SICILY 



433 



felt strong enough to resume his proper title of 

 King of Sicily, and at his death in 1337 left the 

 crown to his son Peter. 



The Angevin House continued to reign in Naples, 

 although they still maintained their nominal claim 

 to Sicily hence after the union the name Kingdom 

 of the Two Sicilies. They upheld the Gueiphic 

 party ; the Aragonese in Sicily, set up against 

 the pope, were Ghibellines. Frederick's successors 

 NJgBM on in Sicily, but in 1409 Mary, queen of 

 Sicily, married Martin, son of Martin of Aragon, 

 and through this the island was again united to 

 the crown of Aragon. Queen Joanna II. of Naples, 

 successor of Ladislas, was childless by both her 

 marriages, and had first adopted as her successor 

 Alfonso V., king of Aragon and Sicily, then revoked 

 this disposition to adopt Louis III. of Anjou. 

 The two parties went to war and divided all Italy : 

 the Duke of Milan and Sforza on the Angevin 

 side, the pope and the Florentines on Alfonso's. 

 On the death of Louis the queen adopted his 

 brother Rene of Anjou in his place. She died in 

 1435, and seven years later Alfonso succeeded in 

 taking Naples, and died in 1458 king of Aragon, 

 Naples, and Sicily. He left Aragon and Sicily, 

 which he had inherited, to his legitimate son John 

 II. ; Naples, which he had won, to his bastard son 

 Ferdinand I., whose cruelty made the chief citizens 

 invite John of Calabria, son of Rene, to contest the 

 crown. He was unsuccessful, but Charles VIII. of 

 France revived the claim as the representative of 

 the Angevin House, entered Italy in 1494, and 

 made his progress in triumph to Naples, whence 

 King Alfonso II. fled. Next year Alfonso's son 

 Ferdinand II. returned to Naples to win back 

 his kingdom. He died in 1496, and was suc- 

 ceeded by his uncle Frederick, who was betrayed 

 by his kinsman Ferdinand of Aragon making an 

 alliance with Louis XIL of France, and compelled 

 to retire, giving up his rights to the French king. 

 Next year (1502) the French and Spaniards 

 quarrelled over their ill-gotten spoil, and the war 

 was ended by the Spaniards utterly defeating the 

 French at Mola near Gaeta in 1504. 



Ferdinand the Catholic hail thus again united 

 Naples and Sicily to the Spanish monarchy. Both 

 himself and his successor, the Emperor Charles V., 

 had promised not to exact any new taxes from the 

 kingdom of Naples without consent of nobles and 

 people ; but the viceroy of Philip IV. laid on griev- 

 ous burdens, which at last led to insurrections both 

 in Naples and Palermo, crushed mercilessly by Don 

 John, bastard son of Philip IV. In 1700 Charles 

 II. of Spain died childless, whereupon Louis 

 XIV. claimed the throne for his grandson Philip, 

 Duke of Anjou, and the Archduke Charles of 

 Austria for himself. The long war of the Spanish 

 succession was closed by the peace of Utrecht 

 (1713), which gave to Charles, now the Emperor 

 Charles VI., Milan, Naples, and Sardinia, while 

 the Duke of Savoy received Sicily with the title of 

 king. Philip again plunged into Italian intrigues, 

 and captured Sardinia by a treacherous attack, 

 lint the Quadruple Alliance (England, France, 

 the United Provinces, and Charles of Austria) 

 enforced the treaty. Victor Amadeus of Savoy 

 had been on the side of Spain in hones of gaining 

 Lombardy, and the Powers compelled him in 1720 

 to give up hi.s new kingdom of Sicily to Charles 

 VI. in exchange for Sardinia. Don Carlos, son 

 of the queen of Spain, after n scries of intrigues, 

 made an attack on Sicily, and at length in a 

 readjustment of the map of Italy at the treaty of 

 Vienna (1738) was acknowledged king of the Two 

 Sicilies. As Charles HI. was called to be king of 

 Spain in 1759 he left Naples and Sicily to his 

 younger son, Ferdinand IV., whose queen, Caroline, 

 a sister of Marie Antoinette, naturally bated the 



French Revolution, and joined the English alliance. 

 Bonaparte took Naples in 1798. King Ferdinand 

 was turned out, allowed to return, but again 

 turned out in 1806, when Bonaparte made his 

 brother Joseph king. When Joseph was made 

 king of Spain in 1808, Joachim Murat succeeded 

 to his crown, Ferdinand being allowed to remain 

 king of Sicily. By the treaty of Paris Italy was 

 restored to her old masters. Victor Emmanuel 

 received Sardinia with Genoa ; the kingdom of 

 Naples was restored to King Ferdinand IV. of 

 Sicily, and he formally took the title of Ferdinand 

 I. as king of the Two Sicilies. Ferdinand II. 

 (1830-59) ruled Naples and Sicily with dreadful 

 tyranny, bombarded Messina and Palermo, and 

 flung the best citizens to rot in loathsome dungeons. 

 Francis II. succeeded him ; he had been brought up 

 by the Jesuits, and under his rule the country 

 ripened fast for revolution. At length Garibaldi 

 sailed from Genoa with his thousand heroes, landed 

 at Marsala, llth May 1860, took Palermo, and at 

 Melazzo defeated the king, who in abject terror 

 promised all manner of reforms to Cavour and 

 Victor Emmanuel. They did nothing but wait the 

 issue, while Garibaldi crossed to Spartivento, drove 

 back the king's troops, defeated them at Volturno, 

 and entered Naples in triumph on the 7th Septem- 

 Iwr. The people of Sicily and Naples joined them- 

 selves by a popular vote of more than a hundred to 

 one to the Sardinian kingdom. 



The palmiest age of letters in Sicily was the reign of 

 the first Hiero (478-467), besung by Pindar; the next, 

 that of the elder I Hcmysius, himself a poet and the friend 

 of Plato. The lyric, the comedy, and the mime were 

 practised by Stesichorus of Himera, Epicharmus, and 

 Sophron of Syracuse ; Empedocles of Agrigentum was 

 a famous philosopher, Archimedes of Syracuse the most 

 celebrated of ancient mathematicians; but the rarest 

 flower that grew out of Sicilian soil was the bucolic poem 

 which once for all attained perfection in the idylls of 

 Theocritus and Moschns of Syracuse, and in Bion, who, 

 though a native of .Smyrna, was a Syracusan in all his 

 sympathies and in his grave. 



The modern Sicilian dialect is of course closely allied 

 to the Neapolitan, but offers grave difficulties both in 

 vocabulary and grammar to the student acquainted only 

 with Tuscan. It has furnished a rich literary material 

 to the popular imagination for six hundred years down 

 to our own day, and yielded a harvest of genuinely 

 popular poetry not equalled elsewhere in the world. 

 But not in their number alone are the Sicilian folk-songs 

 pre-eminent, but in their intrinsic poetic excellence. 

 The love-songs especially are tender, passionate, and 

 sincere, and many have a penetrating patnos that haunts 

 the memory of a reader. They have been collected by S. 

 Salomone-Marino, Dr Pitre (q.v.), and L. Vigo, whose 

 ftaccolta, amplu. di canti popolari Sicil. (1870-74) alone 

 contains 6000 songs, with besides a good bibliography of 

 books in the Sicilian dialect. Dr Pitre's great BMioleca 

 ili I l,i Tradizioiti pop. Sicilianc (19 vols. 1870-90) is a 

 vast encyclopaedia of folk-songs and ballads, folk-tales, 

 legends, proverbs, customs, games, jests, riddles, &c., 

 with grammatical introductions and glossaries. Two 

 other works that must be named are Laura Gonzenbach's 

 Sizilianische Marchen (2 vols. Leip. 1877), and S. Salo- 

 mone-Marino, Storie i>opolari in Poetia Siciliana ( Bolog. 

 1877). For the Sicilian dialect, see the works by Wentrup 

 (Halle, 1880 (and C. Avolio (Moto, 1882); the Sicilian- 

 Italian Dictionaries of G. Biundi (Pal. 1857) and V. 

 Mortillario (new ed. Pal. 1879). 



There are histories of .Sicily in antiquity by Holm 

 (2 vols. Leip. 1870-74) and W. Watkiss Lloyd (1872); 

 the Moslem period, by Amari (3 vols. Florence, 1853- 

 73) ; the Norman period, by Bazancourt (2 vols. Paris, 

 1846) and Graf v. Schack (2 vols. Stuttg. 1889); 

 the Bourbon period, by Amari (Paris, 1849); the 

 Picdmontese period, by Querner (Bern, 1879). See also 

 the works on the history of Naples by Giannone and his 

 continuator, Colletta: Seibert, Benchlin, Orloff, Riistow, 

 Romano-Manebrini, La Lnmia, E. A. Freeman's un- 

 finished HMory of Sietty (vols. L-iv. 1891-94), and 

 his short history ( ' Story of the Nations ' series, 1892). 



