Now, before the Normans came back to Italy they had made Italian architecture their own, and impressed on it their own character, rugged and robust, and it was so different to the buildings in South Italy with which they have been accredited, that I think this theory will have to be revised. The arts were certainly not influenced in Sicily by the first Norman invasion in 1058 under Roger I., son of Tancred, he being entirely a bellicose and rough warrior. It was when the Normans had taken root there, had become more softened, and had formed a settled government; in fact, after Roger II. had been crowned King of Apulia and Sicily in 1130, that they began to give their minds to artistic architecture. This was a century and a half after Abbot Guillaume took his countrymen over to build at Dijon. The first stone of the Duomo of Cefalù was laid in 1131, and the royal palace of Palermo begun during the next year. Under Roger's successors the fine churches of Martorana, and the cathedral of Monreale in 1172, the cathedral of Palermo (1185), and the palace of Cuba arose. An Italian writer, La Lumia, is very enthusiastic over the Duomo of Monreale--"that visigoth (_sic_) art which had in Normandy erected the cathedrals of Rouen, Bayeux, etc., multiplied in Monreale the ogival forms which had been known and practised in Sicily since the sixth century,[91] and took its upward flight in towers and bold spires. In the mosaics and decorations the majestic Arabic art espoused Byzantine and Christian types. The varied and multiplex association has impressed on these works an _impront_ both singular and stupendous. The columns show the ruins of pagan classicism, the incredible profusion of marbles, verd-antique, and porphyry speak of a rich and florid political state; while the solemn mystery of those sublime arcades, profound lines and symbolic forms; the dim religious light, the ecstatic figures of prophets and saints with the gigantic Christ over the altar offering benediction to men, all shadow forth the mediæval idea of Christianity--full and ingenuous faith, vivified by conquest." Then he goes on grandiloquently to say--"The names of the builders are unknown to us, and we need not trouble to seek them: a generation and era is here with all its soul made visible, with all its vigorous and fruitful activity." But if we cannot find the names it would at least be interesting to know whether the Norman-Siculo architecture were entirely the work of the Normans or not. Gravina, Boitò, and other Italian writers think that the Normans took a similar position in Sicily to that of the earlier Longobards in the north, _i.e._ that they were the patrons, and employed the artists whom they found in Sicily.