ROGER II., King of Sicily, second son of the preceding, was b. in 1097, four years before the death of his father. His elder brother Simon haviLg died in 1102. he became the heir to the Sicilian throne; and during his minority, the government was adminis tered by his mother, a princess of Montferrat. When Roger had taken the supreme authority into his own hands, his first care was to extend his estates. He compelled ins cousin William to yield up the portions of Calabria and of the town of Palermo which Robert Guiscard had withheld from his father; and after the death of William (1127), he took possession of Apulia itself, obtaining his investiture in these new possessions (which were fiefs of the holy see) in the following year from Honorius IL, who added to them that of the duchy of Naples. Ambitious of the title of king, he supported the faction of pope Anacletus, his wife's brother, and received from him the title of king of Sicily, with rights of suzerainty over the duchies of Naples and Capua—the former being a Lombardo-Italian, and the latter a Norman principality. In return, Roger estab lished Anacletus on the pontifical throne in 1130; but the dispossessed pope, Innocen II., and the exiled princes of Capua and Naples, applied to the emperor Lothar, who stripped Roger of many of his acquisitions—the latter, however, recovering them almost the moment the German army had retired. At last, his bitter enemy, Innocent II., fell into his hands in 1139, and was compelled to withdraw the excommunications he had pronounced against Roger, and to consent to his retaining the territories lie had acquired (excepting Naples), obtaining by these means not only his liberty, but the firm attachment of Roger to the holy see, and his own recognition as lawful pope.
In 1141 he received from pope Lucius II. the right of using the staff, ring, tunic, miter, and other symbols of ecclesiastical dignity and power. In 1146 he revenged himself on the Greek emperor, who had been of the league with the pope and the emperor against him, by capturing Corfu, and pillaging Cephalonia, Negropont, Corinth, and Athens, returning to Sicily with an immense booty, a number of workers in silk, by whom the silk-manufacture was first introduced into Sicily. He followed up these suc cesses by the taking of Tripoli and other places on the African coast, and afterward attacking the Zeiridesleaving, at his death, an African dependency which stretched from Morocco to Kairwan. He died at Palermo Feb. 26, -1154. Roger was, like his father, prudent and resolute, skillful both in the cabinet and on the field; but he had neither the fine deportment nor the generous soul of the first Roger. His mind was capable of great scope and untiring energy, so that the real interests of his states were never overlooked, and the orderly system of taxation and government was a pattern to the rest of Europe. He cared nothing for the religion of his subjects—they might be heathens if they chose; but obeli *.ace to himself and respect to the laws were rigorously demanded and enforced. His fleet was supreme on the seas, and his court surpassed in magnificence that of every other prince in Europe. He spent many of his later years in rearing religious edifices on a scale of extreme magnificence, of some of which remains still exist.