Creating the “Communitas Siciliae” in the Post-Vespers Years

The Vespers' Revolution of 1282-1285 did more than achieve independence from a detested Angevin-papal regime: it gave the people of Sicily their first opportunity to establish their own identity as a uniquely polyglot, culturally heterogenous, and religiously hybrid society. A crucial, though overlooked, aspect of this self-definition was the writing of the first-ever histories of Sicily penned by Sicilians themselves. Until the late-thirteenth century, all surviving histories of the island had been written by her conquerors -- whether Roman, Byzantine, Aghlabid, Norman, or Angevin. The new histories written by the post-Vespers generation presented dramatically new understandings of Sicilian realities, needs, concerns, and values. From the anonymous authors of the Chronicon Siciliae, the Historia sicula, and the dialect Lu rebellamentu, to the historical works of Nicola Speciale and Michele da Piazza, the historical writers of the post-Vespers generation did as much as the statesmen who cobbled together the parliamentary "Communitas Siciliae" to define and celebrate the pluralistic identity of the island-bound peoples at the very center of the Mediterranean.