Sicilian Vespers

The “ sicilian Vêpres ” indicates a rising and a popular revolt of the island of Sicily against the feudal domination of the king French Charles of Anjou, to Palermo and Corleone, the March 31st 1282, Tuesday of Easter. Following this rising and massacre of the French, the Sicilians release themselves from the yoke angevin before delivering to the king d' Aragon Pierre III. The event is thus at the same time a key moment of the sicilian national history and a geopolitical turning.

Context

The Italian context is that of the fight between the partisans of the pope and the emperor: the parties of the Guelfes (for the pope) and of the Gibelins (for the emperor) crystallize with this occasion.
The sicilian situation was complex since death in 1250 of the emperor Frederic II of Hohenstaufen, king de Sicile and declared enemy of papacy. His/her son Conrad IV succeeds to him but dies in 1254. The Innocent pope IV, suzerain nominal of Sicily, wants to benefit from the minority of his son Conradin for évincer Hohenstaufen of Italy. The regent of Conradin, Manfred de Hohenstaufen, wire bastard of Frederic II, proclaims king in 1258 with the detriment of his nephew. He then is excommunicated and deprived of his kingdom by the pope, who seeks a new applicant to put forward to cut down the “race of vipers” that for the pontifical capacity the family of Hohenstaufen represents. In 1266 it is the count Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX known as saint Louis who is invested by the pope of the Royaume of Sicily. It invades the south of the peninsula Italian and keep silent Manfred from the Bataille of Bénévent the February 26th 1266. It must face with the attacks of Conradin, henceforth enough old to thereafter take advantage of its rights. However this last is overcome and made captive in 1268 following the battle of Tagliacozzo. The October 29th, after a lawsuit for treason, it is decapitated with Naples.
Consequently, extremely of the support of the pope and his military victories, Charles of Anjou nourishes vaster projects of Croisade: it takes the title of king de Jérusalem (1277), makes occupy Saint-Jean-in Acre, and wants to force the Byzantines with the religious union. For that, it prepares a forwarding against the Byzantine Empire for spring 1283 and masses its fleet with Messine.

The death of the last of Hohenstaufen and the exactions of the French lords of the continuation of Charles of Anjou, few with the fact particular institutions Sicily, involves in the sicilian aristocracy and urban classes a rejection of the French which results in the preparation of a revolt. One of the sovereigns most interested by Sicily is then the king Pierre III of Aragon, which had married in 1262 Constance of Sicily, girl of Manfred. If he does not encourage the revolt, it is probable that it does not do anything to prevent it. The Byzantine Emperor Michel VIII Paleologist, anxious of the aimings on the East which Charles maintains Anjou, is also contacted by sicilian emissary. Beginning 1282 a fleet of one hundred eighty vessels starts from Collioure and Valence. It is intended to punish the emir of Tunis not-payment of its tribute in Aragon, but it is probable that king Pierre also has a sicilian project.

Rising and the Aragonese intervention

The rising of “sicilian Vespers” begins the March 30th 1282 with Palermo and Messine. In this Tuesday of Easter per hour of the Vespers, with the sound of the bells, it is a massacre of the troops of Charles from Anjou to Palermo and majority of the French.

To follow of them the chronicles of time, on March 31st, Tuesday of Easter, one attends a usual pilgrimage of the Palerman families of the door Holy-Agathe to the church of the Holy Spirit ( San Spirito ) out the walls; one notes the oppressive presence of the French soldiers. The pretext with the flashover is not clear: the indelicate search for weapons on young people and the women - certain chronicles evoke the particular offense made with an young girl on her intimacy - or a stone launched by children insulted by the French? In all the cases the spark is an attack with the honor. The reaction is done forces, the French as well as administrative staff Amalfi silvering, then is tracked and massacred. The Palerman craftsmen set up transitory a common before being joined by the inhabitants of Corleone. August 30th, 1282, the heir nearest to Manfred puts an end to the Federal republic. For four months, the republic had known a freedom as extraordinary as bloody.

A revolt anti-Frenchwoman? the cry of revolted “Died to the French well”. Sometimes the sources present vespers like a plot - thus the Anonymity of Messine, conspiracy of Jean Prochyta and his references to the occult support of Pierre III of Aragon and Giovanni da Procida, doctor and jurisconsult in exile since 1275 - sometimes like a popular movement - Crònica of Ramon Muntaner. Whatever the reality of its plots - it appears certain that Procida, then chancellor of the crown of Aragon, tied contacts with Gibelins of Sicily - the movement was recovered by Pierre III of Aragon, massively supported by the aristocracy and the Catalan middle-class.

The fleet aragono-Catalan woman unloads in Palermo and drives out the troops faithful to Charles of Anjou apart from the island. No French survived, except notable for Guillaume of the Piglets, chamberlain of Charles of Anjou and member of famous the Maison of Provence Of the Piglets, in consideration of his uprightness and his virtue. The sicilian emissary bring to king Pierre the crown of the island in the name of his wife. He is proclaimed king on September 4th. However its army does not manage to put the foot in the continental part of the kingdom of Sicily; it is the beginning of division between the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, whose kings claim both on the same basis of “king de Sicile”. The pope Martin IV, furious to see a heir to the Hohenstaufen giving the foot to Italy, excommunicates king Pierre and gives his kingdom of Aragon, of which he is also the suzerain, to Charles de Valois, wire of Philippe Bold the, king de France, which gives place to the Croisade of Aragon.

Historical range and literary posterity

From 1282 to 1372, then until 1422, Sicily was to know a cycle of conflict which exhausted monarchy and reinforced the influence of the gibelines families. The war between the house of Barcelona and the house capétienne begins and lasts twenty years, until the Paix of Caltabellotta (1302) where the king of Sicily Frederic III recognizes the possessions angevines in Italy of the south. But peace was hardly solid but in 1373 (treated Aversa): Angevins recognize the possession of Aragons on Sicile.
Beyond, as Henri Bresc could underline it, Vespers can be read like “tumultuous assertion of the sicilianity”, the “first unit expression of a population linked politically and soon culturally”. Striking imaginations, the event was to be mobilized by Dante - Paradis , 8th song - to inspire with Casimir Delavigne a tragedy in five acts in 1819, to be the source of a historical novel of Etienne de Lamothe-Langon, in 1821 ( Jean de Procida or vespers sicilian ) and in 1855, Verdi devoted an opera to it entitled sicilian Vespers .

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