The Normans in Sicily by J.J. Norwich

We review stuff for you, so you can pick the best medieval material.

Here’s our take on John Julius Norwich’s The Normans in Sicily. This work actually consists of two books, which we combine in one review since they are such a unity together. The books are:

1. The Normans in Sicily, Volume I: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130
2. The Normans in Sicily, Volume II: The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194

Quick facts

Volume I

• Full title: The Normans in Sicily, Volume I: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130
• Author: John Julius Norwich, English popular historian. Died in 2018.
• First published: 1967
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Number of pages without notes: 331

Volume II

• Full title: The Normans in Sicily, Volume II: The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194
• Author: John Julius Norwich
• First published: 1976
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Number of pages without notes: 392

Our review

Norwich’s double volume on the Normans in Sicily is an enthusiastic deep-dive of superior excellence and erudition. With a healthy dose of humor, the author describes how the Normans started out in southern Italy as brigands and petty nobles and worked their way up the rungs of feudal society. Rather than a dry summary of events unfolding, John Julius Norwich is able to explain why they succeeded.

Never do both books lose attention for the geopolitical context the Normans operated in and the opportunities they seized in their relations with the Byzantines, the Holy Roman Empire, the papacy, and – later in the story – the Crusader States and Islamic North Africa. In practice, this means the reader not only gets to spend a lot of time inside the books’ main focus (Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, and Campania), but also meets wrathful emperors like Frederick Barbarossa, clerical schemers such as antipope Anacletus II, and geopolitical gambler Manuel I Komnenos of Constantinople.

Volume I

The first book, The Normans in the South, 1016-1130, deals with the upstart sons of Tancred de Hauteville, a low-ranking noble in Normandy. Many of his sons traveled to southern Italy as mercenaries.

The region at the time was a battleground for the conflicting ambitions of the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires. On top of that, the papacy was also heavily involved through its fief, the Duchy of Benevento, and the local Lombard nobility tried to cling to whatever power they had left.

Through the ingenious machinations of Robert Guiscard, one of Tancred’s sons, the Normans carefully played one side against the other whilst making sure they themselves profited the most from whatever conflict was going on. Over time, they started accruing their own territory and – through many pitfalls, challenges, and near-defeats – managed to have one of their own crowned as King of Sicily within a century of the Normans arriving in southern Italy. This is the end of the first book.

Volume II

The second book, The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194, starts off with the reign of said king and his successors. Sicily grows into a major commercial and political power and receives unheard-of concessions from the pope. It defies invasions by the Holy Roman Emperors and becomes a nemesis of the Byzantine Empire, going as far as to invade mainland Greece.

The fleet Sicily possesses makes it a powerful chess piece in the Crusader era, as the Kingdom of Jerusalem needs Sicily’s ships to fend off the Fatimid navy. Meanwhile, the Sicilian court successfully and open-mindedly balances the wishes of its diverse population (Catholic Normans and Lombards, Orthodox Greeks and a lot of Muslims, on account of Sicily having been an emirate for over two centuries before the Norman conquest).

After the death of the great king Roger II, though, we think the book dwindles a bit in its captive capacities. The story becomes encumbered by messy revolutions, palace intrigue, and successions crises. Foreign marriages bring much-needed help to buttress the royal household, but carry with them a lot of administrators not native to the island – and insensitive to its delicate religious balance. Errors by the island’s administration start mounting and undo many of the early Norman successes.

Whilst the complexity of this part of the story is historical, one can almost taste John Julius Norwich’s disappointment in this “sunset stage” of the Kingdom of Sicily, as he calls it. He thoroughly tries to narrate the second half of the second book with the same flair and pizzazz as he did earlier, but the reader can tell he misses the genius and brilliance of Roger II’s court. By the end of Volume II, Norwich seems exhausted by the sheer weight of his story.

This shouldn’t be taken as too harsh a criticism, as it’s simply a sign of the author’s deeply-felt connection with the subject – a connection which allowed him to write such great books in the first place. However, because the final chapters carry with them such a sense of teleological fatalism, we felt we should give this otherwise masterful piece of historical writing 4 stars instead of 5.

Our verdict

Where to buy

Disclosure: these are affiliate links, meaning – at no additional cost to you – we will earn a small compensation if you click through. With these earnings, we can provide you with more exclusive medieval reports and guides.

• Buy John Julius Norwich’s The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 over at Amazon!
• Buy John Julius Norwich’s The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194 over at Amazon!
• Buy the bundle (Volume I + II) over at Amazon!