9
In modern scholarship, medieval southern Italy (understood here to mean Sicily and mainland southern Italy) has been discussed, first and foremost, in relation to the formation of Western Europe. To some scholars, it was a gateway through which Western Europe received Byzantine and Islamic cultures. Translations into Latin of a number of important Greek and Arabic texts, ranging from philosophy to natural science, were undertaken here. Knowledge of Byzantine art and architecture was also transmitted to Europe through medieval southern Italy. To other scholars it was the nurturing place of the first modern state in Western Europe to have a highly developed royal administration and bureaucracy. On the other hand, southern Italy has been discussed with a negative connotation in the context of the formation of Italy. Regardless of how the Norman and Hohenstaufen kingdom dominated the central part of the Mediterranean and had so much influence over the politics, economy and cultures of this region, it might be seen as a glorious historical anecdote or even as a serious obstacle to Italy’s unification in the “history of Italy.”
Southern Italy in the Middle Ages should not be treated just as a frontier of Europe or a part of the Italian entity. Both frameworks, Europe and Italy, as fixed geopolitical or historical entities prevent us from understanding the history of Southern Italy. We could certainly take different viewpoints or use different frameworks to see its history, but it should not be forgotten that southern Italy itself was not an everlasting geopolitical entity either. Many of the phenomena that happened in southern Italy must be considered and understood in a far larger context extending beyond its geographical limits. A large part of its history was not self-contained at all, but a reflection of power relationships in a wider context, even though it sometimes became a powerful engine to effect change further afield. Although obvious, it should also be noted that the history of southern Italy cannot be fully understood without putting it in the context of the history of the Mediterranean. The sea could be a serious obstacle to transportation and become a natural border. But at the same time, it could be a busy road along which goods and people went back and forth. In the case of southern Italy, the hinterland of which was extremely mountainous, most of the important cities were located along the coastline and were connected to each other and with foreign cities by sea. In the Middle Ages, southern Italy was more often a part of the Mediterranean than a part of the European continent.
Norman unification
From the seventh century, the Mediterranean region consisted of three major cultural zones: Latin-Christian Western Europe, the Greek-Christian Byzantine East and Arab-Islamic North Africa and Spain. Southern Italy was located on their borders, and as a result it had a remarkably complicated history. In the eleventh century, when Norman warriors arrived from Normandy in northern France, Calabria and Apulia were under the control of the Byzantine Empire. The three duchies of Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta were nominally subject to Byzantine authority, and the three Lombard principalities of Salerno, Capua and Benevento were to all intents independent. Sicily was divided among local Muslim warlords.
The Normans first worked for Lombard rulers and Byzantine governors as mercenaries but were soon drawn to Aversa and Melfi, which became centers for the Norman warriors. By the middle of the eleventh century, the Normans in Southern Italy had already become a strong force affecting international politics, and had grown into perhaps one of the most active political elements in Western Europe besides the papacy and the German Empire. In fact, the Normans had a strong bearing on the papacy. They fought with Pope Leo IX and captured him in 1053, and they supported Pope Nicholas II against his rival. They were to play important roles during the Investiture Controversy. Without their military support, the popes could not have fought against the German emperors so persistently.
In 1059 Richard, a leader of the Normans at Aversa, and Robert Guiscard, a leader at Melfi, received from Pope Nicholas II the investiture of the principality of Capua, and the duchy of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, respectively. The duchy of Apulia rapidly developed into a powerful principality under Robert Guiscard. He conquered the Byzantine territory in Apulia and Calabria (Bari fell in 1071) and unified southern Italy. Although he faced serious baronial revolts, Robert Guiscard basically succeeded in keeping his authority over the duchy. He also played an important role in international politics. He fought with Pope Gregory VII at first, but after making peace with him in 1080, they maintained a good relationship thereafter. When the German King Henry IV made an expedition to Italy and besieged Gregory VII in 1084, Robert Guiscard marched on Rome, sacked the city and rescued Gregory VII. He mounted two large expeditions against the Byzantine Empire. During the first in 1081–1082, he took Avlona (modern Vlorë), Corfu and Durazzo (Durrës, Dyrrachium), which were lost after his return to Italy. In the second expedition in 1084–1085, he reconquered Avlona and Corfu and occupied Butrint, but he fell ill and died in Cephalonia in 1085.
After the death of Robert Guiscard, the duchy rapidly lost its integrity. His son Roger Borsa (duke from 1085 to 1111) and his grandson William (duke from 1111 to 1127) failed to maintain his strong authority, and they allowed many of the Norman barons within the duchy to become effectively independent. This tension between the aspirations of the barons and that of the rulers is a constant in the history of medieval southern Italy. Count Roger I of Sicily, brother of Robert Guiscard, became the most powerful ruler in southern Italy. Prior to his brother’s death, Roger I had patiently been conquering Sicily with a few hundred knights under his command. When he took Noto in 1091, the last city retained by the Muslims, he had already spent thirty years in this endeavor since the capture of Messina in 1061. Even though technically inferior to the duke of Apulia, Roger I transformed Sicily into a cohesive and wealthy state, and he became one of the most influential monarchs in Western Europe. An agreement with Pope Urban II endowed him with authority over the Church in Sicily, even though the exact terms of this arrangement gave rise to argument for the next six centuries. Powerful princes in Europe sought to make alliances with him. His daughters were married to King Coloman of Hungary, the count of Toulouse, and Conrad, son of Emperor Henry IV of Germany. Roger I died in 1101 and left two sons, Simon and Roger II. During their minority, their energetic mother Adelasia (Adelaide) from Savona in northern Italy managed to maintain authority and order in Sicily as regent. In 1112 she left Sicily for Jerusalem to marry King Baldwin (who before long repudiated her, having only sought to benefit from the wealth of Sicily); Count Roger II began independent rule.
The Norman conquest redrew the political map of southern Italy. The old political order in this region, balanced among several states with different cultural traditions, was destroyed, and new political circumstances emerged under the Norman rulers. Some of the old political units were simply destroyed, while others remained with their rulers replaced by Normans. Almost all regions in southern Italy were placed under Norman rulers. Thus, in a political sense, one of the most important strategic points and most important trading centers in the Mediterranean ceased to be the border region of the three cultural zones and became a part of Latin-Christian Europe.
From a demographic point of view, however, the Normans were a minority in terms of numbers, and most of the inhabitants remained almost the same as before. The majority of Sicilians were Muslims and Greeks. Many of the inhabitants in Calabria and part of Apulia were Greeks, while the majority in Apulia and Campania were those with Latin-Christian traditions. These people with different cultural backgrounds preserved their own customs and traditions under the new rulers. Despite the change of rulers, some of the old political units survived the Norman conquest as Norman political entities or as regional boundaries within the Norman monarchies. However, the links between Adelaide of Savona and northern Italy helped stimulate large-scale migration by so-called Lombards into Sicily from the end of the twelfth century onwards, leading to the gradual Latinization of the island and the spread there of Italian vernacular dialects in place of Arabic and Greek.
The Norman Kingdom of Sicily
When his cousin’s son, Duke William of Apulia, died without heirs in 1127, Count Roger II of Sicily quickly took over the duchy of Apulia. Having subdued discontented barons, he succeeded in receiving the investiture of the duchy of Apulia from Pope Honorius II in 1128. In 1130, taking advantage of a papal schism, Roger II obtained from Antipope Anacletus II the crown of the kingdom of Sicily, Calabria and Apulia, the principality of Capua, the honor of Naples and the protectorate of the men of Benevento. This was the beginning of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and marked a watershed in both Italian and Mediterranean history. Italy had been ruled by a series of outsiders after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and its southern part had been divided into small states with different cultural backgrounds. This fragmented situation in the south came to an end when Roger II unified this region and transformed it into a mighty kingdom. This kingdom was a sound political entity with a stable governing system, far more cohesive than the dominion of Robert Guiscard, which had lacked a stable governing system and which was dismembered at his death. Its rulers became powerful and influential players in Mediterranean and European politics.
Thus the creation of the new kingdom in 1130 symbolizes a great historical change in southern Italy and the Mediterranean. But the actual condition of the kingdom should not be misunderstood. Roger II’s authority was not yet recognized in a vast area of the peninsula, which was still under the control of independ ent warlords and cities. At this moment the political extent of the kingdom was far smaller than its nominal extent. Roger II had to spend almost ten years pacifying all the territory. Powerful barons and many cities in Apulia, supported by Pope Innocent II, continuously revolted. Lothar, the German emperor, invaded the kingdom in response to the pope’s request in 1136. The pope himself also made an expedition in 1139 but was captured by Roger, son of Roger II. As a result, he was forced to rescind the excommunication of Roger II and to confirm his status as king of Sicily, duke of Apulia and prince of Capua.
The kingdom as a political entity
By the end of the summer in 1140, Roger II restored peace and order in the kingdom and gained almost complete control over the whole territory, which now consisted of the county of Calabria and Sicily, the duchies of Apulia and Naples and the principalities of Taranto and Capua. The gain of land north of Calabria had multiplied his territory and population. Sicily and southern Italy were put under one ruler and to all intents constituted one political entity. The extent of the kingdom became the basic framework for the history of this region thereafter, and it remained long in people’s mind as the regno (kingdom) par excellence. Modern scholarship tends also to take the existence of the kingdom as a framework within which to describe the society of medieval southern Italy and Sicily.
No matter how important the creation of this political entity was, however, the kingdom was not a uniform one but a complex of different regions with different traditions. Roger II used the administrative units of the old polities as his largest governmental districts, and for that reason he kept the duchy of Apulia, the principality of Taranto and the principality of Capua as administrative divisions of the kingdom. He appointed his sons as dukes and princes, as if the old poli-ties continued to exist under the authority of the king. The principality of Capua offers a good example. It fell into the hands of Roger II in 1135 and was given to his third son, Anfusus. Its unity was preserved for a certain period of time within the kingdom; documents were dated by the regnal year of Anfusus and he had his own chamberlain, who seems to have been active in the administration of the principality as late as 1149. The kingdom was thus a mosaic of different political units unified under Roger II.
Within the boundaries of the newborn kingdom lived people with different cultural traditions: Arab-Islamic, Greek Orthodox Christian, Latin Catholic Christian and Jewish. These people did not live together but in different regions and districts. The southern and western parts of Sicily were mostly inhabited by Muslims and the northeastern part by Greeks. The majority of the inhabitants of Calabria and part of Apulia were Greeks. To the north of Calabria lived mainly south Italians of the Latin Catholic tradition. Almost all of the lay landlords were Latin, above all Norman, and so were many of the high clerics. The coexistence of people with different cultural backgrounds within the kingdom was a simple result of the unification of political entities belonging to different cultures.
After the pacification of the peninsula in 1140, however, the kingdom was gradually transformed into a state more cohesively and systematically governed by new administrative apparatuses. Roger II’s intent is well reflected in the so-called Assizes of Ariano, the laws he promulgated just after the pacification. The first article included in the Vatican manuscript proclaimed that because of the variety of people subject to the Norman rule, their usages, customs and laws should not be abrogated unless they are clearly contradictory to the newly promulgated laws. This clearly shows the ruler’s will to respect the existing laws and customs among different people on the one hand, but on the other it also makes clear that his edicts had priority over them. Roger II tried to control the people in much the same condition as they had been, but definitely under his strong and sole authority.
Kingship and the royal court
At the center of the kingdom there were always Christian Norman kings, and the governmental center of the kingdom was the royal palace in Palermo, where the royal court of the kingdom became fixed. The character of sovereignty changed according to the form of central power, as did the power structure of the court. Day-to-day power was not always held by a king, but sometimes by a head minister or a group of the familiares regis. These three forms of central power appeared in turn at the royal court of Sicily. When a king himself did not exercise power, the court became the stage for an intense power struggle and a cunning battle for hegemony. Confrontations among different groups, such as bureaucrats, clerics and feudal lords, between natives and foreigners, and among different cultural groups, complicated the situation further.
During a large part of the reign of Roger II, the king himself exercised power. In the royal court, Roger II had many able officials, most of whom he inherited from his parents, as well as Norman aristocrats and Christian clerics. These officials bore various titles of Roman, Frankish, Byzantine and Arabic origins such as cancellarius, camerarius, kaprilingas, protonotarius (protonotarios), notarius (notarios), logothetes, amiratus and so forth. The high officials who bore the title of amiratus, which is of Arabic origin, were powerful magnates in the court with the king’s full confidence. They commanded the army and were concerned with the administration of the kingdom. Most of them were Greek. A powerful head minister, George, who also bore the title of amiratus, was a typical example of such a Greek. Although supported by these able ministers, officials and feudal vassals, Roger II solved various problems and dealt with important matters himself. Thus Roger II himself exercised power for a prolonged period, and he was the real center of administration for a large part of his reign.
His son William I (1154–1166) was completely different. Once the unstable situation after the death of Roger II subsided, William I entrusted the government to the head minister Maio and decided to live an easy life in a secluded palace. The king stepped down from the center stage of politics and Maio held full control over the kingdom. After the death of Maio in 1160, William I appointed the archdeacon of Catania, the count of Marsico, and the bishop-elect of Syracuse to be familiares regis, and entrusted them with the government. From this time, the familiares regis came to have special significance in the kingdom. Familiaris regis was a well-defined title to indicate a member of the royal inner council during the reigns of William I and his son William II (1166–1189). Although the holders of this title swelled to ten people at one point, they usually numbered between three and five. As the decision makers on policy and other important matters, they were the most powerful people in the kingdom.
William II did not exercise power either. In the early period of his minority, his mother Margaret entrusted the government first to Peter, an ex-Muslim eunuch, and then to Stephen, a son of the count of Perche in France. Both of them fled the kingdom in disturbances. Stability was restored when Walter, one of the familiares regis and the dean of Agrigento, was consecrated archbishop of Palermo. He changed the composition of the inner council and established a triumvirate consisting of himself, Gentile the bishop of Agrigento, and the notary Matthew. This triumvirate continued for about fifteen years with changes in membership and was modified by the addition of the archbishop of Monreale. This archbishopric was created in 1183 and its first archbishop, William, joined the familiares regis. The government of the kingdom by the four familiares regis lasted until the death of William II.
Norman administration
With regard to administrative organizations, we should underline the importance of chronological developments, because so many previous scholars have treated offices belonging to different periods as if they were contemporaneous, and have thereby created a confused image of the Norman administration. In order to examine the structure of the Norman administration, we must clearly specify the time period, which should be limited within a sufficiently narrow time frame.
Roger II introduced the first important administrative changes after his pacification of the peninsula in 1140. He installed local chamberlains and local justiciars systematically all over the kingdom. Then he created a new office with the Arabic title of dīwān al-taḥqīq al-ma‘mūr. This office was created around the remaining Arab documents, which included information on land and its inhabitants, in order to keep and to revise the useful documents. It soon came to be called duana de secretis in Latin. Under Maio, royal officials advanced in specialization and hierarchization; this change was especially marked in the organization of chamberlains and justiciars in the central government. A chamberlain working in the central government came to be called “chamberlain of the royal palace” (camerarius regalis palatii), while another title of “master chamberlain of the royal palace” (magister camerarius regii palatii) appeared a little later. This master chamberlain of the royal palace came to take a significant role in the central administration. The presence of justiciars in the central government also displayed the increased level of specialization and hierarchization under Maio. At the beginning of William II’s reign, a new office called duana baronum was created for the government of the peninsula. This new office was located in Salerno, perhaps in the castle of Terracena, and had competence over the whole peninsula except for Calabria, carrying out various administrative duties needed there.
After the creation of the duana baronum, we can see the structure of the Norman administration at its most developed stage. In this period, the royal inner council of familiares regis held the highest authority in the government and made decisions on important issues of the kingdom or on matters concerning the king’s interests. The master chamberlain of the royal palace and his two subordinate chamberlains of the royal palace directed the executive and administrative functions of the central government. Most of the holders of these offices were Muslims or ex-Muslims. For special duties concerning the administration of land, however, there was the special office called dīwān al-taḥqīq al-ma‘mūr in Arabic (or duana de secretis in Latin, or mega sekreton, sekreton in Greek), which was located at the royal palace in Palermo and under the direction of one of the two chamberlains of the royal palace. It had high officials called magistri duane de secretis in Latin, aṣḥāb dīwān al-taḥqīq al-ma‘mūr in Arabic, hoi epi tou megalou sekretou (hoi epi tou sekretou), or archontes tou sekretou in Greek, most of whom were also Muslims or ex-Muslims.1 Their primary duty was land administration within Sicily (later possibly Calabria too), but they were among the most powerful officials of the kingdom. For the government of the peninsula a branch office called the duana baronum in Latin (or sekreton tōn apokopōn in Greek) had been created at Salerno to meet a variety of local administrative needs. It had high officials called magistri duane baronum in Latin or hoi epi tou sekretou tōn apokopōn in Greek, who were also among the most powerful officials of the kingdom. Local officials such as local chamberlains, local justiciars, magistrates of towns (catepani or stratēgoi) and baiuli worked for the king’s interest under the direction of these high officials.
One of the most important characteristics is the administrative difference between Sicily together with Calabria, and the rest of the peninsula. In Sicily and Calabria the king had more immediate control of inhabitants and lands by means of registers of lands and villeins. Vassals and churches were not such strong obstacles to the royal administration. Here existed a more valid and stable administration. In peninsular administration, however, the vassals were indispensable. The king could control and govern the inhabitants and the land only through vassals. The administrative organization of the kingdom was based on the existing administrative institutions of the former rulers or was created to control the different existing offices. The time lag in absorbing different regions, each of which had its own political and historical integrity, made it difficult to organize a homogeneous administrative system over the whole kingdom, and as a result, it led to the coexistence of different administrative systems. Although some scholars have seen in this kingdom an advanced degree of centralization of government, and even the origin of modern states, its administrative system was in fact a mixture of different systems.
The kings’ ambitions and diplomacy
Through the decade-long pacification, Roger II consolidated his authority within the kingdom and expanded its power base. This inner solidarity made possible his remarkable naval expansion into Africa and Greece. His fleet repeatedly attacked northern Africa and finally established mastery in the area between Tripoli and Bona. He also made an expedition against the Byzantine Empire, taking Corfu and Cephalonia. By his death in 1154, Roger II had gained dominance over impor tant commercial routes in the central Mediterranean, which was to be lost under William I.
William I, after expelling the invasions of the papal and German armies at the beginning of his reign, increased his influence over the papacy, and at the death of Hadrian IV, he succeeded in establishing his candidate as Pope Alexander III (1159–1181). In 1158 he concluded a peace with the Byzantine emperor and they remained on good terms thereafter. During the reign of William II the kingdom maintained good and peaceful relationships with many foreign states. A treaty with Genoa in 1156 provided Sicily with an assured market for its grain and cotton. Pope Alexander III was its best ally. After a failed attempt by the German emperor to gain control of both northern and southern Italy in the 1160s, the Peace of Venice of 1177 established a truce with the German Empire for fifteen years; the marriage of Constance, aunt of William II, to Henry, son of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, further improved the relationship between the two monarchies. The kingdom made alliances with Genoa and Venice and even retained a peaceful relationship with the normally troublesome Byzantine Empire for quite a while. Furthermore, the marriage of King William II to Joanna, daughter of King Henry II of England, in 1176 consolidated the close connection between the two most powerful Norman Kingdoms in twelfth-century Europe. While keeping on good terms with foreign powers, William II also showed great military adventurousness. Taking advantage of the dispute over a successor to Emperor Manuel, he attacked the Byzantine Empire in 1185. The Norman fleet took Durazzo and Thessalonica in the same year and marched on Constantinople, resulting in a war that lasted for several years. He also sent expeditions against the Muslims, especially those in Egypt. The Norman fleet attacked Damietta in 1169, Alexandria in 1174 and Tinnis twice between 1175 and 1178; William II attacked Majorca to the west as well in 1181–1182. He also sent his fleet to join the Third Crusade in 1189, but he died before knowledge of the successes of his amiratus Margaritus in the East reached him.
Transition
William II died childless in 1189 at the age of thirty-six. His aunt Constance, a daughter of Roger II, was the legitimate heiress to the crown of Sicily, but her marriage to Henry VI, king of Germany, caused fear among Sicilian magnates that Sicily might lose its independence to the German Empire. Eventually Tancred, count of Lecce and illegitimate son of Duke Roger, and hence grandson of Roger II, was elected king in 1190. But his reign was fraught with difficulties from the beginning. He had to fight against his opponents and enemies. An opposition party revolted in the peninsula while the Muslims rose in Sicily. King Richard the Lionheart of England arrived in Messina with his crusading army and created havoc. In 1191 Henry VI, now emperor, invaded the kingdom and established his authority in Salerno. Although Tancred succeeded in reconquering the peninsula, the kingdom had lost its integrity and the cohesiveness preserved under his predecessors. It was on the way to dismemberment and disorder. Tancred died in 1194, leaving his child William III as successor.
Henry VI, having again put the peninsula under his authority, marched on Pa lermo, removed the child king William III from power, and had himself crowned king of Sicily on Christmas Day 1194. This was but one day before his wife – who had only reached Jesi in central Italy – gave birth to an heir, the future Frederick II. The coronation of Henry marks a change in the royal dynasty of the kingdom from the Hauteville Norman house to the German Hohenstaufen, although Norman blood was transmitted to Frederick II through his mother Constance. But no less important was the creation of the Italo-German political zone in which political elements closely interacted. Thereafter, the history of southern Italy cannot be fully understood without considering German factors. Henry VI soon returned to Germany, leaving the government to Constance. The kingdom was after all a private foreign domain for him, no matter how wealthy it was. He died in 1197, followed by Constance in 1198. Although Constance had chosen the pope as guardian of her son, the kingdom was submerged in political confusion. The king’s authority withered, and warlords came to fight one another for lands and hegemony. The kingdom lost its integrity and was no longer a single political entity.
Frederick II
After the death of Henry VI the kingship of Sicily was inherited by his son Frederick II. He was crowned at Palermo at the age of three in his mother’s arms in May 1198. When his mother died later the same year, he was officially put under the guardianship of Pope Innocent III. In fact, he was just left in Palermo and was raised there. During his minority the kingdom became immersed in ever deeper disorder. In Germany the succession to Henry VI caused serious confrontation between two parties and produced two kings, Philip (Frederick’s uncle) and Otto IV the Welf. After the assassination of Philip in 1208, Otto IV was reelected sole king of Germany and was crowned emperor in Rome in 1209.
In 1208 Frederick II came of age at fourteen and undertook a difficult task: the restoration of order and royal control in the kingdom. During his minority, disorder had prevailed throughout the kingdom. Many barons had become independent and usurped their neighboring lands including the royal demesne. Castles had been built here and there without royal permission. Many cities had also rid themselves of royal control. In 1209 Frederick II gathered his army and subdued rebellious barons by force, but there was a long way to go to fulfill his task. In the next few years his life and fortune drastically changed, for in 1210 the pope excommunicated Emperor Otto IV, who had marched into Italy and invaded the kingdom of Sicily, and in 1211 the supporters of the Hohenstaufen in Germany elected Frederick II king of Germany. Otto IV, who had already marched deep into the southern end of the peninsula, turned back to Germany, and Frederick II also left Sicily for Germany. Frederick II occupied Constance without much difficulty and was crowned at Mainz in 1212. Thereafter he was engaged in subduing the opposing barons and restoring order in Germany for twelve years. It was in 1220 that he finally came back to Sicily.
Restoration of royal authority
When he returned to the kingdom, Frederick II was not simply the king of Sicily. He had already established himself as the ruler of Germany, leaving his young son Henry (VII) as king in Germany.2 He had even had himself crowned as emperor at Rome on his way home. With these titles and power, he resumed the difficult task of restoring order and royal control in the kingdom. His strong will to do so is well shown in the Assizes of Capua, which were promulgated in December 1220 just after his return to the kingdom. In the prologue, he proclaimed that he would restore the state of the kingdom to the good condition of the reign of William II; ordered that those castles unjustly built during the period of disorder should be destroyed or delivered to royal authority; and ordered that those charters and privileges issued during this period should be examined and confirmed by the royal chancery. Without doubt, the king’s top priority was to restore royal authority within the kingdom. Thereafter, he energetically fought against powerful independent barons in the peninsula and subjected them to royal authority. He crushed the rebellious Muslims in Sicily and transferred a large part of the Muslim population in Sicily to Lucera in the peninsula.
After working hard at the consolidation of royal authority in Sicily and southern Italy, Frederick II took up the cross for the crusade in 1228. He had taken the crusade vow at his coronation in Germany, but the unstable condition of the kingdom obliged him to put off his departure, to the intense ire of the pope; excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX because of the constant delays, Frederick II finally left the kingdom for Cyprus and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem in June 1228. He had taken as his second wife the heiress to Jerusalem, so he went there as crusader and as emperor, but also as king of Jerusalem in right of Isabella. He succeeded in obtaining Jerusalem by negotiation with al-Kāmil, sultan of Egypt, and celebrated his diplomatic victory with a crown-wearing in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in March 1229. This remarkable success without shedding blood was not appreciated by the pope, however. On the contrary, the papal army invaded the kingdom of Sicily in what was a papal holy war against a crusader – an odd event by any standards. Frederick II immediately came back home and expelled the papal army. He made a generous peace treaty with the humiliated pope at San Germano in June 1230.
Thereafter he devoted himself again to consolidating the kingdom. In October of the same year, he summoned “old good people” from various regions of the kingdom and made inquiries about local laws and customs. Then he presented the edicts of his constitutions at the royal court of Melfi in June 1231 and promulgated them the following September. A large number of them are concerned with crimes and legal procedures, which suggests that their main purpose was to attain and keep peace and order in the kingdom. From this time to his death in 1250, he continued to issue additional new laws (novellae) in order to consolidate the kingdom, although he was distracted by the wars against the Lombard Leagues and the papacy; and his successors continued this practice.
The Norman inheritance
To what extent the Norman administrative system functioned during the period of disorder in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries is a question over which scholars’ opinions differ widely. Some see the evidence for continuity in the exist ence of Norman titles and administrative districts in documents, while others think the Norman administration came to a standstill in the political confusion after the deaths of Henry VI and Constance. But as many scholars have pointed out, there is certainly a conspicuous similarity and common character between the Norman Kingdom and that of Frederick II, including the idea of kingship, cultural activities at court and administrative organization.
When restoring royal authority, Frederick II obviously had an image of the kingdom of his Norman predecessors in mind. He intended to revive the governmental system of his Norman ancestors, and bring about a rebirth of the strong authority of the Norman kings. Such intent is clearly shown in the Assizes of Capua of 1220, in which he proclaimed his wish to restore the institutions of the Norman period, and ordered that his justiciars’ duties should be the same under William II and that the divisions of duties between his justiciars and baiuli (bailiffs) should be the same as in the Norman period. His will is also reflected in the Constitutions of Melfi of 1231, which included the edicts of his Norman predecessors. His key officials in the administration were in fact justiciars, chamberlains and baiuli as in the Norman period. And like his Norman predecessors, he tried to exclude the powerful lay magnates from the government and created a corps of professional bureaucrats. One innovation in this respect was the foundation of the University of Naples, as a training center for future bureaucrats. A number of bureaucratic families emerged, many of them drawn from the Amalfi peninsula and the lands around Naples, and some of these, for instance the Rufolo family, would continue to serve later kings as well, even after the violent change of dynasty that was to occur.
A changed kingdom
Still, the kingdom could not be the same, no matter how hard Frederick II tried to revive the kingdom of his Norman predecessors. Indeed, the inner condition of Sicily and southern Italy had changed too deeply; there was a conspicuous change in its demography. The Muslim population decreased rapidly in Sicily from the late twelfth century to the early thirteenth century. The Saracens continuously revolted during this period, and Frederick II decided to transfer them from Sicily to Lucera, an inland town of the peninsula. Thus Lucera became the colony of Muslims in the kingdom and remained so until 1300. Most of them lived a peasant life separated from outside Christian society, while some served the king as soldiers or courtiers. The coexistence of Muslims and Christians, one of the more striking features of the Norman Kingdom, came to an end. Muslim agricultural skills were lost from Sicily, and a large part of the land for fruit, vegetables, indigo, henna and so on was converted to grain producing land, though attempts were made to remedy this by bringing Jewish cultivators from north Africa who had the same skills, but not the same religion, as the departed Saracens.
The kingdom’s center of gravity also changed. Palermo was no longer the sole unrivaled capital. Frederick II moved around the kingdom and resided much more often in the peninsula than his Norman predecessors, who usually stayed in Pa -lermo or Messina. Foggia, an inland town in Apulia, and Naples, a huge port city in Campania, were both attaining the status of a capital in the peninsula. Some officials gained more power while others lost their influence. For example, justiciars became more and more active and important in his administration, but the master chamberlains of the royal palace, as well as the office of duana de secretis, seemed to have lost their influence. In his government, we find few of the Muslim or Greek officials who had been so conspicuous and influential under the Norman kings. The Assizes of Capua, while showing the king’s strong will to restore Norman institutions, prohibited the custom of the Norman period that permitted senior ecclesiastics and local nobles to take charge of judicial matters. The Constitutions of Melfi, while including many edicts of the Norman kings, at the same time denied the effectiveness of his predecessors’ laws that were not included.
Frederick II’s position as the ruler of the kingdom was totally different from that of the Norman predecessors. He was in a far more complicated situation than the Norman kings. As Holy Roman Emperor he was at the center of European politics and had a difficult relationship with the more and more assertive papacy. He was not simply a ruler of just one kingdom as his Norman predecessors were, but a ruler of two large political entities, the kingdoms of Sicily and Germany. Unlike the Norman kings who could concentrate their energy and concern on southern Italy, he had to rule two different kingdoms with completely different traditions and peoples, one a decentralized kingdom with powerful nobles and cities, the other a bureaucratic kingdom in the Mediterranean tradition of Byzantium and Islam. It can easily be imagined how difficult it was for one person to govern the two kingdoms separated by the strong natural obstacle of the Alps. Frederick II made his son Henry (VII) king of Germany and entrusted him with rule in Germany, with the intention that he himself would concentrate on the kingdom of Sicily. However, this did not work out well because Henry alienated the great German princes by trying to create his own power base. He had to remove his rebellious son in 1235 and put another son, Conrad IV, on the German throne in 1237. All this involved coaxing, rather than coercing, the German princes, since it was they who elected the German king, and they had grave doubts about the merits of effectively permitting hereditary succession. Based in southern Italy, Frederick II had to watch troubles and problems beyond the Alps. No matter how important the kingdom of Sicily was to him, it was after all a mere part of his dominion. Added to this were his worries about the situation in northern Italy, where Lombard rebels, increasingly encouraged by the papacy, drew him into the bitter rivalries of Milan, Cremona and other towns. This culminated in the hysterical denunciation of Frederick II at the Council of Lyons (1245), when Innocent IV declared him deposed as king and emperor.
The dismemberment of Frederick II’s dominion
Frederick II died from illness in the castle of Fiorentino on 13 December 1250, with many issues unresolved, notably the relationship between pope and emperor and the problem of Lombardy. Any successor would have difficulties in ruling his inheritance. The large dominion extending from Sicily to the Baltic Sea, and even as far as the Middle East, was too large to be unified in any meaningful sense, and almost impossible to be ruled by a single ruler, given the natural obstacles such as the Mediterranean and the Alps. His successor would also have to deal with the hostile papacy. Even that energetic and intellectual monarch Frederick II had great difficulties ruling his vast dominion in the face of papal hostility. It was Conrad, his son and the king of Germany, whom Frederick II chose as his successor. Conrad succeeded to the German throne and the kingship of Sicily, while Manfred, an illegitimate son, took the position of regent for Italy and Sicily. When his father died, Conrad was at war with William of Holland, who was the leader of the anti-Hohenstaufen party in Germany. His campaign in Germany turned out to be a stalemate, but Hohenstaufen influence rapidly withered there. He returned to Italy in 1252 but struggled to secure his inheritance, and he died in 1254, leaving a two-year-old son, Conrad V (or Conradin).
This put an end to the large political complex of Germany and Italy which had been formed by the crowning of King Henry VI of Germany as ruler of Sicily and strengthened further by Frederick II. Germany and southern Italy, separated into different political entities, began to take different courses. Germany experienced double elections for a new king after the death of William of Holland in 1256 and thereafter a troubled interregnum until 1273; it became a land submerged in political confusion and falling victim to further decentralization. The kingdom of Sicily also fell into a state of war. After the death of Conrad, Pope Innocent IV tried to control the kingdom while Pietro Ruffo, who had been a faithful follower of Frederick II and Conrad, tried to establish his own dominion based on Messina. Manfred defeated the papal army at Foggia in 1254 but could not restore order within the kingdom. His coronation as the king of Sicily in Palermo in 1258 did not improve the situation to any significant degree.
Charles of Anjou and the two kingdoms
In its hostility to the Hohenstaufen, the papacy searched for an able pro-papal candidate for the throne of Sicily. Under the French pontiff Urban IV (1261–1264), the papacy chose Charles, count of Anjou and Provence and brother of King Louis IX of France. Charles was crowned as king of Naples and Sicily in January 1266 in Rome, and he initiated his campaign against Manfred with a force of French, Provençal and Italian knights. He killed Manfred at the battle of Benevento and took control of a large northern slice of the kingdom. He defeated Conradin, the sole descendant of Frederick II in the legitimate male line, at Tagliacozzo and mercilessly executed him in 1268. He made Naples his effective capital and began to rule the kingdom with great energy, succeeding in his efforts to restore order in Sicily and southern Italy.
The Angevin kingdom, which appeared as a political entity from the dust of political confusion, was in a sense a revival of the old Hohenstaufen kingdom. Although the crown was transferred to the French royal house from the German Hohenstaufen, the basic framework of the kingdom seemed to remain the same. Its boundaries did not change much, nor did its inhabitants. Even its governmental system did not appear to show much difference from the former one. It is not clear whether this system survived the political confusion or was revived by Charles, but most historians agree to a conspicuous continuity from Hohenstaufen to the Angevin government. Charles brought French elements to the government, but its basic structure remained the same as the Hohenstaufen or Norman predecessors. Some of Charles’ officials are known to have served Frederick II and Manfred. It is also known that Charles preserved Hohenstaufen taxation, including the notorious collecta, despite promises to the pope not to levy it. His son Charles II had the Norman register of military service known as the Catalogue of Barons copied, just as the Hohenstaufen had done before, and inserted it into the Angevin registers of official acts; this symbolizes how strongly the Norman and Hohenstaufen structure of land distribution remained alive. Charles continued to entertain close relations with the foreign merchants, aiming to sell Sicilian and Apulian grain to the Florentines and the Venetians among others; and the relationship with the leading banks in Florence, which provided his court with credit and luxury textiles in return for tax concessions on grain exports, became a mainstay of Angevin finances for the next eighty years.
No matter how conspicuously continuous it appears, however, the Angevin kingdom was certainly not the same as the Hohenstaufen one. Its inner condition had changed, and its surrounding situation was different. Although the majority of the population remained almost the same before and after the political confusion, there were a great number of immigrants from the peninsula to Sicily in the thirteenth century. When Charles took the throne, Sicily was no longer an island of Muslims and Greeks; it had been transformed into an island of Latin Christians. In addition, the Muslim population was about to disappear from the kingdom. In fact, their last survivors in Lucera, who had been transported from Sicily by Frederick II, were to be sold as slaves in 1300 under Charles II. Thus the kingdom was no longer a state in which Muslims, Greeks and Latins coexisted, but an almost solely Latin Christian one.
After the pacification of the kingdom, many foreigners, especially French and Provençal settlers, came to southern Italy. Some of them worked for the central government while others received lands and became landlords. They constituted the new ruling class. This created a fault line between the foreign ruling class, backed by the foreign king, and the ruled natives. However, the native aristocrats, who were struggling to gain positions at the center of power, were given a chance to replace the ruling foreigners. Furthermore, Charles chose Naples, not Palermo, as the capital of the kingdom, which meant a shift of gravity from Sicily to Campania; he only once visited Sicily, on his way to a crusade against Tunis. Although Norman and Hohenstaufen elements survived strongly in local administration, as did their governmental methods, the governmental structure subtly changed. Sicily became a province. Sicilians lost their central status, and their political and cultural influence at the royal court withered. The king may well have regarded Sicily simply as a source of profit from the grain trade and other natural assets.
The relationship between the king and the kingdom also changed greatly. At his coronation in 1266, Charles was forty years old and was already count of Anjou and of Provence. He had married the heiress of the county of Provence in January 1246 and thus had come to rule this wealthy county. In August of the same year he had received Anjou and Maine from his brother Louis IX, and these always remained important fiefs to whose government he gave close attention, even from afar. For Charles, no matter how important it was, the kingdom of Sicily was but one part of his dominion. Under the Hohenstaufen there had been a large and dense Italo-German zone in which various political elements closely interacted. In place of that, Charles created an Italo-Angevin zone that consisted of Anjou, Provence, southern Italy and Sicily. He was king of Sicily but also king of Albania and Jerusalem; count of Provence, Forcalquier, Anjou, Maine and Tonnerre; over-lord of Tunis; and sometime Senator of Rome. His concern was not limited to the affairs of the kingdom, and his ambitions went far beyond that, crossing over the Mediterranean. His agenda included the Tunis Crusade of 1270, attacks against the schismatic Greeks in Constantinople, the acquisition of lands in Burgundy and Flanders, the crusade to the East and interests in Greece, the Balkans and Sardinia. His dominion was too large to control, as was his ambition.
The Sicilian Vespers and arrival of the king of Aragon
On 30 March 1282 a revolt broke out at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Palermo. A personal quarrel between a Palermitan and a French soldier was its apparent principal cause. The revolt quickly spread throughout the island and many French soldiers were killed. The Sicilians asked Pope Martin IV to give them autonomy under his auspices, but the pope rejected this request and excommunicated all the inhabitants of Sicily. In August, representatives of the towns and nobility of Sicily held an assembly and decided to look for a protector outside the kingdom. They chose Peter III, king of Aragon. He was the husband of Constance, daughter of Manfred, who herself had been proclaimed queen of Sicily at the royal court of Aragon after the death of Manfred. Having accepted their offer, Peter landed at Trapani in late summer and was crowned king of Sicily following his election by a parliament held at the ancient Norman church of San Cataldo in Palermo. He was already awaiting the invitation, having sailed to north Africa on a self-proclaimed crusade against the Moors, high in the expectation that Sicily rather than Africa would prove to be his final destination.
This revolt, the so-called Sicilian Vespers, has been characterized by historians in various ways. One of the most lasting questions is whether it was a revolt against the French ruler or against the traditional oppressive rule adopted by the Normans, the Hohenstaufens, and the Angevins. Some scholars attribute its cause to the failure of Charles’ government and insist that the rebels’ purpose was to eliminate French and Provençal officials from the court as well as French landlords. Others attribute it to economic burdens, especially that of the notorious collecta, first levied by Frederick II. It has been recently pointed out that many of the Amalfitan officials targeted by the rebels belonged to the families that had served Frederick II and Manfred. Some scholars even see a sense of national identity as Sicilians in this revolt, which was largely confined to the island part of the kingdom, although others question this interpretation.
The most important point of this revolt, however, is the fact that Charles could not subdue the revolt properly and quickly. This failure caused the breakaway of Sicily from his kingdom and made Sicily a different political entity. The profound and long-lasting result was the coexistence of two rival kingdoms in southern Italy. Thereafter it long remained the most fundamental political feature of southern Italy. The two political entities, each of which had its own close relationship with outside powers – that is, the houses of Barcelona and Anjou-Provence – opposed each other and brought southern Italy into a state of endemic warfare, damaging to the local economies and a constant distraction to popes planning crusades, north Italian cities in search of protectors and so on.
The two kingdoms of Sicily and Naples
The war started in 1282 between the Angevins and the Aragonese (the house of Barcelona) and lasted until 1302. However, after a break it was renewed on and off, continuing for about two centuries, and so it is justly called the “Two Hundred Years’ War” by David Abulafia. Meanwhile, Charles died in 1285, and was succeeded by his son, Charles II. In the same year the French king began an anti-Aragonese crusade. In 1290 Charles II ceded Anjou and Maine to Charles of Valois. The Anjou family continued to rule the kingdom of Naples until 1435, while a branch of the house of Barcelona ruled Sicily until the start of the fifteenth century, when the island was reintegrated into the Aragonese-Catalan political federation.
As stated earlier, there was a governmental difference between Sicily together with Calabria and the peninsula under the Norman kings. This difference, based on political frameworks and traditions predating the Norman conquest, was consolidated in the process of the conquest and the centralization of administration. At first glance these two fundamental administrative frameworks appear to have been separated into the two political entities. Some scholars seem to think the Sicilian Vespers activated an inner dividing line and separated the kingdom, but we should not stress these regional differences too much. The regional lines of division existed in layers. We cannot totally deny the unity of the kingdom either, for one and a half centuries had already passed since the creation of the Norman Kingdom, and the kingdom already had common historical experiences including the idea of the kingdom, laws, customs, institutions and cultures. What happened here was not an inevitable result of history caused by regional differences, but a simple incident that changed the destination of the history of southern Italy. Taking the opportunity of the revolt, the Aragonese king used military force to realize his wife’s claim of succession to the throne. Thus the two political forces based in Naples and Palermo, both of which claimed their own legitimacy to the throne, collided with each other and divided the peninsula and Sicily.
These two kingdoms, both sharing the Norman and Hohenstaufen tradition, came to coexist in southern Italy for an extended period. Both of them were situated in the geographical framework of Italy, but they belonged to different political zones embracing larger geographical areas. The kingdom of Sicily came to be a part of the Aragonese zone, while the kingdom of Naples continued to be a part of the Angevin. At the Straits of Messina the two houses of Aragon and Anjou confronted each other, and they continued to do so for about two centuries.
Notes
1 οἱ ἐπὶ τοῦ μεγάλου σεκρέτου (οἱ ἐπὶ τοῦ σεκρέτου); ἄρχοντες τοῦ σεκρέτου.
2 Henry is known as Henry (VII) to avoid confusion with Henry VII of Luxembourg, emperor early in the fourteenth century.
Further reading
There is a steadily growing literature here. A readable narrative is provided by John J. Norwich, The Normans in the South (London, 1967); and The Kingdom in the Sun (London, 1970), repr. as The Normans in Sicily (London, 1992). A fine analytical study encompassing the period of the conquest and of the kingdom is Jean-Marie Martin, Italies normandes, XIe–XIIe siècles (Paris, 1994). For the eleventh century, Graham A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (Harlow, 2000), is excellent; see too Graham A. Loud and Alex Metcalfe, The Society of Norman Italy (Leiden, 2002), for recent work on all aspects of Norman Italy. Joanna Drell, Kinship and Conquest (Ithaca, NY, 2002), looks at Salerno at the time of the Norman conquest; for Gaeta, see the fine work of Patricia Skinner, Family Power in Southern Italy (Cambridge, 1995).
Donald Matthew, The Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Cambridge, 1992), has some rather quirky views; better is Hubert Houben, Roger II: A Ruler between East and West (Cambridge, 2002). On administration, see Hiroshi Takayama, The Administration of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Leiden, 1993); also Jeremy Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily (Cambridge, 2002); and Léon-Robert Ménager, Amiratus – Ἀμηρᾶς. L’Émirat et les origines de l’amirauté (Paris, 1960), without forgetting the classic and very substantial work of Evelyn Jamison, “The Norman Administration of Apulia and Capua,” Papers of the British School at Rome, vol. 6 (1913), repr. in her Studies on the Medieval History of Sicily and South Italy (Aalen, 1992). On politics and culture, see Evelyn Jamison, Admiral Eugenius of Sicily (London/Oxford, 1957), though with reservations. On politics and art, see Eve Borsook, Messages in Mosaic: The Royal Programmes of Norman Sicily, 1130–1187 (Oxford, 1990); and William Tronzo, The Cultures of His Kingdom (Princeton, 1997), which looks at the Palatine Chapel in Palermo. On the wars in Africa, see David Abulafia, “The Norman Kingdom of Africa,” Anglo-Norman Studies, vol. 7 (1985), pp. 26–49, repr. with other studies of Norman and Hohenstaufen Sicily in David Abulafia, Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987). On the economy, see David Abulafia, The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge, 1977).
On Frederick II, see the mystical work of Ernst Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second, 1194–1250, trans. Emily O. Lorimer (London, 1931), on which consult David Abulafia, “Kantorowicz and Frederick II,” History, vol. 62 (1977), pp. 193–210, repr. in Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, and the excellent study of Martin A. Ruehl, “In This Time without Emperors: The Politics of Ernst Kantorowicz’s Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite Reconsidered,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 63 (2000), pp. 187–242. See David Abulafia, Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor (London, 1988, 3rd ed., 2002), for a revisionist viewpoint. Wolfgang Stürner, Friedrich II., 2 vols. (Darmstadt, 1992–2000), is very learned. Thomas C. Van Cleve, The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (Oxford, 1972), is disappointing. On intellectual life and also the wider background, see William Tronzo, ed., Intellectual Life at the Court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen (Studies in the History of Art, 44, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Symposium papers xxiv, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1994). On the Church, Helen J. Pybus, “The Emperor Frederick II and the Sicilian Church,” Cambridge Historical Journal, vol. 3 (1929–1930), pp. 134–163, is still worthwhile; see also James M. Powell, “Frederick II and the Church in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1220–40,” Church History, vol. 30 (1961), pp. 28–34, and “Frederick II and the Church: A Revisionist View,” Catholic Historical Review, vol. 44 (1962–1963), pp. 487–497; Peter Herde, “Literary Activities of the Imperial and Papal Chanceries during the Struggle between Frederick II and the Papacy,” in Tronzo, ed., Intellectual Life at the Court of Frederick II, pp. 227–239.
For the era of Charles of Anjou, a classic narrative is that of Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1958); there is a sober account in German by Peter Herde, Karl I. von Anjou (Stuttgart, 1979), which can also be found in Italian in the Dizionario Biografico Italiano, s.v. “Carlo I d’Angio.” A good thematic study is that of Jean Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou: Power, Kingship and State Making in Thirteenth-Century Europe (London, 1998). The Angevin-Aragonese feud is the theme of David Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, 1200–1500: The Struggle for Dominion (London, 1997). For an approach emphasizing continuity, see Léon Cadier, Essai sur l’administration du royaume de Sicile sous Charles 1er et Charles II d’Anjou (Paris, 1891; new Italian ed. prepared by Francesco Giunta, L’amministrazione della Sicilia angioina [Palermo, 1974]). On the wider political setting, Norman Housley, The Italian Crusades: The Papal-Angevin Alliance and the Crusades Against Christian Lay Powers, 1254–1343 (Oxford, 1982), is valuable. On Lucera, see the items listed under Chapter 11 [David Abulafia, ed., Italy in the Central Middle Ages (Oxford, 2004), Chapter 11], which now includes Julie Taylor, Muslims in Medieval Italy: The Colony at Lucera (Lanham, MD, 2003). A superb study of a later Angevin king is Samantha Kelly, The New Solomon (Leiden, 2003), which looks at ideas of kingship under Robert the Wise (1309–1343). A great explosion of Angevin studies in France has resulted in several volumes of conference proceedings that address the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century in Anjou, Provence, Italy and beyond, beginning with L’État angevin (Rome, 1998) and continuing with La noblesse dans les territoires angevins à la fin du Moyen Âge (Rome, 2000); also Les Princes angevins du XIIIe au XVe siècle. Un destin européen (Rennes, 2003). On Charles I and the Greek world, see Deno J. Geanakoplos, Michael VIII Palaeologus and the West, 1258–1282 (Cambridge, MA, 1959), pp. 92–115. On Sicily under Charles, an important book is that of Luciano Catalioto, Terre, baroni e città in Sicilia nell’età di Carlo I d’Angio (Messina, 1995). Several intriguing articles of the French scholar Henri Bresc are reprinted in Politique et société en Sicile, XIIe–XVe siècles (Aldershot, 1990), and there is a wealth of precious material in his vast study Un monde méditerranéen: économie et société en Sicile, 1300–1450, 2 vols. (Rome/Palermo, 1986). On the economy of mainland southern Italy, an influential older work is that of Georges Yver, Le Commerce et les marchands dans l’Italie meridionale au XIIIe & au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1903); see also David Abulafia, “Southern Italy and the Florentine Economy, 1265–1370,” Economic History Review, ser. 2, vol. 33 (1981), pp. 377–388, repr. in Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400. On Aragonese Sicily, see Clifford R. Backman, The Decline and Fall of Medieval Sicily: Politics, Religion and Economy in the Reign of Frederick III, 1296–1337 (Cambridge, 1995); Stephan R. Epstein, An Island for Itself: Economic Development and Social Change in Late Medieval Sicily (Cambridge, 1992) challenges the work of Bresc but is mainly concerned with later centuries.
Philip Grierson and Lucia Travaini, Medieval European Coinage, vol. 14: Italy (III) (Cambridge, 1998), contains excellent surveys of political and economic developments throughout the Norman, Hohenstaufen, and Angevin periods.