Palermo Faith (the Norman Legacy)

Monreale Cathedral.

You may remember (from ‘The Norman Conquest’) that Roger’s Sicilian campaign started in 1061, when one of the Emirs (Ibn al-Timnah) asked him to come to his assistance during the infighting against other Arab rulers of the island.

But this was not the first time that an external force had been invited, by an incumbent, to invade the island!

You may recollect (from ‘The island where east met west’) that the Byzantines ruled Sicily from the 6th century, having kicked out the Ostrogoths. [Alix: you will be tested on this when we get back to the UK]. In 826, Euphemius, the commander of the Byzantine fleet in Sicily, forced a nun to marry him. Emperor Michael II did not approve of this and Euphemius was driven out to North Africa. There he requested the help of the Emir of Tunisia (Ziyadat Allah) to take the island. The Emir and his successors took over a century to complete their conquest. And no sooner had this been achieved than the Emirate of Sicily began to fragment.

One consequence of the Muslim conquest was that the Byzantines were kicked out of Palermo. The Bishop of Palermo was forced to move his seat from the capital, and his church was converted to a mosque. He chose a small church (Aghia Kiriake) in a nearby village in the hills to the south, later known as Monreale.

After the Norman conquest, Roger II retook Palermo, where Missy Bear is now berthed for a few days. He rebuilt the cathedral. He also commissioned many other fine buildings and works of art here, of which more in a later blog.

But in 1174, his grandson King William II with Queen Joan of England, decided to found a church in Monreale, built next to a new and wealthy Benedictine monastery. Like his grandfather, William ruled over and nurtured Sicily’s prosperous, multicultural society. He employed the best Norman, Arabic and Byzantine architects, craftsmen and artists. Dedicated to The Nativity of the Virgin Mary, Duomo di Monreale is known as one of the finest existing examples of Norman architecture and forms part of a wider Arab-Norman UNESCO world heritage site.

A few days ago, we drove our hire car from the Temple of Segesta along the winding, mountain route of the SS186 and crossed the cape to Monreale. Monreale is only 4km south of Palermo, and we could have waited to visit Monreale until we arrived at Palermo. But I was impatient to see this wonder of the world! And we were not disappointed.

We parked the car and walked through the narrow medieval streets, arriving first at the eastern end of the cathedral and its three apses. It is immediately striking and very unusual. It has an Islamic feel due to the tiled bands with geometric designs. And yet the structure is a series of intertwined arches, some Sicilian-Norman (semi-circular with a slight point) but others fully Gothic, sitting on Corinthian columns.

The exterior of two of the three apses.

I then frog-marched Alix to the western-end to see the famous double towers (see first photo above). They were symmetrical I think, but the southern one was added to; subsequent patrons just can’t stop themselves fiddling! For example, the portico between the towers is a Renaissance addition and, in my mind, jars with the rest of the building: it’s the wrong colour; the arch shape is wrong; and the columns are Doric. As for the balustrade on the top; it simply obscures something far more beautiful.

Peering through the iron gates of the portico, though, one can admire the original door. It is amazing! It is a beautiful Sicilian-Norman arch with some Romanesque decoration. But look more closely and it is a fusion with Arabic art, with the tiled bands of geometric design.

The original Norman west door; a typical fusion of styles.

From the piazza to the north, one can just get a feel for its overall layout; the wide and squat central Norman tower; the northern part of the transept; the nave with its clerestory of slightly-pointed Norman arches; leading to the twin towers at the western end; and the alternate blind and open arches of the aisles below, which also show Arabic-influenced decoration.

View from the north.

The cathedral plan; the western cross-shape plan is obfuscated by the two extra apses, stuck on the ends of the transept (#12 and 22), which is more of an eastern orthodox design I understand.

But all this is pre-amble, because I hadn’t really come to see the exterior; I had come to gawp at the breath-taking Norman interior which was decorated by William’s local and imported artists in a Byzantine style. And I was absolutely not disappointed.

The nave looking east to the main apse.

The interior is slightly dark, yet sparklingly light, due to the sheer acreage of mosaic, much of which is golden. The nave is supported and separated from the aisles by rows of light, plain coloured Corinthian columns. But above them is simply a riot of pictorial decoration. And above all that lies the original, shallow-pitched timber roof, again highly decorated with what looks like Islamic motifs.

The highly decorated, timber roof. I don't know this, but I imagine the timber would be from a cedar forest in the Levant?

But your eye is immediately drawn to your left as you enter. Drawn to the central apse. And here overseeing all, is the Christ Pantocrator – from the Greek, ‘Almighty’ or ‘All Powerful’. I’d try and describe it, but my power of language is not up to it. Just look at the photograph instead.

Christ Pantocrator! Breathtaking, even to an agnostic.

Every one of the mosaics throughout the cathedral depicts a story, sometimes in a series of sequential panels. It is a reminder that most of the population was illiterate, but once the they had been told of the stories behind these pictures, they could gaze at the mosaics and enjoy them like re-reading a favourite book. Or perhaps re-reading their only book!?

The walls would have been covered in a slow drying plaster and then an artist would have traced out the shapes of the scene in the plaster. While the plaster was still soft, the craftsmen would then have placed the individually coloured tesserae. Like a paint-by-numbers! Apparently, they didn’t try to place the tiles in the same orientation or perfectly flat, because a very slightly uneven finish reflects the light better and gives a slightly shimmering effect.

Biblical scenes set out in in mosaic.

I am no scholar of art, but I find the dynamism of some the figures in these scenes quite atypical of pre-renaissance religious art, which is normally quite wooden or static. These scenes to me feel more like early renaissance art due to their dynamism, but we are a century before that period is supposed to have begun on mainland Italy? I’m sure that Amanda will put me right, if she reads this.

It is hard to believe that this amazing piece of architecture and art has survived mostly unscathed for nearly a thousand years. Even those terrible people that invented Baroque have kept their meddling hands off it. (There is a chapel added later to the north transept which is of a Sicilian-Baroque style - #14 on the floorplan. And it is truly hideous; all seaside-rock colours, lack of clear hierarchy and over-fussy design.)

Sometimes, progress for progress’ sake does not improve things. In My Humble Opinion, the original cannot be improved.