Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/185

PALERMO 169 colonies in the west, Panhormus came under the power of Carthage, and became the head of the Carthaginian dominion in Sicily. As such it became the centre of that strife between Europe and Africa, between Aryan and Semitic man, in its later stages between Christendom and Islam, which forms the great interest of Sicilian history. As the Semitic head of Sicily, it stands opposed to Syracuse the Greek head. Under the Carthaginian it was the head of the Semitic part of Sicily; when, under the Saracen, all Sicily came under Semitic rule, it was the chief seat of that rule. It has been thrice won for Europe by Greek, Roman, and Norman conquerors in 276 B.C. by the Epirot king Pyrrhus, in 254 B.C. by the Roman consuls Aulus Atilius and Gnseus Cornelius Scipio, and in 1071 A.D. by Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger, the first count of Sicily. After the conquest by Pyrrhus, the city was soon recovered by Carthage, but this first Greek occupation was the beginning of a connexion with western Greece and its islands which was revived under various forms in later times. After the Roman conquest an attempt to recover the city for Carthage was made in 250 B.C., which led only to the great victory of Metellus just under the southern wall of the city. Later in the First Punic War, Hamilcar Barca was encamped for three years on Heirkte or Pellegrino, but the Roman possession of the city was not disturbed. Panhormus remained a Roman possession, and one of the privileged cities of Sicily, till it was taken by the Vandal Genseric in 440 A.D. It afterwards became a part of the East-Gothic dominion, and was recovered for the empire by Belisarius in 535. It again remained a Roman possession for exactly three hundred years, till it was taken by the Saracens in 835. As Syracuse remained to the empire for a much longer time, Panhormus now became the Mussulman capital. In 1063 the Pisan fleet broke through the chain of the harbour and carried off much spoil, which was spent on the building of the great church of Pisa. After the Norman conquest the city remained for a short time in the hands of the dukes of Apulia. But in 1093 half the city was ceded to Count Roger, and in 1122 the rest was ceded to the second Roger. When he took the kingly title in 1130, it became and re mained the capital and crowning-place of the kingdom, " Prima sedes, corona regis, et regni caput." During the Norman reigns Palermo was the main centre of Sicilian history, especially during the disturbances in the reign of William the Bad (1154-66). The emperor Henry VI. entered Palermo in 1194, and it was the chief scene of his cruelties. In 1198 his son Frederick, afterwards emperor, was crowned there. His reign was the most brilliant time in the history of the city. After his death Palermo was for a moment a commonwealth. It passed under the dominion of Charles of Anjou in 1266, but he was never crowned there. In the next year, when the greater part of Sicily revolted on behalf of Conradin, Palermo was one of the few towns which was held for Charles ; but the famous Vespers of 1282 put an end to the Angevin dominion. From that time Palermo shared in the many changes of the Sicilian kingdom. In 1535 Charles V. landed there on his return from Tunis. The last kings crowned at Palermo were Victor Amadeus of Savoy in 1713, and Charles III. of Bourbon in 1735. The loss of Naples by the Bourbons in 1798, and again in 1806, made Palermo once more the seat of a separate Sicilian kingdom. The city rose against Bourbon rule in 1820 and in 1848. In 18 60 came the final deliverance at the hands of Garibaldi, but with it came also the yet fuller loss of the position of Palermo as the capital of a kingdom of Sicily: The original city was built on a tongue of land between two inlets of the sea. There is some question as to their extent inland, and as to the extent of salt and fresh water. But there is no doubt that the present main street, the Cassaro, Via Marmorea, or Via Toledo (in official language Via Vittorio Emmanuele), represents the line of the ancient town with water on each side of it. Another peninsula with one side to the open sea, meeting as it were the main city at right angles, formed in Polybius s time the Neapolis or new town, in Saracen times Khalesa, a name which still survives in that of Calsa. It was on this side that both the Romans and the Norman conquerors entered the city. But the old relations of land and water have long been changed. The two ancient harbours have been dried up ; the two peninsulas have met ; the long street has been extended to the present coast-line ; a small inlet called the Gala alone represents the old haven. The city kept its ancient shape till after the time of the Norman kings. It is still easy to mark the site of the two inlets, which now form valleys on each side of the long street. The old state of things fully explains the name Ilaj/op/Aos. There are not many early remains in Palermo. The Phoenician and Greek antiquities in the museum do not belong to the city itself. The earliest existing buildings date from the time of tt.e Norman kings, whose palaces and churches were built in the Saracenic and Byzantine styles prevalent in the island (see NORMANS). Of Saracen works actually belonging to the time of Saracen occupa tion there are no whole buildings remaining, but many inscriptions and a good many columns, often inscribed with passages from the Koran, which have been used up again in later buildings, specially in the porch of the metropolitan church. This last was built by Archbishop Walter, a native of England, and consecrated in 1185, on the site of an ancient basilica, which on the Saracen conquest became a mosque, and on the Norman conquest became a church again, first of the Greek and then of the Latin rite. What remains of Walter s building is a rich example of the Christian-Saracen style. This church contains the tombs of the emperor Frederick the Second and his parents, as also the royal throne, higher than that of the archbishop ; for the king of Sicily, as hereditary legate of the see of Rome, was the higher ecclesiastical officer of the two. But the metropolitan church has been so greatly altered in modern times that by far the best example of the style in Palermo, or indeed anywhere, is the chapel of the king s palace at the west end of the city. This is earlier than Walter s church, being the work of Ring Roger in 1143. Besides the wonderful display of mosaics, it is, simply as an architectural whole, beyond all praise. Of the palace itself the greater part has been rebuilt and added in Spanish times, but there are some other parts of Roger s work left, specially the hall called Sala Normanna. Alongside of the churches of this Christian-Saracen type, there is another class which follow the Byzantine type. Of these the most perfect is the very small church of San Cataldo, embodied in public buildings. But the best, though much altered, is the church commonly called Martorana, the work of George of Antioch, King Roger s admiral. This is rich with mosaics, among them the portraits of the king and the founder. Both these and the royal chapel have cupolas, and there is a still greater display in that way in the church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti, which it is hard to believe never was a mosque. It is the only church in Palermo with a bell-tower, itself crowned with a cupola. Most of these buildings are witnesses in different ways to the peculiar position of Palermo in the 12th century as the " city of the threefold tongue," Greek, Arabic, and Latin. Elements from all three sources may be seen, and inscrip tions abound in all three languages. King Roger s sun- XV1TT. 22