I cannot answer the question of red wedding dresses in medieval Sicily. But i would like to note that Sicily might be considered something of a special case.
Sicily was settled by Phoenicians during the 10th through 8th c. BCE, and by 750 BCE by Greeks, who absorbed the indigenous Sicani and Siculi people. Carthaginian cities remained in the west of the island until the Roman Punic Wars, the Carthaginians being descendants of the Phoenicians. But even after Roman conquest the language was never completely Latinized, and Greek remained the primary language for most of the population. Various Germanic tribes invaded in the 5th c. but the Eastern Roman Empire (known to us as Byzantium) took control of Sicily in the 6th c. - also controlled much of Southern and Eastern Italy. Settlements still spoke Sicilian Greek long after Byzantine rule was driven out. Some scholars have argued that most Sicilians are descendants of Greeks, or at the very least are part Greek. The Fatimids began invading Sicily from North Africa during the 6th century, a mixed group of Arabs, Berbers, Andalusians, and others. They eventually conquered the entire island and established the Emirate of Sicily by the beginning of the 10th c. with Muslim culture and the Arabic language asserting a strong influence. A particular languge developed, Siculo-Arabic, commonly spoken in Sicily until the end of the 13th century, although definite linguistic influences remain. Yet during this time, a large Greek speaking population remained. The Franco-Normans followed the Arabs, and during their rule Arabic and Greek continued to be spoken there. The society was composed of Normans and Lombards, Muslims, Jews, Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Greeks, and Roman Catholics working together. During this time there were also Provencal and Catalan cultural and linguistic influences. Sicily remained an independent kingdom until eventually it became part of the Spanish kingdom of Aragon in 1409 - in 1492 Ferdinand of Spain decreed the expulsion of all Sicilian Jews. It was again an independent kingdom from the beginning of the 18th c until 1816, when it became part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with the merger of the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples in 1816. It remained independent until the unification of Italy in the 1860. But the Sicilians were not really culturally fully Italian. And they considered the unification of Italy to be the conquest of the south by the north. And many Sicilians continued to be rebels and separatists into the 20th c. When Italy became a Republic at the end of WWII, Sicily was one of five regions given special status as an autonomous region. Linguists today say the Sicilian language, Sicilianu, is different enough from standard Italian to be considered a separate language, not merely a dialect. I mention all this because traditions in Sicily - which reflect Greek and Arabic influence to this day - will not be identical to those the rest of Western Europe. So, did medieval Sicilian women really wear red wedding dresses? I don't know, but i suspect that information about other medieval European cultures will not fully apply to Sicilians. Anahita _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
