Under such conditions there could be no general transplantation of Norman institutions. The rulers were Norman, as were the holders of the great fiefs, but, to speak paradoxically, the most Norman thing about their government was its non-Norman character, that is to say, its quick assimilation of alien elements and its statesmanlike treatment of native customs and institutions. The Norman leaders were too wise to attempt an impossible Normanization.
The policy of toleration in political and religious matters had its beginnings in the early days of the Norman occupation, but it received a broad application only in the course of the conquest of Sicily by the Great Count, and was first fully and systematically carried out by his son Roger II. In religion this meant the fullest liberty for Greeks, Jews, and Mohammedans, and even the maintenance of the hierarchy of the Greek Church and the encouragement and enrichment of Basilian monasteries along with the Benedictine foundations which were marked objects of Norman generosity. In law it meant the preservation of local rights and customs and of the usages of the several distinct elements in the population, Latin and Greek, Hebrew and Saracen. In local administration it involved the retention of the local dignitaries of the cities and the Byzantine offices of the strategos and the catepan, as well as the fiscal arrangements established by the Saracens in Sicily. And finally in the central government itself, the
