Sicilian Vespers
The
Sicilian Vespers is the name given to a rebellion in
Sicily in
1282 against the rule of the
Angevin king
Charles I, who had taken control of the island with
Papal support in
1266. It was the beginning of the eponymous
War of the Sicilian Vespers.
The rising had its origin in the struggle between the
Holy Roman Empire, represented by the
Hohenstaufen emperors, and the
Papacy for control over
Italy. When the last Hohenstaufen
Manfred of Sicily was defeated in
1266, the kingdom of Sicily was entrusted to Charles of Anjou by
Pope Urban IV.
Charles regarded his Sicilian territories as a springboard for his
Mediterranean-wide ambitions, which included the overthrow of the
Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus. His French officials (who governed Sicily badly) mistreated the native Sicilians, with rape, theft, and murder without reproach.
There are two interpretations, not necessarily mutually exclusive, of events. One stresses the
weltpolitik of Michael Palaeologus and the
Aragonese king
Peter III, Manfred's son-in-law, in fomenting the revolt; the other concentrates on the grassroots unpopularity of Charles's rule among the native Sicilians. The latter view gained popularity during the
Risorgimento, when it was propounded by the patriot
Michele Amari during the nineteenth century. Regarding the former, Michael VIII in his autobiography wrote:"Should I dare to claim that I was God's instrument to bring freedom to the Sicilians, then I should only be stating the truth."
The event is so named because the insurrection began at the start of the evening prayer service of
vespers on
Easter Monday (
March 30, 1282) at the
Church of the Holy Spirit just outside
Palermo. Thousands of Sicily's French inhabitants were massacred over the course of the next six weeks. The exact events that started the uprising are not known for sure, but all the retellings have common elements.
According to
Steven Runciman, Sicilians at the church were engaged in holiday festivities and a group of French officials came by to join in and began to drink. A sergeant named Drouet dragged a young married woman from the crowd, pestering her with his advances. Her husband then attacked Drouet with a knife, killing him. When the other Frenchmen tried to avenge their comrade, the Sicilian crowd fell upon them, killing them all. At that moment all the church bells in Palermo began to ring for Vespers.
According to
Leonardo Bruni (1416), the Palermitans were holding a festival outside the city when the French came up to check for weapons, and on that pretext began to fondle the breasts of their women. This then started a riot, the French were attacked first with rocks, then weapons, killing them all. The news then spread to other cities leading to open revolt throughout Sicily. "By the time the furious anger at their insolence had drunk its fill of blood, the French had given up to the Sicilians not only their ill-gotten riches, but their lives as well".
According to one legend, that has no source or attribution, the rebellion started after a Sicilian woman went to a church in
Palermo to look for her young daughter, who had spent the whole day there praying, only to find her being raped in the church by a French soldier — whereupon the mother then ran into the streets, shouting
Ma fia! Ma fia! (meaning "My daughter! My daughter!" in medieval Sicilian dialect). Although some have claimed that this is a plausible explanation of the origins of the word "
Mafia", it has all the marks of
folk etymology.
Taking advantage of the revolt, King
Peter III of
Aragon launched a successful invasion, becoming also Peter I of Sicily.
Charles remained in control of the mainland
Kingdom of Naples until his death in
1285, and his heirs continued to reign there until Peter's successors reunited the two territories in
1442.
*One of
Giuseppe Verdi's most musically acclaimed
operas,
Les vêpres siciliennes is based on this conflict.
In the 20th Century, the name
Sicilian Vespers would come to refer to the night of
September 10,
1931, when gangster
Lucky Luciano ordered the deaths of several Mafia soldiers loyal to crime boss
Salvatore Maranzano and his rival,
Joseph Masseria, ending the
Castellammarese War in New York City.
*
Steven Runciman (1958),
The Sicilian Vespers, ISBN 0521437741. Considered a classic of history.
*
Leonardo Bruni (1416),
History of the Florentine People, Harvard, 2001, ISBN 0674005066. Regarded as the first history book to be called "modern", and the first modern historian, it also happens to cover the events of this period.
