educated in the arts and manners, of this fortunate isle, departed long since to enrich the barbarians with our treasures, and now returns with her savage allies, to contaminate the beauties of her venerable parent. Already I behold the swarms of angry barbarians; our opulent cities, the places flourishing in a long peace, are shaken with fear, desolated by slaughter, consumed by rapine, and polluted by intemperance and lust. I see the massacre or captivity of our citizens, the rapes of our virgins and matrons.148 In this extremity (he interrogates a friend) how must the Sicilians act? By the unanimous election of a king of valour and experience, Sicily and Calabria might yet be preserved; 149 for in the levity of the Apulians, ever eager for new revolutions, I can repose neither confidence nor hope.150 Should Calabria be lost, the lofty towers, the numerous youth, and the naval strength, of Messina 151 might guard the passage against a foreign invader. If the savage Germans coalesce with the pirates of Messina; if they destroy with fire the fruitful region, so often wasted by the fires of mount Etna,1 152 what resource will be left for the interior parts of the island, these noble cities which should never be violated by the hostile footsteps of a barbarian ? 153 Catana has again been overwhelmed by an earthquake; the ancient virtue of Syracuse expires in poverty and solitude; 154 but Palermo is still crowned with a diadem,

149 Constantia, primis a cunabulis in deliciarum tuarum affluentiâ diutius educata, tuisque institutis [instituta], doctrinis et moribus informata, tandem opibus tuis Barbaros delatura [ditatura] discessit; et nunc cum ingentibus copiis [. . .] revertitur, ut pulcherrima [pulcherrime] nutricis ornamenta [. . .] barbarica fœditate contaminet. . . Intueri mihi jam videor turbulentas barbarorum acies ... civitates opulentas et loca diuturnâ pace florentia, metu concutere, cæde vastare, rapinis atterere, et fœdare luxuriâ: [occurrunt] hinc cives aut [resistendo] gladiis intercepti, aut [. . .] servitute depressi [illinc], virgines [. . .] constupratæ, matrone, &c. [p. 253-4].

149 Certe si regem [sibi] non dubiæ virtutis elegerint, nec a Saracenis Christiani [leg. a Christianis Saraceni] dissentiant, poterit rex creatus rebus licet quasi desperatis et [fere] perditis subvenire, et incursus hostium, si prudenter egerit, propulsare.

160 In Apulis, qui, semper novitate gaudentes, novarum rerum studiis aguntur, nihil arbitror spei aut fiduciæ reponendum.

...

181 Si civium tuorum virtutem et audaciam attendas, . . . murorum etiam ambitum densis turribus circumseptum.

18 Cum crudelitate piratica Theutonum confligat atrocitas, et inter ambustos lapides, et Ethnæ flagrantis incendia, &c.

153 Eam partem, quam nobilissimarum civitatum fulgor illustrat, quæ et toti regno singulari meruit privilegio præeminere, nefarium esset. . . vel barbarorum ingressu pollui. I wish to transcribe his florid, but curious, description of the palace, city, and luxuriant plain of Palermo.

154 Vires non suppetunt, et conatus tuos tam inopia civium, quam paucitas bellatorum elidunt.

Conquest of the

Sicily by the em

peror

A.D. 1194

and her triple walls inclose the active multitudes of Christians and Saracens. If the two nations, under one king, can unite for their common safety, they may rush on the barbarians with invincible arms. But, if the Saracens, fatigued by a repetition of injuries, should now retire and rebel; if they should occupy the castles of the mountains and sea-coast, the unfortunate Christians, exposed to a double attack, and placed as it were between the hammer and the anvil, must resign themselves to hopeless and inevitable servitude." 155 We must not forget that a priest here prefers his country to his religion; and that the Moslems, whose alliance he seeks, were still numerous and powerful in the state of Sicily.

The hopes, or at least the wishes, of Falcandus were at first kingdom of gratified by the free and unanimous election of Tancred, the grandson of the first king, whose birth was illegitimate, but Henry VI. Whose civil and military virtues shone without a blemish. During four years, the term of his life and reign, he stood in arms on the farthest verge of the Apulian frontier, against the powers of Germany; and the restitution of a royal captive, of Constantia herself, without injury or ransom, may appear to surpass the most liberal measure of reason. After his decease, the kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle; and Henry pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo. The political balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and, if the pope and the free cities had consulted their obvious and real interest, they would have combined the powers of earth and heaven to prevent the dangerous union of the German empire with the kingdom of Sicily. But the subtle policy, for which the Vatican has so often been praised or arraigned, was on this occasion blind and inactive; and, if it were true that Celestine the Third had kicked away the Imperial crown from the head

155 At vero, quia difficile est Christianos in tanto rerum turbine, sublato regis timore Saracenos non opprimere, si Saraceni [. . .] injuriis fatigati ab eis cœperint dissidere, et castella forte maritima vel montanas munitiones occupaverint; ut hine cum Theutonicis summâ [sit] virtute pugnandum, illinc Saracenis crebris insultibus occurrendum, quid putas acturi sunt Siculi inter has depressi angustias, et velut inter malleum et incudem multo cum discrimine constituti? hoc utique agent quod poterunt, ut se Barbaris miserabili conditione dedentes, in eorum se conferant potestatem. O utinam plebis et [ac] procerum, Christianorum et Saracenorum vota conveniant; ut regem sibi concorditer eligentes, [irruentes] barbaros totis viribus, toto conamine, totisque desideriis proturbare contendant. The Normans and Sicilians appear to be confounded.

of the prostrate Henry,156 such an act of impotent pride could serve only to cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy. The Genoese, who enjoyed a beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened to the promise of his boundless gratitude and speedy departure; 157 their fleet commanded the straits of Messina, and opened the harbour of Palermo; and the first act of this government was to abolish the privileges, and to seize the property, of these imprudent allies. The last hope of Falcandus was defeated by the discord of the Christians and Mahometans: they fought in the capital; several thousands of the latter were slain; but their surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above thirty years the peace of the island. By the policy of Frederic the Second, sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera in Apulia. In their wars against the Roman church, the emperor and his son Mainfroy were strengthened and disgraced by the service of the enemies of Christ; and this national colony maintained their religion and manners in the heart of Italy, till they were extirpated, at the end of the thirteenth century, by the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou.158 All the calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored were surpassed by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He violated the royal sepulchres, and explored the secret treasures of the palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom: the pearls and jewels, however precious, might be easily removed; but one hundred and sixty horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily.159 The young

156 The testimony of an Englishman, of Roger de Hoveden (p. 689), will lightly weigh against the silence of German and Italian history (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. x. p. 156). The priests and pilgrims, who returned from Rome, exalted, by every tale, the omnipotence of the holy father.

157 Ego enim in eo cum Teutonicis manere non debeo (Caffari, Annal. Genuenses, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 367, 368).

158 For the Saracens of Sicily and Nocera, see the Annals of Muratori (tom. x. p. 149, and A.D. 1223, 1247), Giannone (tom. ii. p. 385), and of the originals, in Muratori's Collection, Richard de St. Germano (tom. vii. p. 996), Matteo Spinelli de Giovenazzo (tom. vii. p. 1064), Nicholas de Jamsilla (tom. x. p. 494), and Matteo Villani (tom. xiv. 1. vii. p. 103). The last of these insinuates that, in reducing the Saracens of Nocera, Charles II. of Anjou employed rather artifice than violence.

159 Muratori quotes a passage from Arnold of Lubec (1. iv. c. 20). Reperit thesauros absconditos, et omnem lapidum pretiosorum et gemmarum gloriam, ita ut oneratis 160 somariis gloriose ad terram suam redierit. Roger de Hoveden, who mentions the violation of the royal tomb and corpses, computes the spoil of Salerno at 200,000 ounces of gold (p. 746). On these occasions, I am almost tempted to exclaim with the listening maid in La Fontaine, "Je voudrois bien avoir ce qui manque ".

Final ex

tinction of

the Normans.

A.D. 1204

king, his mother and sisters, and the nobles of both sexes, were separately confined in the fortresses of the Alps; and, on the slightest rumour of rebellion, the captives were deprived of life, of their eyes, or of the hope of posterity. Constantia herself was touched with sympathy for the miseries of her country; and the heiress of the Norman line might struggle to check her despotic husband, and to save the patrimony of her new-born son, of an emperor so famous in the next age under the name of Frederic the Second. Ten years after this revolution, the French monarchs annexed to their crown the duchy of Normandy; the sceptre of her ancient dukes had been transmitted, by a grand-daughter of William the Conqueror, to the house of Plantagenet; and the adventurous Normans, who had raised so many trophies in France, England, and Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the East, were lost, either in victory or servitude, among the vanquished nations.