection to the unbeliever. I desire much to rescue them from this oppression, and to avenge the injury done to God." Such ever afterwards was the orthodox mode of speaking of the conquest. Neither Robert nor Roger, it is true, wanted any fellow-crusaders to join them in their enterprise. They embarked in it at their own risk, and they meant to reap the benefit of it for themselves. That the Sicilian Christians in most cases helped the conquerors against the infidel is probable; that they did not in all has been conclusively shown by Signor Amari.

Let us turn now from the conquerors to the conquered, and examine, with the help of Signor Amari, what was the social and political condition of the Greek and Mussulman subjects of the Norman kingdom. We shall find that during the best period toleration, religious and political, was a reality. We shall find the Greek, the Mussulman, and the Lombard (for in the country round Etna there was a large Lombard colony, then lately settled and still there resident) living peacefully side by side under the powerful protection of the Norman princes.

When Palermo was surrendered by the Mussulmans to Roger, a Greek archbishop was found in the city enjoying full liberty for the discharge of his ecclesiastical functions.^[6] The toleration which the Greeks enjoyed under the Mussulman domination they enjoyed no less under their new masters. Though their form of Christianity was not re-established in the land on the overthrow of the infidel, there were ecclesiastical foundations in both parts of the kingdom which, although no longer retaining the orthodox ritual, were Greek in character and filled by Greeks. The Greek documents from the monastery of La Cava, on the mainland, and from that of Fragalà, in Sicily, occupy the greater part of the two great collections of Trinchera^[7] and Spata.^[8] In the course of the twelfth century Latin attestations appear here and there amongst the Greek signatures to the Greek documents; they are generally those of royal officers, men of Norman or Italian origin. At Fragalà Greek attestations are found as late as 1409. The fact that Frederic published his constitutions both in the Greek and Latin languages is a sufficient evidence of the importance of the Greek population during his reign, if it were not already demonstrated by the prosperity of Messina and that end of Sicily which was mainly inhabited by Greeks. Nevertheless although so retentive of their national life and language that at the present day there are communities of Greeks in the Terra di Otranto and Calabria considered by competent authority^[9] to be quite distinct from the Albanian and other colonists of the last and preceding centuries, speaking a Grecian dialect, and still possessing a ballad literature in that dialect, they never appear to have taken an active part in the politics of the kingdom. The story of the priest Scholarios (Amari, iii., pp. 257-9) is worth referring to as an illustration of this.

Greek influence is most visible in the sphere of art, but of that we cannot speak at present. Not only was mosaic a Greek art, but the sacred language in which the legends and scrolls were written was Greek. The etiquette and costumes of the Norman court were closely modelled on those of Constantinople. In the fourteenth century the instructors of Petrarch and Boccaccio were Greeks from Calabria; and a patriotic Neapolitan (Trinchera) laments, and perhaps with some justice, that the classicists of the Renaissance paid so little regard to the surviving Hellenism of southern Italy. The Greeks may perhaps have taught the Normans the importance of naval strength in the Mediterranean — at any rate the administration of the navy was Greek, as were its best admirals; and strangely enough it was over the Greek empire that it obtained its most signal victories. In ecclesiastical affairs also there can be little doubt that the early Norman kings were strengthened in their opposition to papal encroachments, and in their arrogating to themselves authority in things ecclesiastical as well as civil, by their knowledge of the power of the emperor in the orthodox Church. It may be worth while once more to point out the baselessness of the tradition that the manufacture of silk was introduced into the West from Greece after the sack of Athens, Thebes, and Corinth in 1149. Greek operatives may for the first time have been employed after that event, but the tiraz, or silk-manufacture, was an appendage of the palaces of all Mussulman princes, at Cordova, at Kairoan, and at Palermo. The Arabic inscription on the imperial mantle at Nuremberg furnishes itself conclusive proof, for it tells us that the mantle was made for King Roger at Palermo in 1133, in the royal manufactory, "the dwelling-place of happiness, of light, of glory, of perfection," etc. A representation of the mantle and a translation of the inscription is to be found in Bock's "Kielnodien des Helligen Römischen Reichs."

If toleration of Greeks was remarkable at this period, toleration of Mussulmans was still more so. The condition of the Mussulman subjects of the Norman kingdom, and their relation to and influence upon their rulers, constitute one of the most interesting studies in mediæval history. As the conquest of Sicily was gradual and diverse, so the treatment of the vanquished was various. At Messina the Saracen inhabitants were massacred with the connivance and probably at the instigation of the Greek populace. Greek fanaticism was always sanguinary, and Messina retained its bad name throughout the Norman epoch, and not without reason, for the "treachery of Greece and the fickleness of pirates" (Falcandus). A fugitive Mussulman puts his own sister to death with his own hand that she may not have to forswear her religion and fall into the hands of Christian ravishers. In the north-eastern part of Sicily, the Val Demone, the Saracens were practically exterminated. We find them at Petralia and at Traina (Malaterra, ii., 14 and 29), but the bulk of the population of that division was Greek, just as the bulk of the population of the Val di Noto and almost the entire population of the Val di Mazarà was Saracen. At Girgenti, for instance, the infidels were so powerful that the bishop was obliged to build himself a castle in self-defence, and he made use of the ancient temples of Agrigentum as a quarry for its construction. "May the earth lie heavy on his bones," is Signor Amari's imprecation. We say, "Amen."

We are fortunate in possessing a contemporary testimony of an enlightened Mussulman traveller with regard to the condition of his co-religionists in Sicily during the reign of William the Good. Ebn Grobhair, a native of Valencia in Spain, on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca landed at Messina. Thence sailing to Cefalù and Termini, he proceeded by land through Palermo to Trapani, from which port he eventually sailed for Spain. The narrative of his journey, which took place in the winter of 1184-5, was translated by Signor Amari in the "Archivio storico Italiano" for 1847.

From that narrative we gather that there was a very great difference in position between the Saracens of the cities and those in the country. The latter, the poorer cultivators of the soil and agricultural labourers, with the introduction of feudal tenure, were reduced to a state of villeinage, and shared the life of the lowest serfs. Thus a large gift of Mussulman serfs was made by Roger to the church of Cefalù, and in such cases oppression would be aggravated by religious fanaticism. Much land, however, was still held by Mussulman proprietors, and on these estates the Islamite labourer would be well treated. Of this class of proprietors Abu'l Cassem was a distinguished member. Possessed of large estates in the island, a domain which had descended to him from first-born to first-born, and of many houses in Palermo itself, houses, says the traveller, "which resembled magnificent and extensive palaces," a patron of poets, a Mussulman Mæcenas, as Lalumia has termed him, he is denounced as holding a treasonable correspondence with his countrymen in Africa, subjected to a large fine, and deprived of his property. Subsequently restored to favour, he is intrusted again with office under the government. Reinstated though he was, he found life amongst Christians so irksome, surrounding circumstances so eminently calculated to induce him to forsake Islam or to drive him from the country, that he resolved to sell all that he possessed and migrate to Africa. "Consider, therefore," says our author, "in what a wretched condition a man of such wealth and authority must have found himself when he determined to abandon the home of his forefathers with sons and daughters and all his property." Those of the upper class of Mussulmans who did not leave their country, like Abu 'l Cassem, held aloof from politics, while the unprincipled made outward profession of conversion to Christianity, remaining all the while Mussulman at heart. Christian churches were open as sanctuaries to unbelievers, but the unbeliever by taking sanctuary ipso facto renounced Islam.

This religious toleration was entirely the work of the Norman kings themselves, and it was only under compulsion that they ever succeeded in inducing their subjects to observe the principle. The rational judgment pronounced by Falcandus upon the kaid Peter, and the still more remarkable championship of the cause of that fallen statesman by the Count of Molisé, are almost the only exceptions to the rule.^[10] The king found in the Mahometans his most faithful soldiers, his most cultivated companions, and his best officials. The palace and court of Palermo were almost completely officered by Mahometans in fact, if not always in name. But with the growth of stability in the realm national feelings were created. The patriotic party demanded that the young king William should be brought up as a Sicilian. A new nobility of office arose, and daily increased in power. At first, whilst the feudal baronage was still to be dreaded, this official nobility protected the Saracens, many members of it themselves professing Islam. After, however, the coalition of the feudal baronage, the nationalists, and the officials had brought about the fall of Stephen of Perche, young William's foreign tutor, the two latter parties obtained the chief share in the government, and united were strong enough to do without direct Saracen help, whilst the ecclesiastical element in the council was always eager for persecution. The Saracens had still the king to defend them. And as long as William lived his protection was sure. With his death dissension between Christian and Saracen begins, and dissension prepares the way for the German. Tancred, the elect of the nation, is again the Saracens' friend. He brings them back to Palermo from their hiding-places and fastnesses in the mountains. His work is cut short by death. Again during the minority of Frederic persecutions break out, again the persecuted flee to the mountains. Frederic in 1223 reduces the greater part of them to subjection, and transfers a large body of them to Luceria in Apulia. The palace and court of Palermo still derive their lustre from Oriental luxury and culture, and in this respect Frederic is a true successor of the Norman kings. The anarchy and persecution, however, of the intervening period had converted a wealthy, peaceful, and cultivated population into Italian mercenaries and Sicilian brigands.

A clear idea of what toleration was in Sicily whilst it lasted, and of the general condition of the Mussulman inhabitants, will best be obtained from Grobhair himself: —

The road [from Termini to Palermo] looked like a market, [says he] it was so much trodden and full of people coming and going. The bands of Christians that we met saluted us immediately, and treated us with politeness and familiarity; so much so that we saw that the mode of government and the mildness of the treatment of the Mussulmans were sufficient to tempt the minds of the ignorant. May God protect all the followers of Mahomet, and deliver them from these temptations by his power and grace. [The custom-officer who received the pilgrims at Palermo muttered the Mahometan salutation between his teeth] at which we marvelled greatly. Amongst the Mussulmans at Palermo [he proceeds] there are still left traces of the true faith. They maintain the greater part of their mosques in good repair; they are summoned to prayer by the voice of the muezzin; they have suburbs of their own in which they live unmingled with the Christians, and markets in which they alone have shops. They have a cadi of their own, who administers justice to them. … The king of Sicily himself is singular for his good disposition and his frequent employment of Mussulmans. Eunuchs are about his person, all of whom, or the greater part, are firmly attached, though secretly, to the religion of Islam. The king has great confidence in the Mussulmans, and entrusts to them the most important and delicate business. The superintendent of his kitchen is a Mussulman, and the king has a body-guard of negro Mussulman slaves, commanded by one of themselves. His vizier and his chamberlain are always chosen from amongst the above-mentioned eunuchs. … In truth no Christian prince reigns more mildly, enjoys more wealth, and lives more delicately than he. He. resembles the Mussulman kings in his pleasures no less than in the order of his laws, the manner of government, the distinction of classes of his subjects, and the pageantry and luxury of his court. He is thirty years of age: may God prolong his life in good health for the benefit of the Mussulmans. Another remarkable thing about him is that he reads and writes Arabic. One of his chief eunuchs told us this, and that he has taken as his alamah or sacred motto, "Praise be to God, praise is due to him." His father's alamah was, "Praise be to God in recognition of his benefits." The female slaves and concubines that he keeps in the palace are all of the Mussulman faith. Furthermore, the above-mentioned servant John, one of the pages in the tiraz (the silk-manufactory, the harem), where the garments of the king are embroidered in gold, revealed to us a no less marvellous fact, namely, that the Frank Christian ladies staying in the palace become Mussulman, being converted by the female slaves that we have mentioned. The king knows nothing of the fact, yet these ladies were very zealous in good works. The same John told us that once during an earthquake, the king, whilst in his palace, heard on all sides his women and eunuchs uttering prayers to God and the prophet. When they caught sight of the king they were alarmed; but he reassured them, saying, "Let every one pray to the God whom he adores, he who has faith in his God will obtain peace."

The sovereign who uttered these words based his toleration on the widest grounds. Unfortunately, before the end of his reign, by his too close connection with the Roman Church, he was induced to extend ecclesiastical jurisdiction so that the bishops took cognizance of certain cases between Mussulman and Christian (Lalumia, p. 187). Thereby he opened the door to persecution, and he broke through the original principle of the constitution by which Mussulmans were only to be tried by Mussulman judges, according to their own law of the Koran. Looking backward and forward from the reign of William, we can better understand the character of the courts of Roger and Frederic. The abuse heaped on Frederic by his ecclesiastical foes, their accusations of heresy and apostasy, are well known. The Palermitan court of Frederic, however, was but an inheritance from the "good" King William. The rapprochement between East and West, between Latin, Greek, and Arabic culture, in which and in the consequences resulting therefrom was supposed to lie the great value to Europe of the Crusades, had been made already in Sicily. The principles of toleration embodied by Frederic in the treaty of Jerusalem were exactly actly those previously applied by his Norman ancestors in Sicily. And there, instead of fitfully for a few months or years at a time, this rapprochement lasted continuously for two centuries. There the peoples came really to know one another, and to react upon one another. It was the stronger elements in each of these various civilizations that survived. In art, science, and manufacture, in culture and philosophy, Orientalism, Greek and Arabic, prevailed. In war and politics Latinism was victorious. It was the high privilege of the Normans to preside over this fusion of the streams of mind, and right worthy directors of the movement they proved themselves to be. The Nemesis of history seems, however, to have grudged Sicily her good fortune. For the last time east and west, north and south, had met in arms upon the Trinacrian soil. Victory had remained with the west, and the allegiance to Constantinople, to Bagdad, to Cordova, and to Kairoan was forever broken. Nevertheless, the glorious independence of Sicily was but short-lived, and since she has ceased to be the battle-ground of rival civilizations she has remained outside the main stream of history.

We cannot resist noticing in a sentence or two how the three elements of which civilization in the Norman kingdom consisted have impressed themselves on the architecture of the country. Though the fusion itself is concealed by the mists of a distant past, at Palermo, Monreale ,and Cefalù we have abiding memorials of the fact. The interest of the subject has brought most competent observers into the field, and in the works of Hittorf and Zanth, of Gally Knight, and above all of Serra di Falco and Gravina, the principal buildings are laid before us in all their detail. With a few trifling exceptions, of which the most important is the baths at Cefalù, we have the high authority of Signor Amari for stating that no building of importance at present survives in Sicily which can be with certainty attributed to the period of Mussulman rule. The claims of the Cuba and the Zisa at Palermo have been conclusively disposed of. Nevertheless the great buildings of the period are in their essence, that is to say in the principle of construction, which is almost invariably that of the pointed arch, Saracenic. A typical example is to be found in the well-known Ponte d' Ammiraglio near Palermo. The Normans ordered the buildings, but it was the Saracens who were the actual builders. On the other hand Greek influence shows itself in the mosaic ornamentation, Latin in the form — the basilican — given to the ecclesiastical edifices. The wooden roofs at Cefalù and Monreale as contrasted with the Saracenic ceiling of the Capella Regia and the gradual but very slight admixture of figure sculpture in the west door of Monreale show that in some departments there was a struggle in progress. Into such details, and into the interesting subject of the south-Italian architecture of the period, illustrated by the magnificent work of Schulz, it is impossible to enter.

We have endeavoured to call attention to that part of the subject which is of most interest to the general reader — the condition of the subject nationalities. But there are many other respects in which the Norman kingdom in Sicily is well worthy of study. The jurist and political philosopher will find a mine of study in the constitutions of Roger, William, and Frederic, whilst the practical reformer may derive some useful hints therefrom on such subjects as medical education and sanitary regulation. The high-sounding title claimed by Roger of "king of Sicily, Italy, and Africa," suggests the manifold foreign relations in which a central Mediterranean state would be involved, a state holding in its dominion both shores of the inland sea. Many of the enigmas of the life and reign of Frederic II. can only be solved by a knowledge of the history of what was his true fatherland. It was the union of the crowns of the empire and "the kingdom" upon a single head that brought the struggle of the empire and the papacy to a crisis. The possession of the kingdom was worth the struggle; the loss of it was the loss of Italy. To the history of municipal institutions, to the history of commerce and of social life in Italy, the annals of the Norman kingdom make considerable contributions. And it was in Norman Sicily that the first words of Italian poetry were uttered, that Italian literature began. These subjects and others are all touched upon more or less by Signor Amari, whose work we cannot, in conclusion, on account of both its historical and literary value, too strongly recommend to our readers.

1. 1. Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia. Scritta da Michele Amari. 3 voll. Firenze, 1854-72.
   2. Storia di Sicilia sotto Guglielmo il buono. Scritta da Isidoro Lalumia. Firenze, 1867.
   3. Considerazioni sulla storia di Sicilia. Da Rosario Gregorio. 5 voll. Palermo, 1805-10.
2. Gibbon, vol. vii., chap. 56, p. 106.
3. Freeman, Norm. Conq., ii., p. 163 sq.
4. Arch. Stor. Ital., pp. 28, 29.
5. Storia, iii 218 n.
6. Malaterra, ii., 45.
7. "Syllabus Membranarum Græcarum," etc. Napoli, 1865.
8. Pergamene Greche esistenti nel grande Archivio di Palermo, Palermo, 1861.
9. Sr. Pitré in the "Canti populari dell' Italia meridionale."
10. See Muratori, vii., pp. 303 D, and 308 D. E