. After acquiring the county of Anjou from the Plantagenet kings of England in the early 13th century, French kings twice assigned the county as an apanage to a younger son. The first house of Anjou was established by Charles I (1227-1285), the youngest brother of Louis IX, who also acquired Provence by marrying Beatrice, the youngest daughter of the count.
With papal backing, Charles I in 1266 invaded the Regno, as the kingdom of Sicily and its mainland province were called. With his victories at Benevento (1266) and Tagliacozzo (1268), Charles carried out Innocent IV’s de-
Sire to “exterminate that brood of vipers,” the German Hohenstaufen dynasty, which had acquired the Regno in 1194 and had seriously threatened the papal states. As the new king of Sicily, Charles I continued the bureaucracy and system of taxation established by earlier Norman and Hohenstaufen kings. His ambitious plans led to the diversion to Tunis of Louis IX’s last crusade and to a projected attack on the recently restored Byzantine state at Constantinople.
His oppressive government, marked by heavy taxation, led to the rebellion against Charles I in 1282 known as the Sicilian Vespers. The ensuing war (1282-1302) pitted Aragon, to whose royal house the Sicilians had entrusted themselves, Genoa, and Byzantium against Naples, the mainland part of the Regno, supported by France, Venice, and the papacy. Charles II (r. 1285-1309), who retained Provence and Naples but had to return Anjou to France, concluded the Peace of Caltabellota with Frederick III of Sicily in 1302, but intermittent conflict between the mainland and island parts of the old Regno continued until 1442, when Alfonso V of Aragon seized the kingdom of Naples.
The older son of Charles II, known as Charles Martel, married the heiress of Hungary and established an Angevin dynasty there. Charles Martel’s grandson Louis the Great (r. 1342-82) added Poland to his dominions in 1370. The younger son of Charles II, Petrarch’s friend Robert (r. 1309-43), reigned in Naples and Provence and led the resistance of the Italian Guelfs against the invasion of the emperor Henry VII. Robert’s son, Charles of Calabria, became signore of Florence from 1325 to 1328. The latter’s daughter, Joanna I (1326-1382), succeeded her grandfather Robert and married her cousin Andrew of Hungary, whose murder in 1345 many blamed on Joanna. Her long reign was troubled by the rebellious nobles of the Regno and an invasion by Louis of Hungary, who pressed his claim to the succession.
In France, King John II the Good created the second house of Anjou by bestowing the county on his son Louis I (1339-1384) as an apanage. Louis’s Italian ambitions were fueled by the papal Schism of 1378, as the French-backed antipope Clement VII hoped for French military assistance against Rome. The childless and oft-married Joanna I of
Naples was induced to name Louis as her heir, but her cousin of the Hungarian line Charles of Durazzo seized Naples and reigned as Charles III (r. 1382-86) after capturing and murdering Joanna. Charles III was succeeded by his son Ladislas (r. 1386-1414) and daughter Joanna II (r. 1414-35), during whose reign the Regno disintegrated.
The second house of Anjou, which had seized Provence, continued to claim Naples. Louis I, who failed to dislodge Charles of Durazzo, died in Italy in 1384. His claims passed on to his son Louis II (d. 1417) and grandson Louis III (d. 1434). The latter’s brother Rene (d. 1480) had married Isabelle, the heiress of Lorraine, which with its dependencies he added to Anjou, Maine, and Provence—the inheritance from his brother. Rene seemed about to realize his family’s Neapolitan claims when Joanna II adopted him as heir in 1434. He actually ruled in Naples from 1438 until expelled four years later by Alfonso of Aragon. An ineffectual ruler, Rene never returned to Italy, and after abdicating Lorraine to his son Jean he turned in his old age to the pursuit of art and literature.
William A. Percy, Jr.
[See also: CHARLES I; NORMANS IN SICILY; RENE D’ANJOU]
Leonard, Emile G. Les Angevins de Naples. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954.
World History
