THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN Kll\GDOMS 1200-1500and other goods produced in Sicily. This was the beginning
of a slow process by which the trade of Norman Sicily was
gradually redirected away from its traditional commercial
partners in north Mrica towards Latin Europe; the process
was accompanied by the immigration of settlers from the area
around Genoa. It was thus part of a wider process of latin-
isation which was taking place in Norman Sicily. Although
the north Italian merchants did not obtain an iron grip on
the economy of Sicily (indeed, the Genoese quarrelled with
William I of Sicily within a few years of the treaty mentioned
earlier), the acquisition of Sicilian wheat was of consider-
able importance to the cities of northern Italy, providing
them with the means to grow still further in population and
output. Throughout the central and late Middle Ages, the
relationship between the north Italian merchants and the
rulers of Sicily and southern Italy was of m~jor importance
in the economy and politics of the Mediterranean world.
Some scholars have argued that this relationship had a major
influence on the economic structures that developed within
Sicily itself and other have played this down, but it is imposs-
ible to deny that this relationship had massive political and
commercial repercussions in the city palaces and on the
quaysides of the maritime cities of northern Italy.~^1
THE COMING OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN
Certain fundamental features of the Norman kingdom thus
had a major impact on the thirteenth-century kingdom as
well. In the first place, the kings of Sicily were papal vassals.
The papacy learned increasingly to accept the advantages
which a powerful kingdom lying to the south of Rome might
offer. No longer pirate kings, the Normans became protectors
of the Church; in the early 1190s King Tancred of Sicily won
the support of Pope Celestine III when Barbarossa's fierce
son, Henry VI of Hohenstaufen, launched his invasions of the
Norman kingdom. For, just as the papacy hoped to benefit
from the presence of a strong, friendly monarchy to the- For an attempt to steer between the views of Brese and Epstein on
this, see David Abulafia, Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean,
1100-1500 (Aldershot, 1993), chapter l.