Sicily - John Julius Norwich


This is a book about the entire history of the island of Sicily written by an Englishman who visited in the 60s and upon returning home to London found that there were virtually no books in English on the subject. He found sources in Latin and simply translated them and turned them into a work of literature rather than a simple list of events. The book is lain out chronologically.

The story begins with Greek settlements on the island. It had been inhabited prior to that and there is ample evidence of it, but that is all prehistorical. The Mycenean Greeks settled all over the island around 1500 BC but preferred the south shore at the beginning because it had beaches onto which they could pull their primitive boats. Later, the Greeks around 700 BC began to prefer harbors like the one at Syracuse. The oldest cathedral in the world was built at the time, roughly five centuries before Christ, though at that time it was a temple to Athena. It was built by the tyrant Gelon, who made Syracuse into a major port. The greatest leader of the Greek age was Dionysius though, who somewhat united the Greeks of Sicily in resistance against the Carthaginians. He was a great leader, orator, and tactician. At the height of his power, he controlled the majority of Sicily and a large part of the mainland of Italy, and had he not been preoccupied with the Carthaginians in the west, he might have continued up Italy and taken control of young Rome. Sicily, even at the beginning of recorded history, was at the center of the Mediterranean and thus attracted a lot of attention.

After Dionysius died, some power struggle eventually occurred, weakening the empire. Carthage and Corinth got somewhat involved and Corinth came out on top, after which Sicily thrived, which meant Rome thrived as well, as it seemed to be their most important export market. In the wake of Timolean the Corinthean, a local tyrant eventually came to power named Agathocles who was indeed terrible. He was heroic however, too. When Syracuse was under siege by the Carthaginians, he left his brother in charge and went with another army to Africa, pillaging all the small towns of Carthage and eventually besieging the city itself. He requested help from a Libyan (Alexandrian) king who promptly came, killed him and took his army. The siege failed but resulted in a lasting peace, and Agathocles crowned himself king, which was unprecedented but necessary in the climate of kings around the Mediterranean.

Eventually, as Rome was growing, Sicily became an important staging ground in the battle for the Mediterranean between Carthage and Rome. Sicily itself played little part in this, but the consequences were huge. When the Punic wars were over, Carthage was totally and eternally destroyed. After which, Sicily was a defacto Roman province. This marked a local Pax Romana during which little of note occurred. After some slave revolts an Roman named Verres was appointed governor and taxed and swindled everyone he could until eventually he was brought to trial in Rome and prosecuted by Cicero, the speeches for which he gave became legendary. Unfortunately the object of prosecution escaped to a peaceful retirement in Marseille.

Despite the Greek nature of Sicily, it was brought into the empire and it’s people made citizens. They were Christianized and very little written record of that time comes down to us. It seems to have been peaceful and prosperous. In 476 the Western Roman Empire was subsumed by barbarians. Some tried to replace it for a time but nothing could hold the empire together. Sicily was on its own for a time, but the Byzantine emporer Justinian sent an army to bring it into the Eastern empire, which was welcomed for the most part. Later, in fear of the growing influence of Muslims in the western Mediterranean, the capital of the empire was briefly moved to Syracuse after having been disappointed by Rome during a visit there. The five years that followed marked the worst exploitation the Sicilians had ever experienced. Luckily for them, the Emporer died unexpectedly and in response to Muslims moving into Asia Minor, the capital was moved back to Constantinople. In 827 the Arabs came to Sicily in strength and though some cities held out against them, by 878 Syracuse, after a long and terrible siege, finally surrendered and the island was theirs. The Christians who formed the majority of the island were allowed to continue their faith and were just expected to pay a small tax to their rulers. The Arabs brought new crops and this era was again relatively peaceful and prosperous, but only for a short time. Infighting among Arab factions in Sicily and other North African states intensified.

In the 11th century, Normans who had been brought to southern Italy from their home in the North, became a strong military presence in the area. When civil war threatened in Sicily, Byzantium decided to strike, partly because Sicilian muslim pirates were disrupting trade in the Mediterranean, and partly because Sicily was largely Greek and should be part of the empire. The Arabs had to go. In the process of building a force with which to strike, some of these Normans were included, including Robert Guiscard “the most dazzling military adventurer between Caesar and Napolon” and his brothers. The campaign was successful, but due to a dispute over the division of spoils the Normans returned to Italy. There, their power grew until the Papacy itself became worried. The pope raised an army against them but was defeated. The pope was theirs, and six years later, he granted Robert Guiscard the dukedoms of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. The pope really had no such authority, and they would have to take power in Sicily themselves. It took 31 years to totally subdue the island and other holdings. Because Robert was busy with affairs on the mainland, the young brother Roger took on the responsibility of administering Sicily. It was the beginning of a golden age for the island, and also together with the reconquista in Spain, a turning of the tide around the Mediterranean against the Muslims that would culminate in the Crusades. Roger embraced all on the island and allowed each language and religion to flourish. Artists would come from other empires to decorate newly built churches and mosques. In 1130 Roger was crowned King Roger II of Sicily, which included his domains in Calabria and Apulia. The King and his kingdom were known for their intellectual freedom and curiousity. Because it was a meeting place of Greek and Arab cultures, philosophy and mathematics flourished. The king commissioned a geography of the world to be made, and much of it comes down to us today. It was far ahead of its time.

Roger II was followed by William the Bad, who was not actually so bad. When the Byzantines with papal assistance tried to invade and conquer his Italian holdings, William retook them and punished the traitors harshly, totally destroying Bari. In fear of retaliation, the Pope ceded virtually all of Italy south of Rome to William. The empire was much bigger than it had ever been. He died shortly thereafter and his son William the Good followed. Because he was only 12 at the time, his mother served as regent. The regency was a bit tumultuous but when he was 18, William II took the throne and was popular among the Sicilians because he was a handsome blond boy who was studious, mild-mannered, and had learned all the languages of the kingdom. His rule was to be short, and in the course of it he made a serious attempt at taking Constantinople which failed, he married an English princess who provided no heir, and he married off the heir to the kingdom should he die to a German King. This cousin of William II, Constance, luckily did give birth to an heir at age 40 on her way south, named Frederick. He was known as Emporer of the West, but he never forgot that he was also the King of Sicily, grandson of Barbarossa and Roger II.

This King Frederick II was known as the wonder of the world and he marked a new age for Sicily in which it was no longer independent but part of a larger empire. Under pressure from the Pope, he sent a crusade to the Holy land but fell ill and did not depart with them. On this technicality, because the pope had become impatient, he was excommunicated, even despite having a successful crusade. This would lead to innumerable problems for Sicily. The pope would eventually grant Sicily to Anjou (France) and although later it would change hands after a period of unrest known as the Vespers, ending up as part of Spain, the pope still didn’t recognize it. Sicily was a deeply unhappy place for centuries as a result of this, being cut off from a lot of trade and thus impoverished. It was often ruled as a part of Naples and Southern Italy than thus had a secondary status.

When Napoleon came, things in Europe changed as drastically as they did rapidly. He ended Venice’s millenium of independence and came all the way down to Southern Italy, conquering everything. This was actually good for Sicily, because the king finally had to leave Naples and come to Palermo. Sicily also took on an important role at the time because Napoleon was scared of crossing any body of water in which the English Navy was present, so Sicily became an important place of resistance against the Empire.

Later in the 19th century, various forces would work to unite Italy as other countries were uniting. As it did so, Sicily became a part of it, though again taking a sort of secondary role. It was during this time that the long-time tradition of banditry in the interior of the island developed into a more organized shadow government that we know today as the mafia. When WWII came, Sicily again had a role to play as a staging area for combatants when the English and Americans invaded the island. Prior to doing so, because America had so many Sicilian immigrants, several mafiosos were recruited and were able to help coordinate the invasion. This proved very useful and allowed Patton to famously beat Montgomery to Messina.

This is roughly where the story ends. I skipped over many details here in the interest of keeping this short, but in particular it should be noted that between the Norman kingdom and Napoleon, the amount of political maneuvering involving various European powers, royal marriages, rivalries, religious complications, and other factors, was particularly hard to follow. It was interesting, but easily forgettable simply due to the quantity of characters involved. The scope of this book is vast and I’m sure that each twenty-page chapter could be a book on its own. John Norwich does a splendid job here of both stitching it all together into a comprehensible form, and keeping it as brief as possible. I’d recommend this book in its entirety only to people planning to visit the country. Otherwise, it’s probably best to just read the chapters you’re most interested in.



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