Sicily & Lipari / Aeolian Islands

Long before becoming the Greeks’ Thrinacia, the island of the “three promontories” (treis acra in Greek, called thus after its unmistakable tricuspid form), Sicily was a settled land. Human habitation dates surely from as early as the 9th to 8th millennium B.C. Agriculture, and with it animal husbandry, began to develop in the 5th millennium B.C... Read on

Long before becoming the Greeks’ Thrinacia, the island of the “three promontories” (treis acra in Greek, called thus after its unmistakable tricuspid form), Sicily was a settled land. Human habitation dates surely from as early as the 9th to 8th millennium B.C. Agriculture, and with it animal husbandry, began to develop in the 5th millennium B.C., as did humanity’s most ancient cult, that of the fertile Earth Mother, which was celebrated with particular fervor and handed down without interruption in the Erice area. The people abandoned the caves; in the villages of huts the first indigenous nuclei developed. Typical of this period are the rupestral settlements of Megara Hyblaea and Stentinello, near Syracuse, where ceramic shards with etched decorations – among the most ancient of this type of art – have been found. Thus, a humanized landscape and a domesticated countryside were the sights that greeted the eyes of the first in a long series of colonizers: the Phoenicians, navigators and able tradesmen who exported precious manufactured goods and wood to the West in exchange for raw materials. It was not long (in the 10th century B.C., to be exact) before their vessels came ashore in western Sicily, where they founded cities like Palermo, Mozia, and Solunto. The Greeks arrived in waves in the 8th century B.C. and settled on the eastern coasts of the island. From this time onward, and with an intensity seen on no other island, life in Sicily hinged on its splendid sea. Around the largest island in the Mediterranean ran the trade routes between the West and the Greek and Eastern worlds; Sicily also became a point of encounter between the north and the south of this broad natural basin with its great civilizations and highly-developed commercial traffic.

Greek domination inaugurated for the island a period of high artistic expression that confers nobility to the wild beauty of the landscape. Outstanding examples are the Temple and the Theater of Segesta, the temples of Agrigento and of Seli-nunte, the Temple of Apollo and the Theater of Syracuse, and the Theater of Taormina, all almost metaphysical entities that stand out in superb relief against the natural scenario.

The period of Roman domination, however, was characterized by a policy of fierce exploitation of the new province. Roman expansionism, which gained ground very rapidly from the 3rd century onward on the Italian peninsula, the Iberian peninsula, on the African coasts and on the Greek eastern front, also involved Sicily in that process that at the threshold of the Christian Era led to the fall of the Republic and the birth of the Empire. The sheer extension of the territory to be controlled, too much for even a powered-up army, favored in Sicily the breakdown of the old agricultural organization and the introduction – through widespread confiscation of lands – of the latifundium. Since type of estate could be farmed on a vast scale and required little tending, the work of the slaves of war transferred to the island from Asia and Africa was sufficient; in the centuries that followed, this form became the symbol of economic backwardness and the model for Sicilian agriculture at many times in history. The new province was thus transformed into the granary of the capital; what is more, the cities paid tributes to Rome on a regular basis. Sicilian art did not change substantially following the Roman conquest, as part of the panorama delineated earlier by the Greeks. The principle of utilitas prevailed: the public buildings changed use destination; many of the Greek theaters were restructured to meet the needs of the spectacles of the Roman period. This is the case of the Theater of Catania and of the Greek Theater of Taormina – second only to that of Syracuse as to size – which in its new 2nd-century B.C. version acquired seating capacity and grandiosity. Other important architectural remains of the Roman period are the amphitheaters of Catania and of Syracuse. With the downfall of the Western Roman Empire (476 A.D.), the new world of Islamic civilization, against which the Christian West of the medieval Crusades later took up ranks, turned its gaze to Sicily where it was to play an important historical role. In Sicily as in other areas, the decline of the Empire left a free hand to the barbarian invasions (Vandals, 468; Ostrogoths, 491); the island was annexed to the Eastern Roman Empire under Justinian (535). Three centuries of Byzantine domination saw the consolidation of the religious tradition of the island, which was converted to Christianity in the 4th century (in 313, Constantine’s Edict of Milan had established the principle of freedom of workship in all the territories of the Empire). New cathedrals were built on the foundations of the old temples – this is the case, for example, of the Cathedral of Syracuse, raised over the Temple of Athena on the island of Ortigia – and the many monasteries built by pope Gregory the Great (590-604) were flanked by those of the oriental cults, which were centers of erudite studies centering on transmission of the language and tradition of classical Greece and which significantly contributed to shaping Sicilian culture.

The Arabs, who first landed in Sicily (at Mazara) in 827 A.D., governed the island for almost two centuries. If on the one hand the “infidels,” against whom the Holy War was directed, conquered the island through ferocious raids and with a cruelty that has gone down in history, on the other their government worked to establish a climate of religious and cultural tolerance. The specific element of Islam, characterized by the lack of a central religious authority, that most influenced Sicily was a certain cosmopolitan aperture, an element of modernity thitherto unknown to the Western peoples. The most original interpreter of this teaching was Frederick II of Swabia, anticipator in the Middle Ages of an “illuminated” type of rule that the European nations generally experimented only many centuries later. The Arabs’ scientific culture was also modern; they imported innovative contributions to Western mathematics, astronomy, optics, acoustics, and medicine. The introduction of new irrigation techniques heralded a true rebirth of agriculture, impoverished by the latifundia and at that time reorganized as a plurality of small plots; of Arab origin also are a number of dialectical terms linked to the land. New crops were introduced: tangerines, oranges, a variety of muscat grape called zibibbu, the pistachio (frastuca), the lemon (lumia); Sicilian cuisine has also incorporated many dishes of Arab origin. The social and religious peace and the economic rebirth came to fruit during the period in which Sicily was ruled by the dynasty of the Kalbiti of Palermo (948-1040), when Arab Sicily knew its maximum splendor. Palermo (the Arabic name of which was “Balarm”), subtracted from the Byzantines in 831 and promoted to the rank of capital of the Emirate of Sicily in 948, soon became one of the best known cities in Europe, thanks above all to its rapid rise in the world of commerce. Its original function as a port and emporium is well summed up in the name given the city by the Greeks (Panormos, “all port”). This aspect was further valorized by Arab management: the port acquired new marketplaces, neighborhoods grew up around it, and it became a strategic center of the vast trading network built up by the Islamic empire. The vacuum left by the downfall of the Kalbiti dynasty opened the way to the Norman invasion. In 1091, Count Roger de Hauteville completed the Christian reconquest of Sicily and laid the foundations for the Norman policy of affirmation of feudal power and protection of civil and religious freedoms, so continuing in the direction already laid out by the Arab government. In his father’s steps, Roger II, King of Sicily and Apulia (1113-1154), guided the kingdom to its maximum splendor and consolidated the Arab component as a stable element of Sicilian life while establishing a feudal system of administration for the island.

In the 13th century, Palermo became the residence of Frederick II of Swabia – grandson of Frederick I Barbarossa and son of Constance de Hauteville, the last Norman heir – King of Sicily from 1198 to 1250 and Holy Roman Emperor. On the throne, he welcomed and valorized the cultural heritage left by his predecessors. Educated in the illuminated, cosmopolitan spirit of the Norman court, a cultured man and a “modern” ruler, Frederick II impressed on arts and letters a style in his own image: non-confessional and Europe-gazing. The culture expressed by the Swabian court – strong and respectful of the rich legacy transmitted by earlier times – now moved in a dimension that well overstepped the limits of the Kingdom of Sicily. The first literary forms in vernacular Italian include the lyrics in courtly Sicilian of the Sicilian school (Iacopo da Lentini, Pier delle Vigne, and Frederick II himself). From point of convergence between the western and eastern worlds, between Africa and Europe, in the modern age Sicily became a far-off satellite in the vast constellation formed by the European states. With the death of Frederick II of Swabia there opened for the Kingdom of Sicily a long period of crisis, characterized by the reawakened ambitions of the feudal barony and by the transfer of the government from the island to the peninsula. Under the Angevins, the move of the capital to Naples triggered the separatist revolt called the Sicilian Vespers (1282). After many ups and downs, Sicily was reduced to being a mere possession of the Aragon crown and then of Spain, becoming a vice-royalty (1415) of the Iberian kingdom until, with the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), it passed into the hands of the Savoy. After the rule of the Savoy, Sicily passed into the hands of the Austrians (1722) and then of the Bourbons (1734). In 1860, Garibaldi’s campaign against the Bourbon forces ended with the annexation of Sicily to Piemonte and later to the Kingdom of Italy (1861). All this did nothing to resolve the long-standing problems of backwardness linked to dependence on centralized governments outside its territory, and the ancient scourge of the latifundia was only felt even more strongly. There arose the phenomenon of emigration, which accentuated dramatically in the early 1900s, and that of brigandage.

The Fascist regime did nothing to alleviate the problems inherited from earlier governments. Since 1946, Sicily is administered under a Special Statute, but is still far from eliminating the conditions of social discomfort in which the Mafia prospers.

close