THE WESTERN MEDITERRA.I'\EAN KINGDOMS 1200-1!100when the Byzantine world was very fragmented and when the
Greeks in southern Italy and Sicily had long experience of
communion with Rome. They were a shrinking group, barely
represented among the trading community of what had once
been their greatest centre in Sicily, Messina. The future lay,
rather, with the 'Lombards' who had been swamping eastern
Sicily for up to two centuries.
What is clear is that the term 'popular rebellion' should
be applied to the Sicilian Vespers with caution. If there
was a conspiracy, it is not at all certain that the occurrence
at Vespers on 30 March was part of it. Nor is it certain that
the Sicilian nobles, with their dream of a papal 'republic',
were at one with Giovanni da Procida and his contacts.
Legend relates that Palmieri Abbate, Alaimo of Lentini and
Gualtiero da Caltagirone were the prime contacts of Giovanni
da Procida as he wandered the Mediterranean disguised as
a Franciscan brother.
It would not be surprising if the failure of the 1268 up-
rising left discontented Sicilian barons conspiring fruitlessly
among themselves. But Procida did have someone 'waiting
in the wings'; and the uprising in Sicily only acted as a spur
to definite activity on the part of one who was already contem-
plating an attack on Sicily, perhaps while Charles's fleet was
at sea: the husband of Manfred's daughter Constance, King
Peter of Aragon, had behind him the navy of Catalonia. The
Sicilian parliament met at Palermo and agreed to his envoys'
suggestion that the King of Aragon be summoned to Sicily
to take the crown in right of his Hohenstaufen wife; and
in September he came fully armed to Palermo to receive
the crown and defend his new kingdom."' Evidently, Peter
III was not the first choice of the rebels, since they first
sought papal protection; equally, his help became an abso-
lute necessity once the pope had refused to support the
rebels against Charles of Anjou. The crucial aspect of the
Vespers that has not been sufficiently stressed is, therefore,
the division of opinion concerning the future of Sicily and
indeed of southern Italy: whether there should be a collection
of republics under papal overlordship (an approach which
must at the time have raised almost insoluble questions about
- Runciman. Si(i/ian VrsjHTS, pp. 248-52.