T. Fazello, De rebus siculis, decades duae, Johannes Mattheus Mayda et Franciscus Carrara, Palermo 1560, Dec. II, pp. 597-598.
Description of a riot that took place in Palermo in 1516 shortly after the death of King Ferdinand the Catholic. During the period of political uncertainty that followed the king’s death, a friar gave a sermon inciting the crowds against New Christians wearing penitent garments imposed by the Inquisition. In the text the New Christians are identified as Jews (Hebrews) and their wear of penitential garments, although imposed by the Inquisition, is perceived as a sacrilege. In other words, the preacher an the populace do not consider them heretics but Jews, and as Jews they should not wear a cross, because they crucified Christ. The riot that ensues attacks both the wearers of the penitential garment and the Inquisition who imposed it. Later in that year the crowds attacked the Inquisitor General and forced him to leave Sicily. The penitents, however, must have peceived the garment as a punishment, shameful and disgraceful. In fact, inquisitorial records show that in later years many Sicilian “reconciliados” did not adhere to the restrictions and paid fines for wearing red clothes, riding horses and bearing arms as they were reluctant to lose their status in society.^[1] In fact, the text under discussion shows that the penitential clothes worn by the New Christians (Hebrews?) represented different things for different groups.

Publication:
Tommaso Fazello’s history of Sicily, written in Latin, was first printed in 1558, in Palermo titled: De rebus siculis decades duæ, Johannes Mattheus Mayda et Franciscus Carrara, Palermo, 1558. Two years later a second edition was printed in Palermo, this time with corrections of the errors that appeared in the first edition: De rebus siculis decades duae, Johannes Mattheus Mayda et Franciscus Carrara, Palermo 1560. The text presented below is an excerpt from this edition. A third sixteenth century edition, slightly different, is titled: De rebus siculis, Rerum Sicularum Scriptores, Francoforti ad Moenum, 1579.

Contemporary and modern translations:
Fazello’s work was translated into Italian already in the sixteenth century: Le due deche dell'historia di Sicilia del R.P.M. Tomaso Fazello siciliano dell'ordine dei Predicatori : divise in venti libri / tradotte dal latino in lingua toscana dal T. M. Remigio Fiorentino del medesimo, Venetia, printed by Domenico & Giovanni Battista Guerra fratelli, 1574.
Recently a modern Italian translation was produced by the university of Palermo (with an Introduction by Massimo Ganci): Tommaso Fazello, Storia di Sicilia, Presentazione di Massimo Ganci, trans. and ed. Antonio Rosalia e Gianfranco Musso, Palermo, Regione Siciliana Assessorato ai Beni Culturali, 1990.

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