Sicily under the Normans and Frederick II, 1130–1250

The Normans had come to Sicily as adventurers with few skills other than the military one. But by the time Roger II was crowned king of Sicily in 1130, they had shown themselves to be able administrators, and – what was perhaps more remarkable – they governed with considerable tolerance and flexibility. The kingdom included Calabria on the mainland, and Roger I (1031–1101) was able to draw on Byzantine experience in administration, through Greek officials. But the Normans constituted an undisputed, if small, ruling class. The Sicilian population they ruled was, of course, an extraordinary ethnic mixture, in which Greeks and Arabs predominated. From Norman charters it would seem that whereas the Normans brought their own laws for their Latin population, they allowed Greeks, Moslems and Jews to retain their own laws and to be judged by their own judges. The distinction between religious and secular law was, of course, an ill-defined one. Moslem countries have usually regarded the Koran as the basis of any legal system, and when the Normans referred to ‘Jewish Law’ they meant religious practices in the family and society. Greek and Arabic were used as official languages alongside Latin. Moslems were not violently persecuted by the government, but they were regarded as an inferior group, much as Christians had been under the Arabs, and both Moslems and Jews were discriminated against in tax policy.