Martel (d. 1295), assumed the regency. Peter died the same
year, leaving Aragon to his son Alphonso III. and Sicily to his
son James, who was consecrated king in spite of the interdict.
The war went on uninterruptedly, for the popes prevented all
attempts to arrive at an understanding, as they were determined
that the rights of the church should be fully recognized. Charles
Charles II.the Lame, who had been liberated in 1288, having
renounced his rights on Sicily, was absolved from
his oath by Pope Nicholas IV., who crowned him king of
the Two Sicilies and excommunicated Alphonso. The latter’s
successor James made peace with Boniface VIII. by renouncing
Sicily (in exchange for Sardinia and Corsica and the hand of
Charles’s daughter) and promising to help the Angevins to
reconquer the island. But the Sicilians, led by James’s brother,
Frederick III.,[1] who had been governor of the island
Frederick III.
and was now proclaimed king, determined to resist.
The war went on with varying success, until Charles
of Valois, summoned by the pope to conduct the campaign,
landed in Sicily and, his army being decimated by disease,
made peace with Frederick at Caltabellotta (1302). The
Angevins renounced Sicily in favour of Frederick, who was
recognized as king of Trinacria (a name adopted so as not to
mention that of Sicily), and he was to marry Leonora, daughter
of Charles of Valois, at his death the island would revert to
the Angevins, but his children would receive compensation elsewhere.
In 1303 the pope unwillingly ratified the treaty. (See
Charles II., king of Naples and Sicily, and Frederick III.,
king of Sicily.)
Charles II. died in 1309 and was succeeded by his second son Robert. (His eldest son had predeceased him, leaving a son, Charles Robert, or Caroberto, at this time king of Hungary.) Robert now became leader of the Guelphs in Italy, and war between Naples and Sicily broke out once more, when Frederick allied himself with the emperor Henry VII. Robert. on his descent into Italy, and proclaimed his own son Peter heir to the throne. Robert led or sent many devastating expeditions into Sicily, and hostilities continued under King Peter even after Frederick’s death in 1337. Peter died in 1342, leaving an infant son Louis; but just as Robert was preparing for another expedition he too died in the same year. Robert had been a capable ruler, a scholar and a friend of Petrarch, but he lost influence as a Guelph leader owing to the rise of other powerful princes and republics, while in Naples itself his authority was limited by the rights of a turbulent and rebellious baronage (see Robert, king of Naples). His son Charles had died in 1328 and he was succeeded by his granddaughter Joanna, Joanna I. wife of Andrew of Hungary, but the princes of the blood and the barons stirred up trouble, and in 1345 Andrew was assassinated by order of Catherine, widow of Philip, son of Charles II., and of several nobles, not without suspicion of Joanna’s complicity.
Andrew’s brother Louis, king of Hungary, now came to Italy
to make good his claims on Naples and avenge the murder of
Andrew. With the help of some of the barons he drove Joanna
and her second husband, Louis of Taranto, from the kingdom,
and murdered Charles of Durazzo; but as Pope Clement refused
to recognize his claims he went back to Hungary in 1348, and
the fickle barons recalled Joanna, who returned and carried on
desultory warfare with the partisans of Louis of Hungary.
Louis of Taranto and Joanna were crowned at Naples by the
pope’s legate in 1352, but Niccolo Acciaiuoli, the seneschal,
became the real master of the kingdom. In 1374 Joanna made
peace with Frederick of Sicily, recognizing him as king of
Trinacria on condition that he paid her tribute and recognized
the pope’s suzerainty. She nominated Louis of Anjou her
heir, but while the latter was recognized by the antipope
Clement VII, , Pope Urban VI. declared Charles of Durazzo
(great-grandson of Charles II.) king of Sicily al di qua del
Faro (i.e. of Naples). Charles conquered the kingdom and took
Joanna prisoner in 1381, and had her murdered the following
year. Louis, although assisted by Amadeus VI. of Savoy, failed
to drive out Charles, and died in 1384. Charles III. died two
Charles III.
Ladislas.
years later and the kingdom was plunged into anarchy
once more, part of the barons siding with his seven-year-old
son Ladislas, and part with Louis II. of
Anjou. The latter was crowned by the antipope Clement,
while Urban regarded both him and his rival as usurpers. On
Urban’s death in 1389 Boniface IX. crowned Ladislas
king of Naples, who by the year 1400 had expelled
Louis and made himself master of the kingdom. In 1407 he
occupied Rome, which Gregory XII. could not hold. But
Alexander V., elected pope by the council of Pisa, turned against
Ladislas and recognized Louis. Ladislas was defeated in 1411
and driven from Rome, but reoccupied the city on Louis’s
return to France. He died in 1414, and was succeeded by his
sister Joanna II. (q.v.), during whose reign the kingdom
sank to the lowest depths of degradation. In 1415
Joanna II.
Joanna married James of Bourbon, who kept his wife in a state
of semi-confinement, murdered her lover, Pandolfo Alopo, and
imprisoned her chief captain, Sforza; but his arrogance drove
the barons to rebellion, and they made him renounce the royal
dignity and abandon the kingdom. The history of the next
few years is a maze of intrigues between Joanna, Sforza, Giovanni
Caracciolo, the queen’s new lover, Alphonso of Aragon, whom
she adopted as her heir, and Louis III. of Anjou, whom we find
pitted against each other in every possible combination. Louis
died in 1434 and Joanna in 1435 (see Joanna II., queen of Naples).
The succession was disputed by René of Anjou and Alphonso,
but the former eventually renounced his claims and Alphonso
was recognized as king of Naples by Pope Eugenius IV. in 1443.
Under Alphonso, surnamed “the Magnanimous,” Sicily was once more united to Naples and a new era was inaugurated, for the king was at once a brilliant ruler, a scholar and a patron of letters. He died in 1458, leaving Naples to his illegitimate son Ferdinand I. (Don Ferrante), and Sicily, Sardinia and Aragon to his brother John. Alphonso the Magnanimous. Ferdinand found, however, that Alphonso had not really consolidated his power, and he had practically to reconquer the whole country. By 1464 he was master of the situation, in spite of the attempt of Pope Calixtus III., to enforce the claims of the papacy, and that of John of Anjou to enter into the heritage of his ancestors. In alliance with Pope Sixtus IV. and the Milanese he waged war on Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1479; but that astute ruler, by visiting Ferdinand in person, obtained peace on favourable terms (1479). In 1485 the disaffection of the barons, due to Ferdinand I. the king’s harshness and the arrogance and cruelty of his son, found vent in a revolt led by Roberto Sanseverino and Francesco Coppola, which was crushed by means of craft and treachery. Ferdinand died in 1494 full of forebodings as to the probable effects of the invasion of Charles VIII. of France, and was succeeded by Alphonso (see Ferdinand I., king of Naples). The Invasion of Charles VIII.The French king entered Italy in September 1495, and conquered the Neapolitan kingdom without much difficulty. Alphonso abdicated, his son Ferrandino and his brother Frederick withdrew to Ischia, and only a few towns in Apulia still held out for the Aragonese. But when the pope, the emperor, Spain and Venice, alarmed at Charles’s progress, formed a defensive league against him, he quitted Naples, and Ferrandino, with the help of Ferdinand II. of Spain, was able to reoccupy his dominions. He died much. regretted in 1496 and was succeeded by Frederick. The country was torn by civil war and brigandage, and the French continued to press their claims; and although Louis XII. (who had succeeded Charles VIII.) concluded a treaty with Ferdinand of Spain for the partition of Naples, France and Spain fell out in 1502 over the division of the spoils, and with Gonzalo de Cordoba’s victory on the Garigliano in December 1502, the whole kingdom was in Spanish hands.
On the death of Ferdinand in 1516, the Habsburg Charles became king of Spain, and three years later was elected emperor as Charles V.; in 1522 he appointed John de Lannoy viceroy of
- ↑ He was the second king of that name in Sicily, but was known as Frederick III. because he was the third son of King Peter.
