Roger II crowned King of Sicily

December 25, 1130

In Palermo cathedral on Christmas Day, the Norman count of Sicily had himself anointed king of a new polyglot kingdom stretching from the Abruzzi to Malta. His court would mint coins in three scripts, employ an Arab geographer named al-Idrisi, and become Europe's most astonishing cultural crossroads. Roger governed through a centralized bureaucracy modeled on the Fatimid divan, administering justice in Latin, Greek, and Arabic with equal fluency.