Roger II's Palermo assembly coined a kingdom on Christmas 1130
Norman Roger II had the Curiae Generales proclaim him King of Sicily in Palermo's royal palace in 1130—sometimes called an early parliament—and Antipope Anacletus II sanctioned the crown on Christmas Day. The realm outlived him until 1816, splitting after the 1282 Sicilian Vespers.
Roger I's Normans had seized the island from Muslim rulers and taken Apulia and Calabria; Roger II inherited those lands plus Malta and southern duchies. Rival Pope Innocent II soon urged Emperor Lothair III and Byzantium's John II to invade. After Angevin Charles briefly ruled, the Vespers revolt expelled Angevins from the island while the mainland kept the Sicily title—later remembered as Naples.
For centuries the dual Sicilies puzzle confused diplomats: one name, two shores, shifting dynasties from Normans through Spanish and Bourbon houses until the 1816 merger into the Two Sicilies.
Roger had to fight for the title. Lothair, having failed to take the whole island, handed Capua and Apulia to Roger's enemies, then died crossing the Alps on 4 December 1137. Through the decade that ended with the Assizes of Ariano in 1140, Roger issued laws meant to centralise government and put down revolts by leading vassals such as Grimoald of Bari. His admiral George of Antioch seized the Ifriqiyan coast from the Zirids, earning Roger the informal style King of Africa. His son William I was nicknamed William the Bad largely because chroniclers sided with the barons he crushed, and in the mid-1150s he lost most of the African holdings. Frederick, who acceded as a child in 1197 and became Emperor Frederick II in 1220, left a vacuum in a realm used to strong kings, yet he later extended the legal reforms with the Assizes of Capua in 1220 and the Constitutions of Melfi, the Liber Augustalis, in 1231.
Source: Kingdom of Sicily
