Peter Costello
The cloisters of Monreale Cathedral The recently completed restoration of Notre Dame in central Paris has absorbed the interest of so many people over the last five years that other such work in other places have been sadly overlooked.
Central Paris gets millions of visitors each year; Palermo, the capital of the Island of Sicily, is less popular, for various reasons, yet for those who take the time to go there and have, as well, the leisure to appreciate what they are seeing, it is a remarkable place.
During the restoration, which cost something in the region of €1.1 million and was funded by the European Union, the mosaics were deep cleaned, restored and repaired. The famous mosaics and their gold settings now gleam as new. But also a totally new and more effective lighting system has been installed which makes them easier to see.
The entire nave is dominated by an image of Christ Pantocrator, ‘Christ the All Ruler’ behind the altar. The walls of the main body of the church as well as the side aisles are also richly adorned. But the Cathedral is only a part of an ecclesiastical settlement on the heights of a hill, some 925 feet in the air, which can be seen from many miles away.
The cathedral was built between 1172 and 1186 by William the Good. That last date at least was when the great bronze doors were hung, though the interior decorations were not completed till after 1200.
It has been called by Christopher Kininmonth, the British travel writer, “One of the wonders of the world in its day, and has remained so ever since. “
The cathedral is the product of Sicily’s long and complicated history, which owes much to the interaction of several historical cultures. After the little known eras of prehistory, Sicily passed through a Greek period, a Roman Period and then a Barbarian period as the Roman Empire collapsed in the third century AD.
Relieved
The island was relieved of the barbarian Ostrogoths by the invasion of the Byzantine general Belisarius; but liberation also saw the arrival of the malaria spreading mosquitoes which led to a loss of population. There now began another series of invasions, this time by the Muslims, mainly Berbers from North Africa rather than true Arabs. But the Normans, who conquered the island after 1061, brought a return of Christianity.
However, the architecture of the cathedral owes something to Byzantium, to the Muslims, and, of course, to the ideas that the Normans brought south with them from Normandy.
Here in Ireland we have always been reluctant to recognise the genius of the Normans; but in Monreale visitors can see that culture in its finest flowering. It is an example of what can happen when cultures, rather than being in conflict, merge and become involved with each other.