The Battle of Cerami
My
grandfather was born in Cerami, Sicily around the turn of
the century. Cerami is not on the fashionable coast, but
far in the interior on the other side of Mt. Etna. The only
place on the planet that my last name is as common as Smith
or Jones is in Cerami or the next city over, Troina. Modern
times have finally started to creep into this part of the
world, but in the 1920's when my grandfather left, Cerami
may as well have still been in the middle ages. Cerami has
been the scene of two great battles. The first one took
place in the middle ages and marks the real start of the
ebbing of the Islamic tide.
The Arabs, Moors and Andalusians invaded Sicily in 827.
They quickly swept over the southwest portion of the
island, but the northeast portion (inhabited by loyal
orthodox Greek Christians) managed to hold out until 902.
Over the next century most of the island was converted by
the sword to Islam, but the villagers of the northeast
chose to accept the submissive status of dhimmi and paid
the jizya in order to keep their Christian faith. Whenever
the Byzantine emperor attempted (unsuccessfully) to
re-conquer the island, the dhimmis of the northeast were
always ready to rise up. But the Byzantines, though they
called themselves Romans, were not. Their fleets and armies
were easily scattered by the religious fanaticism of the
Moselmen.
A Norman knight, on the other hand, was the medieval
equivalent of an M1A1 Abrams tank. The Normans (or
Northmen) were Scandinavian Viking savage pagans that
raided up and down the French coast raping and pillaging.
They eventually settled down in the aptly named Normandy,
accepted Christianity, married hot French chicks, invented
romantic knights of chivalry, and had lots of babies.
Unfortunately, they had too many babies. The first son got
everything, and the rest had to become priests, soldiers of
fortune or robbers. Normans, not being of a monkish
temperament, tended to choose the other two, more martial
alternatives. So, before long, Western Europe was covered
with small roving bands of chivalric bad asses, with
nothing to do and no where to go.
A few found their way to Apulia in Southern Italy serving
as soldiers of fortune, then -- of course -- they seized
the place for themselves. They got into a dust up with the
Pope, who led a giant army against them. The Normans
lowered their visors, charged and swept the field. They
captured the Pope, knelt before him, and begged for his
forgiveness. The Pope, duly impressed with these very
dangerous people, wisely accepted their apology, confirmed
their acquisitions and gave them Sicily as well -- knowing
that Sicily had been held by the Saracens for over 100
years. The Pope must have thought: “Hey, if the Normans can
take it, they can have it. Better them than the Arabs.”
So as related in Gibbon’s fabulous history, in 1060, Roger
Tancred of Hauteville crossed the straights of Messina with
sixty knights and landed on the hostile shore. He drove the
Saracen garrison of Messina behind its gates and the
campaign to save Sicily from Dar-al-Islam had begun.
Roger’s success attracted reinforcements and 300 Norman
knights were welcomed with open arms by the Christians of
Cerami and Troina. The Normans were besieged in Troina by
all the Saracen forces of the entire island. The rocky
mountaintop fortress reinforced by the considerable arms of
the Normans, held out for four months. Finally, 136 Normans
knights took to the fields of Cerami and arrayed themselves
against 50,000 Moslems. The apparition of St. George on
horseback bearing the cross was said to have made an
appearance, and the Normans swept the field. The numbers of
Christians, of course, are impossible and implausible. Even
given the fact that each knight would have been attended by
5 or 6 men-at-arms, the Normans could not have hoped to
keep the field without considerable local help. But
victorious they were and the Normans went on to conquer the
entire island.
To this day Sicilian marionettes reenact scenes of chivalry
involving heroic Norman knights and evil Saracens. A few
years years ago (at the same time that images of Nick Berg
were on the front pages of all the newspapers), I was
walking the streets of Taormina (in northeast Sicily), I
saw fencepost after fencepost decorated with the heads of
Arabs, now made of ceramic -- of course. In Cerami, not
only had the spread of Islam been checked, but for the
first time, the West fought back and reclaimed land and
liberated dhimmi -- all in my grandpa’s backyard.
