CHRONOLOGY.
| DATES. | |
| The Normans enter Italy | A.D. 1018 |
| The Normans conquer Apulia from the Greeks | 1043 |
| The Normans attack the Saracens in Sicily | 1061 |
| Conquest of Sicily completed by Roger de Hauteville | 1090 |
| Roger II. | 1101 |
| William I., surnamed the Wicked | 1153 |
| William II., surnamed the Good | 1166 |
| Tancred | 1189 |
| Frederic Hohenstaufen of Germany | 1197 |
| Conrad | 1250 |
| Conradin | 1254 |
| Charles I., first Angiovine King of Naples | 1266 |
| René, last Angiovine King of Naples | 1435 |
It would be easier to define the limits and character of the styles of Italian Mediæval Architecture in the centre and south of Italy by a negative than a positive title. To call them the “non-Gothic” styles would describe them correctly, but would hardly suffice to convey a distinct idea of their peculiarities. Romanesque, or even Italian Romanesque, would not be sufficient, because that term fails to take cognizance of the foreign element found in them. That element is the Byzantine, derived partly from the continued relations which such cities as Venice or Pisa maintained during the Middle Ages with the Levant, and partly from the intercourse which the inhabitants of Magna Gracia kept up across the Adriatic with the people on its eastern shores. To such a mixture of styles the term Byzantine-Romanesque would be quite appropriate; and although there are in Apulia churches, such as Molfetta and St. Angelo, which look more like Levantine designs than anything to be found in other parts of Europe (except perhaps such buildings as St. Front, Périgueux, and one or two exceptional buildings in the South of France), and in a very detailed description of Italian styles it might be expedient to attempt a further subdivision with other specific terms, for the present it will probably suffice to describe the various non-Gothic styles of the centre and southern half of Italy in local sections without attempting any very minute classification of their variations. As the Italians had no great national style of their own, and both in the North and South were principally working under foreign influences, it is in vain to look for any thread that will conduct the student straight through the labyrinth of their styles. Italian unity is the aspiration of the present century; during the Middle Ages it did not exist either in politics or art.
460. The Old and New Cathedrals at Naples. (From Schultz.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.
Although Naples is in the very centre of its province, where we naturally first look for examples of the style, there are few cities in Italy which contain so little to interest the architect or the antiquary. Still she does possess one group of churches, which, by their juxtaposition, at least serve to illustrate the progress of the style during the Middle Ages. The earliest of these, Sta. Restituta—shaded dark in the plan (Woodcut No. [460])—may be as old as the 4th or 5th century, and retains its original plan and arrangement, though much disfigured in details. The baptistery, a little behind the apse on its left, is certainly of the date indicated, and retains its mosaics, which seem to be of the same age.
In the year 1299 Charles II. of Anjou commenced the new cathedral at right angles with the old, his French prejudices being apparently shocked at the incorrect orientation of the older church. It is a spacious building, 300 ft. long, arranged, as Italian churches usually were at that age, with a wooden roof over the nave and intersecting vaults over the side-aisles. Opposite the entrance of the old cathedral is a domical chapel of Renaissance design, so that the group contains an illustration of each of the three ages of Italian art.
