The Cathedral of Monreale by Esther Singleton

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

Sicily under the Normans offered the spectacle of a singularly hybrid / civilization. Christians and Northmen, adopting the habits and imbibing / the culture of their Musulman subjects, ruled a mixed population of / Greeks, Arabs, Berbers, and Italians. The language of the princes was / French; that of the Christians in their territory, Greek and Latin; / that of their Mahommedan subjects, Arabic. At the same time the / Scandinavian Sultans of Palermo 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 hereditary 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 / English ecclesiastics mingling 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.