This is a fascinating book about politics and war in the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century and their significance for the history of Europe and in particular the Papacy. It tells the story of Charles, Count of Anjou, brother of the French King Louis IX, Saint Louis. Through his marriage with Beatrice of Provence and the support of his brother and several of the Popes, as well as his political, administrative and military skills, he puts together a large kingdom with lands in France, Sicily, Italy, Albania and even the Holy Land. His core kingdom in the Mediterranean is Sicily, consisting of Sicily and southern Italy. But with his attention focused on other priorities he largely ignores the island of Sicily, which is not as wealthy as other holdings and the inhabitants of which he distrusts; he sends French officials to run it. He has a number of successes including defeating King Manfred, a bastard son of Frederick II, manipulating the Papacy and taking control of Italy. He was about to send a fleet in a crusade against Constantinople when revolt in Sicily destroys the main body of his fleet and signals the decline of his power.

The revolt begins when the Sicilians massacre the French garrison at Palermo on March 30, 1282, remembered as the Sicilian Vespers. By instigating events that led to the collapse of Charles’s power in Sicily and Italy, the massacre “altered the fate of nations and of world-wide institutions.” To bring out its importance, Steven Runciman places the massacre in the context of the Mediterranean world in the second half of the thirteenth century. Various threads come together at the massacre: the undoing of Charles by his own arrogance, a conspiracy plotted in Barcelona and Constantinople intended to bring him down and “the gradual suicide of the grandest conception of the Middle Ages, the universal papal monarchy.” The Emperor of Byzantium wanted to disrupt Charles’s plans for an expedition against Constantinople, and King Peter of Aragon, married to Manfred’s daughter Constance, supported a campaign of vengeance against Charles. John of Procida, the King of Aragon’s Chancellor and former Chancellor of Manfred, is generally credited as coordinating the conspiracy with Charles’ opponents in Sicily and Italy. And the Popes, most of whom supported Charles 100 percent (including in the case of Pope Martin IV declaring Holy War against Sicily), severely damaged the Papacy’s credibility as the leader of Christendom.

It is the international setting that brings great complexity to the story. Numerous Popes appear on the scene because many of them die soon after their selection. The struggle between Guelfs (traditional supporters of the Papacy) and Ghibellines (traditional supporters of the Western Emperor) complicates the story in the north of Italy. Dynastic arrangements involving marriages of daughters, sons and grandchildren create new power alliances and territorial holdings. Seesaw struggles between the Latins and the Greeks in Albania and the Peloponnese involve numerous personalities and territories. King Louis’s crusade against the King of Tunis creates a sideshow in North Africa. Charles’s acquisition of the Kingdom of Jerusalem brings the Holy Land into the picture. The ongoing efforts of several Popes and the Byzantine Emperor Michael Palaeologus to implement a union of the churches delayed Charles’s plans for the expedition against Constantinople. (Charles was a loyal son of the Church and would not act without the Pope’s blessing. But this did not stop him from using his power to manipulate the selection of new Popes who would be favorable to him.) Castile, Bulgaria, Serbia, England, Hungary, Bohemia, the Mameluks of Egypt, and the Mongol Ilkhan of Persia all make appearances at different points in the story. In the end, it is by keeping the focus on Charles himself that Runciman enables us to digest this plethora of complications in an intelligible order. A more detailed discussion of the twists and turns of this complicated story is set forth below.

My one criticism is that the book needs a map of Sicily and Southern Italy.

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There were few medieval historians writing in English about the affairs of the thirteenth century Mediterranean in the mid twentieth century. Sir Stephen Runciman was one of the few. Into the bargain, his major works dealt with the more complex events that convulsed the basin. Runciman had a mind and research skills equal to the task. This is one of his major works and is still read with profit by students of the period and the place. Sicily, as it had been in the early eleventh century became for a brief period, the cockpit of Europe. The Norman kingdom in the island was tossed between the declining Holy Roman empire and the emerging French monarchy. Into the bargain, the Crusading attempt to destroy the Byzantine state had just recently failed, leaving the resurgent Byzantines with enough desperation to fish in these troubled waters with devastating results for their most likely enemies. The story requires careful reading to sort out the players and keep track of their conflicting strategies. I recommend this book as an example of the high levels of plotting our ancestors could rise to. ( )

This book takes it name from the "Sicilian Vespers", a popular uprising in that flared up at vespers in Palermo, Easter 1282 and quickly ended Angevin rule on Sicily, but it's rather about the rise and sort-of fall of Charles of Anjou, the first, and as far as the island itself was concerned, last Angevin king of Sicily.

The younger brother of Saint Louis of France, Charles had been called in in 1266 to deliver the Papacy from the heirs of Frederick II, who in the person of Manfred of Sicily seemed on the verge of extinguishing the pope's temporal power outright. Victorious in the great battles of Benevento (1266, against Manfred) and Tagliacozzo (1268, against Conradin, the last generally recognized Hohenstaufen heir), he was rewarded with the Kingdom of Sicily, which apart from the island itself covered about the southern third of mainland Italy.

For the next fourteen years Charles was, in alliance with the Papacy, the effective overlord also of much of the rest Italy, and found time to acquire the crowns of Jerusalem and Albania. In the early 1280s he was planning an invasion of Byzantium to restore the defunct Latin Empire of Constantinople.

The Sicilian Vespers then marks the beginning of the fall, or at least the downward course of Charles' fortunes. The Sicilians called in the king of Aragon, whose wife was a Hohenstaufen princess, to rule them, and Charles, despite the backing of the Papacy and the French monarchy was unable to retake the island, let alone pursue his eastern ambitions. Instead, a twenty year war lasted long beyond his death in 1285, to end with the kingdom partitioned, with Sicily proper remaining with the Aragonese while Charles' heirs kept the mainland part of the kingdom (officially still called the "Kingdom of Sicily", but usually known as as the "Kingdom of Naples" to reduce the confusion of latter-day students).

Runciman's is a style of narrative history that could hardly be written today, on the one hand scholarly, on the other always eager to pass aesthetic or moral judgement. The latter can annoy me - I'm not all that interested in whether Manfred of Sicily or Charles of Anjou was a great man, particularly as the criteria are never stated. On the plus side, he's an excellent stylist, at his best when describing battles and other dramatic events. He can get confusing when summarizing longer developments; a chronology and a list of the major personalities with dates and allegiances stated would have been helpful.

To be recommended if you like old-fashioned narrative history.

No conception in medieval history was finer than that of the Universal Church, uniting Christendom into one great theocracy governed by the impartial wisdom of the Vicar of God. But in this sinful world even the Vicar of God needs material strength to enforce his holy will.

Feel free to read the above with cynicism. Runciman offers a series of top-down facts. The doctor doesn't appear troubled by living conditions or world views. The principal characters trot onto stage and various episodes unfold. Causality is short-changed. The only detail supplied pertains to battles. One is quickly struck by the precarious health of the Bishops of Rome: it appears that a pope dies every few pages. Ultimately the Sicilians, once a proud multicultural society rebel in 1282 against their Angevin occupiers. Their French hegemon, Charles of Anjou had hoped to create a Latin Empire and retake Constantinople from those Greek-speaking Orthodox buggers. As a result of this unexpected intifada, all such Norman expansionist matters ground to a halt. The papacy shifted gears and nationalism edged ahead of the Universal Church. This is not a satisfying text, but it did whet appetites for further researches. ( )

The book's title suggests it is about the revolt in Sicily in 1282 which began with a massacre during Vespers in Palermo, but it really has a much broader focus -- the revolt itself, at least the early and dramatic part, occupies six pages, 75 pages from the end of a 312 page book. The book as a whole is about the rise and fall of Charles of Anjou (1226-85), brother of King Louis IX of France (Saint Louis), and also provides the necessary context to understand his rise, by recounting the fortunes and decline the the Hohenstaufen emperors in Italy: Frederick II, who was the Antichrist to Pope Gregory IX; Conrad IV, and King Manfred of Sicily, who Charles took the Kingdom from. It also provides context from the East, which mainly consists of Michael Palaeologus of Nicea's conquest of the Latin Empire set up by the crusaders who took Constantinople some decades earlier.

It's good, but generally bewildering, jumping from person to place at a speedy clip. There is an enormous fold-out genealogical chart of the back of my copy, which would be handy if it weren't sixty years old and printed on the poor quality paper you find in old Pelican paperbacks. I suggest following along with a pencil for drawing these family trees and a few maps handy. Runciman makes the probably-fair assumption early on that you know most of the Kingdom of Sicily consists of southern peninsular Italy -- everything from approximately Naples, south. Sicily proper plays a role mainly for Frederick II and during and after the Vespers. I didn't realise, and that confused the hell out of me initially.

Runciman does have a particular gift for detailed descriptions of events rather than chronologies, and this comes out during the battles of Benevento (Charles v Manfred) and Tagliacozzo (Conradin v Charles), and to a lesser extent smaller battles and events throughout. But most of the book would be better described as a chronology, and although he does attempt to draw some larger points about the Empire, the papacy, and nationalism near the beginning and the end, I don't feel it is as strong a motivation for him as the story itself. Which is fine, in a way. ( )