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Taormina
history
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 The Greek civilization
In the VIII century BC
the Greek sailors
avoided landing at the
Sicilian coasts, because
they were afraid of
encountering
with
Sicels, considered
cruel. However it seems
that the Athenian sailor
Theokles, been
shipwrecked on the
Oriental coasts
of Sicily, ascertained
the favorable climate
and fertility of the
earth. Come back in
Athen, he prepared an
expedition of
Dorians, Ionians,
Chalcedons. Then he
returned to the island.
This is the story taled
by the Greek historian
Eforo.
Putting aside from the
truthfulness of this
episode, is sure that
Greeks, prevented to
expand toward the
powerful empires of
Asia Minor, they were
forced to look for the
colonial expansion in
Sicily and subsequently
in Southern Italy,
strong also for
their advanced naval
art. In 735 BC
groups of greek
colonists, with Achaeans
from the Northern
Peloponnese, Dorians and
Chalcedons, land at the
Oriental Sicilian
coasts. Probably the
first founded colony had
the name of Naxos
because many of
them originated from the
island of Naxos in the
Egeo. They called,
besides, Tauro
Mount the rocky high
ground which
overhangs the lowland,
finding it similar to
those of the Tauro in
Asia Minor. Sicels, who
lived in that lowland,
were forced
to
retire on the mountain.
The proof of the Sicels
existence on the Tauro
Mount was given from the
Necropolis of
Cocolonazzo in
Castelmola, discovered
in 1919. While the Greek colonization initially contained itself in some zones of the
shore, with Dionysus Senior (432-367 BC), tyrant of Syracuse, it was carried to the whole Sicily. The
expansionistic design
carried Dionysus to
fight against Sicels and
Carthaginians, who
occupied the Western
Sicily. The Tauro Mount,
for its
natural position,
constituted a strong
obstacle to this
colonialistic plan. In
fact, the Sicels who
garrisoned the Mountain
prevented from passing the troops of Dionysus directed to Messina and, beyond, to Reggio, Croton, Metaponto, Sibari.
Not
succeeding in getting
the possession of the
stronghold pacifically,
the tyrant tried to
occupy it with the
strength. |
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 In
403 BC he besieged Naxos and with the
complicity of a traitor,
Prokles, he
was able to conquer it. The town, which
for more than three centuries, exactly
for 332 years, had developed pacifically
with the agriculture, sheeprearing and
trade, was set on fire and destroyed.
The historian Pausania (II c. A.D.) writes that
the destruction of Naxos was so total
that, in his times, neither the ruins
existed anymore. After the conquest of
Naxos, Dionysus encircled the Mountain
with siege. In one night
without moon,
raving a snow and wind storm, his
troops, climbing up the precipices of
the Mountain, succeeded to take
possession of the acropolis, placed
where the greek theater rises. But
Sicels, roused by the shouts of alarm of
the look-outs, came all together and
succeeded in chasing away again
Syracusans. Dionysus, defeated, removed
the siege and returned to Syracuse. But,
as a treatise stipulated with
Carthaginians some time after, exactly
in 392 BC, he succeeded equally in
possession of the Mountain. People
retain that
Tauromenium
was founded in 396
BCE by
Andromachus,
father of the famous historian
Timaeus,
who engaged the government of the town.
The town, placed upon a high ground, 205
metres above sea level, was an
impregnable place, above all because
three
of its sides were consituted by
dreadful canyons, which threw headlong
directly to sea. Despite that, for a
surer defense of the polis, Tauromeniti
added mighty walls on the northen and
southern sides, according to the
Hellenic defensive system, which
provided for a triplex curtain of walls
and only two entries to the town. The
walls are visible up to now and the
ancient gates of the town still exist.
During its richest period, the
population of Tauromenium counted 12.000 inhabitants.
The dominant language was the doric
dialect. The first arrangement of the
polis was elaborated by Andromaco and it
was affected on marble tables. Fourteen
of these tables are still guarded in the
little ancient Theater Museum. The
leader of the polis was the
Eponymous.
He continued in office during one year
and couldn't be elected again. Other
public magistrates were the Strategists,
"Ginnasiarchi"
and "Proagori".
People
reunited to elect the magistrates in the
agora, placed in the actual Square
Abbey. |
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 Tauromenium entrusted
the military order for the duration of
ten years to a hellenic patriot named
Tyndarion,
because it had
to defend from the
dangerous raids of
Mamertines
(mercenaries in the pay of Syracuse), so
called for the Mamerte god.
Mamertines,
in 288 BC, after having conquered
Messina,
they pushed forward as far as under the
wall of the Tauromenium
polis, but Tyndarion was able to defend it and save it.
Worried by the danger of new raids
of Mamertines and above all for the
hostile intentions of
Syracusans,
in 278 Tindarione
asked for help to
Pyrrhus,
king of the Epirus.
The latter reached Tauromenium, greeted with enthusiasm by
Tindarione himself, but he didn't
succeeded in the enterprise.
Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, succeeded in fact in
subduing the town.
The historian Timaeus,
son of
Andromachus,
founder of Tauromenium, cause of his
opposition to the tyrant was exiled in
Athens, where he lived during 50 years and died,
in 261 BC, at the age of 90 years.
After
the Agathocles death, Syracuse was led
by Geron II,
who recognized to the Tauromeniti the
autonomy, but he subdued
them to the
payment of the tithe, a tax which
subtracted part of the wealth producted
during the year.
However it was for the
polis a period of shine and of economic
comfort.
Tauromeniti could devote
themselves to the construction of the
Theater,
Naumachy,
aqueducts.
Nevertheless there was the
danger of
Carthaginians
for Tauromenium, cause they had tried to
expand from Western Sicily to
the Oriental part occupied by the
Greek-Sicilian colonies.
They had
already, with their mighty army,
devastated and destroyed different
cities, among which
Selinus, Himera,
Agrigento,
Camerina
and
Gela. |
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 The
Romans
Another
more serious danger appeared, still, not
only for Tauromenium,
but for the whole Sicily: the Romans.
In 264 BC the Romans arrived in Sicily
called for help by Mamertines from
Messina. Syracuse, which after the death
of Gerone II had stopped the politics of
alliance with Rome, was attached and
razed to the ground by the Roman army,
leaded by the
Consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Population was massacred and died then
the great Archimedes
too.
Tauromenium, to avoid the destructions
and sacks which Syracuse suffered,
started a friendly politics with Rome
and, in 212
BC, it submitted to the
capital. This action determined in
Sicily the end of the greek
civilization's period of maximum
splendor.
Caesar Octavian
made of Tauromenium a Roman colony,
removing many of its inhabitants and
populating it with Roman families.
Attracted by the beauty and mild
climate, many consuls retiring to
private life chose it as place where
rest.
Many famous Roman families built
luxurious villas in the most pleasant or
close to the sea places to reside there
permanently. Spisone place took its name
from Piso's
family and Calpurnia's
people.
Via Iallia Bassia
took its name from the matron
Julia
Basilia. Mufabi
region
took its name from the villa built by
the Fabius'
family. Having submitted at once to
Rome, Tauromenium was the first free and
federate civitas among the 52 cities in
the island. Thanks to this recognition,
it was exempted from the tributes
towards Rome and many privileges were
granted to Tauromeniti, the Roman
citizenship inclusive. The town enjoyed
a period of peace up to
133 BC, during which Geron II
ordered
the restructuration of the Greek Theater
(that's why today the ancient Theater is called
Greek-Roman), the construction of new
monuments and he gave also an impulse to
the urbanistic development.
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 In
the same period the struggle for
supremacy and existence developed
between Rome and Carthage; struggle
which lasted 120
years (264-146 BC) and
that ended with the destruction of
Carthage,
in 146 BC, after the
Three Punic Wars. The definitive
expulsion of the
Carthaginians from the island is due to
the Romans, but Sicily and Tauromenium
didn't ever become Latin.
Tauromenium
preserved its Greek speaking up to the
birth of the vernacular in the Norman-Swabian
period. A proof of that stays
in the
fact that the bishop
Teofono Cerameo
pronounced his homilies still in Greek. The Roman empire's history embraces five
centuries, from 31 BC. to 476 AD. This
historical phase is characterized by
crisis and disorders, civic struggles,
social
transformations. Limiting the
attention to Sicily, we notice that the
inexorable decadence continued in all
the fields and for a long
time
misgovernment reigned in the island. The
rural ownership tended to disappear,
cause it was ill-treated by the fiscal
increases. The agrarian zones became prey for the italic
speculators and the number of
disinherited people increased.
Such impoverishment, determined by more and
more greedy impositions, exasperated the
agriculturists, who rebelled against
Rome. The revolts, which established an
awakening of the island independence's
feelings, were called
the revolts of the
slaves
(135- 132 and 104-101 BC).
Born in Sicily and fed in Rome by the
work of the people's tribune, the
Tiberio and Caio Gracco
brothers,
revolts involved Tauromenium too. Dozens
of thousands of farmers and slaves,
leaded by
Euno,
rose up against the
landowners and occupied
Enna,
Agrigento,
Catania
and Tauromenium. Rome
sent the consul
Fulvio Flacco
with the order to tame
rebels. He
besieged Tauromenium and as he didn't
succeed in occupying it, the consuls
Lucio Pisone
and
Publio Rupilio
came
to
his help. Rebels
barricaded in the town and, though they
had exhausted the provisions, resisted
for a long time (it seems that to
survive they even forced themselves to
the anthropophagy). For the betrayal of
one slave only, named
Sepadone,
the Rupilio
consul succeeded in entering
the town. The captured rebels were
killed atrociously or they
were chained and brought to Rome to
make
an exhibition of themselves in the
circuses, making them fight against
starving lions. |
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 During
the whole domination period different
episodes marked how difficoult the
integration with Rome was to the
Tauromeniti.
In the Taormina's forum a
statue in memory of the magistrate
Gaio Verre
was built, when, in 73 BC, he was sent
to Sicily to administer justice.
Verre
was immediately recognized as a thief of
art masterpieces and extortioner.
He
pretended, despite the town enjoyed the
tax exemption, a great deal of wheat,
provisions and even ships.
Citizens
decided to react and, with the
complicity of one dark night, they threw
down his statue.
Then they minced it and
spread the pieces, leaving only the base
to accent the outrage.
The town
collaborated, instead, with
Marco Tullio Cicero,
when he came to Taormina to collect
informations and useful proofs
to accuse
Verre in Senate.
Verre, guessing what
was coming next, went into exile by
himself in Marseille, where he died in
43 BC.
Cicero, satisfied for the Verre's
escape, didn't read, in front of the
Superior Senatorial Court, the five
famous orations, called
Verrine
(in
Verrem).
He red the first only and
published the others.
In these orations
he wrote sharply and acutely a lot of
news about Taormina.
After Verre,
Tauromenium suffered the cupidity of
another Magistrate,
Sistus Pompeius,
son of
Pompeius
the Great, then captured and
killed by
Anthony
in Mileto. |
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The Christianity
Roman Empire
failed, just for some time in
progressive degeneration. Three were the
principal reasons for the collapse: the
process of infiltration of Barbarians
in the most elevated ranks of the
administrative offices; the pressures on
the borders and
the following
territorial infiltrations, in addition
to the Arabs,
of powerful North European tribes (Vandals, Visigoths,
Alemannics,
Erulos, Huns);
the
Christianity
rising and prodigious spreading. The
Christian faith and doctrine, born in
Palestina,
soon spread
in the Roman world,
threatening with the religious, cultural
and social scaffolding on which it was
founded upon the empire
from the foundations. The Romans reacted with
determination, persecuting mercilessly
the Christians. In spite of that, the
strength of the faith and ideas of the
Christianity forcefully imposed and the
new religion soon arrived to Tauromenium
too.
Pancras
from Antioch was named Bishop
by Peter Apostle
and he was sent to Tauromenium
with the mission of evangelizing
Sicilians. He arrived in 40 BC, when the emperor
was Caligula,
and practiced the apostolate for 60
years. In the island the
diffusion of the Christianity was slow and difficult,
because hindered by the persisting of
pagan cults and by the continuous
rising
up of heretical and schismatic movements. But Sicily too counts many
martyrdoms for faith, above all in the
humblest
classes. Among these ones the
bishop Pancras who, in 100 AD, was
pierced through and stoned by the
Gentiles. For the
martyrdom immediately
he was glorified and today S. Pancras is
the protector of the town. In the fourth
and in the fifth
century After Christ,
when the island was invaded first by the Vandals and then by
the Goths,
the Christians continued in
being
persecuted and oppressed. Tauromenium has been an Episcopalian center up to 1082, till this one came abolished by
Roger Count of Altavilla, first
Norman
conqueror in Sicily.
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 The Arabs
When
the
Roman Empire of West failed (V
century AD), on the southern coasts of
Sicily the
Arabs began to raid, inciting people
to the
Holy War against the unfaithful
Christians. Their raids continued in
VII, VIII, IX centuries. In 827 they
came with more than ten thousands of men
with
the purpose of conquering the whole
Sicily. They landed at Mazara and completed the invasion
with the conquer of Tauromenium in 902.
The town resisted the assaults till when
the emir succeeded in going into the
town from Cuseni
Gate, then called the Gate of
Saracens, just to remember the
unhappy invasion. The town was sacked
and destroyed. Women, old men and
children, wherever they were, into the
churches too, were slaughtered.
Monuments and churches were knocked
down. The bishop of Tauromenium, Procopio,
fugitive, was recognized and captured.
Ibrahim
ordered to pull out Procopio's heart
from his breast and ate it behind the
people. Procopio's martyrdom was painted
in a fresco which
we can admire in the
Church of Saint Pancratius. Survivors
were sold as slaves. Girls on one hand
were bought by the caliph to populate
the harems
of
Baghdad; on the other they were sold
as brod-mares to mingle the
Mediterranean race with the Arab one.
According to the legend,
the firmament
too cried for the dreadful massacre of
Tauromenium. In reality, during that
night in Aug 10, 902, the sky brighted
for a plentful rain of meteorites.
In
909 Christians rebuilt the town, but in
962 the Arabs, after a siege which
lasted seven months, conquered and
sacked it again.
The
caliph called it
Almoezia
and since then the arab domination lasted two centuries and half. While the Arabs were plundering and blood-thirsty in their assaults, in administration of territories they were wise. They brought innovations in agricolture (production of honey, orange
and
lemon), in irrigation systems and
techniques for captation of waters.
Classic philosophy was spread and
studies in medicine, chemistry and
mathematics progressed (the still in use
system of numbering is the Arab one).
They adopted a system for the collection
of taxes which was
less oppressive. They
fostered the forming of little property
and relieved the slaves condition.
During the Arab domination, Christians
could live according to their religious
faith; the only one forbidden thing was
building new churches,
bringing the
cross during the procession, ringing the
bells. It was then that, close to the
old towers, were built minarets and
mullions. About the Arab architecture,
Sicily has no more a lot, because the
Normans destroyed all the mosques. In
each town of the island and, then, in
Taormina too, we can find some traces of
the Arab domination. In a particular
manner, the Arab presence brought a
significant linguistic enrichment.
Islamism brought progress not only
to Sicily, but to Southern Europe too,
to Middle East and to East. All that
aroused alarm in the
Roman Church.
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 Normans and
Swabians
The
pontifical politics entrusted the
enterprise against the
Arabs to the
Normans who, leaded by
Tancredi of Altavilla, were the
soldiers most dangerous for greed of
prey and audacity. In 1078
Roger, the younger Tancredi's son,
stormed Almoezia and the
town took back
the name of Tauromenium.
In 1087 the
Normans occupied the whole island and
they had from now on the problem to cure
the awful wounds caused by
the war. They
were excellent in this assignment,
demonstrating to be one of the most
enlightened dynasties at that time.
With
them a new age of prosperity began for
Sicily. They didn't send away the Arabs
from the island having a tolerant
spirit;
they removed the leaders only,
relegating them in the castles of
Calabria, Puglia and Irpinia. They
assigned the lands with the
privilege of
perpetual immunity to the monastic
orders of Greek obedience and to the
Catholic bishoprics. They reopened the
buildings for the christian cult,
allowing that the bells were again
hoisted on the churches. The sovereign
dominion was
imposeded on the waters and
on the woods. The right to pasture on
the State lands was recognized to the
citizen. The
commercial exchanges, at
last, revived the island, even if the
barter was still persisting. The
pre-existing official language - a
mixture of Greek with Arab language-
changed and the common language got rich
of new lexical acquisitions, syntactic
and
phonetic. It was then that the
so-called vernacular language began to be
speaked. The Norman dynasty ended in the
last
decades of the XII century. After the Normans,
Sicily was dominated
by the
Swabians. Frederic the Second (1194-1250) was
one of the most enlighteneded
protagonist in his time. During his
kingdom, Taormina enjoyed a period of
prosperity which never
in other times. The Swabian dominion, however, didn't last for a lot of time, also for the
hostility of the papacy.
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 The Angevins and Aragoneses
In
1266 the french pope
Clement IV crowned the angevin
Charles King of Sicily. Taormina,
Catania, Caltanissetta, Agrigento and
other cities refused the coronation and
took sides with Konrad of Sweden, who was only 16
years old. He was not ready to face the
more expert Charles for the obvious
inexperience because of his youngness.
In October 29, 1268 he was defeated and
cruelly beheaded in the market-place of
Naples. Subsequently, the Charles's
army, composed by loot-thirsty
adventurers, occupied Sicily. Thus began
what people defined the bad dominion of
Angevins. Citizens were subjected to new
taxes and even to the so-called regal
collections. Civic services suffered
drastic restrictions. Discomfort due to
the French oppressions led, in March 31,
1282, to the rebellion which belongs to
history as the
Sicilian Vespers. Revolt, begun in
Palermo, stretched at once in a lot
of Sicilian cities. Its charge for
independence involved Taormina too,
where the French monks were forced to
escape from monasteries. Palermo,
determined in sending away
Angevins from Sicily, asked for
intervention to the king
Peter III of Aragon. He landed in
Marsala and
in few time conquered the
whole isle. The military occupation due
to Peter III determined a new breaking
in the reign of the Two Sicilies: the
peninsular part, leaded by Naples,
remained under the Angevins dominion,
while the isle passed under the
Aragoneses one. In 1302, with the
Peace Treaty of Caltabellotta,
Frederic III of Aragon
was awarded
the isle, but with the prohibition to
take the title of king of Sicily. Dead
in 1337, his son
Peter II succeeded Frederic III,
mentioned in the testament as universal
heir and, transgressed the treaty,
successor of the Sicilian reign. He died
in 1342. Since that date to unification
Sicily was ruled by regents. In 1348,
plague, the
Black Death, propagated in the isle
brought by the boats which came from
east. After 90 years of war between
Angevins and Aragoneses, in 1372 the
peace was reached: to the
Aragonese family was finally
recognized the title of
King of Sicily.
In 1395
Martin I was crowned King of Sicily.
Hardly 18 years old he had married Mary
of Aragon, Frederic III's daughter. He
died in 1409 without legitimate heirs.
The Sicilian
Parliament met in Taormina, in Corvaja Palace,
and nominated successor Martin the
Great. He left the administration of
Sicily to the daughter-in-law, whom
Martin junior had married in second
weddings. The definitive submission of
Sicily to Spain brought a period of
stability and the isle was no more
theatre for wars. But it again was
oppressed with taxes. The
Thirty Years' War, broken in 1618,
forced Spain to sustain huge costs and
Sicily was forced to contribute with
huge subsidies.
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 The Savoy and
Hasburg's kingdom
In
1713, with
the Treaty of Utrecht, Sicily, taken
away from Spain, came assigned to
Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy, with
title and dignity of kingdom.
His brief
reign was characterized by the struggle
with the Pope for the rights of
ecclesiastical legation (privilege for
the
sovereign to practice the
jurisdiction also in ecclesiastical
subjects).
In June 1714, Vittorio Amedeo
II came to visit Taormina with his wife,
Ann of Orleans.
During the domination of
Savoy, Spain was just about to
reconquer Sicily.
To prevent the Spanish
occupation Vittorio Amedeo II promoted
an alliance among Austria, England and
France.
Austria agreed to
undertake but with the condition that,
defeated Spain, Sicily would have passed
to the dominion of the
Hasburg's
kingdom.
To compensate the loss of
Sicily, the Savoy's reign would have had
Sardinia in exchange for it.
A
bloody war followed, that ended, in
1718, with the defeat of the
Spanish reign.
Thanks to the accord
among the allies, Sicily passed to the
Hasburg's reign.
The Austrian
occupation in the island lasted around 3
years.
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 The Bourbons
In
1734, with the
Viennese peace treaty, Sicily came
back to the spanish power, under the
bourbon
Charles III.
It was so that the
reign unity of Sicily and Naples was reconstitued (that is the
Reign of the Two Sicilies).
Enlightenment produced its effects in
Sicily too. In this period the pest's epidemic,
that struck Messina in the 1743 AD,
saved Taormina, how the licences of
healthiness, released to the residents,
testify.
Despite the absolute monarchy,
they made reforms in each field.
Particularly, they limited the feudality
powers and made stop the clergy
privileges.
The Sant'Uffizio, notorious organ of
the
Inquisition, came suppressed.
The
juridical, philosophical and literary
studies spread rapidly.
They realized in
Taormina important works,among which the
Messina-Catania
road and the one which from the sea
leads to
the city (the today's
Pirandello street).
In 1808,
Ferdinand II of Bourbon, King of the
Two Sicilies, came to visit Taormina.
To
remember the event, a coat of arms of
the bourbon family was placed in the
upper part of Messina Gate: an eagle which
feeds two eaglets.
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 The
Unification
of Italy
The
Spanish dominion of Bourbons went on up
to 1860. The ideas of the
Risorgimento and the feelings of
liberty and national
unity had set on
fire for some time by now also many
Sicilian minds and hearts.
Quite a lot
of patriots had to run away from
Taormina for the bourbon repression,
leaded by a certain Giuseppe
Maniscalco.
In the Christmas
night in 1856 a lot of conspirators were
arrested by the police at the Rosa Calatabiano's
House.
The court of Messina condemned
to 18 years of prison Luigi Pellegrino,
to 16 years Vincenzo
Vadala', to 14
years Carmelo
Barca,
to 2 years the abbot Don
Salvatore Cacciola and other men.
We have to remember also Don Agostino da Taormina,
enlightened patriot.
When, in spring
1860,
Garibaldi disembarked at
Marsala to
free Sicily, many patriots fought with
him to send away forever
the Bourbons.
A
committee leaded by the captain Luciano Crisafulli
was formed at Taormina.
This skilled
strategist succeeded in avoiding the
fight, which could have been very
bloody, with the bourbon contingent in
retreat leaded by the general Clary.
The Garibaldians arrived in Taormina the 3rd of August
1860, leaded by
Nino Bixio, who slept at the baron
Giovanni
Platania's house.
In autumn 1861
Sicily was annexed to Piedmont and, then, to the
Italian KIgdom.
Taormina stopped
being the centre of the Sicilian
political and military circumstances.
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