Roger II of Sicily

“ Much the same can be said of his navy, for the safety of the Sicilian kingdom and its position in Mediterranean politics depended in large measure upon sea power, and Roger’s fleet has a distinguished record in his Italian and African campaigns. Army and navy and civil service, however, rested ultimately upon the royal treasury, and among its contemporaries the Sicilian kingdom enjoyed a deserved reputation for great wealth. Its resources consisted partly in the products of the soil, such as the grain and cotton and peltry which were exported from Sicily itself ”

“ But he appears to have been more endowed with courage and the spirit of enterprise than with good judgment, and his conduct of the empire coincided with events that, as seen in history, contributed to its decline, which after his death followed rapidly. As this decline is to be dated especially from the passing but not ineffectual invasion of Roger II, King of Sicily, in 1146, some account of that, together with a view of conditions immediately preceding, becomes important in a work like this. ”

“ It is written in the chronicles, that earl Roger let himself first be called the king of Sicily in the year of our Lord 1102, having before contented himself with the title of earl only of Sicily, although he was duke of Calabria and Apulia, and was called Roger the Great ”

“ Roger of Sicily had now long attained man’s estate, and had shown his ability and energy in the administration of his county. After his cousin’s death, he at once got himself accepted as Duke of Apulia and Calabria by the mass of the Norman barons, and then directed his resources towards conquering the states of southern Italy that were still outside the power of his house. With the subjugation of the rival Norman principality of Capua, and of the republics of Amalfi and Naples, the unity of the later kingdom of Naples and Sicily was substantially established. ”

“ Had Roger been content with his fruitful patrimony, a happy and grateful people might have blessed their benefactor; and if a wise administration could have restored the prosperous times of the Greek colonies, 98 the opulence and power of Sicily alone might have equalled the widest scope that could be acquired and desolated by the sword of war. But the ambition of the great count was ignorant of these noble pursuits; it was gratified by the vulgar means of violence and artifice. He sought to obtain the undivided possession of Palermo, of which one moiety had been ceded to the elder branch ”

“ The Arabs of Sicily derived a frequent and powerful succor from their countrymen of Africa: in the siege of Palermo, the Norman cavalry was assisted by the galleys of Pisa; and, in the hour of action, the envy of the two brothers was sublimed to a generous and invincible emulation. After a war of thirty years, 55 Roger, with the title of great count, obtained the sovereignty of the largest and most fruitful island of the Mediterranean; and his administration displays a liberal and enlightened mind, above the limits of his age and education. ”

“ He was far-seeing in arranging all his actions, pleasant and merry all with men; strong and brave, and furious in battle.” He shared with Robert Guiscard the conquest of Calabria, and in a treaty of 1062 the brothers in dividing the conquest apparently made a kind of “condominium” by which either was to have half of every castle and town in Calabria. [1] Robert now resolved to employ Roger’s genius in reducing Sicily, which contained, besides the Moslems, numerous Greek Christians subject to Arab princes who had become all but independent of the sultan of Tunis. ”

“ But we must note something about the people. To be one state does not at all mean that all the people in these parts became one race. It was still many centuries before that final amalgamation took place.
The government of Roger II and of his successors gives a unique example of mediæval toleration. The Norman conquerors of Sicily, beginning with Roger I, found themselves reigning over people of two races, two languages, and two religions. There were Greek Christians and Moslem Saracens. To these we may add the Latin Lombards of the mainland. Meanwhile the kings were Norman Latins. ”

“ Roger, unlike most of the monarchs of his age, paid particular attention to improving the wealth of his dominions by increasing the prosperity of his subjects. During his reign the cultivation of the sugar-cane was introduced into Sicily. The conduct of Manuel was very different; when he concluded peace with William, the son and successor of Roger, in 1158, he paid no attention to the commercial interests of his Greek subjects; the silk manufactures of Thebes and Corinth were not reclaimed and reinstated in their native seats ”

“ The intervening period includes Peter's year of adventure in the Sicilian court, the most curious and exciting incident of his whole career.
The Norman Kingdom of Sicily, founded in the eleventh century by the heroic sons of Tancred de Hauteville, was now at the height of its prosperity. It included the Southern States of Italy—Calabria, Apulia, and the principality of Naples. Under Roger II and William I it had become one of the strongest and best administered of existing kingdoms, exercising great influence not only in the West but also in the East. ”

“ The Calabria of his youth had preserved a stiff tradition of Byzantine administration, and the Mohammedans of Sicily had an even stronger bureaucracy at work. Roger's capital was at Palermo, and it was natural that the Greek and Saracen institutions of Sicily and Calabria should prove the formative influences in his government as it was extended to the newly acquired and less centralized regions of the mainland. There was free adaptation and use of experience, but the loose feudal methods of the Normans were profoundly modified by the bureaucratic traditions of the East. ”

“ 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 II. 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. Mal. iv. 2 9) . ”

“ The Papacy, favouring a prince who had recovered Sicily from Greeks and Moslems, granted to him and his heirs in 1098 the Apostolic Legateship in the island. Roger practised general toleration to Arabs and Greeks, allowing to each race the expansion of its own civilization. ”

“ The breeding of the worm in Europe seems to have been confined to Greece from the time of Justinian to the twelfth century; but in 1148, Roger, King of Sicily, brought as prisoners of war, from Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, many silk-weavers, and settled them at Palermo. “Then might be seen Corinthians and Thebans of both sexes, employed in weaving velvet stoles interwoven with gold, and serving like the Eretrians of old among the Persians.” ”

“ At the prayer of the pope, who immediately after Lothair’s departure had been driven out by Roger, and moved by the prophetic exhortations of Bernard, the emperor prepared for a second Roman campaign in A.D. 1136. Leaving the conquest of Rome to the eloquence of the prophet of Clairvaux, he advanced from one victory to another until he brought all Southern Italy under the imperial sway, and died on his return homeward in an Alpine hut in the Tyrol. Fuming with rage Roger now crossed over from Sicily and in a short time he reconquered his southern provinces of Italy. ”

“ By the aid of the friends of Gregory, the walls had been perforated or scaled; but the imperial faction was still powerful and active; on the third day, the people rose in a furious tumult; and a hasty word of the conqueror, in his defence or revenge, was the signal of fire and pillage. The Saracens of Sicily, the subjects of Roger, and auxiliaries of his brother, embraced this fair occasion of rifling and profaning the Holy City of the Christians; many thousands of the citizens, in the sight, and by the allies, of their spiritual father, were exposed to violation, captivity, or death ”

“ When the Sicilian fleet returned to Palermo, Roger determined to employ all the silk-manufacturers in their original occupations. He consequently collected all their families together, and settled them at Palermo, supplying them with the means of exercising their industry with profit to themselves, and inducing them to teach his own subjects to manufacture the richest brocades, and to rival the rarest productions of the East. ... It is not remarkable that the commerce and manufactures of Greece were transferred in the course of another century to Sicily and Italy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This, which was at first a close monopoly, guarded with the most jealous care, gradually became extended to other countries, as wave after wave of conquest swept over the Eastern Empire. One of these conquerors, Roger, king of Sicily, in 1140 transported a whole colony of silk-weavers, with a plentiful supply of eggs, from Constantinople to Palermo, where, for many centuries afterwards, a great manufacture of silk flourished. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most brilliant time for Sicily as a power in the world 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 Norman conquest.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 (see Roger I.) . The conquests of the Normans in Italy and Sicily form part of one enterprise ”

“ His half-brother, Robert Wiskard or Guiscard, after defeating the papal troops at Civitella in 1053, received from Leo IX. the investiture of all present and future conquests in Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, which he agreed to hold as fiefs of the Holy See. Nicholas II. ratified this grant, and confirmed the title of count. Having consolidated their possessions on the mainland, the Normans, under Robert Guiscard’s brother, the great Count Roger, undertook the conquest of Sicily in 1060. After a prolonged struggle of thirty years, they wrested the whole island from the Saracens ”

“ Such was the state of affairs when, in 1146, Guiscard’s nephew, King Roger of Sicily, availing himself of an insult to his honour, invaded Greece with far greater success than had attended his uncle. The Sicilian Admiral, George of Antioch, occupied Corfù, with the connivance of the poorer inhabitants, who complained of the heavy taxation of the Imperial Government which in the twelfth century levied from that one Ionian Island about 9,000,000 dr. ”

“ Roger, Count of Calabria and Sicily, besieging the town of Capua, one named Sergius, a Greek by birth, to whom he had given the command of 200 men, having suffered himself to be bribed, formed the design of betraying him, and of delivering the army of the count to the Prince of Capua, during the night. It was on the 1st of March that he was to execute his intention. St. Bruno, who then dwelt in the Desert of Squilantia, appeared to Count Roger, and told him to fly to arms promptly, if he would not be oppressed by his enemies. ”

“ Corleone sends hither three thousand of her warriors to conquer or to die with you. But if our fate be to perish, let all those perish with us who would take part with the stranger in the day of the deliverance of Sicily. Thou, Roger, valiant in fight and sage in counsel, thou hast spoken words of safety. Henceforward he who lingers is a traitor to his country; let us arm ourselves and go forth."
"Forward, forward!" thundered the voice of the people in answer to his words, and with marvellous celerity the messengers were despatched ”

“ 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. ”