Lu rebellamentu di Sichilia

[7] It says that when the Sicilians complained to Charles of Anjou about their high taxes, he responded, "Vi farro spendiri munita di soli, como altra volta havitu spisu,"[8] threatening that he would re-issue leather money as had been done in the past.

This probably indicates that the legend that William I issued leather money, otherwise first recorded by Tommaso Fazello in his De Rebus Siculis (1558), was current in the late thirteenth century.

[9] The Rebellamentu also makes the Orsini Pope Nicholas III party to a conspiracy to dethrone Charles of Anjou.

The excerpt below describes how Peter was crowned by the Bishop of Cefalù because the incumbent of the Archdiocese of Palermo, Piero II de Santa Fede, had recently died, and the Archbishop of Monreale, Giovanni Roccamezza, was away in Rome: The Spinelli Codex, the oldest surviving copy of the text, was probably copied from an older manuscript (perhaps the original) around 1330.

[11] The opera Les vêpres siciliennes (1855), with music by Giuseppe Verdi and a libretto by Eugène Scribe, drew upon the Rebellamentu for elements of its story, notably the rape.