Manfred of Sicily

“ Meanwhile Manfred had regained all the dominions of the Sicilian crown in the name of Conradin, but in 1258 he quietly set aside his nephew and accepted the throne for himself. However necessary such a step might be, it divided Sicily from Germany. This was what the papal party desired: but Manfred, the son of an Italian mother, aimed, like his father, at an Italian monarchy. Consequently Alexander declared against him. In Italy, however, the cessation of supplies from England left Alexander almost powerless, and Manfred was accepted as the head of the Ghibellines in the peninsula. ”

“ When in May 1254 the German king died, Manfred, after refusing to surrender Sicily to Pope Innocent IV., accepted the regency on behalf of Conradin, the infant son of Conrad. But the strength of the papal party in the Sicilian kingdom rendered the position of the regent so precarious that he decided to open negotiations with Innocent. By a treaty made in September 1254, Apulia passed under the authority of the pope, who was personally conducted by Manfred into his new possession. But Manfred’s suspicions being aroused by the demeanour of the papal retinue, he fled to the Saracens at Lucera. ”

“ Each warrior leaned out of the saddle, seized a lance, and rode back around at top speed to throw at the target again.
After a moment, Manfred turned back to Daoud and said, "Charles d'Anjou has been hanging about in Rome all through the spring and summer claiming to be king of Sicily. This morning I asked to see my crown, and my steward brought it to me from the vault. The pope's words had not made it disappear. Rome is not Sicily. Anjou is welcome to stay in that decaying pesthole until he takes one of those famous Roman fevers and dies." ”

“ 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 ”

“ He is my lawful son, and Sicily can boast of few houses more ancient than that of Falconara. But alas! my Lord, what is blood! what is nobility! We are all reptiles, miserable, sinful creatures. It is piety alone that can distinguish us from the dust whence we sprung, and whither we must return.”
“Truce to your sermon,” said Manfred; “you forget you are no longer Friar Jerome, but the Count of Falconara. ”

“ He had no ally. Yet he defied them all, and swore that Sicily should be free. Many of the Catalonian nobles who revered the memory of his father rallied round the gallant young prince. He was a true son of En Pedro. Volunteers flocked to his standard. Above all, the almogavares were staunch to a man. En Federigo was proclaimed King of Sicily.
The Pope gave Jayme II. the titles of Gonfalonier, Admiral, and Captain-general of the Church; and, in addition to his marriage with Blanche of Anjou, he married his sister, the granddaughter of King Manfred, to the French heir of Naples. ”

“ He, his sons Manfred and Enzio, his chief counsellor Pier della Vigna, and many poets and troubadours drawn thither by his fame, so far outstripped the rest of Italy that all Italian poetry, wherever written, was called Sicilian.
Sicily was the most civilized place in Europe, now that Southern France had been crushed by the Albigensian persecution. The old Greek stock kept some trace of their inheritance; the Arabs had brought their culture; the Normans had added chivalric ideas; the Crusades and commerce had enlarged the intellectual boundaries ”

“ Under Frederic II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Sicily had been governed wisely. His son Conrad succeeded him as King of Sicily in 1250, but went to Germany, where his crown was being contested by William of Holland, leaving his illegitimate brother Manfred to administer Sicily. Conrad and his brother Henry died in 1254. Manfred continued to rule Sicily as regent for his nephew Conradin, son of Conrad, but in 1258, upon a rumor of Conradin's death, assumed the crown. ”

“ The last one was Conrad, son of Frederic and half brother of Manfred. He died ten years ago, and then Manfred proclaimed himself king of southern Italy and Sicily. The German part of the Holy Roman Empire is in a more chaotic state than Italy, if my lord can imagine such a thing.
Here in Orvieto, where the pope has settled for his safety, there are no Ghibellini. The townsmen have managed to find other reasons to [129] fight among themselves. The chief rivalry is between two great families, the Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi. ”

“ Charles of Anjou, after being crowned king of Naples and Sicily by the Pope, and having secured secret advantages [Pg 187] by bribery and intrigue, marched against Manfred in 1266. They met at Benevento, where, after a long and bloody battle, Manfred was slain, and the kingdom submitted to the usurper. By the Pope's order, Manfred's body was taken from the chapel where it had been buried, and thrown into a trench: his widow and children were imprisoned for life by Charles of Anjou. ”

“ But the most important transactions of Pedro were with Sicily. On the death of Manfred, who had perished at Benevento in battle with Charles [96] of Anjou, whom the pope had invested with the fief, the French prince took undisturbed possession of the Two Sicilies. When Conradin had attained his sixteenth year, knowing the hatred borne to the French rule by the Sicilies, and that the Ghibelline faction was at his command, he resolved to vindicate his rightful claims. ”

“ For the which cause, the Saracens fled into Apulia, but Manfred did not therefore cease to molest the Pope and the Church in their followers and troops, and he abode now in Sicily and now in Apulia, in great luxury and in great delights, following a worldly and epicurean life, and for his pleasure keeping many concubines, living lasciviously, and it seemed that he cared neither for God nor for the saints. But God, the just Lord, which, through grace, delays His Cf. Par. ”

“ As his father, Emperor Frederic, did before him. In the kingdom of Sicily under the Hohenstaufens, people may believe as they please, as long as they are discreet about it. Of course, King Manfred must pretend to be a Catholic, or all the hosts of Christendom would fall upon his kingdom and destroy him. As for me, Manfred trusts me because he knows I do not stand in awe of the pope. The same reason he relies on his Saracen warriors."
Yes, Daoud thought, having no religion might make Celino a more useful companion for a mission like this. ”

“ Also the people and forces of King Manfred were much dispersed, for M. Conrad of Antioch was in Abruzzi with a follow-211-ing, Count Frederick was in Calabria, the count of Ventimiglia was in Sicily; so that, if he had tarried a while, his forces would have increased; but to whom God intends ill, him He deprives of wisdom. Manfred having sallied forth from Benivento with his followers, passed over the bridge which crosses the said river of Calore into the plain which is called S. Maria della Grandella, to a place called the Pietra a Roseto ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the ruins of the Greek, Lombard and Saracen power, the Normans feudalised southern Italy so thoroughly that the feudalism of Naples and Sicily long outlasted the more indigenous feudalism of Tuscany or Romagna. Freed from his grasping brother’s tutelage after 1085, Roger ruled over Sicily as count till his death in 1101. We shall see how his son united Sicily with Apulia in a single sovereignty, which has in various shapes endured as the kingdom of Naples or Sicily, until the establishment of a united Italy in our own days. ”

“ A fierce war followed, but in spite of defeats, treaties that would have sacrificed her to the interests of kings, and continuous papal threats, Sicily clung staunch to her new ally, gaining at last as a recognized Aragonese possession a triumphant independence of the Angevin kingdom of Naples.
Rome, under a pope who was merely the puppet of Charles of Anjou, had hurled anathemas at Peter III; but his successors of more independent mind envied the Sicilians. It was of little use for Rome to throw off Hohenstaufen chains if she must rivet in their stead those of the French House of Anjou. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The subjugation of the Sicilians (in support of whom Lord Minto, much disappointed by a pseudo-constitution granted by the King, in which their rights were simply disregarded, had set out for Palermo) , still remained as difficult of completion as ever. On the 25th of March, the Sicilian Parliament met at the last-named place, and declared the dethronement of Ferdinand II. Thereupon ensued the bombardment of Messina, whence arose the King’s universally-known nickname of King Bomba. The independence of Sicily was now recognised by France and England. In May the cry of “Religion in Danger!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ This tale sounds too remarkable to be invented. Yet it is in fact only a variant of a myth localised also in Sicily, and doubtless in many other places. 318 The Palermo version is worth noting. It is a pendant, of course quite unhistorical, to one of the traditions of the Sicilian Vespers. After the massacre, the Pope laid an interdict on Sicily. The churches were closed and the bells silent. The people could not live so; something must be done. So they built a ship, and a group of gentlemen went on board, carrying with them all the silver cups and dishes which they possessed. ”

“ Domestic politics in the kingdom of Sicily were a further source of trouble. Richard's brother-in-law, King William, had died a year before the arrival of the crusaders, and the throne was in dispute between Henry VI, the new king of Germany, who had married Constance, William's aunt and heiress, and Tancred, an illegitimate descendant of the Norman house. Tancred was in possession, and to Richard, no doubt, the support of Sicily at the time seemed more important than the abstract question of right or the distant effect of his policy on the crusade. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides, my people are not your people, and it is a long way—I do not know how far, perhaps thousands of miles—from Sicily to England; and we are a people who live in a summer land, where one can even gather figs of thistles, but where everything one gathers turns into the lotus before it reaches the mouth, and robs the mind and limbs of all desire saving to eat and drink and be merry. And we of Sicily, called of the ancients the ‘laughing land,’ cannot even be merry, for every race which has conquered Sicily knows that it must itself be conquered afterwards. ”

“ The beginning of the thirteenth century sees the break-up of the Norman power, and Sicily transferred to the empire; one of the more notable facts of this transfer being the removal of sixty thousand Saracens to Nocera, in the south of Italy. Saracen, however, though it means Mahometan, by no means, necessarily, means Arab. Then we have the dominion of the French, ending with the Sicilian Vespers, and the death of eight thousand of them. Catalonians, Genoese, Modern Greeks, and Albanians (?) complete the list of the elements of intermixture in Sicily ”