Religious Identity in Norman Sicily: Evidence from the Christian Chronicles

Abstract (English)

This presentation argues that the “Norman conquest” of Sicily, which was neither fully Norman nor a conventional conquest, produced a ruling project in an exceptionally plural society of Muslims, Greek and Latin Christians, and Jews, with overlapping ethnic (Lombard, Greek, Arab, Berber, Norman), linguistic (Arabic, Greek, Latin, Sicilian, Hebrew, Franco-Norman), and religious spheres that rarely aligned one-to-one. Part I reads foundational narratives in Amatus of Montecassino, William of Apulia, and Geoffrey Malaterra to recover how Norman elites perceived themselves: as providential liberators and guardians of Christendom whose victories were signs of divine favor, yet pragmatists who allied across confessional lines when politically useful. Episodes of divine inspiration (e.g., Cerami, 1063) reconcile piety with power, while accounts of Civitate (1053) deploy hagiographic strategies to legitimize Norman ascendancy even against papal forces. Part II reinterprets the famed “Norman-Arab-Byzantine” synthesis under Roger II (1105–54) as a calculated presentation rather than a deep fusion. Greek predominated in administration and charters, but the court’s working language and culture remained Franco-Norman; as such, claims for extensive Greek learning or Byzantine strategic theory are thin. Roger’s celebrated Arabic patronage, especially as described in al-Idrīsī’s Tabula Rogeriana, served imperial geography and diplomacy more than cultural ecumenism, while the description of Sicilian Muslims as “palace Saracens” signals control rather than tolerance. Taken together, perception (providential, universalist self-identity) and presentation (hybrid imagery and multilingual administration) functioned to secure and manage a diverse polity. As Latinization intensified across the twelfth century, the hybrid façade thinned, and the outward image converged with an inward Latin Christian identity, revealing the “synthesis” as an instrument of legitimacy and rule.