Conclusion

The Norman conquest changed southern Italy for ever. The Normans expelled the Byzantines from mainland south Italy and the Muslim rulers (and some of the upper class) from Sicily, although the great mass of the Greek and Muslim population remained where they were under the rule of their new masters. From being a frontier between Greek east and Latin west, and Christian north and Muslim south, southern Italy and Sicily became unequivocally part of the Christian west. The ports of Apulia became the embarkation points for Crusaders and pilgrims to the Holy Land, south Italian foodstuffs helped to feed the growing populations of the north Italian towns, and sometimes those of the new Crusader states as well. Messina in particular became one of the great commercial entrepôts of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Mediterranean. ¹ New political structures were created, which in 1130 were combined together to form a new kingdom, comprising the whole of the southern part of the peninsula and Sicily. Despite initial hostility, especially from the German emperors who still claimed overlordship over southern Italy, this kingdom was to endure for more than 700 years. Meanwhile a long-term process of acculturation, and the immigration into Sicily of Latin Christians, both from the mainland south and from northern Italy, first attenuated and then swamped the surviving Greek and Muslim populations. By 1250 Sicily was an overwhelmingly Latin island. Greek Calabria retained its identity longer, but the Greek zone was slowly attenuated in the late Middle Ages, and eventually dwindled away. None of this would have happened without the Norman conquest.