A Banquet of Knives | Saint Plume

A Banquet of Knives: The Massacre of the Sicilian Vespers (1282)

By N.B. — Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

On an Easter evening, the island feasted on blood. No negotiation, no mercy — just the sound of blades and the scent of salt air thick with revenge.

In the spring of 1282, Sicily was a powder keg. For decades, the island groaned under the rule of Charles of Anjou, whose heavy taxation and contempt for local customs bred resentment like rot in a wound. The final insult came on Easter Monday, March 30, in the churchyard of Palermo.

A French soldier, it is said, accosted a Sicilian woman. The insult was minor in word, monumental in consequence. A local man drew a blade and struck him down.

What followed was no riot but a cleansing. That night, church bells rang, not for prayer, but for slaughter. Every Frenchman on the island — soldier, merchant, even monks — was hunted and killed. The streets of Palermo and Messina choked with bodies, blood mingling with wine spilled from overthrown cellars.

For six weeks, Sicily purged itself of foreign rule. Contemporary chronicler Bartholomaeus of Neocastro wrote:
"There was no house, no convent, no harbor where blood did not flow."

The rebellion’s name came from those vesper bells that called the faithful to massacre. An act of revenge disguised as piety, it spread by whispered word and unrelenting blades.

Though Peter III of Aragon would later claim the throne, the Massacre of the Sicilian Vespers remained one of medieval Europe’s bloodiest upheavals. It was not merely a rebellion but an execution, an act of collective fury where diplomacy fled, and the streets spoke in crimson.

Sources

Runciman, Steven. The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Abulafia, David. The Two Italies: Economic Relations Between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes. Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Bartholomaeus of Neocastro. Historia Sicula. 13th-century chronicle, critical edition by G. La Lumia, Palermo, 1869.