King of Sicily

“ Charles of Naples met the King of Sicily at Calatabellota, and agreed to acknowledge him as king, and to give him his daughter Leonor for his wife. In return Federigo consented to evacuate Calabria. The marriage took place at Messina in May 1302.
A very large army remained in Sicily without employment. Friar Roger de Flor conceived the idea of offering his services to the Emperor of the East and of enlisting the Aragonese and Catalonian soldiers to fight against the Turks. ”

“ Pledging his lands, he crossed the Alps and issued a manifesto at Verona setting forth his claim on Sicily. Notwithstanding the defection of his uncle Louis and other companions who returned to Germany, the threatenings of Pope Clement IV., and lack of funds, his cause seemed to prosper. Proclaimed king of Sicily, his partisans both in the north and south of Italy took up arms; his envoy was received with enthusiasm in Rome; and the young king himself was welcomed at Pavia and Pisa. ”

“ At the point where the road to the church had become impracticable for horse or litter, courtiers and ladies, priests and knights had to climb as best they could the stubborn slope to the summit. But the fatigue which was thus imposed upon the tender limbs of women, upon the ancient frames of ecclesiastics, was not to be borne by the new King of Sicily. He was carried up the incline in a chair by two herculean Moorish slaves, so strong and surefooted that the stubborn ascent could be made with the least possible discomfort to his royal body. ”

“ Sixteen years later, in 1282, the French paid dearly for their oppression in the terrible massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, when they were exterminated throughout the island.
Then the Sicilians invited Don Pedro de Aragón, the son-in-law of Manfred, their last Norman king, to rule them; and the Aragonese dynasty, with varying fortunes, lasted until 1409, when it became extinct, and Sicily was attached to Spain and governed by Spanish viceroys. Never did a government care less for its subjects ”

“ An independent nation, without a free people, was the highest aspiration of revolted Sicily. England and France left her to her fate, except so far as Lord Minto’s meddling complicated her condition. The temporarily vanquished Neapolitans returned to the contest, and the revolution was ingloriously suppressed.
In Naples the victory of the constitution was as short as the independence, of Sicily. The king acted without sincerity, and the deputies without prudence. The king found an opportunity of resistance, for which he had well prepared himself. ”

“ They got ashore safely, in spite of the Bourbons’ cruisers, and before they left for Calatafimi Garibaldi posted his now famous proclamation claiming Sicily for King Victor Emmanuele.
Of course there are a cathedral, Punic and Christian tombs, the remains of ancient walls and harbor works, latomie and so on, but to-day Marsala really spells only—Wine! The largest and most important establishments are those of the Englishmen Ingham and Woodhouse, and the Sicilian Florio of Palermo. But there are numerous others not so well known nor doing so large a business. ”

“ In Sicily the revolutionists were purely insular in their aspirations and bitterly hostile to the Neapolitans, and the attempts at conciliation, although favoured by Lord Minto, failed, for Naples wanted one constitution and one parliament, whereas Sicily wanted two, with only the king in common. The Sicilian assembly met in March 1848, and SettimoSicily. in his inaugural speech declared that the Bourbon dynasty had ceased to reign, that the throne was vacant and that Sicily united her destinies to those of Italy. ”

“ A revolt in Sicily is put down the following year. Sicily is used as a starting-point for the African wars.
1554 Charles gives his son Philip the title of king of Naples, on Philip’s marriage to Mary of England.
1556 Abdication of Charles V. Philip I (II of Spain) receives the Two Sicilies as part of his dominions. The kingdom becomes merely a Spanish province. Pope Paul IV wishes to drive the Spaniards from Naples and makes a league with Henry II of [670] France for that purpose. Francis, duke of Guise, grandson of René II of Lorraine, plans to obtain the crown of Naples. ”

“ This was the first step to the subjection of Sicily, but not till after Syracuse and Catania fell did the King feel that there was no further cause for anxiety—the taking of the capital becoming a mere question of time. ”

“ All the calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored, were surpassed by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He violated the royal sepulchres, and explored the secret treasures of the palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom; the pearls and jewels, however precious, might be easily removed; but one hundred and sixty horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily. The young king, his mother and sisters, and the nobles of both sexes, were separately confined in the fortresses of the Alps ”

“ Otho, the Guelf, whom men now call Emperor, is speeding toward the north. Never more need Sicily fear his grip. The throne which he usurps is shaken and disturbed. The world needs an emperor who can check disorders and bring it life and strength. Whose hand may do this so surely as thine—the illustrious Lord Frederick [Pg 115] of the grand old Hohenstaufen line, the elect King of the Romans, the Lord of Sicily? ”

“ The division occurred first after the rising against the French and the massacre known as "the Sicilian Vespers". See ITALY: A. D. 1282-1300. The crown of Sicily was then acquired by Peter, king of Aragon, succeeded by his son Frederick. Charles of Anjou and his successors were left in possession of the kingdom of Naples, alone, although still claiming Sicily in union with it. "As the king who reigned at Naples would not give up his right to Sicily, ... his kingdom is often called Sicily as well as the Island Kingdom ”

“ Sicily would be still ruled by a race of monarchs, descended through me from Charles I and Rodolph I the former my grandfather king of Naples and Sicily; the latter emperor of Germany, my father-in-law ”

“ The whole structure smells of blood. To-day, as the Dogana, or Custom House, it is as useful as ever—and for the Sicilian importer no doubt still a palace of most unpleasant inquisition.
King William the Bad, King Roger’s son, and father of William II, the Good—who built the Cathedral of Monreale—called his favorite palace in Arabic La Zisa, the Beloved or the Splendid. It is of distinctly Moorish character—bare walls unrelieved by projecting decorations of any sort, with Oriental doorways, pointed-arch windows, and a heavy battlemented frieze. ”

“ The ship made Cefalù head, and everyone came ashore safely. Two years later King Roger fulfilled his vow, by establishing a town at the foot of the cliff, and beginning to rear the most magnificent sanctuary that had been built in Sicily since the Greeks constructed their massive Doric temples.
Tremendous and massive are the only words that fit this building, and the enormous hewn stones upon which the façade rests seem to indicate that here must once have stood some ancient fortification which offered the Norman architects a permanent base upon which to build their shrine. ”

“ He is still there, and the Sicilians silently sigh over their inability against the superior force of Naples. The people are of a nobler type than the Neapolitans and regard themselves as of a nobler race, they are also more industrious and earnest, and still greater lovers of freedom. But the want of independence breeds in the cities frivolity and immorality, especially in Palermo, and that amongst all classes. Sicily is still rich and beautiful, as in ancient times, and is still worthy to be called the gem of the Mediterranean. ”

“ Thus at last a single man put the period to the island’s troubled history, ended definitely her ambitions for individual greatness and made her an important part of a greater and more powerful whole.
So it is clear that there has never been a Sicilian nation, nor has there ever been even a Sicilian language; but every great race that dwells about the Mediterranean at some time has had a part in Sicily’s story, and each race in its turn has left an indelible imprint upon language and customs, upon architecture and people. Here one sees a pure Greek face of classic beauty ”

“ Last of all the great molders of Sicily came the Normans, knights who with their keen blades carved a slice out of the Byzantine Empire on the Italian mainland and, conquering the Sicilian Muslims, built up a kingdom for themselves. Sicily’s period of greatest glory dawned with their conquest. They developed a splendid fabric of feudalism; and all the arts as well as the more usual graces of civilization stamped the new kingdom for their own. The very Italian language, as Dante himself acknowledges, had its feeble beginnings in the court of the Emperor Frederick II at Palermo. ”

“ By consulting the map you see that the triangle—with an area of some ten thousand square miles—is not only in the center of the Mediterranean from East to West, but that it is also a great stepping-stone between Europe and Africa. In ancient days, when all the civilized world bordered the Mediterranean, the geographical position of Sicily gave the island an especial political character and importance. And naturally, while it remained the very center of the civilized world, it was a rich prize to be fought for by each Nation which rose to power. ”

“ Many an army had marched and camped and fought among these hills and vales, and the powdery dust of the milk-white roads had puffed up from the feet of Elymian and Phœnician, Greek and Roman legions. But never before had a victory meant so much to civilization as the success of the badly armed but desperately determined and immortal Thousand who followed the gray-haired sailor-hero. And history repeated itself yet again when Garibaldi, like Timoleon, refused everything for himself, counting it honor enough to serve Sicily so well. ”

“ There has never been a Sicilian nation. Perhaps that is the reason the story of the island is so hard to follow, it’s all snarled up with the history of first one, then another nation. The most obvious way of learning something about Sicily is to read what historians have to say about it; a pleasanter way is to listen to what the poets from Homer to Goethe have sung of it, paying special heed to Theocritus—he knew Sicily better than anybody else before his time or since! ”

“ The name of Sicily is illustrious in history. If the reputation of a people had for sole foundation and measure the number of inhabitants, the extent of its territory, the duration of its influence, the Sicilians, impoverished by continual revolutions, decimated by sucessive tyrannies, more isolated from the general progress by their internal organisation, than from the mainland by their geographical position, would hold, perhaps, in the annals of the world, no more room than their island occupies on the map of Europe. ”

“ When that occurs, Sicily may again raise its desponding head, and, by seeking the protection of England, whose remembrance is indelibly stamped on the hearts of its inhabitants, it would soon be regenerated, and, with a liberal government and free trade, might once more become the rich and happy Sicily, the garden of Europe. ”

“ They stayed a long time, but with the crumbling of the Roman Empire there came a change in Sicily, the first Roman province, and for a time the Goths and the Byzantines ruled her. Then came the Saracens. They destroyed Syracuse and made a new capital, Palermo, that from their time to ours has remained the chief city of the island. After the Saracens came the Normans—the same generation of men that subdued England under William the Conqueror,—and gave to Sicily a second period of greatness; for if the Greeks gave Sicily her Golden Age, the Norman age at least was Silver Gilt. ”

“ Carven slabs from the temple friezes—what a story they tell of the primitive and ardent culture of the early Greeks perched upon their twin hills at Selinus, beside the sounding deep! One whole hall is lined with them, arranged symmetrically in series, speaking even to-day with the voice of that mystic lore which, to understand, reveals ancient Sicily. And though individual carvings excel them in precision and beauty, as a series denoting the exact progress of Greek Sicilian art from its crudest to its most perfected form, the metopes are unsurpassed. ”

“ We see signs of the art of Byzantium, so long mistress of Southern Italy, and of the art of the Saracen, in Italy only a visitor or an invader, while in Sicily an abiding master. The portico in front of the church is Roman in its general idea; but, instead of the colonnade and entablature of the Laurentian basilica, we see an arcade whose pointed arches at once call up memories of Sicily. They have indeed little of Sicilian grace. Nowhere at Palermo or Monreale do we see such massive columns bearing such massive stilts. ”

“ But then it would be necessary that the Two Sicilies as an independent and separate State should be well governed, and should have an enlightened Sovereign. This unfortunately has become hopeless and impossible under the Bourbon Dynasty, and no Englishman could wish to see a Murat or a Prince Napoleon on the Throne of Naples.4 The course of events since last summer seems to have finally decided the fate of Sicily and Naples, and there can be no doubt that for the interest of the people of Italy, and with a view to the general balance of Power in Europe, a united Italy is the best arrangement. ”