The conquest of Sicily began with the capture of Messina in 1061 and occupied thirty years. It was chiefly the work of Roger, though Guiscard aided him throughout the earlier years and claimed a share in the results for himself, as well as vassalage for Roger’s portion. The decisive turning-point was a joint enterprise, the siege and capture of Palermo in 1072, which gave the Normans control of the Saracen capital, the largest city in Sicily, with an all-anchoring harbor from which it took its name. The Saracens, however, still held the chief places of the island: the ancient Carthaginian strongholds of the west and centre, Eryx and ‘inexpugnable Enna,’ known since mediæval times as Castrogiovanni; Girgenti, “most beautiful city of mortals,” with its ancient temples and olive groves rising from the shores of the African Sea; Taormina, looking up at the snows and fires of Etna and forth over Ionian waters to the bold headlands of Calabria; and Syracuse, sheltering a Saracen fleet in that great harbor which had witnessed the downfall of Athenian greatness. To subdue all these and what lay between required nineteen years of hard fighting, varied, of course, by frequent visits to Roger’s possessions on the mainland and frequent expeditions in aid of his nephew, but requiring, even when the great count was present in person, military and diplomatic skill of a high order. When, however, the work was done and the last Saracen stronghold, Noto, surrendered in 1091, Count Roger had under his dominion a strong and consolidated principality, where Greeks and Mohammedans enjoyed tolerance for their speech and their faith, where a Norman fortress had been constructed in every important town, and where the barons, holding in general small and scattered fiefs, owed loyal obedience to the count who had made their fortunes, a sharp contrast to the turbulent feudalism of Apulia, which looked upon the house of Hauteville as leaders but not as masters. Roger was also in a position to treat with a free hand the problems of the church, reorganizing at his pleasure the dioceses which had disappeared under Mohammedan rule, and receiving from Pope Urban II in 1098 for himself and his heirs the dignity of apostolic legate in Sicily, so that other legates were excluded and the Pope could treat with the Sicilian church only through the count. This extraordinary privilege, the foundation of the so-called ‘Sicilian monarchy’ in ecclesiastical matters, was the occasion of ever-recurring disputes in later times, but the success of Roger’s crusade against the infidel seemed at the moment to justify so unusual a concession.