When we look at religious ‘tolerance’ in Norman Sicily, we’re really asking two different questions: ‘Was Norman Sicily more tolerant than other contemporary cultures towards religious minorities?’, and ‘Does Norman Sicily fit our modern concept of “tolerance”’?

If we just examine Sicily through the latter question, the answer would be that Sicily was not a tolerant society. Klaus van Eickels has argued that no medieval culture can be described as tolerant because all minorities had to accept a marginalised position in society just to be allowed to exist. This can be seen in Sicily with the fact that Muslims and Jews were forced to pay the jizya, a tax to their Christian rulers for not being Christian (note: this was introduced by the Islamic rulers of Sicily before Norman rule for Jews and Christians to pay, but the Normans allowed this form of fiscal discrimination to continue after the conquest).

There was also a great deal of hostility between the Christian and Muslim populations. This was especially the case after Roger II, where tensions between Christians and Muslims led to massacres against Muslims in 1161, as well as the prolonged Muslim revolt against Christian rule following William II’s death in 1189. But it was not as if this hostility did not exist under Roger II as well, and we can see that towards the end of his rule, Roger did listen to Christian resentment towards Muslims, as shown with the execution of his court administrator qā’id Philip in 1153.

We should also not forget that ‘Christian’ did not describe one homogenous group, as there was also hostility between the invaders and settlers who followed the Latin rite, and the existing Christian population of Sicily and south Italy who followed the Greek rite. Gaufredo Malaterra, a Latin chronicler who travelled to Norman Sicily in the late 11th century, described the Greeks as a ‘people who are customarily devoted to luxuries and self-indulgence’, whilst the abbot of Patti allowed ‘only men of the Latin tongue’ to settle in his town.

It is therefore tempting to say that the relations between Latin Christians and other religious groups were not ‘tolerant’. But we must also recognise that the Norman rulers of Sicily were far more tolerant than any other society at the time. Whilst it may seem that Greeks, Jews and Muslims were persecuted, they also thrived under Norman rule. For the Greeks, the patronage of the Norman kings led to Greek abbeys being founded throughout Sicily and south Italy, such as Roger II’s foundation of the abbey of the Holy Saviour in Messina. For the Jews, Benjamin of Tudela describes large Jewish communities in all the major towns in the kingdom, including a population of 1500 in the capital of Palermo, far more than in most towns of Europe. For the Muslims, they were treated very at court where Roger II and his successors did create a culture of multiculturalism: they employed Muslim administrators (although they did have to nominally convert to Christianity), they adopted Muslim forms of architecture and display, and they even had fairly harmonious contact with the Fatimid caliphs in Egypt. Muslims also thrived outside of the capital, such as at Tapani where Ibn Jubayr witnessed a procession celebrating Eid al-Fitr as late as 1184.

We can thus see that it was a mixed bag: Greeks, Jews and Muslims were marginalised and treated with a degree of hostility which could not be described through modern eyes as tolerant. But they were also allowed to live their own lives, and were treated far better than in other kingdoms of medieval Europe. This nuance comes across in the writings of the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela and the Islamic traveller Ibn Jubayr – their experience of life in Norman Sicily is the only way we can know if they were treated with tolerance or not.

Primary Sources:

Benjamin of Tudela

Gaufredo Malaterra

Ibn Jubayr

Secondary Sources:

Catlos, B. A., Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050-1614 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Houben, H. ‘Religious Toleration in the South Italian Peninsula During the Norman and Stauffen Periods’ in The Society of Norman Italy, eds. Loud, G. A. and Metcalfe, A. (Leiden: BRILL, 2002).

Johns, J., ‘The Norman Kings of Sicily and the Fatimid Caliphate’, Anglo-Norman Studies 15 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1993).

Loud, G. A., The Latin Church in Norman Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Metcalfe, A., ‘The Muslims of Sicily under Christian Rule’ in The Society of Norman Italy, eds. Loud, G. A. and Metcalfe, A. (Leiden: BRILL, 2002).

Van Eickels, K., ‘Why Minorities Were Neither Tolerated nor Discriminated Against in the Middle Ages’ in Discrimination and Tolerance in Historical Perspective, ed. Hálfdanarson, G. (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2008).