Talk:Kingdom of Sicily

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Article milestones
DateProcessResult
August 9, 2009Peer reviewReviewed
September 1, 2009Good article nomineeListed
Current status: Good article


GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Kingdom of Sicily/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Prose issues
  • Parts of it are written using British English grammar and style, while other parts are written in Oxford English grammary and style. Choose one style and stick with it throughout the article. Now, if I made any corrections myself contrary to British English grammar and usage, feel free to make the appropriate corrections.
  • In the "Norman Kingdom" subsection, very first sentence – The Norman Kingdom was created in 1130 by Roger II of Sicily, who united the lands he inherited from his father Roger I of Sicily, the Duchy of Apulia and the County of Sicily, which belonged to his cousin William II, Duke of Apulia, until his death in 1127, and the other Norman vassals. → way too long of a sentence. Please try to split into at least two separate sentences.
  • The paragraph lengths in the "Norman Kingdom" subsection are sorely inconsistent; compare with the following "Hohenstaufen kingdom" subsection which is pretty consistent. The number of sentences in the paragraphs are 2 - 11 - 3 - 5 - 3. The first, third, and fifth paragraphs are way too short, and the second paragraph is way too long. Try to move some stuff around to create paragraphs of more consistent length and number of sentences.
  • In the "Hohenstaufen kingdom" subsection – In 1202, an army led by the chancellor Walter of Palearia and Dipold of Vohburg was defeated by Walter. → This sentence could probably be rewritten in structure as well as to eliminate the confusion between the two Walters.
  • Last paragraph in the "Hohenstaufen kingdom" subsection – After the Kingdom was governed by Manfred of Sicily, the illegitimate son of Frederick, who ruled the kingdom for fifteen years while other Hohenstaufen heirs were ruling various areas in Germany. However, the legitimate heir was Conrad II. → The first sentence is a fragment, while the second sentence contains a "however". Reword this section to make more sense.
  • The "Society", "Economy", and "Religion" sections' singular paragraphs are too long and should be split into two.
Verifiability issues
  • In the "Hohenstaufen kingdom" subsection, the second half of that third paragraph is completely unsourced. Please provide a reference, or alternatively, remove it.
  • The second half of the first paragraph in the "Angevin and Aragonese kingdoms" subsection (note that I combined the first two paragraphs there) is completely unsourced. Please provide a reference, or alternatively, remove it.
MoS issues
  • Words to avoid – there are some words to avoid that should be removed or changed, such as "although" and "however".
    • Good. Changed one remaining instance of "although" to "while". I'll leave the one "however" in there as it's not editorialising but rather moving the timeline. MuZemike 21:49, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Stability issues
Other things to remember
  • Redundant citations – Except for quotes, you only need one inline citation at the end of the content in which that citation is used.
  • Logical quotations – The end quotation mark precedes the end-punctuation unless that quotation is a sentence in itself.
  • No images directly under L3 headings – the software doesn't like it when images are placed directly under a L3 heading.
  • End punctuation in captions – remember, per WP:CAPTION, if the caption is a sentence fragment, then no end punctuation is to be used. If it is a complete sentence, then end punctuation must be used.
  • Non-breaking spaces in separable figures – per WP:MOSNUM, you need non-breaking spaces between the number and the measurement, such as "2.5 million"
  • Non-breaking spaces with rulers – also per MOSNUM, you need non-breaking spaces between the last name of a ruler and the Roman numeral.
  • lead/led – You're using both words for the same thing. I believe it's "led" when used as "... which led to ..."
  • No forced resizing in thumbnails – per WP:MOSIMAGE, unless there is a specific reason to resize an image, don't do it. This disallows default resizing of thumbs under "my preferences", limiting usability.
Conclusions

On hold pending further improvements noted above (except the "other things to remember" obviously; that is only for future reference). MuZemike 23:33, 31 August 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Fixed prose, mos, and verifiability issues. Hopefully John Kenney will be online in order to resolve the issue about the confuse the current lead may create according to his concerns. --Alarichus (talk) 16:14, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Passed MuZemike 21:54, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Some confusion[edit]

I don't think this article does enough to make clear that, from 1282 to 1816, there were in fact two kingdoms known officially as the "Kingdom of Sicily." This article needs to explicitly justify why it is only talking about the island kingdom - arguably, Kingdom of Sicily should be a disambiguation page, with links to an article on the Kingdom before 1282, to an article on the island kingdom from 1282 to 1816, on the "Kingdom of Naples", and on the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies after 1816. At any rate, the current intro is quite confusing. john k (talk) 00:10, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ok, let's clarify this issue. From 1130 to 1282 there is the Kingdom of Sicily whose parts are both Sicily and Naples, without any judicial, military or religious distinction. In 1282 the Kingdom of Naples was formed. It was a state which had no relation to the Kingdom of Sicily. It's official name was Kingdom of Naples. In 1816 the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples were unified as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. However, they were two separate entities, each one with its own parliament, judicial system, and clergy, and official state name. The monarch of the Two Sicilies maintained the titles of both Kingdoms(Sicily and Naples).--Alarichus (talk) 08:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I read carefully your concerns John, and they originate from a mistake you're making. The official name of Naples was Kingdom of Naples, and that is the official name used by modern historians, not Kingdom of Sicily. --Alarichus (talk) 17:36, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I changed part of the lead:
  • It was sometimes called the regnum Apuliae et Siciliae until 1282. In 1282 a revolt against the Angevin rule, known as the Sicilian Vespers dethroned Charles of Anjou. The Angevin managed to maintain control in the mainland areas of the kingdom, and formed the Kingdom of Naples.

I believe this is clarifying. What do you think?--Alarichus (talk) 17:47, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I am not making a mistake. The official name of the kingdom informally known as the "Kingdom of Naples" was, in fact, "Kingdom of Sicily." Thus, when that kingdom was merged with the kingdom which constituted the island, you had the "Kingdom of Two Sicilies." The Angevins did not "form the Kingdom of Naples." The Angevins continued to rule the mainland (and claim the island) under the title of "King of Sicily," just as they had done previously. The kingdom became known as the Kingdom of Naples so as people wouldn't be confused about what was meant, but that was never its official name. Note that the Kings always called themselves "King of Sicily" (as see here). It is true that the Kingdom of Naples is normally called such by modern historians, and was normally called such by contemoraries. But the fact that it was officially the "Kingdom of Sicily" needs to at least be acknowledged here. And we certainly shouldn't say that Charles of Anjou formed a new kingdom on the mainland. john k (talk) 19:41, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Modern historians refer to it officially as Kingdom of Naples. It was called Kingdom of Naples, by every other state except Kingdom of Naples itself. You made additions to the part of the lead I changed, and I believe that they contain no issues. Collaboration succeeded, review may continue. --Alarichus (talk) 21:20, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Modern historians don't get to decide for convenience that a state has a different official name from the one that it actually used for itself. "Kingdom of Sicily" certainly isn't the common name for the Kingdom of Naples, but it was the official name. In terms of the good article review, my feeling is that there is very little information on anything after 1266 - and that including the Habsburg and Bourbon periods under the heading "Angevin and Aragonese kingdoms" is problematic. john k (talk) 22:42, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The dispute about the Kingdom of Naples was resolved. My goal regarding this article was to get it to GA status for the moment. If you want to expand the article, expand it. --Alarichus (talk) 23:19, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
A good article ought to be comprehensive. This article is not comprehensive - its history of the period after 1282 is minimal. There are eleven paragraphs on the first 150 years of the kingdom and five paragraphs on the next 600 years. It is also misleading in describing the Habsburg and Bourbon periods under a heading called "Angevin and Aragonese kingdoms". I don't think it qualifies as a good article at the moment. john k (talk) 23:49, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The society, economy, religion, coinage, demographics are largely about the period after 1282 and the section about malta and the unification refer to the period after 1282, so I would say that you are wrong. Be bold though. If you want to improve the article, improve it. Create a subsection about the Bourbon and Habsbourg period or anything else you regard as improving. --Alarichus (talk) 23:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think its more than "clarifications" that are needed here. This article says that "In 1816 the Kingdom of Sicily merged with Kingdom of Naples into the newly created Kingdom of the Two Sicilies" when the article on the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies claims that "the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies resulted from the reunification of the Kingdom of Sicily with the Kingdom of Naples (called the kingdom of peninsular Sicily), by King Alfonso V of Aragon in 1442". One of the articles is definitely wrong and I suspect it's this one. --Demdem (talk) 06:13, 15 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Merge proposal[edit]

See Talk:Kingdom of Sicily, Jerusalem and Cyprus. —Srnec (talk) 21:30, 10 September 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Orphaned references in Kingdom of Sicily[edit]

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Kingdom of Sicily's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "stan":

  • From Sicily: "Brief history of Sicily" (PDF). Archaeology.Stanford.edu. 7 October 2007.[dead link]
  • From Emirate of Sicily: "Brief history of Sicily" (PDF). Archaeology.Stanford.edu. 24 November 2008.
  • From Malta: "Brief history of Sicily" (PDF). Archaeology.Stanford.edu. 7 October 2007.[dead link]
  • From History of Sicily: "Brief history of Sicily" (PDF). Archaeology.Stanford.edu. 7 October 2007.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 11:04, 3 September 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Flag[edit]

The kingdom of Sicily did not possess a Flag; It possessed numerous CoA's and Flags according to its respective rules; Because of the factual correctness: Flag deleted from info box Agilulf2007 (talk) 20:19, 7 November 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

- Support your claim! Vadac (talk) 04:38, 8 November 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Population[edit]

Per WP:CALC: Routine calculations do not count as original research, provided there is consensus among editors that the result of the calculation is obvious, correct, and a meaningful reflection of the sources. That is simply not the case here. The population has been calculated as the product of the area and the population density, neither of which is properly sourced. The area seems to be complete WP:OR (it's sourced to Google Maps, which is of course not a WP:Reliable source when it comes to the territorial extent of historical polities), and the population density that is sourced is for Italy, not for the Kingdom of Sicily (one cannot simply assume that they are the same; if one were to assume that India has the same population density as all of Asia, one would underestimate the population of India by a factor of 4). TompaDompa (talk) 15:19, 9 October 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

When it comes to Italy not Sicily's density, the India-Asia comparison is nothing short of absurd, for Italy is a continent. These are population estimates not census numbers, for that purpose using Italy's population density is fine. We know the boundaries of the kingdom thus we know its area size which corresponds to the area of Southern Italy minus Sardinia, I don't have source that proves 123,024-24,090=98,934 but I thought very basic mathematics does not need a source; if your issue is with these numbers perhaps you ought to remove them from said articles for there seems not to be a direct source attributed to them, even if those numbers can be proven with Google maps. Go-Chlodio (talk) 17:33, 9 October 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
You could just as well compare the population density of the South Island to that of the entirety of New Zealand; the point is that you cannot simply assume uniform population density, which you have implicitly done. That is WP:Original research. That means that you are not performing a routine calculation by multiplying the two numbers together, but coming to new conclusions that the sources do not directly support. That is WP:Synthesis.
We know the boundaries of the kingdom thus we know its area size which corresponds to the area of Southern Italy minus Sardinia – I'm not going to take you at your word there, you need to back that up with sources. Looking at the maps I have been able to locate, the borders of the Kingdom of Sicily do not match the boundaries of Southern Italy exactly. For instance, this map of the Kingdom of Sicily includes Gaeta, which is in Lazio, Central Italy – not Southern Italy. So while it is correct that you do not need a source for 123,024-24,090=98,934, you do need a source for the claim you are making, which amounts to "The area of the Kingdom of Sicily was 98 934 km2 in the year 1300." TompaDompa (talk) 22:42, 9 October 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]


Splitting proposal[edit]

There is no consensus for the proposed split. ——SN54129 11:40, 17 April 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


I propose we split this messy article into the following articles:

  • Norman Kingdom of Sicily (1130–1194)
  • Swabian Kingdom of Sicily (1194–1266)
  • Angevin Kingdom of Sicily (1266–1442)
  • Kingdom of Trinacria (1276–1816)

The reason being that these entities differed more than they shared, meaning that the ruling house was hardly the only thing that changed with them, their religious-and diplomatic policies, administration, military, territorial possessions changed drastically. Go-Chlodio (talk) 13:40, 25 October 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Support per nom. This is long overdue. Constantine ✍ 14:37, 25 October 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think this broad concept article should remain, but I am more than happy to see a Norman Kingdom of Sicily article appear. "Angevin Kingdom of Sicily" would be more a split off from Kingdom of Naples than this article. Continuing the Kingdom of Trinacria down to 1816 seems odd given the short articles on the Hautevilles and Staufer. In fact, I think the whole 1130–1266 could be dealt with in a single article if we wanted to. I support the proposal in principle. Srnec (talk) 00:27, 26 October 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'd want to do away with this article because I believe it miscommunicated how different these realms were, if we would just create the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, it would be just equivalent to Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty. That works for Byzantine Empire, here I find it just too messy. If we absolutely have to keep one article, we should still split this into united Kingdom of Sicily (1130–1282) , and the Kingdom of Trinacria (1282–1816).
Sigh... Naples is its own can of worms... Yeah, maybe we should take Angevin Kingdom of Sicily off the table.
I did not consider further Trinacrian splits because unlike the differences between the medieval Sicilies, I'm not familiar with the differences between Early Modern Trinacria; I have no idea how much the Trastámara Trinacria and Habsburg Trinacria shared, therefore initially I won't tackle it, but if we can split Trinacria into its own article, somebody can do that eventually. Go-Chlodio (talk) 05:34, 26 October 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Go-Chlodio: It does not seem that there is any opposition to your proposal, at least for splitting Norman Kingdom of Sicily and Swabian Kingdom of Sicily off. How do we proceed from here? Constantine ✍ 13:13, 1 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

1. By renaming this article into Kingdom of Sicily (disambiguation)
2. By making the Norman Kingdom of Sicily into a proper article instead of a redirect.
3. By creating a new article, Swabian Kingdom of Sicily.
4. By going through everything that leads to the disambiguation and redirecting them accordingly.
I'll do, but not just now. Go-Chlodio (talk) 13:55, 1 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
There is opposition to your #1, at least as a first step. Better to create the new sub-articles and then decide if a broad-concept article is still worth keeping or not. I have sources, so I can definitely help with writing the articles. Srnec (talk) 01:24, 2 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If #1 can't be done, I reckon the entire "split" is pointless and I won't take any part in it. Go-Chlodio (talk) 01:50, 2 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
But how can you create a disambiguation page first when the articles don't exist to point to? There's also plenty of precedent for a broad "long-term" article, see Kingdom of Hungary, Kingdom of England and Kingdom of France. –Srnec (talk) 02:41, 2 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This disambiguation page will not just link to Norman and Swabian kingdoms, but also to Habsburgs Sicily and Naples. Furthermore, articles Norman and Swabian Sicilies will be created only minutes after the name change.
Every case is different and judged situationally. Comparing the Kingdom of Sicily to the Kingdom of France isn't fair a comparison. Go-Chlodio (talk) 06:34, 2 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This article can be turned into a dab page without a name change. I assume that is all you mean?
But I don't understand why the comparison to other kingdoms is unfair. There were changes of dynasty in 1194 and 1266, but the real turning point in the history of the Sicilian kingdom is 1282, after which it was divided into two kingdoms more or less permanently. So I guess I see the split as more like creating Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty-type sub-articles since Kingdom of Naples is already a separate article. Srnec (talk) 13:39, 2 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I don't know what you mean by dab page.
The point I'm trying to make is that these weren't just dynasty changes, in Kingdom of France all dynasties were Capetians who inherited the crown upon extinction of the previous branch. In Sicily, not so. Norman Sicily came to an end when Swabians conquered it, they arrested bulk of the leading Italo-Norman nobility and replaced them with Swabians. When Charles of Anjou deposed the Swabians he did the same, replacing Germans with French. As I have already stated, the Byzantine-dynasty division doesn't fit here, doing so would essentially be the equivalent of renaming Ottoman Empire to "Byzantine Empire under the Ottoman dynasty". Go-Chlodio (talk) 09:54, 4 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Dab page = disambiguation page.
I guess our disagreement is pretty fundamental, because the point I'm trying to make is that these were just dynasty changes. Now, every case is different and our treatment probably isn't consistent. I notice that Kingdom of France treats 987 as the start point (which doesn't totally make sense to me), but Kingdom of England does not treat 1066 as anything, when surely 1066 was at least as pivotal in English history as 1194 in south Italian history. Donald Matthew's The Norman Kingdom of Sicily, which is on my shelf, covers the whole period from 1130 to 1266 despite its title. Matthew, p. 281, explicitly compares Sicily to England and 1194 to 1066: because the Normans/Anglo-Saxons built a "viable political entity" it could be "taken over in one piece" by the Swabians/Normans. Louis Mendola has written a history of the whole length of the kingdom, The Kingdom of Sicily, 1130–1860 (Trinacria, 2015). He isn't an academic, but his translations of medieval sources have received positive/decent reviews.
Just to be clear: I do not oppose a split. In fact, I positively endorse the idea and am willing to help create sub-articles. Srnec (talk) 02:52, 5 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'd actually be in favor of splitting England in half.
Fact that Matthew's included Swabian Kingdom of Sicily doesn't matter when you also have books like John Julius Norwich's The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130 - 1194. Go-Chlodio (talk) 09:02, 5 December 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]
oppose the split, this would make it even messier, conditional support of WP:SS subpages, provided that somebody puts in the work to develop the subpages as full articles. --dab (𒁳) 13:17, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
oppose @Go-Chlodio: Though I agree this article is unwieldy, I oppose particularly the creation of a separate "Swabian Kingdom of Sicily". The Swabian dynasty did not create a new kingdom, they rearranged the succession of the old one. Instead of passing to anyone else, the kingdom simply passed to the Empress Constance, daughter of the Norman king Roger II, the first Norman king, and her husband. Her son, Frederick, was as Sicilian (and arguably, as Norman) as any mediaeval king. He grew up in Sicily, spoke Arabic - the official language of government in the Kingdom - and ruled over a largely (if no longer majority) Muslim island, and was the grandson of the first Norman King of Sicily. Calling him "Swabian" and adding him and his Siculo-Norman mother to a new "Swabian Kingdom of Sicily" - a complete neologism - is gives completely the wrong impression!
A search demonstrates that "Swabian Kingdom of Sicily" is not at all a WP:COMMONNAME, and the phrase only seems to appear in an article title preceeded by "The Norman and". Angevin Sicily, by which time the Muslim and Byzantine population had vanished from Sicily and the place was fully Latin and incipiently Italian, came after a significant dynastic, political, and military break and upheaval not limited to just swapping one successor of Roger II for another and certainly deserves an new article, or else be parcelled off as a part of an article on subsequent mediaeval and Renaissance Sicilian kingdom(s). I would not certainly not call it Angevin Sicily or Swabian Sicily, but something like "Kingdom of Sicily during the x period" or "... under the y dynasty" would fit. There has never been anything Swabian about any kingdom of Sicily!
I don't know much about the post-Frederick II period but my feeling is that "Swabian Kingdom" is not right and that the natural break point after the Conquest is the Sicilian Vespers. I would not oppose a "Kingdom of Sicily, 1130-1266" or "... 1130-1302". Thereafter there could be separate article for each Kingdom (Naples and Sicily proper) until the Bourbon reunification. As for replacing nobles with other nobles from abroad, that happened numerous times in the Norman kingdom - in the regency of Adelaide, for instance, or whenever a new queen was sent for. The whole period was one of diverse immigration to Sicily from all over the West and waves of nobles of particular nationalities came with each new dynastic marriage.
I'm in favour of keeping the long overview article for the whole length of the kingdom on the model of Byzantine Empire and the other major mediaeval kingdoms, and separate main articles under heads like "Kingdom of Sicily under the Angevin dynasty" or simple periodizations by year. There is also the question of the "Norman Conquest of southern Italy" (not a good name), which runs for the whole length of the dynasty! I would divide this information between: "Norman Conquest of Sicily and South Italy", a "Norman Sicily" or "Siculo-Norman Sicily" (dealing with the island from c. 1060 until the Angevins or at least until Frederick II's deportation of the Muslims to Luccera), and a "Kingdom of Sicily under the Norman dynasty", "..under the Angevin dynasty", &c. I oppose "Kingdom of Trinacria" as obscure and obfuscatory: the kingdom of Sicily that occupied Sicily in that time should clearly be called Kingdom of Sicily, Trinacria was applied centuries beforehand and is nothing other than a lyrical Latin name for Sicily anyway. It was also used by sources in the Norman period if I remember right. I would also note that John Julius Norwich is, well, a journalist and not a specialist in the history of anything; more academic work should be consulted.
GPinkerton (talk) 01:29, 21 March 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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