Edmund Curtis
Published: 2016-07-07
Total Pages: 358
Get eBook
In 1016, the ruthlessly ambitious, but obscure, knights of the Norman House of Hauteville came to southern Italy and managed to create a kingdom of their own. Under its first king, Roger II, the Kingdom of Sicily, which included southern Italy, became the most cosmopolitan, tolerant, and enlightened state in Medieval Europe, where Muslims, Christians, Greeks, Normans, Lombards, Italians, Arabs, and Jews lived in relative harmony. By virtue of its strategic location and powerful navy it was at the center of the Mediterranean world. It was coveted by the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Almohad and the Fatimid Caliphates. Eventually, the Hauteville kings succumbed to the Hohenstauffen emperors, where the author ends his history, even though the kingdom continued on as a powerful and enlightened vassal state of the Holy Roman Empire.The author, Edmund Curtis, 1881 to 1943, was a professor of history at Trinity College in Dublin from 1914 to 1939, and an editor of Irish historical documents. His work, Roger of Sicily, covers Sicily's Norman period from 1016 to 1154.