THE NORMANS

1060 - 1094

The Castles - Palermo - Messina
 
Coming back from the Holy Land after having taken part in the Crusades as strong and able mercenary warriors, since the first years of the second century,the Normans began to have good relations with Lombards, Byzantines, and the Church often changing references. They stopped in the south of Italy, supporting either the ones or the others, and a good starting point for their people to settle, since the land shortage they suffered in their own country. They were considered the best mercenaries of that time . From southern Italy, where they had their first estates thanks to some well done actions, they started moving towards Sicily, which they examined for the first time  when they helped Byzantium in the province of Messina. Later, since 1060, they won back the Island in 30 years, subduing the muslin opposition (which sometimes was very strong, as in Syracuse defended by the Emir Benavent). Entering from Messina and settling there permanently in 1061, they accomplished the work in 1091, defeating the Arabians in Noto (the last Saracen area). In 1099 Roger I of Sicily was named “ Great Count of Sicily and Calabria” by Pope Urban II. He was tolerant with the defeated enemies, tried to re-latininate the ethnic element and stregthenhis own authority over the feudalism for the first time introduced in the island.
His son Roger II (1113 – 1154) continued with the same policy. He became King of Sicily and Apulia in 1130 and restore the kingdom’s great brightness.
With William I of Sicily, called “The Bad” or “The Wicked” (1154-1166) the Sicilian power was dimmed by baronial conspiracies and pitiless repressions. William II, called “The Good” (1172-1189), restored the power which lasted even when the Crown went to Henry of Swabia, (then Henry VI) in 1186 for his marriage with Constance of Hauteville, the last Norman heir (strongly contrasted by the national party of Tancred, illegitimate son of Roger II).
Henry, the son of Frederick I Barbarossa (Redbeard), after his father’s death (1190) became the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (Kingdom of Germany and Kingdom of Italy) and King of Sicily: the Swabian age of Sicily started with him. In 1197 Henry VI died, Constance and later Innocent III (who claimed the territorial rights of the Holy See) ruled the kingdom for the little Frederick , known in his own time as Stupor mundi (“wonder of the world”).