Albana Mignaty, Marguerite: Sketches of the historical past of Italy: from the fall of the Roman Empire to the earliest revival of letters and arts (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1876)

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CHAPTER IX.
The Norman Conquests in the Two Sicilies, and the Suzerainty of the
Pope—Civilization of the Southern Provinces of Italy and of their
capital, Palermo.
THE Kingdom of Naples and Sicily—or of the Two
Sicilies, as the southern provinces of Italy were
long designated—has never yet been duly brought for-
ward to the observation it deserves in the pages of
general history. The deplorable depression into which
these beautiful provinces have fallen has been frequently
pointed out with more or less scorn and pity ; but no
corresponding research or care has been employed in
recalling their ancient civilization, commerce, industry,
and intellectual progress.
Even their architectural and artistic treasures have
remained in relative oblivion, whilst the more fortunate
parts of the Peninsula, the central and the northern,
have engrossed the interest and laborious investigations
of scholars and historians of every country and of every
age.
And yet the civilization of those favoured provinces
was brilliant just before the pall of darkness was to
overshadow them; and churches, monuments, paintings,
and sculptures, heretofore unknown or neglected, attest
the uninterrupted activity of those various centres of
independent citizen life.
In the following pages the Norman conquests of
Southern Italy will be rapidly reviewed, together with
their alliances with the Pontiffs ; the consequences of the
feudal yoke will be explained, and the social influences
which had gathered in the maritime provinces of the
Sicilies, and which had produced a brilliant but transitory
gleam of civilization, not unimportant to mankind, will
be pointed out.
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