THE WESTERN MEDITERRAt\EAN KINGDOMS 1200-1'100ability to assimilate rapidly into the surrounding society.~''
Memories of common Norman ancestry were revived in the
late twelfth century to stimulate diplomatic relations with
the English monarchy, which by then was not very Norman
either. The ruling dynasty of Sicily was Norman by origin,
but it is probably an exaggeration to say that Norman French
was much spoken at court. Roger II had a north Italian
mother, and he and his courtiers would have known Greek,
Arabic and some Italian.
The magnificent Byzantine mosaics in the great churches
of Palermo and Cefalu, the intricate Arab ceiling of the Pal-
ace Chapel in Palermo, the occasional multilingual inscrip-
tion, the flurry of translation of ancient philosophic and
scientific works from the original Greek, the fulsome poetry
and scientific research of Muslim visitors to the royal court,
all these have created in the minds of subsequent observers
the gorgeous image of a 'kingdom in the sun', in which rare
values of tolerance and mutual trust that transcended reli-
gious and ethnic boundaries were created, almost uniquely
in twelfth-century Europe.^1 h This image speaks more for
the noble sentiments of those who have articulated it than
it represents the full reality. Even at court, non-Latins were
only able to enjoy a high degree of influence under Roger
II, who was an able manipulator of his su~jects, anxious to
win the support of the Muslim m~ority in Sicily, for other-
wise he could not hope to make his kingdom a reality. Roger
also appreciated the administrative and cultural gifts that
Greeks and Arabs could offer. Yet his aim, ultimately, was to
manage to be a recognisably western-style king to his Latin
su~jects, a Byzantine-style basileus to his Greek su~jects, a
sultan to his Muslim subjects. His great achievement lay in
this ability to be all things to all people, or rather the right
thing to the right people.^17
- Here I side more with R.H.C. Davis, The Normans and their myth
(London, 1976), than with D.C. Douglas, The Norman achievement
(London, 1969). and The Norman Fate (London, 1976).
Hi. Thus Lord Norwich actually entitled the second volume of his engag-
ing narrative history of Norman Sicily The Kingdom in the Sun (Lon-
don, ] 970); repr. as part^2 of The Nonnans in Sicily (London, 1992). - The meaning of many mosaics is elucidated bv E. Borsook, iVIessages
in Mosaic. The royal f!rowammes of Norm.an Sicily, 1130-1187 (Oxford,
1990).