Norman Sicily

In 911, Charles the Simple ceded a section of coastal France to the Viking chieftain Rollo in exchange for a promise to convert to Christianity and to withdraw his warriors from Paris. Within a century the land of the Northmen (Nortmanni) became the well-administered, highly centralized state of Normandy.

The Normans followed the rule of primogeniture,whereby the eldest son inherits all the lands of his father. Thus only one of the twelve sons of Tancred of Hauteville would inherit the family lands in western Normandy; the rest had to find their own fortunes. Luckily for them, southern Italy was a battleground between the Italians, Byzantines, and Muslims. Tancred's fourth son, Robert Guiscard (“cunning”), went from leading a gang of bandits to ruling southern Italy. In 1059, Pope Nicholas II recognized Robert's claim to southern Italy, and offered him the island of Sicily as well, provided he take it from the Arabs. Robert entrusted the task to his brother Roger, who conquered all of Sicily by 1091.

Roger's second son, also named Roger, ruled over a thriving Norman Kingdom in southern Italy and Sicily that combined the best of east and west. Salerno, on the mainland, hosted a medical school that attracted students from around the Mediterranean world. The students gained a much better understanding of medicine because they were allowed to perform dissection of human bodies, a practice that had been outlawed in the West since the early days of the Roman Empire. Palermo, where speakers of Greek, Latin, and Arabic mingled freely, became known as the “City of the Three Tongues.”