The Kingdom of Sicily (Latin: Regnum Siciliae; Sicilian: Regnu di Sicilia; Italian: Regno di Sicilia) was a state that existed in Sicily and the southern Italian Peninsula as well as, for a time, in North Africa, from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of the southern peninsula. The island was divided into three regions: Val di Mazara, Val Demone and Val di Noto.
After a brief rule by Charles of Anjou, a revolt in 1282 known as the Sicilian Vespers threw off Angevin rule in the island of Sicily. The Angevins managed to maintain control in the mainland part of the kingdom, which became a separate entity also styled Kingdom of Sicily, although it is informally and retrospectively referred to as the Kingdom of Naples. The Kingdom of Sicily on the island (also known as Kingdom of Trinacria between 1282 and 1442 and Kingdom of Sicily on the other side of the Lighthouse between 1282 and 1816) on the other hand, became a semi-independent viceroyalty ruled by relatives of the House of Barcelona, and was then added permanently to the Crown of Aragon as a result of the Compromise of Caspe of 1412, while retaining a degree of its previous autonomy. Following the dynastic union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon (1469–1479), Spanish control over Sicily strengthened, enabling the Spanish Inquisition to more easily eliminate non-Catholic populations across all Spanish dominions. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–1714), the island was taken over by the House of Savoy. In 1720, Savoy gave it to Austria in exchange for Sardinia. Later, the island was ruled by a branch of the Bourbons. Following the Napoleonic period, the Kingdom of Sicily was formally merged with the Kingdom of Naples to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which in 1861 became part of the new unified Kingdom of Italy.
History
Norman conquest
By the 11th century, mainland southern Lombard and Byzantine powers were hiring Norman mercenaries, who were descendants of Vikings in northern France. It was the Normans under Roger I who conquered Sicily, taking it away from the Sicilian Muslims. After taking Apulia and Calabria, Roger occupied Messina with an army of 700 knights. In 1068, Roger I of Sicily and his men defeated the Muslims at Misilmeri but the most crucial battle was the Siege of Palermo, which led to Sicily being completely under Norman control by 1091.
Norman kingdom (1130–1198)
In 1130, Roger II convened the Curiae Generales in the Royal Palace in Palermo to proclaim the first King of Sicily, which could be considered the first parliament in the modern sense. Thus, the Kingdom of Sicily was created and born. The first king of Sicily received the royal dignity through the sanction of Parliament, and this event imposed the rule—albeit uncodified—that all subsequent sovereigns of the Kingdom of Sicily who succeeded to the throne had to obtain the assent (rather than the approval) of Parliament.
The Norman Kingdom was sanctioned on Christmas Day, 1130, by Roger II of Sicily, with the agreement of Antipope Anacletus II. Roger II united the lands he had inherited from his father, Roger I of Sicily. These areas included the Maltese Archipelago, which was conquered from the Arabs of the Emirates of Sicily; the Duchy of Apulia and the County of Sicily, which had belonged to his cousin William II, Duke of Apulia, until William's death in 1127; and the other Norman vassals. Roger declared his support for the Antipope Anacletus II, who enthroned him as King of Sicily on Christmas Day 1130.
In 1136, the rival of Anacletus, Pope Innocent II, convinced Lothair III, Holy Roman Emperor to attack the Kingdom of Sicily with help from the Byzantine Emperor John II Comnenus. Two main armies, one led by Lothair, the other by Henry X, Duke of Bavaria, invaded Sicily. On the River Tronto, William of Loritello surrendered to Lothair and opened the gates of Termoli to him. This was followed by Count Hugh II of Molise. The two armies were united at Bari, from where in 1137 they continued their campaign. Roger offered to give Apulia as a fief to the Empire, which Lothair refused after being pressured by Innocent. At the same period, the army of Lothair revolted.
Lothair, who had hoped for the complete conquest of Sicily, then gave Capua and Apulia from the Kingdom of Sicily to Roger's enemies. Innocent protested, claiming that Apulia fell under Papal claims. Lothair turned north, but died while crossing the Alps on 4 December 1137. At the Second Council of the Lateran in April 1139, Innocent excommunicated Roger for maintaining a schismatic attitude. On 22 March 1139, at Galluccio, Roger's son Roger III, Duke of Apulia, ambushed the Papal troops with a thousand knights and captured the pope. On 25 March 1139, Innocent was forced to acknowledge the kingship and possessions of Roger with the Treaty of Mignano.
Roger spent most of the decade, beginning with his coronation and ending with the Assizes of Ariano, enacting a series of laws with which Roger intended to centralise the government. He also fended off several invasions and quelled rebellions by his premier vassals: Grimoald of Bari, Robert II of Capua, Ranulf of Alife, Sergius VII of Naples and others. In the mainland provinces, however, Roger had to contend with a peninsular aristocracy that was often reluctant to accept the consolidation of the new kingdom and the king's authority; only after the mainland opposition had been broken were confiscated lordships and comital titles reorganised, and by the 1140s the mainland had been effectively restructured around Terra di Lavoro, Apulia, and Calabria, while some counties were suppressed, resized, or reassigned to loyal barons. Royal administration on the mainland also relied on local military commanders, including royal constables (comestabuli), who coordinated provincial forces and lesser barons during the kingdom's formative decades.
It was through his admiral George of Antioch that Roger then conquered the littoral of Ifriqiya from the Zirids, taking the unofficial title "King of Africa" and marking the foundation of the Norman Kingdom of Africa. At the same time, Roger's fleet also attacked the Byzantine Empire, making Sicily a leading maritime power in the Mediterranean Sea for almost a century.
Roger's son and successor was William I of Sicily, known as "William the Bad", though his nickname derived primarily from his lack of popularity with the chroniclers, who supported the baronial revolts which William suppressed. In the mid-1150s, William lost the majority of his African possessions to a series of revolts by local North African lords. Then, in 1160, the final Norman African stronghold of Mahdia was taken by the Almohads. His reign ended in peace in 1166. His elder son Roger IV, Duke of Apulia had been killed in previous revolts, and his son, William II, was a minor. Until the end of the boy's regency by his mother Margaret of Navarre in 1172, turmoil in the kingdom almost brought the ruling family down. The reign of William II is remembered as two decades of almost continual peace and prosperity. For this more than anything, he is nicknamed "the Good". However, he had no issue, which led to a succession crisis: his aunt Constance, the sole heir to the throne as the daughter of Roger II, was long confined in a monastery as a nun, with her marriage beyond consideration due to a prediction that "her marriage would destroy Sicily". Nevertheless, in 1184, she was betrothed to Henry, the eldest son of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor and the future Emperor Henry VI. William named Constance and Henry the heirs to the throne and had the noblemen swear oath, but the officials did not want to be ruled by a German, so the death of William in 1189 led the kingdom to decline.
With the support of the officials, Tancred of Lecce seized the throne. In the same year, he had to contend with the revolt of his distant cousin Roger of Andria, a former contender who supported Henry and Constance but was tricked to execution in 1190, as well as the invasion of Henry, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor since 1191, who invaded on behalf of his wife. Henry had to retreat after his attack failed, with Empress Constance captured and only released under the pressure of the Pope. Tancred died in 1194, and Constance and Henry prevailed: the kingdom fell in 1194 to the House of Hohenstaufen. William III of Sicily, the young son of Tancred, was deposed, and Henry and Constance were crowned as king and queen. Through Constance, the Hauteville blood was passed to Frederick, who reigned in Sicily as Frederick I.
Hohenstaufen period (1198–1266)
In 1197, the accession of Frederick, a child who would also become Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1220, greatly affected the immediate future of Sicily. For a land so used to centralised royal authority, the king's young age caused a serious power vacuum. His uncle Philip of Swabia moved to secure Frederick's inheritance by appointing Markward von Anweiler, margrave of Ancona, regent in 1198. Meanwhile, Pope Innocent III had reasserted papal authority in Sicily, but recognised Frederick's rights. The pope was to see papal power decrease steadily over the next decade and was unsure about which side to back at many junctures.
The Hohenstaufen's grip on power, however, was not secure. Walter III of Brienne had married the daughter of Tancred of Sicily. She was sister and heiress of the deposed King William III of Sicily. In 1201, William decided to claim the kingdom. In 1202, an army led by the chancellor Walter of Palearia and Dipold of Vohburg was defeated by Walter III of Brienne. Markward was killed, and Frederick fell under the control of William of Capparone, an ally of the Pisans. Dipold continued the war against Walter on the mainland until the claimant's death in 1205. Dipold finally wrested Frederick from Capparone in 1206 and gave him over to the guardianship of the chancellor, Walter of Palearia. Walter and Dipold then had a falling out, and the latter captured the royal palace, where he was besieged and captured by Walter in 1207. After a decade, the wars over the regency and the throne itself had ceased.
The reform of the laws began with the Assizes of Ariano in 1140 by Roger II of Sicily. Frederick I continued the reformation with the Assizes of Capua (1220) and the promulgation of the Constitutions of Melfi (1231, also known as Liber Augustalis), a collection of laws for his realm that was remarkable for its time. The Constitutions of Melfi were created in order to establish a centralized state. For example, citizens were not allowed to carry weapons or wear armour in public unless they were under royal command. As a result, rebellions were reduced. The Constitutions made the Kingdom of Sicily an absolute monarchy, the first centralized state in Europe to emerge from feudalism; it also set a precedent for the primacy of written law. With relatively small modifications, the Liber Augustalis remained the basis of Sicilian law until 1819. During this period, he also built the Castel del Monte, and in 1224, he founded the University of Naples, now called University of Naples Federico II.
Frederick had to beat off a Papal invasion of Sicily in the War of the Keys (1228–1230). After his death, the kingdom was ruled by Conrad IV of Germany. The next legitimate heir was Conradin, who was too young at the period to rule. Manfred of Sicily, the illegitimate son of Frederick, took power and ruled the kingdom for fifteen years while other Hohenstaufen heirs were ruling various areas in Germany. After long wars against the Papal States, the Kingdom managed to defend its possessions, but the Papacy declared the Kingdom escheated because of the disloyalty of the Hohenstaufen. Under this pretext, Manfred came to an agreement with Louis IX, King of France. Louis's brother, Charles of Anjou, would become king of Sicily. In exchange, Charles recognized the overlordship of the Pope in the Kingdom, paid a portion of the Papal debt, and agreed to pay annual tribute to the Papal States, the Chinea.
The Miossi family, a noble family, was commissioned in 1251 by Pope Innocent IV to administer the Kingdom of Sicily. The Hohenstaufen rule in Sicily ended after the 1266 Angevin invasion and the death of Conradin, the last male heir of Hohenstaufen, in 1268.
Angevin Sicily (1266–1282)
In 1266, conflict between the Hohenstaufen house and the Papacy led to Sicily's conquest by Charles I, Duke of Anjou. With the usurpation of the Sicilian throne from Conradin by Manfred of Sicily in 1258, the relationship between the Papacy and the Hohenstaufen had changed again. Instead of the boy Conradin, safely sequestered across the Alps, the Papacy now faced an able military leader who had greatly supported the Ghibelline cause at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260. Accordingly, when negotiations broke down with Manfred in 1262, Pope Urban IV again took up the scheme of disseising the Hohenstaufen from the kingdom, and offered the crown to Charles of Anjou again. With Papal and Guelph support Charles descended into Italy and defeated Manfred at the Battle of Benevento in 1266 and in 1268 Conradin at the Battle of Tagliacozzo.