Order of Malta Studies

(Author's Note: This concise overview is not intended as a scholarly work, as it presents no newly-researched information; a list of books suggested for further reading follows the text.)

The medieval feudal institutions of Sicily are worthy of study --or at least consideration-- for several reasons. Firstly, like those of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, they reflect not only European norms (particularly influenced by those of Normandy and Germany) but also certain Byzantine and Arab practices. As such, they are particularly interesting regarding the military-religious orders. In this regard, it is to be remembered that until 1530, when it was given to the Hospitallers, the island of Malta was part of the Kingdom of Sicily (and technically remained so as a feudal dependency until 1798); its small noble class, which was essentially of Sicilian (Norman and Lombard) and Aragonese origin, was influenced by the same traditions and practices as Sicily's feudal aristocracy. Secondly, the multicultural society of medieval Sicily was not unlike that of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other states of medieval Palestine. Nowhere else did Western European, Arab and Byzantine society come together for so long, and in few other regions controlled by Europeans, excepting some of the Iberian lands, did such diverse cultures shape medieval society. Thirdly, Sicily was not only a springboard for the Crusades but in many ways a prosperous and powerful point of reference for the Papacy and much of Europe for several key centuries --a limelight it sometimes shared with the Byzantine Empire and the Spanish states. Here one reflects, of course, on Sicily's multicultural "Golden Age." By 1500 the island's population was exclusively Catholic and overwhelmingly illiterate, a situation which (bolstered by the Inquisition and lasting feudalism but virtually untouched by the intellectual benefits of the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution or the Enlightenment) was little changed by 1900 --and that is perhaps the saddest commentary to be gleaned from an examination of the medieval past. Nothing presented on this page is the subject of original scholarly study. This is merely a simple overview, presenting information which otherwise could be obtained most readily only by consulting specific sections of various books.

King, Queen, Count, Baron, Knight. Certain words are more familiar to us for their literary connotations --or as pieces on a chessboard-- than for their actual meanings. Owing largely to impressions from literature and even cinema, entire historical periods and institutions are understood, or perceived, by many from just a few key elements, while important facts relating to the terms are conveniently ignored. But historical context should never be overlooked. With this in mind, let's cast a glance over some features of medieval Sicily's royal and feudal institutions, specifically kingship, nobility and knighthood. This is intended only as an overview to consider how these institutions existed in Sicily, and perhaps to dispel a few misconceptions. For those who visit Sicily, it may be helpful in better understanding those many details not mentioned by travel books or tour guides. In the interest of brevity we'll stick to generalities and the frequent simplification.

Here we are concerned with Sicily's Norman and Swabian periods (from 1061 to 1266), during which many European institutions were introduced while others (particularly those of the Arabs) were adapted to European rule. More generally, the "Middle Ages" might refer broadly to the period from around AD 476, when the Ostrogoths deposed the last Western Roman Emperor, until 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Turks. Sicily's feudal medieval era actually began with the Norman age (1061). Prior to this, the Byzantines had ruled from 535 (following brief Vandal and Gothic rule) until the middle of the ninth century, when the Aghlabid Arabs arrived (the first major Arab invasion was launched from Tunisia in 827). Muslim-Arab and Byzantine-Greek culture and institutions flourished in Sicily, if to an ever-decreasing degree, throughout the Norman and Swabian periods, and it was during the latter that the Sicilian language, a Latin tongue influenced by Greek, Arabic and (to a far lesser extent) Norman French, developed as the island's vernacular. Sicily (like many eastern Mediterranean regions) was predominantly Greek-speaking throughout the Roman period, though many people also spoke or read some Latin; the Normans' "Latinization" was not, therefore, simply a matter of slowly replacing Orthodoxy and Islam with Catholicism (1054 marking the division between Eastern and Western churches), but also of very gradually, if not intentionally, Latinizing the commonly spoken language. When they arrived there was no true "Sicilian" tongue but only Greek and Arabic.

While fundamental Sicilian institutions shared much with their Norman counterparts in England, they were coloured by unique factors, particularly concepts inherited from the Arabs and Byzantines. During the period in question, the Kingdom of Sicily included not only the island of Sicily itself but most of the Italian peninsula south of Rome, ruled from the capital, Palermo, so in many ways this is the history of southern Italy --though in southern peninsular Italy the immediately pre-Norman rule was Lombard and Byzantine rather than Arab. Following the War of the Vespers (1282), when a French king (Charles of Anjou in Naples) and an Aragonese king (Peter in Palermo) both claimed the Crown of Sicily, the phrases "Both Sicilies" and "Two Sicilies" became popular, though the crowns of Naples and Sicily were not formally (and constitutionally) united until the nineteenth century.

Monarchy
Like most European monarchies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Sicily's was essentially "absolute" in almost every respect, though parliaments and legal codes (early precursors of constitutional law) certainly existed, even if there was never any Sicilian Magna Carta. The Normans in England were generally the sons of important families of Normandy; those in Sicily were usually the children of poorer barons, and the Hautevilles were no exception. England was already a kingdom long before William arrived there; Sicily, on the other hand, was a loose network of emirates which evolved into a European monarchy from 1061 until 1130. Before 1130, Roger II, like his father (also Roger), was Count of Sicily, just as there were counts (not kings) of Toulouse and Savoy. Crown, sword, sceptre and orb may have been important symbols, but royal authority did not depend on them except when it was necessary for a king to defend his birthright with a sword --not an uncommon occurrence in the Middle Ages.

Kingship
When Roger de Hauteville was crowned Sicily's first king in Palermo Cathedral in 1130 he was anointed by a bishop. It was a universal convention that medieval Christian kings, be they Catholic or Orthodox, were crowned during public religious ceremonies (coronations) in cathedrals. Though a widowed queen might serve as regent for her young son (and future king), Salic Law meant that, strictly speaking, the king's wife was a queen-consort and not a queen in her own right. This is still true in Spain, and it was the case in Italy until the end of the Savoy monarchy in 1946. That said, Queen Constance, mother of Frederick II (and daughter of King Roger), was a particularly powerful and assertive queen-regent.

When a monarchy already exists (this obviously was not the case in 1130 when Roger was crowned), succession is actually automatic if an heir apparent has been designated and is living. Hence the phrase: "The king is dead, long live the king!" (Morto il re, viva il re!) A coronation is a religious rite which confirms the ascendant monarch's right, authority and ability to rule. This usually presumes the material power to reign (over an actual defensible territory), approval by the Church at the time of coronation (hence the bishop's role), and consent of the people (the nobility). To avoid possible contestations, the Norman kings of Sicily and England sometimes nominated their eldest sons successors during their own lifetimes, and coronations were held to confirm these choices. William, son of King Roger of Sicily was crowned in 1151. Henry, eldest son of King Henry II of England, was crowned as "rex filius" in 1170, though he pre-deceased his father and thus never actually ascended the throne (which went to his brother, Richard I "Lionheart"). Medieval kings were occasionally deposed; in the 1260s Charles of Anjou deposed the young heirs of Frederick II (through victorious battles in mainland Italy) to become king of Sicily, only to lose the island to Peter of Aragon through the Sicilian Vespers uprising in 1282, though Charles was able to retain the peninsular territories, which he continued to rule from Naples.

In Sicily (as elsewhere) royal authority was thought to emanate from God Himself (reflected in the mosaic shown here of Roger receiving the Crown directly from Christ). Here the principle implied a certain independence from the Papacy, and this influenced civil and ecclesiastical policy in Sicily until the death of the oft-excommunicated Frederick II in 1250. While it is true that battles, such as that of Hastings in 1066, were often fought between the armies of reigning monarchs, the idea of a king single-handedly duelling a challenger to retain his kingdom owes more to legend than to history. Moreover, true chivalry usually existed more in theory than in fact, at least outside the military-religious orders. The duel planned between Peter of Aragon and Charles of Anjou at Bordeaux in 1283 (under the auspices of King Edward of England) for the Sicilian Crown never took place, and by 1150 the Normans were already setting aside the idea, inherited from their Viking forebears, of "trial by battle," duels between knights to establish guilt or innocence of crimes.

This is not to say that some medieval kings were not competent knights; Roger II and Frederick II certainly were. However, in this period a ruler's wisdom and leadership were more important than his personal martial skills.

Until the arrival of the Normans, the emirs of Bal'harm (Palermo), Kasr'Janni (Enna) and other cities exercised what may have seemed like sovereign authority. In fact, the "Khalbids" (who succeeded the Aghlabids) were at least nominally part of the larger Fatimid Empire. An emir's role was more akin to that of a powerful feudal lord than a king, and Muslim religious authorities monitored the emirs' actions to prevent abuses of power and ensure conformity to Islamic law. Arab society imposed a certain class structure, but nothing so rigid as the feudal system.

Barons and Enfeoffed Knights
The feudal system begins with little more than a tree, or a patch of grassy land, which must belong to somebody --or at least be maintained by some one on behalf of its owner. A contiguous grouping of farms or woods forms an estate forming a fief, belonging to the knight who needs land to graze the horses required for his military service to his king or lord to defend the territory they rule (or to serve in the invasion of the lands of other kings). Little, if any, ceremony attached to the completion of the young knight's training until the twelfth century, and then it was developed largely to define the knights as a social class rather than (as previously) a strictly military one.

A fief is a territory held by a baron or lord (seigneur), vassal or enfeoffed knight on authority of the Crown. The internal administration of a fief (or seigneury or manor), and the relationship of a baron (or vassal, lord or enfeoffed knight) to his underlings and serfs, is properly described as manorial, while the relationship of the baron to the king is feudal, but to keep things simple the term "feudalism" is used more broadly here even if it isn't always appropriate. The typical fief or manor was a small village or town built around a castle or tower or (in Sicily) a bailey (baglio), which is a tower attached to a walled courtyard. In Sicily only a few coastal fortresses (Castello al Mare in Palermo, Ursino Castle in Catania) had moats. Most Sicilian castles are on hills or mountains, though a baglio might be built on flat land.

By the time of the Vespers uprising (1282) the feudal system was universal in Sicily, but well into Frederick's reign there were still Arab and Byzantine land holdings administered under the prior systems. It is true that there were serfs (peasants tied to the land) and even a few slaves (held by Arabs) during the Norman era, but in Sicily serfdom was never as commonplace as it was in the German lands, France, England and Russia. That doesn't mean that by 1250 a poor peasant farmer could simply decide to leave the hinterland for the city, as he might have debts and obligations to the lord on whose land he lived, but it does mean that he was not formally the property of that same lord. That said, feudalism, as an institution, could actually exist without serfdom and slavery.

In demesnial cities and towns appertaining directly to the Crown (Castrogiovanni, Calascibetta, Messina, Catania, Siracusa, Piazza Armerina, Trapani, etc.), as opposed to feudal cities, there were no feudal lords, and in many districts the feudal authority was the abbot of a monastery --though these clerics were not always any more charitable or humane to peasants than were the arrogant barons. The numerous Arab-founded towns and hamlets were only gradually incorporated into the feudal system as the Muslims converted to Christianity.

The earliest barons were actually enfeoffed knights who held their tenure to the fief at the will and pleasure of the king, to whom they rendered military service (typically 40 days per year) for this privilege. They didn't have a "freehold" ownership of the land, and were succeeded by heirs (sons) only with royal approval. By 1282, the time of the Vespers revolt and the chaos it engendered, the military obligations still existed but most feudal lands had become, in effect, the personal property of the barons. It is interesting that at this late date inheritance was still influenced by a family's ancestral traditions: the Lombard families followed the self-destructive Longobard system of dividing a fief among sons, while the Norman, Swabian and Angevin families enforced transmission of the entire fief to the eldest son according to the Frankish practice.

Some Norman barons initially resisted King Roger's royal authority because of rivalry within his Hauteville family (with certain barons supporting Roger's cousins or other Norman claimants to territories on mainland Italy), or because of resentment that the grandson of a mere knight would claim kingship. However, this phenomenon was not restricted to Sicily; the rebellion of Symon de Montfort against King Henry III of England in 1264 comes to mind.

The procedure for assuming a fief formally is called feudal investiture (sometimes undertaken during a "commendation ceremony"), though it differs from the chivalric investiture of knights (below). The hierarchy of titles of nobility beyond baron (see below) came into wide use in southern Italy after the period under consideration here. Nobility was hereditary along legitimate lines, but only a king could ennoble a common man. In general parlance, the terms seigneur, vassallo and chevalier were most common in Sicily until the end of the thirteenth century, on occasions when titles of this kind were even used. Use of the title "baron" came later. In fact, a toponym was often sufficient to identify a member of the nobility. (This is explained under 'surnames' below.)

Feudalism was abolished in Sicily in 1812. This meant that, among many significant (and perhaps long overdue) social changes, noble titles were henceforth not linked to the land, so purchase of a "barony" no longer made its buyer a baron. It also eradicated the last vestiges of aristocratic legal authority over administration of landed estates (such as the levying of local taxes) and, in effect, it greatly attenuated the privileges of titled nobles. However, based on the changes of 1812, certain nobles recognised (based primarily on the high tax value of their estates) as peers of the realm could sit in parliament.

When most medieval Sicilian landholding nobles were known by the titles barone (baron) or signore (lord), annual military service was required of most of them, but it later became possible to pay a set fee instead of actually rendering this service. The title cavaliere ereditario (hereditary knight bachelor), though it sounds very medieval, was actually introduced later. By 1600 the titles in use were: principe (noble prince), duca (duke, rare in Sicily), marchese (marquis), conte (count), visconte (viscount, rare in Sicily), barone (baron), nobile (untitled nobleman). Most highly-populated territories which were baronies in the fourteenth century were princedoms or counties by the nineteenth, such was the social climbing inclination of the Sicilian nobility. This explains why to this day many Sicilian aristocrats regard barons with a certain disdain; many Sicilian barons descend from nothing more than vulgar gabelloti (estate managers) who achieved ennoblement through purchase of feudal property in the decades immediately prior to 1812. Male primogeniture was the normal means of transmitting a title, and indeed many noble families known to have flourished in the Middle Ages are now extinct in the male line.

Knights and Esquires
There were two forms of knighthood. Enfeoffed (feudal) knights, described above, were a landholding class in the service of the king. Primogeniture determined which son succeeded his father, meaning that younger sons might inherit nothing, even though they were trained as esquires who aspired to become knights. The younger son of a baron or feudal knight, not standing to inherit property, might go on Crusade with one of the military-religious orders, such as the Hospitallers, Templars or (during the reign of Frederick II) the Teutonic Order. An interesting Sicilian custom which survived into the early years of the twentieth century was rooted in this latter practice; the younger son of a baron was often addressed as "cavaliere" (sir knight) even if he had not been knighted. It is possible that there were never more than about three hundred knights of the military-religious orders present in commanderies or preceptories on the island of Sicily at one time.

Whichever destiny awaited him, a postulant to knighthood would acquire his military training as the esquire of a knight, perhaps living for a few years at the castle of a neighbouring lord or performing service at court. By the thirteenth century, knights were usually drawn from the landholding class, though there in practice were actually many exceptions to this rule.

Chivalric investiture was a dubbing ceremony following an all-night vigil spent at prayer in a chapel. We associate dubbing with the tap of a sword blade on each shoulder but the earlier version was the slapping of the kneeling esquire's cheek with a leather gauntlet. The sons of the king might be knighted at sixteen or eighteen, and this marked their coming-of-age as well as their earliest stage of military training. Ordinary esquires might be knighted around the age of twenty. While feudal investiture (bestowing a fief upon a lord) was not necessarily a religious ceremony, chivalric investiture (bestowing the state of knighthood upon a squire ad personam) usually was a rite performed in a church or chapel. It should be reiterated that chivalric investiture became a formal and religious ceremony after 1100; the earliest Norman knights present in Sicily (who invaded in 1061) were dubbed in very simple ceremonies, if at all. In Sicily, investiture served, in the public mind, to distinguish the Norman and Lombard knights from the Arab cavalry integrated into royal service as the king's personal escort and guards.

A knight was more than a fighting horseman, and feudal knights were usually invested by the king or his designated representative (a member of the royal family, a bishop or a noble), but certain nobles, and even senior feudal knights, could also dub knights on their own authority until this latter practice was discouraged beginning in the reign of Frederick II. In the military-religious orders the duty of investing knights was the prerogative of the order's leader, the grand master, though some of the men serving in these orders would have already been dubbed by their own kings before enlisting. By 1200 the Hospitallers, Templars and Teutonic Knights all had commanderies in Sicily.

The code of chivalry, to the extent that it ever reflected more than an ideal, was probably more evident in the military-religious orders than among the feudal knights. At its best, and when extended from theory into practice, it embodied honourable behaviour of the knight: fealty to his sovereign, respect for women, children and clergy, honour in combat, and honesty. In principle at least, it epitomised all the virtues. Sadly, it was rarely applied, and then it usually had classist overtures, with knights treating members of their own social class chivalrously while showing little respect for peasants.

Knights were not the only men-at-arms. There were also footmen (infantry), archers and such, many of whom normally performed civilian roles during times of peace. On short notice the Sicilian kings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries could count on raising a mounted army of at least 900 battle-trained knights from around the island (in addition to those from the mainland), and at least twice this number if allowed ample time for preparation, plus many esquires and other horsemen (such as the king's loyal and effective Siculo-Arab cavalry).

Surnames
If noble titles per se were less important in the twelfth century than later in the Middle Ages, was there another means of recognising identity? Until the Vespers period (1282) few Sicilians outside the aristocracy had surnames except for simple patronymics (as "di Giovanni" meaning "son of John") or the occasional nickname. Often, though not always, a nobleman or enfeoffed knight would use the toponym derived from the name of his fief as his surname. (Incidentally, this is why so many Sicilian-Normans bore surnames that sound more Arabic or "Italic" than French; they were based on place names in Sicily.) The names of the oldest royal dynasties follow this pattern, hence the Norman kings of Sicily were the de Hautevilles and the Swabians were von Hohenstaufens. So the lord of a fief called Boscogrande might be called "de Boscogrande." There are no firm rules on this usage, but as a matter of social fact it would have been difficult for a serf to impersonate a knight, and the penalty for doing so was grave. The vast majority of Sicilians assumed formal, hereditary surnames only in the early decades of the fifteenth century.

Bishops, Priests, Monks (and learning)
Into the middle years of the thirteenth century the rapport of the Sicilian Crown with the Papacy was rarely amicable. Nevertheless, the King of Sicily held extraordinary authority to appoint, or at least approve, bishops, and the Crown endowed many monasteries.During this period, when there were still many Muslims and Jews in Sicily, there were also many Orthodox monasteries of the eastern (Byzantine) rite. Monasteries were, in effect, a peripheral part of the feudal system, so abbots exercised the same authority over Church lands as secular lords did over their fiefs and manors.

The Normans introduced the Benedictines into Sicily, and this kind of Latinisation (by gradually replacing Greek Orthodox churches with Roman Catholic ones, and relegating Islam to a minority religion) was the first small step in altering the island's literacy levels, though not for the better. Throughout the Norman era Sicily's Muslims and Jews had their own small schools to teach reading and basic arithmetic. These were not limited to boys; in these communities girls were also taught to read, especially among Muslims who considered reading the Koran to be extremely important, and reading was also taught at home, most Muslim parents being at least fundamentally literate. Considering the island's population and the number of towns founded or populated by Arabs, it is probable that about half of all Sicilians living in 1071 (when the Normans took Palermo) were Arabs or their descendants, and there was some amalgamation with "native" Sicilians. Among Jews, who represented something under ten percent of the population (estimates vary wildly), this kind of education seems to have been directed toward boys more than girls. The "native" Sicilians (descended predominantly from ancient peoples such as Sicanians, Elymians, Sicels, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans) present before the arrival of Arabs in the ninth century were originally "Byzantine" (Orthodox) Christians. Their rate of literacy, while certainly less than those of the Muslims and Jews, was still significant, especially among men. By the end of Frederick's reign (1250) most of the Muslims had converted to (Latin) Christianity --thus there are surviving Sicilian psalters of Christian prayers written in Arabic-- and most of the Orthodox communities had become Latin (Catholic) through replacement of their clergy and changes in liturgy. Indeed, many Sicilians living in the twelfth century could converse in more than one language --typically Arabic and Greek (and later Sicilian, an Italic mixture of Latin, French, Arabic and Greek). Most aristocrats also spoke Norman French and could read at least some Latin.

But wasn't the medieval Church a centre of learning? Though the Benedictines of the Middle Ages maintained schools, these were primarily for aspirants to the priesthood or monastic life. Nobles had tutors; early in the twelfth century these were Muslims but in the thirteenth usually Benedictine monks. In effect, the level of literacy declined throughout the general population except among the Jews (forcibly converted or expelled in the few years immediately following 1492). Among Sicily's adult population literacy may have been as high as forty-five percent in 1100 (strikingly remarkable by medieval standards); in 1850 (based upon research in vital statistics records kept since 1820 in which it is seen that most citizens could sign only a mark such as an "X" or perhaps a poorly inscribed signature they copied) it was lower than fifteen percent. Logically, this was concentrated among the clergy, the aristocracy, and the emerging bourgeoisie --the latter two taught by religious orders such as the Dominicans and Jesuits. Public schools were instituted late in the nineteenth century but by 1900 the vast majority of Sicilians (perhaps seventy percent) were still illiterate; that is to say that only three out of ten adults could read, probably fewer than in the twelfth century. In fact, into the early years of the twentieth century illiteracy was also rampant in northern Italy, not confined to southern regions, while in the nations of northwestern Europe the overwhelming majority of people could read and write.

Heraldry
Coats of arms, namely shields and surcoats emblazoned with symbols representing a knight and his family, came into use in Sicily sometime after 1180. These soon became hereditary; the lawful bearer of a coat of arms is an armiger. In medieval days, of course, feudal lords were also knights. Early on, armourial heraldry developed its own rules regarding pictorial composition and the use of colour. By 1200, virtually every knight had a coat of arms (a painted shield whose design would be repeated on seals and carved into the portal or wall of his castle or bailey). Coats of arms had become marks of gentility and the warrior class, and so remained through the centuries.

The earliest records of coats of arms are parchment rolls compiled in the Middle Ages. The one shown here depicts the arms of three families present in Sicily by 1300, though not all were Sicilian originally; the Casato or Casati (left) were Lombards present in Messina, and the Grimaldi (right) were Genoans present at Palermo, where their family chapel still exists in the medieval church of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Many explanations have been suggested for the use of these insignia on shields for identification during combat or at tournaments. They supposedly identified the helmeted, armoured knight to friend and foe, but why was no such need determined centuries earlier? The tournament theory seems the more likely. "Canting arms" were popular in Sicily. This meant that the symbols on the shield were literally allusive to the knight's surname --a lion for Leone, an ox for Bue, an olive tree for Oliviero, a red field for Rosso, a tower for La Torre, a horseshoe for Maniscalco, a fountain for Fontana, a mountain for Montagna, a sword for Spada, and so forth. The Casato castle (shown in the roll here) is canted for the castle, as the name literally means "noble house." The keeping of heraldic records was the job of court officers known as heralds.

Today this all seems arcane, but into the late Middle Ages a knowledge of heraldic practice and rules was, like familiarity with Latin and chess, the sign of a gentleman --in Sicily always a very small and exclusive caste. Nowadays armourial heraldry is unregulated and much abused, with coats of arms unjustly claimed by people who (by coincidence) share nothing more than a common surname with an original armiger.

The Sicilian Nobility on Best of Sicily