November 3-4, 2017
Marines’ Memorial Theatre, San Francisco
Even before their rapid conquest of England in 1066, Norman knights arrived in Saracen-controlled Sicily. Pretending to serve as mercenaries variously to the Lombards, the local lords of Benevento or the Byzantines, they plotted long-term opportunities for themselves in Sicily. Those who found it even more enticing than a Crusade to the Holy Land settled in to enjoy domination of the local population. Sicily under the Normans became a crossroad for intense yet prosperous interaction among Norman-Catholic, Byzantine-Orthodox and Arab-Islamic cultures, endowing Palermo with great art, an art that glorifies the severe authoritarianism of centralized royal and divine power, such as the famous mosaic of Christ Pantocrater in Monreale.

Friday, November 3, 2017
7:30-9:30 pm
Sicily as a Site of Encounter / Teofilo Ruiz (History, UCLA). After the defeat of the Muslims, Sicily became a county under Norman rulers in 1071 and, under Roger II, a kingdom in 1130. The kingdom of Sicily encompassed most of southern Italy (the mezzogiorno), so towns along the Amalfi coast joined this ambitious political and cultural project. Under Norman and Hohenstaufen rulers, Sicily became a paradigmatic site of encounter. Greek, Arabic, and Latin became the official languages. The Normans promoted a vigorous cultural program in which great works of art, such as the church at Monreale, the Mediterranean map of al-Idrisi, and the tombs of Norman kings in Palermo, showed the richness of cultural hybridity. This lecture recaps the history of Sicily and southern Italy and discusses Sicily as a site of encounter. In Sicily a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-linguistic population forged a unique moment in time. Their many accomplishments, carried out under Norman and Hohenstaufen rule, show the possibilities for cooperation, as short-lived as they were, in Mediterranean societies.