The Sicilian Parliament was the legislature of the Kingdom of Sicily.
The Sicilian Parliament was the legislature of the Kingdom of Sicily.
The Sicilian Parliament is arguably one of the oldest parliaments in the world and the first legislature in the modern sense. [1] [2]
In 1097 came the first conference in Mazara del Vallo convened by Roger I the Great Count. The parliament was initially travelling, as it had no official building to house it. The Sicilian Parliament was made up of three branches: one feudal, one ecclesiastical, and one from the towns. The feudal branch was formed by noble representatives of counties and baronies; the ecclesiastical branch was formed by archbishops, bishops, abbots and archimandrites, while the state-owned branch was formed by representatives of 42 autonomous towns in Sicily. The first Norman parliament had only an advisory function- especially in taxation, economics and wars- and was responsible for confirmation of the sovereign. Members were chosen from the more powerful nobles.[ citation needed ]
Since 1130, meetings have been held in the Palazzo dei Normanni, in Palermo. Its first radical change came with Frederick II of Sicily, who allowed access to parts of civil society.[ citation needed ]
After a period in the background during the reign of Charles I of Anjou, the Parliament became the central focus of the organization of the Sicilian Vespers. On 3 April 1282, during the uprising, the red and yellow flag with a central triskele was adopted by Parliament: today it is the flag of Sicily. With the Vespers and the subsequent settlement of Frederick III of Aragon in 1297, the Assembly strengthened its central role. At this time, the Parliament was permanently established at Castello Ursino, in Catania, at the Sala dei Parlamenti (Parliaments Hall). At this time, the Sicilian Parliament consisted primarily of landowners, mayors of cities, counts and barons, and was chaired and convened by the king. Parliament had the constitutional responsibility to elect the king and to guarantee the proper conduct of ordinary justice exercised by executioners, judges, notaries and other officials of the kingdom.
In 1410 the Sicilian Parliament was held at Palazzo Corvaja in Taormina, in the presence of Queen Blanche I of Navarre - a historic meeting for the election of the King of Sicily after the death of Martin II. Under the rule of the successive kings of Aragon, Sicily lost its political autonomy and a viceroy ruled the island. Charles V again summoned parliament in Palermo in 1532, which continued to meet under Philip II, preserving its authority. Over time the importance of the Sicilian Parliament faded.
In Palermo, on 19 July 1812, the Sicilian Parliament, meeting in extraordinary session, declared the feudal regime abolished, promulgated the first Sicilian constitution, of English inspiration, and approved a radical reform of the state. [3] In 1816, the Parliament, along with the Kingdom of Sicily was abolished when the latter united with the Kingdom of Naples to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
The Parliament only met again during the Sicilian revolution of 1848.
On 25 March 1848, the General Parliament of Sicily met in Palermo, with a revolutionary government composed of a president and ministers. Vincenzo Fardella of Torrearsa was elected president, to be followed by Ruggero Settimo. After sixteen months of de facto autonomous rule, the Parliament was declared void by the Bourbon dynasty, who offered the vacant throne of Sicily to the Prince Ferdinando, Duke of Genoa, the second son of Carlo Alberto of Savoy. Though his claim was recognized by the British, Ferdinando declined the offer after the Sardinian defeat at the Battle of Novara. The life of the Parliament of 1848-49 was short, and already Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies began to take possession of Sicily through the so-called "Gaeta decree" or Gaeta ultimatum of 28 February 1849, wherein he demanded greater powers of taxation and composed a government in which he held the bulk of the power. [4] On 14 May that year, the Parliament was dissolved. [5]
The final reconstitution of the Parliament came at the end of World War II, when, in order to defuse a budding separatist movement in Sicily, the island was granted special autonomy and its Parliament was reborn, on 25 May 1947, in Palermo, as the Sicilian Regional Assembly.
Sicily is the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions and is officially referred to as Regione Siciliana. The island has 4.8 million inhabitants. Its capital city is Palermo. It is named after the Sicels, who inhabited the eastern part of the island during the Iron Age.
The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in the south of the Italian Peninsula and, for a time, in the region of Ifriqiya from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of the southern peninsula. The island was divided into three regions: Val di Mazara, Val Demone and Val di Noto.
Southern Italy, also known as Meridione or Mezzogiorno, is a macroregion of Italy consisting of its southern regions.
Michele Benedetto Gaetano Amari was a Sicilian patriot, liberal revolutionary and politician of aristocratic background, historian and orientalist. He rose to prominence as a champion of Sicilian independence from the Neapolitan Bourbon rule when he published his history of the War of the Sicilian Vespers in 1842. He was a minister in the Sicilian revolutionary government of 1848–9 and in Garibaldi's revolutionary cabinet in Sicily in 1860. Having embraced the cause of Italian unification, he helped prepare the annexation of Sicily by the Kingdom of Sardinia and was active in his later years as a senator of the Kingdom of Italy.
The Expedition of the Thousand was an event of the unification of Italy that took place in 1860. A corps of volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto dei Mille near Genoa and landed in Marsala, Sicily, in order to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the Spanish House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. The name of the expedition derives from the initial number of participants, which was around 1,000 people.
The D'Agostino family is a Sicilian noble lineage originated at least in the thirteenth century, Sicilian strain of historical noble family Agostini Fantini Venerosi Della Seta Gaetani Bocca Grassi from Pisa, family of noble origin, Earls of the Kingdom of Italy, Earls Palatino of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, noble patricians of the Maritime Republic of Pisa. This family dressed different political-military roles in Sicily.The surname "D'Agostino" is rooted in the Latin name "Augustus," symbolizing a direct connection to the Roman emperor.
The Zacco family originated from Spain, where they are first recorded in when Stefano Zacco was a councillor of King Alfonso II of Aragon in the 12th century.
The flag of Sicily shows a triskeles symbol, and at its center a Gorgoneion and a pair of wings and three wheat ears. In the original flag, the wheat ears did not exist and the colors were reversed. The original flag was created in 1282 during the rebellion of the Sicilian Vespers.
The Sicilian revolution of independence of 1848 which commenced on 12 January 1848 was the first of the numerous Revolutions of 1848 which swept acrosss Europe. It was a popular rebellion against the rule of Ferdinand II of the House of Bourbon, King of the Two Sicilies. Three revolutions against the Bourbon ruled Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had previously occurred on the island of Sicily starting from 1800: this final one resulted in an independent state which survived for 16 months. The Sicilian Constitution of 1848 which survived the 16 months was advanced for its time in liberal democratic terms, as was the proposal of a unified Italian confederation of states. It was in effect a curtain-raiser to the end of the Bourbon kingdom of the Two Sicilies, finally completed by Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand in 1860, the Siege of Gaeta of 1860–1861 and the proclamation of the unified Kingdom of Italy.
Ruggero Settimo was an Italian politician, diplomat, and patriotic activist from Sicily. He was a counter-admiral of the Sicilian Fleet. He fought alongside the British fleet in the Mediterranean Sea against the French under Napoleon Bonaparte. He reconquered the island of Malta, and defended the city of Gaeta near Naples.
The history of Sicily has been influenced by numerous ethnic groups. It has seen Sicily controlled by powers, including Phoenician and Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Vandal and Ostrogoth, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragonese, Spanish, Austrians, British, but also experiencing important periods of independence, as under the indigenous Sicanians, Elymians, Sicels, the greek-siceliotes, and later as County of Sicily, and Kingdom of Sicily. The Kingdom was founded in 1130 by Roger II, belonging to the Siculo-Norman family of Hauteville. During this period, Sicily was prosperous and politically powerful, becoming one of the wealthiest states in all of Europe. As a result of the dynastic succession, the Kingdom passed into the hands of the Hohenstaufen. At the end of the 13th century, with the War of the Sicilian Vespers between the crowns of Anjou and Aragon, the island passed to the latter. In the following centuries the Kingdom entered into the personal union with the Spaniard and Bourbon crowns, while preserving effective independence until 1816. Sicily was merged with the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Although today an Autonomous Region, with special statute, of the Republic of Italy, it has its own distinct culture.
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was a kingdom in Southern Italy from 1816 to 1861 under the control of a cadet branch of the Spanish Bourbons. The kingdom was the largest sovereign state by population and size in Italy before Italian unification, comprising Sicily and most of the area of today's Mezzogiorno in covering all of the Italian Peninsula south of the Papal States.
The Sicilian Regional Assembly is the legislative body of Sicily. While it has a long history as an autonomous entity, the modern Region of Sicily was established by Royal Decree on 15 May 1946, before the Italian Republic. The Regional Assembly has the widest legislative power in Italy and is the only regional assembly to have the title of "parliament" whose members are called "deputies" as are those in Rome. Seventy deputies are elected every five years in the nine provinces.
Sicilian nationalism, or Sicilianism, is a movement in the autonomous Italian region of Sicily, as well as the Sicilian diaspora, which seeks greater autonomy or outright independence from Italy, and/or promotes further inclusion of the Sicilian identity, culture, history, and linguistic variety.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Palermo, Sicily, Italy.
Lanza are an Italian noble family that originated in Sicily in the 15th century. Derived from a cadet branch of the Lancia family, barons of Longi, it represents one of the major dynasties of the Sicilian aristocracy.
Ferdinando Lanza was a Two Sicilian lieutenant-general who fought against Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand. During the conflict, Lanza was stationed at Palermo but surrendered after the siege on May 30, 1860.
Ferdinando Beneventano del Bosco was a Two Sicilian Brigadier General of the Army of the Two Sicilies. He was one of the few charismatic figures during the Expedition of the Thousand and a primary figure of Two Sicilian resistance against the Sardinian forces.
The history of Bivona, an Italian municipality in the province of Agrigento in Sicily, begins with the appearance of the first human settlements in the municipal area dating back to the Copper Age. Also documented in the Bivona area are settlements from the Greek, late Roman and medieval periods. The town of Bivona, although sometimes believed to be of Islamic origin, is documented from 1160: first a simple hamlet, then a lordship, it was one of the main feudal centers of the Vallo di Mazara.
