Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor
House of Hohenstaufen

Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor

Henry VI (November 1165 – 28 September 1197) was King of Germany from 1190 to 1197, Holy Roman Emperor from 1191 to 1197 and King of Sicily from 1194 to 1197.

Coronation as Emperor

In April 1191, in Rome, Henry and Constance were crowned Emperor and Empress by Pope Celestine III. The crown of Sicily, however, was harder to gain, as the barons of southern Italy had chosen a grandson of Roger II, Tancred, count of Lecce, as their king. Henry began his work besieging Naples, but he had to return to Germany (where Henry the Lion had revolted again) after his army had been heavily hit by an epidemic. Constance, who stayed behind in the palace at Salerno, was betrayed by the Salernitans, handed over to Tancred, and only released on the intervention of Celestine III, who in return recognized Tancred as King of Sicily. Henry had a stroke of fortune when the duke of Austria Leopold gave him his prisoner, the King of England Richard I. Henry managed to exact from the English a ransom of 150,000 silver marks, a huge sum for that age, and with this money, he could raise a powerful army to conquer southern Italy.

Henry was granted free passage in Northern Italy, signing with the Italian communes a treaty in January 1194. The following April he also reached a settlement with Henry the Lion. In February Tancred died, leaving as heir a young boy, William III. Henry met little resistance and entered Palermo, capital city of the Kingdom of Sicily, on November 20, and was crowned on December 25. He is also said to have had the young William blinded and castrated, while many Sicilian nobles were burned alive. Some, however, like the Siculo-Greek Eugene of Palermo, transitioned into the new Hohenstaufen government with ease.

At that point, Henry was the most powerful monarch in the Mediterranean and Europe, since the Kingdom of Sicily added to his personal and Imperial revenues an income without parallel in Europe. Henry felt strong enough to send home the Pisan and Genoese ships without giving their governments the promised concessions in Southern Italy, and even received tribute from the Byzantine Empire. In 1194 his son, Frederick, the future emperor and king of Sicily and Jerusalem, was born. Henry secured his position in Italy, naming his friend Conrad of Urslingen as Duke of Spoleto and giving the Marche to Markward of Anweiler.

His next aim was to make the imperial crown hereditary. At the Diet of Würzburg, held in April 1196, he managed to convince the majority of the princes to vote for his proposal, but in the following one at Erfurt (October 1196) he did not achieve the same favourable result.

[edit] Death
Henry's grave in the Cathedral of Palermo.
Henry's grave in the Cathedral of Palermo.

In 1197 the tyrannical power of the foreign King in Italy spurred a revolt, especially in southern Sicily, where Arabs were the majority of the population, which his German soldiers suppressed mercilessly. In the same year Henry prepared for a Crusade, but, on September 28, he died of malaria in Messina.

His son Frederick II was to inherit both the Kingdom of Sicily and the Emperor crown.

Henry was fluent in Latin and, according to Alberic of Troisfontaines, was "distinguished by gifts of knowledge, wreathed in flowers of eloquence, and learned in canon and Roman law". He was a patron of poets and poetry, and he almost certainly composed the song "Kaiser Heinrich", now among the Weingarten Song Manuscripts.

According to his rank and with Imperial Eagle, regalia, and a scroll, he is the first and foremost to be portrayed in the famous Codex Manesse, a fourteenth century manuscript showing 140 reputed poets (see Minnesänger), and at least three poems are attributed to a young and romantically minded Henry VI. In one of those he describes a romance which makes him forget all his earthly power, and neither riches nor royal dignity can outweigh his yearning for that lady (ê ich mich ir verzige, ich verzige mich ê der krône – before I give her up, I’d rather give up the crown).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenstaufen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VI%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor

Enrico VI di Hohenstaufen
ENRICO VI DI HOHENSTAUFEN
(Nimega 1165 - Messina 1197). Re di Germania (1190-1197), imperatore (dal 1191) e re di Sicilia (dal 1195). Figlio di Federico Barbarossa e di Beatrice di Borgogna, fu associato all'impero nel 1186 e sposò nello stesso anno Costanza d'Altavilla, erede del trono di Sicilia. Nel 1190, alla morte del padre e del suocero, si trovò erede dei regni di Germania, Borgogna, Italia e Sicilia. Incoronato imperatore, affrontò i baroni siciliani che avevano eletto re Tancredi, figlio naturale di Ruggero di Puglia, e nel frattempo dovette sconfiggere le opposizioni in Germania, dove Enrico il Leone cercava di riconquistare gli antichi domini. A questo scopo catturò il re d'Inghilterra Riccardo Cuordileone, di ritorno dalla crociata e alleato del suo avversario, liberandolo solo dietro un pesante riscatto. Raggiunto un favorevole accordo con Enrico il Leone, poté organizzare una nuova spedizione in Sicilia, dove intanto era morto Tancredi, e farsi incoronare re nel 1195. Affidò allora il regno di Germania al fratello Filippo di Svevia e fece incoronare il figlio Federico re di Sicilia (1196). Mentre stava progettando una nuova crociata e la costituzione di un ampio impero mediterraneo, morì prematuramente. Politico abile e spregiudicato Enrico VI fu anche uomo di grande cultura e poeta.

ENRICO THERE NOR HOHENSTAUFEN ( nijmegen 1165 Mexican 1197). King nor Germany (1190-1197), emperor ( from the 1191) both king nor Sicily ( from the 1195). Son nor Pillowcase Barbaric both nor Beatrice nor Burgh , she was associate all'impero in the 1186 both bride nello same yr Assiduity d'Altavilla , heir of the throne nor Sicily. In the 1190, to the quietus of the father both of the father-in-law , himself lie-in heir of the sovereign nor Germany , Burgh , Italy both Sicily. Enthroned emperor , facing the barony sicilian what they had elected king Tancredi , son unlearn nor Rust nor Puglia , both meanwhile in where upset the opposition un Germany , in where Enrico does the stop at Leo forage nor reconquer the ancients sovereignty. AT this view collar does the stop at king d'Inghilterra Wealthy Cuordileone , return dalla crusade both allied of the one's opponent liberandolo sole in the rear a stodgy redeem. Work out a large settlement with Enrico does the stop at Leo poté structure a youthful shipment un Sicily , in where by that time she was died Tancredi , both plough enthroned king in the 1195. Affidò thereat does the stop at reign nor Germany to the brother Philippine nor Svevia both made enthroned does the stop at son Pillowcase king nor Sicily (1196). Whilst stava project a youthful crusade both how much is the admission to the makeup nor a wide empire Mediterranean morì prematurely. Political adroit both spregiudicato Enrico THERE she was too stiff nor mighty culture both poet.

Casale Gaedera è citato - 1195 - Caggeggi
Fino al 1845 era costituito da due distinti villaggi, Soccorso Gaedera (o Gaedara) e Soccorso Cròpani, unificati per decreto di Ferdinando II di Borbone e assegnati al Comune di Gualtieri Sicaminò. II nome del casale Gaedera è citato in un documento del 1195 col quale Enrico VI di Svevia conferma al monastero cistercense di Roccamatore (Tremestieri) la donazione dei tre feudi di Campo Caggeggi e Paparcudi fatta da Bartolomeo de Lucy, conte di Paternò.

Until 1845 it was constituted from two distinguished villages, Aid Gaedera (or Gaedara) and Cròpani Aid, unifica you for decree of Ferdinand II of Borbone and assigns you to the Common one of Gualtieri Sicaminò. II name of the Gaedera country house is cited in a document of 1195 with which Enrico YOU of Svevia confirmation to the monastero cistercense of Roccamatore (Tremestieri) the donation of the three feudi of Field Caggeggi and Paparcudi made from Bartolomeo de Lucy, conte of Paternò.

Caggegi - Kaggegi - Kaggeg
Swedish:

Caggegi
Kaggegi
Kaggeg

English:

Keg

Icelandic:

barrel, keg, big, flashy car

http://www.translation-guide.com/free_online_translators.php?from=English&to=Swedish

Teuto-Nordic
To date it appears that S21 in Britain marks "Anglo - Saxon" and so on the Continent in Italy (perhaps a legacy of the Visigoth and Lombard Germanic invaders), north to Saxony and Friesland and the home of the Angles. Norway is about 66% S21 positive; and the surrogate for the Anglo - Saxon homeland (Friesland) is about 75% - S21 positive.

http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm#saxons
http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm#england
http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm#visigoths
http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm#lombards

Teuto-Nordic

Originally settled by the Celtic tribe of the Atrebates, it later became a Roman garrison town known as Atrebatum.

It is located in the former Dutch and French province of Artois. For many centuries, Arras was on the border between France and the Low Countries and it frequently changed hands before firmly becoming French in the late 17th century, the fortifications upgraded by Vauban helping keep it in French hands. The town was closely linked to the trade of Flanders and later became an important centre for sugar beet farming and processing as well as a prosperous market centre.

The Union of Atrecht (the Dutch name for Arras) was signed here in January 1579 by the Catholic principalities of the Low Countries that remained loyal to king Philip II of Habsburg; it provoked the declaration of the Union of Utrecht later the same month.
The Town Square, Arras. February, 1919
The Town Square, Arras. February, 1919

During the First World War, Arras was near the front and a long series of battles fought nearby are known as the Battle of Arras in which a series of medieval tunnels beneath the city, unknown to the Germans, became a decisive factor in the French holding the city. The city, however, was heavily damaged and had to be rebuilt after the war. In the Second World War the town was occupied by the Germans and 240 suspected French Resistance members were executed in the Arras citadel.

History
Hamburg 1800
Hamburg 1800

The city takes its name from the first permanent building on the site, a castle ordered to be built by Emperor Charlemagne in 808 AD. The castle was built on some rocky ground in a marsh between the Alster and the Elbe as a defence against Slavic incursion. The castle was named Hammaburg, where "burg" means "castle".

The "Hamma" element remains uncertain. Old High German includes both a hamma, "angle" and a hamme, "pastureland." The angle might refer to a spit of land or to the curvature of a river. However, the language spoken might not have been Old High German, as Low Saxon was spoken there later. Other theories are that the castle was named for a surrounding Hamma forest, or for the village of Hamm, later incorporated into the city. Hamm as a place name occurs a number of times in Germany, but its meaning is equally uncertain. It could be related to "heim" and Hamburg could have been placed in the territory of the ancient Chamavi. However, a derivation of "home city" is perhaps too direct, as the city was named after the castle. Another theory is that Hamburg comes from ham which is Old Saxon for shore.

In 834 Hamburg was designated the seat of a bishopric, whose first bishop, Ansgar, became known as the Apostle of the North. In 845 a fleet of 600 Viking ships came up the River Elbe and destroyed Hamburg, at that time a town of around 500 inhabitants. Two years later, Hamburg was united with Bremen as the bishopric of Hamburg-Bremen.
seal of 1245

In 983, the town was destroyed by king Mstivoj of the Obodrites. In 1030, the city was burned down by King Mieszko II Lambert of Poland. After further raids in 1066 and 1072 the bishop permanently moved to Bremen. Hamburg had several great fires, notably in 1284 and 1842.

The charter in 1189 by Frederick I "Barbarossa" granted Hamburg the status of an Imperial Free City and tax free access up the Lower Elbe into the North Sea. This and Hamburg's proximity to the main trade routes of the North Sea and Baltic Sea quickly made it a major port in Northern Europe. Its trade alliance with Lübeck in 1241 marks the origin and core of the powerful Hanseatic League of trading cities.

In 1529 the city embraced Lutheranism, and Hamburg subsequently received Protestant refugees from the Netherlands and France. Hamburg was at times under Danish sovereignty while remaining part of the Holy Roman Empire as an Imperial Free City.

Briefly annexed by Napoleon I (1810-14), Hamburg suffered severely during his last campaign in Germany. The city was besieged for over a year by Allied forces (mostly Russian, Swedish and German). Russian forces under General Bennigsen finally freed the city in 1814. During the first half of the 19th century a patron goddess with Hamburg's Latin name Hammonia emerged, mostly in romantic and poetic references, and although she has no mythology to call her own, Hammonia became the symbol of the city's spirit during this time.

Hamburg experienced its fastest growth during the second half of the 19th century, when its population more than quadrupled to 800,000 as the growth of the city's Atlantic trade helped make it Europe's third-largest port.
Hamburg's central promenade Jungfernstieg on River Alster in 1900
Hamburg's central promenade Jungfernstieg on River Alster in 1900

With Albert Ballin as its director the Hamburg-America Line became the world's largest transatlantic shipping company at the turn of the century, and Hamburg was also home to shipping companies to South America, Africa, India and East Asia. Hamburg became a cosmopolitan metropolis based on worldwide trade. Hamburg was the port for most Germans and Eastern Europeans to leave for the New World and became home to trading communities from all over the world (like a small Chinatown in Altona, Hamburg).

After World War I Germany lost her colonies and Hamburg lost many of its trade routes. In 1938 the city boundaries were extended with the Groß-Hamburg-Gesetz (Greater Hamburg Act) to incorporate Wandsbek, Harburg, Wilhelmsburg and Altona. The city counts 1.7 million inhabitants.

During World War II Hamburg suffered a series of devastating air raids which killed 42,000 German civilians (Bombing of Hamburg in World War II). Through this, and the new zoning guidelines of the 1960s, the inner city lost much of its architectural past.

The Iron Curtain—only 50 kilometres east of Hamburg—separated the city from most of its hinterland and further reduced Hamburg's global trade. On February 16, 1962 a severe storm caused the Elbe to rise to an all-time high, inundating one fifth of Hamburg and killing more than 300 people.

After German reunification in 1990, and the accession of some Eastern European and Baltic States into the EU in 2004, Hamburg Harbour and Hamburg have ambitions for regaining their positions as the region's largest deep-sea port for container shipping and its major commercial and trading centre. Hamburg 2020

R1b1c9a
Haplogroup R1b1c9a is a subclade of the preceding group. Present indications are that it arrived in England with either the Saxons or Normans.

My haplogroup is U5a1a
My haplogroup is U5a1a, and the literature explained that a haplogroup "identifies deep ancestral ethnic and geographic origins on your maternal line." They included a map showing where the haplogroups are found and how they are connected with each other. My haplogroup origin is found only in Sweden.

Haplogroup R1b (Atlantic Modal Haplotype)
R1b1c1 European Australians
R1b1c2 Basque
R1b1c3 European
R1b1c4 Basque/Andalusian
R1b1c5 European
R1b1c6 Iberian
R1b1c7 NW Ireland (Ui Neill)
R1b1c8 Italy
R1b1c9 Northern Germanic (S21)
R1b1c9a
R1b1c9b
R1b1c10 Southern Germanic, Swiss

R1b1c9a and R1b1c9b are promising to be useful as they may further subdivide north germanics into germans, danes, swedes and norwegians.

Langobardi/Langobards/Longobardians

R1b1c6 is as you can see from the above list, Iberian in origin. It is supposedly well represented in southern england. But it is also well represented in coastal europe so we can't assume they came here directly after the ice age. Dating it has been difficult but it seems to be around 3500 BP. So, are we looking at people in the bronze age migrating to Britain? Could they be indicative of the Belgae or Atrebates of the iron age? Maybe they came as Frisians and Merowingians during the dark ages? There are usually lots of possibilities.

Haplogroup R1b (Atlantic Modal Haplotype)

Atlantic Modal Haplotype #2

The haplotype below is the most common haplotype in the YHRD database, and it may be considered classic (or "Western") AMH. It occurs all over Europe, and the paternal ancestors of someone with this haplotype could easily have come from anywhere. When that person has British roots, Occam's Razor is generally applied and a "deep ancestry" among the Celtic-speaking, pre-Roman population of Britain is assumed. Much of this population has been in Western Europe since the Paleolithic, and is thought to have migrated to the British Isles from either Spain or France. Sure enough, of the top twenty frequencies listed below, half occur in samples of Iberian origin. The highest frequency occurs among the Basques, who have been shown to be nearly identical, in Y chromosome terms, to predominantly Celtic populations like the Irish and the Welsh. Southern Ireland itself exhibits the sixth highest frequency of this haplotype. Yet a sample from Saxony comes in second, and one from the western Netherlands comes in fourth. Two Italian samples also exhibit frequencies among the top twenty. Since the Atlantic Modal Haplotype occurs in relatively high proportions, not just in Iberia and the British Isles, but also in areas like Germany and The Netherlands, we cannot rule out an Anglo-Saxon origin for any "Border Reiver" descendant with this haplotype. It is not the simplest assumption we can make, but it is a reasonable assumption. Nor, with the high frequencies in Iberia and Italy, can we rule out an origin among Roman settlers. The best assumption that we can make about the ancestry of "Border Reiver" descendants with this haplotype is that it is most likely a mixture of several possible origins. This and related R1b haplotypes originated in Europe during the Paleolithic. During the Ice Age, the carriers of R1b wintered in the Pyrenees. When the Ice Age ended, these carriers radiated across Western Europe. They became the pre-Roman population of Spain, France, the British Isles, and large portions of the Rhineland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Northern Italy. Although the Celtic language itself has roots in Asia, the indigenous people of Western Europe became its primary speakers. They comprised the largest proportion of those people we know from history as "Celtic", and remain so today. Traditional areas of Celtic settlement are Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, Brittany, and Galicia in Northern Spain. Celtic culture is epitomized archaeologically by the La Tene settlement, which existed near Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland during the Iron Age. The Paleolithic population of Europe also became one of the earliest components of the Spanish, Italian and German peoples, and were among the first speakers of the the Romance languages and the Teutonic languages, even though the Indo-European source of these languages, too, lay elsewhere. The Basques, who are perhaps the purest "Paleolithic" population in Europe, do not speak a Celtic language and are not Celts, even though they are ancestrally related to those who are. R1b does not mean "Celtic". And, even though R1b is found everywhere in Western Europe, no country in Western Europe is entirely R1b, or has been so for a very long time.

ORIGINS
BASQUE ORIGINS

There is no shortage of theories that seek to explain the origins of the Basques, western Europe's mystery people. They range from the incredulous (that Basques are the survivors the lost people of Atlantis, the fabled land that sunk into the sea) the mythical (Basques are descendants of Aitor, the first Basque man) the pre-historic (Basques descended from the Stone Age, proponents pointing to Basque words for tools that all incorporate stone) the expansive (purported links with other distant languages) to the probable (Basques are descendants of the Iberians, people who once inhabited Spain).

Outside the city of Gernika, one can find the caves of Santimamine which contains the remnants of a culture 20,000 years ago. Other archeological finds suggest that the present Basque homeland contained human communities as long as 70,000 years ago. What is unknown, however, is if they were ancestors of the Basques. The debate is whether the Basque populace and culture developed--in situ--there in the Pyrenees or if they migrated into their present homeland. Those skeptical of the tens of thousands of years of a Basque presence place their arrival sometime between 5,000 and 3,000 B.C. Nonetheless, even these conservative estimates place the Basques in western Europe long before the migrations of the second millennium B.C. that established the ethnic composition of modern Europe. Therefore, what is certain is that the Basques are the oldest indigenous people of western Europe.

SURVIVORS OR MIGRANTS?

Where are they from? Who are the Basques? Both are questions that many Basques are asked. Neither is easy to answer but there has been no shortage of efforts.

Philippe Veyrin, a French student of Basque origins, grouped explanations into three broad categories: theological, the metaphysical and scientific theories. Leading writers from the theological age--predominately in the late 18th, and early 19th centuries--put forth claims that Basque was the original language spoken prior to the linguistic fragmentation resulting from the Tower of Babel. (The biblical story in which God thwarts the human effort to build a high tower to reach the heavens. To disrupt the project, God imposed a multitude of languages on the workers so that they could not communicate with one another). One attempt to substantiate this claim was that of the Abbe Diharce de Bidassouet who based his claim on some inventive etymological work. Gipuzkoa (one of the seven provinces) represented Gu-iz-puzk-ko-ak, or literally those whose language was broken. Meanwhile, Manuel de Larramendi, who wrote the first Basque grammar book, was not as assertive and instead assigned Basque a place among the seventy-five languages that followed the collapse of the Tower of Babel. Finally, another commentator, Abbe Dominique Lahetjuzan claimed that Basque proved the story of Genesis. Apparantely the originality of Basque verified the divinity of Genesis. Unfortunately, these and other explanations offered little solid evidence for their claims and instead relied on questionable etymologies and assumptions. But for a time, these claims were taken seriously. The Gipuzkoan priest Erroa petitioned the Chapter of the Cathedral of Pamplona, which after months of deliberations, accepted his theory that Basque was the language spoken in the Garden of Eden.

Metaphysical explanations were initiated in the nineteenth century by the German scientist Humboldt. He asserted that Basques descended from the Iberians, the original inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula. Not everyone embraced his conclusions, and Humboldt's research triggered a rush to link the Basques with other peoples--from the Finns and Hungarians, to the ancient Egyptians and the Native Americans, with the Celts, Phoenicians among others, thrown in for good measure. Rodney Gallop, writing in 1930, preferred the theory offered by Bosch Gimpera. Gimpera places the Basques in linear succession to the Paleolithic inhabitants of the Pyrenees, basing his claim on the physical resemblance of from 25-40% of the modern Basque population. Basques were influenced by the Iberians, and most likely borrowed from their language, but they were distinct. It is a plausible hypothesis, but as Gallop concedes it is not conclusive. Gallop concluded that the Basques are the oldest people in Europe. There is little or no mention of the Basques until the 12th century, Gallop tells us, so before that time, "like an honest women they had no history." As Roger Collins concludes, "the evidence just does not exist, be it anthropological, archaeological or linguistic, on which it would be possible to state where the Basques come from, and when and how they established themselves in the western Pyrenees."

It is no better when trying to answer the second question: what is a Basque? In former times, it was a more simple matter because it was a people and a land. The Basques defined themselves as Euskaldunak--literally those who speak Basque--and their homeland was Euskal Herria--land of the Basques or Basque speakers. As it turned out, their homeland was situated at a busy thoroughfare on the Iberian peninsula. The Romans "visited," followed by numerous other peoples and armies, including the Goths, Franks, and Moors. Their homeland was finally claimed by the emerging nation-states of Spain and France. Most Basques are aware that there are seven provinces that make up what is today considered the Basque country. They could point out that four are in Spain and three in France. This legacy dates from the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. Representatives from Spain and France gathered to decide upon a mutual boundary between their two nations. The final division, which split the province of Nafarroa into two parts, was presumably based upon "natural frontiers" that divide Spain and France. At the negotiations in Madrid in 1651, it was proclaimed that "the Pyrennes Mountains, which divided the Spanish from the Gauls [French] since antiquity, constitute the division of these two kingdoms." It is not known what the delegates considered to be antiquity because the Basques of course were there before they were.

With the integration of the Basque Country into the states of Spain and France, many atzerritarrak or "outsiders" found their way to the land of the Basques. Therefore when Sabino de Arana-Goiri, the founder of modern Basque nationalism at the end of the 19th century set about his task, this question of definition loomed paramount. His definition included discussions of both ethnic and cultural aspects (Arana made an effort to learn the Basque language), but he stressed racial purity. In this simple definition the number of Basque surnames emerged as paramount: the more Basque last names the more Basque one was considered. The definition of Basqueness has been transformed today. From the early accent on racial purity, the modern emphasis is on the Basque language and culture.

Other researchers have pointed to physical attributes to differentiate the Basques from their neighbors. There are claims of a distinctive skull structure and defining hair and eye colors. Much as also been made of blood comparisons. Basques have a high percentage of type O blood, in particular a high incidence of Rh negative, but this alone cannot firmly establish a distinct people and it remains problematical to define Basques in physical terms.

The plot thickens when the focus shifts to a cultural definition of Basques. Basque nationalists and others have come full circle to conclude that language remains the only satisfactory tool to address questions of Basque identity. This however is controversial because it excludes a sizable group of people who consider themselves Basque even though they do not speak the language. There are also non-Basques who have recently learned the language and now consider themselves Basque. Thus being Basque becomes a state of mind. Do you see why it is not easy to respond to this question?

But analysis of the language has revealed some certainties. Do not be confused by the loan words from neighboring languages because Euskara is nothing like Spanish or French because it remains the only non-Indo-European language in western Europe. It precedes these latter-day derivatives of Latin, the language of the Romans, by--at least--3,000 years. A form of Euskara or Basque, therefore, has been in western Europe longer than any other current language. That much is certain, but the question remains as to where it came from.

It should come as no surprise then that the origin of the word "Basque" is also uncertain. Somehow the Euskaldunak assumed the names of Basque, in France, and Vascos in Spain. Roman writers made mention of a particular tribe whose neighbors did not understand their language. The first reference came a generation before the birth of Christ and the Romans referred to the people that inhabited this corner of Europe by various names, including Vascones. Gallop posits that the Latin root "vasc" is probably a corruption of the Basque "eusk". He concludes that from this evolved the modern terms Basque, Vasco and Gascon. But it is still uncertain as to whether this was actually the Basque people. In the twelfth century, a more certain reference labeled them the Bascli. We ended up with the French version of the term because English made extensive use of French vocabulary.

So do you know anything more now after reading this article? Unfortunately, there are very few certainties when discussing the Basques. They remain Europe's "mystery people" because the origin of the people and their language remains lost to us. While there remain more questions than answers, what is certain is that the Basques and Euskara are western Europe's oldest indigenous people and language.

Genetic history

Sami genetic history has been of great interest because of their large genetic distance to other European populations including their closest neighbours. It is mainly the north Sami and east Sami that have been investigated. There is considerable genetic variation between the different Sami groups but they all share a common ancestry. Female mtDNA especially has been investigated, but also Y chromosomes and classical autosomal markers. The research indicates that 95.6% of Saami mtDNA originated in the Iberia refugia while only 4.4% is of Siberian-Asiatic origin (Tambets 2004). A genetic link has been established between the Sami and the Berbers of North Africa going back 9000 years (Achilli 2005).

Sami Y chromosomes indicate that 29.8% originated in the Iberia refugia and 58.2% originated in Eastern Europe (Tambets 2004). The autosomal classic markers shows that the Sami have no close relatives in any population including their closest linguistic relatives but are in general more closely related to Europeans than people of other continents. The closest of the distant relatives are Finnish people, but this is probably due to more recent immigration of Finnish people into the Sami areas, and the assimilation of the Sami population into the mainstream population in today's Finland (Meinila 2001).

The Sami are no more closely related to the Siberian and Mongol populations than other European populations (Niskanen 2002), in contrast to the historically held view that the Sami are of Siberian-Asian origin. The genetic distances between the Sami and the rest of the world are due to founder effects and genetic drift resulting from their small and isolated population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Genetics

Sami mtDNA

The Sami people mtDNA haplogroup distribution strongly deviate from the distribution of other European countries including their closest neightbours. The European haplogroup Velda - V and Ursula - U5b1 stands for 89.2% of the total haplogroups among the Sami people, while minor Siberian linages like D5 and Z occur at only 4.4% (Tambets 2004). These major haplogroups occur at a low rate in European populations except for haplogroup U5b1 among Finns in Finland's Oulu Province (22.4%) due to Sami admixture (Meinilä 2001) and haplogroup V among the Basque people in Iberian Peninsula (12.4%) and Mari people in Volga-Ural (10.2%). Further almost 50% of haplogroup U5b1 haplotypes are unique for the Sami people population and do not occur elsewhere, while most of the haplogroup V haplotypes is also seen among other European populations. Its believed on the basis of correlation analysis that haplogroup V and U5b1 migrated togheter with male haplogroup I1a (Rootsi 2004) and on the basis of variance and haplotype analysis its believed they migrated from western Europe. The age of haplogroup V and U5b1 among the Sami based on variance analysis is believed to be between 5 800 to 11 000 years old (Delghandi 1998, Tambets 2004, Ingman 2006), while the Siberian lineages Z and D5 is probably not older than 2 000 years representing a much later minor migration wave from the east (Ingman 2006).

Sami Autosomal

The autosomal classic markers shows that the Sami have no close relatives in any population but are in general more closely related to Europeans than people of other continents (Cavalli-Sforza 1994, Niskanen 2002). The closest of the distant relatives are Finnish people, but this is probably due to more recent immigration of Finnish people into the Sami areas, and the assimilation of the Sami population into the mainstream population in today's Finland (Meinila 2001).

The Sami are not more closely related to Siberian and Mongol populations than other European populations (Niskanen 2002), in contrast to the historically held view that the Sami are of Siberian-Asiatic origin. It has been speculated that the small founding population overtime was slowly intermixed and that any East-Asian genes, being limited to the initial founder group, were increasing overwealmed from surrounding populations becoming gradually nearly the same as their various European neighbours. However the relative young age of the eastern female hg Z and D5 and male hg N3 among the Sami do not support this idea. The genetic distances between the Sami and the rest of the world are due to adaption, founder effects and genetic drift resulting from their small and isolated population.

Genetics

Although they are genetically distinctive in some ways, the Basques are still very typically west European in terms of their Mt-DNA and Y-DNA sequences, and in terms of some other genetic loci. These same sequences are widespread throughout the western half of Europe, especially along the western fringe of the continent. The Saami people of northern Scandinavia show an especially high abundance of a Mt-DNA type found at 11% amongst Basques.[1][19][20]

It is thought that the Basque Country and neighbouring regions served as a refuge for paleolithic humans during the last major glaciation when environments further north were too cold and dry for continuous habitation. When climate warmed into the present interglacial, populations would have rapidly spread north along the west European coast. Genetically, in terms of Y-chromosomes and Mt-DNA, inhabitants of Britian and Ireland closely related to the Basques,[21][2] reflecting their common origin in this refugial area. Basques, along with Irish, show the highest frequency of the Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup R1b in Western Europe; some 90-95% of Basque men have this haplogroup. The rest is mainly I and a minimal presence of E3b.[21] The Y-chromosome and MtDNA relationship between Basques and people of Ireland and Wales is even stronger than to neighboring areas of Spain, where ethnically Spanish people now live in close proximity to the Basques, although this genetic relationship is also very strong among Basques and other Spaniards. In fact, as Stephen Oppenheimer has stated in The Origins of the British (2006), although Basques have been more isolated than other Iberians, they are a population representative of south western Europe. As to the genetic relationship among Basques, Iberians and Britons, he also states (pages 375 and 378):

By far the majority of male gene types in the derive from Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal), ranging from a low of 59% in Fakenham, Norfolk to highs of 96% in Llangefni, north Wales and 93% Castlerea, Ireland. On average only 30% of gene types in England derive from north-west Europe. Even without dating the earlier waves of north-west European immigration, this invalidates the Anglo-Saxon wipeout theory... ...75-95% of British and Irelanders (genetic) matches derive from Iberia...Ireland, coastal Wales, and central and west-coast Scotland are almost entirely made up from Iberian founders, while the rest of the non-English parts of the Britain and Ireland have similarly high rates. England has rather lower rates of Iberian types with marked heterogeneity, but no English sample has less than 58% of Iberian samples...

Before the development of modern Genetics based on DNA sequencing, Basques were noted as having the highest global apportion of Rh- blood type (35% phenotypically, 60% genetically). Additionally Basques also have virtually no B blood type (nor the related AB group). These differences are thought to reflect their long history of isolation, along with times when the population size of the Basques was small, allowing gene frequencies to drift over time. The history of isolation reflected in gene frequencies has presumably been key to the Basque people retaining their distinctive language, while more recently arrived Indo-European languages swamped other indigenous languages that were previously spoken in western Europe. In fact, in accordance with other genetic studies, a recent genetic piece of research from 2007 claims: "The Spanish and Basque groups are the furthest away from other continental groups, which is consistent with the suggestions that the Iberian peninsula holds the most ancient West European genetic ancestry" [3].

u5 & R1b
U5:

Saami - Arctic Peoples - Indigenous Peoples at the Arctic Council

The Saami Council representing Saami people in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia

"We, Saami are one people, united in our own culture,
language and history, living in areas which,
since time immemorial and up to
historical times, we alone inhabited and utilized".

Saami Political Program 1986 /
Saami Council statements

The Saami Council is a voluntary Saami organization (a non–governmental organization), with Saami member organizations in Finland, Russia, Norway and Sweden. Since its foundation in 1956 the Saami Council has actively dealt with Saami policy tasks. For this reason the Saami Council is one of the indigenous peoples’ organizations which have existed longest.

The primary aim of the Saami Council is the promotion of Saami rights and interests in the four countries where the Saami are living, to consolidate the feeling of affinity among the Saami people, to attain recognition for the Saami as a nation and to maintain the economic, social and cultural rights of the Saami in the legislation of the four states. (Norway, Sweden, Russia and Finland). This objective can be achieved through agreements between these states and the bodies representing the Saami people, the Saami parliaments.

Saami Council renders opinions and makes proposals on questions concerning Saami people’s rights, language and culture and especially on issues concerning Saami in different countries.

R1b:

The Basques, the most invaded indigenous group on the planet, are fortunate enough to have gained true self-determination as a separatist state.

On February 15 1990, by an absolute majority of 38 votes, the Basque Parliament proclaimed:

"The Basque People have the right to self-determination.

This right resides in the lawful authority of its citizens to take decisions, freely and democratically, on their political, economic, social and cultural status, either by providing themselves with their own political framework or by sharing their sovereignty, totally or in part, with other peoples".

The Basque Country has had its own Government and autonomous Parliament since the arrival of democracy in Spain in the late nineteen seventies. As indigenous people, they're much more fortunate in this regard than other aboriginal peoples. I wonder when this democracy will arrive in Australia and America?

Inhabiting the Pyrenees for at least four thousand years, the Basques have survived ongoing invasion and colonisation by moving to the hills where it is difficult to attack and easy to defend, fighting ferocious and carefully chosen battles. They have been invaded by the Indo-Europeans, the Celts, the Romans, the Franks, the Visigoths and Islamic peoples. Eventually their territory was divided between France and Spain during the middle ages.

Now there are seven autonomous Basque territories, governed by bodies of law known as Fueros. These work well because they have the indigenous quality of flexibility and the ability to evolve with changes in society and the environment.

The Basque Homeland is called Euzkadi, and its language is Euskara, which survives from not only pre-Roman times, but pre-Celtic times as well. About 3 million Basques live in the Basque Homelands.

M269 - R1b1c*: Europe, predominantly western
M269 - R1b1c*: Europe, predominantly western

SRY2627 - R1b1c6: Iberia; SW England and Ireland
S26 - R1b1c9a: concentrated in England

U5
U5a:

Finnish Saami: 2.9%
Norwegian Saami: 0.7%

U5a:

EuropeanRussia(N = 215): 7.91%
Scandinavia(N = 645): 6.82%

U5a1:

Finland/Estonia(N = 202): 1.49%
Orkney(N = 152): 1.32%
U5 - Geographic Patterns of mtDNA Diversity in Europe
U5

Saami: 5.29%
Karelia: 1.81%
Estonia: 1.79%
Albania: 1.43%
Finland: 1.39%
Volga-Finnic: 1.18%
Iceland: 1.13%
Basques: 1.04%
Norway: 1.00%

Geographic Patterns of mtDNA Diversity in Europe

U5a1a
U5a1a

2.3% - SC - Scotland
2.0% - FI - Finland
1.9% - CP - center Portugal
1.5% - SG - south Germany
1.4% - NG - north Germany
1.2% - NO - Norway
1.0% - SP - south Portugal
0.5% - FR - France
0.5% - NP - north Portugal
0.4% - EN - England
R1b (Haplotype 15)
R1b (Haplotype 15) - This is the most common in Western

Europe, occurring most frequently among the Basques of Spain

and the Celtic-speaking aborigines of the British Isles, such

as the Irish, the Welsh and possibly the Picts. Scientists

believe that those who belong to this group are descended

from the original Paleolithic population of Europe, whose

members took refuge from the Ice Age in the caves of the

Pyrenees. The most common - or the "modal" - pattern in this

group is called the Atlantic Modal Haplotype.

Percentage of Population that are Haplogroup R1b:

Spanish Basque – 89.9%
French Basque – 86.4%
Catalan – 79.2%
British – 72%
Dutch – 70.4%
Andalausian -65.5%
Italian – 62.0%
French – 52.2%
German – 50.0%
Czech and Slovakian – 35.6%
Calabrian – 32.4%
Greek – 27.6%
Sardinian – 22.1%
Albanian – 17.6%
Polish – 16.4%
Syrian – 15.0%
Georgian – 14.3%
Hungarian – 13.3%
Udmurt – 11.6%
Croatian – 10.3%
Macedonian - 10.0%
Saami – 8.3%
Turkish – 6.6%
Lebanese – 6.4%
Ukrainian – 2.0%

Nordic Viking blood
MARCH OF THE TITANS - A HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE

Chapter 37 : Risorgimento - The Resurrection of Italy

Viking descendants invade Sicily. Roger Guiscard, one of the Normans from France - who were themselves Vikings from Scandinavia - lands on the coast of Sicily. Guiscard launched a race war against the non-White Muslim occupiers of Sicily in 1061. With the aid of many of his countrymen, he succeeded in driving the Muslims out of Sicily in 1090, and set up a kingdom on that island, with himself as leader. The infusion of new Nordic Viking blood onto the island was soon taken up into that region's population - so that to this day it is still possible to find blue eyed blonds amongst the Sicilian population, of whom a significant proportion are of mixed race.

http://www.stormfront.org/whitehistory/hwr37.htm

Giovanni John Raciti DNA Y-DNA and mtdna Haplogroups:

The Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype - Haplogroup R1b

http://www.geocities.com/johnraciti2/r1b1c.html

Clan Ursula - Haplogroup U5

http://www.geocities.com/johnraciti2/u5a1a.html

Giovanni John Raciti DNA Y-DNA and mtdna Haplogroups:

The Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype - Haplogroup R1b

http://www.geocities.com/johnraciti2/r1b1c.html

Clan Ursula - Haplogroup U5

http://www.geocities.com/johnraciti2/u5a1a.html

Norman/Germanic - Viking heritage - Language and Culture in Sicily.
Norman/Germanic - Viking heritage - Language and Culture in Sicily.

Norman/Germanic - Viking heritage - Language and Culture in Sicily.

My cousin through marriage David Neilson assumed my surname was biological ‘Raciti’. I am biological in fact a Caggegi. He told me that I needed to wait in line before I could consider my Norman/Germanic - Viking heritage.

He believes he is of Danish heritage (through his surname - Neilson). He has brown hair and brown eyes. I personally don't see it at all. My daughter Racheal has blonde hair and blue eyes - and is most likely to be of that area.

I have found the original form of my biological name to be of a 'North Sea Germanic language' of Norse Origin: 'Keggeg', specifically from the Ingaevones, Jastorf and Langobardic cultures that migrated into North Italy in the 6th and 7th centuries.

History tells us that there were significant Lombard (with their Gallo-Italic idiom) settlements in Randazzo, Sicily.

There was a Lombard Community (the last to come, with the Normans) around the church San Martino in Randazzo.

The Langobardi tribe could have been biologically very similar to The Cimbri (Danes) and The Frisii tribes.

The one thing I do know is that The Lombards through The Jastorf culture - were in locations in Sweden - were I find other 'Keggeg's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pre_Migration_Age_Germanic.png
__________________
Descendant of The Saami, reindeer hunters of Scandinavia and The Cro-Magnon of southern France.
Reply With Quote
#3
Old 04-07-2007, 02:07 AM
johnraciti johnraciti is offline vbmenu_register("postmenu_36990", true);
Registered User

Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 281
Lombards and Saxons

# Longobardus — Lombards
# Saxneat — Saxons

Lombards and Saxons have the same dna haplotype.

The Lombards, Saxons, and Angles were all Germanic peoples. The Lombards are thought to have originated on an island in the Baltic Sea. In 100 B.C. they moved into the area now known as Germany, and by A.D. 500 they lived in present-day Austria. The Lombards invaded and controlled much of Italy from 568 to the mid-700s. Today the northern region of Italy is known as Lombardy, named for the Lombards.

The Saxons were a warrior tribe who lived in Jutland (a peninsula comprising a portion of present-day Denmark and northwestern Germany) during the second century A.D. They staged a series of raids along the coastal areas of the North Sea, occupying the northwestern coast of present-day France by 400. Fifty years later they reached England, then part of the waning Roman Empire, which crumbled later in the century.
__________________
Descendant of The Saami, reindeer hunters of Scandinavia and The Cro-Magnon of southern France.
Reply With Quote
#4
Old 04-07-2007, 02:45 AM
johnraciti johnraciti is offline vbmenu_register("postmenu_36991", true);
Registered User

Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 281
North Italian Kingdom Of The Lombards Ad 568 - 773

NORTH ITALIAN KINGDOM OF THE LOMBARDS
AD 568 - 773

The Lombards, or Langobards, originated in and above northern Silesia/Prussia (now western Poland) as part of the Suebi (Baltic Sea). They migrated south in the sixth century, filling the gap left on the north bank of the Danube in Hungary by the collapse of the Huns. After being used as a mercenary army by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, the Lombards began to invade northern Italy after his death, diminishing the influence of the Byzantine Exarchate at Ravenna.

I'm certain that The Saxons and Langobards came from the same Hamburg area, Schleswig-Holstein region.
__________________
Descendant of The Saami, reindeer hunters of Scandinavia and The Cro-Magnon of southern France.
Reply With Quote
#5
Old 04-07-2007, 03:17 AM
johnraciti johnraciti is offline vbmenu_register("postmenu_36992", true);
Registered User

Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 281
The Lombards are Saxons by blood.

The Lombards are Saxons by blood.

This would explain would I have many Anglo-Saxon exact matches. These Lombards from North Germany (Hamburg) went into Milan 6th century then into Sicily during the 11th century.

Invaders huh...
__________________
Descendant of The Saami, reindeer hunters of Scandinavia and The Cro-Magnon of southern France.

R1b1c:

Northern Spain [Basque] 19.05% - Aragonese
Germany: Saxony [Sorbs] 18.18% - Swabians - Lombards
Holland: Zeeland, Southwestern Netherlands 13.04% - Normans
Pyrenees, Spain 12.88% - Aragonese
Southern Ireland 10.28% - Anglo-Saxons - Normans


U5a1a

2.3% - SC - Scotland - Anglo-Saxons - Normans
2.0% - FI - Finland - Longobards - Lombards
1.9% - CP - center Portugal - Spanish
1.5% - SG - south Germany - Lombards
1.4% - NG - north Germany - Normans
1.2% - NO - Norway - Longobards - Lombards, Norse - Normans
1.0% - SP - south Portugal - Spanish
0.5% - FR - France - Normans - Angevin French
0.5% - NP - north Portugal - Spanish
0.4% - EN - England - Anglo-Saxons - Normans

THE WESTERN ATLANTIC MODAL HAPLOTYPE
THE WESTERN ATLANTIC MODAL HAPLOTYPE

Super Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype


The Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype is the most common Y-DNA signature of Europe’s most common Haplogroup, R1b. Simply put your ancestors have experienced a dramatic population explosion over the past 10,000 years, probably since the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM-that’s Anthropology-speak for the last Ice Age) that covered most of Europe beginning 20,000 years ago and lasting for 10,000 long cold winters.

R1b, and its most common Haplotype (yours), exists in high or very high frequencies in all of Western Europe from Spain in the south to the British Isles and western Scandinavia in the north. It appears that approximately 2.5% in Western European males share this most common genetic 12 marker signature and because of its very high frequency we always suggest that for genealogy purposes people in this group should only use our 25 or 37 marker test for their genealogy.

Anthropologists have been describing for many years that only a select % of all the males in past societies did the vast majority of fathering, while other males lost the opportunity to pass on their Y-Chromosomal genes.

On a lighter note it’s clear that R1b’s Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype has contributed much more than its ‘fair share’ in populating Western Europe.


Northern Spain [Basque] 19.05
Germany: Saxony [Sorbs] 18.18
Holland: Zeeland, Southwestern Netherlands 13.04
Pyrenees, Spain 12.88
Southern Ireland 10.28

---------------------------------------
Spain: Zaragoza, Aragon 8.33
Birmingham, England 8.25
Spain: Barcelona, Catalonia 8.04
Lombardy, Northern Italy 7.14
Madeira, Portugal 7.14
Northern Portugal 7.14
Central Portugal 7.03
Holland: Limburg, Southern Netherlands 6.00
Cantabria, Northern Spain 5.94
Andulacia, Southern Spain 5.88
Emilia Romagna, Central Italy 5.62
Munster, Westphalia 5.61
Asturias, Northern Spain 5.56
Leiden, Western Netherlands 5.21
London, England 4.86
Brussels, Belgium 4.80
Blekinge, Sweden 4.76
Madrid, Central-East Spain 4.73
Eastern Norway 4.71
Lausanne, Western Switzerland 4.63
Freiburg, Baden-Wurttemburg 4.62
Northern Norway 4.44
Bern, Switzerland 4.39
Groningen, Northern Netherlands 4.17
Dusseldorf, Westphalia 4.00
Umbria, Central Italy 3.92
Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt 3.89
Marche, Eastern Italy 3.70
Valencia, Eastern Spain 3.57
Uppsala, Sweden 3.51
Oslo, Norway 3.33
Munich, Bavaria 3.19
Denmark 3.17
Strasbourg, Alsace 3.03
Berlin, Brandenburg 2.91
Tuscany, Central Italy 2.75
Southern Portugal 2.68
Cabinda, Angola 2.67
Tyrol, Western Austria 2.62
Chemnitz, Saxony 2.56
Liguria, Western italy 2.47
Leipzig, Saxony 2.42
Ostergotland Jonkoping, Sweden 2.38
Varmland, Sweden 2.33
Netherlands 2.29
Friesland, Northern Netherlands 2.27
Caceres, Central-West Spain 2.19
Skaraborg, Sweden 2.13
Sicily, Southern Italy 2.01
Sweden 1.98
Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg 1.94
Latium, Central Italy 1.80
Hamburg, Northern Germany 1.76
Cologne, Westphalia 1.48
Rostock, Mecklenburg 1.48
Dresden, Saxony 1.47
South Caucasus [Georgian] 1.29
Baranya, Southern Hungary [Romani] 1.28
Szeged, Hungary 1.00
Albania .99
Romania .98
Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate .96
Krakow, Southern Poland .93
Gdansk, Northern Poland .92
Paris, France .92
Ljubljana, Slovenia .83
Bulgaria .82
Tartu, Estonia .75
Macedonia .67
Turkey .63
Bydgoszcz, Northern Poland .59
Greifswald, Pomerania .48
Finland .25
Atlantic Modal Haplotype #2

The haplotype below is the most common haplotype in the YHRD database, and it may be considered classic (or "Western") AMH. It occurs all over Europe, and the paternal ancestors of someone with this haplotype could easily have come from anywhere. When that person has British roots, Occam's Razor is generally applied and a "deep ancestry" among the Celtic-speaking, pre-Roman population of Britain is assumed.

Much of this population has been in Western Europe since the Paleolithic, and is thought to have migrated to the British Isles from either Spain or France.

Sure enough, of the top twenty frequencies listed below, half occur in samples of Iberian origin.

The highest frequency occurs among the Basques, who have been shown to be nearly identical, in Y chromosome terms, to predominantly Celtic populations like the Irish and the Welsh. Southern Ireland itself exhibits the sixth highest frequency of this haplotype.

Yet a sample from Saxony comes in second, and one from the western Netherlands comes in fourth. Two Italian samples also exhibit frequencies among the top twenty. Since the Atlantic

Modal Haplotype occurs in relatively high proportions, not just in Iberia and the British Isles, but also in areas like Germany and The Netherlands, we cannot rule out an Anglo-Saxon origin for any "Border Reiver" descendant with this haplotype. It is not the simplest assumption we can make, but it is a reasonable assumption. Nor, with the high frequencies in Iberia and Italy, can we rule out an origin among Roman settlers.

The best assumption that we can make about the ancestry of "Border Reiver" descendants with this haplotype is that it is most likely a mixture of several possible origins


Northern Spain [Basque] 19.05%
Saxony [Sorbs] 18.18%
Zeeland, Southwestern Netherlands 13.04%
Pyrenees, Spain 12.88%
Southern Ireland 10.28%

My R1b1c:
My R1b1c:

13-24-14-11-11-14-12-12-12-13-13-29

13 24 14 11 11 14 12 12 12 13 13 29

STEWART

13 24 14 11 11 14 12 12 12 13 13 29 17 09 10 11 11 25 15 19 29 14 15 17 17

(15341)

R1b1c; Scottish Orkney - Celtic / Pictish; A title of honour for one who superintends household affairs for royalty, including tax collection, and the person at the right hand of the King in battle. Ultimately there was a Scottish Royal family of Stewarts - supposed to be descended from a line of Breton nobles. The Bruce and Stewart families were alligned by marriage and ultimately Robert Stewart, son of King Robert the Bruce, was crowned in 1371. Black makes that point that the name Steward became common since, for example, each bishop would have his own steward. Thus not every Stewart will be descended from the Royal household of Scotland - but it is possible that all Stewarts of Shetlands are true descendants. According to Martine, true descendants of the Royal family are descendants of Alan, Seneschal of Dol, a Celtic noble, and he also comments on how prolific this family was and implies that all Stewarts are Royal descendants and can trace their lineage to the Royal castle in Holyrood near Edinburgh. Lamb notes that the Stewarts were at one time Earls of Orkney; The participant"s family has maintained that "somewhere there was a connection to Robert Stewart Commendator of the Abbey Holyrood" and that the descent is via one of Robert's many known "formal" and "informal" relationships with women; John STEWART, born 1750, Whalsay (Brough); Whoever is the ancestor of those with this signature was indeed prolific. There are 208, 12 / 12 matches in the FTDNA database (the largest number known). In addition there are large numbers of matches at the 23, 24, and 4 at the 25 / 25 level. One of the latter matches is with a Stewart, and 2 of 8 of the 24/25 mathces are also Stewarts. At the 37 marker level, there are 34/37 matches with two CLANCEYs, and two STEWARTs. Work is ongoing to see if it can be shown that there is a DNA link to the Stewarts of the Mainland; It is possible that the signature we are seeing here is that of the Royal household of Scotland. In consulting with those connected with Scottish clan chieftains it was their opinin that the signature "Was Flaad, Senechal of Dol (traditionally Flaad "fitz Alan"). We need to get the DNA of someone like Stewart of Castle Stewart, Stewart of Galloway or Arrdvorlich or Appin, or another known male line descendant of Flaad" (DM). Clearly more work needs to be done in Shetland and on the Mainland, hopefully, as noted above, by testing someone known to be a Stewart Royal descendant. The DNA finding of S21 and S28 minus on these Germanic and Continental markers lends support to the contention that this haplotype is native Celtic / Pictish.
U5a1a

NE, North Europe; - Central Europe; 9.1%
BR, Britain; - Central Europe; 9.1%

(Normans)


R1b1c9a:

Greater Frisia - Northern Germanic / Scandanavian

(Lombards/Saxons/Frisians)

Originary Santo Stefano di Camastra was called "Santo Stefano di Mistretta",and in this way it is mentioned in Norman-Swabian documents.

Trigona - Barone di Azzolina

Fu giurato in Piazza nel 1741-42 e capitano di giustizia nell’anno 1744-45; un Francesco Maria Trigona e Bonanno, barone di Azzolina.

North-Eastern Sicilian:
North-Eastern Sicilian:


U5a1a = Norman

The town originated around the Benedictine monastery of Santa Croce di Santo Stefano in Val Demone, established in the Norman period (11th century AD), and took at that time the name of Santo Stefano di Mistretta (Mistretta being at the time the nearest important center).


R1b1c9/R1b1c9a = Lombard

Lombard immigrants in Randazzo (Catania Provincia).

A Lombard Community around the church San Martino in Randazzo (Catania Provincia).

The Lombards (the last to come, with the Normans) in San Martino in Randazzo (Catania Provincia).

R1b1c9
R1b1c9 (being the predominant variety in Holland, Northern Germany and Scandinavia)

Norse: European to East German
15341
STEWART
R1b1c
Norse:
European
13
24
14
11
11
14
12
12
12
13
13
29

Northern Spain [Basque]
19.05%

Saxony [Sorbs]
18.18%

Zeeland, Southwestern Netherlands
13.04%

Pyrenees, Spain
12.88%

Southern Ireland
10.28%

Lusatia (German: Lausitz, Upper Sorbian: Łužica, Lower Sorbian: Łužyca, Polish: Łużyce, Czech: Lužice) is a historical region between the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers and the Elbe river in the eastern German states of Saxony and Brandenburg, south-western Poland (Lower Silesian Voivodeship) and the northern Czech Republic.

History

According to the earliest records, the area was settled by Celtic tribes. Later, around 100 BC, the Germanic tribe of the Semnones settled in that area. Around the year 600 CE the Slavic people known as the Milceni settled permanently in the region. In about 928, Germans and Poles began invading the region. Lusatia changed hands repeatedly, belonging in turn to Samo's Empire, Greater Moravia, and Czech Kingdom of Bohemia. In 1002, the Poles took control of the region, and Lusatia became part of Poland in 1018 until it was absorbed by the German principalities of Meissen and Brandenburg less than twenty years later. In 1076 Emperor Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire awarded Lusatia as a fief to the Bohemian duke Vratislav II. Around 1200 large numbers of German settlers came to Lusatia, settling in the forested areas yet not settled by the Slavs. Upper Lusatia remained under Bohemian rule until the Thirty Years' War when it became part of Saxony. In 1815 Upper Lusatia was divided, with the eastern part around Görlitz now belonging to Prussia. Following the Lutheran Reformation, Lusatia became Protestant but especially the Sorbs stayed mainly catholic till today. In 1945 the eastern part rejoined Saxony and in 1952, when the state of Saxony was divided into three administrative areas, Upper Lusatia became part of the Dresden administrative region. 1990 the state of Saxony was reestablished.

Demographic
Region where the Sorbs live in Germany

Since ethnicity is not a legal category in Germany for German citizens, their number can only be guessed. The constitutions of both Brandenburg and Saxony explicitly declare any inquiry about ethnicity unconstitutional and illegal. But every citizen is free to view himself/herself as a Sorb and thus choose his/her ethnic identity, which must not be testified or examined by any state authority. Current estimates speak of 10,000 to 30,000 active speakers of Sorbian (almost all of them are bilingual) and about 60,000 people who subjectively consider themselves Sorbs.

The Sorbs (Upper Sorbian: Serbja, Lower Sorbian: Serby) are a Slavic minority indigenous to the region known as Lusatia in the current German states of Saxony and Brandenburg (in former GDR territory). They are or were also known as Lusatians, Wends, “Lusatian Serbs” or “Serbs of Luzice (Upper Sorbian: Łužica, Lower Sorbian: Łužyca).”

DYS 426=12, DYS 388=12
DYS 426=12, DYS 388=12

Haplogroup: R1b1c9 (tested)

Last name: German

Variant last names: Jarman Jerman Jarmon Gearman

http://www.ysearch.org/search_view.asp?uid=3EAEK&viewuid=ZD7BZ&p=0


Haplogroup: R1b1c9*
Last name: DYS492_13_R1b

DYS492=13

About 95% of males with DYS492=13 also have the "S21" SNP

About 65% of S21 males have DYS390=23 and about 30% have DYS390=24

http://www.ysearch.org/search_view.asp?uid=ZD7BZ&viewuid=8FPR4&p=0

Frederick II
The last Norman king designated Constance, wife of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, as his heir and the kingdom passed successively to Frederick II, Conrad IV, Manfred, and Conradin of Hohenstaufen.

Frederick II

Frederick II (1194-1250) was Holy Roman emperor from 1215 to 1250. His unsuccessful effort to establish a strong centralized Italian state brought him into a long and bitter conflict with the papacy and the Italian urban centers.

Born in lesi, Italy, Frederick II was the only son of Emperor Henry VI and of Constance of Sicily. His father died in 1197 and his mother, who served as regent for him, a year later. As the orphan king of Sicily, he was the ward of the great pope Innocent III, who ignored his education and training but kept his kingdom intact for him. Frederick grew up in Palermo, surrounded by factions who attempted to use him for their own ends and influenced by the Islamic and Greek culture that pervaded the dissolute Sicilian court.

At first Frederick was ignored in the empire of his father, where his able uncle Philip of Swabia and the Welf Otto IV, son of Henry the Lion, were quarreling over the imperial title. By 1211, however, Philip was dead and Otto IV had broken with Innocent III, who had previously supported him. So, when a group of German nobles asked him to go to Germany to assume the imperial crown, Frederick made his infant son, Henry, king of Sicily and hastened to Frankfurt, where in 1212 he was chosen ruler of Germany. He pacified the papacy, which feared a union between Sicily and the empire, by promising Innocent III that he would abdicate his Sicilian throne in favor of his son and that he would go on a crusade at the earliest opportunity. In 1214 Otto IV was defeated at Bouvines by Frederick's ally King Philip II (Augustus) of France, and in 1215 Frederick was recognized as emperor-elect by Pope Innocent III, who died a little while later.

Early Reign

Frederick began his reign as emperor in Germany by gaining the support of the magnates, both lay and ecclesiastical, by confirming in 1213 and 1220 their right to the privileges they had usurped in 1197 on the death of Emperor Henry VI. He then made his son, Henry, king of Germany and his viceroy and returned to Italy, which from this time on occupied most of his attention, for Germany never interested him except as a source of support for his Italian projects. Immediately upon his return he persuaded Pope Honorius III to crown him emperor and managed to put off giving up Sicily, as he had promised, on the grounds he needed to pacify it so that it could support his crusade.

The first task Frederick undertook was to establish firm control over the kingdom of Sicily, which had been in complete disorder since 1197. In 1220, in contrast with his actions in Germany, he revoked all privileges granted its towns and nobles since the death of King William II (1189), put down a Moslem revolt on the island of Sicily itself, and began to organize his realm into a tyrannical but well-administered kingdom. By 1225, prodded by Pope Honorius, he had married Yolande, heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem (his first wife, an Aragonese princess, having died), and had made plans to proceed with his crusade to the East. He was still delaying on fulfilling this project when Pope Honorius died in 1227.

Honorius was succeeded by the aged pope Gregory IX (reigned 1227-1241), who, though over 80, was a vigorous, unrelenting foe of the young emperor. This aged pope almost at once excommunicated him for not going on crusade and, when Frederick then left for the East in 1228 without having the excommunication lifted, excommunicated him again and began planning a crusade against Frederick's Sicilian domains. Frederick proved very successful in the East, where he regained the city of Jerusalem from the Moslems by negotiation instead of war, crowned himself king of Jerusalem (a title which he retained until 1245), and built up his authority in the East. He returned in 1230 to find Pope Gregory IX attacking his kingdom of Sicily. After he had defeated the papal forces, he made Gregory lift his excommunication.

Policies in Italy

In 1231 Frederick promulgated the Constitutions of Melfi, an important code of laws that set up a nonfeudal state in Sicily. By this code the independence of towns and nobles was curbed, a centralized judicial and administrative system was established, mercenary armies were recruited, ecclesiastical privileges were limited, and commerce and industry were fostered by a uniform system of tolls and port dues and a common gold currency. At the same time his own revenues were increased by the establishment of royal monopolies over such things as salt production and the trade in grain. Sicily became one of the most prosperous realms in Europe.

Frederick then proceeded to attempt to extend his centralized rule to northern Italy, where in 1231 he made plans to subjugate its cities by appointing podestas, or imperial governors, over them. This alarmed the Pope, who saw the papacy, as in Henry VI's time, threatened between an imperial hammer in the north and the well-organized anvil of Sicily in the south. Gregory's answer was to reopen hostilities against Frederick II by attempting with some success to revive the Lombard League used against Frederick's grandfather Frederick Barbarossa. When these cities rose against him in support of a German revolt of his son King Henry, Frederick suppressed the revolt and in 1237 won a great victory over the Milanese at Cortenuova. As a result of this victory, the Lombard League temporarily collapsed and most of its cities submitted to him, as did the majority of the nobles of northern Italy.

While Frederick was establishing his authority firmly in Sicily and northern Italy, however, he was following quite a different policy in Germany. There in 1231 he issued the Constitution in Favor of the Princes, which had the result of making the magnates practically independent and even placed the towns under their rule. When his son Henry objected to this and revolted, Frederick suppressed his rising, threw him into prison, where he died, and replaced him as king in 1238 with his second son, Conrad. From this time on he made little attempt to exercise any real authority in Germany, whose princes, satisfied with their status, caused him no trouble. The only action of importance he took which affected Germany was his grant of a special charter to the Teutonic Knights, who, late in his reign, began their occupation of East Prussia, which they wrenched from the grasp of the kings of Poland.

In Italy, however, Pope Gregory IX still refused to accept Frederick's domination of northern Italy and excommunicated him. When his papal opponent died in 1241, Frederick reacted by using military force to keep a new pope from being elected for 2 years (1241-1243) and finally by procuring the election of a Ghibelline pope, Innocent IV (reigned 1243-1254). Innocent IV, however, soon broke with Frederick and fled from Italy to Lyons, where in 1245 he held a great Church council which condemned Frederick as the antichrist. The efforts of the Pope to enlist French and English support against this great Hohenstaufen ruler, however, proved abortive, and the war continued in Italy.

Frederick, relying on his able illegitimate sons and on lieutenants like Ezzalino, fought valiantly against the continuing resistance of the cities of Lombardy and the Papal States. Finally his army was badly defeated near Parma in 1248. By 1250, just as he was beginning to reverse the tide, he died suddenly, and his hopes of dominating all of Italy died with him. He left a number of illegitimate sons in Italy as his heirs, such as Manfred, Enzio, and Philip of Antioch, and one legitimate successor, the young Conrad across the Alps in Germany.

His Character

Frederick's character has long fascinated the historians and biographers who have studied him. He was married three times, first to Constance of Aragon, next to Yolande of Jerusalem, and finally to Isabelle of England. His real love was Bianca Lancia, with whom he carried on a lengthy liaison and who bore him several children. He had two legitimate sons and numerous illegitimate ones. He was reputed, probably with some justification, to have kept a harem in Palermo. His general lifestyle seemed to his contemporaries more Islamic than Christian; for instance, he maintained a force of Moslem mercenaries and scandalized his age by traveling with a private zoo. Though he remained formally a Christian, his spirit seemed more tolerant and skeptical than his age was ready to accept. In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of his Sicilian court, Arabic and Byzantine culture was highly prized.

Frederick proved an important patron of the arts throughout his entire reign. A poet himself, he prized southern French poetry highly, and he welcomed troubadour poets from this region when after the Albigensian Crusade they fled to his court. Through the influence of these poets, a new poetry began to be composed in the Sicilian vernacular tongue. He was also much interested in art and architecture, and under his aegis a classical artistic revival took place, anticipating that of later Renaissance Italy.

Frederick spoke a number of languages, and in 1234 he founded the University of Naples, the first state university in western Europe. He was much attracted to scientific ideas, perhaps because of his appreciation of Arabic culture. He is said to have conducted a series of experiments to determine how digestion took place, using the contents of the stomachs of executed criminals as his evidence. He also tried isolating children at birth to discover what language they would speak if untaught. He was also an enthusiastic falconer and wrote a book on the subject entitled On the Art of Hunting with Birds, which proved to be the most detailed scientific examination of ornithology written until the 19th century.

In short, Frederick deserves the title of Stupor Mundi (Wonder of the World), which his contemporaries bestowed upon him. This extraordinary man with all his faults, then, was a ruler who had the misfortune to be born before his time. He paid the price for this by seeing all his brilliance and ability brought to naught by a hostile papacy and a reluctant citizenry of the northern Italian communes. With his death Italy had to wait more than 600 years for the unity he had tried to bring about.


Frederick II

(born Dec. 26, 1194, Jesi, Ancona, Papal States — died Dec. 13, 1250, Castel Fiorentino, Apulia, Kingdom of Sicily) King of Sicily (1197 – 1250), duke of Swabia (1228 – 35), German king (1212 – 50), and Holy Roman Emperor (1220 – 50). The grandson of Frederick I Barbarossa, he became king of Sicily at age three but did not gain control over the strife-ridden country until 1212. He defeated his rival Otto IV in 1214, and though the planned union of Sicily and Germany alarmed the pope (1220), he negotiated a compromise and was crowned emperor. A delay in departing for the Sixth Crusade brought excommunication (1227), later revoked. By 1229 Frederick was king of Jerusalem. On his return he quelled a rebellion in Germany led by his son Henry, who had allied with the Lombard League. Seeing Frederick as a growing threat to papal authority, Gregory IX excommunicated him again in 1239; the emperor responded by invading the Papal States. He tried and failed (1245) to negotiate peace with Innocent IV, and his struggle with the papacy continued. By the time of his death Frederick had lost much of central Italy, and his support in Germany was uncertain.
NOBILIARIO DI SICILIA
Barone di Santo Stefano di Mistretta [+donna Maria-Carolina Trigona, dei principi di S.Elia, n.1896; o Pier Marino Albanese, figlio di donna Giovanna Albanese, nata Trigona].

Trigona.
Azzolina
Santo Stefano di Mistretta

Dott. A. Mango di Casalgerardo
NOBILIARIO DI SICILIA
da Traversa a Trovato

Santo Stefano Di Camastra ME
Santo Stefano Di Camastra ME

Barone di Contrada Felicita
Barone di Contrada Sparta
Barone di Contrada Antara
Barone di Contrada Puzzarello

Europe's Cro-Magnon people.
Hg U5a1a – (HV-2: 309+C) – Italy or N Caucasus
Hg U5ala – (HV1+2: 16270T, 16256T, 16399G, 309+C)- Italy / Adygei
SW France, N. Spain

M343A - Hg R1b - W. Europe
P-25A – Hg R1b1 - SW France, N Spain
M269C – Hg R1b1c - SW France, N Spain

35,000 YBP, M343 are the direct descendants of Europe's Cro-Magnon people.
The Franks or the Frankish peoples were mainly proto-German speaking peoples such as the Salians, Sicambri, Chamavi, Tencteri, Chattuarii, Bructeri, Usipetes, Ampsivarii. These peoples formed one of several ever changing west Germanic federations and first appeared in history around 260. Sometimes they allied with non-Dutch, or Old Frankish speaking tribes as the Frisians and Chatti and occasionally with Saxons. They were not originally grouped into one official tribe, but "as with the other barbarians, they belonged to much smaller groups that would join constantly changing confederations."[1] Most of those peoples were living at the northern borders of the Rhine in, and opposite to the Insula Batavorum in a region then called "Francia" in the Panegyrici Latini. They formed a constant pressure on the Roman borders but also took active service in the Roman army, climbing up the ranks to dominating positions, such as at the time of Arbogastes. They slowly replaced the Batavians in their native domains and according to Ammianus Marcellinus expanded their territory on Roman soil to the delta of the Scheldt, where the Salians blocked grain supplies for the Roman Army. With later invasions of the Salians Chlodio and Childeric they moved up the Scheldt and homed around Tournai, from where those Salians finally conquered the Roman army, that was supported by other Franks.

The Merovingian family of Childeric united all Franks in Gaul and slowly expanded their influence to other territories until a new dynasty called the Carolingians took over and conquered a major part of western Europe. The location of Francia moved with the Franks untill finally around the year 1000 it became to be known as France.

Etymology

Some histories asserted that the Merovingian kings were descended from the Sicambri, a Germanic tribe, asserting that this tribe had changed their name to "Franks" in 11 BC, following their defeat and relocation by Drusus, under the leadership of a certain chieftain called Francio. The Chronicle of Fredegar is the earliest source for this chieftain, and it is widely agreed among historians (including A. C. Murray, Ian Woods, Rosamund McKitterick, and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill) that "Francio" is a Fredegarian invention.

The ethnonym has also been traced to *frankon (Old English franca), meaning "javelin, lance." This would compare to the seax (knife) after which the Saxons were named or the halberd (battle-axe) after which the Lombards may have been named. The throwing axe of the Franks is known as the francisca) but, conversely, the weapon may have been named after the tribe. A. C. Murray says, "The etymology of 'Franci' is uncertain ('the fierce ones' is the favourite explanation), but the name is undoubtedly of Germanic origin."

The meaning of "free" (e.g. English frank, frankly, franklin) arose because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks had the status of freemen.

Earliest records of the Franks

The earliest Frankish history remains relatively unclear. Our main source, the Gallo-Roman chronicler Gregory of Tours, whose Historia Francorum (History of the Franks) covers the period up to 594, quotes from otherwise lost sources like Sulpicius Alexander and Frigeridus, and profits from Gregory's personal contact with many Frankish notables. Apart from Gregory's History, some surviving earlier Roman sources such as Ammianus and Sidonius Apollinaris mention the Franks.

Gregory states that the Franks originally lived in Pannonia, but later settled on the banks of the Rhine. Additional sources beginning with the 7th century Chronicle of Fredegar and the anonymous work called Gesta regnum Francorum (completed 727) likewise relate that a Cimmerian or Scythian tribe called the Sicambri migrated in prehistoric times from the mouth of the Danube on the Black Sea to the Rhine, where they took the name "Franks." This legend of a Scythian or Cimmerian background is not unique to the Franks; it is similar to the origin legends of many other European nations as well.

Modern scholars of the Völkerwanderung are in agreement that the Frankish confederacy emerged at the beginning of the third century out of the unification of various earlier, smaller groups, including the Sicambri, Usipetes, Tencterii, and Bructerii, who inhabited the lower Rhine valley and lands immediately to the east. The confederacy was a social development perhaps accelerated by increasing upheaval in the area arising from the war between Rome and the Marcomanni beginning in 166 and subsequent conflicts of the late second and the third centuries. A region in the northeast of today's Netherlands — north of the erstwhile Roman border — still bears the name Salland, and may have received that name from the Salians, who formed the core of the Frankish pirates.

Since the very end of the second century, Franks appear in Roman textual and archeological sources and on Roman soil as both enemies and allies (laeti or dediticii). Around 250, one group of Franks, taking advantage of a weakened Roman Empire, penetrated as far as Tarragona in present-day Spain, plaguing this region for about a decade before Roman forces subdued them and expelled them from Roman territory. About forty years later, the Franks had the Scheldt region under control and were raiding the Channel, disrupting transportation to Britain. Roman forces pacified the region, but did not expel the Franks, who were feared as pirates along the shores at least till the time of Julian the Apostate (358), when some of them were settled as foederati in Toxandria according to a treaty with the Roman authority.[citation needed] They participated in the spectacular episode known as the Conspiratio Barbarica (367–369).

Northern Spain [Basque] 19.05% - Aragonese
Germany: Saxony [Sorbs] 18.18% - Swabians - Lombards

2.3% - SC - Scotland - Anglo-Saxons - Normans
2.0% - FI - Finland - Longobards - Lombards

Aragonese - People and dynasty of Aragon in northeastern Spain.

Swabians - People of Swabia region in southern Germany.

Lombards - People of Lombardy in northern Italy, by 1200 descended from both Germanic Longobards and native Romans.

Normans - People of Frankish and Nordic (Viking) origin in Normandy who conquered parts of Italy and Britain in 11th century.

Sicilian Peoples: The Swabians
by Vincenzo Salerno

Barbarossa with his sons Frederick and the future Henry VI.If the Normans brought Sicily back into the European orbit following centuries of Byzantine and Arab rule, the Swabians made it one of the most important regions of Europe. Swabia is a region of southwestern Germany which in the twelfth century included part of Bavaria and eastern Switzerland. Swabia takes its name from a Germanic people, the Suabi, and borders the region once ruled by the Alemanni, another Germanic tribe.

The Swabian Staufer (Hohenstaufen) family emerged as a powerful dynasty before 1100. Their name comes from Stauf Castle, built near Göppingen in the Jura Mountains by Count Frederick (died 1105). Their early history was not too different from those of other central European nobility emerging in the high medieval era, but the Dukes of Swabia became Kings of Germany during the rule of the distinguished Frederick I "Barbarossa" ("Redbeard") in 1152. From 1138 until 1254, the Hohenstaufen ruled as emperors of the loose feudal confederation known as the Holy Roman Empire. The sovereign state of Swabia itself was dissolved after 1268, its lands seized by lesser families, but in the 1190s it was the focal point of a kind of vaguely defined German unity.

It was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, but the confederation founded by Charlemagne was Europe's most powerful monarchy. In 1186, Constance Hauteville, the youngest child of King Roger II of Sicily, was betrothed to Henry VI, second son of Frederick Barbarossa. This was seen as a way of sealing the Normans' rapport with the dynasty which controlled not only the Alpine regions but most of Italy north of Bologna.

By virtue of his consort, Henry claimed the Sicilian crown in 1194 following the brief and ineffectual reign of Tancred, Constance's illegitimate nephew through her eldest brother, Roger (died 1149).

When Henry VI was crowned in Palermo, he found himself in control of the island of Sicily and all of mainland Italy except for a central region (the Papal State) controlled by the Papacy, a situation the Pope and other sovereigns Seals of husband, wife and son.found disturbing --indeed overtly threatening.

The Emperor's power was not absolute. Eventually, a rivalry between factions developed, with the Guelphs (Welfs) opposing the Ghibellines (Hohenstaufen supporters who took their Italianized name from the Staufenfortress of Waiblingen). In time, the Guelphs supported the Pope (and the Angevins) against the Swabians. This undercurrent determined Imperial politics in some parts of Italy.

His wife may have been a Norman princess, but the Sicilians did not welcome Henry and his suite of German knights and retainers very warmly. The new king installed several commanderies of recently-founded Teutonic Order of knights in Sicily, appropriating for them Palermo's Magione Church and constructing for them the Church of Saint Mary of the Germans in Messina. Though only a few walls and arches remain, Saint Mary is one of the few examples of more-or-less pure Gothic architecture in Sicily. Constance gave birth to Frederick II who, like his grandfather Roger II, was one of Europe's most enlightened rulers.

Henry VI died in 1197. While his widow raised their young son in Sicily, many of the unruly Imperial vassals reneged on their feudal obligations. Upon reaching the age of majority, Frederick sought to remedy this. His realm included regions from Saxony to Palestine, effectively ruled from Palermo, though he traveled almost continually. The kingdoms of Sicily and Jerusalem were not part of the Holy Roman Empire; strictly speaking, they were separate realms which just happened to be ruled by the same monarch. Furthermore, the kingship of Germany was one thing, the emperorship something more.

Some historians regard the Swabian (or Suabian) period as a continuation of the Norman rule of Sicily. However, Sicily changed greatly under the Swabians. Despite Frederick's quarrels with the Papacy, leading to excommunication, the church in Sicily became almost completely Latinized during his long reign. By 1250, there were no Byzantine parishes in Sicily --only a few Orthodox monasteries remained. Following a series of revolts, a few thousand Muslim Arabs were "exiled" to Lucera in Apulia, while thousands more converted to Catholicism. By 1250, mosques were a rare sight. In 1200, Sicily was a multicultural kingdom; by the end of the Swabian era a half-century later it was an essentially "European" one. This was true of customs, language (Sicilian) and law. All bore the mark of Arab and Byzantine influences but were now almost "Italian."

It was during the Swabian period that the Sicilian language later recognized by Dante and then Boccaccio truly evolved. The sonnet is thought to have been born at the court of Frederick II.

Architecture gradually lost its Byzantine and Arab features. An Italianate "Gothicized" Romanesque prevailed. Though present in some Norman-era castles and churches, most of the arched two-light windows visible around Sicily date from the Swabian period or the century following it. Frederick built a number of castles, such as the fortress at Catania.

The people themselves did not immediately change. Sicily was still the heart of an important realm, even if absentee administration became commonplace. In the countryside, feudalism flowered.

The term "Swabian" is misleading. Many of the arrivals were German or Lombard but not Swabian. Lombard garrisons loyal to Frederick were installed in several towns, the native "Norman" nobles regarded as too fickle. Initially, Frederick also had Saracen (Arab) troops. Constance of Aragon, Frederick's wife, brought an Iberian influence to the Sicilian court.

While Frederick was a brilliant man, it appears that he was not generally liked by the Sicilians. Indeed, Swabian rule generally appears not to have been appreciated either by the nobility or the other classes. Despite this, a stronger national identity was being forged among the Sicilians, continuing what had begun in Norman times. At Frederick's death, in 1250, Pope Innocent IV tightened his grip on the island. The strong papal influence, which eventually led to Angevin rule and consequently, in 1282, the War of the Vespers, was not at all progressive. For comparison, we may consider that England's Magna Carta, issued in 1215, set forth royal and baronial rights and duties for centuries to come. In Sicily, despite numerous "parliaments" and declarations over the years, nothing comparable ever emerged, even though there were numerous laws, such as the remarkable Assizes of Ariano of Roger II.

Following the death of Frederick in 1250, three of his descendants claimed the throne in succession, but the antipathy of the Guelphs and the Papacy had not abated. Frederick's son Conrad IV died inHohenstaufen coat of arms and eagle insignia. 1254. An illegitimate son, Manfred, was killed at the Battle of Benevento in 1266 when his army was defeated by an Angevin force commanded by Charles of Anjou, the papal choice to succeed as king of Sicily. Frederick's grandson, Conradin (Conrad's son), was executed in 1268 at the age of sixteen. With the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, southern Italy passed into the hands of the House of Anjou, which ruled Sicily from Naples until the House of Aragon, and the Sicilians themselves, challenged French authority in 1282.

The end of Hohenstaufen rule was a turning point in history because henceforth Sicily would only rarely be ruled by resident kings. Instead, it was usually administered by viceroys. Moreover, the island nation lost her importance in world affairs. There is also a cultural factor to be considered. Had the thirteenth-century popes (and their Guelphic allies) not had their way, Italy might have evolved into a state with a society in some ways more Germanic than Latin.

We do not know how many Germans and Lombards remained in Sicily following the Swabian period. Those who received feudal lands certainly stayed, and in several towns certain surnames --and even some commonly used words-- bear the mark of Germanic influences. The Teutonic Knights maintained several Sicilian commanderies well into the 1300s, undisturbed by subsequent dynasties.

Sicilian Peoples: The Aragonese
by Vincenzo Salerno

Eleanor of Aragon, by Laurana.The Aragonese period of Sicily can be said to have lasted from 1282 until 1492, bridging the medieval and modern eras. The Kingdom of Aragon, which by the middle of the thirteenth century encompassed Catalonia and other lands, was an ethnically diverse region with its own language and a flourishing capital, Barcelona. Indeed, Aragon emerged as a powerful "Spanish" state in an age when most of the Iberian monarchies were struggling against the Moors, a conflict which was to continue well into the last years of the fifteenth century. Until the end of the Middle Ages, Spain was not a unified nation.

The royal house of Aragon effectively ruled Sicily from the time of the War of the Vespers in 1282, when the conspiracy of Sicilian nobles acting against Charles of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, brought about a popular uprising that ousted thousands of Angevins from the island. King Peter of Aragon, whose wife was considered the last heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Swabia, thus became King of Sicily, succeeded in turn by two of his sons.

In principle, the crowns of Aragon and Sicily were to remain separate, meaning that the same prince could not simultaneously be king of both Aragon and Sicily. In practice, of course, this was not always the case.

In 1302, a treaty known as the Peace of Caltabellotta (for the city where it was signed) established an Angevin-Aragonese truce. By that time, the dynasties of Aragon and Naples were related through marriage, and the Aragonese presence was well-established in Sicily. The House of Anjou, meanwhile, cast its aspirations toward Hungary and elsewhere, and the Neapolitan crown was inherited by the House of Aragon in the middle of the fifteenth century.

Initially, the Aragonese period brought peace and prosperity to Sicily. This was sometimes interrupted by periods of unrest, and the nobility never seemed content. Yet it was during this era that most of Sicily's remaining castles and medieval palaces were constructed. Pure Gothic styles were rarely followed. Instead, various Romanesque styles flourished, often enhanced by certain Gothic features and therefore called "Gothic." The Chiaramonte Gothic style was associated with one of the noble families of Sicily which (as we shall see), in the absence of a resident king, usurped royal power for several decades. This was essentially a continuation of the Swabian style used in fortified structures. In the fifteenth century, as the "closed" fortified residences (castles) gave way to more airy "modern" palaces, the Catalan Gothic style was influenced by Aragonese and Catalonian trends, while the Renaissance Gothic style was based on northern Italian architecture. In general, however, the Renaissance influence --despite exceptional artists such as Antonello da Messina-- was minimal in Sicily compared to northern Italy. Nevertheless, in churches statues gradually replaced icons and bas-reliefs, and outside the Church a few enlightened patrons supported the arts.

Socially, feudalism became the norm, though in reality (despite claims to the contrary) very few Sicilian noble families identified in the eighteenth century are descended in the male line from ancestors living before 1400. Also, most Sicilians bearing Spanish surnames are descended not from Aragonese forebears but from Spanish ones arriving well after 1500.

There were very few Orthodox communities in Sicily after 1300, though an influx of Albanians arrived two centuries later. As far as we know, the Muslims had all converted to Catholicism by 1300. Whereas many towns had once had thriving Jewish communities, most Jews were now migrating to the larger cities. By 1400, Sicily was an essentially Roman Catholic and "Latin" country.

The Aragonese introduced a number of nobles to the island, and envy by the native "Latin" nobility, represented by families such as the Chiaramonte, provoked a destructive "war" against the Alagona and other "Catalan" clans, who ostensibly acted in Aragonese interests. The roots of this movement can be traced to certain families seizing fiefs formerly belonging to the defeated Angevin nobility, but simple greed and avarice were the Courtyard of the Steri, Palermo.real causes. Aggravated by the absence of the king and the presence of the Plague, the chaos led to much rural destruction for several decades.

The Chiaramonte (probably descended from the Norman nobility) built castles across Sicily. In Palermo, their socio-economic rivalry with the local Grua family became architectural, pitting the Steri palace (shown here) against the Sclafani palace --both constructed as fortresses just in case the need for defence should arise. The legitimate rulers could not afford to be absent forever. In 1392, Martin of Aragon was crowned king. The Alagonas, Peraltas, Ventimiglias, Gruas and Artales were brought under control, but the deepest royal wrath was reserved for the arrogant Chiaramontes, the last of whom was hung before his lavish residence in Palermo, which became the royal palace and viceroy's residence of Sicily. (It later became the local seat of the Inquisition.) Usurping royal prerogatives and riches was a dangerous game.

During the Aragonese period a number of foreigners were present in Sicilian cities. Catalan cloth merchants, Genoese traders, Venetian bankers and even English vendors arrived. Today, certain urban churches reflect the heritage of these communities. Saint Joseph of the Neapolitans and Saint George of the Genoans, both in Palermo, come to mind. In the country, however, deforestation continued in an effort to provide timber for the building of Aragonese ships. It isn't difficult to imaging the overzealous Chiaramontes and Ventimiglias destroying entire forests for economic gain.

In Spain, the fall of Granada, the unification of the nation under what became a single dynasty, and the expulsion (or conversion) of the last non-Christians --Jews and some remaining Muslims-- in 1492 mark the beginning of the modern "Spanish" era. The arrival of Columbus in America in the same year definitively removed the Mediterranean, and its largest island, from the stage of world events. In the immediate aftermath of these developments, the kings of Spain were also kings of Sicily, though the Sicilian crown was to be passed from dynasty to dynasty in the centuries to follow. There were no more Muslims in Sicily, but most of the island's Jews converted to Catholicism. As many Jews left, this had a negative effect on the economy of cities such as Palermo. Until around 1500, Messina was the second most important city in Sicily. Henceforth, Catania gradually challenged her for importance in the eastern part of the island.

Except for a few years of resurgent independent feeling every few decades --usually coinciding with a "parliament"-- national Sicilian identity gradually declined after 1300. By 1492, it was all but invisible. Even following the Vespers, most "parliaments" held in Sicily under Angevin rule were little more than meetings of barons convened on royal authority, usually with the purpose of "confirming" royal proposals.

Despite isolated prosperity, Aragonese Sicily was undistinguished for economic or social initiative, and was usually exploited to support Aragon's treasury and wars. In many ways, the Sicilian nobility became a sleepy, unmotivated social class uninterested in genuine economic development or progress. A true middle class failed to develop, and literacy decreased at a frightening rate. These conditions worsened under Spanish rule in the decades and centuries to come. Coupled with foreign --often distant-- rule, a reactionary Catholicism didn't help matters. In the waning years of the Middle Ages, the benefits of an "Italian" Sicily on the model of the northern city-states probably would have outweighed those of a distant "Spanish" one. These harsh realities would haunt the Sicilians well into the twentieth century.

Sicilian Peoples: The Normans
by Vincenzo Salerno

Bayeau Tapestry. Knights at the Battle of Hastings resembled those at the Battle of Messina five years earlier.To call them "Vikings" (Norsemen) is to oversimplify the culture of the medieval Normans, for their society, heritage and genetic make-up were as Frankish and Roman as they were Norse. The term "Norman" refers to the residual Norse and Frankish civilization of Normandy. Much as the Lombards of Lombardy were not purely Longobardic, the Normans of Normandy were not purely Norse. In fact, they were descended not only from Vikings but from Franks, Romans and Celts, and their language was a dialect of French. Unlike their Viking forebears, the Normans were Christians, and their society was highly evolved in its government, law, art, architecture and literature, which during the twelfth century profoundly influenced not only Normandy but England and southern Italy.

The Norsemen ("Viking" comes from the early Scandinavian word vikingr for "pirates") were Danish, Norwegian and Swedish adventurers who rose to power in the ninth century, raiding the coasts of northwestern Europe in places like England and Ireland, and sailing as far as North America. The Swedish element penetrated overland and along rivers into the Baltics and Russia to the Black Sea. Constantinople's Varangian Guard consisted of Vikings such as Harald Sigurdsson ("Hardrada") who fought alongside Normans with George Maniakes in Byzantine Sicily. The Vikings were initially pagans, and their colorful mythology has given us the English names of several days of the week (Wednesday for Woden, Thursday for Thor, etc.), following an earlier Roman custom of naming the days for gods (as in the Italian Mercoledì for Mercury and Giovedì for Jove or Jupiter).

The Franks were a Germanic tribe which settled in Gaul (France and southern Belgium) during the decline of the Roman Empire. The Romans abandoned part of Belgium to the Franks in AD 358. By 507, much of France was united under the Christianized Frankish king Clovis. This included what is now Normandy.

By 900, Vikings were raiding this region but also establishing outposts there. In antiquity, the region of the Seine and Eure valleys had Norman knights depicted in the cloister of Monreale Abbey, outside Palermo.been Celtic. It fell under Roman control through the efforts of Julius Caesar. The Franks had ruled not only in the person of Clovis, but under the reign of Charlemagne. After 911, Charles III "the Simple" ceded Normandy to the Norse chieftain Hrolf (Rollo), who became a Christian. Immigration rapidly increased, and by 1000, following several generations of intermarriage with the "native" Frankish-Celtic population (i.e. Viking men marrying Frankish women), a distinct ethnic culture had emerged. In the decades to follow, Norman knights arrived in Italy, first as pilgrims and then as mercenaries, taking part (on both sides) in the wars between Byzantines and Lombards. In some cases, these were the younger sons of nobles who (under Frankish law) could not inherit lands destined for eldest sons. In others, they were simply wandering men-at-arms.

In general, the Normans of England were somewhat higher-born than their compatriots in Italy, their surnames typically based on familial fiefs in Normandy. Like the conquest of England, the Normans' conquest of Italy was characterized by social and political motivations, though it was much slower than the English campaign. The patriarchs of Rome (the popes) resented Byzantine influence in Italy, and the power of the Lombard feudatories (in peninsular Italy) was viewed as a nuisance. There were also more racist motives. Whereas the competition between Saxons and Normans for England was largely a question of Saxon English-ness versus Norman greed, the campaign against the Sicilian Arabs had all the makings of a "holy war," whether justified or not. The Papacy made it clear that restoring Sicily to Latin Christiandom (separating its Orthodox Christians from Constantinople's influence) was at least as important as reducing the influence of Islam on the island. In the event, the Normans did not Latinize Sicily rapidly enough for Papal tastes, nor did they immediately seek to convert the island's Muslims. In fact, they were often at odds with the popes.

In 1054, the Church separated. The Great Schism left the Latin ("Roman") West distinctive of the Byzantine ("Greek") East, resulting in the churches now described as "Catholic" and "Orthodox." In truth, the conflict had been brewing for two centuries or more, and far transcended theology. In 1061, having assumed control of much of southern Italy, a Norman force crossed into Sicily at Messina and seized the city from its Saracen garrison. The Sicilian conquest now underway was slow and difficult. In 1066, a Norman force, including some knights who had fought in the Italian campaigns, won the Battle of Hastings (based in part on tactics learned at Messina), establishing the Norman presence in England. London was taken soon afterward. In Sicily, on the other hand, the de Hauteville brothers, Robert "Guiscard" and Roger, reached Palermo only in 1071. While Saxon lords paid fealty to William "the Conqueror" of England almost immediately, it took Roger and his knights more than a decade following the Battle of Palermo to bring the entire island under Norman control. (Emir Ibn Hamud of Kasr Yanni surrendered only in 1087.) It was worth the effort. Their Norman coin, 1150.Mediterranean jewel was more important --and far wealthier-- than William's rainy realm in the North Sea; revenues from the city of Palermo alone eclipsed those of all England.

For all that, the Normans were not the first northern European invaders to reach Sicilian shores during the Middle Ages. That distinction belongs to the Vandals and Goths, whose rule was short-lived and left few visible traces. By contrast, vestiges of Norman Sicily are everywhere to be found. --particularly churches and castles.

Sicilian society was more sophisticated than what the Normans encountered in England or even mainland Italy. The polyglot culture of the Arabs and Byzantines was a prosperous intellectual, artistic and economic environment at the center of the most important region of the "Western World" --the Mediterranean. It was a geographic crossroads between north and south, east and west. The beautiful Romanesque architectural style of Normandy (Cefalù's cathedral is based on Caen's Saint Etienne church), so important in changing the face of Saxon England, was welcome in Sicily, but it merely embellished what the Byzantines and Arabs already knew. The "Norman-Arab" style of art and architecture was unique, combining Byzantine, Moorish and northern European movements in a new expression of aesthetics.

More important than this was the evolution of the social fabric of Norman Sicily, adapting essentially Arab institutions to European realities. Throughout the Norman era (roughly from1070 to 1200), ethnic and religious tolerance were generally accepted as integral parts of Sicilian society. Though there were conflicts, multicultural co-existence usually prevailed. The Church, but also the Sicilian language, was gradually Latinized. European institutions such as feudalism were introduced. In effect, Norman Sicily became part of Europe rather than Africa (under the Moors) or Asia (under the Byzantines).

On a humanistic level, its multicultural orientation was important enough, but Sicily's emergence as one of Europe's most important regions ushered in a "Golden Age" which continued into the "Swabian" era (of Frederick II) during the thirteenth century. It was probably Sicily's finest hour. The twelfth century saw Sicily become a kingdom under Roger II (whose realm included not only Sicily but most of Italy south of Rome). The Norman government included clerics and from England and Normandy, great Arab thinkers such as Abdullah al-Idrisi, and a young Anglo-Norman queen.

Nowadays, "New World" nations such as Canada, the United States and Australia seem to represent the epitome of tolerant, multicultural societies. In the Middle Ages, however, the concept was a novel one. True, the Roman Empire had embraced many cultures, but it could be argued that Norman Sicily supported a truer equality than most places offered, and it was more benevolent than ancient Rome. Slavery was eventually all but abolished, and serfdom was never as prevalent as it was in England, France or Germany, while freedom of speech and literacy came to be considered every Sicilian's birthright. The Normans' system of justice allowed separate --but equal-- jurisdictions based on Shari'a law for Muslims, Judaic law for Jews, Byzantine Greek law for Byzantines and Norman feudal law for Normans. Important documents were multilingual. True, a Latin (and Roman Catholic) orientation eventually prevailed, but until the reign of Frederick II a more or less egalitarian society existed. At least for a time, it was a successful experiment, and a necessary one.

Despite its ethnic diversity, or perhaps because of it, Norman Sicily evolved into an enduring "nation" with Sicilians as its "people." In other Italian regions such developments were literally centuries away. (This was even true of Sardinia, which, as an island, might reasonably be expected to assume a "national" identity long before it did.) In time, the territory ruled by the Normans, contiguous to Magna Graecia, became known to Italians simply as "il Regno" ("the Kingdom"). Palermo (the Arabs' Bal'harm) was the capital of this realm and later, under Frederick II, the capital of the entire Holy Roman Empire. The period beginning with the arrival of the Normans in 1061 and ending with the death of their descendant, Frederick, in 1250, was a brief --but remarkable-- shining moment in European history.

The Normans retained much of Arab society. After all, there was no need to change certain things which functioned well. Some North meets South and East meets West in Palermo in 1148. Tomb inscriptions in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic.everyday sights, like the souks (street markets) and Romanesque windows, still exist, of course, but throughout the twelfth century it was the Arabs' institutions that truly distinguished Sicily from other Norman territories, particularly England. Instead of abolishing existing policies and institutions, the Normans built upon what already existed, adapting these as they found necessary. This was enlightened rule, especially from renegades and mercenaries who just a few decades earlier were pillaging the Italian countryside.

It is generally believed that most red-haired and blue-eyed Sicilians owe their coloring to the medieval Normans or the Lombards who often accompanied them. Yet we do not know how many Normans settled in Sicily. Most were men, most were knights or other soldiers, and many were feudatories, effectively constituting the earliest medieval Sicilian landed aristocracy. Most married Sicilian-born women. The best estimate of the Norman migration places it at fewer than eight thousand persons arriving between 1061 and 1161, but even this is highly speculative. It certainly was not a mass immigration comparable to those of the Arabs (Saracens) or ancient Greeks. The first Norman incursions into Sicily were measured in hundreds of Norman knights accompanied by greater numbers of non-Norman infantry, and not all of them remained here. Except for Benedictine and diocesan clergy, there were few men of learning among the Norman arrivals.

Change did not come overnight. Some localities were more Orthodox Christian and Greek-speaking while others were predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking. Mosques stood alongside churches and synagogues. The Norman vassals and knights, though Christian, were Roman Catholic. It was the Normans who Latinized Sicily (just as they Latinized the language of Saxon England), both linguistically and ecclesiastically. Some isolated Orthodox monasteries in the northeast of Sicily survived this process for a time, but most of Sicily's greatest Norman churches, though boasting some superficially Byzantine elements, were founded (or re-constructed) as Latin (Roman Catholic) ones.

The Norman era lasted through four rulers (two Rogers succeeded by two Williams), followed by a Swabian (German) wed to Constance, the last surviving Norman princess, in a land where --at least in theory-- only men ruled. Her son, Frederick II, could be said to have continued the Norman tradition but he was a Hohenstaufen and not a Hauteville. In the event, the "home rule" of Sicily from its own capital effectively ended with his death in the middle of the thirteenth century. Henceforth, the island was to be governed from Naples or from cities even further afield. The Sicily of the Normans represents a unique time in history which, like all such periods, was not to last forever. In the words of John Julius Norwich:

"Norman Sicily stood forth in Europe --and indeed in the whole bigoted medieval world-- as an example of tolerance and enlightenment, a lesson in the respect that every man should feel for those whose blood and beliefs happen to differ from his own."

Norman Roman Templar Genes - Haplogroup R-M269 - R1b1a1a2 - DYS464X: 15c-15c-17c-17g

Norman Roman Templar Genes - Haplogroup R-M269 - R1b1a1a2 - DYS464X: 15c-15c-17c-17g Haplogroup R-M269 , also known as  R1b1a1a2 , is a s...