Kingdom of Sicily (1130): Roger II and Norman Palermo

The Kingdom of Sicily was created on 25 December 1130, when the Norman ruler Roger II was crowned king in Palermo Cathedral. It united the island of Sicily with the southern Italian mainland into one of the richest states in twelfth-century Europe. Ruled by descendants of minor Norman knights, it was home to Latin Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, Muslims and Jews, and its culture is still visible in Palermo’s Palatine Chapel.

From mercenaries to princes

Southern Italy in the early eleventh century was a patchwork of Lombard principalities, Byzantine provinces and independent cities, while Sicily had been ruled by Muslim dynasties since the Muslim conquest of the island that began in 827. Norman warriors, descendants of the Vikings who had settled in Normandy under Rollo, began arriving as mercenaries in the 1010s.

Among them were the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, a minor lord from the Cotentin peninsula. William “Iron Arm”, Drogo and Humphrey became leaders in Apulia, but the most successful was Robert, nicknamed Guiscard (“the cunning”). In 1053 the Normans defeated and captured Pope Leo IX at Civitate. In 1059, at Melfi, Pope Nicholas II changed course and invested Robert as Duke of Apulia and Calabria and future ruler of Sicily, making the Normans papal vassals.

The conquest of Sicily

Robert and his youngest brother Roger crossed the Strait of Messina in 1061, taking advantage of quarrels between Sicily’s Muslim emirs. Palermo, the island’s capital and one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean, fell in January 1072. The conquest proceeded slowly: Syracuse surrendered in 1086 and Noto, the last stronghold, in 1091.

Roger I, known as the Great Count, ruled Sicily until his death in 1101. He left local communities largely intact, employed Arabic- and Greek-speaking officials and recruited Muslim soldiers. His widow, Adelaide del Vasto, governed as regent for their young son Roger, born on 22 December 1095.

Roger II becomes king

Roger II came of age around 1112 and made Palermo his capital. When his cousin William, Duke of Apulia, died childless in 1127, Roger claimed the mainland duchy and, after hard fighting against rebellious barons and papal opposition, made his claim good.

A crown required papal sanction. In 1130 a disputed election produced two popes, Innocent II and Anacletus II. Roger backed Anacletus, who in September 1130 granted him the title of king of Sicily. He was crowned in Palermo on Christmas Day 1130. Innocent II, supported by most of Europe and by Bernard of Clairvaux, refused to recognise the kingdom. Only in July 1139, after Roger’s forces captured Innocent at Galluccio, did the pope confirm his title in the Treaty of Mignano.

A multicultural court

Roger’s government combined Norman, Byzantine and Islamic traditions. His chief minister, the admiral George of Antioch, was a Greek Christian who had served the Muslim rulers of Tunisia; his title, “emir of emirs”, came from Arabic. Royal documents were issued in Latin, Greek and Arabic, and the royal financial office, the diwan, followed Fatimid models. A trilingual inscription of 1142 in Latin, Greek and Arabic records a water clock built for the king.

The Assizes of Ariano, a law code of about 1140, set out royal authority while letting the different communities keep their own customs. Roger also sponsored scholarship: the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi spent years at his court compiling a great description of the known world with a silver planisphere, finished in 1154 and known as the Book of Roger.

Roger’s fleet made the kingdom a Mediterranean power. In 1147 it raided Byzantine Greece, sacking Corinth and Thebes and carrying off silk workers to Palermo. Between 1146 and 1148 his forces took Tripoli and Mahdia in North Africa, creating a short-lived “kingdom of Africa” lost by 1160.

The Palatine Chapel and Norman Palermo

The Cappella Palatina, the royal chapel in the palace at Palermo, sums up the culture of Roger’s kingdom. Built in the 1130s and consecrated in 1140, it has a Latin basilica plan, walls covered in Byzantine-style gold mosaics of Christ and biblical scenes, and a painted wooden ceiling of muqarnas, honeycomb-like vaulting typical of Islamic architecture, decorated with Arabic inscriptions and scenes of court life.

Nearby, George of Antioch founded the church of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, known as La Martorana, whose mosaic shows Roger crowned directly by Christ in Byzantine imperial robes. Roger also began Cefalù Cathedral in 1131. In 2015 these and other buildings were listed by UNESCO as “Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale”.

After Roger

Roger II died in Palermo on 26 February 1154 and was buried in a porphyry tomb in Palermo Cathedral. His son William I and grandson William II, builder of Monreale Cathedral, maintained the kingdom, but tensions between communities grew and many Muslims were pushed to the margins. After William II died childless in 1189, the crown passed to his aunt Constance and her husband, Emperor Henry VI, who took control in 1194. Their son was the famous Emperor Frederick II.

The kingdom itself proved remarkably durable. It passed from the Hohenstaufen to the Angevins and then to the Crown of Aragon, was divided after the Sicilian Vespers revolt of 1282, and survived in later forms as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies until Italian unification in 1861.

Key people

• Robert Guiscard (c. 1015–1085): the most successful of the Hauteville brothers, Duke of Apulia and Calabria, who also fought the Byzantine Empire.
• Roger I (c. 1031–1101): Robert’s youngest brother, conqueror and first Norman count of Sicily.
• Adelaide del Vasto (died 1118): Roger I’s widow and regent for her sons, later briefly queen of Jerusalem.
• Roger II (1095–1154): first king of Sicily, raised in a Greek- and Arabic-speaking environment, who governed through talented ministers.
• George of Antioch (died c. 1151): Roger’s admiral and chief minister, founder of La Martorana.
• Muhammad al-Idrisi (c. 1100–c. 1165): geographer and cartographer at the Palermo court.

Wealth and economy

Sicily’s wealth underpinned the new kingdom. Under Muslim rule the island had gained irrigation, citrus fruits, sugar cane and cotton, and Palermo had become a great trading port. The Normans kept this economy running. Grain from Sicily and Apulia was exported across the Mediterranean, and Roger reformed the coinage around 1140, introducing a silver coin called the ducalis, from which the later name ducat derives.

Visitors were impressed. The Andalusian traveller Ibn Jubayr, who passed through Palermo in 1184 under William II, described its palaces and gardens and noted the many Muslims still living in the city, though he also recorded their growing insecurity.

Timeline

• 1053: Normans defeat Pope Leo IX at Civitate.
• 1059: Robert Guiscard is invested as duke by Pope Nicholas II at Melfi.
• 1061: Robert and Roger begin the conquest of Sicily.
• 1072, January: Palermo falls to the Normans.
• 1091: Noto surrenders, completing the conquest.
• 1130, 25 December: Roger II is crowned king in Palermo.
• 1139, July: Innocent II recognises the kingdom in the Treaty of Mignano.
• 1140: The Palatine Chapel is consecrated.
• 1154, 26 February: Roger II dies.
• 1194: The kingdom passes to Henry VI of Hohenstaufen.

Why it matters

Roger II’s kingdom was one of the most centralised and wealthy states of medieval Europe and a meeting point of Latin, Greek and Islamic cultures, comparable in some ways to Muslim Spain. Its monuments, administration and scholarship made Palermo a bridge between the Mediterranean worlds, while the Norman achievement in Sicily paralleled their conquest of England after the Battle of Hastings.