Sketches and studies in Southern Europe
Symonds, John Addington, 1840-1893
Kt^ '' HB»j'-' ' .-''• P?'; '■"l'^ if V .;,. * ^■mk Ss>* -^ »S,'i-- ;: ' J|f<- .' 1, 1 - \i " * . * ; t "- -J 11?^* v^^. \ J i* - k > •j \p i.^' ^v ''■4''!^* ^': .'"'■ ?^ \ ^^^^^■^ SKETCHES AXD STUDIES IN SOUTHEEN ETJEOPE BY JOHN ADDIXGTOX SYMOXDS AUTHOR OF "studies OF THE GREEK POETS " ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES Vol. II. ^ ^ W/l NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRAXKLIX SQUARE 18S0 CONTENTS OF VOL. 11. PAGE Palermo V Syracuse and Girgenti 36 ^TXA .55 Athens 66 Rimini 92 Ravenna 110 Canossa 123 Parma 139 Fornovo 154 Two Dramatists of the Last Century 174 Crema and the Crucifix 188 Bergamo and Bartolommeo Colleoni 201 CoMO AND II Medegiiino 219 Lombard Vignettes 235 Monte Generoso 273 Love of the Alps 284 Old Towns of Provence 310 Appendix: Blank Verse 325 Note on the Orfeo 383 Eight Sonnets of Petrarch 385 SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN SOUTHERN EUROPE. PALERMO. THE NORMANS IN SICILY. Sicily, in the centre of the Mediterranean, has been through- out all history the meeting-place and battle-ground of the races that contributed to civilize the West. It was here that the Greeks measured their strength against Phoenicia, and that Car- thage fought her first duel with Kome. Here the bravery of Hellenes triumphed over barbarian force in the victories of Gelon and Timoleon. Here, in the harbor of Syracuse, the Athenian Empire succumbed to its own intemperate ambition. Here, in the end, Eome laid her mortmain upon Greek, Phoenician, and Sikeliot alike, turning the island into a granary and reducing its inhabitants to serfdom. AVhen the classic age had closed, when Belisarius had vainly reconquered from the Goths for the empire of the East the fair island of Persephone and Zeus Olympius, then came the Mussulman, filling up with an interval of Oriental luxury and Arabian culture the period of utter deadness between the ancient and the modern world. To Islam succeeded the con- querors of the house of Ilauteville, Norman knights who had but 8 Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. lately left their Scandinavian shores, and settled in the northern provinces of France. The Normans flourished for a season, and were merged in a line of Suabian princes, old Barbarossa's prog- eny. German rulers thus came to sway the corn-lands of Trina- cria, until the bitter hatred of the popes extinguished the house of Hohenstauffen upon the battle-field of Grandella and the scaf- fold of Xaples. Frenchmen had the next turn — for a brief space only ; since Palermo cried to the sound of her tocsins, " Mora, Mora," and the tyranny of Anjou was expunged with blood. Spain, the tardy and patient power which inherited so mucli from the failure of more brilliant races, came at last, and tightened so firm a hold upon the island that, from the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, with one brief excep- tion, Sicily belonged to the princes of Aragon, Castile, and Bour- bon. These vicissitudes have left their traces everywhere. The Greek temples of Segeste and Girgenti and Selinus, the Roman amphitheatre of Syracuse, the Byzantine mosaics and Saracenic villas of Palermo, the Norman cathedrals of Monreale and Cefalii, and the Spanish habits which still characterize the life of Sicilian cities, testify to the successive strata of races which have been de- posited upon the island. Amid its anarchy of tongues, the Latin alone has triumphed. In the time of the Greek colonists Sicily was polyglot. During the Saracenic occupation it was trilingual. It is now, and during modern history it has always been, Italian. Differences of language and of nationality have gradually been fused into one substance by the spirit which emanates from Rome, and vivifies the Latin race. The geographical position of Sicily has always influenced its history in a very marked way. The eastern coast, which is turn- ed towards Greece and Italy, has been the centre of Arian civiliza- tion in the island, so that during Greek and Roman ascendency Syracuse was held the capital. The western end, which projects Palermo. 9 into tlie African sea, was occupied in tlie time of the Hellenes by Phoenicians, and afterwards by Mussulmans : consequently Panor- mus, the ancient seat of Punic colonists, now called Palermo, became the centre of the Moslem rule, which, inherited entire by the Norman chieftains, was transmitted eventually to Spain. Pa- lermo, devoid of classic monuments, and unknown except as a name to the historians of Greek civilization, is therefore the mod- ern capital of the island. " Prima sedes, corona regis, et regni caput " is the motto inscribed upon the cathedral porch and the archiepiscopal throne of Palermo : nor has any other city, except Messina,* presumed to contest this title. Perhaps there are few spots upon the surface of the globe more beautiful than Palermo. The hills on either hand descend upon the sea with long-drawn delicately-broken outlines, so exquisitely tinted with aerial hues that at early dawn or beneath the blue light of a full moon the panorama seems to be some fabric of the fancy, that must fade away, " like shapes of clouds we form," to nothing. "Within the cradle of these hills, and close upon the tideless water, lies the city. Behind and around on every side stretches the famous Conca cf Oro, or golden shell, a plain of mar- vellous fertilitv, so called because of its richness and also because of its shape ; for it tapers to a fine point where the mountains meet, and spreads abroad, where they diverge, like a cornucopia, towards the sea. The whole of this long vega is a garden, thick with olive-groves and orange-trees, with orchards of nespole and palms and almonds, with fig-trees and locust-trees, with judas-trecs that blush in spring, and with flowers as multitudinously brilliant as the fretwork of sunset clouds. It was here that in the days of * Messina, owing to its mercantile position between the Levant, Italy, and France, and as the key to Sicily from the mainland, might probably have be- come the modern capital had not the Normans found a state machinery ready to their use centralized at Palermo. 10 Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe, the Kelbite dynasty, the sugar-cane and cotton-tree and mulberry supplied both East and West -with produce for the banquet and the paper-mill and the silk-loom ; and though these industries are now neglected, vast gardens of cactuses still give a strangely Ori- ental character to the scenery of Palermo, while the land flows with honey-sweet wine instead of sugar. The language in which Arabian poets extolled the charms of this fair land is even now nowise extravagant : *' Oh how beautiful is the lakelet of the twin palms and the island where the spacious palace stands ! The limpid water of the double springs resembles liquid pearls, and their basin is a sea : you would say that the branches of the trees stretched down to see the fishes in the pool and smile at them. The ffreat fishes swim in those clear waters, and the birds among the gardens tune their songs. The ripe oranges of the island are like fire that burns on boughs of emerald ; the pale lemon re- minds me of a lover who has passed the night in Aveeping for his absent darling. The two palms may be compared to lovers who have gained an inaccessible retreat against their enemies, or raise themselves erect in pride to confound the murmurs and ill thoughts of jealous men. 0 palms of the two lakelets of Palermo, may ceaseless, undisturbed, and plenteous dews forever keep your fresh- ness 1" Such is the poetry which suits the environs of Palermo, where the Moorish villas of La Zisa and La Cuba and La Favara still stand, and where the modern gardens, though wilder, are scarcely less delightful than those beneath which King Roger dis- coursed with Edrisi, and Gian da Procida surprised his sleeping mistress.* The groves of oranges and lemons are an inexhausti- ble source of joy : not only because of their " golden lamps in a green night," but also because of their silvery constellations, neb- ulae, and drifts of stars, in the same green night, and milky ways of blossoms on the ground beneath. As in all Southern scenery, * Boccaccio, Giorn. v. Nov. 6. Palermo. 11 the transition from these perfumed thickly-dustering gardens to the bare unirrigated hill-sides is very striking. There the dwarf- palm tufts \vith its spiky foliage the clefts of limestone rock, and the lizards run in and out among bushes of tree-spurge and wild cactus and gray asphodels. The sea-shore is a tangle of lilac and oleander and laurustinus and myrtle and lentisk and cytisus and geranium. The flowering plants that make our shrubberies gay in spring with blossoms are here wild, running riot upon the sand- heaps of Llondello or beneath the barren slopes of Monte Pelle- grino. It was into this terrestrial paradise, cultivated through two pre- ceding centuries by the Arabs, who of all races were wisest in the arts of irrigation and landscape-gardening, that the Norsemen en- tered as conquerors, and lay down to pass their lives.* * The Saracens possessed themselves of Sicily by a gradual conquest, which began about 82Y A.D. Disembarking on the little isle of Pantellaria and the headland of Lilybaeum, where of old the Carthaginians used to enter Sicily, they began by overrunning the island for the first four years. In 831 they took Palermo ; during the next ten years they subjugated the Yal di Mazara ; between 841 and 839 they possessed themselves of the Val di Xoto ; after this they extended their conquest over the seaport towns of the Yal Demone, but neglected to reduce the whole of the northeast district. Syracuse was stormed and reduced to ruins after a desperate defence in 8*78 ; while Leo, the heir of the Greek Empire, contented himself with composing two Anacre- ontic elegies on the disaster at Byzantium. In 895 Sicily was wholly lost to the Greeks, by a treaty signed between the Saracens and the remaining Chris- tian towns. The Christians during the Mussulman occupation were divided into four classes — (1) A few independent municipalities obedient loosely to the Greek Empire ; (2) Tributaries who paid the Arabs what they would oth- erwise have sent to Byzantium ; (3) Vassals, whose towns had fallen by arms or treaty into the hands of the conquerors, and who, though their property was respected and religion tolerated, were called " dsimmi" or " humbled ;" (4) Serfs, prisoners of war, sold as slaves or attached to the soil (Amari, vol. i.). 12 Sketches mid Studies in Southern Europe. No chapter of history more resembles a romance than that which records the sudden rise and brief splendor of the house of Hauteville. In one generation the sons of Tancred passed from the condition of squires in the Norman vale of Cotentin, to king- hood in the richest island of the Southern sea. The Norse ad- venturers became sultans of an Oriental capital. The sea-robbers assumed, together Avith the sceptre, the culture of an Arabian court. The marauders whose armies burned Home received at papal hands the mitre and dalmatic as symbols of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.* The brigands who on their first appearance in Italy had pillaged stables and farm-yards to supply their needs, lived to mate their daughters with princes and to sway the politics of Eui'opc with gold. The freebooters, whose skill consisted in the use of sword and shield, whose brains Avere vigorous in strategy or state-craft, and whose pleasures were confined to the hunting-field and the wine-cup, raised villas like the Zisa and incrusted the cathedral of Monreale with mosaics. Finally, while the race was yet vigor- ous, after giving two heroes to the first Crusade, it transmitted its titles, its temper, and its blood to the great emperor who was des- tined to fight out upon the battle-field of Italy the strife of em- pire against papacy, and to bequeath to mediajval Europe the tra- dition of cosmopolitan culture. The physical energy of this brood of heroes was such as can scarcely be paralleled in history. Tan- cred de Hauteville begat two families by different wives. Of his children twelve were sons : two of whom stayed with their father in Normandy, while ten sought fame and found a kingdom in the south. Of these, AVilliam Iron Arm, the first Count of Apulia ; Robert Guiscard, Avho united Calabria and Apulia under one duke- dom, and carried victorious arms against both emperors of East and "West ; and Roger the Great Count, who added Sicily to the * King Roger, in the mosaics of the Martorana Church at Palermo, wears the dalmatic, and receives his crown from the hands of Christ. Palermo. 13 conquests of the Xorinans and bequeatlied tlic kingdom of South Italy to his son, rose to the highest name. But all the brothers shared the great qualities of the house ; and two of them, Hum- phrey and Drogo, also wore a coronet. Large of limb and stout of heart, persevering under difficulties, crafty yet gifted with the semblance of sincerity, combining the piety of pilgrims with the morals of highwaymen, the sturdiness of barbarians with the plas- ticity of culture, eloquent in the council-chamber and the field, dear to their soldiers for their bravery and to women for their beauty, equally eminent as generals and as rulers, restrained by no scruples but such as policy suggested, restless in their energy, yet neither fickle nor rash, comprehensive in their views, but in- defatigable in detail, these lions among men were made to con- quer in the face of overwhelming obstacles, and to hold their con- quests with a grasp of iron. What they wrought, whether wisely or not for the ultimate advantage of Italy, endures to this day ; while the work of so many emperors, republics, and princes has passed and shifted like the scenes in a pantomime. Through them the Greeks, the Lombards, and the Moors were extinguished in the south. The papacy was checked in its attempt to found a province of St. Peter below the Tiber. The republics of Naples, Gaeta, Amalfi, which might have rivalled, perchance, with Milan, Genoa, and Florence, were subdued to a master's hand. In short, to the Normans Italy owed that kingdom of the Two Sicilies which formed one third of her political balance, and which proved the cause of all her most serious revolutions, Roger, the youngest of the Haute ville famil}', and the founder of the kingdom of Sicily, showed by his untamable spirit and sound intellect that his father's vigor remained unexhausted. Each of Tancred's sons was, physically speaking, a masterpiece, and the last was the prime work of all. This Roger, styled the Great Count, begat a second Roger, the first king of Sicily, whose ll Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. son and grandson, both named 'William, ruled in succession at Palermo. "With them the direct line of the house of Hauteville expired. It would seem as if the energy and fertility of the stock had been drained by its efforts in the first three generations. Con- stance, the heiress of the family, -who married Henry VI. and gave birth to the Emperor Frederick II., was daughter of King Roger, and, therefore, third in descent from Tancred. Drawing her blood more immediately from the parent stem, she thus trans- mitted to the princes of the race of Ilohenstauffen the vigor of her Norman ancestry unweakened. This was a circumstance of no small moment in the history of Europe. Upon the fierce and daring Suabian stem w-ere grafted the pertinacity, the cunning, the versatility of the Norman adventurers. Young Frederick, while strong and subtle enough to stand for himself against the world, was so finely tempered by the blended strains of his par- entage that he received the polish of an Oriental education with- out effeminacy. Called npon to administer the affairs of Ger- many, to govern Italy, to contend with the papacy, and to settle by arms and treaties the great Oriental question of his days, Fred- erick, cosmopolitan from the cradle, was equal to the task. Had Europe been but ready, the Renaissance would have dated from his reign, and a universal empire, if not of political government, yet of intellectual culture, might have been firmly instituted. Of the personal appearance of the Norman chiefs — their fair hair, clear eyes, and broad shoulders — we liear much from the chroniclers. One minutely studied portrait will serve to bring the whole race vividly before us. Bohemond, Prince of Taren- tum, the son of Robert Guiscard, and first cousin to Tancred of Montferrat, was thus described by Anna Comnena, who saw him at her father's court during the first Crusade : " Neither amono- our own nation (the Greeks) nor among foreigners is there in our age a man equal to Bohemond. His presence dazzled the eyes, Palermo. 15 as his reputation tlic fancy. lie was one cubit taller than the tallest man known. In his waist he was thin, but broad in his shoulders and chest, without being either too thin or too fat. Ilis arms were strong, his hands full and large, his feet firm and solid. He stooped a little, but through habit only, and not on account of any deformity. He was fair, but on his cheeks there was an agreeable mixture of vermilion. His hair was not loose over his shoulders, according to the fashion of the barbarians, but Avas cut above his ears. His eyes were blue, and full of wrath and fierceness. His nostrils were large, inasmuch as, having a wide chest and a great heart, his lungs required an unusual quan- tity of air to moderate the warmth of his blood. His handsome face had in itself something gentle and softening, but the height of his person and the fierceness of his looks had something wild and terrible. He was more dreadful in his smiles than others in their rage." When we read this description, remembering the romance of Bohemond's ancestry and his own life, we do not wonder at the tales of chivalry. Those " knio-hts of Logres and of Lyoness, Lancelot or Pelleas or Pellenore," with whose advent- ures our tawny- haired magnificent Plantagenets amused their leisure, become realities. The manly beauty described by the Byzantine princess in words which seem to betray a more than common interest in her handsome foe was hereditary in the house of Hauteville. They transmitted it to the last of the Suabian dynasty, to Manfred and Conradin, and to the king Enzio, whose long golden hair fell down from his shoulders to his saddle-bow as he rode, a captive, into Bologna, The story of the Norman conquest is told by two chroniclers — William of Apulia, who received his materials from Robert Guis- card, and Godfrey Malaterra, who wrote down the oral narrative of Roger. Thus we possess what is tantamount to personal me- moirs of the Norman chiefs. Nevertheless, a veil of legendary 16 Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. romance obscures the first appearance of the Scandinavian war- riors upon the scene of histor}^ William of Apulia tells how, in the course of a pilgrimage to St. Michael's shrine on Monte Gar- gano, certain knights of Normandy were accosted by a strano-er of imposing aspect, who persuaded them to draw their swords in the quarrel of the Lombard towns of South Italy against the Greeks. This man was Melo of Bari. Whether his invitation were so theatrically conveyed or not, it is probable that the Norsemen made their first acquaintance with Apulia on a pilgrim- age to the Italian Michael's mount ; and it is certain that Melo, whom we dimly descry as a patriot of enlarged views and indom- itable constancy, provided them with arms and horses, raised troops in Salerno and Benevento to assist them, and directed them against the Greeks. This happened in 1017. Twelve years later we find the town of Aversa built and occupied by Normans under the control of their Count Rainulf ; while another band, headed by Ardoin, a Lombard of Milan, lived at large upon the country, selling its services to the Byzantine Greeks. In the anarchy of Southern Italy at this epoch, when the decaying Em- pire of the East was relaxing its hold upon the Apulian provinces, when the papacy was beginning to lift up its head after the ig- nominy of Theodora and Marozia, and the Lombard power was slowly dissolving upon its ill-established foundations, the Norman adventurers pursued a policy which, however changeful, w^as in- variably self-advantageous. On whatever side they fought, they took care that the profits of war should accrue to their own col- ony. Quarrel as they might among themselves, they were always found at one against a common foe. And such was their repu- tation in the field that the hardiest soldiers errant of all nations joined their standard. Thus it fell out that Avhen Ardoin and his Normans had helped Maniaces to wrest the eastern districts of Sicily from the Moors, they returned, upon an insult offered by Palermo. 17 the Greek general, to extend tlie right hand of fellowship to Eainulf and his Normans of Aversa. His half-brother, Robert Guiscard, imprisoned one Pope,* Leo IX., and wrested from another, Nicholas II., the title of Duke of Apulia and Calabria. By the help of his youngest brother, Roger, he gradually completed the conquest of Italy below the Tiber, and then addressed himself to the task of subduing Sicily. The papacy, incapable of opposing the military vigor of the Northmen, was distracted between jealousy of their growing im- portance and desire to utilize them for its own advantage.f * The Xormans were lucky in getting hold of popes. King Roger caught Innocent II. at San Germano in 1139, and got from him the confirmation of all his titles. t Even the great Hildebrand wavered in his policy towards Robert Guiscard. Having raised an army by the help of the Countess Matilda in 1074, he ex- communicated Robert and made war against him. Robert proved more than his match in force and craft ; and Hildebrand had to confirm his title as duke, and designate him Knight of St. Peter in 1080. When Robert drove the em- II.— 2 18 " Sketches and Studies in SoutJicrn Europe. The temptation to employ tliese filial pirates as a cat's-paw for restoring Sicily to the bosom of the Church was too strong to be resisted. In spite of many ebbs and flows of policy, the favor Avhich the Popes accorded to the Normans gilded the might and cunning of the adventurers Avith the specious splendor of ac- knowledged sanctity. The time might come for casting off these powerful allies and adding their conquests to the patrimony of St. Peter. Meanwhile it costs nothing to give away what does not belong to one, particularly when by doing so a title to the same is gi-adually formed. So the Popes reckoned. Robert and Roger went forth with banners blessed by Rome to subjugate the island of the Greek and Moor. The honors of this conquest, paralleled for boldness only by the achievements of Cortez and Pizarro, belong to Roger. It is true that since the fall of the Kelbite dynasty Sicily had been shaken by anarchy and despotism, by the petty quarrels of princes and party leaders, and to some extent also by the invasion of Maniaces. Yet on the approach of Roger with a handful of Norman knights, " the island was guarded," to quote Gibbon's energetic phrase, "to the water's edge." For some years he had to content himself Avith raids and harrying excursions, making Messina, which he won from the Moors by the aid of their Christian serfs and vassals, the basis of his operations, and retiring from time to time across the Faro Avith booty to Reggio. The Mussulmans had never thor- oughly subdued the northeastern highlands of Sicily. Satisfied peror Henry IV. from Kome, and burned the city of the Coelian, Hildebrand retired with his terrible defender to Salerno, and died there in 1085. Robert and both Rogers were good sons of the Church, deserving the titles of " Ter- ror of the faithless," " Sword of the Lord drawn from the scabbard of Sicil}'," as long as they were suffered to pursue their own schemes of empire. They respected the Pope's person and his demesne of Benevento ; they were large- ly liberal in donations to churches and abbeys. But they did not suffer their piety to interfere with their ambition. Palermo. 19 ■with occupying the whole western and southern sections of the island, with planting their government firmly at Palermo, destroy- ino- Syracuse, and establishing a military post on the heights of Castro Giovanni, they had somewhat neglected the Christian pop- ulation of the Val Demone. Thus the key to Sicily upon the Italian side fell into the hands of the invaders. From Messina Roger advanced by Rametta and Centorbi to Troiua, a hill-town raised high above the level of the sea, -svithin view of the solemn blue-black pyramid of ^Etna. There he planted a garrison in 1062, two years after his first incursion into the island. The interval had been employed in marches and countermarches, descents upon the vale of Catania, and hurried expeditions as far as Girgenti, on the southern coast. One great battle is recorded beneath the walls of Castro Giovanni, when six hundred Norman knights, so say the chroniclers, engaged with fifteen thousand of the Arabian chivalry and one hundred thousand foot-soldiers. However great the ex- aggeration of these numbers, it is certain that the Christians fought at fearful odds that day, and that all the eloquence of Roger, who wrought on their fanaticism in his speech before the battle, was needed to raise their courage to the sticking-point. The scene of the great rout of Saracens which followed is in every respect mem- orable. Castro Giovanni, the old Enna of the Greeks and Romans, stands on the top of a precipitous mountain, two thousand feet above a plain Avhich waves with corn. A sister height, Calascibetta, raised nearly to an equal altitude, keeps ward over the same valley ; and from their summits the whole of Sicily is visible. Here in old days Demeter from her rock-built temple could survey vast tracts of hill and dale, breaking downward to the sea and undu- lating everywhere with harvest. The much-praised lake and vale of Enna* are now a desolate sulphur district, void of beauty, Avith * Cicero's description of Enna is still accurate: ",Enna is placed in a very lofty and exposed situation, at tlie top of which is a table-land and never-failing 20 Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. no flowers to tempt Proserpine. Yet the landscape is eminently noble because of its breadth — bare, naked hills stretching in every direction to the sea that girdles Sicily, peak rising above peak and town-capped eyrie above eyrie — while JEtna, wreathed with snow, and purple with the peculiar color of its coal-black lava seen through light -irradiated air, sleeps far off beneath a crown of clouds. Upon the corn-fields in the centre of this landscape the multi- tudes of the infidels were smitten hip and thigh by the handful of Christian warriors. Yet the victory was by no means a deci- sive one. The Saracens swarmed round the Norman fortress of Troina; where, during a severe winter, Roger and his young wife, Judith of Evreux, whom he had loved in Normandy, and who journeyed to marry him amid the din of battles, had but one cloak to protect them both from the cold. The traveller who even in April has experienced the chill of a high-set Sicilian vil- lage will not be inclined to laugh at the hardships revealed by this little incident. Yet the Normans, one and all, were stanch. A victory over their assailants in the spring gave them courage to push their arms as far as the river Ilimera and beyond the Simeto, supply of springs. The whole site is cut off from access, and precipitous." But when he proceeds to saj', " many groves and lakes surround it and luxu- riant flowers through all the year," we cannot follow him. The only quality which Enna has not lost is the impregnable nature of its cliffs. A few pop- lars and thorns are all that remain of its forests. Did we not know that the myth of Demeter and Persephone was a poem of seed-time and harvest, we might be tempted, while sitting on the crags of Castro Giovanni and looking towards the lake, to fancy that in old days a village dependent upon Enna, and therefore called her daugliter, might have occupied the site of the lake, and that this village might have been withdrawn into the earth by the volcanic action which produced the cavity. Then people would have said that Deme- ter had lost Persephone and sought her vainly through all the cities of Sicily ; and if this happened in spring Persephone might well have been thought to have been gathering flowers at the time when Hades took her to himself. So easy and yet so dangerous is it to rationalize a legend. Palermo. 21 while a defeat of fifty tliousand Saracens by four liundred Normans at Cerami opened the way at last to Palermo. Reading of these engagements, we are led to remember how Gelon smote his Punic foes upon the Ilimera, and Timoleon arrayed Greeks by the ten ao-ainst Carthao-inians by the thousand on the Crimisus. The bat- tie-fields are scarcely altered ; the combatants are as unequally matched, and represent analogous races. It is still the combat of a few heroic Europeans against the hordes of Asia. In the battle of Cerami it is said that St. George fought visibly on horseback before the Christian band, like that wide-winged chivalrous arch- angel whom Spinello Aretino painted beside Sant' Efeso in the press of men upon the walls of the Pisan Campo Santo. The capture of Palermo cost the Normans another eight years, part of which was spent according to their national tactics in plundering expeditions, part in the subjugation of Catania and other districts, pai't in the blockade of the capital by sea and land. After the fall of Palermo, it only remained for Roger to reduce isolated cities — Taormina, Syracuse,* Girgenti, and Castro Giovan- ni— to his sway. The last-named and strongest hold of the Sara- cens fell into liis hands by the treason of Ibn-IIamud in 1087, and thus, after thirty years' continual effort, the two brothers were at last able to divide the island between them. The lion's share, as was due, fell to Roger, who styled himself Great Count of Sicily and Calabria. In 1098, Urban IL, a politician of the school of Cluny, who well understood the scope of Ilildebrand's plan for subjecting Europe to the court of Rome, rewarded Roger for his zeal in the service of the Church with the title of Hereditary Apostolical Legate. The Great Count was now on a par with the most powerful monarchs of Europe. In riches he exceeded all ; so that he was able to wed one daughter to the King of Hungary, * In this siege, as in that of the Athenians, and of the Saracens 878 A.D., decisive engagements took place in the great harbor. 22 Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe anotlier to Conrad, King of Italy, a third to Raimond, Count of Provence and Toulouse, dowering them all with imperial splendor and munificence. Hale and vigorous, his life was prolonged through a green old- age until his seventieth year. AVhen he died, in 1101, he left two sons by his third wife, Adelaide. Roger, the younger of the two, destined to succeed his father, and (on the death of his cousin, William, Duke of Apulia, in 1127) to unite South Italy and Sicily under one crown, was only four years old at the death of the Great Count. Inheriting all the valor and intellectual qualities of his family, he rose to even higher honor than his predecessors. In 1130 he assumed the style of King of Sicily, no doubt with the political purpose of impressing his Mussulman subjects ; and nine years later, Avhen he took Innocent captive at San Germano, he forced from the half-willing pontiff a confirmation of this title as well as the investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and Capua. The extent of his sway is recorded in the line engraved upon his sword : " Appulus ct Calaber Siculus niilii scrvit et Afer." King Roger died in 1154, and bequeathed his kingdoms to his son William, surnamed the Bad ; who in his turn left them to a William called the Good, in 1106, The second William died in 1189, transmitting his possessions by will to Constance, wife of the Suabian emperor. These two Williams, the last of the Haute- ville monarchs of Sicily, were not altogether unworthy of their Norman origin. William the Bad could rouse himself from the sloth of his seracflio to head an armv ; William the Good, thouo-h feeble in foreign policy and no general, administered the State with clemency and wisdom. Sicily under the Normans offered the spectacle of a singularly hybrid civilization. Christians and Northmen, adopting the habits and imbibing the culture of their Mussulman subjects, ruled a Palermo. 23 mixed population of Greeks, Arabs, Berbers, and Italians. The lano-uage of the princes was French ; that of the Christians in their territory, Greek and Latin ; that of their Mohammedan sub- jects, Arabic. At the same time the Scandinavian Sultans of Pa- lermo did not cease to play an active part in the affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical, of Europe. The children of the Vikings, though they spent their leisure in harems, exercised, as liereditary Legates of the Holy See, a peculiar jurisdiction in the Church of Sicily. They dispensed benefices to the clergy, and assumed the mitre and dalmatic, together with the sceptre and the crown, as symbols of their authority in Church as well as State. As a consequence of this confusion of nationalities in Sicily, we find French and Eno-lish ecclesiastics* mino-ling at court with Moorish freedmen and Oriental odalisques, Apulian captains fraternizing with Greek corsairs, Jewish physicians in attendance on the person of the prince, and Arabian poets eloquent in his praises. The very money with which Roger subsidized his Italian allies was stamped with Cuphic letters,! and there is reason to believe that the reproach against Frederick of being a false coiner arose from his adopting the Eastern device of plating copper pieces to pass for silver. The commander of Roger's navies and his chief minister of State was styled, according to Oriental usage, Emir or Ammiraglio. George of Antioch, who swept the shores of Africa, the Morea, and the Black Sea, in his service, was a Christian of the Greek * The English Gualterio Offamilio, or Walter of the Mill, Archbishop of Palermo during the reign of William the Good, by his intrigues brought about the match between Constance and Henry VI. Richard Talmer at the same time was Bishop of Syracuse. Stephen des Rotrous, a Frenchman of the Counts of Perche, preceded Walter of the Mill in the Arch See of Pa- lermo. \ Frederick Barbarossa's soldiers are said to have bidden the Romans : " Take this German iron in change for Arab gold. This pay your master gives you, and this is how Franks win empire." — Amari, vol. iii. p. 468. 24: Sketches and Studies in SoiitJiern Europe. Church, Avlio had previously held an office of finance under Temiii, Prince of Mehdia. The workers in his silk-factories were slaves from Thebes and Corinth. The pages of his palace were Sicilian or African eunuchs. His charters ran in Arabic as well as Greek and Latin. His jewellers engraved the rough gems of the Orient with Christian mottoes in Semitic characters.* His architects were Mussulmans, who adapted their native style to the require- ments of Christian ritual, and inscribed the walls of cathedrals with Catholic legends in the Cuphic language. The predominant characteristic of Palermo was Orientalism. Religious toleration was extended to the Mussulmans, so that the two creeds, Chris- tian and Mohammedan, flourished side by side. The Saracens had their own quarters in the towns, their mosques and schools, and cadis for the administration of petty justice. French and Italian women in Palermo adopted the Oriental fashions of dress. The administration of law and government was conducted on Eastern principles. In nothing had the Mussulmans shown great- er genius than in their system of internal state-craft. Count Roger found a machinery of taxation in full working order, offi- cers acquainted with the resources of the countiy, books and schedules constructed on the principles of strictest accuracy, a Avhole bureaucracy, in fact, ready to his use. By applying this machinery he became the richest potentate in Europe, at a time when the Northern monarchs were dependent upon feudal aids and precarious revenues from croAvn lands. In the same way the Sara- cens bequeathed to the Normans the court system, which they in turn had derived from the princes of Persia and tlie example of * The embroidered skull-cap of Constance of Aragon, wife of Frederick IT., in the sacristy of the cathedral at Palermo, is made of gold thread thickly studded with pearls and jewels — rough sapphires and carbuncles, among which may be noticed a red carnelian engraved in Arabic with this sentence, " In Christ, God, I put my hope." Palermo. 25 Constantinople. Roger found it convenient to continue that or- ganization of pages, chamberlains, ushers, secretaries, viziers, and masters of the wardrobe, invested each witli some authority of State according to his rank, which confined the administration of an Eastern kingdom to the walls of the palace.* At Palermo, Europe saw the first instance of a court not wholly unlike that which Versailles afterwards became. The intrigues which endan- gered the throne and liberty of William the Bad, and which per- plexed the policy of William the Good, were court-conspiracies of a kind common enough at Constantinople. In this court life men of letters and erudition played a first part three centuries before Petrarch taught the princes of Italy to respect the pen of a poet. King Roger, of whom the court geographer, Edrisi, writes that " he did more sleeping than any other man Avaking," was sur- rounded during his leisure moments, beneath the palm-groves of Favara, Avith musicians, historians, travellers, mathematicians, poets, and astrologers of Oriental breeding. At his command Ptolemy's Optics Avere translated into Latin from the Arabic. The proph- ecies of the Erythrean Sibyl Avere rendered accessible in the same Avay. His respect for the occult sciences Avas proved by his dis- * The Arabic title of Kuld, which originally was given to a subordinate captain of the guard, took a wide significance at the Norman court. Latin- ized to gaijtus, and Graecized under the form of koItoq, it frequently occurs in chronicles and diplomas to denote a high minister of State. Matteo of Ajello — who exercised so powerful an influence over the policy of AYilliam the Good, heading the Mussulman and national party against the great ecclesiastics who were intriguing to draw Sicily into the entanglements of European diplomacy — was a Kaid. Matteo favored the cause of Tancred, Walter of the Mill es- poused that of the Germans, during the war of succession which followed upon AVilliam's death. The barons of the realm had to range themselves under these two leaders — to such an extent were the affairs of State in Sicily within the grasp of courtiers aud churchmen. 26 Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. interring tlic bones of Virgil from tlieir resting-place at Posilippo, and placing tliem in the Castel dell' Uovo, in order that he might have access through necromancy to the spirit of the Roman wiz- ard. It may be remembered, in passing, that Palermo, in one of her mosques, already held suspended between earth and air the supposed relics of Aristotle. Such were the saints of modern cult- ure in its earliest dawning. While Venice was robbing Alexan- dria of the body of St. Mark, Palermo and Naples placed them- selves beneath the protection of a philosopher and a poet. But Roger's greatest literary work was the compilation of a treatise of universal geography. Fifteen years were devoted to the task ; and the manuscript, in Arabic, drawn up by the philosopher Ed- risi, appeared only six weeks before the king's death in 1154. This book, called The Book of Roger, or the Delight of Whoso Loves to Make the Circuit of the World, Avas based upon the previous labors of twelve geographers, classical and Mussulman. But aiming at greater accuracy tban could be obtained by a mere- ly literary compilation, Roger caused pilgrims, travellers, and mer- chants of all countries to be assembled for conference and exam- ination before him. Their accounts were sifted and collated. 