Introduction

Since the publication of the works of Heinrich Matthias Schwarz and Stefano Bottari in the 1940s about the first Norman ecclesiastical buildings in Sicily and Calabria, it has been assumed that all the churches erected by count Roger I followed the model of the Hauteville dynasty’s two oldest foundations in Calabria: S Maria in Sant’Eufemia (1061−2) and SS Trinità in Mileto (after 1062 but before 1080) (Fig. 7.1). These two Benedictine abbeys were three-nave basilicas with a transept and a simplified version of an echelon east end (the so-called plan bénédictin), like many monastic churches built in Normandy and Norman England during the eleventh century.

This assessment was mostly based on hypothetical reconstructions of the cathedrals of Mazara del Vallo and Troina. Over the last twenty years, archaeological excavations and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) analysis have revealed this hypothesis to be incorrect. In fact, these churches did not adopt the plan bénédictin, as was supposed in the past, but rather a cruciform ‘T’ plan with an aisleless nave, long projecting transept and three apses. This design also featured at S Bartolomeo in Lipari, founded by Roger I and Robert Guiscard before 1085, and the later S Maria della Roccella (c. 1119−22), although the latter has a more articulate east end (Fig. 7.1). The cathedrals of Mileto (after 1080) and Catania (after 1091), in contrast, had three naves, a very short transept, and three semi-circular aligned apses. Unfortunately, no information about the eleventh-century arrangement of the cathedrals of Agrigento, Palermo and Messina is available, while in Syracuse the Early Christian episcopal church, which had incorporated the temple of Athena, was still suitable for use at the time of the Norman conquest.

On the basis of these examples, this chapter aims to review the traditional theory of a linear evolution of ecclesiastical architecture in the Norman county of Sicily and Calabria, one that is based on a continuous iteration of the Sant’Eufemia model during the second half of the eleventh and the entire twelfth century. Instead, this prototype was set aside after the 1060s and only revived sixty years later in Cefalu, the first cathedral of the Norman Kingdom (Fig. 7.1).