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The Sicilian unrest was also being fomented by agents of the Byzantine Emperor
Michael Palaeologus who was desperate to thwart Charles's projected invasion of
his empire, and of the Aragonese king Peter III, Manfred's son-in-law, who saw his
wife Constance as rightful heir to the Sicilian throne. The event takes its name from
an insurrection which began at the start of Vespers, the sunset prayer marking the
beginning of the night vigil on Easter Monday, March 30, 1282, at the Church of
the Holy Spirit just outside Palermo. Because the city's borders have expanded over
the centuries, the church is now within the city limits. Beginning on the night of the
Vespers, thousands of Sicily's French inhabitants were massacred within six
weeks.
The massacre of the Vespers ruined the expansion of King Charles’s empire and
perished in the blood bath. It was the ruin of the Hildebrandine 7 Papacy. The
Papacy had committed itself to Charles. The failure to support Charles would have
been an admission that Rome had been wrong but to support him so blindly
against the wishes of a devoted people and against the conscience of much of
Europe, and then be dragged by him into defeat, meant a far cruller humiliation.
The Papacy threw more money than it could afford; it threw the weapon of the Holy
War, and all to no purpose. It emerged financially impoverished; it emerged with
its chief spiritual weapon tarnished, for there were few Europeans outside France
and the Guelph cities of Italy who could regard the repression of the Sicilian as a
spiritual aim. The idea of the Holy War had been cheapened already when it was
used against the Hohenstaufen. The Sicilian men who poured, with knives drawn,
through the streets of Palermo on the savage evening struck their blows for
freedom and with it consequences rescued a gallant people from the oppression
that changed Europe. It altered the history of Christendom. The lesson was not
forgotten, more than three centuries later King Henry IV of France boasted to the
Spanish ambassador the harm that he could do to the Spanish lands in Italy were
the King of Spain to try his patience too far. “I will breakfast at Milan”, he said,
“and I will dine at Rome”. “Then”, replied the ambassador, “Your Majesty will
doubtless be in sicily in time for Vespers”.
7 Or Hildebrand, one of the most influential of medieval ecclesiastics, who reigned as Pope Gregory
VII. 1073-85. He is celebrated for his development of the pretensions of the papal see both before
and after his elevation to the papacy.
The Hohenstaufen Dynasty - Page 166 of 200