Communities, Cultures and Conflict in Southern Italy, from the Byzantines to the Angevins

Abstract

ABSTRACT When the Normans conquered southern Italy and Sicily during the eleventh century, a significant part of the population were Greek-rite Christians (mainly in southern Apulia, Calabria and north-east Sicily) or, on the island of Sicily, Muslims. To begin with, at least, it was very much in the interests of the new rulers to tolerate these groups, and hence the reputation of the Norman kingdom of Sicily for its diversity and multi-culturalism. But over the next two centuries this consensus slowly dissolved, the position of the Greek and Muslim communities weakened, and ultimately both disappeared. However, while with the Greeks much of the pressure for acculturation and Latinisation was unconscious and unintended, and the decline of the Greek rite and contraction of the Graecophone areas were very slow, the Muslims of Sicily were provoked into revolt at the end of the twelfth century, and had been almost entirely eliminated from the island by 1250. It has usually been assumed that most of the Muslims of Sicily were deported to Frederick II’s military colony at Lucera in the Capitanata. Yet when examined closely, this thesis seems improbable, and what happened to the Sicilian Muslims remains an enigma.