Cathedral of Palermo by Esther Singleton

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

While treating of Palermo, we are bound to think again of the Emperor / who inherited from his German father the ambition of the Hohenstauffens / and from his Norman mother the fair fields and Oriental traditions / of Sicily. The strange history of Frederick -- an intellect of the / Eighteenth Century born out of date, a cosmopolitan spirit in the / age of Saint Louis, the Crusader who conversed with Moslem sages / on the threshold of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sultan of Lucera who / presented Paterini while he respected the superstition of Saracens, / the anointed successor of Charlemagne, who carried his harem with him / to the battle-fields of Lombardy, and turned Infidels loose upon the / provinces of Christ's Vicar -- would be inexplicable, were it not that / Palermo still reveals in all her monuments the _genius loci_ / which gave spiritual nurture to this phœnix among kings. From his / Mussulman teachers Frederick derived the philosophy to which he gave / a vogue in Europe. From his Arabian predecessors he learned the arts / of internal administration and finance, which he transmitted to the / princes of Italy. In imitation of Oriental courts, he adopted the / practice of verse composition, which gave the first impulse to Italian / literature. His Grand Vizier, Piero Delle Vigne, set an example to / Petrarch, not only by composing the first sonnet in Italian, but also / by showing to what height a low-born secretary versed in art and law / might rise.