The French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1266-1305

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The French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1266–1305

Charles of Anjou’s conquest of the Sicilian Regno in 1266 transformed relations between France and the kingdom of Sicily. This original study of contact and exchange in the middle ages explores the significance of the many cultural, religious and political exchanges between the two countries, arguing that the links were more diverse and stronger than simply the rulers’ family connections. Jean Dunbabin shows how influence flowed as much from south to north as vice versa, and that France was strongly influenced by the experiences of those who returned after years of fighting in the Regno. As well as considering the experiences of notable crusading families, she sheds new light on the career of Robert II d’Artois, who virtually ruled the Regno for six years before returning to France to remodel the government of Artois. This comparative history of two societies offers an important new perspective on medieval western Europe. j e a n d u n b a b i n is a senior research fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and a fellow of the British Academy. Her previous publications include Charles I of Anjou: Power, Kingship and State-Making in Thirteenth-Century Europe (1998) and Captivity and Imprisonment in Western Europe, 1000–1300 (2002).

The French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1266–1305 Jean Dunbabin

c a m b r i d g e u n i ve r s i t y p r e s s Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521198783 C Jean Dunbabin 2011

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2011 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Dunbabin, Jean. The French in the kingdom of Sicily, 1266–1305 / Jean Dunbabin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-19878-3 (hardback) 1. Sicily (Italy) – History – 1194–1282. 2. Sicily (Italy) – History – 1282–1409. 3. France – Relations – Italy – Sicily. 4. Sicily (Italy) – Relations – France. 5. French – Italy – Sicily – History – To 1500. 6. Intercultural communication – Italy – Sicily – History – To 1500. 7. Acculturation – Italy – Sicily – History – To 1500. 8. France – History – 13th century – Biography. 9. Aristocracy (Social class) – France – Biography. 10. Robert II, d’Artois, 1250–1302. I. Title. DG867.299.D86 2011 2010048070 945 .804 – dc22 ISBN 978-0-521-19878-3 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Genealogical tables Introduction

page vii ix xi 1

Par t I Means of communication 1 Routes and journeys

31

2 Meetings, embassies and correspondence

36

3 The movement of money

48

Par t II Indirect channels of communication 4 Lesser means of diffusing Angevin influences

59

Par t III Settlers in the Regno 5 Robert II d’Artois

101

6 The Dampierres, the comital family of Flanders

120

7 Other French aristocratic families

133

8 Foundations and degrees of French aristocratic commitment to the Angevin regime in the Regno

155

9 The French experience in the Regno

171

Par t IV Cultural and political impacts 10 Royal ideology: the saintly family

189 v

vi

Contents

11 Religious politics and practices

199

12 The universities of Naples and Paris

214

13 Medicine and science

228

14 Law

235

15 Administrative practices

250

16 Navy and army

260

17 Literature

269

Epilogue: spurs to remembering

275

Conclusion

279

Bibliography Index

281 305

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staff of the following libraries: in Oxford, the Bodleian (with especial thanks to the librarians on the Upper Reading Room Reserve, where the bulk of the work for this book was done), the History Faculty, the Taylorian, All Souls, Corpus Christi, Exeter, Queen’s and St Anne’s College libraries; in London, the Warburg, the Institute of Historical Research and the British Library; in Chicago, the Newberry and the University of Chicago Library; and in Hobart, the University of Tasmania Library. I am also most grateful for access to the Archives départementales du Nord, Lille; the Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais, Arras; and the Archives départementales du Maine-et-Loire, Angers. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help I have received from various friends; I owe a particular debt to Malcolm Vale, who read almost the whole text and saved me from many silly errors – those that remain are, of course, my fault. If I had had the intellectual competence to follow up some of his suggestions, this would have been a better book. Chris Wickham and John Gillingham have both encouraged and given stimulus; Professor A. J. Forey and Jeremy Catto have provided muchneeded material; Paul Brand, Michael Clanchy, Julian Gardner, Simon Gaunt, Bernard Gowers, Xavier Hélary, Martin Kauffmann, Sarah Kay, Catherine Leglu, John Maddicott, Michael McVaugh, Guy Perry, Daniel Power, Hannah Skoda, Christopher Tyerman and Nicholas Vincent have all given invaluable help on specific (important) points; and Barbara Harvey, Matthew Kempshall and David d’Avray have discussed various aspects of the subject with me, greatly to my benefit. John Dunbabin has generously devoted time to googling for me, to providing helpful criticism of parts of the script, and above all to accompanying me on research trips. I am also grateful to the three anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press for valuable suggestions. My debt to my parents, among other things for scrimping and saving for my education, was and remains great. This book is especially theirs, because its theme owes much to them. They were devoted servants of the vii

viii

Acknowledgements

British Empire. When they retired to Scotland, the home they created around them was full of mementoes of their years in West Africa (the Gold Coast) and Palestine. Their closest friends were people who had shared at least some of their experiences abroad. My mother’s cuisine, otherwise conventionally Highland, was enlivened by the family taste for avocados, aubergines, stuffed courgettes, Jaffa oranges and Turkish coffee, long before these items became commonplace in British kitchens. I drew the conclusion that the environments in which people spend their years of youth and vigour leave a deep and lasting impression on them. Proper names have proved problematic. I have used French forms for Frenchmen and Italian for Italians. But in order not to prejudge the issue, I have used the English forms for the Angevin rulers and members of their families. I have also used English forms for the titular rulers of Byzantium. With scholars, I have used English forms for those who wrote in Latin, and French forms for those who wrote in French.

Abbreviations

A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres

A. de Bouard (ed.), Actes et lettres de Charles Ier, roi de Sicile, concernant la France, 1257–1284 (Paris: E. Boccard, 1926) ´ BEFAR Bibliothèque de l’Ecole Française d’Athènes et de Rome CUP Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. H. Denifle and E. Chatelain, vol. I (Paris: Delalain, 1889) and vol. II (Paris: Delalain, 1891) L’état angevin L’état angevin. Pouvoir, culture et société entre XIIIe et XIVe siècle. Actes du Colloque internationale, Rome – Naples, ´ 7–11 novembre, 1995 (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1998) MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores MGH SS RG Monumenta Germaniae Historica Rerum Germanicarum Scriptores Ordonnances des Roys de France Ordonnances des Roys de France de la troisième race, vol. I, ed. Eusèbe de Laurière et al. (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1717; reprinted Farnborough: Gregg Press, 1967–8) QFAIAB Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken RCA Registri della cancelleria angioina, 49 vols., ed. Riccardo Filangieri et al. (Naples: Academia Pontaniana, 1951–2006)

ix

x

List of abbreviations

Reg. Boniface VIII

Reg. Clément IV Reg. Honorius IV Reg. Martin IV Reg. Nicholas IV RHF TNA

Registres de Boniface VIII, 4 vols., ed. G. Digard et al. (Paris: BEFAR, 1884–1921) ´ Jordan Registres de Clément IV, ed. E. (Paris: BEFAR, 1893–95) Registres de Honorius IV, ed. M. Prou (Paris: BEFAR, 1898) Registres de Martin IV, various editors (Paris: BEFAR, 1901) Registres de Nicolas IV, 2 vols, ed. C. V. Langlois (Paris: BEFAR, 1886–93) Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, ed. E. Martène and U. Durand, 2 vols. (Paris, 1717; reprinted Farnborough: Gregg Press, 1968–69)

Genealogical tables

xi

Marie = Sancho, k. of Majorca

Blanche = James II of Aragon

The royal family of Charles I of Anjou.

Pierre d’Eboli

Isabelle = Ladislas of Hungary

Catherine de Valois = Philip of Taranto

Catherine = Charles de Valois

Beatrice = Philip of Courtenay

Beatrice = Azzo d’Este

Eleanor = Frederick III of Sicily

Philip of Taranto = Jean Tristran Jean = (1) Ithamar Agnès de Perigord (2) Catherine de Valois

Philippe = Isabelle de Villehardouin

(2) Marguerite of Tonnerre

Marguerite = Charles de Valois

Robert = Raymond Berengar (1) Violante of Aragon (2) Sancia of Majorca

Charles

Blanche = Robert de Béthune

Louis Charles Martell = Clemence of Habsburg

Charles II = Maria of Hungary

Charles I of Anjou = (1) Beatrice of Provence

Robert

Catherine de Valois

Mahaud = Otto, count of Burgundy

Mahaud = Philippe of Chieti

Raoul = Agnès de Montfort

Robert, bishop

Robert de Champignelles = Mahaud de Mehun-sur-Yèvre

The Courtenay family. This table is simplified to illustrate only the members of the family who played some part in the Regno.

Philippe = Blanche de Bretagne

Amicie de Courtenay = Robert II d’Artois

Pierre de Courtenay = Perenelle de Joigny

Catherine = Charles de Valois

Philip = Beatrice d’Anjou

Philippe de Montfort = Jeanne de Lévis

Jean = Marguerite Simon de Beaumont

Baldwin II = Marie de Brienne

Elinor de Courtenay = Philippe de Montfort

Pierre de Courtenay = Yolande de Flandre

Pierre de France

Henry IV

Jean I

Mahaud

Maria = Philippe III

Philippe

(3) Marguerite d’Avesne

Robert II = (1) Amicie de Courtenay (2) Agnès de Bourbon

Maria Henry III = Mahaud = Adelaide of Burgundy Robert I d’Artois

The Brabant–Artois relationship.

Godfrey

Philip Beatrice = Guillaume de Dampierre

Henry II of Brabant = Maria of Hohenstaufen

Thomasie = Pietro Vico

Anastasie = Romanello Orsini

Gui = Marguerita Aldobrandesca

Amicie de Courtenay = Robert II d’Artois

Perenelle de Joigny = Pierre de Courtenay

Amicie = Gaucher de Joigny

Gui = Heloise d’Ibelin

Jean = Marguerite Simon de Beaumont

Philippe = Jeanne de Lévis

Philippe = (1) Elinor de Courtenay

The Montfort family. This table is simplified to illustrate only those members of the family mentioned in the text.

Mahaud de Chieti = Philippe de Flandre

Amaury

Simon de Montfort II = Eleanor Plantagenet

Agnès = (2) Raoul Simon III de Courtenay

Gui = Peronnelle de Bigorre

Simon de Montfort I = Alice de Montmorency

Simon de Montfort = Alicia de Beaumont

2 daughters

Marguerite = Daughter Elisa = Jean de Montfort Jean Britaud de Nangis

Pierre = Filippa di Celano

The Beaumont family.

daughter

Guillaume = ?

Philippe

Filippa = Geoffroi de Joinville

Guillaume de Beaumont

Adam

Dreux = d. of Anselm de Chau

Geoffroi

Gilette

The Toucy family.

Marguerite = Leonardo of Achaia

Ancelin de Toucy

Philippe?

Narjaud = Lucia of Antioch

Philippe?

Eudes = Filippa di Beaumont (Celano)

Philippe de Toucy

Introduction

In an essay entitled ‘Experiences of an Anglo-French historian’, Richard Cobb said of his 1937–39 years: ‘My long stay in France had enabled me to acquire a second nationality and to discover fraternity.’1 His enriching experience, though uncommon in the 1930s, is commoner now among the young as the gap year or study abroad becomes almost a rite of passage in the wealthier countries of the world. It may be unduly optimistic to imagine that many travellers from times before the eighteenth-century grand tours had either the opportunities or the abilities that marked out Richard Cobb’s life. But it does seem ungenerous to assume that travel rarely broadened the mind before the modern period.2 Indeed, in the era before the development of the nation state and the religious wars of early modern times, there were fewer barriers to ease of movement, as also to ease of communication, across Europe than were later to arise. In the popular imagination, medieval travellers are seen as very credulous and lacking in sympathy for the unfamiliar. This may, however, show more about their respect for the earlier models they used in writing their reports than about their powers of observation. To test this hypothesis, it is necessary to explore different kinds of sources in search of a more positive picture, looking for evidence of open minds, curiosity, willingness to adapt. The aftermath of the French conquest of the kingdom of Sicily in 1266 offers a good field for such an enquiry, because the Italian sources are, for the thirteenth century, relatively rich. That conquest was achieved by dint of a huge effort on the part of large numbers of Frenchmen; and the attempt over the next forty years or so to preserve what had been won 1 2

Richard Cobb, Paris and Elsewhere. Selected Writings Edited and Introduced by David Gilmour (London: John Murray, 1998), p. 26. Barry Taylor, ‘Late medieval Spanish travellers in the East’, in Rosamund Allen (ed.), Eastward Bound. Travel and Travellers, 1050–1550 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 221–34, at p. 232, says of his four travellers: ‘None of them, unsurprisingly, shows any signs of broadened horizons or even less of going native.’ Of course, his travellers were going to more exotic regions than the French in this study.

1

2


also involved sustained effort. This meant that many Frenchmen stayed for several years in southern Italy or Sicily. It is the argument of this book that their effort was in some sense compensated for by the wide range of cultural and administrative ideas the French picked up in the south. But it must be conceded right from the start that southern influences on France were not long lasting; after about 1305 they dwindled to the almost unnoticeable. Therefore the period under consideration is a reasonably short and coherent one, which makes the enquiry easier. Even so, ‘influence’ is a very tricky historical concept. In everyday life, almost everyone will admit to being the product of many influences, the most important perhaps being those experienced early in life. Influences on groups of people are always less easy to assess, though socially more significant (and a matter of daily examination by journalists, sociologists, preachers and others). But at least in the present day any such examination can rely to a considerable extent on the oral testimony of those who constitute the group. Influences on groups of people in the past, especially where evidence is patchy, become treacherously difficult to trace. For the medieval historian either to prove beyond reasonable doubt the impact of a particular influence on a group of people, or to weigh up its significance as against other influences, is to enter a minefield. There is no appropriate unit of measurement for the latter, and only occasionally is there incontrovertible evidence for the former. The historian therefore usually enters the realm of the probable, of the plausible. Whereas post hoc ergo propter hoc is acceptable in many sciences, where changes can be isolated, reproduced, and studied in depth, in the field of human relations it is more open to question, because events do not take place in isolation and any individual change in the past may be accounted for by a multiplicity of factors. It is only too easy for a historian to exaggerate the importance of the particular influence he or she wishes to investigate. Yet if influence is difficult to evaluate, it is also too pervasive to be ignored. There comes a point where scraps of hypothetical connections from a number of different fields add up to a substantial heap, and therefore deserve to be given weight in traditional explanations of change. I hope that in what follows I shall succeed in convincing at least half of my readers that the politics and culture of the Regno, the kingdom of Sicily (soon to be known as the kingdom of Naples), had a real impact on what happened in northern France – the area known to contemporaries as Francia – in the second half of the thirteenth century and the very early years of the fourteenth. This aim may seem deliberately perverse to those who know the historical literature of the period. Robert Bartlett’s book The Making of Europe. Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change

Introduction

3

950–1350,3 has accustomed many younger medievalists to think of the high middle ages as a period in which the whole of Europe acquired characteristics first found in Frankish lands. France set the pattern, it did not absorb influences from elsewhere. Furthermore, several important and distinguished historians of the later nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries devoted themselves to searching for French influence on the Regno in the thirteenth century; and that pursuit is still fashionable among some art historians.4 It is, after all, natural to expect that conquerors should have a measurable impact on the society, institutions and culture of a conquered people. But I hope to suggest that this was by no means a one-way traffic, that the French were not insensitive to the features of the new environment in which they found themselves, that they borrowed from the Regno nearly as much as they imposed upon it, and sometimes to quite long-term effect. In fact, there is no great novelty in such a perspective. Other historians have written on the impact, both cultural and political, of Sicily and southern Italy on northern Europe, particularly on England, in this and other medieval periods.5 And from 1266 to around 1305, the ties 3 4

5

London: Allen Lane, 1993. ´ For example Paul Durrieu, Les archives angevines de Naples. Etude sur les registres du roi Charles Ier, 1265–85, vol. I (Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1886) p. 7: ‘Dans les vingt premières années qui ont suivi la conquête, pendant tout le règne de Charles Ier, l’influence française est absolument préponderante’; Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers. A History of the Mediterranean World in the Late Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), p. 125: ‘After Conradin’s invasion and the rebellions, he [Charles of Anjou] reorganized the Kingdom after the French model and saw to it that the important positions were given to Frenchmen whom he could trust’; Jill Caskey, Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean. Merchant Culture in the Region of Amalfi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 8: ‘The South’s diverse population and varied visual cultures faced suppression in the name of an expanding and unified Christianitas, a process fueled by the newly installed Angevin dynasty and its commitment to northern European ideals.’ See also Gennaro M. Monti, ‘Fonti francesi di legislazione angioina’, in Monti, Nuovi studi angioini (Trani: Vecchi, 1937). The more usual view nowadays, at least in the administrative sphere, is expressed by Hiroshi Takayama, ‘Law and monarchy in the south’, in David Abulafia (ed.), Italy in the Central Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 77: ‘Most historians agree to a conspicuous continuity from Hohenstaufen to Angevin government.’ See also Henri Bresc, ‘La chute des Hohenstaufen et l’installation ´ Verry (eds.), Les princes angevins de Charles Ier d’Anjou’, in N.-Y. Tonnerre and E. du XIIIe au Xve siècle. Un destin européen (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003), pp. 61–83, esp. pp. 71–81, on continuities of all sorts. As the influence of French language and culture on northern Italy in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is increasingly appreciated, e.g. Daniela Delcorno Branco, Tristano e Lancillotto in Italia. Studi di letteratura arturiana (Ravenna: Longo, 1998), it becomes more difficult to regard evidence of French influence in the Regno solely as the result of Angevin imperialism. For example W. Lewis Warren, Henry II (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), pp. 313–14; Ernst Kitzinger, ‘The Byzantine contribution to western art of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 20 (1966), 27–47, at 38–9; R. Allen Brown, H. M.

4


between the Regno and northern France were very strong, despite their fairly rapid disappearance after 1305. As I hope to show, there was far more interaction between the two than might be suggested merely by the close relationship between the royal house of France and the new Angevin dynasty in Naples. The effects of visits to the Regno by inhabitants of northern France were diffuse, in some spheres long-lasting, and felt by a broad section of the population. That this should be so will occasion no surprise in the Britain of today, where the influence of its colonial past is felt in every sphere of life. A country whose inhabitants allegedly regard chicken tikka masala as their favourite food is one that is conscious of how much it owes to the peoples over whom it once ruled. Admittedly the British empire lasted longer and was more firmly entrenched, at least in many parts of the world, than the French conquest of southern Italy which, although it survived for a long time, fairly rapidly ceased to have any strongly French character. But even relatively short periods of rule over other people can have an effect on the supposed rulers.6 My aim is very different from that of Fernand Braudel in his great Out of Italy, 1450–1650.7 I make no claim at all for the superiority of the Regno’s politics and culture over those of France in the later thirteenth century. This was not a golden age in southern Italy, while France is usually thought to have been flourishing in most spheres. Prima facie borrowing might not seem probable. Nevertheless, European culture was fairly impervious to borders at the time. Families, physically split when some members settled far from home, tended to keep in touch, at least for the first generation. Channels of communication were kept open by visits, letters and inheritance arrangements. The Regno had distinctive institutions and learned traditions, a few (but an important few) of which so impressed some of those Frenchmen who did not permanently settle there as to inspire them to imitate them once they had returned home. They were less self-confident about French ways, more open-minded, than some later historians have thought them to be. The aim of this book is therefore to illuminate one aspect of what Bjorn Weiler has called ‘the

6

7

Colvin and A. J. Taylor, A History of the King’s Works in the Middle Ages (London: HMSO, 1939), vol. I, p. 86, vol. II, p. 1015; Ralph V. Turner, ‘Les contacts entre l’Angleterre normanno-angevine et la Sicile normande. Un réexamen du “Mythe normand” de Davis’, ´ Etudes Normandes 35 (1986), 39–60; Karl Meisen, Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch im ¨ Abendlande. Eine kultgeographisch-Volkskundliche Untersuchung (Dusseldorf: L. Schwann, 1931), pp. 510–12. For a somewhat similar view of the impact of Sicily on Aragon, see Marta Van Landinghem, Transforming the State. King, Court and Political Culture in the Realms of Aragon (1213–1387) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), passim. Translated by Sian Reynolds (Paris: Flammarion, 1991).

Introduction

5

structures which underpinned the cultural, political and social commonwealth which constituted thirteenth-century Europe’.8 There are obvious difficulties in the path of this investigation: in the first place, as has already been remarked, the difficulty of proving influence is considerable. Then, the project is an untidy one, covering the effects of the conquest itself, those of the ties between the rulers of the Regno and France, and the much wider impact of vigorous interactions between the inhabitants, both clerical and lay, of northern France and the Regno. In what follows, some chapters will stress one aspect of the subject, some another. It makes for a rather bumpy ride. But there is little point in attempting to look at only part of the question. Just as important a difficulty in the path lies in the fact that northern France was distinctly open to influences from the whole of the Italian peninsula in this period. The great commercial families of Lucca, Pisa, Florence and Siena were drawn into lending money all over northern France and therefore affected the ways in which credit was given and taxation was collected. Slowly what Robert Lopez famously christened ‘the commercial revolution’ of the middle ages was coming to parts at least of northern France.9 In the 1260s, Brunetto Latini was in Paris, writing his Trésors in the language of his host country, to spread Italian ideas around in a French readership. Italian styles were on the point of permeating French art. Manuscript illumination in France was soon to look to Italian models.10 There were increasing links between the northern and the southern points of what sociolinguistics experts call ‘the West Romance dialect continuum’.11 And practices initially associated with the university of Bologna were beginning to infiltrate French medicine, surgery and, most notably, law.12 We should not be thinking of two competing cultures. The fact that about a third of the surviving manuscripts of Old French and Occitan poetry were copied in Italy rather than in France demonstrates the cultural congruence of the 8 9 10

11 12

In Bjorn Weiler and Ifor W. Rolands (eds.), England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216–1272) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p. 155. Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). François Avril, Manuscript Painting at the Court of France. The Fourteenth Century (1310– 1380), trans. U. Molinaro and B. Benderson (London: Chatto and Windus, 1978), pp. 10, 15, 16. J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill, Dialectology (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 6. Chirurgie de Maˆıtre Henri de Mondeville, chirurgien de Philippe le Bel, trans. and intro. E. Nicaise (Paris: Alcan, 1893), pp. 187–8; André Gouron, ‘The training of southern French lawyers during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, Studia Gratiana 15 (1972), 219–27, reprinted in Gouron, La science du droit dans le Midi de la France au moyen aˆ ge (London: Variorum, 1984), IV.

6


two countries.13 Only slowly were contemporaries beginning to realise that there might in the future be two distinct, autonomous cultural realms.14 But if this is the case, if major political borders were easily permeated both by financial and by cultural innovations, and if contemporaries failed to distinguish sharply between things French and things Italian, is it either possible or desirable to attempt to pinpoint specific influences from just one part of Italy, the Regno, on northern France? Although it is clearly tricky, I believe that it is both possible and desirable, because circumstances for a finite period of time created an unusual opportunity for cross-fertilisation between these geographical areas. In engaging with this subject, I come up against the opinion of Joseph Strayer, that great expert on the reign of Philippe IV of France, that Philippe ‘refused to take much interest in the problems of his Angevin cousins of Naples’.15 I would contend that this is a distortion, based on an exaggerated contrast between the policies of Philippe III and Philippe IV. That Philippe IV le Bel was concerned about the recovery of Sicily is evidenced more fully in the reconstructed chancery records of Charles I and Charles II16 than in surviving French records. As I hope to show, considerable amounts of money and manpower went from France to the Regno during his reign, especially in the years before 1294. Diplomatic channels between Paris and Naples were always kept open. And, as I also hope to show, Philippe IV set a high value on military or administrative experience gained by his subjects in service to the Angevin kings. In particular, he listened intently to the advice he received from his cousin, Robert II d’Artois, who had ruled the Regno in one capacity or another for six years before he returned to France.17 Robert will be a central figure in what follows. 13

14 15

16 17

On Occitan texts, Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (eds.), The Troubadours. An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Appendix 4, pp. 303–5. For the rapidly growing number of Old French texts now thought to have been produced in Italy, see Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso, ‘La réception de la littérature courtoise du XIIe au XIVe siècle en Italie: nouvelles propositions’, in B. K. Altmann and C. W. Carrol (eds.), The Court Reconvenes. Courtly Literature across the Disciplines (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 3–13, esp. p. 7. Cf. Karla Mallette, The Kingdom of Sicily, 1120–1250. A Literary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), p. 123. Joseph Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 11; cf. the radically different argument in David Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, 1200–1500. The Struggle for Dominion (Harlow: Longman, 1997), pp. 109–10, where Philippe IV is accused of harbouring ‘a grandiose Mediterranean policy’. Registri della cancelleria angioina, ed. R. Filangieri et al., 49 vols. (Naples: Academia Pontaniana, 1951–2006); henceforth RCA. See below, pp. 250–9.

Introduction

7

The background to this story is the crusade launched in 1265 by the pope through the agency of Charles of Anjou, count of Provence, Anjou and Maine and brother of King Louis IX of France, to rid the Regno of its allegedly tyrannical Hohenstaufen rulers and to re-establish just rule in southern Italy and Sicily.18 The elimination of the Hohenstaufen dynasty had been papal policy since the Council of Lyons in 1245, at which Frederick II had been excommunicated and he and his descendants barred from rule. Although the death of Frederick II’s son Conrad in 1254 had put an end to Hohenstaufen rule in Germany, the popes had been unable to eject from the Regno Frederick’s illegitimate son Manfred, who had, after his coronation in August 1258, built up for himself what appeared to be a solid base in the south.19 Official papal policy was to find a warrior willing to drive Manfred out of the Regno. But a warrior with suitable military experience, personal resources and ambition, who yet would be sufficiently pliable towards papal demands not to overstep his brief, was hard to find. Since the popes had no intention of resigning their claimed position as overlords of the Regno, whoever undertook to eject Manfred was sure to find his freedom of manoeuvre in his new kingdom very much circumscribed by the wishes of his overlord. It took nineteen years from the Council of Lyons for a plausible candidate to appear. But by 1264 Charles of Anjou, after lengthy negotiations to improve the terms of his contract, finally made concrete plans to conquer the Regno. The crusading army that collected to assist Charles in his endeavour was predominantly made up of Frenchmen and men from Charles’s Provençal lands, all inspired both by religious zeal and by the promise of good wages.20 These stalwarts were well reinforced when they arrived in Italy, both by men from the traditionally Guelf townships of Lombardy and Tuscany and by the large group of exiles from the Regno who had gathered in the papal states during the reign of Manfred.21 Even so, Charles’s victory over Manfred at the battle of Benevento in February 18

19 20

21

The story has been told many times. For the negotiations that led up to the crusade, ´ Edouard Jordan, Les origines de la domination angevine en Italie, 2 vols. (Paris: A. Picard et fils, 1909), remains the basic text. For clear narrative of the events in English, Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers. See below, pp. 25–7. The crusade was preached not only against the Hohenstaufen, but also against the Muslims of Lucera; Julie Taylor, Muslims in Medieval Italy. The Colony at Lucera (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2003), p. 133. On wages, Norman Housley, The Italian Crusades. The Papal–Angevin Alliance and the Crusades against Christian Lay Powers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 148–9, 224. Conventional historiography has largely ignored this group. It included the important families of San Severino and Ruffo, along with the Pignatelli, the Lentini, the Dragoni and the Fasinelli. Their importance lay in the fact that they were determined to reestablish themselves in the Regno.

8


1266 could not have been confidently predicted. Manfred’s death in the battle assured Charles of the succession to the throne of the Regno, to which he had already been consecrated by five cardinals in Rome in January 1266. The battle of Benevento therefore established the Angevin kingdom, which lasted (though in a truncated form) till 1435. Charles of Anjou’s rulership was severely shaken by the advent of a predominantly German army led by Corradin, Frederick II’s grandson, in 1268, and much more severely tested by the Sicilian Vespers rebellion that broke out in 1282, which deprived the Angevins permanently of the island of Sicily. But Charles’s son Charles II, after a very rocky start, succeeded in holding on to southern Italy. The later history of his reign and those of his descendants is of no concern to this book. It is universally agreed that the ties between France and the Regno, so powerful in 1266, loosened in the early fourteenth century. I have chosen to cut off my investigation of those ties and their impact on France at about 1305. By that date the internal troubles of France meant that neither King Philippe IV nor any of his powerful subjects could afford to cultivate the connections with the Regno that had meant so much to Frenchmen in the early years. The humiliating defeat of the French army at Kortrijk by the Flemish in July 1302 preoccupied the French court to the exclusion of almost all other concerns until at least 1320. From Charles II’s point of view, the Peace of Caltabellotta made in 1302 between himself and the Aragonese conquerors of Sicily meant that he was no longer desperate for French financial and military aid. On both sides, the constant stream of messengers and envoys declined to a trickle. Sentimental links were still powerful; but they were not sufficiently strong to bring about more than the very occasional cultural or political consequence.22 It is the contention of this book that between 1266 and about 1305, such consequences had been significant. Given the difficulty of proving my points beyond reasonable doubt, I hope that even those readers who remain unconvinced by the main plank of my argument will at least allow much of the content of this book to be a contribution to comparative history. Because my subject is so diffuse, a gathering together of bits and pieces from a variety of fields, more attention than usual is paid to building up a picture of the connections between France and the Regno on which my arguments for plausibility depend heavily. Therefore, after a brief look at French society 22

` l’ombre des fleurs de lis. Les rapports entre les rois de See Philippe Contamine, ‘A France Valois et les Angevins de Naples et Provence’, in Tonnerre and Verry (eds.), Les princes angevins, pp. 117–30.

Introduction

9

and government around 1260 and a parallel consideration of society and government in the Regno at the same time, Part I of the book is given up to surveying journeys between the Regno and France, routes, reasons for and means of travel. In particular, it covers embassies between the two royal houses and, at least as important, the flow of money from north to south. Part II is a brief résumé of the indirect connections between France and the Regno, followed by a survey of the groups of French people who were drawn to visit the Regno. Part III is devoted to describing the interests of French individuals at the top of the social scale who settled for a time at least in the Regno. These great men, along with some ladies, had both the opportunity for importing ideas and institutions from the Regno into France and sufficient influence at home to make them stick. I shall try to isolate what impressed them and what effects there were. The chapters in Part III deal with Robert II, count of Artois, and with members of the Dampierre family, the relations of the counts of Flanders; with other great men, nobles, churchmen, administrators and others whose influence can be traced; and with the differing degrees of commitment shown by the participants in conquest and settlement, offering a brief survey of the differing opportunities open to any of them to get to know the people, the culture and the politics of the Regno. Part IV attempts to build up a picture, sometimes only speculative, at other times more solidly based, of the debts of northern France to the Angevin regime in the Regno in the social, political, religious, military and cultural spheres. A snapshot of northern France in the 1260s France in the 1260s was beginning to acquire that national selfconfidence for which it would subsequently become famous.23 Jacques Le Goff has called the thirteenth century the first “Grand Siècle” for the country.24 The efflorescence of literature, both poetry and prose, in the vernacular from almost all parts of northern France is one of the most striking features of the century.25 The view, articulated by Chrétien de Troyes, that France had become the home both of chivalry and of 23

24 25

Joseph Strayer, ‘France: the Holy Land, the chosen people, and the most Christian king’, in Strayer, Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History, ed. John Benton and Thomas Bisson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 300–14. Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), p. 571. Jean-Charles Payen, ‘Littérature et chrétienté sous le règne de saint Louis’, in Septième centenaire de la mort de saint Louis. Actes des colloques de Royaumont et de Paris (21–27 mai, 1970) (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1976), pp. 331–44; Gabriel Spiegel, Romancing the Past. The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), esp. pp. 315–19; Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 515.

10


clerical learning, began to be widely held among ordinary Frenchmen.26 They annexed to themselves (with some though not complete justification) the triumph of Christianity over its enemies in the conquest of the Holy Land.27 And they gloried in the growing international reputation of the university of Paris as the home of truth and light of the universal church.28 One factor that enabled its inhabitants to identify their homeland as la douce France as they knew it from literature29 was the relative peacefulness of France in the 1260s. There was a widespread sense of relief that major causes of conflict had now been settled: by the 1258 Treaty of Corbeil with Aragon which established the southern border of the kingdom; and by the 1259 Treaty of Paris with England which put an end to Henry III’s claims to Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Poitou, and confined his rule to the lands almost exclusively south of the Garonne, in what was known as the duchy of Gascony, which he now held as a fief of the crown of France.30 If the French king Louis IX had not pressed home his advantage to the fullest extent in either treaty, he had created what seemed for the moment at least to be lasting solutions to the problems left over from the bold victories of Philippe Auguste’s reign. Peace could now be anticipated from the Rhine delta in the north to the Mediterranean Sea in the south. Another factor in the general sense of contentment was the comparative prosperity of agriculture in northern France in the thirteenth century. ˆ The rich corn-growing fields of Artois and the Ile-de-France were producing good yields which could not only feed the rising population of their own area but also earn wealth for their farmers by exporting the surplus to Flanders.31 Wine production was growing, especially in the 26

27

28

29 30

31

Cligés, ed. Alexandre Micha in Les romans de Chrétien de Troyes, vol. II (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1957), p. 2, lines 28-33. For the repetition of this sentiment by Guillaume de Nangis, see Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 115; also p. 568. Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 290–4; Colin C. Smith, ‘The vernacular’, in David Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 71–81, esp. p. 76. Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis (henceforth CUP), ed. H. Denifle and E. Chatelain, 4 vols. (Paris: Delalain, 1889–97), vol. I, no. 79, p. 137, Parens scientiarum of Pope Gregory IX, found an echo among Frenchmen. La chanson de Roland, ed. F. Whitehead, rev. T. D. Hemming (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1993), p. 2, l. 16. On these treaties, see Jean Richard, Saint Louis, roi d’une France féodale, soutien de la Terre sainte (Paris: Fayard, 1983), pp. 358–9, esp. pp. 352–5; Malcolm Vale, The Angevin Legacy and the Hundred Years War, 1250–1340 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 53–6. Wim Blockmans, ‘Flanders’, in Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V, pp. 405–16, esp. pp. 411–13.

Introduction

11

Laonnais. And Normandy offered much in the way of dairy products and meat that might otherwise have been in short supply.32 The agricultural surpluses of northern France gradually drew the region into the more vigorous money economy that had characterised Flanders and Champagne in the earlier decades of the thirteenth century, and which continued to do so in the reign of St Louis.33 Though there were signs that shortages might soon appear, for the moment all seemed well. That harmony should largely obtain between the temporal and the spiritual powers in the kingdom was perhaps more remarkable. Despite his later canonisation, Louis entertained clear convictions as to the roles of the king and the lay authorities in his kingdom, for which he was willing to fight if he thought either pope or bishops sought to undermine them.34 He taxed the church harshly when he thought it necessary for the crusades.35 On the other hand, he listened to the clergy, particularly the mendicants; one of his closest advisors was Eudes Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen.36 He built many churches and monasteries.37 And nobody who knew him could doubt his intense piety. Therefore mutual respect created a sufficient measure of understanding to ensure that sources of tension were overcome, in his reign at least.38 The French people were inclined to attribute their present good fortune to the fine character of their current king and future saint.39 While a few murmured about his expensive failures as a crusader in Egypt in 1249, and others about his monkish ways, most recognised that he was a lover 32 33 34

35

36 37 38 39

Daniel Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 6–8. Kathryn L. Reyerson, ‘Commerce and communications’, in Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V, pp. 50–70, esp. pp. 67–70. Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 167–8; Gerard J. Campbell, ‘The attitude of the monarchy towards the use of ecclesiastical censures in the reign of St Louis’, Speculum 35 (1960), 535–55; Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, e´ dition bilangue de Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Dunod, 1995), pp. 31–2, 335–9. For instances of negotiation over bishops’ temporal powers, see William Chester Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 137–40. Jean Favier, ‘Les finances de Saint Louis’, in Septième centennaire, pp. 133–40, esp. pp. 138–40; Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 79–82; and see below, pp. 48–9. Adam J. Davis, The Holy Bureaucrat. Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in ThirteenthCentury Normandy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), esp. pp. 157–70. Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Monfrin, pp. 345, 359. Yves Congar, ‘L’église et l’état sous le règne de Saint Louis: e´ quilibres et malaises’, in Septième centennaire, pp. 257–71. ´ ‘Il y a eu la paix dans le royaume en son temps, il aima Dieu et Saint Eglise, et on dit qu’il est Saint’, The count of Poitiers’ minstrel, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France (henceforth RHF), vol. XXIII, p. 146, quoted in Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 462, note 4.

12


of justice who sought the common welfare of his people.40 The inquests which he conducted into the misdeeds of his officials showed up some long-smouldering resentments, but also offered at least a measure of hope of redress to those who had been oppressed.41 Joinville’s famous story of Louis dispensing justice under an oak tree at Vincennes provided a portrait of the king that soon grew famous.42 In a sense, this image of the king as justice incarnate, moulded as it was on Christ sitting among his apostles and bringing peace to all men,43 was somewhat ironic, because it was in the reign of St Louis that the Parlement of Paris began to do justice in the king’s name.44 Personal verdicts began to give way to more impersonal decisions. Nevertheless, it was also in Louis’s reign that the Capetian dynasty notably fulfilled its potential as a law monarchy.45 Symptomatic of this development was the appearance of royal legislation intended to run throughout the kingdom.46 By the second half of Louis’s reign, it was clear to all that Paris now ˆ lay at the core of the kingdom. The royal palace on the Ile-de-la-Cit´ e effectively counterbalanced the cathedral at the other end of the island. Louis stayed there quite frequently, moving among the people of the city, and using the palace garden for grand and very public occasions, as for example the receiving of Henry III’s homage in 1259 or the knighting of his son Philippe III in 1267.47 Symbolic of this new preference for Paris was the building of the Sainte-Chapelle, the royal chapel of the palace, intended as a reliquary for the crown of thorns that Louis had acquired from the Latin emperor Baldwin II in 1239.48 Its walls of stained glass, gilded statues and painted arches still amaze the beholder. Michael Camille has said of it that its sumptuousness ‘was meant to add luster not only to the sacred relics but also to the line of Capetian kings’.49 Below the level of the monumental, Louis’s frequent stays in the royal palace familiarised the inhabitants of the city with his chancery clerks and those who dealt with royal financial matters. It was not to be until the 40 42 44

45 46

47 49

41 RHF, vol. XXIV, ed. L´ Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 644–7. eopold Delisle (1904). 43 Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 485. Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Monfrin, p. 31. Les Olim ou registres des arrêts rendus par le cour du roi . . . , ed. Arthur Beugnot, vol. I, 1254– 1273 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1839). But note Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 142–4, for the argument that in Louis’s reign this movement had hardly begun. Beryl Smalley, ‘Capetian France’, in J. M. Wallace-Hadrill and John McManners (eds.), France: Government and Society (London: Methuen, 1957), pp. 61–82, esp. pp. 76–9. Gavin Langmuir, ‘“Judei nostri” and Capetian legislation’, Traditio 16 (1960), 203–39; André Gouron, ‘Royal ordonnances in medieval France’, in A. Padoa-Schioppa (ed.), Legislation and Justice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 57–71. 48 Ibid., pp. 531–2. Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 260, 270. Michael Camille, Gothic Art. Visions and Revelations of the Medieval World (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996), p. 46.

Introduction

13

reign of Philippe IV that these groups of civil servants took up permanent residence in new quarters in the rebuilt palace. But the roots of centralised administration were already by the end of Louis’s reign detectable to others than the members of the royal household. Perhaps the change that will have been most obvious to the inhabitants of the fast-growing city was that a rising number of the princes and other great nobles of France chose to reside in Paris for at least a part of most years.50 Consequently the city became home to artisans specialising in luxury trades, in manuscript illumination, in other forms of painting, in making jewellery, in tailoring, in shoe-making, in ivory-carving,51 and generally in pandering to the tastes of the new aristocratic residents.52 It was still too early, in 1266, to regard Paris as a capital city. But its path to that dignity was already well established. If Paris was its core, what were the peripheries of the kingdom of France in c.1266? It was emerging as a reasonably well-defined geographical area for the first time in its history. The royal conquest of Languedoc, achieved in 1229 and confirmed in 1244, had brought a much-contested area firmly into the kingdom, and the Treaty of Corbeil in 1258 had defined its southern frontier. Yet only a stretch of land roughly from Carcassonne to Beaucaire, including the crucial Mediterranean coast, had been added to the royal demesne (the land the king could directly exploit for profit). Most of the interior of the county of Toulouse had been given to Louis’s brother Alphonse of Poitiers (already lord of much of Aquitaine) as a result of his marriage with Jeanne, daughter of Raimon VII of Toulouse. Alphonse therefore added Toulouse to his already extensive lordship on the death of Raimon VII in 1249. His was now the largest of the apanages which complicated the political map of France in 1266. Louis VIII, by his will of 1226 which was extremely generous to his younger sons, had given a new meaning to the apanage in French constitutional history. With the intention of endowing Robert, Alphonse and Jean, his second, third and fourth sons, in order to create harmony in the family, he had

50

51 52

For example: Alphonse of Poitiers resided in Paris more than anywhere else (Richard, Saint Louis, p. 138): Charles of Anjou had an hôtel there (below, p. 275), as did the count of Flanders (Malcolm Vale, The Princely Court. Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 84), the duke of Burgundy (Jean Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne et la formation du duché du XIe au XIVe siècle (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1954), p. 308, note 4) and the count of Artois (Vale, The Princely Court, p. 124). So did the archbishop of Rouen (Davis, The Holy Bureaucrat, p. 47). Peter Spufford, Power and Profit. The Merchant in Medieval Europe (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002), pp. 180–2. R. Cazelles, Nouvelle histoire de Paris. De la fin du règne de Philippe-Auguste a` la mort de Charles V, 1223–1380 (Paris: Hachette, 1972), pp. 72–96.

14


brought into existence what were in effect Capetian principalities.53 As it happened, Alphonse and Jeanne had no children; when they both died in 1271, Philippe III was able, after a considerable legal fight, to claim the whole of Alphonse’s large inheritance for the royal demesne. Therefore the division of France by the Loire which had been so enduring a feature of its political geography did not survive long after 1249. There was a similar, though ultimately much more troubling, arrangement in Gascony. As has been said, the Treaty of Paris in 1259 ensured that this large principality based on hereditary right (as opposed to an apanage based on the gift of the ruler) should be held as a fief of the crown of France, in return for a large financial payment and tentative promises of some territorial gain for the duke in the future. Although the Treaty of Paris brought temporary peace (partly because the duke, King Henry III of England, was soon involved in serious trouble in England), there were many controversial elements still unresolved.54 Still, from then on the Pyrenees marked the frontier of the French kingdom to the south-west as well as to the south-east. The western side of the kingdom had been the beneficiary of Henry III’s renunciation, by the Treaty of Paris, of any rights he might have in Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Poitou. From then on, any lingering doubts the populations of these counties might have felt about the justice of Philippe Auguste’s annexations were put to rest. The Atlantic shore was safely French. Apart from the extensive duchy of Gascony, the only parts of the west not under direct royal administration were the duchy of Brittany and the counties of Anjou and Maine. The latter pair were an apanage, intended by Louis VIII for his son Jean, but given after Jean’s death by Louis IX to his youngest brother, Charles of Anjou, in 1246. Despite the occasional spasm of irritation with Charles, Louis was confident that these counties would be ruled in a fashion of which he broadly approved. The duke of Brittany was a less reliable figure. In the period of Louis IX’s youth there had been trouble (as there had also been in Champagne). But for the moment at least, relations between king and duke were harmonious. The western shores of the kingdom, so long a potential threat to the Capetian monarchy, now seemed reasonably peaceful. Northwards, there was apparently little dispute. The wealthy county of Artois had been established in 1237 as an apanage for Louis’s brother Robert, who had died at Mansourah in 1250. It was now in the hands of 53 54

Charles T. Wood, The French Apanages and the Capetian Monarchy, 1224–1328 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966). Vale, The Angevin Legacy, pp. 48–63.

Introduction

15

Robert’s son, Robert II, whose youth and fascination with matters eastern made him an easy neighbour for Louis.55 Further north, the frontier was well defined. Since the tenth century the counts of Flanders had usually recognised the French king as their suzerain for all but a small part of their territory, while the neighbouring counts of Hainault paid homage to the emperor, as did the dukes of Brabant, the counts of Luxembourg and the counts of Bar. Louis IX had strengthened this frontier by his arbitration in 1246 between the children of the two marriages of Countess Marguerite of Flanders. The decision that the children of Marguerite’s second (and much preferred) marriage to Gui de Dampierre should acquire Flanders on their mother’s death created a link of gratitude between the large Dampierre family and Louis, which ensured that the rich principality of Flanders would not, in that king’s lifetime, cause trouble to the crown.56 But that was a more temporary arrangement than Louis IX probably realised. The eastern frontier of the kingdom was by 1266 the most open to dispute. But the failure of the German princes to elect an undisputed emperor after the death of Conrad IV in 1254 until the election of Rudolph of Habsburg in 1273 meant that there was no firm opponent to make trouble for Louis IX here. To the east of Paris stretched the county of Champagne, held in 1266 by the king of Navarre, known to his French fief-holders as Thibaud V.57 Thibaud’s relatively short reign, his preference of Paris for a residence, his occasional preoccupation with Navarre and his interest in crusading, meant that Champagne officials ran the county on a daily basis. There was no ambitious figure either on the border or within the county to challenge the frontier here. And those with antennae sensitive to political trends may have been aware that royal influence was growing steadily within that county. The situation was rather similar in the duchy of Burgundy. After a career of expansion at home and threats to the neighbouring (imperial) county of Burgundy, Duke Hugues IV was by the 1260s more concerned with the establishment of a possible lordship somewhere on the Mediterranean littoral. He no longer wanted either to cause trouble at home or to press eastwards for a new frontier abroad. And 1266 was the year in which his heir, Eudes count of Nevers, set off on an expedition to Outremer, where he died. From that time onwards, a struggle for Hugues’s inheritance broke out among Eudes’s daughters and their 55 56 57

See below, pp. 101–2. Charles Duvivier, La querelle des Avesnes et des Dampierres jusqu’à la mort de Jean d’Avesnes (Brussels: Muquardt, 1894); below, pp. 120–1. Theodore Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100–1300 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), pp. 55–6.

16


respective husbands.58 Again, Louis had no cause for alarm, temporarily at least, about the duchy of Burgundy. South of the duchy, there were areas around Lyons and the Dauphiné where trouble over the French king’s rights might emerge in the future. The south-eastern frontier of France was poorly defined. But Louis had reason to feel relatively untroubled about this. Beyond the frontier of France, in what had since the tenth century been recognised as imperial territory, the county of Provence was, by 1266, firmly in the hands of Louis’s youngest brother, Charles of Anjou.59 Working hand-in-hand with Alphonse of Poitiers, Charles devised policies that usually (though not quite always) served the interests of Louis as well as his own. On the whole, Louis had reason to think that his two surviving brothers served the crown of France well. The huge expansion of the royal demesne that had taken place in the first half of the thirteenth century had somewhat simplified the chequered administrative and legal framework of France. Almost half of the kingdom was now under the direct control of baillis or sénéchaux nominated by the king.60 And since Alphonse of Poitiers in his extensive apanage imitated or occasionally set an example for the administrative innovations of the reign, there was a greater degree of uniformity beyond the frontiers of the demesne than could have been expected.61 Neither Charles of Anjou nor Robert II d’Artois was disinclined to follow the royal lead where it was permitted, nor were they determined to dispute the growing claims of the king within the whole kingdom. They both, for example, obeyed without making difficulties the royal edict of Chartres in 1262, which limited the circulation of all except royal money to the fief in which it was coined and forbade fief-holders to imitate royal coinage – a prohibition aimed specifically at Alphonse and Charles.62 Nevertheless, behind this growing appearance of uniformity, there was frequently an absence of effective royal power. Even in the royal demesne, the king’s officials were inclined to exercise their own judgment rather than carry out royal orders to the letter. The royal ordinance of 1254, designed to regulate strictly what the king’s officials did, is testimony to the problems Louis faced.63 The further away the official was from Paris, 58 60

61 62 63

59 See below, pp. 70–71. See below, p. 124. On the differences between these sets of officials, see Hiroshi Takayama, ‘ The local administrative system of France under Philip IV (1285–1314) – baillis and seneschals’, Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995), 167–93. Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 138, 442. Philip Grierson, The Coins of Medieval Europe (London: Seaby, 1991), p. 113. Louis Carolus-Barré, ‘La grande ordonnance de 1254 sur la réforme de l’administration et la police du royaume’, in Septième centennaire, pp. 85–96, esp. pp. 86–7; Alan Harding,

Introduction

17

the harder it was to ensure that he always behaved as a royal agent, not as an independent person. Even in Paris, the prévots did not always enact the royal will.64 Local and personal interests often stood in the way. The decision after Louis’s return to France in 1254 to send out enquêteurs regularly to check on the abuses committed by officials did something to help, at least initially. But the gap between royal command and local execution was substantial in all medieval monarchies. The sheer size of the kingdom of France made this clearly visible, as did the survival of large principalities like Flanders and Gascony and, potentially at least, the new creation of substantial apanages. Much of the history of France in the period 1266 to c.1305 was to be concerned with tension between the king and two of his greatest feudatories. The king’s right to impose his will everywhere across the kingdom was still far from being recognised, even in 1305. In no field was the kingdom of France’s lack of uniformity more visible than in that of justice. Throughout the kingdom, disputes had to be taken to local courts, operating according to the law as understood in that locality, and usually presided over by men, dukes, barons, castellans, whose right to hold a court was based on hereditary claims. In other words, in 1266 France north of the Loire was still a land of customary laws, some applying only to a small area, enforced by men only a minority of whom owed their position directly to royal appointment. Only what had once been the duchy of Normandy had one legal custom for the whole area.65 Elsewhere there was a mosaic of customs, several being committed to writing for the first time during the reign of Louis.66 In the far south of France, customary law was slowly being supplemented (and in a few cases changed) by the new reliance on Roman law, under the influence of graduates from Bologna, Montpellier and other small centres of legal knowledge.67 But uniformity was very far from obtaining, even

64 65

66

67

Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 148–52, 155–8. Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Monfrin, pp. 355–7. Le très ancien coutumier de Normandie, vol. I, in Coutumiers de Normandie: Textes critiques publiés avec notes et ećlaircissements, 2 vols., ed. Ernest-Joseph Tardif (Rouen: Société de l’Histoire de Normandie, 1881). E.g. Coutume de Touraine-Anjou and Usage d’Orlenois, on which see F. R. P. Akehurst, ´ The Etablissements de Saint Louis. Thirteenth-Century Law Texts from Tours, Orleans, and Paris (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). Akehurst has produced an excellent treatment of this subject in the Introduction to his translation of Philippe de Beaumanoir’s Coutumes de Beauvaisis (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. xvii–xix. André Gouron, ‘La diffusion des consulats méridionaux et expansion du droit romain ´ aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 121 (1963), 26–76, esp. 54–67, reprinted in Gouron, La science du droit; and Gouron, ‘The training of southern

18


here. Compared with the kingdoms of England or Sicily, the French legal system at ground level in the 1260s appeared seriously undeveloped. On the other hand, Louis IX’s reign saw a vast increase in the number of appeals from the localities made to the king, either for denial of justice (the failure of a local court to hear a case) or for default of justice (a local court failing to come to a proper verdict); or for a conflict of jurisdiction (two parties disputing the right to hear the case). From 1254 onward, records (the Olim) were kept of these appeals, which were heard before what came to be called the Parlement of Paris.68 Three times a year a large council met, often in the king’s presence, to hear these appeals and render judgment in accordance with the customary law of the locality in which the alleged failure of justice took place. In this way, a link was forged between the royal court, the highest in the land, and the local courts at ground level. How the judgments of the Parlement of Paris slowly began to have an effect on the law dispensed in local jurisdictions, how Parlement started to intervene even without receiving an appeal, is the chief narrative thread of the legal history of France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This development was only at the very beginning in the reign of St Louis. But Parlement’s potential importance was becoming evident during the period covered by this book, 1266–c.1305. As has already been said, the reign of St Louis was generally a good time for the French economy, although with considerable regional and chronological variations.69 France, like the rest of western Europe, was gaining from the increasing amounts of precious and other metals being mined in Bohemia and Poland; money-lending was becoming commoner and helping to offer a buffer against the occasional bad harvest; agriculture was generally profiting from the more active markets for foodstuffs brought about by the rising population; trade in wine, wheat and cheese encouraged the growth of small town markets; building, especially ecclesiastical building, was providing jobs and profits for workmen. Furthermore, small parts of the country, especially the great Flemish towns, the ports of Mediterranean France and the Champagne fair towns, were engaging successfully in international trade. Groups of merchants, those who organised textile manufacture and various master craftsmen were becoming rich. The problems inherent in this growth, which were to become evident in the last two decades of the century as prices for basic commodities rose, had not yet emerged. It was with some justification

68 69

French lawyers during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, ibid.; John Gilissen, Introduction historique au droit (Brussels: Bruylant, 1979), p. 330. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. 191–212; Harding, Medieval Law, pp. 160–70. For an overview, Gérard Sivéry, L’économie du royaume de France au siècle de Saint Louis (vers 1180 – vers 1315) (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1984).

Introduction

19

that later generations were to look back on the reign of St Louis as a golden age. It is an assumption behind this book that France in 1266 was in a good state to absorb influences from outside. In the process of acquiring a French identity, the country’s administrators were still sufficiently open-minded to see the advantages of different methods of administration, while having enough machinery of their own onto which to graft new forms. French visitors to the Regno were sufficiently self-aware to appreciate that southern Italy and Sicily were culturally and politically rich in ways that might add depth to their own traditions. They were also sufficiently self-confident to pick out only the elements that seemed best suited to absorption in a French environment. The fact that France’s exposure to southern influences was so short mattered less than the timing of that exposure, which found the country in a peculiarly receptive mood. A snapshot of the Regno, c.1266 The kingdom of southern Italy and Sicily, usually known as the Regno, came into existence with the coronation of Roger II, duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily as king on Christmas Day, 1130.70 The story of the Norman conquest of southern Italy and Sicily has been often told, and need not be repeated here.71 But what has particularly intrigued many recent historians is the hybrid society that resulted from this conquest.72 Because the fast-fading remnants of this hybridity were still visible in 1266, it is necessary to allude briefly to the Norman background here. Whereas in the Roman empire and in the early Byzantine period the fates of southern Italy and Sicily had been closely intertwined, in the course of the ninth century the relationship was sharply altered by the slow but steady Muslim conquest of Sicily by men from North Africa.73 The failure of the Muslims in the early tenth century to establish permanent bases in southern Italy gave a new political and cultural importance to the sea passage between Messina and Reggio. The boundary between 70 71 72

73

Hubert Houben, Roger II of Sicily. A Ruler between East and West, trans. G. A. Loud and D. Milburn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 50–6. For a recent treatment in English, see Graham A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard. Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (Harlow: Longman, 2000). Perhaps most vividly recreated in John Julius Norwich, The Normans in the South, 1016– 1130 (London: Longman, 1967) and The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130–1194 (London: Faber, 1976). See also David Abulafia, ‘The Italian Other: Greeks, Muslims and Jews’, in Abulafia (ed.), Italy in the Central Middle Ages, pp. 215–36, at pp. 221–2. Mark Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600–1025 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 305–7.

20


the Arabic- and the Latin-speaking peoples achieved some sharpness. But the Byzantine reconquest of Apulia in the reign of Basil II gave renewed vigour to the Greek-speaking peoples of southern Italy, who had probably dwindled to a small minority before this event, and to those of Sicily who were more numerous. The Norman conquest of the later eleventh century therefore brought together under one ruler peoples of the three great Mediterranean cultures. The ability of the Regno’s early rulers, particularly Roger II, to exploit aspects of the Greek and Arabic inheritance has aroused admiration. However, by the 1250s, the Latin culture of its rulers and of the Roman church had become by far the dominant force in the Regno.74 The Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Sicily had declined steadily in number since the Norman conquest. The survivors, perhaps 5 or 10 per cent of the original population,75 had revolted against Frederick II and had been defeated in 1223, and the overwhelming majority of those who remained were then gradually transported to the mainland at Lucera, where they became a valuable military resource for the Hohenstaufen armies.76 The reliance of Frederick II and then Manfred on these troops provided the popes with another justification (there were many) for their decision to attempt the eradication of the Hohenstaufen dynasty.77 Like the Muslims, the Greek-speaking population in Calabria and eastern Sicily had also declined both in numbers and in importance.78 Their connections with the Byzantine empire had loosened, particularly after the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, and the restoration of 1261 with the accession of Michael VIII Paleologus to the throne in Constantinople had not changed the situation. Perhaps more importantly, the connections of the Greek-speaking churchmen in the Regno with the Orthodox church had also been relaxed.79 By the reign of Frederick II, Greek-speakers were to be found only in the interior of the Val Demone in Sicily and in the mountains of Sila and Aspromonte in Calabria, and in the Terra d’Otranto. In the early 1260s, the Greek ecclesiastical community seems 74 75 76 77 78 79

Alberto Varvaro, ‘Language and culture’, in Abulafia (ed.), Italy in the Central Middle Ages, pp. 197–211, at p. 199. David Abulafia, Frederick II. A Medieval Emperor (London: Allen Lane, 1988), p. 147; Italy in the Central Middle Ages, p. 223. Abulafia, Frederick II, pp. 144–8: Taylor, Muslims in Medieval Italy, pp. 11–19. Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 65. Abulafia, Frederick II, pp. 252–3; G. A. Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 507–12, 520. For the issues at stake between the two churches, Henry Chadwick, East and West. The Making of a Rift in the Church; from Apostolic Times until the Council of Florence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 200–18; for the recognition by Greek churches in the Regno of papal supremacy, see Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy, p. 499.

Introduction

21

to have been seriously weakened by the papal–Hohenstaufen quarrel. It is notable that very little evidence survives for the activities of the Greek bishops of Calabria during the reign of Manfred.80 The traditional claims of the Regno to hybridity were therefore very much reduced.81 There was, however, still a large population of Jews, particularly in Apulia,82 but also in Sicily, where Frederick II had welcomed the settlement of new groups.83 In addition to the economic advantages they brought – the immigrants from North Africa were given the task of cultivating indigo in Sicily and south Italian Jews contributed much to the cultivation of silk – the Jewish communities also provided scholars and translators, some of whom formed a cultural bridge with the Arabicspeaking survivors.84 It was chiefly through their agency that the Regno continued to play a (diminishing) role in the transmission of classical Greek and Arabic scholarship to the west.85 But if the Regno became increasingly Latin in speech and culture, it retained its traditional outward-looking network of relations with its Mediterranean neighbours. Its geographical position in the centre of that great sea dictated its integration in a larger whole; and its production of grain, vegetables, olive oil, raw cotton and silk ensured its commercial importance.86 These commodities were exported in large amounts, sometimes to North Africa, always to the cities of northern Italy, and 80

81

82 83 84 85

86

Norbert Kamp, Kirche und Monarchie im staufische Königreich Sizilien, vol. II (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1975), e.g. p. 879 for the absence of a known archbishop of Rossano between 1254 and 1266. But note the extensive Lombard immigration into Sicily in the 1240s, see Henri Bresc, ´ ´ Un monde méditerranéen. Economie et société en Sicile, 1300–1400, 2 vols. (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1986), vol. II, p. 598. Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews. The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 85. Abulafia, Frederick II, pp. 146, 335–6. Ibid., pp. 255–7, though Abulafia takes a much more sceptical approach about their significance than earlier authors; Italy in the Central Middle Ages, pp. 230–1. Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), pp. 33, 155–93; Jean Jolivet, ‘The Arabic inheritance’, in Peter Dronke (ed.), A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 113–48, at pp. 125–6. For medical translations in the time of Manfred, Heinrich Schipperges, ‘Die Assimilation der arabischen Medizin durch das lateinische Mittelalter’, Südhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, Beihefte 3 (1964), 166–72, at 168. For the literary impact of Arabic on writers of the Regno in the time of Frederick II, see Mallette, The Kingdom of Sicily, esp. p. 73. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea. A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 119, 209, 222–3; David Abulafia, The Two Italies. Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) passim, but esp. pp. 34–8; Stephan R. Epstein, An Island for Itself. Economic Development and Social Change in Late Medieval Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 291; Philip Jones, The Italian City State. From Commune to Signoria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 169–72.

22


by the second half of the thirteenth century in increasing amounts to the surviving Latin states in Outremer.87 The foundation by Manfred of the port of Manfredonia was proof that increased facilities for the export trade were now needed. While the monarch was the chief gainer from the tough controls imposed by Frederick II on the grain trade – licences had to be obtained to export grain and duty had to be paid on all exports – others seem to have made a living out of it.88 However, very little of the profit of trade, if any, percolated down to the peasants who grew the crops for export. There are signs, even as early as the reign of Frederick II, that landlords, particularly those in Sicily, were having difficulty in keeping their tenants on the land.89 Hence the encouragement given by thirteenth-century rulers to immigrants from other parts of the Mediterranean.90 What has been said of crops grown for export and the taxes imposed by the kings on them presupposes a substantial fleet of ships carrying the goods to the markets of northern Italy or elsewhere. As David Abulafia has shown, this had been the case since the early years of the Norman conquest.91 Although there was a Sicilian navy, it was chiefly employed in warfare; the bulk of the carrying trade between the Regno and its markets was in the hands of Pisans, Genoese and, to a lesser extent, Venetians in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There were colonies of Pisan and Genoese merchants in the Regno, ready to arrange exports on the best terms they could secure.92 Commercial relations between the large maritime republics and the Regno were confused, in the later part of Frederick II’s reign and throughout Manfred’s, by political considerations.93 The Hohenstaufen family had usually found alliances with Pisa congenial; Genoa was rather more tricky.94 Principally through these two cities, the Regno was drawn into what Robert Lopez famously called ‘the commercial revolution of the middle ages’.95 87 88 89

90

91 93 94

95

Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277 (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 64. Abulafia, Frederick II, pp. 214–21. Jones, The Italian City State, p. 264. The Liber Augustalis or Constitutions of Melfi Promulgated by the Emperor Frederick II for the Kingdom of Sicily in 1231, trans. James M. Powell (Syracuse, NY: University of Syracuse Press, 1971), p. 109. We have already mentioned Frederick II’s welcome to North African Jews. Charles of Anjou was equally encouraging to men from Provence: Jean Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou. Power, Kingship and State-Making in Thirteenth-Century Europe (Harlow: Longman, 1998), p. 157. 92 Ibid., pp. 279–82. The Two Italies, pp. 49–55. For Genoa, see Steven A. Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1528 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 135–9, 141–4. Abulafia, Frederick II, pp. 310–12; in the reign of Manfred, the Genoese and Venetians played the central role: Enrico Pispisa, Il regno di Manfredi. Proposte di interpretazione (Messina: Sicania, 1991), pp. 209–11. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages.

Introduction

23

Both the Regno’s geographical position and its agricultural crops made its harbours the ideal places for ships crossing the Mediterranean, whether from east to west or north to south, to rest and restock in the middle of the journey. Inhabitants of the Regno were involved in repairing ships and sails, baking ships’ biscuit, and carrying goods to the harbours, all under the close scrutiny of royal officials, there to ensure that all transactions both benefited the crown financially and were in the political interests of the monarch. While most of the visiting ships came directly from the Italian maritime republics, some had been charted by the military orders to send fighting men and supplies to their members in Outremer.96 The importance of the Regno as a stopping-place, as also as a provider of Apulian wheat to Acre and Tyre, convinced the popes that the fall of the Hohenstaufen and a regime change in the Regno was a valuable, even necessary, preliminary to a major campaign to strengthen the Christian hold on the lands that had been won by the first crusade or in its immediate aftermath.97 After the fall of the Latin empire of Constantinople in 1261, the popes were equally persuaded that the Regno’s ports were vital to any plan for reconquest there.98 Not all of the Regno’s external relations were driven primarily by commerce. Manfred followed the tradition of his predecessors in looking earnestly for areas of the Mediterranean into which he might expand his influence. One tie with a neighbour forged under the Norman kings which was still of significance in his reign was the connection with the emirs of Tunis. Tunis was frequently an eager market for grain from the Regno. It was also a source of gold. On occasion, this gold could be obtained in the form of tribute, a recognition by the emirs of the Sicilian navy’s control over the straits that separated them from Manfred’s kingdom, and a reminder of the vassal status the emirs were forced to recognise from time to time.99 That Tunisian gold came into the Regno was interpreted by its neighbours as a sign of the fabulous wealth to be found there. Only fifty miles across the Adriatic from Apulia lay the coast of Albania. The Regno had always faced insecurity from this direction. The disintegration of the Byzantine empire in 1204 had offered some relief from the traditional enemies of the Norman kings; but it had permitted greater independence to the rulers of Bulgaria and to the Despot of Epiros. To neutralise any potential threat from his closest eastern neighbours, Manfred seized much of central Albania, probably in 1257, and forced the Despot of Epiros to bestow these lands, plus Corfu, as 96 97 99

Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood. A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 238–44; Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 67. 98 Ibid., p. 67. Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 68–9. Abulafia, Frederick II, p. 60.

24


dowry on his daughter Helena, who became Manfred’s second wife.100 This appeared to offer a long-term solution to what had been a major weakness in the Regno’s external relations. Unfortunately for Manfred, the defeat of his troops in alliance with those of Epiros and of Guillaume de Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, at the battle of Pelagonia in 1259 by the renascent forces of the Greek empire of Nicaea under Michael Paleologus, soon to be emperor of Constantinople, put an end to his ambitions for expansion in this direction.101 To the west, there were more opportunities than hazards. Sardinia and Corsica both seemed to be potential conquests. But Manfred was too occupied to attempt such a thing. In any case, he was probably unwilling to interfere with either the precarious Pisan lordship of Sardinia or the rather stronger Genoese lordship of Corsica.102 Malta remained under his overlordship, but with powerful Genoese interests there.103 Further west, he achieved his major coup by securing the marriage of his daughter Constance with the heir to the throne of Aragon-Catalonia, Peter. This marriage was, after 1282, to be of crucial importance to the Aragonese title to Sicily when Peter exploited the Vespers rebellion to take the crown of the island for himself in the name of his wife. In the short term, the marriage bestowed on Manfred recognition by one of the more important monarchs of Europe. But he himself had little chance to make profit from it. Western opportunities had to be allowed to slip. The reason for Manfred’s relative lack of success abroad was that he was increasingly pushed onto the defensive by poor relations with his feudal overlords, the popes, and fear of a Guelf alliance against him. As the illegitimate son of Frederick II, he had been permitted to act as regent for the Regno on the death of Conrad IV in 1254. But both Innocent IV and Alexander IV were determined to assert papal lordship over the Regno during what they saw as an interregnum. Neither was keen to endorse the claims of Conrad IV’s boy son Corradin, whom many inhabitants of the Regno regarded as their legitimate monarch-tobe. They hoped to find a non-Hohenstaufen candidate for the throne, in accordance with the decree of the Council of Lyons in 1245. On the other hand, in his capacity as regent, Manfred was proving successful in ruling the people of the Regno. On 11 August 1258, after rumours of Corradin’s death had circulated, Manfred took a great gamble in having 100 101 102 103

Alain Ducellier, ‘Albania, Serbia and Bulgaria’, in Abulafia (ed.), New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V, pp. 779–95, at p. 792. Pispisa, Il regno di Manfredi, p. 315. Marc Tangheroni, ‘Sardinia and Corsica’, in Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V, pp. 447–57. Pispisa, Il regno di Manfredi, p. 300.

Introduction

25

himself crowned king of the Regno in Palermo. The coronation, undertaken in open defiance of Pope Alexander IV, demonstrated the strength of Manfred’s support among his new lay subjects, but provided a real stumbling-block to peace on the northern frontier of the kingdom,104 and some internal trouble. For churchmen who had attended the coronation, it brought the threat of excommunication and loss of office. Many left the Regno, and those who remained largely kept their public activities to a minimum.105 Manfred was therefore deprived of much in the way of pulpit propaganda in his new position. On the other hand, he was drawn, whether willingly or not, into an alliance with the Ghibelline powers of northern Italy, which were in the ascendant in the years after their victory over the Guelfs at Montiperti in 1260.106 Naturally this alliance did not endear him to the popes. Despite occasional attempts to reach some sort of compromise with him, Alexander IV, Urban IV and Clement IV hardly gave up the search to find some European prince who would be willing both to eject Manfred from the Regno and, as his successor, to acknowledge papal overlordship of the country in the very active sense in which the popes understood it. In the end, Urban made terms with Charles of Anjou in 1263, and Clement set the count of Provence, Anjou and Maine off on what proved to be a military triumph at Benevento in February 1266.107 From the second excommunication of Frederick II at the Council of Lyons in 1245 until the battle of Benevento in 1266 (and indeed beyond this), the Regno was in a state of political and ecclesiastical upheaval.108 This was, however, no great novelty for the country, or indeed for much of Italy in the thirteenth century. And beneath the troubled surface, the Regno enjoyed a degree of internal peace from the time of Manfred’s coronation until the battle of Benevento. The country’s inhabitants were surprisingly quiescent, considering the burdens put upon them. Manfred inherited from his father a harsh fiscal system that diverted a large proportion of the Regno’s wealth into the hands of the monarch. In addition to the taxes on exports and export licences already mentioned, 104

105 106 107 108

Daniel Waley, The Papal State in the Thirteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1961), p. 153. On the treaty between Innocent II and Roger II on which the papal claim to lordship was principally based, see Peter Partner, The Lands of St Peter (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972), p. 174. For details of individual bishops, see Kamp, Kirche und Monarchie im staufische Königreich Sizilien, vol. III. Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, p. 25. Jordan, Les origines de la domination angevine remains the clearest and fullest description of the tangled negotiations over the Regno. For Pispisa’s view that Manfred generally held the upper hand over the church within the Regno, see Il regno di Manfredi, pp. 241–67.

26


the king received the usual aids from his feudatories and could levy a tax, the subventio generalis, from his subjects to cover his expenses in time of war.109 There was already a tendency for this tax to become regular rather than to be simply for emergencies. Manfred’s difficult position with the papacy allowed the plea of preparation for defensive war as an excuse for taxation for most of his reign. The fruits of this fiscal extortion created the belief among knowledgeable foreigners that the resources of the Regno were greater than they actually were. They also offered a weapon to the popes to argue that the Hohenstaufen were destroying the resources of the Regno and therefore should be removed from the throne.110 Harsh fiscalism is only possible where there exists a body of taxcollectors under the tight direction of and answerable to a numerate, legally minded bureaucrat. Frederick II had built on Norman precedent to create this condition. His magister rationalis controlled his secreti and portulani who did the tax-collecting pretty efficiently. Their authority was backed up in each province by a justiciar, a legal official who had officials below him to enforce his judgments, and who might be called on to play a military role in the defence of his locality.111 Pispisa has demonstrated that, in the reign of Manfred, all tax-collectors were gradually subordinated less to the magister rationalis than to the chosen new counts and barons on whom Manfred relied for support, with the result that the financial arrangements – and indeed also matters of justice and defence – became more decentralised than they had been under Frederick.112 But because the counts and barons, the new nobility, led by the members of his mother’s family, the Lancia clan, were deeply loyal to Manfred, it was possible still to maintain the accustomed financial pressure on the subjects of the Regno, and also possible for the monarch to obtain his income. How long this mutation of the system could have remained efficient is unknowable; the king’s reign was too short to put these personal ties under strain. The bureaucracy in the Regno depended to a great extent on the written order emanating from the centre to the local officials. Like the church’s administration, and to a lesser extent that of England, but unlike that of France in the 1260s, the government demanded of its officials a fair degree of literacy and numeracy. Local as well as central administrators 109 110 111 112

See Abulafia, Frederick II, p. 339; Donald Matthew, The Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 339–40, 347, 350. Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 48. Matthew, The Norman Kingdom of Sicily, pp. 329, 354–6. Pispisa, Il regno di Manfredi, p. 43.

Introduction

27

were required to keep records and regularly consult them.113 Frederick II had made it easier for his subjects to acquire the relevant skills, along with a knowledge of the law, by his foundation of the university of Naples in 1224. Against this background, his most famous achievement, the promulgation of the Liber Augustalis in 1231, seems almost natural, though it was in fact a major innovation.114 In his Proemium to the book, the emperor declared that his aim was to produce a clear code of laws to be from henceforth enforced across the kingdom. These laws comprised both the laws promulgated by his predecessors and those of his own that he wished to preserve. In future the law courts of the kingdom should be able to dispense justice satisfactorily because everyone would know what the law was. The book was to be a means of promoting peace in the realm. In other words, Frederick was choosing among the customs of the past those that seemed most likely to encourage order and harmony in his kingdom. He then ordered the chosen laws into three books, so that they could be more easily assimilated, and promulgated them for his people. Unlike the codifications of local law which appeared in France in the later thirteenth century, this was a statement of royal law issued by a ruler. And, also unlike them, it showed the deep impact of Roman law, not only in the form of the Liber, but also in the content of some of the individual laws.115 In many ways, Manfred’s kingdom was very different from that of Louis IX. Far smaller, it was more centralised, more bureaucratic, more obviously dominated by its ruler. It had a legal and intellectual tradition that depended on a relatively high degree of lay literacy. It possessed a code of royal law which gave it at least an apparent unity. Unlike France in the 1260s, it could not aspire to concentrate on internal matters; both its geographical position and its history of commerce made it constantly outward-looking. In possessing resources of gold, it was thought by its neighbours to be wealthier than it was. Its crops and the skills of its workforce made it a crucial stopping place for shipping in the Mediterranean. Many travellers therefore knew it well, and probably envied it. All this had few parallels in France As it turned out, the most immediately politically significant contrast with France lay in the fact that, whereas Louis IX was regarded by the popes as a defender of the church, Manfred was 113 114 115

Matthew, The Norman Kingdom of Sicily, pp. 337–8. The Liber Augustalis, trans. Powell. Most famously, Book I, Tit. XXXI. On the importance of Roman law, contrast the view of Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 102, with Matthew, The Norman Kingdom of Sicily, pp. 342–4.

28


seen as a wicked excommunicate who had impoverished both the church and the people of the Regno and who refused to acknowledge the rights of the popes as the country’s rightful overlords. That papal perception led to the preaching of the crusade against Manfred and ultimately to the seizure of the Regno by Charles of Anjou.

Part I

Means of communication

1

Routes and journeys

The route between Paris and Naples came to be very well trodden in the years from 1266 to 1305. Long-distance travel in the middle ages was never comfortable nor particularly safe; brigandage by land and piracy by sea always threatened. But this was not, by contemporary standards, a difficult journey. That Charles of Anjou had already been count of Provence for twenty years before he became king of the Regno was the crucial fact in easing the traveller’s way. After 1271 ( the date of the death of Alphonse of Poitiers), a Parisian might travel through land belonging either to the king of France or to the count of Anjou (Charles) until he got to the Italian border. This route would take him through northern France, then across the Loire at Tours and then south to Languedoc. The alternative way, taken by Gui de Dampierre in 1270, was through ˆ Burgundy and then down the Rhone to Provence.1 Each of these was well protected and provided with inns; royal coinage was accepted everywhere. The traveller probably entered Provençal territory at Avignon, or perhaps Tarascon. Here he would have to exchange his gold or his livres parisis for Count Charles’s money, which he might well be unwilling to do, especially when the effects of debasement were clearly felt on the coinage of Provence.2 But he would still be protected by comital officials on his path to Marseilles (or just occasionally Nice), and there were comital stables at which he could rest his horses.3 From Marseilles, he might then sail directly to Naples, thereby avoiding altogether alien territory or hostile lords. If he was fortunate in finding a ship at Marseilles ready to sail for the Regno, the whole journey could take not much longer than four weeks. 1

2 3

Inventaire analytique des chartes des comtes de Flandre avant l’avènement des princes de la maison de Bourgogne, ed. Jules de Saint-Genois (Ghent: Vanryckegem-Hovaere, 1843– 46), p. 46, no. 141. Archives du Bouche-du-Rhône. vol. I. Série B. Cour des Comtes de Provence, ed. L. Blancard (Paris: P. du Pont, 1865) no. 1370. Correspondance administrative d’Alphonse de Poitiers, 2 vols., ed. Auguste Molinier (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1900), vol. II, no. 1743.

31

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For reasons that will become apparent in the course of this book, the route from northern France to Aix-en-Provence, Tarascon or Marseilles, by way of Lyons, Vienne and Avignon, was in constant use in our period.4 This guaranteed reasonable speed. On 2 September 1283, a messenger was sent with a letter from Flanders to Charles of Anjou, then in Provence. By 3 October (six days before the feast of St Denis) he had returned with Charles’s answer to Arras.5 Assuming that the matter was dealt with expeditiously as soon as Charles was aware of it, the messenger will have taken about fourteen days to reach him and the same amount of time to return. Obviously, it will usually have taken rather longer for great men with considerable retinues to reach Provence from the north. But the great usually acquired royal safe-conducts, which assured them the assistance of local officials on their way. There was little to fear on this leg of the journey. The sea route from Marseilles (or sometimes Nice) to Naples flourished throughout the period of Angevin rule in southern Italy. Normally, prudence – fear of corsairs and storms – led the ships’ captains to prefer a sheltered route around the coastline of Italy, or alternatively (especially in times of antagonism with Genoa) an island-hopping route around Sardinia and Corsica, either of which made the journey longer than a modern sailor would expect.6 For example, it took Charles of Salerno about four weeks to get from Naples to Provence by sea in 1278, stopping at Pisa and Genoa on the way.7 Nevertheless, the sea passage offered huge advantages, in terms both of time-saving and of avoiding potential enemies in the Alpine regions. Furthermore, the mercantile traffic between Marseilles and Naples was growing steadily heavier in the second half of the thirteenth century, under Angevin encouragement to trade. Waiting times for passages grew shorter, as queues of aristocrats shuttled between their Provençal and their Regno estates. It must have been a rare cargo ship that departed in either direction without any paying passengers. Both Marseilles and Naples were relatively well sheltered, and both offered excellent land or sea connections to other routes. The occasional person departing the Regno for France might spurn Naples and prefer Ostia, Porta Pisano or even Genoa as the point of departure, 4 5

6 7

For alternative routes from northern France to southern Italy, see Spufford, Power and Profit, pp. 155–73. Archives du Nord Série B, ed. L’Abbé Deshaines and J. Finot, 398, nos. 2.504 and 2.515. On this, see the very useful chapter by Reyerson, ‘Commerce and communications’, in Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V , pp. 50- 70, at p. 54. John H. Pryor, Geography, Technology and War. Studies in the Maritime History of the Mediterranean, 649–1571 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 7. Andreas Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II. von Anjou (1278–1295) (Husum: Matthiesen Verlag, 1999), p. 51.

Routes and journeys

33

as did Robert II, count of Artois, when he finally left the Regno in November 1291. The reason for this was that he had business to transact at the Roman curia before he left Italy. He passed through Rome on 26 November, set sail from Genoa, arrived at Nice where Charles II made elaborate arrangements for his reception, and ended his journey in Paris in January 1292.8 Some lesser men probably took a similar course for the same reason. The speed of a sea journey could permit the element of surprise. When Charles of Anjou set off by sea from Marseilles directly to Ostia in May 1265 (the journey took him ten days), he arrived in Rome too soon to allow his potential enemies within the Eternal City to unite against him.9 The other side of the coin was, however, that it was difficult to make an impressive entry into a city after a sea landing, because ships did not permit of the transfer of sizeable entourages. Hence those concerned above all with the ceremonial aspects of the journey preferred the longer and often more hazardous land route. So, after the ignominious end of the Tunis crusade and the death of Louis IX, the young Philippe III set off in 1271 with his father’s corpse on a long journey through Italy and France that was half funeral procession, half a public reception of the new king. According to the Grandes Chroniques, Philippe went by Viterbo, Orvieto, Florence, Bologna, Cremona and Milan, and through the Mont Cenis pass to Lyons, Mâcon, Cluny, Troyes and Paris.10 Similarly, when Charles II wished to portray his long-delayed return to the Regno in 1294 as a kind of victory parade, he chose to travel from Provence through Piedmont, across Lombardy, Tuscany and the papal states, expecting ceremonial receptions all along his way.11 It was a means of drawing together all his potential allies as he returned home. Therefore speed was sacrificed to splendour. While Philippe III and Charles II could be reasonably confident that their enemies would keep a low profile while they crossed Piedmont, Lombardy and Tuscany, others could not. When great armies took the land route from Naples to Provence or from Provence to Naples, they did 8

9 10

11

Anne H. Van Buren, ‘Reality and literary romance in the park of Hesdin’, in Medieval Gardens, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections (Washington, DC, 1986), pp. 117–23, at p. 126, note 25; RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 385. Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers, p. 85. Les grandes chroniques de France, vol. VIII, ed. J. Viard (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1934), pp. 33–5; according to the Anonymous chronicle in Chroniques de Saint-Martial de Limoges, ed. H. Duplès-Agier (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de la France, 1874), pp. 133–4, he also called in at Limoges. But this is an error. Ptolemy of Lucca, Die Annalen des Tholomeus von Lucca, ed. B. Schneidler (MGH SS RG ns vol. VIII), p. 225, tells of the splendid reception for Charles II in Lucca, which added to the commune’s existing burdens so much that it had to make peace with Pisa.

34


so partly because shipping an army, with all its horses and equipment, was usually prohibitively expensive;12 Robert d’Artois paid 5,000 lt for the short journey by sea from Genoa to Nice for himself and his household in 1291.13 This sort of sum put the route beyond consideration for a whole army. Besides, the land route offered the advantage that the soldiers could frighten and if possible subdue their enemies as they went. So Philippe de Montfort led the great crusading army from France by land from Lyons in October 1265, through the Alps and Lombardy, to meet Charles of Anjou in Rome. Philippe’s combination of military threat with diplomatic skill ensured a safe passage for his men, although at times they met with real difficulties. By January 1266, they had arrived in Rome, in sufficient time to join the attack on Manfred in February of that year. In the same way, the majority of French recruits coming in 1282–4 to assist Charles of Anjou against Peter of Aragon followed the land route. It was not surprising that both Charleses repeatedly tried to impose their lordship on Piedmont. Without control there, they risked serious military weakness in the Regno. So while the sea route offered an excellent passage for individual messengers rushing between the royal courts of France and Naples, or for military leaders in a desperate hurry, as Charles of Anjou was both in 1265 when he set out to defeat Manfred and in 1284 when he returned home to face the worst crisis of his reign, the cheaper, more arduous but sometimes more politically rewarding land route never lost its appeal, despite the real difficulties of following the coastal route both to the west and to the east of Genoa. The crossing of Alpine passes became as familiar to members of the two royal courts as was the sea passage between Provence and the Regno. However it was never easy. When the young King Philippe III returned home from the aborted Tunis campaign in 1271, he had to allow four days of rest for his men and his horses before they made the effort of crossing the Mont Cenis pass, which involved ascending to the summit of 6,800 feet.14 Count Gui de Dampierre of Flanders preferred to use the Great St Bernard pass on his return.15 Both passes were hazardous, especially outside high summer. Still, it was 12

13

14 15

On horse transports, John H. Pryor, ‘Transportation of horses by sea during the era of the crusades: eighth century to 1288 AD’, The Mariner’s Mirror 68, part ii (1982), 103–25. Bernard Delmaire, Le compte général du receveur d’Arras pour 1303–1304, e´dition précédée d’une introduction a` l’étude des institutions financières de l’Artois au XIIIe–XIVe siècles (Brussels: Academie Royale de Belgique, Commission Royale d’Histoire, 1977), p. LXIII, note 31. Les grandes chroniques de France, vol. VIII, p. 35. For the detail of Gui’s journey, see Albert Henry, Les œuvres d’Adenet le Roi, vol. I (Bruges: De Tempel, 1951), pp. 21–30.

Routes and journeys

35

relatively cheap for lesser men who wanted to go to southern Italy to join an armed group which they knew was heading for Naples by Lake Geneva or Piedmont, then Lombardy, Tuscany and the papal states. Whichever way they chose to go, seven weeks for the journey from northern France to the Regno was apparently considered a very liberal allowance for a soldier and his entourage.16 There is, unfortunately, no means of knowing how many men set off and failed to arrive, because either they turned back, they were captured by thieves or enemies, or they grew ill or died. Nor can we know how many actually arrived. The records are in a poor state.17 Even for those sufficiently important to join the royal household, records are distinctly scrappy, particularly between 1265 and 1271, and after 1279.18 Nevertheless, sufficient numbers of individuals are recorded as having gone down to the Regno during the period to suggest that the dangers of the journey were rarely regarded as sufficient to put off the young, vigorous and ambitious. 16 17

18

Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais Série A, 30/6, on the time allowed for Béraud of Saint-Georges’s prospective return to Flanders. For a table of the lost registers, see Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, p. 15. For the destruction of the Angevin registers in 1943 and the effort to reconstruct them, see Riccardo Filangieri, RCA, vol. 1, pp. v–xii. Jean Dunbabin, ‘The household and entourage of Charles I, King of the Regno, 1266– 85’, Historical Research 77 (2004), 313–36, passim. The almost continuous absence of Charles II from the Regno between 1285 and 1293 seems to have prevented a revival of the custom of keeping household lists (though there is plenty of information about household costs).

2

Meetings, embassies and correspondence

Between 1266 and about 1305, messengers flew almost ceaselessly between the royal court at Paris and the royal court in Naples. Sometimes the two courts were in complete harmony; more often there were minor strains between them; only occasionally (as in 1303, when Charles II solidly backed Boniface VIII after Anagni)1 did a temporary breach occur. But even then, there was cause for negotiation, for an attempt to pour oil on troubled waters. For almost the whole of the reign of Philippe III (1270–85), contact was regular; and although Philippe IV (1285–1314) was less closely involved in the fate of the Regno than his father, and his own interests coincided less easily with those of Charles II than his father’s had with Charles I’s, there were still many urgent matters to be discussed between them. So in Paris, major events in the Regno were regularly commented on, as is attested in the chronicle of the SaintDenis monk Guillaume de Nangis.2 Charles of Anjou’s conquest of the Regno would not have been possible without the consent and active support of Louis IX (1228–70) of France. There have been those who thought it was given reluctantly; but few modern historians follow this line.3 By the time Charles set off in 1265, Louis was convinced that the Regno must be in safe hands before Outremer could be given the help it so desperately needed. His brother’s campaign in southern Italy was but the first step in the maintenance and reinforcement of Christianity in the Holy Land. He therefore put no barrier in the way of the pope’s demand for a tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues from France for the enterprise.4 He encouraged the constable of France, Giles 1 2

3 4

Sylvie Pollastri (ed.), Les Gaetani de Fondi. Recueil d’actes 1174–1623 (Rome: Fondazione Camillo Caetani, 1998), docs. 59 and 60. Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis de 1113 a` 1300, vol. I, ed. H. Géraud (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1843). Guillaume was well informed on the main events of the history of the Regno from 1266 until he stopped writing in 1300. For discussions of this point, see Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 465–6; Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 726. Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 83–4. On this subject, see the following section.

36


37

le Brun, to participate with his troops in the battle of Benevento.5 He lent money for the conquest. Royal officials helped to ensure a supply of grain to the newly conquered kingdom.6 And he allowed Charles’s agents to recruit across France both for the initial conquest and to consolidate it. His only mistake lay in thinking that Charles’s victory over Corradin at Tagliacozzo in August 1268 marked the end of his brother’s need for troops and finanical help. He then showed his impatience to launch the second part of his plan, the crusade to Jerusalem. Because the two campaigns were so deeply connected in Louis’s mind, it is difficult to sort out how many of the letters and embassies between the brothers were inspired purely by Regno business in the last four years of Louis’s reign. They had always kept up correspondence and Charles’s move from Provence to the Regno does not seem to have slowed the rate of letters very much. As it turned out, Charles and Louis never met in person again after 1265. And when they did send messages, the Regno and the crusade were not the only topics that concerned them. Charles had to forward in the court of Louis IX business relating to his French counties of Anjou and Maine, and his second wife’s county of Tonnerre. There were, of course, occasional spats of ill will: Louis’s queen, Marguerite, had a grievance about her unrecognised claims to Provence, made worse after her sister Beatrice’s death in 1268, because Beatrice had left a will which gave Charles of Anjou usufructory rights in Provence and Forcalquier for his lifetime.7 Usually, Louis made no gesture of overt support for his wife, in order not to compromise his position as an arbitrator. This may have required considerable self-restraint, especially as ˆ he himself was irritated by Charles’s levy on salt in the Rhone valley.8 But for the most part relations between the rulers were cordial. Charles showed his gratitude to Louis by diverting the ships that he had gathered for a campaign in Albania to the Tunis crusade in 1270. While later Ghibelline authors accused Charles of diverting the crusade to Tunis for his own purposes, there is little evidence to support this assertion. He has, more plausibly, been criticised for profiteering from the disaster that enveloped the crusade in Tunis. But given the state of the French army when he arrived to join it, he may have had no option but to wind the crusade up in the least ignominious way possible.9 He certainly ensured that he gained by the terms of its withdrawal. On the other hand, too little may have been made of the payment of 103,000 onces of gold by the emir of Tunis to Philippe III to buy peace; of this 5 7 8

6 Siv´ Richard, Saint Louis, p. 474. ery, L’économie du Royaume de France, p. 35. RCA, vol. 2; additiones, documenti tratti da varie fonti, 92. 9 Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 561–2. Reg. Clément IV, 1008.

38


sum, Philippe only gave his uncle 35,000 onces (including a loan he had already made of 3,000) as a contribution towards his costs.10 Charles was not the only gainer by the withdrawal from Tunis, and while he had to wait to reap advantage from the arrangement, Philippe got a large sum of gold on the spot. Whatever the truth of the ending of the Tunis crusade, Philippe III does not seem to have been inclined to blame his uncle in any way. Charles did well from the opportunity it provided for him to give advice and help to the young king after his inauspicious accession to the throne. The return journey from Tunis to Sicily, thence to Calabria, up through the Regno to Rome allowed a sufficiently long personal contact between the two kings to leave the younger feeling permanently in his uncle’s debt. Some may think that Philippe was manipulated by Charles; but it is worth remembering that the new young king carried back his father’s bones to Paris with him, despite Charles’s urgent request to be allowed to bury Louis in the Regno. Charles had to be satisfied with just the entrails and probably also the heart.11 Philippe was not infinitely malleable. Charles also had to pick up a heavy bill for entertaining the French cortège. As far as is known, he derived no tangible or immediate benefit from this generosity. On the other hand, Philippe continued to support the Regno, and if he was less lavish before 1282 than his father had been, it was because Charles seemed to have weathered the storm by 1271; his needs were less apparent. The reception, with tournaments, that Philippe put on for Charles of Salerno when he visited Paris in 1279 was notable for its magnificence.12 It was a clear sign of the warmth he felt for his relations. The second, and last, occasion on which Charles of Anjou and Philippe III met in person (in the early summer of 1283) was equally cordial, but on this occasion Charles was desperate for any help he could get. When the Vespers rebellion had broken out at Easter 1282, Philippe had demonstrated his support by encouraging his relations and friends to go to the Regno to fight to restore Angevin control in Sicily, and by making an extensive loan to Charles. Now, in 1283, he had the opportunity of expressing his sympathies in the most public way. In one of those dramas so beloved of medieval commentators, Charles arrived in Bordeaux in May, with the avowed intention of fighting Peter III of Aragon 10

11 12

RCA, vol. 5, reg. xx, 306 and 303. For what happened to the money acquired by Philippe III from Tunis, see Xavier Hélary, ‘Les rois de France et la Terre sainte de la croisade de Tunis a` la chute d’Acre (1270–1291)’, Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de France (2005), 21–104, at 85–91. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxi, 85. Guillaume de Nangis, Vie de Philippe III, RHF, vol. XX, p. 512.


39

in a battle with a hundred knights on each side. The victor was to win Sicily. Pope Martin IV was appalled and ordered Edward I of England, in his capacity as duke of Gascony, to prevent the battle, because such a form of ordeal was against canon law.13 Charles and Peter each explained the failure of the battle to take place by the failure of the other to turn up at the appointed time. But probably no one was expecting them to fight. Aborted duels were a fact of medieval life. The stated willingness to fight for one’s cause was taken as proof of a man’s conviction that he was right. The issue was often, if not usually, resolved by some other means.14 Nevertheless, it was important for Charles’s position that Philippe accompanied him to Bordeaux and supported him ostentatiously. The king of France’s presence ensured that French chroniclers would report the incident, and from a perspective favourable to Charles. This tended to underline Peter of Aragon’s diplomatic isolation, especially when his brother, King James of Majorca, began to make signs of willingness to ally with Philippe. Philippe’s presence upheld Charles’s claim to legitimacy, at a time when Peter of Aragon had apparently played his trump card in placing his wife Constance, daughter of Manfred and therefore of Hohenstaufen blood, as regent in Sicily. If the drama played out at Bordeaux was, as it seems to have been, a public jockeying for moral superiority, then Philippe was Charles’s prime asset. The French pope Martin IV, whose pro-Angevin proclivities were notorious and who had the example of Innocent IV’s attack on the Hohenstaufen to guide him, declared in March 1283 that Peter of Aragon’s sins constituted just ground for confiscating all his realms, and launched a crusade against him. On their way back from Bordeaux, Philippe held a council at Bourges, in Charles’s presence, at which he publicly condemned Peter.15 Charles then returned slowly, by way of Anjou and Maine and Provence, to the Regno, much fortified both in manpower and in morale. To conclude the story, in August 1283, Martin offered Philippe the throne of Aragon for one of his sons, in order to distract Peter from Sicily by an attack on his home ground. Philippe and his advisors, after much discussion, accepted the offer in February 1284.16 Philippe saw this as constituting a perfect way of assisting his uncle Charles and at the same time ensuring the future of his own second son, Charles de Valois, who would then accede to a crown. 13 14 15 16

Reg. Martin IV, no. 452. Cf. Anna Laura Trombetti Budresi, ‘La sfida di Bordeaux: dragazioni sul tema di un duello mancato’, in La società mediterranea all’epoca del Vespro, vol. IV, pp. 409–19. Chroniques de Saint-Martial de Limoges, ed. H. Duplès-Agier, p. 178. Reg. Martin IV, no. 580.

40


Because the so-called ‘Aragonese crusade’ turned out to be a complete disaster for France and led to Philippe III’s death, some historians have been inclined to exaggerate the malevolent influence of Charles I on the decision to go to war.17 But Philippe probably thought that his son’s claim to the Aragonese throne through his mother, Isabelle of Aragon, was good; and neither he nor his heir showed any willingness to abandon that claim until it became untenable. Indeed, for some months after Charles II’s release from his Aragonese prison in late 1288, Philippe IV refused to allow his brother Charles de Valois to give up the Aragonese throne, although Charles II begged him to do so. Philippe IV did not formally resign it on his brother’s behalf until the Treaty of Anagni in 1295. Besides, the decision to campaign against Peter was confirmed by the Parlement of Paris in February 1284. French kings were never merely putty in the hands of designing monarchs of the Regno; nor did they take important decisions on their own. It is, however, worth noting that Philippe III planned, once the Aragonese crusade had been brought to a successful conclusion, to go on to campaign for the reconquest of Sicily in person.18 He was clearly convinced that upholding his uncle’s rights was in the interests of France.19 It is possible, though by no means certain, that in the earlier part of Philippe III’s reign, Charles used the French royal chamberlain, Pierre de la Broce, as a channel of communication with Philippe.20 Pierre was notorious as having achieved almost vice-regal power in the first seven years of the reign, and then being executed in early 1278 for treason at the behest of various French magnates, of whom Robert d’Artois was the most significant. It is well known that Pierre had been trusted by King Louis IX, who committed to him the particular care of his heir in 1268.21 Charles of Anjou’s connection with Pierre has only recently been remarked.22 But Pierre was from the Touraine; his uncle, to whom he was close, was patronised by Charles, who conferred on him the chantership and a prebend in the church of Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour at 17 18 19

20

21 22

Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers, p. 259: ‘In his last illness . . . he [Philippe III] had time to reflect on the humiliation into which his admiration for his uncle Charles had led him.’ Camillo Minieri Riccio, Cenni storici intorno i grandi uffizii del Regno di Sicilia (Naples: Archivio di Stato, 1872), p. 28. Xavier Hélary, ‘Les relations entre les cours de France et de Naples dans la décennie 1270’, in Jean Duma (ed.), L’espace politique méditerranéen (Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 2008, version e´ lectronique), 33–46. For the supporters of Marie becoming the pro-Angevin party after 1278, Charles-Victor Langlois, ‘Le règne de Philippe III le Hardi’, thèse, Faculté des Lettres de Paris, 1887, p. 35. LeGoff, Saint Louis, p. 733. Xavier Hélary, ‘Pierre de la Broce, seigneur féodal, et le service militaire sous Philippe III. L’Ost de Sauveterre (1276)’, Journal des Savants (2006), 275–305, at 289–90.


41

Le Mans;23 later Charles pressed for him to become dean of the same church.24 Charles will have met Pierre himself when he came on the Tunis crusade. In 1273 he arranged for Pierre to be given money to buy a fief in Anjou, and subsequently gave full instructions for his installation in a fief that Geoffrey de Lavadin had held.25 This certainly looks like an attempt to keep on close terms with Philippe’s chief minister.26 But the effects of this connection remain very shadowy. The two reasonably lengthy direct encounters between Charles of Anjou and Philippe III were complemented by many embassies. Of these, the most likely to have made an impression on a relatively wide circle of Frenchmen were those directed to the Parlement of Paris. After his coronation as king of the Regno, the most significant piece of business Charles had to promote there was his claim to a considerable part of the inheritance of his brother, Alphonse of Poitiers, and his wife, Jeanne of Toulouse. Alphonse had died in 1271, shortly after his return from the Tunis crusade; his wife survived him for only a few weeks. They had had no children. Charles made no claim to Toulouse, the fate of which had been determined in 1248. But, as Alphonse’s nearest surviving relation, he did claim the very large part of the duchy of Aquitaine that had been Alphonse’s, also his lands in the Auvergne and those in Provence.27 Therefore there were lawyers representing Charles’s interests fighting in the Parlement from 1271 until the final (perhaps rather unjust) rejection of almost all his claims in 1284. For a time in the late 1260s and early 1270s there were also advocates representing the king of Sicily in Paris as Charles fought to ensure for his second wife Marguerite her share of her father’s inheritance. Marguerite was one of three daughters of Eudes, count of Nevers, who died in 1266. By 1274, Marguerite was recognised as countess of Tonnerre and lady of three important seigneuries, two in the Perche and one in Normandy. These cases, of which the outcomes were so different, ensured that Charles’s profile remained high throughout almost the whole of his reign among the notables who were called to the Parlement and those who did the French king’s business. Out of sight was far from out of mind. Neither Robert d’Artois during the regency 23

24 25 26

27

Cartulaire du chapˆıtre royal de Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour du Mans, ed. Menjot d’Elbenne and L.-J. Denis (Le Mans: Société des Archives Historiques du Maine, 1903–7), p. 95, doc. LXXXIII; p. 106, doc. XCVI; p. 110, Doc. C. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 683. Cartulaire du chapˆıtre royal de Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour du Mans, nos. 647, 682, 1044 and 1045. It is worth noting that Robert II d’Artois also gave a money fief to Pierre de la Broce at Viterbo in 1270: E. de Loisne, ‘Diplomatique des actes de Robert II, Conte d’Artois (1266–1302)’, Bulletin Philologique et Historique (1916), at 206–7. Cartulaire du chapˆıtre royal de Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour du Mans, nos. 810, 811, 854.

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nor Charles II when he reigned in person was able to equal Charles of Anjou in raising contentious issues for the attention of the Parlement. As we shall see, Charles of Anjou began his reign with financial demands that laid a great burden on the French church.28 In other ways, the French clergy were frequently reminded of him. Those who attended the royal chapel heard him prayed for in 1273.29 Others thought of him after 1276 by the title he from then on preferred to all others: king of Jerusalem. This associated in their minds the uncle of the king of France with the outcome of the crusades, making him a figure representative of all that the earlier Latin armies had achieved in Outremer. On a less elevated plane, the hospitality Charles afforded to visiting French clerics in the Regno will have been much discussed among the younger and more ambitious clergy.30 Those who went to Rome on business were tempted to extend their stay by a few weeks in the Regno, primarily for pleasure and for interest. French merchants had reason to be grateful for the regular orders they received from the court at Naples. Household officials were sent to buy cloths, robes and headdresses for the king, the royal courtiers and the queen and her circle.31 The earliest letters in the royal chancery written in French were concerned with such matters, presumably because Latin words for dress requirements were not sufficiently precise for the delegated buyers to know exactly what was wanted.32 Then there were the jewels, including crowns, which Charles ordered from Paris whenever he could afford them, and almost as frequently sought to pawn when he needed ready cash.33 While most of the necessities for court life could be amply satisfied in the Italian market, the king and queen intended to appear distinctly French in dress and ornament. Since the official – usually the pantler – deputed to buy these wares was almost always sent with enough ready cash to cover the costs, these purchases did not lead to the complicated credit transactions that the acquisition of other more expensive and more vital things frequently did. One way and another, Paris and the more influential men and women in that city were frequently reminded of their links to the Regno before 1285. Ironically, although the interests of Charles II and Philippe IV did not dovetail as neatly as their fathers’ had done, their characters were much more similar. ‘Deux Capétiens, deux bigots, deux amateurs de 28 29 30 32 33

See below, pp. 48–9. Jean-Paul Boyer, ‘Prédication et l’état napolitain dans la première moitié du XIVe siècle’, in L’état angevin, pp. 127–37, at p. 129. 31 A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 1027. See below, pp. 94–6. Durrieu, Les achives angevines, vol. I, pp. 65–6, and note 1; also p. 94. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxi, 151.


43

conseillers juristes.’34 With many of the same beliefs and priorities, facing at least some of the same challenges, it was perhaps not surprising that Charles II and Philippe le Bel surrounded themselves with the same kind of servants and often performed the same actions. They therefore took care to present a harmonious front whenever they could, expressing their goodwill loudly where it was possible, passing over in silence their differences, and emphasising their blood relationship. Each did as much to help the other as was compatible with pursuing their own interests first and foremost. Inevitably Philippe’s help was more important to Charles than Charles’s could be to Philippe. But the French king made little of this in public. As it happened, it was even harder for Parisians to forget about the existence of Charles II, at least before 1303, than the existence of Charles of Anjou. Unlike his father, Charles II was a fairly regular visitor to Paris, and stayed there for some time on each occasion. As count of Anjou and Maine, he had inherited residences in the capital, which he did not give up to Charles de Valois, his son-in-law and his successor as count of Anjou and Maine, until late in 1292 – and even then his stepmother, Marguerite of Tonnerre, kept one.35 Charles’s need for a residence in Paris was keen in the first years after his release from his Catalan jail on 1 November 1288, because he was devoting himself to persuading Philippe IV, against his inclinations, to make peace with Alfonso III of Aragon, Peter III’s successor. Charles came up frequently from his base in Provence, and must have been well known to ordinary Parisians as he journeyed about the city with his entourage. The more influential among French princes and royal servants will have followed every step in the negotiations that led painfully to the agreement of Corbeil in August 1290, whereby Charles de Valois would be rewarded with the hand of Charles’s eldest daughter Marguerite and the counties of Anjou and Maine, in return for giving up his claim to the throne of Aragon.36 But it was easier to propose this arrangement – a huge sacrifice of both resources and prestige for Charles – than to bring Charles de Valois on side, and, more importantly, to produce terms sufficiently alluring for Alfonso III to make at least a truce with Philippe. Such was the task that the king of the Regno had taken upon himself as a condition of his release from jail; and to this end he principally devoted himself until the marriage of his daughter in 1291. 34 35 36

Gérard Giordanengo, ‘Arma legesque colo: l’état et le droit en Provence (1246–1343)’, in L’état angevin, pp. 35–80, at p. 69. RCA CII, vol. 45, reg. li, 62. Thesaurus novus anecdotorum (henceforth TNA), ed. E. Martène and O. Durand, vol. I, cc. 1236–40.

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After this, Charles II came to Paris to try to raise money and soldiers. For example, a letter from Charles Martell, his eldest son, to Robert d’Artois, dated July 1292, mentioned that his father was with Philippe IV, trying to get help.37 The end of the war between Aragon and France did nothing to assist him in his own war with the Aragonese. Despite considerable trouble at home, neither Alfonso III nor his successor James II (who came to the throne in 1291) was willing to give up Sicily without strong inducements to do so. The war therefore dragged on until late 1293, with vast expenditure on both sides. Charles’s financial position was dire. He could only beg his richer cousin for loans, gifts, and military and naval help wherever he thought an opportunity existed. Philippe was not particularly forthcoming; but he did not want to experience a complete defeat in what was widely seen as a Capetian cause. He lent what he could, and pressed hard to get the money returned at the agreed date. In 1292 he even expressed a desire to own property in the Regno himself, though nothing came of this.38 After Charles returned to the Regno in December 1293, visits to Paris were rare, though he was there again in 1297.39 But he continued to write letters, still appealing for help and interceding on behalf of his allies with the king. He acquired armaments and logistical aids in France.40 That he still had influence there is attested by Guillaume de Nangis, who held him responsible for Philippe’s brief display of forgiveness to Gui de Dampierre, which led to a truce between the French and the Flemish in 1297.41 Unfortunately, this failed to survive the two-year period for which it was originally intended. By this time, Philippe had very little energy left to bestow on the affairs of the Regno; all his efforts were bent on the subjugation of Flanders and the attempt to prevent losses in Gascony. As far as is known, he was unable to assist in response to Charles’s desperate plea for help in 1299, after the failure of his Sicilian campaign and the capture of his son Philip of Taranto.42 The French king’s endorsement of Charles de Valois’s expedition in 1301 represented the last gasp of his interest in the affair. After the terrible defeat of Kortrijk in July 1302 and the clash with Boniface VIII, the crown of France had no part left to play in the war between Naples and Sicily. Charles II gladly accepted the Peace of Caltabellotta in August 1302, and the long alliance was over. French involvement in the attempted arrest of Boniface VIII at Anagni in the following autumn will have embarrassed Charles heartily. He did what 37 39 41 42

38 RCA CII, vol. 45, reg. liv, 34. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 37/25. 40 RCA CII, vol. 38, Prefazione, p. xi. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. I, no. 2314. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronique latine, vol. I, p. 302. Domenico Tomacelli, Storia de’ Reami di Napoli et Sicilia, vol. II, pp. 436–9.


45

he could to punish the Italian perpetrators, in order to uphold the rights of his papal overlord.43 Boniface’s death and his successor’s eagerness to heal the breach with Philippe prevented any open display of tension with France. But the papacy was no longer strong enough to smooth the path between the two kings, which had been the aim of Honorius IV and Nicholas IV. When King Robert of Anjou broke the peace to attack Sicily again, in 1314, the war effort had to be financed and manned largely independently of French help. Of much less overall significance than the personal relation between Charles II and Philippe IV was that between Charles II and Philippe’s younger brother Charles de Valois. Nevertheless, given Charles de Valois’s political influence during his brother’s reign and well beyond it, the tie was on occasion important. From the moment in February 1284 when Philippe III accepted from Martin IV the offer of the throne of Aragon for his younger son by his first marriage, Charles de Valois was set to become a major figure on the French political scene. Charles II’s chief activity immediately on his release from his Catalan jail in November 1288 was to persuade Charles de Valois to renounce his title to the Aragonese crown in return for marriage with Charles’s daughter Marguerite and the gift of the counties of Anjou and Maine (which together produced a revenue of at least 5,000 lt per annum). The marriage took place in the summer of 1291, and the French prince’s gain was a substantial loss to Charles II. Sadly, it was not compensated for by a long-lasting familial tie; Marguerite died in 1299. But Charles de Valois’s second bride, Catherine of Courtenay, whom he married at the beginning of 1301, also had strong Angevin connections. The daughter of Philip of Courtenay, titular emperor of Constantinople, and Charles II’s sister Beatrice, she had been brought up by Charles of Anjou’s second wife Marguerite of Tonnerre at the royal court of the Regno. After Charles of Anjou’s death in 1285, she had retreated with Marguerite to Tonnerre, and had then moved around France, trying to recover her family lands and searching for an appropriate husband to take on her majestic title of empress of Constantinople.44 Charles de Valois fitted the bill admirably; the alliance met with the approval both of Philippe IV and of Charles II. The marriage necessarily kindled Charles de Valois’s ambitions in the east. Therefore he readily accepted Boniface VIII’s offer of full powers

43

44

Pollastri (ed.), Les Gaetani de Fondi, docs. 59 and 60. On the other hand, he prevented the Colonna from attempting to profit from Boniface’s death; Guiseppe Galasso, ‘Charles Ier et Charles II d’Anjou, princes italiens’, in Tonnerre and Verry (eds.), Les princes angevins, pp. 85–97, at p. 95. See p. 139.

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to pacify Italy in September 1301, which was to be the first stop on a planned reconquest of the Latin empire of Constantinople. Charles de Valois’s Italian campaign brought him into close contact with Charles II and Charles’s heir, Robert, duke of Calabria. They were, by this time, worn out by their lack of success against Frederick III, the younger brother of James II of Aragon, who had been proclaimed king of Sicily by the Sicilians in 1295. Neither Charles nor Robert any longer entertained hopes of being able to dislodge Frederick from Sicily, without substantial help from France or Aragon. They were anxious to make peace. Pope Boniface, on the other hand, was determined to fight on. Whether because he shared Angevin dispiritedness or because he was anxious to return to France on hearing of the news of Kortrijk, Charles de Valois negotiated the treaty of Caltabellotta with Frederick III in August 1302. Because he served Angevin rather than papal interests by the treaty, Charles de Valois ensured that he was well paid for his assistance by Charles II. He left Italy richer than he had come to it.45 The marriage of Charles de Valois with Marguerite had required a papal dispensation. The close kinship of the two Capetian lines prevented other subsequent marriages. By 1305, links of friendship were becoming strained; opportunities for reinforcing them becoming rare. The messengers who had been employed to carry letters between Paris and Naples were likely to find themselves deployed in other directions. As Philippe’s concerns became increasingly northern, so Charles II was drawn to Piedmont and to Hungary. The bonds created by a common enterprise had notably loosened. There remained, however, one royal connection that kept its vigour long after 1305. This was the link between the Angevins and the circle of Marie de Brabant, Philippe III’s second wife, Philippe le Bel’s stepmother, and Robert d’Artois’s first cousin.46 Marie’s brother, Jean duke of Brabant, had been a firm ally of Robert II d’Artois (they had acted decisively together in bringing about the downfall of Pierre de la Broce). Consequently Marie was drawn into long and active support of Robert in the Regno, and therefore of the Angevins. She lent money to the cause, she acted as a close friend to Charles of Anjou’s second wife Marguerite of Tonnerre, and she was even reputed to have decisively intervened to persuade Philippe III into his attack on Aragon in 1285.47 45 46 47

Joseph Petit, Charles de Valois (Paris: A. Picard, 1900), pp. 78–88, esp. p. 85, emphasises the financial gains. Patricia Stirnemann, ‘Les bibliothèques princières et privées au XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, in André Vernet (ed.), Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. I, p. 184. Jocelyn Hillgarth, Ramon Lull and Lullism in Fourteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), p. 165.


47

She was as loyal to Charles II as she had been to his father. There was little sign of affection between her and her stepson Philippe le Bel; during ˆ his reign she was seldom at court, though often in Paris at the hotel de Flandre. On the other hand, she remained a considerable figure in northern France, where she was known as a great patron of literature. Her friendship was a pillar of the Angevin monarchy. Messengers went to and fro between her various places of residence and the royal family in the Regno until at least the death of Charles II. It was symbolic of the relationship that she became the last known owner of Charles of Anjou’s doubtless much-valued cross.48 48

Codicil to will of dowager queen Marguerite, Archives du Nord, B447 (4.621).

3

The movement of money

The financial drain from France to the Regno will have affected more Frenchmen than any other aspect of the enterprise begun in 1265. Conquests come expensive, and conquerors naturally try to put the costs on to as many shoulders as possible. In their efforts to exploit all conceivable sources of revenue, Charles of Anjou and Charles II were aided by the pope, by various Italian bankers, and by a small number of faithful French lords. France could not be made to pay as much per head as Provence or the Regno; but it was squeezed in every feasible way, often with the support of the crown. So great was the effect of the initial outpouring of capital from France for the expedition of 1265–66, both in terms of ecclesiastical taxation and in terms of the money individual crusaders brought with them, that this flow has been seen as a factor contributing to the decline of the Champagne fairs, which had been the focal point of most French trade with Italian merchants since the second decade of the thirteenth century.1 The initial victim of the financial drain was the French church. As a condition of attempting to eliminate the Hohenstaufen from the Regno, Charles of Anjou was promised in 1264 by Urban IV a tax of a tenth on the property and goods of the French church for three years. Norman Housley has calculated the total raised by this as about a million florins, an enormous sum; in his view it was enough to pay entirely for Charles of Anjou’s conquest.2 The collectors met with all kinds of resistance. The French clergy had, after all, shown their strength in their successful opposition to the Saladin Tithe in 1188;3 they were not by nature compliant with demands that seemed to them to create new impositions. And they had already been heavily taxed for Louis IX’s crusade of 1248– 54.4 But both pope and French king held out against them, and in the 1 2 3 4

Sivéry, L’économie du Royaume de France, p. 233. Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 238, 230. John W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 53–4. Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 79–90, 112.

48


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end the money was collected. By 1274 Charles had signed off the debts. The relief felt was, however, not particularly great, because by then the French clergy were also paying tenths for the expenses of Louis IX’s abortive Tunis crusade. As it turned out, Charles of Anjou’s tenth was notable for two features that came to characterise most later grants: it applied beyond the boundaries of the area the king of France regarded as his realm, to Provence – understandably enough, in the circumstances – but also to the dioceses of Lyons, Vienne, Embrun, Tarantaise and Besançon.5 In this respect, it established a precedent for Philippe IV’s later claims to the eastward expansion of his kingdom.6 Secondly, it tested to the limit any claim for exemption. Opposition to payment was particularly strong from the military orders and from the Cistercians.7 The popes of the period, in insisting that Charles get his due, found themselves in the unenviable position of opposing the interests of some of their most ardent supporters. Therefore the tenth of 1264 may have played a significant part in the process that, over time, converted much of the northern French clergy to adherence to Philippe IV in the famous clash with Boniface VIII in 1302–3. It also contributed to the process that resulted in a steady impoverishment of the French church, once a wealthy and self-confident institution. Charles nominated five important French clerics to ensure the collection, and to pay off his debts as soon as the money came in.8 He sent his chancellor, Jean d’Acy, to Paris to bring the money down with him. Jean’s long absence from the Regno – October 1266 to February 1268 – indicates the slowness of receipt.9 Clement IV assisted in the collection by sending the cardinal of Santa Cecilia as papal legate to Paris to put pressure on the French clergy to pay up.10 His presence with that of his household will have been a conspicuous one. Throughout the period till 1274, messengers flew from Charles to his collectors, demanding more rapid payment and telling them to redirect the money to urgently pressing creditors.11 The lay people of Paris must have been as aware as the clergy of northern France of what was going on. The business of the Regno was presumably a matter of widespread gossip and concern within the city. 5 6 7 8 10 11

Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 175. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. 349–67. Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 214–18; A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 139 II; Reg. Clément IV, no. 1451. 9 Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, pp. 231–2. RCA, vol. 1, reg. ii, 36. Reg. Clément IV, nos. 1374, 1454, 1456. RCA, vol. 3, reg. xii, 412–15, 442; reg. xiii, 663, 676; vol. 6, reg. xxii, 1452, 1463, 1408, 1509; vol. 7, reg. xxxvii, 586.

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No later financial exaction from the clergy for the Regno caused as much controversy in France. In part, this was because the bulk of the burden later fell on Tuscan bankers,12 on papal resources,13 on the clergy of the Regno itself, on parts of imperial territory where papal pressure could be exerted without major opposition, and for a short while on Aragon and Catalonia.14 After 1274 the French church must have hoped for the fulfilment of the prospect Urban IV had held out to them as an inducement to pay the original three-year tenth that, once the Regno was conquered, there would be sufficient wealth from that source accruing to the papacy for its needs to be met without appeals for future help from northern clerics.15 But the French church did not in fact remain unscathed. Much of its contribution to the tenth levied by Pope Gregory for the Holy Land at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274 was later diverted to the Angevin war effort, though it is quite possible that the original donors did not realise this.16 Then the French church was required to pay heavily for the Aragonese crusade of 1285, which most Frenchmen rightly regarded as intimately connected with the preservation of Capetian lordship in the Regno.17 Boniface VIII also demanded a subsidy for the Sicilian war in October 1298.18 Some of the large amount that came in from this subsidy the pope later diverted to Charles de Valois’s expedition to Italy in 1301, in addition to the tenth that was granted from the French church directly to Charles.19 These taxes, along with the enforced levies for potential crusades to the Holy Land, some of the profits of which were in fact diverted to fighting for the reconquest of Sicily,20 imposed serious losses and were resented in France. The Treaty of Caltabellotta of 1302 was consequently welcomed, although by that time the French clergy were chiefly worried about costs incurred in what they saw as defending the realm against the Gascons and the Flemish.21 It must not be assumed that all the French clergy were unwilling in their contributions to the Regno. Some clerics were happy to pay. For example, Henri de Malines, a canon of Châlons-sur-Marne, left a sum for the Angevin cause in his will.22 It was worth Charles of Anjou’s while to ask that his servants in France regularly search for and claim sums left 12 13 15 18 19 21

22

Jordan, Les origines de la domination angevine, vol. II, pp. 536–58. 14 Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 231–8. Partner, The Lands of St Peter, p. 287. 16 Ibid., pp. 103–4. 17 Reg. Martin IV, no. 457. Ibid., p. 51. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. II, no. 2886. 20 Ibid., pp. 103–4. Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 177, 180. For the clergy’s apparent belief that Philippe IV’s wars in France were essentially defensive, see the appeal of the archbishops of Reims, Sens, Rouen (and probably Narbonne) in January 1297 to Boniface VIII, asking for permission to help the king financially: Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, p. 254. RCA CII, vol. 45, reg. li, 48.


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to him in wills.23 Charles II also attempted to claim 300 pounds of gold allegedly left to him in a will.24 But the general impression that arises from the sources is that the French clergy were increasingly reluctant to pay up for any appeal to their crusading consciences for the Regno. They felt distinctly overburdened. Protesting, however, was different from refusing. They might procrastinate, negotiate, and do all they could to lighten the burden. But open refusal was not an option. If the clergy had to shoulder the chief burden in France for papal plans in the Regno, they were not the only sufferers. Among the earliest laymen to feel the pinch were the inhabitants of Flanders. In 1253, Countess Marguerite of Flanders had made a desperate attempt to extrude the children of her first marriage, Jean and Baudoin d’Avesnes, from the county of Hainault, of which she was the hereditary countess. She had refused to nominate Jean as heir to the county of Hainault when asked to by William of Holland, Jean’s brother-in-law, and chose her time for this defiance opportunely because Louis IX, who in 1246 had arbitrated the Flemish succession between the children of Marguerite’s two marriages, was absent on crusade. When the Flemish army was soundly defeated in Holland, she asked Charles of Anjou for his help, which he gave lavishly. On Louis’s return to France in 1254, the king reimposed the settlement he had earlier made, and required that Marguerite pay Charles 160,000 lt by way of compensation for his expenses.25 Marguerite, while apparently agreeing to this condition, did nothing much to implement it before 1264, when Louis ordered her to pay her debt to help finance Charles’s conquest of the Regno. The money reached Charles only slowly, but the full repayment was acknowledged by him in 1272.26 Despite the wealth the countess could command, the sum was a large one, and could not have been raised without burdening her tenants. This, along with the costs of her husband Gui de Dampierre’s participation in the Tunis crusade, will have kept the inhabitants of Flanders on a tight string for several years. Then, when Gui de Dampierre’s fifth son Philippe of Chieti was captured in 1287, fighting for the Angevin cause against James II of Sicily, James sent the terms for Philippe’s ransom to his family in Flanders, with the clear implication that money would have to come from his own and his family’s Flemish possessions as well as his lands in the Regno.27 23 25

26 27

24 RCA CII, vol. 33, reg. xix, 37. RCA, vol. 11, reg. lix, 241. Marc Boone, ‘Une société urbanisée sous tension. Le comté de Flandre vers 1302’, in R. C. van Caenegem (ed.), 1302. Le désastre de Courtrai. Mythe et realité de la bataille des ´ Eperons d’or (Antwerp: Fonds Mercator, 2002), pp. 22–77, at p. 37. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 383; RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 1896. Inventaire analytique des chartes des comtes de Flandre, ed. Jules de Saint Genois, p. 141, no. 465.

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The financial burden on the people of Flanders was therefore heavy and continual over three decades. Very soon, all other sources of debt repayment (and they were minor) to the Angevins were exhausted. An attempt to claim arrears for a pension to Charles promised by Louis IX does not appear to have been successful.28 After the defeats of Manfred and Corradin, this drying up of French funds did not cause major problems, although Charles sent Pierre de Beaumont to negotiate a loan from Philippe III in 1272.29 But the opening of the war of the Vespers after Easter 1282 left first Charles and then his successor in desperate straits. They could rely only on raising loans from any potential allies and trying to pay off the loans by heavy taxation of the Regno. As the war dragged on, the financial situation grew critical. Charles II was in any case in a much worse position than Charles of Anjou had been, because he had surrendered the counties of Anjou and Maine in 1291 to Charles de Valois, which meant the loss of at least 5,000 lt per annum; he had lost the tribute from the emir of Tunis that had helped to swell his father’s coffers; he got no revenue from the island of Sicily, lost to him before the beginning of his reign; and he had accepted the limitations on means of raising revenue inside the Regno imposed by Honorius IV.30 Without loans to tide him over while he awaited the taxes he could legitimately impose, he would have been totally defeated by the costs of the war against Sicily.31 As it was, he shuffled money from account to account, got exasperated with his officials because they never seemed to have the wherewithal to satisfy his demands, and dashed from one crisis to another. The main source of loans to the rulers of the Regno was Italian; Italian bankers suffered heavily from being involved.32 But debts to Italian bankers could have their French dimensions. When Robert d’Artois in 1275 negotiated a loan from bankers in Ravello, he arranged that the repayments should be made at Troyes.33 The nomination of a Champagne fair town as the place for repayment implies that Robert intended to raise the money for repayment either from Charles of Anjou’s French lands or from his own in Artois. Unfortunately, the Angevin chancery record is our only evidence for this transaction, so no more is known about it. 28 30

31 32 33

29 RCA, vol. 10, reg. xlix, 225. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 31. For the concessions made at San Martino in 1283 and Honorius IV’s demands, see Léonard, Les Angevines de Naples, pp. 151–2, 164–6; on Charles II’s financial state, see Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II von Anjou, pp. 486–90. For a list of the loans he was able to raise between 1289 and 1295, see Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II von Anjou, pp. 547–53. See the list of loans to Charles of Anjou in 1266, RCA CII vol. 44, part 2, Additiones to reg. i, nos. 1–20. RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxx, 78.


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However, the chancery registers of the Angevin kings point to French kings and aristocrats as important sources of ready money in time of crisis.34 On the whole, these people were more able than Italian bankers to demand restitution; because they were potential military assistants of the Angevin regime, none of them is known to have been bankrupted by their loans. But they and all those dependants on whom they could lean to raise money quickly will have frequently been reminded by financial pressure of their stake in the conquest of the Regno or in the war of the Vespers. For example, a citizen of Paris lent money to Philippe de Montfort to help pay his army to enter Italy and penetrate down to Rome in 1265–66.35 Hugues IV, duke of Burgundy, who will concern us in Part III, made a substantial loan to Charles of Anjou shortly before his own death. Charles demanded that his seneschal of Provence repay Hugues from money that had been collected to pay a son of the king of Castile who had proposed to bring soldiers to the Regno but then decided against it.36 Charles was similarly able to borrow off Philippe III on the return from Tunis37 – though Philippe demanded that various regalian vestments, two crowns adorned with precious stones, and other jewels be put in pawn by way of guarantee.38 In what was to prove one of the last letters ever written by Charles of Anjou, the dying king said of his royal nephew that ‘all his hope depended on him’.39 The counts of Roucy and Ponthieu also lent money to Charles.40 During the regency, French barons promised to support Robert d’Artois financially.41 The duke of Brittany gave Charles II credit,42 as did Philippe IV, who also contributed to his expenses by lending him galleys to take him back from Provence to Italy in 1289.43 In 1292, the French king lent another 10,000 onces.44 In 1293, Charles discharged a large part of his debt to Philippe by letting him have twenty galleys which he had ordered from the Genoese, and which the French king now needed.45 In 1297 Charles was in Paris, once again begging for help. In 1301, Philippe IV arranged for his brother Charles de Valois to receive 100,000 lt to assist in the conquest of Sicily. That the money did not reach its target will not have been a consolation to those Frenchmen 34

35 37 39 40 42 43 44 45

For a full list of Philippe III’s loans to Charles in the 1270s, see Xavier Hélary, ‘Les relations entre les cours de France et de Naples dans la décennie 1270’, in Duma (ed.), L’espace politique méditerranéen, pp. 33–46, at pp. 37–8. 36 RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 1465. RCA, vol. I, reg. ii, 35. 38 A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, nos. 280 and 303. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxi, 151. RCA CII, vol. 36, additiones to reg. cxxiv, 27. 41 RCA CII, vol. 32, reg. x, 39. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, nos. 189, 648. RCA CII, vol. 44, additiones to reg. xxvi, 466. RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 483; vol. 41, reg. xl, 41, 83. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II von Anjou, pp. 497–8. RCA CII, vol. 49, reg. lxviii, 207. On this, see below, p. 266.

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who had helped to provide the sum.46 Another member of the royal family also proved open-handed: Charles II had to repay large sums to Marie de Brabant, the dowager queen of France, first cousin of Robert d’Artois, who was always a good friend to the Capetians of the Regno.47 One way and another, the crown and baronage of France were more than generous to the Angevins. The list of Angevin creditors (which naturally also included all their own wealthier subjects) provides the skeleton of a pro-Angevin party in France.48 Money also came from less directly personal sources. As soon as he was freed from his Catalan jail, Charles borrowed large sums in Paris, through the Templars.49 During his long stay in Provence, Charles ordered that a loan be raised for him from Lucca merchants through the Templars in Paris, to settle debts which could no longer be defrayed by his Angevin incomes, now in the hands of Charles de Valois as a result of his marriage with Charles’s daughter Marguerite.50 Loans of this kind, of which there were many over the whole period, probably involved the creditors in squeezing their own debtors or those who owed them service of any sort, in order to raise the necessary sums. Many in northern France will have endured shortages, even suffering, for the sake of financing war in the Regno. There were also apparently voluntary contributions raised both from individuals and from communities. Because the initial conquest of the Regno was preached as a crusade, those who made donations towards it obtained an indulgence; there will have been many who carefully calculated the spiritual advantages of their various gifts to good causes. Those in Charles’s French lands who gave, also did so in order to earn favour with him, particularly if they were also not sending members of their family to fight. For example, a canon of the church of St George at Faya made arrangements for one golden obol to be paid annually in perpetuity by him and his heirs to Charles of Anjou and his heirs.51 Others were generous to their own lords when they went to the Regno to fight. For example, the people of Ardres and Guines offered Robert d’Artois financial support in 1283 when he had gone down to the Regno to assist Charles at the outbreak of the Vespers rebellion.52 In their words, 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Joseph Petit, Charles de Valois (Paris: A. Picard, 1900), p. 578. RCA CII, vol. 35, reg. xxi, 88, 143; vol. 38, reg. xxx, 641. Cf. William Chester Jordan, Women and Credit in Pre-industrial and Developing Societies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). RCA CII, vol. 32, reg. xiii, 62; vol. 33, reg. xix, 121, 168. RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 641. ´ Archives nationales. Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, vol. IV, ed. Elie Berger (Paris: PlonNourrit, 1902), p. 447 no. 5702. Pas-de-Calais Série A 28/13.


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Robert’s purpose was ‘to help the most Christian king of Sicily to the exaltation of the Roman church and the Christian faith’. They ostensibly regarded this gift as a return for the many favours he had bestowed on them, in particular in protecting them from the insults of the Jews and in building admirable defences for them. They clearly hoped their subsidy would at least keep Robert’s good will. There is, unfortunately, no way of discovering whether the rewards for such gifts were worth the losses incurred in making them. These donors were specific in the object of their liberality. Others were not. As Norman Housley has shown, there were also legacies, monies from the redemption of crusading vows and other contributions from Frenchmen, which were diverted by the popes from the cause of the Holy Land to the Angevin war effort.53 This was a conspicuous feature of Boniface VIII’s assistance to the Sicilian war in 1297.54 There is very little surviving evidence about the reactions of the donors or their families to such diversion. Perhaps many, if not most, were unaware of what had happened. The individuals who decided to join the armies of Charles I and Charles II usually had to raise loans to cover their expenses. In some cases, these could be enormous. For example, Pierre d’Alençon, Philippe III’s brother, borrowed 28,745 lt from the bailli of Tours and 500 lt from the Temple when he set off for the Regno in 1282.55 Since he died within months of his arrival, it cannot have been easy for his creditors to recover these sums. The effect may well have been yet another donation from French royal coffers to the maintenance of the Regno, made supportable by the return of Pierre’s apanage to the crown.56 Lesser men might have to mortgage their lands to pay expenses, especially where the promised salaries for their military endeavours did not materialise. But on this we are not well informed. One way and another, by taxes, subsidies, tenths, loans and voluntary donations, the people of France offered solid financial support to the Capetian kings of the Regno. And this at a time when the general economic situation of France was becoming rather less favourable than it had been earlier in the thirteenth century;57 and also at a time when their 53 54 55 56 57

Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 102–4. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Boniface VIII. Un pape héretique? (Paris: Payot et Rivages, 2000), p. 147. Carolus-Barré, Le procès de canonisation de Saint Louis, p. 161. Wood, The French Apanages and the Capetian Monarchy, p. 30. I rely here on Sivéry, L’économie du Royaume de France, pp. 144–5, where he suggests that most people faced a decline (though not a catastrophic one) in the purchasing power of their incomes in the last quarter of the thirteenth century.

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own rulers were burdening them more heavily. Of course the sum given was inadequate to the needs of the Regno, which were almost boundless. But the overall contributions point either to the relative efficiency of the methods of collection or to the willingness of at least the upper classes to give. The willingness of those below, on whose shoulders much of the burden in practice fell, cannot be assessed. But the strain will have been widely felt. On the whole, their plight aroused rather little sympathy in the ruling class. An illustration of this, which relates to corn rather than money, comes from 1269, and from Languedoc rather than northern France. In that year the consuls of Carcassonne wanted to forbid the export of corn because of a local shortage, while the local lords and the producers wanted to export (presumably because they would make a greater profit thereby). The royal seneschal of Carcassonne and Béziers was called in to adjudicate. He decided to permit export, though only to Christian powers, and in particular to Charles of Anjou, whose army desperately needed food at that time.58 In reaching his decision, the seneschal was moved more by concerns of crusade than by the plight of local men. This priority was presumably frequently displayed in the history of the French–Angevin alliance. 58

Sivéry, L’économie du Royaume, pp. 34–5.

Part II

Indirect channels of communication

4

Lesser means of diffusing Angevin influences

The chief concern of this book is direct links between the Regno and northern France. But a brief section must be devoted to those areas that belonged to the Angevins, either within or on the borders of what Louis IX would have recognised as his realm. These, Anjou and Maine, Provence, and Tonnerre, were all places in which Frenchmen, either inhabitants or visitors, might make contact with customs or ideas that originated in the Regno. None of these was particularly important as a channel of communication, and two (Anjou and Maine and Tonnerre) did not fulfill this role for long. But all may well have been more influential than the surviving record shows; and all had at least some impact. Anjou and Maine Although Anjou and Maine did form an indirect channel of communication, and we shall deal with this aspect later, it also offers a case study of an area of northern France that felt the impact, direct and strong if brief, of the adventure in the Regno. Charles became count of Anjou and Maine in August 1246 through the gift of his brother, Louis IX. He had been established there for twenty years before the battle of Benevento, and seems to have been a reasonably popular figure. After his move to the Regno, he only returned once to his French counties (in 1283); but the inhabitants had already got accustomed to his absence before this, both during his crusade of 1248–50 and, more importantly, because he was also count of Provence, which needed his presence urgently, at least until about 1257. So his move to Italy did not require much adjustment on the part of the Angevins. Charles saw to it that the news of his famous victory over Manfred was conveyed rapidly by Ug des Baux to the nobles of the two counties.1 From then on, he kept up a steady correspondence 1

Camillo Minieri Riccio, Alcuni studii storici intorno a Manfredi e Corradino della imperiale casa di Hohenstaufen (Naples: Archivio di Stato, 1850), document section, no. A, pp. 71–2.

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with his agents in the counties, to ensure that the administration was conducted according to principles of which he approved and with financial profit to himself.2 Within Anjou and Maine, no one could forget that they were ruled by the king of the Regno. After 1266, the government of the two counties remained largely in the hands of the bailli of Anjou, aided by a receiver and a proctor whose functions were primarily financial, and a magister and a vice-magister for legal matters. The one innovation was that Charles now nominated a cleric of high standing as a counterweight to the bailli; this cleric usually received royal orders in tandem with the bailli, and was presumably supposed to keep an eye on the administration in the king’s interests. For much of Charles’s reign, this cleric was the dean of St Martin at Angers. When a new clerical overseer was appointed, he was required to show the records of income and expenditure for the county each month to the castellan of Angers, by way of a check on financial corruption.3 Charles’s fear that he was being cheated by his agents was perhaps natural in an absentee ruler; but it must have made for ill-feeling. Bienvenu, the historian of Anjou, has suggested that Charles imposed an almost ruinous burden of 13,000 lt a year on the people of the two counties in order to finance his ambitious foreign adventures from Naples.4 While the king was undoubtedly anxious to get his hands on every penny he could, this allegation seems incompatible with the economic growth for the period also recorded by Bienvenu; and it is based on questionable figures.5 Charles calculated his profits from Anjou and Maine as being 5,000 lt when he mortgaged them to Philippe III in 1272 and again in 1282.6 This would have been a reasonable amount to draw from the lands. No doubt he drew more than that sum in some years. Like most rulers of the period, he was exacting in demanding all his own customary rights, while denying that custom on its own was an adequate guarantee for anyone else’s. On the other hand, he also made efforts to 2

3 4

5

6

A large part of that correspondence is conveniently collected in A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, passim. It is notable that letters apparently diminished sharply from 1278 on, when Charles’s attention was taken up with his plans for a major campaign against Michael VIII Paleologus. RCA vol. 11, reg. lx, 94. J.-M. Bienvenu in F. Lebrun (ed.), Histoire des pays de la Loire. Orléannais, Touraine, Anjou, Maine (Toulouse: Privat, 1972), vol. I, p. 163. For the allegation that he took 65,000 lt between 1272 and 1275, see Hubert Landais (ed.), Histoire de Saumur (Toulouse: Privat, 1997), p. 95. For my views on this, see Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 31–2, note 9. But I failed to note that Charles will have raised 2,000 lt from his Angevin lands on top of the 5,000 he normally got, because he was required to pay this sum annually to Queen Marguerite by way of compensation for the loss of her claims in Provence. A de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 554; RCA, vol. 26, reg. cxi, 89.


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assist trade and communications, particularly with the Regno.7 The balance of increased taxation against increased prosperity is hard to assess. The records from the period are inadequate; but there was no sign of widespread distress or anger among the inhabitants of Anjou and Maine in the period 1266–91. Still, Charles left a series of debts amounting to 1,400 lt, both to individuals and to communities, which were unpaid in 1290.8 In that year, Charles II noted the receipt of another huge loan of 25,000 lt, raised by Maurice de Craon, his vicar in Anjou, which had been used to pay for the new king’s ransom and for his debt to Queen Marguerite of France.9 (The size of this loan should be related to Charles’s intention to take profit from Anjou and Maine in 1290 before he surrendered the counties to Charles de Valois, as will shortly be seen.) For several years during the period of Angevin rule, 1272, 1282 and 1285–88, the profits of Anjou and Maine were diverted to the king of France, not to the king of the Regno. In 1272, Charles was desperately trying to pay off the debts he had incurred in his conquest; in 1282, he was facing the outbreak of the war of the Vespers; and in 1285, on his deathbed he conferred the regency of Anjou and Maine on Philippe III during the imprisonment of his son Charles of Salerno.10 It was perhaps unfortunate for the inhabitants that the two counties provided Charles’s easiest form of income for debt repayment. But there is nothing to suggest that financial oppression was either lighter or heavier during these years of royal control. In 1291 the two counties left Angevin rule to go, along with Charles II’s daughter Marguerite, to Charles de Valois. In a sense then, the years in which the profits of Anjou and Maine had been leased to Philippe III and Philippe IV acted as testing grounds for their permanent annexation by the house of Valois. In the years in which Charles did enjoy the profits from Anjou and Maine, he used them to reward his followers, for example the viscount of Beaumont, and to cancel his own debts.11 The existing records create the impression that he did not keep any tally of how much money from the two counties remained unspent. When he needed to pay someone from Anjou or Maine who was returning home, or when his debts loomed large, he simply ordered his bailli to pay, apparently making the 7 8 9

10 11

Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 32–3; RCA CII, vol. 44, part 2, additiones to reg. lxxxix, 255; Landais (ed.), Histoire de Saumur, p. 98. Landais (ed.), Histoire de Saumur, p. 102. Le carte di Léon Cadier alla Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Contributo alla ricostruzione ´ della Cancelleria angiona, ed. Serena Morelli (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2005), no. 80. RCA CII, vol. 36, additiones to reg. cxxiv, 27. RCA CII, vol. 35, reg. xxi, 30. A de Bouard, Actes et lettres, nos. 9, 10, 11, 13 and 14, and passim.

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assumption that there was always plenty of money.12 He got increasingly angry with his baillis when they failed to carry out his orders, and towards the end of the reign he changed his officials fairly frequently. To judge from the correspondence that survives, collection of any revenues due to him must have been ruthlessly efficient, in order to shield the officials from royal wrath. The relentless pressure on debtors will have caused more misery than the actual sums demanded. Charles II was, if anything, worse, because the burden of his debt was greater. In 1290, conscious that he was about to lose Anjou and Maine to Charles de Valois, he attempted to maximise his profit from the counties by demanding four aids, for his ransom, for relief, for the knighting of his son and for the marrying of his daughter. Charles’s right to take aids in such circumstances was contested. There was resistance to his demands, and he obtained far less than he sought before he had to surrender the counties. He left a serious problem for his successor.13 One group of inhabitants suffered particularly badly. Charles of Anjou’s treatment of the Jews in Anjou had been, by the standards of his day, fair. He had allowed them to appeal against ill-treatment to the Great Court at Naples and had freed them from the obligation of wearing distinctive signs on their clothing. But, as would be expected, they had had to buy this measure of protection by paying heavy taxes.14 His son, however, was no sooner freed from his Catalan jail than he ordered the expulsion of the Jews from the two counties. Kiesewetter has pointed out that the king’s aim was to raise money as quickly as he could, not only by way of confiscations from the Jews but also through a tax on the local population for the benefit conferred by the expulsion, before he handed Anjou and Maine to his daughter Marguerite and her husband Charles de Valois in 1291.15 In other words, it was a form of asset-stripping.16 Certainly the amount of money he received for the expulsion of the Jews was carefully entered among the receipts in the chamber register.17 Charles did not himself have to face the consequences of what he did. 12 13

14 15 16

17

E.g. ibid., nos. 236, 242, 351. Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Customary Aids and Royal Finance in Capetian France. The Marriage Aid of Philip the Fair (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 61–6. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 32–3. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 492. Charles was, of course, also motivated by religious scruples; see David Abulafia, ‘Monarchs and minorities in the Christian western Mediterranean around 1300: Lucera and its analogues’, in Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (eds.), Christendom and its Discontents. Exclusion, Persecution and Rebellion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 234–63. RCA CII, vol. 47, additiones to reg. xiii, 46.


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The standard religious justification for confiscation, that Jews had been attempting to convert Christians, and Jewish men had engaged in sexual relations with Christian women, was presumably no truer in 1290 than it had been before. But a new accusation, that Jews were deliberately violating the consecrated host, perhaps provided sufficient justification for a policy that was very much in Charles II’s financial interests.18 Charles’s actions set a precedent. There can be little doubt that Philippe le Bel had the example of his Angevin cousin in his mind when he sought to make maximum financial advantage by the expulsion of the Jews from the kingdom of France in 1306.19 His need for money was urgent, because he was undertaking the restoration of good coinage in order to propitiate the churchmen and landowning classes who had lost seriously by the devaluations of 1295–1303.20 An infusion of capital into the royal coffers was necessary. At the same time, it was easy to square the expulsion with his own religious convictions. It was ironic that some of the Jews Philippe put to flight were able to find refuge in Provence, governed by Charles II.21 Heavy financial exactions from the inhabitants of the two counties were balanced for some fortunate individuals by the new opportunities created for them by the conquest of the Regno. Many participated in the ˆ army of conquest itself, under the command of the count of Vendome. Others came later. The most distinguished of these was Louis, viscount of Beaumont, recognised by Charles as a relation of his own.22 Then there was Thibaud of Saumur who became one of the architects of Charles’s abbey of S. Maria di Reale Valle.23 Various members of the de Foresta family who had looked after the children of Charles and his wife Beatrice of Provence in Anjou came to the Regno in the same capacity.24 One of the family later became the justiciar of Otranto.25 Adam de Morier, who was for a long time Charles’s vicar in Sicily, almost certainly came from Anjou.26 Jean de Torchevache (or Troussevache) from Anjou was one of the longest-serving of Charles’s household servants, beginning as his 18 19

20 21 22 24 25 26

Gavin I. Langmuir, ‘The tortures of the body of Christ’, in Waugh and Diehl (eds.), Christendom and its Discontents, pp. 299–300. William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews. From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), pp. 181–2, 200– 13. I do not mean to imply that Philippe’s only motives were financial; like Charles II, he almost certainly believed that he was performing a work of righteousness. Jean Favier, Philippe le Bel (Paris: Fayard, 1978), pp. 148–69. Norman Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy. A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 531. 23 Landais (ed.), Histoire de Saumur, p. 95. See below, p. 142. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, nos. 8 and 498. See Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 189, where Gui is wrongly called de Forez. Ibid., p. 31.

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butler, then becoming his cup-bearer, and ending up as a chamberlain.27 An Angevin was made treasurer of Durazzo and Albania after Charles had claimed to conquer these territories.28 Charles made the seneschal of ˆ Vendome his vicar in Rome.29 Among clerics, Jean de Mesnil from Anjou worked his way up the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Regno, becoming archdeacon of Palermo, while performing also a major administrative role for more than two years as vice-chancellor of the Regno, and finally being elected to the archbishopric of Palermo (which he only held for a few months before his death).30 Pierre Boudin of Anjou was magister rationalis under both Charleses. Charles II’s confessor was John de Loches.31 As we have seen, that king preserved friendship with the hereditary seneschal of Anjou, Maurice de Craon. And he occasionally reinforced his contacts with Angevin churchmen. But Charles II’s link with Anjou and Maine was much less close than that of his father. No sooner was he freed from his Catalan jail in late 1288 than he was negotiating to pass the counties on to Charles de Valois. The opportunities for Angevins to make lucrative careers for themselves in the Regno therefore diminished considerably after 1291.32 The Angevin chancery records demonstrate that those who had served Charles I in the Regno were often richly rewarded when they returned home. Louis, viscount of Beaumont, was able to protect a dependant through royal beneficence after he got back, and appears to have been allowed to keep some lands in the Regno.33 A relation of Jean de Mesnil was promoted in Anjou.34 And Charles’s agents were made responsible for ensuring that those who went to the Regno to serve the king suffered no damage from their absence.35 Charles sometimes arranged for money to be provided to cover the expenses of those from the two counties who wished to settle in the Regno.36 On the other hand, the two counties offered no refuge for those who had failed to fulfil their obligations to the king in the Regno. Jean du Mans, a royal butler who went home without permission, was pursued by the bailli of Angers and the dean of 27 28 30 31 32

33 34 36

A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, nos. 342, 545, 1082. 29 RCA, vol. 18, reg. lxxx, 345. RCA, vol. 19, reg. lxxxii, 221. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 150; Kamp, Kirche und Monarchie im staufischen Königreich Sizilien, vol. III, p. 1145. RCA CII, vol. 41, reg. xl, 18. The position between 1291 and 1295 was somewhat obscure. Only after Charles de Valois had formally renounced his claims in Aragon by the Treaty of Anagni in 1295 did the two counties become his by hereditary right. Before that, they were vested in his wife, who died in December 1299. RCA, vol. 4, reg. xiv, 959; vol. 35, reg. xxi, 304. 35 RCA, vol. 8, reg. xxxvii, 600. RCA, vol. 11, reg. lvii, 401 and 402. RCA, vol. 11, reg. lvii, 366.


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St Martin’s, who were ordered to threaten him with confiscation of all his goods if he did not present himself at the royal court in the Regno with complete accounts for his time in the royal household.37 For a short time, one privilege marked out the men of these two counties from anywhere else in France: once their ruler became king of the Regno, their court of appeal against local injustices was the Great Court at Naples. Because the records of the proceedings of the Great Court have not survived and were not known to historians of the nineteenth century who did so much work on other aspects of Angevin rule, there is no way of discovering how often the men of the two counties had resort to it. Only where an appeal or other item of business led Charles to demand further information is there a record. For example, an Angevin knight who was serving Charles in the Regno complained that some merchants of Le Mans to whom he had mortgaged land in Cahors before he went on the Tunis crusade were attempting to exact a usurious payment from him before they would restore the land. Charles asked his bailli to investigate and, if the facts were as stated by the complainant, to insist that the land was returned to the knight at once.38 In another case, Julian de Faneto, who had slain a servant of the powerful Guillaume de Beaumont,39 had given compensation for the murder and made peace with the dead man’s relatives; he was then sentenced to depart on pilgrimage for the Holy Land. The count of Richmond, eldest son of the duke of Brittany, interceded with Charles, who asked his agent to see whether the relatives were prepared to absolve the murderer from his promise to go to the Holy Land. The king pointed out that if the relatives were obdurate, the promise must be fulfilled in accordance with the law.40 It was of course much easier for those already in the Regno to take advantage of the procedure than for other inhabitants; but some sent messengers to the Great Court to act on their behalf.41 Charles’s justices had every incentive to attempt to solve a dispute at this point, because further appeal to the Parlement of Paris was also available to the inhabitants of Anjou and Maine, in the same way as to the inhabitants of much of the French realm. Within the two counties, the town of Le Mans enjoyed a particularly close tie with the Regno, because it was given to Marguerite of Tonnerre, Charles’s second wife, in dower.42 Marguerite’s original intention was to bestow the supervision of the city on Robert de Béthune, eldest son of the count of Flanders, and on his second wife, her sister Yolande. 37 39 42

38 A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 547. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 1460. 40 A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 672. 41 Ibid., no. 451. See below, p. 146. Ibid., no. 99; for the original dower, see Ernest Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la race capétienne, vol. V (Paris: A. Picard, 1894), pp. 129–33.

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But Robert’s decision to return to Flanders presumably put an end to any plan there may have been for their personal residence there. By 1271 a familiaris of Robert de Béthune was installed in the town as its guardian.43 While he was alive, Charles usually treated the town as part of his patrimony. In this connection, Aimon Bili, archpriest of Saumur, was called to the Regno to treat of some business relating to Le Mans.44 It will have become Marguerite’s alone in 1285, but nothing is known of her rule there, though Charles II did try to ensure that her rights were not infringed by any action of his.45 After her return to France in 1290 the link with the Regno will have loosened. However, when she made a will in 1305, she made special arrangements for two gifts in Le Mans, showing that she had not forgotten her intimate link with the town.46 The inhabitant of Angers also were closely linked with the Angevin regime. Charles was particularly anxious that all aristocrats who held in fief hôtels in that city should be obliged to live there for at least forty days each year, lest their customary obligations, including suit of court, should fall into desuetude.47 The last link between the two counties and the Regno lay in ecclesiastical patronage. The counties of Anjou and Maine provided an unusual amount to their counts, and Charles I did all he could to increase that. As successor of the Plantagenet counts of Anjou, he was in a stronger position than other French princes to assert rights without stirring up vast local opposition. So he exploited the euphoria felt by Pope Clement IV in the immediate aftermath of the battle of Benevento to extract from the pope a charter guaranteeing his rights of patronage in the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour at Le Mans.48 He regularly recommended the clerical relations of those who had served him well in the Regno for elevation, both there and as canons of the collegiate churches of St Laud and St Martin at Angers.49 He attempted to secure for himself the nomination to the chantership at St Laud, and seems to have been successful, at least in the short term.50 While by no means all his nominees had Italian connections, many did have them. Charles clearly regarded the promotion of their clerical relatives as a cheap way of repaying some of his most faithful servants for their hard work. So, for example, Jean de Torchevache’s nephew was nominated for a prebend, as was the 43 45 46 47 48 49

44 Landais (ed.), Histoire de Saumur, p. 95. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 353. RCA CII, vol. 33, reg. xix, 90. Archives du Nord, B447, n. 4.471, vidimus of the 1305 will made in 1311. RCA, vol. 20, reg. lxxxiii, 25. Cartulaire du chapˆıtre royal de Saint Pierre-de-la-Cour, ed. d’Elbenne and Denis, nos. 93, 94 and 95. 50 Ibid., nos. 824 and 848. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, nos. 446, 483.


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brother of Archdeacon Jean de Mesnil of Palermo.51 The king’s widow Marguerite succeeded in 1285 to his position in Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour at Le Mans,52 but does not appear to have imitated his rather aggressive use of patronage, though she did collate one prebend while Charles of Salerno was still in prison, and also one in St Laud, asking Philippe IV to ensure that it got to its correct recipient.53 It follows from what has been said that, while all the inhabitants of the two counties will have been aware of the huge effort made locally to support the conquest of the Regno, it will have been more often the inhabitants of Angers and Le Mans than those of the countryside who were brought to recognise the force of the link with the Regno after about 1270. In both towns, the administration was conducted in the name of a far-distant ruler and with the interests of that ruler in mind. Outside the towns, particular families kept their close connections with relatives in the Regno. But even in the reign of Charles of Anjou, the revenues of the two counties sometimes went to the king of France; it is very unlikely that they went to Charles II before 1289. So the link with the Angevin court was broken in 1291 with rather little sense of crisis. It was inevitable that large numbers of northern Frenchmen passed through the two counties on their way to or from Languedoc or to or from Mediterranean areas. Such travellers will have taken for granted their fairly smooth passage through the lands of various princes who exercised high criminal jurisdiction and had a considerable degree of political independence. But at least a few of them will have noticed unusual features of Anjou and Maine that derived from their subordination to the king of the Regno. Servants of Philippe III or Philippe IV who spent any time in Angers (as they must have done during the years in which the counties’ revenues went to their king) and talked to the bailli or his acolytes will have heard about the peculiarities of the county’s administration. Churchmen who went through Le Mans are sure to have been told about the high claims of Charles of Anjou in the field of ecclesiastical patronage and the difficulty of combatting these, given Charles’s apparently secure standing with the popes. Merchants may have come across their counterparts from the Regno at the fairs of Anjou. And everyone will have heard the complaints about high taxation, echoed everywhere else in France, but perhaps made rather more plangently in Anjou and Maine because the money – or part of it – was going outside the counties to a ruler far away. The differences between the two counties and the rest 51 52 53

Ibid., nos. 727 and 865. Cartulaire du chapˆıtre royal de Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour, p. 117, doc. cvi. RCA CII, vol. 35, reg. xxi, 173, 175.

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of northern France were small and did not last for long; but they were perceptible in the 1270s and 1280s. Provence The history of Provence under Angevin rule has elicited a great deal of scholarship since the 1980s.54 Provence’s cultural richness, religious distinctiveness and political stability have all been the subject of much remark. It was also the part of his territories where Charles II liked to spend time and where he chose to be buried.55 It was in every way far more important than simply a staging post on the road between northern France and southern Italy. But, for the purposes of this book, that is the only facet of its life that matters. Provence does not fit into the pattern I have chosen to investigate. With the exception of a small number of Angevin administrators and lawyers who settled there in the years after Charles of Anjou acquired both Anjou and Provence in 1246, those northern Frenchmen who came to Provence were almost always on the road elsewhere, and spent very little time in the province. (Pierre de Ferrières, who became archbishop of Arles in 1304, was the one outstanding exception to the rule.) Men from the Regno did not come to Provence to study and, with the exception of Charles II’s administrators after 1289, very few came for any other purpose except to go northward. There was nothing comparable to the north–south flow to be examined on pp. 82–186 of this book. There was, of course, a very substantial contribution from Provence, both to the conquest of the Regno and to its subsequent settlement. Sylvie Pollastri has studied this in detail.56 But the fate of those Provençaux who settled in the Regno was rather different from that of the French there. More of them became permanent residents. The local climate and language were more like what they were used to at home; therefore they apparently faced fewer problems in integrating with the local population.57 They continued to constitute a sizeable part of the Regno’s aristocracy throughout the middle ages. Links between Provence and the Regno maintained their strength until the death of King Charles III in 1481. In other words, the whole 54

55 56 57

See the extensive bibliography in Martin Aurell, Jean-Paul Boyer and Noël Coulet, La Provence au moyen aˆ ge (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 2005) and the footnotes in the relevant section by Jean-Paul Boyer. Tanja Michalsky, Memoria und Repräsentation. Die Grabmäler des Königshaus Anjou in ¨ Italien (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2000), pp. 271–2. ‘La noblesse provençale dans le royaume de Sicile’, Annales du Midi 100 (1988), 405–34. The most striking instance of this is the Sicilian treatment of Guilhem Porcelet at the time of the Vespers; see Bartolomeo di Neocastro, Historia Sicule, ed. G. Paladino, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ns. xiii, part 3 (Bologna, 1921), p. 13.


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subject of Provençal–Regno relations is far too important to be squeezed into a corner of this book, which is concerned solely with the northern French–Regno connection. Therefore it is only Provence as a channel of communication to northern France for ideas, institutions or attitudes originating in the Regno in the period 1266–1305 that concerns us here. For the most part, both the Provençal settlers in the Regno and the inhabitants of Provence itself demonstrated loyalty to their rulers even in the difficult times that followed the outbreak of the Sicilian Vespers rebellion. Charles I and Charles II responded by treating them rather more generously than other peoples of their domains. They allowed the inhabitants of Provence to take cases even against the crown to the Great Court at Naples;58 they showed themselves reasonably sensitive to some established privileges;59 they convoked the occasional assembly of Provençal notables to give them counsel.60 On the other hand, throughout the whole period they imposed huge burdens, financial, military and naval, on Provence. They increasingly reshaped Provence’s government and laws to make them more compatible with those of the Regno.61 And their officials devoted themselves relentlessly to increasing the count’s share of the land and sources of income within the county, to the point that many aristocrats were beginning to find themselves in serious financial troubles well before 1305.62 Lesser men, too, gradually became aware that their ruler had changed from being a count to being a king, and was claiming monarchical powers in their land. Charles I and Charles II were to be counted as among the great legislators of their period, for Provence as for the Regno.63 The county emerged as a firmly governed state. Provence clearly provided a meeting place in which men from the north of France might meet men from the Regno, and northern Frenchmen might become acquainted with ideas and institutions that originated in the Regno. There is however an apparent problem of timing: the years in which most of the known northern Frenchmen visited Provence or 58 59 60 61

62 63

J.-P. Boyer, ‘De force ou de gré: la Provence et ses rois de Sicile’, in Tonnerre and Verry (eds.), Les Princes angevins, pp. 23–59, at p. 31. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 609. M. Hébert, ‘Les assemblées representatives dans le royaume de Naples et dans le comté de Provence’, in L’état angevin, pp. 475–90. R. Busquet, Les fonds des Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, vol. I, séries anciennes, A a` F (Marseilles, 1937), p. 4; J.-P. Boyer in La Provence au moyen aˆ ge, pp. 200–2; Laura Verdon, ‘Le roi, la loi, l’enquête et l’officier: procédure et enquêteurs en Provence sous le règne de Charles II (1285–1309)’, in C. Gauvard (ed.), L’enquête au moyen aˆ ge, pp. 319–29. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, pp. 463–8; Inventaire-sommaire des Archives du Bouches-du-Rhône, vol. I, série B, ed. L. Blancard, B 1423. Boyer in La Provence au moyen aˆ ge, pp. 196–8.

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took up positions of importance there (largely in the reign of Charles of Anjou) usually preceded the years in which Italians acquired influence there (after Charles II’s release from his Catalan prison in late 1288).64 While this undoubtedly weakens the case for Provence as a direct channel of active communication, it does not undermine its long-term importance as an indirect and rather more diffuse one. To visit Provence at any time after 1266 was to become aware of the large number of the county’s inhabitants who had fought in the Regno, who were establishing themselves in lands there while trying to hold on to their Provençal estates, or whose clerical sons had found important positions in southern Italy. Provence in the later thirteenth century had become a land in which the more adventurous were drawn in large numbers to live much of their lives in distant parts. Conversations with Provençal townsmen, knights or even peasants will have reflected that fact. Even before his conquest of the Regno, Charles of Anjou had used the Roman lawyer Roberto di Laveno, in origin from Lombardy, in the administration of Provence.65 Men trained at Orléans or Toulouse were increasingly prominent both in local and in central administration. They played their part along with local men, often trained at Montpellier, and men from Languedoc or perhaps even Catalonia.66 Of the northerners, the most distinguished was Pierre de Ferrières, presumably from Ferrières in the Gatinais. Pierre had been a notable doctor of civil law at the university of Toulouse before he was recruited by Charles of Anjou. He became Charles II’s chancellor in Naples, and obtained a substantial reward for his services when he was made archbishop of Arles in 1304; he died in 1307.67 Martin Aurell has recently summed up the task of lawyers such as Pierre: ‘Intermédiaires culturels entre la cour et les populations, ces légistes ont aidé le roi a` connâitre, a` savoir, a` réflechir, et donc a` gouverner.’68 The transformation of Provence into a state during the early years of Angevin rule was largely the achievement of such lawyers, working in conjunction with Charles of Anjou, and exploiting the reforms 64 65 66

67

68

Ibid., pp. 165–6 and 226–7. Gérard Giordanengo, ‘Arma legesque colo: l’état et le droit en Provence (1246–1343)’, in L’état angevin, p. 48. Robert had earlier been the counsellor of Beatrice of Savoy. Charles may have inherited for a short while Romée de Villeneuve from Raymond Berengar V; see Thierry Pécout, Raymond Bérengar V. L’invention de Provence (Paris: Perrin, 2004), p. 249. Thierry Pécout, ‘Une technocratie au service d’une théocratie. Culture et formation intellectuelle des e´ vêques de Provence’, in M.-M. de Cevins and J.-M. Matz (eds.), Formation intellectuelle et culture du clergé dans les territoires angevins (milieu du XIIIe – fin ´ du XVe siècle) (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2005), pp. 106, 114. ‘Le roi et Les Baux, la mémoire et la seigneurie (Arles, 1269–70)’, Provence Historique 49 (1999), 59.


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of Raymond Berengar V, Charles’s predecessor.69 Joseph Strayer argued in 1970 that Philippe IV’s use of lawyers for a similar purpose was innovative, that it was Paris that transformed his legists into centralisers.70 But this conclusion depended on a comparison solely with Languedoc. Had Strayer looked to Provence, he might have found a model for Philippe to copy. French kings had, from the time of Louis VII, employed the occasional Roman lawyer. What distinguished Philippe IV’s reign from those of his predecessors was the large number and the importance in administration of his lawyers.71 The identical use of lawyers had been well established much earlier, from the reign of Manfred in the Regno and the rule of Charles of Anjou in Provence. Did Philippe IV have to reinvent the wheel? After he left for Naples in 1265, Charles of Anjou only visited Provence twice, before and after his stay in Bourges in 1283. He therefore had to have a representative in the county to look after his interests and exercise control over those who might undermine them. His first powerful ally was Alain de Lusarches, bishop of Sisteron, who took pride of place in the government of Provence until his death in 1277.72 Below him, and after the end of Charles of Salerno’s vicariate in 1282, the key figure was the seneschal. Of the thirteen seneschals Charles I employed during his reign, the first eleven were from Anjou or France.73 Two of the more important came from the Lagonesse and the d’Aulnay families, who served the Angevins in many capacities across their lands.74 The seneschals were advised by a council appointed by Charles. Below them came the largely Provençal bails who administered comital estates and controlled districts; the judges under the juge-mage, and a treasurer, all of these except the juge-mage usually locals. The officials at the top level had in time to learn to compile documents in the fashion employed in the Regno, because initially there was only one chancery for both the county and the Regno.75 Accounting was also done according to rules developed in the Regno.76 And appeals from Provençal courts could go 69 70 71 72

73 75 76

Pécout, Raymond Bérenger V, pp. 235–64. In Les gens de justice du Languedoc sous Philippe le Bel (Toulouse: Association Marc Bloch, 1970), p. 44. Franklin J. Pegues, The Lawyers of the Last Capetians (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962). On this important family, which produced both bishops and civil servants, see the remarks of Louis Carolus-Barré, ‘Les pères du IIe concile de Lyons (1274). Esquisses ´ prosopographiques’, in 1274 – Année charnière. Mutations et continuités (Paris: Editions de CNRS, 1977), p. 422. 74 Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 122. Boyer in La Provence au moyen aˆ ge, p. 166. Andreas Kiesewetter, ‘La cancelleria angioina’, in L’état angevin, pp. 361–415, at p. 370. Noël Coulet, ‘Aix, capitale de la Provence angevine’, in L’état angevin, pp. 317–38.

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to the Great Court at Naples. This was so popular a resort that Charles had to order his officials to nominate judges to sort out cases in Provence except where they directly concerned his interests.77 A small number of highly skilled northern Frenchmen thus acquired in Provence a training in the administrative practices of the Regno. Charles II was a much more visible presence in Provence. In 1278, he was sent by his father to take over as vicar of the county, a position he held until he received an urgent summons to seek help for the Regno in Paris when the Sicilian rebellion broke out. During the four years of his vicariate, he developed a fondness for Provence as his inheritance from his mother, and also as the place where he believed Mary Magdalen had begun her mission of conversion.78 In recognising her as the patron saint both of his dynasty and of Provence, he created a solid link with the county that made him popular there. After his release from the Catalan jail at the end of 1288, he briefly visited Italy and then spent over three years in the county before returning to the Regno in early 1294; and he visited Provence quite frequently thereafter.79 During the time that he and his court were present, usually at Aix-en-Provence, any visiting Frenchman from the north – and there were many involved in diplomatic negotiations or trade – would have seen in action monarchy as conceived in the Regno. On the other hand, just at this period the number of Frenchmen involved in either comital administration or episcopal office in Provence declined sharply. When the Vespers broke out, Charles of Anjou tried his first experiment in nominating a seneschal from the local population – Bérengar Gantelme, appointed in 1283. From 1298 onwards, all the seneschals nominated by Charles II were Italian.80 The growing number of Italians in the Provençal church and in the county’s administration went hand-in-hand with an increasing direct subordination of its government to the Great Court at Naples.81 Therefore Provence provided an improved and more direct reflection of the Regno to northern visitors. But fewer of these later visitors are likely to have possessed the legal or bureaucratic knowledge to appreciate the technicalities of what they saw.

77 78 79 80 81

A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 1004. Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen. Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Boyer in La Provence au moyen aˆ ge, p. 199. Ibid., pp. 226–7; for the nomination of an Italian judge for Provence in 1293, RCA CII, vol. 49, reg. lxviii, 116. Coulet, ‘Aix, capitale de la Provence angevine’, pp. 317–38.


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Throughout the whole of the period 1266–1305, Marseilles flourished ˆ for the trade between northern France and Italy.82 Pilgrims as an entrepot to Rome and the occasional brave pilgrim to Jerusalem took ship there. French officials came down to assert the rights of their king as heir to Alphonse of Poitiers in half of Avignon; and when these rights were surrendered to Charles II in 1290, Philippe IV chose to build up French influence down the western bank of the Rhone, at Beaucaire and at Villeneuve, as close to Provence as he could. His purchase of galleys from Provence brought officials down to the county.83 There were, therefore, many reasons why northern Frenchmen might come for short periods to Provence in the reigns of Charles I and II. How observant they were when they visited remains uncertain. But at least a few of them may be presumed to have acquired a more than superficial understanding of the county’s rule and forms of law; and these were increasingly a mirror of those in the Regno. Tonnerre The county of Tonnerre plus two lordships in the Perche and one in Normandy came into Angevin hands in 1274 as the inheritance of Marguerite, Charles of Anjou’s second wife, from her father Eudes, count of Nevers, who died in Acre in August 1266.84 Eudes’s heirs were four daughters, of whom Marguerite was the second. After her marriage to Charles in 1268, he took on the responsibility of claiming her share of the inheritance in the Parlement of Paris.85 When the county came into their hands, he established a bailli there who was made accountable to the bailli of Anjou; a similar arrangement was made for the two lordships in the Perche.86 When Charles died, Marguerite seems to have continued the same arrangement for as long as she remained in the Regno. In 1290, not long after the release of her stepson Charles II from his Catalan jail, she returned to France and took up residence in Tonnerre, where she remained until her death in 1309. During this period, her chief advisors were members of the Lusarches family, probably relations of the 82

83 84 85 86

Charles M. de la Roncière, ‘Marchands florentins de Provence en l’an 1300’, Provence Historique 49 (1999), 319–32, emphasises the importance of northern French cloths in Provençal trade. Vale, The Angevin Legacy, p. 201. Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 528–30; Les ducs de Bourgogne, pp. 322–3; on the two Perche lordships, Archives du Nord, B447 (3.424). A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 721. On the complications of the inheritance, see Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne, pp. 318–28. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, nos. 813 and 914.

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northerner Alain de Lusarches, bishop of Sisteron, who had been a pillar of Charles of Anjou’s government in Provence.87 On 9 March 1276 Charles of Anjou defined the principles on which the bailli of Tonnerre should operate.88 He was to treat with respect claims to lordships or rights in the county made by various bishops, and to consult with the bishop of Langres on how to come to fair agreements on these matters. On the other hand, he was to resist the claim of the count of Nevers that his coinage should run in the county.89 He was to put the castles of Tonnerre back into good repair, and was to enforce the same rules on mortmain as applied in the lands of Philippe III. This sounds like a conservative programme, designed to bring about peace after a very troubled period of indecision in the county’s history. Characteristically, Charles was concerned to ensure that every penny owed to him should be collected, accounted for, and handed over twice yearly to the bailli of Anjou.90 Exactly the same problem therefore raises its head as with Anjou: were the inhabitants of Tonnerre more grateful for predictable government or upset by frequent taxes? There was no sign of discontent in the county, indeed there appeared to be growing prosperity; but Charles’s rule did not last long enough for any clear results to emerge. Marguerite’s return to Tonnerre in 1290 must have marked a substantial change for the county. Till the end of her comparatively long life, she bore the title queen of Jerusalem and Sicily, which will have focused attention on her past. Accompanied as she was by Catherine of Courtenay, titular empress of Constantinople, who often stayed with her until her marriage to Charles de Valois in 1301, and by Marguerite, widow of Bohemond VII count of Antioch, now known as the princess of Antioch, who acted as her executor when she wrote the codicil to her will in 1308, her court will have struck beholders as truly queenly.91 Wooden statues of both Marguerites, crafted while they lived, remain to this day in the hospital of Tonnerre that she built.92 Judging by the large number of precious objects Queen Marguerite distributed to various relations, friends and others in the codicil to her will, wealth and luxury will have been evident to any beholder. Much of this derived from Marguerite’s enrichment through her years in the Regno. Her most lavish gift, of a beautiful 87

88 89 91 92

Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, p. 132; Archives du Nord, B447 (4.621), vidimus of will of Marguerite of Sicily, bequests to Robert and Renier de Lusarches; for Alain de Lusarches, see Boyer in La Provence au moyen aˆ ge, pp. 165–6. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 914. 90 Ibid., nos. 813, 914. For other claims of the count to be resisted, ibid., no. 927. Archives du Nord, B447 (4.621); for other wills see ibid., B447 (4.4471); B447 (3.424); B447 (5.071); B447 (4.640). See Françoise Baron in L’art au temps des rois maudits. Philippe le Bel et ses fils, 1285–1329 (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1998), pp. 119–20.


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sapphire and a cross that had once belonged to Charles of Anjou, was for Marie de Brabant, the second wife of Philippe III who, with the princess of Antioch, was burdened with the endless complications of executing her will and its codicils. Marguerite of Antioch received for her efforts as executor some silver basins and a white silk cloth. Such objects would, in earlier days, have dazzled beholders in an area not much accustomed to grandeur of this type. If she still had many fine possessions at the time she died, Queen Marguerite was more noted in Tonnerre for the quantity she had given away in alms. In April 1293 the foundations were laid for the great hospital she built in the town of Tonnerre, to provide succour for the poor, the infirm, the aged and the sick, and for penniless travellers. By 1295, the great hall (both church and shelter for the poor and sick) was under construction, and in April 1296 it was consecrated. It was destroyed in the eighteenth century and rebuilt to stand to this day as a monument to Marguerite’s devotion. Sadly, the other two hospitals she built in the county at Ligui and Laignes have completely disappeared.93 How much of the profits from financial exploitation of the Regno ended up in these great acts of charity cannot be ascertained. But it is unlikely that the hospitals were the product only of income from Tonnerre, since this was not sufficiently great to have featured much in Charles of Anjou’s financial calculations. More speculative is the notion that Marguerite’s lavish expenditure on hospitals reflected her time in the Regno. She was, after all, a contemporary of Margaret of Cortona, whose penitence took the form of nursing the sick in the community she founded at Cortona.94 Her fame will surely have been known to the ruling class of the kingdom just to the south. It is, however, plausible that Marguerite’s model was her contemporary Margaret of Hungary, who was similarly devoted to working for the sick, and who died in 1270. If so, Marguerite will presumably have heard of Margaret through her niece, Queen Marie, wife of Charles II.95 Queen Marguerite’s long widowhood and her concern expressed in her will that the hospital at Tonnerre should be sufficiently well endowed to last, suggest this, too, was an act of penance. Whether or not she was consciously imitating one of her saintly namesakes, the 93

94

95

Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, vol. V, p. 133. On the sculpture of the tympanum and east portal of the Tonnerre hospital, see Baron, L’art au temps des rois maudits, p. 115. Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti. Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 21–5. André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 181.

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poor of Tonnerre had reason to be grateful for what she did. And this was widely recognised in France.96 More certainly, Marguerite’s experiences in the Regno accounted for her frequent resort to the papacy for advice, privileges and prayers. As Charles of Anjou’s queen, she had learned to take for granted a closeness to popes that was unusual in northern French aristocrats. She had asked Nicholas III in secret for a change of a penance that had been imposed on her;97 she obtained various privileges from Nicholas IV.98 But it was with Boniface VIII, whom she may have known well, that correspondence multiplied. His accession coincided with the completion of the hospital at Tonnerre, which he graciously privileged in many ways in response to Marguerite’s prayers, and conferred other privileges on her.99 She clearly had a tender conscience, because she asked to be absolved if she had infringed the law on extortion from the Jews, and also to have the right to give to the poor any money she may illicitly have taken whose owners could no longer be traced.100 Her correspondence with the papacy was unusual in its frequency and the variety of concerns exhibited. The number of messengers that must have gone from Tonnerre to Rome, Anagni or Viterbo will have been noticed, and perhaps were intended to be noticed, by the local population. It is almost as if Marguerite was drawing attention to her claim to holiness. If so, she was surely intending to impress her people with the idea that only the pope could now legitimately canonise anyone. As a channel of communication for wealth and ideas derived from the Regno, the importance of Tonnerre lay quite largely in its geographical situation, on the frontiers of the duchy of Burgundy. There was created a centre in the east of France, where Marguerite deliberately kept alive the memory of her august husband, and attracted to her court members of families that had been of significance in the Regno in his reign, among them the Toucys, the Lusarches and the Courtenays. As long as she lived – she died in 1309 – the story of the Angevin dynasty’s triumphs and defeats in the Regno remained vividly in the recall of her entourage. Visitors en route to other places At first sight, there may be a question about the appropriateness of discussing in a book about the impact of the Regno’s politics and culture 96

97 99 100

Les grandes chroniques de France, vol. VIII, p. 200. See also Carol Symes, A Common Stage. Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), p. 141. 98 Reg. Nicholas IV, nos. 1080–7, 1301, 1302. Reg. Nicholas III, no. 477. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. I, nos. 2, 7–9, 11–16, 21, 45–7, 2118. Ibid., vol. I, no. 2120; vol. II, no. 2860.


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on France those who merely stopped at the Regno on their way to other destinations in the eastern Mediterranean. Surely those who only passed through could not retain a strong or true enough impression of the country for it to have affected their thinking when they returned home? There is, of course, some force in this objection. It may well be true for many travellers. Yet, as we shall see, a few passed through the Regno several times. And others may have had particular reasons for being observant.101 It is not wise to assume that all medieval travellers determinedly shut their minds to differences of environment or custom, or failed to reflect on possible improvements to their own ways by imitation of others.102 As nowadays, only some did. The centrality of the Regno to the Mediterranean world has rightly been emphasised by all historians of the region. For a Frenchman going from home to the eastern Mediterranean, a stop on the way, either in southern Italy or in Sicily, was almost a matter of course. He might sail from Marseilles and visit Messina to reprovision on his way to Acre or Constantinople, or he might proceed by road to Bari or Brindisi, where he would take a boat across to Durazzo, and then march across the Balkans in the direction of Constantinople. Given the importance of the Regno ports to all crusading enterprises, it was scarcely surprising that thirteenth-century popes justified their anti-Hohenstaufen policies in part by the need to have the Regno in hands sympathetic to crusading aims.103 This had been one of the strongest arguments for the French popes Urban IV (1261–64) and Clement IV (1264–68) in favour of persuading Charles of Anjou to conquer the Regno from Manfred. Agricultural factors reinforced the geographical, in that the Regno was rich in supplies both of hard grain for ship’s biscuit and of more perishable foodstuffs. In the Angevin period, captains of ships sailing to assist the Latins in Acre or in Achaia (the dwindling nexus of lands in southern Greece still controlled by the Latins after the fall of Constantinople to the Greeks in 1261) could usually count on being allowed to restock in one of the Regno ports.

101

102 103

Historians have reckoned that Edward I of England may have been receptive to what he saw in his visit to the Regno. W. A. Percy, ‘The revenues of the kingdom of Sicily under Charles I of Anjou, 1266–1285, and their relationship to the Vespers’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Princeton, 1964, suggested that Edward may well have copied the Regno practice in introducing into England the new custom on goods shortly after his return from crusade in 1274. See also M. Clanchy, England and its Rulers (2nd edn, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 220–1, for a suggestion that Edward learned from Charles of Anjou in the matter of castle-building. E.g. Rosamund Allen in her Eastward Bound. Travel and Travellers, 1050–1550 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 3. Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 62–9.

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The most regular users of this route were the Hospitallers and Templars, pausing in Messina on their way to reinforce the dwindling ranks of Latins in Acre before 1291 and, after the fall of Acre in that year, in Cyprus.104 The bulk of the (largely French or Occitanian) monkknights who sailed this way had no intention of ever returning to the west; they had dedicated their lives to the protection or, after 1291, to the reconquest of the lands around Jerusalem. Therefore, although there were many of them, they had little chance of affecting perceptions in France. But the masters of both orders moved back and forth reasonably frequently, ably assisted by the officials of the Angevin crown. And both orders had preceptories in the Regno, at which the masters and their entourages could rapidly find their way to people of influence at the court. Unfortunately, although the surviving evidence clearly shows the importance of the Regno to both orders, and their impact on the Regno, in the present state of research there is little to suggest that these links had a noticeable impact on France.105 Nevertheless, it is always possible that a few French members of the orders, when they got home again, honed their banking skills by imitating the practices current in the Regno. The Regno also offered shelter, sometimes only very temporary, to numbers of French pilgrims and soldiers on their way to the Holy Land in the later 1260s and the 1270s. For example, a Norman knight expressed his intention at Easter 1267 of going to Sicily and then on to the Holy Land.106 Then Charles ordered his officials to permit Francis of Flanders, on his way to Outremer in 1268, to leave the country, accompanied by two soldiers, three pages and two horses.107 By this stage, the land route across the Balkans to Constantinople was far too dangerous to be often attempted, as the forces of Michael VIII Paleologus, the Greek emperor, strove to recover for his people the remnants of the Latin empire of Constantinople in the Peloponnese. Those who wanted to reach Palestine had to take ship, either from Marseilles or another western Mediterranean port, or from Bari. Despite the Angevin conquest of the Regno, the journey was perilous, the destination even more so. By the 1280s, when the war of the Sicilian Vespers frequently disrupted shipping, only a very few determined pilgrims can have made their way to the east.108 Of 104 105 106 107 108

Dominic Selwood, Knights of the Cloister. Templars and Hospitallers in Central-Southern Occitania 1100–1300 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999), pp. 169–96. See Barber, The New Knighthood, pp. 169–74: Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 157, 229. Archives de l’Eure, H571. I am most grateful to Daniel Power for giving me this reference. RCA, vol. 1, reg. vi, 393. Among these were the missionaries of the mendicant orders; see Andrew Jotischky, ‘The mendicants as missionaries and travellers in the Near East in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, in Allen (ed.), Eastward Bound, pp. 88–106. Also, and more


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these, presumably only a minority returned to France after the journey. The circumstances of the years 1266–91 argue against pilgrims as an important conduit for spreading influences from the Regno to France (though they very probably had constituted this in earlier times). Rather different was the decision of the young Philippe III, immediately on the death of Louis IX in Tunis on 25 August 1270, to return from North Africa to Paris by way of the Regno under the protection of his uncle, Charles of Anjou. This meant sailing to Trapani in Sicily rather than to Marseilles or to Aigues Mortes, the French port from which his father’s crusade had set out. Perhaps the dysentery that had swept through the French army in Tunis had also so reduced his navy that Philippe had no alternative but to rely on his uncle’s ships to get home, by however indirect a route. More probably, in his moment of weakness and sorrow, since he too was stricken by disease,109 he clung to his powerful uncle for support. The result was the exposure to the ways of the Regno both of the new French king and of those of his soldiers who survived – more died in destructive storms off Trapani and yet more of sickness or accident as they travelled north. The close link between Philippe and Charles, forged during the six weeks of Philippe’s journey through the Regno, was to have a lasting impact on Philippe’s foreign policy decisions for the rest of his life.110 The sense of kinship between the two Capetians, which might well have weakened with the coming to power in France of one of the next generation, was in fact strengthened by what Philippe must have regarded as his uncle’s generosity to him – however different the judgments of others may have been. Similarly, Charles’s tie with the Dampierre family was reinforced by the close relationship he resumed with Gui, count of Flanders, during the time in Tunis and in the Regno.111 On a cultural plane, the deaths that occurred among Philippe’s closest companions in the Regno exposed the French to southern Italian customs of commemoration;112 and perhaps also to Italian ways of accounting.113 At a lower social level,

109 110 112 113

surprising, the countess of Blois and her daughter Jeanne, who went to Acre in 1287. Although the countess died there in 1288, Jeanne returned after a two-year stay; Aisne Derbes and Mark Sandona, ‘Amazons and Crusaders: the Histoire Universelle in Flanders and the Holy Land’, in D. H. Weiss and L. Mahoney (eds.), France and the Holy Land. Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 187–229, at pp. 214–15. See the second letter of Pierre de Condé, summarised by Gérard Sivéry, Philippe III le Hardi (Paris: Fayard, 2003), p. 52. 111 See below, pp. 120–4. See above, p. 38. Julian Gardner, The Tomb and the Tiara. Curial Tomb Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), p. 70. Among Philippe’s followers was Pierre de Condé, later to become an important financial agent for Philippe III and Philippe IV. His arrival in the Regno coincided with the time when the reforms of Geoffroi de Beaumont, second chancellor of the Angevin Regno,

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Charles persuaded a few of Philippe’s followers to remain in southern Italy for some time to serve him.114 Altogether, Charles had reason to be more than contented with the results of his offer of hospitality to his young nephew. The consequence was to create links of friendship between those who went home and those who remained in the Regno that proved reasonably long-lasting. The crusading leaders naturally had large retinues with them which meant that Philippe III’s 1271 stay exposed substantial numbers of French soldiers to the Regno way of life. Because Charles wished to ensure that these men were not subjected to any form of tax-paying as they crossed from Sicily to Calabria, he sent his officials lists of the numbers of men accompanying each of the leaders who made their own way home to France.115 Gui, count of Flanders, had the largest group, comprising 350 men; his son Robert de Béthune had 113; Baldwin, titular emperor of Constantinople, had 130; the constable of the king of France had 55; the count of Soissons had 98, and the count of Roucy had 59. Lesser men had smaller numbers. Together they made a formidable band. Charles noted that he had emptied his treasury in looking after them and giving presents to many of these, whom he described as pilgrims.116 The lucky ones will, then, have had concrete and in some cases enduring mementoes of their stay in the south to show their friends when they returned home. Other travellers paused in the Regno on their way, not to crusading destinations, but to places in Greece with which their families or their lords had built up connections during the dominance of the Latins in Constantinople (1204–61). Of these places, by far the most important for French travellers was Achaia, the dwindling area in the southern Peloponnese still ruled by the heirs of Geoffrey de Villehardouin, who had helped to conquer it in 1205 and ruled it from 1209 to 1228. The significance of this is initially hard to determine, because, after Charles of Anjou’s treaty with Guillaume de Villehardouin, the ruler of Achaia, signed at Viterbo in 1267, the affairs of the Regno became so involved with those of Achaia as to make them almost indistinguishable. But the second marriage of Guillaume’s elder daughter and heiress, Isabelle, to

114

115

were taking effect. Did he perhaps learn from what he saw on this brief visit? See below, ´ Lalou (ed.), Comptes sur tablettes di cire de la chambre aux deniers pp. 254–5, and E. de Philippe III le Hardi et de Philippe IV le Bel (1282–1309) (Paris: Boccard, 1994), pp. xxv–xxviii. Dunbabin, ‘The household and entourage of Charles I of Anjou’, p. 318. Jean d’Eppes probably stayed also; see Andreas Kiesewetter in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. XLIII, p. 29. 116 RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 1205. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 891.


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Florent de Hainault in 1289 marked the return to at least a degree of independence for Achaia. Although Florent did not stay long in Achaia, for the rest of our period contacts were maintained between the Villehardouin family in Greece and the ruling house of Hainault, contacts which necessarily were channelled through the ports of the Regno.117 Then there were other places in Greece to which various Frankish families had claims.118 Of these, the most significant was the duchy of Athens, whose rulers, the la Roche family, kept in touch via Brindisi and Naples with their French lands in Burgundy.119 Connections of this kind will come under closer scrutiny in Part III of this book. In addition, there were French visitors whose main object was to do business at the papal curia, but who came down to the Regno as part of their journey. For example, Robert de Béthune, heir to the county of Flanders, revisited the Regno after a long and fruitless series of negotiations with Pope Boniface VIII in 1298.120 According to the Myreur des Histors of Jean Outremeuse – a far from reliable source but on this perfectly plausible – the count of Bar went to Rome to do penance in 1297, and then went on to the Regno.121 More importantly, as we shall see in the next section, Charles de Valois, brother of King Philippe IV, went on from the papal curia to the court of Charles II in 1302.122 Since Charles de Valois was surrounded by a very large entourage, in assessing the impact of his sojourn the shortness of his stay may have been balanced by the substantial number of those who experienced the Regno on this occasion. At least one other visitor was en route from a much more exotic destination, the court of the Mongol Khan. In 1291 he called in on the Regno on his way home from conducting negotiations on behalf of Philippe IV with that much-feared monarch.123 There may also have been other visits that remained unrecorded in our scanty sources. For the moment, it is enough to note that there were good reasons for what may seem a surprisingly large number of Frenchmen to travel through the Regno on 117

118 119 121

122 123

See e.g. Archives du Nord. Archives départementales ant. a` 1790, ed. L’Abbé Deshaines and J. Finot. Série B, vol. I, part 2 (Lille: L. Danel, 1906), p. 189. I was unable to trace this charter when I looked in Lille. Peter Lock, The Franks in the Aegean 1204–1500 (Harlow: Longman, 1995), pp. 57–75. 120 See below, pp. 126–8. See below, p. 141. Ly myreur des histors, vol. V, ed. S. Bormans (Brussels: M. Hayez, 1887), p. 520. For the view that this visit should be dated to Charles de Valois’s campaign of 1301–2, see Petit, Charles de Valois, p. 58. See above, p. 46. For Charles’s companions, see Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. III, no. 4691. G. I. Bratianu, Recherches sur le commerce genois dans la mer noire au XIIIe siècle (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1929), pp. 186–7.

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their way to other places, and that some of these reasons continued to draw them for at least three decades after Charles of Anjou’s conquest. Visitors to the Regno This section is devoted to considering the large numbers of French people who came south with the clear intention of visiting the Regno during the period between the Angevin conquest and the aftermath of the Treaty of Caltabellotta in 1302.124 The aim is to highlight groups who came, their reasons for coming, and the possible impact of their stay. At this stage, members of great families who settled in the Regno for some time are excluded (they will be discussed in Part III). The point is to bring into focus lesser men who were influential by reason of their number rather than their individual prestige. It is, of course, difficult to obtain precise information about these individuals, and particularly it is nigh on impossible to know how long most of them actually stayed in the Regno. The illustrations provided will necessarily come from men sufficiently important to have been noticed in the records of the royal chancery. They will here be used as relatively high-status examples of much broader categories. Apart from times of crusading, when fighting in the Regno brought with it the indulgence for the remission of sins,125 the primary reason for visiting the Regno during the early Angevin period was to obtain military experience.126 After about 1245, there was comparative tranquillity in the heartland of France. Tournaments offered some useful practice; and warfare occasionally bubbled up on the eastern frontier, in Hainault, or to the north, in Holland. But there was no particular reason why most northern Frenchmen should wish to join in these affrays. On the other hand, fighting in the Regno was regarded as chivalric, in support of a French enterprise, and often also as the fulfilment of a religious duty.127 A young man could win his spurs and also merit in the eyes of his elders by chancing his luck in one of Charles of Anjou’s campaigns. For those who 124 125 126

127

Sylvie Pollastri, ‘La présence ultramontaine dans le midi italien (1265–1340)’, Studi Storici Meridionale 1/2 (1995), 3–20, esp. 15, 18. On this, see below, pp. 156–8. Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. II, pp. 247–65, gives a list of all the French fighting men mentioned in the royal archives, and pp. 267–400 a list of all French people (over 700) so mentioned. Although these lists are valuable, the drawback from the point of view of this study is that they include people from the whole of what was France when Durrieu was writing; in particular, they include Provençaux. For a different criticism of Durrieu’s lists, see Pollastri, ‘La présence ultramontaine dans le midi italien’, 4–6. On the spiritual benefits when a crusade was called, see Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 127–38.


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wanted it, there might also be the chance of long-term military service in Charles’s forces, or even a landed settlement in the Regno (though fewer seem to have desired this than might have been expected). Because the conquest of the Regno was undertaken at the papal request, Pope Urban IV offered crusading indulgences to those who joined the army in 1265. He also raised huge amounts of money, which permitted Charles to offer good salaries to those who participated.128 The crusade was preached across France and Provence, with much success. There were enough men for Charles to take a small but effective force with him when he sailed to Rome in May 1265, while leaving behind a large army to be collected together and then marched, under the leadership of Philippe de Montfort, through Piedmont and Lombardy to meet him in Rome in January 1266. Among those who arrived there were the count ˆ of Vendome, an ally from Charles’s Angevin lands, Robert de Béthune, the eldest son of the count of Flanders about whom more will be said in Part III, and the heir to the county of Soissons, whose connections with Charles are less clear, but whose family had had strong interests in Outremer before this date.129 Alongside them came a strong contingent of men from the county of Provence, among whom the most distinguished was Barral des Baux.130 In Rome, they were joined by numbers of Italian mercenaries, soldiers from the various Guelf cities of Tuscany and, more important, by the substantial numbers of men from the Regno who had been driven into exile during the Hohenstaufen period. John France has said of this newly integrated army that it ‘would seem to have been a very large and well equipped army of about 4,000 cavalry and 10,000–12,000 infantry’.131 After the victory of Benevento in February 1266 and the death of Manfred on the field, Charles was able to take possession of the Regno, 128 129

130 131

Ibid., pp. 148–60; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 167. Jordan, Les origines de la domination angevine, p. 593; Dominique Barthélemy, La société dans le comté de Vendôme de l’an mil au XIVe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1996), p. 822; RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 601. Raoul de Soissons, who became count of Loreto, left a male relation, Jean, in the Regno to inherit his position; RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxii, 31. Perhaps Raoul was the brother, not the son, of Jean de Nesle, count of Soissons. He may also have been a poet. For the earlier adventures of a Raoul de Nesle and his ambitions as king of Jerusalem in the 1250s, see Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 170, 177. Pollastri, ‘La noblesse provençale dans le royaume de Sicile, 1265–82’, Annales du Midi 100 (1988), 405–34, esp. 408–12, 414–15. Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusade (London: UCL Press, 1999), p. 130. The size of the army vindicates Housley’s view that all campaigns preached as crusades were widely regarded as meritorious for their participants (though this does not necessarily involve the belief that they were as meritorious as participating in a crusade in Outremer). See Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 3–8, 62–70, 75–9; Sylvia Schein, Fideles crucis. The Papacy, the West, and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1274–1314 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), pp. 5–7.

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the crown of which he had already received from the hands of five cardinals at Rome on 6 January 1266.132 The majority of French soldiers who had no desire to settle in the Regno (the men from Provence were more interested in acquiring land in the new kingdom than those from France) will have thought that the crusade was successfully completed, and that they could now go home. But Charles was desperate to keep as many as possible with him, especially when he heard that the young Corradin, grandson of Frederick II, was collecting an army in Germany to invade the Regno. Charles tried all means in his power to induce his men to stay. Of these means, probably the most effective was his entirely genuine plea that he simply had not the money to pay the wages due to them until he had had rather longer to exploit the resources of his conquest. It is therefore probable that far fewer French soldiers than would have wished to had actually returned home before Corradin arrived in the Regno and was defeated by the Angevin army at the battle of Tagliacozzo in August 1268. According to Charles, one of the heroes of this victory was Henri de Cousence, marshal of the king of France, who lost his life in the battle.133 After this second victory Charles’s coffers were rather fuller; he could now pay many French soldiers and allow them to go home. The recruiting drive slowed down once the second great victory made Charles seem safe on his throne. Nevertheless, he still needed help in the Regno and even more in Tuscany and Lombardy, where he was also heavily involved. In 1269, Louis IX permitted his constable Jean de Clari to take up to a thousand French men for the Tuscan campaign.134 After this, individuals came down in a steady trickle to serve Charles. In 1269, Alphonse of Poitiers, Charles’s brother, made arrangements for a knight from the Auvergne to travel south to join the king.135 In 1271, Charles was able to persuade a few of those returning from the disastrous Tunis crusade to stay and serve him.136 Among these were the seneschal of Vermandois, who was nominated as Charles’s vicar in Rome, put down roots in the Regno and left a son to inherit his lands there;137 the viscount of Melun, who died without heirs there;138 the viscount of Beaujeu, who made only a short visit; and Jean II d’Harcourt, who 132 133 134 135 136 137 138

´ Emile G. Léonard, Les Angevins de Naples (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954), p. 56. Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, p. 120. RCA, vol. 7, additiones to reg. xvi, 5. Correspondance administrative d’Alphonse de Poitiers, vol. I, no. 1183, p. 781. Dunbabin, ‘The household and entourage of Charles I of Anjou’, p. 318. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 1817; vol. 19, reg. lxxxii, 213; vol. 22, reg. xciii, 38. RCA, vol. 19, reg. lxxxii, 368.


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visited the Regno twice more, in 1282–83 and in 1302.139 Those who came in the course of the 1270s included some men of considerable note in their localities. Robert II d’Artois returned to southern Italy for a short stay between 1274 and 1276, and then for another in 1282. Robert, count of Boulogne, who almost certainly accompanied Robert d’Artois southwards on his second visit, received fiefs in the Regno in 1274.140 As each of these great men will have been accompanied by an entourage, sometimes sizeable, experience of life in the Regno will have spread below the top rank of French society. Unfortunately, the effects of this can only seldom be attested. More broadly, even those who neither went to the Regno themselves nor were related to those who did will have noticed the absence of lords such as these from their French lands. Lords had to be replaced during their absence by proctors, not all of whom were thought to have conducted themselves equitably.141 Thus the impact of fighting in the Regno created ripples that will have spread through the French countryside. The trickle of French recruits to the Angevin cause turned to a flood in 1282, when the Sicilian Vespers rebellion broke out, lending force to Norman Housley’s view that the rebellion was seen as ‘an insult to the French nation and to its king’.142 Led by Count Robert II d’Artois and another of Charles’s nephews, Pierre, count of Alençon, a considerable army promptly mobilised in France in response to Charles’s prayer for aid. Almost any French family that had in the past had links either with Achaia or with the Regno hastened to find a representative to join the ˆ fray. A typical response was that of Jean, count of Vendome, who decided to imitate his father; although his visit to the Regno was short, it will have ˆ a Gascon vassal helped to lift morale there.143 Jourdain de l’Ile-Jourdain, of Alphonse of Poitiers, Charles’s brother, had taken part in the conquest of 1266, had been Charles’s chief agent in Florence in 1267, but had not found the fiefs in the Regno he was given sufficient inducement to remain there. He nevertheless returned in 1282 to fight again for the cause.144 So, too, did Jean II d’Harcourt, of a family that was particularly close to 139

140 141 142 143 144

RCA, vol. 7, reg. xxvii, 99. On Jean II d’Harcourt see Dictionnaire de biographie française, vol. XVII, cc. 627–8, and Gilles-André de La Roque, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Harcourt (Paris, 1662), vol. I, pp. 12 and 332. For his position with Charles de Valois in 1302 and his death, La chronique métrique attribuée a` Geffroy de Paris, ed. A. Diverrès (Strasbourg: Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Strasbourg, 1956), lines 644–6. RCA, vol. 12, reg. lxiii, 113. For complaints against those who stood in for Robert d’Artois, see Pas-de-Calais Série A, 27/48. Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 155. Barthélemy, La société dans le comté de Vendôme, p. 821. Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 156.

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Charles.145 Their arrival brought much relief in Naples. Then Charles of Salerno, Charles of Anjou’s heir, was said by the St Denis chronicler, Guillaume de Nangis, to have brought back from Provence with him in 1283 Otto, count palatine of Burgundy, the counts of Boulogne and Dammartin, and Matthieu, lord of Montmorency.146 Charles thought that they had a thousand fighting men in their train.147 When Charles in June 1284 returned from a visit first to Bordeaux and then to Bourges, he had collected around him another substantial group of Frenchmen willing to risk their lives for the cause of the Regno. Among these were Henri de Guines and Jean, viscount of Tremblay.148 The geographical spread of these knights’ homes was remarkably broad, with the whole of Philippe III’s realm and its borderlands sending representatives. We have no clear indication of how long most French volunteers stayed. ˆ Some may have imitated Otto, count of Burgundy, Jean de Vendome and Jean II d’Harcourt in returning home to assist Philippe III with planning the attack on Aragon he undertook in 1285.149 Some may have been discouraged by the capture of Charles of Salerno in the bay of Naples in June 1284 or by the death of Charles of Anjou in January 1285. The numbers of those that remained were reinforced when Philippe IV sent to Robert d’Artois all the galleys and other craft that had been ineffective in the Aragonese crusade.150 How many of the sailors were actually French remains unknown – probably only a small minority. They soon were defeated again in 1287 at the battle of Castellemare, which probably left only a few both alive and free. Yet even after this disaster, there were French soldiers assisting in the Regno. According to Villani, it was not until Charles II, without consulting anyone, signed a truce at Gaeta with James of Sicily in the summer of 1289 that large numbers left the Regno in disgust and went home to France.151 Whether they were really 145 146 147

148 149

150 151

Dictionnaire de biographie française, vol. XVII, cc. 627–8. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronique latine, vol. I, p. 258; the chronicler ran this together with the expedition of the counts of Alençon and Artois, which arrived earlier. A. de Bouard, Documents français des archives angevines de Naples, vol. II (Paris: Boccard, 1935), no. 226; Jean de Montfort was said to have received from Charles of Salerno thirty-four knights and eighty-one footsoldiers; RCA, vol. 25, reg. cvii, 66. RCA, vol. 27, part 1, reg. cxx, 252, 316. Henri de Guines later became vice admiral and vice master justiciar of the Regno (RCA, vol. 27, part 2, reg. cxxiv, 50). On Otto of Burgundy, see Eugene Cox, ‘The kingdom of Burgundy, the lands of the house of Savoy and adjacent territories’, in Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval ˆ History, vol. V, pp. 363–4; on Jean de Vendome, Barthélemy, Le comté de Vendôme, p. 822; and on Jean II d’Harcourt, see note 139 above. Charles de la Roncière and G. Clerc-Rampal, Histoire de la marine française (Paris: Larousse, 1934), p. 13. Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica, vol. I, ed. G. Porta (Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo, 1990), pp. 609–10.


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disgusted or whether they simply saw the truce as a good reason for ending their service is disputable. But Pope Nicholas IV’s refusal to ratify the outstanding clauses of the Treaty of Canfranc a year earlier may have helped to prevent a total abandonment of the cause. In any case, Robert d’Artois’s charters and letters demonstrate that he did contrive to keep some faithful soldiers around him and to recruit more until he finally left for France in November 1291.152 Even then, there were a few left. The viscount of Tremblay, for example, remained after Robert’s departure, but had to be given permission to return to France a little later, because he was seriously ill. His son took over his lands in the Regno.153 Between 1291 and 1302, no great French armies set off to assist in the Regno. True, Philippe IV did ask Pope Nicholas IV to launch an expedition in favour of the Sicilian reconquest in October 1291. But the pope was at this time concerned with the fall of Acre and the hope of recovering Outremer, and therefore refused Philippe’s request.154 How sincere the French king was about this is difficult to know. Meanwhile the efforts of Charles II, and to a lesser extent those of the various popes, were engaged in trying to make peace between the Aragonese and Sicilians on the one hand and the Angevins and the French on the other. Initially, these attempts did not please Philippe; he was not willing to make peace with Aragon unless and until he could win a good prize for his brother Charles de Valois, who had been promised the throne of Aragon by Pope Martin IV when he launched the Aragonese crusade in 1283.155 When Philippe did make a truce with the Aragonese in 1290, he turned his concentration to internal affairs. These led him to declare war within France, first on Gascony in 1294 and then on Flanders in 1297. From 1294, those young Frenchmen who hoped for military experience could now find it at home, and in a cause which could also be portrayed as holy.156 While King Charles still begged for financial assistance from France, he could not realistically have expected much in the way of manpower. 152 153 154 155

156

Pas de Calais Série A 2, no. 53, fol. 9v; 29/24; 30/6. RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 8. For the survival of this line in the Regno, see Pollastri, ‘La presence ultramontaine dans le midi italien’, p. 16. Reg. Nicolas IV, no. 6849; Schein, Fideles crucis, p. 84. On the complications of the period, see Béatrice Leroy, ‘Un prolongement des Vêpres siciliennes: Charles de Valois, la Navarre et l’Aragon en 1288’, in La società mediterranea all’epoca del Vespro, vol. III (Palermo: Academia di scienze, lettere e arti, 1983), pp. 279– 93. ‘Un sermon prononcé pendant la guerre de Flandre sous Philippe le Bel’, ed. Jean Leclercq, Revue du Moyen Age Latin 1 (1945), 168–72. But for the view that this sermon dates from 1315, not 1302, see Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ‘Kings like semi-gods: the case of Louis X of France’, Majestas 1 (1993), 5–37, esp. 23–6.

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Nor for some time did he believe it necessary, because in December 1293 he signed a truce with James of Aragon at Figueras. Nevertheless, an occasional figure like Hugues de Bourbon, exiled by Philippe IV, was permitted to serve at the court of Charles Martell, Charles II’s eldest son.157 Then Charles’s hopes that the war would finally end were dashed when the Sicilians refused to accept the terms of the peace drawn up and signed between James and Charles at Anagni in June 1295. In December 1295 the islanders elected James’s younger brother, Frederick, as their king, thereby undermining the agreement that Sicily was to be returned to Charles II. War resumed, but with only small French assistance. Events in Italy brought rather little cheer for the Angevins. Pope Boniface VIII, who had been elected in December 1294, was determined not to surrender Sicily to Frederick. But he could see no means of reconquering it. The offer in 1295 of an indulgence to those who would fight for the island did not have much effect in France.158 And after the failure of James, king of Aragon, to make a serious attempt at removing his younger brother from the throne of Sicily in 1297–99, Charles II clearly wanted to negotiate with Frederick rather than fight him.159 There was, however, one last chance for the pope. In 1301 Charles de Valois, whose ambitions in Spain had been thwarted, married Catherine of Courtenay, titular heiress to the Latin empire of Constantinople, and Charles II’s first cousin. Boniface contrived to persuade the French prince that a campaign in southern Italy was a necessary preliminary to the reconquest of the Latin empire. Accompanied by the bishop of Auxerrre, Pierre de Morigny, and the counts of Armagnac, Auxerre, Châtillon, Joigni and Sancerre160 and an army of French soldiers (including Jean II d’Harcourt), all equipped with crusading indulgences, Charles entered Italy in April 1302.161 The Aragonese ambassador Geoffroi of Foix was not impressed, saying that Charles had brought only three hundred knights with him when he arrived at Viterbo.162 On the other hand, Sanudo said he had 2,000.163 The true number probably lay somewhere between the two. As the pope saw the French mission, its purpose was to defeat the Ghibelline forces in Lombardy and Tuscany, and then to 157 159 160

161 162 163

158 Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. I, no. 1575. RCA CII, vol. 48, reg. lxv, 4. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. II, no. 3425. La chronique métrique attribuée a` Geffroy de Paris, ed. Diverrès, lines 140–60. According to Joseph Petit, Henri, count of Bar, was with the expedition as a gesture of penance for his sins against Philippe IV (Charles de Valois, p. 58). But the date of his visit may have been 1297; see above, p. 81. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. III, no. 4625. Ed. H. Finke, Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII: Funde und Forschungen (Munster: Aschendorffsche, 1902), Quellen, no. 7, Anagni, 1301. Petit, Charles de Valois, p. 79.


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impose a humiliating peace on Frederick and his Sicilians. But Charles de Valois did not see the campaign in the same light. Rather, he came under the influence of his relative Charles II of Naples and Charles’s son Robert, duke of Calabria, both of whom were anxious to put an end to a war that had plunged them deeply in debt without securing them any advantage.164 After about three months of desultory campaigning in the heat of the summer, Charles de Valois met Frederick of Sicily at the end of August, and together they drew up the Treaty of Caltabellotta, which allowed Frederick to continue to rule Sicily for the rest of his life. Charles de Valois and his French army then rapidly retreated home to try to assist Philippe IV, who was still stunned by the blow of the total defeat his army had suffered at the hands of the Flemish at Kortrijk in July 1302. Boniface was furious that the treaty should have been signed.165 He waited until May 1303 before ratifying it and accepting Frederick’s right to rule in what the pope insisted on calling Trinacria.166 By then the pope had no alternative to accepting the fait accompli because he had become totally immersed in his famous clash with Philippe IV of France. So, despite initial papal disapproval, the Treaty of Caltabellotta put an end, for more than a decade, to the war of the Vespers. After late August 1302 there was no further pretext for French soldiers to seek military glory in southern Italy or Sicily. In any case, Philippe IV desperately needed all the military men he could collect together for his attempt to smash the forces of the Flemish towns that had just totally defeated his army at Kortrijk and killed Robert d’Artois, his chief commander, among large numbers of other knights. What French soldiers learned in the way of military tactics or strategy from their spasmodic but sometimes quite extensive involvement in the Regno will be discussed in Chapter 16. Other results can only be guessed at. Entirely speculative is the impact on the soldiers’ sense of identity of participating in campaigns where they fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Provençaux and some Italians against other Italians and Germans. How did they learn to distinguish their friends from their enemies? Later legend tells us that the Sicilians were able to identify the French by their inability to pronounce correctly ‘ciciri’, the Sicilian word for chickpeas.167 But the sources tell us nothing about how the ordinary French soldier could tell the ‘good’ Italians from the ‘bad’ ones, or how well he communicated with 164 165 166 167

Finke, Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII, Quellen, nos. 9–11, pp. xxvi–lviii. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. III, no. 5087. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. III, no. 5348. He favoured this name because he intended Charles II to retain the title of king of Sicily. James Fentress in Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 177, n. 1.

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others from places hitherto quite unknown to him. Did the experience broaden his mind and his range of companions; or did it simply reinforce his latent prejudices, driving him into closer ties with those from his own locality? It is impossible to know. But whichever way it went, the effect on individuals is unlikely to have been negligible. If Durrieu was correct in his explanation for the use of French for some treasury documents in Charles of Anjou’s chancery, that it was designed to make fraud by Italian-speaking bureaucrats difficult,168 then social integration between French and Italians was strained at some levels of society. How generally this was so we cannot know. Then there are the effects for which some evidence survives. To start with the cheerful, to have participated in the campaigns probably boosted the soldiers’ reputations locally when they returned home. It may even have assisted them on occasion in the law courts. That, at least, was what Pierre Pillert hoped when he pleaded his case in a letter to the king that he had been wrongfully imprisoned. He called on witnesses to his good character from those who, like him, had fought at Damietta, in Sicily, at the siege of Marseilles and at the siege of Tunis.169 It is unfortunate that we do not know whether his letter obtained his release from prison. On a different plane, it is likely that those at least who enjoyed the lavish hospitality dispensed in the household of Charles of Anjou, Robert d’Artois or Charles II acquired there a taste for the fruits, spices, sugar and sweetmeats dispensed at table.170 Modern experience tends to suggest that a liking for foreign food is the commonest result of living abroad. If this is so, French soldiers on their return home will have added their shopping lists of exotic foodstuffs to those of the greater aristocrats, and thus fuelled demand-led trade. Then most soldiers probably brought back at least a few mementoes, jewellery or coins.171 These will have helped to spread a taste for Italianate decorative arts across northern France. On the other hand, some few may have brought back diseases to spread among their own families. And because the death rate for the French in the Regno was high, whether from fighting, from rebel action or from dysentery, the war of the Vespers will have left many orphans and widows 168 169

170 171

Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, p. 99. ´ Elie Berger, ‘Requête adressée au roi de France par un vétéran des armées de Saint ´ Louis et de Charles d’Anjou’, in Etudes d’histoire du moyen aˆ ge dediées a` Gabriel Monod (Paris: L. Cerf, 1896), pp. 343–50. See also pp. 267–8. Vale, The Angevin Legacy, pp. 211–12 on the pomegranates and Damascus rose-water in use in Robert d’Artois’s camp in Aquitaine in 1296. Might the ivory plaque of the crucifixion, based on eleventh-century Salernitan models and not of the highest workmanship, be one of these mementoes? Danielle GaboritChopin et al., Ivoires médiévaux Ve–XVe siècle. Département des objets d’art, Louvre, Catalogue (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2003), p. 446, no. 196.


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to face an uncertain future in France. At the highest level of society, the count of Alençon, Philippe III’s brother, survived only a few months of battling in the south in 1283. And the chances of death were much higher for an ordinary knight than they were for a commander, higher still for a footsoldier. War in the Regno will have constituted a serious drain on the manpower resources of France, at least before about 1290. The degree to which an obsession with fighting in the Regno could alter family fortunes may surprise the modern reader. Other instances of this will be evident from what is said in Part III, which is devoted to families who settled in the Regno. By way of example of a family that never quite settled there but came frequently, here is a brief account of the doings of the counts of Vaudémont in the Regno. This family was in origin very distinguished, being a cadet branch of the dukes of Lotharingia.172 By the second half of the thirteenth century, however, as vassals of the count of Bar they were no longer major figures, despite owning land both in Lorraine and in France. They had strengthened their French connection in the time of Louis IX by entering the royal entourage.173 They illustrate the problem of trying to hold on to what they owned in northern Europe while also attempting to build up an Italian base. Because their interests were divided, they were more than visitors yet less than settlers in the Regno. Henri I, count of Vaudémont, is thought to have married into the family of the dukes of Athens.174 This already suggests an interest in matters eastern. It is possible that he had been drawn into alliance with Charles I during that prince’s campaign in Hainault in 1253. Charles certainly counted Henri’s lord, the count of Bar, among his close friends.175 Exactly when Henri determined to fight for Charles in Italy is unclear. Perhaps he came with Philippe de Montfort’s army; perhaps he was recruited after the battle of Benevento. In any case, he was certainly in the Regno by 1268, when Charles ordered his official at Brindisi to send a galley to aid Henri, who had been ordered to Achaia on an embassy.176 By February 1271, Henri was permitted to buy the countship of Ariano from Charles I, in which capacity he caused much trouble to the justiciar of Basilicata, Giovanni di Montefusco.177 172

173 174 175 177

On this and on their crusading tradition, see N. Kedar and B. Z. Kedar, ‘The significance of a twelfth-century sculptural group: le Retour du Croisé’, in Michel Balard, ´ Benjamin Z. Kedar and Jonathan Riley-Smith (eds.), Dei Gesta per Francos. Etudes sur les croisades dédiées a` Jean Richard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 29–44. Pollastri, ‘La présence ultramontaine dans le midi italien’, at p. 3. See The Family Gros-Jolivalt, Their Ancestors and Cousins, Hervé Gros-Jolivalt, www. herve.gros.nom.fr/genanglais/html/dat40.htm. 176 RCA, vol. 1, reg. v, 19, 32, 203. RCA, vol. 8, reg. xxxvii, 332. Francesco Scandone, Documenti per la storia dei comuni dell’Irpinia (Avellino: Amministrazione provinciale di Avellino, 1956), vol. II, pp. 40–2.

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By 1272, Henri held the important post of Charles’s vicar in Tuscany;178 but he did not give satisfaction for long. He was punished for his failings by being required to put the revenues of his Italian lands into the king’s hands for a while.179 Once back in favour, he was sent to Achaia again, and then represented Charles at the Parlement of Paris.180 On his way back to the Regno after this latter visit, he made up the numbers in a delegation from Duke Robert II of Burgundy to Charles I.181 Henri’s absence had, however, created a problem for his lord at home, especially since he had taken his elder son Renaud with him to the Regno. On behalf of the count of Bar, in 1265 Duke Ferri III of Lorraine first proposed that Renaud should be sent home before he was fifteen to do homage to the count; and then, apparently worried lest Renaud fail to make it, the duke licensed Henri’s second son, the future Henri II, to do homage in the event of his brother’s early death.182 These stipulations provide an insight into lords’ fears that their vassals, by absenting themselves to fight abroad, might cause instability in the succession to significant fiefs. As it happened, the duke’s forethought did avail him, although not very soon. When Henri I died in 1278 and Renaud followed him to the grave in 1279 without leaving a male heir, Henri II inherited the county of Vaudémont, along with the other lands in France and Lorraine hitherto held by his parents. However, his failure to come to the Regno within a year of his brother’s death meant the loss of the county of Ariano, which he was never to regain.183 (It passed to Ermengaud de Sabran, the famous Provençal lord.)184 Initially, Henri was content with what he had. The remainder of Henri I’s family, three daughters and a young son Gui, had been brought to and remained in the Regno. After their father’s death, the girls were looked after by Queen Marguerite until they were old enough to be married. In 1280 one daughter, Alice, married Louis de Royer, at one time magister rationalis of the royal court; Alice attempted to acquire her father’s lands in France and Lorraine, but does not appear to have been successful.185 Another daughter, Marguerite, married Tommaso di San Severino, thereby also strengthening a 178 180 181 182 183 184

185

179 RCA, vol. 10, reg. xlviii, 99. RCA, vol. 5, reg. xx, 160. RCA, vol. 11, reg. lix, 228; lx, 149. Henri Jassemin, Un document financier. Le mémorial des finances de Robert II, duc de Bourgogne, 1273–1285 (Paris: A. Picard, 1933), p. 93. Catalogue des actes de Ferri III, duc de Lorraine, 1251–1303, ed. Jean du Pange (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1930), nos. 278 and 280. RCA, vol. 21, reg. lxxxvii, 128. RCA, vol. 17, Documenti tratti da varie fonti, 30. On the Sabran family, see Florian Mazel, ‘Piété nobiliaire et piéte princière en Provence sous la première maison d’Anjou’, in Coulet and Matz (eds.), La noblesse dans les territoires angevins, pp. 527–51, at pp. 544–5. RCA, vol. 24, reg. ci, 16; vol. 25, reg. ciii, 168.


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well-established Angevin connection. The youngest, Catherine, was married in 1292 to Charles of Lagonesse.186 As is evident, women of noble birth were useful in the reinforcement of loyalties towards the king. As to the son Gui, who was clearly only a child when his father died, he was given a pension of 100 onces a year by Charles II in 1293, married Filippa di Milly, and died in 1302.187 With the outbreak of the Sicilian Vespers, Henri II appeared in the Regno, but whether primarily motivated by loyalty to Charles of Anjou or by a desire to re-establish his line there we do not know. Charles decided not to test the point; within a few months of his arrival, he granted Henri II the fief of Larino.188 Henri was one of the forty men who swore to assist Charles in keeping his agreement to meet Peter of Aragon at Bordeaux for a battle in 1283.189 How he divided his time between looking after his northern lands and fighting in the south over the next sixteen years is not clear from the records; but he certainly returned to the Regno by way of Aix in 1291–92.190 At that time, Charles Martell sent him on what was presumably a rather dangerous mission to Hungary, to accept the crown of the realm on the young prince’s behalf and to collect supporters where he could.191 In July 1299 Henri met his death while fighting in a naval battle off Sicily against the men of Frederick III.192 Unsurprisingly, he was the last of his family to be lured down to the Regno. After Gui’s death in 1302, his successors forgot their dreams, whether they had been of Ariano, or of Athens, or of the spiritual benefit to be derived from risking one’s life in the interest of the Angevin cause. Though the counts’ involvement in the Regno was all over in around thirty-six years, the effects on the Vaudémont lands in northern Europe will have been considerable. However efficient the stewards in charge, however knowledgeable the relatives and others who carried the burden – and we know nothing about these matters in relation to the Vaudémonts – there was no substitute in the middle ages for an adult male master whose prime concern was the well-being of those who served him and the careful cultivation of his own fields. Long absences of lords usually meant declining profits – often a good thing from the point of view of the peasants on the land – counterbalanced by increasing burdens imposed by desperate lords on flying visits, and frequently also by attacks from neighbours, which did neither side any good. Jean de Joinville, in excusing 186 187 188 190 192

RCA CII, vol. 40, reg. xxxvi, 137. RCA CII, vol. 44, part 2, reg. xlv, 8; C. Minieri Riccio, Cenni storici intorno i grandi uffizii del regno, p. 223. 189 RCA CII, vol. 36, additiones to reg. cxv, 21. RCA, vol. 26, reg. cxi, 115. 191 RCA CII, vol. 39, reg. xxxiv, 4. RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 641. www.herve.gros.nom.fr.

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himself from accompanying King Louis on the Tunis crusade, pointed out that his men had been harassed by royal agents and those of the king of Navarre (who was also count of Champagne) in his absence on the 1248–54 crusade.193 If this pattern was repeated in many places across France as a result of lords fighting in the Regno, it must have added to the atmosphere of gloom that was palpable there during the Flemish and Gascon wars. Because the knights and footsoldiers who came to the Regno were recruited by lords in their own localities and from among their own kith and kin, when they returned to France they will have lived among those with whom they could refresh their memories of the great adventure. Furthermore, bands of soldiers were sometimes accompanied by nonmilitary figures, washerwomen, cooks and prostitutes, about whose experiences in the Regno nothing can be learned, but who will, once home again, have helped to reinforce the collective memory. More promisingly from the historian’s point of view, greater lords might bring their minstrels with them, as did Gui de Dampierre, who brought Adenet le Roi in 1270, and Robert d’Artois who brought Adam de la Halle in 1282.194 The poems and songs that such minstrels produced will have performed their usual role in creating solidarities among their listeners. Memories of the Regno campaigns are not likely to have endured much beyond the lifetimes of the men (and women?) who participated in them. But in their lifetimes, they were probably kept vivid by much discussion and some making of legends. And in the case of servants of families like the Vaudémonts, they were refreshed by revisits. Although soldiers made up easily the majority of visitors to the Regno, churchmen also came in considerable numbers. In the campaign of 1265– 66, a major role was played by the bishop of Auxerre, who preached the crusade and accompanied the army that came through Piedmont and Lombardy to join Charles of Anjou in Rome. He remained with the army until after the battle of Benevento.195 Of the clerics who came once the conquest was completed, some fell into the category of those who merely extended a business trip to Rome for a week or two in order to see relations or friends in the Regno. Perhaps this was the case with the dean of Caen, who wrote to the lady of Kortrijk about affairs in the Regno in early 1284.196 But others came with the intention of a more prolonged stay. Charles’s first three chancellors were the dean of Meaux (Jean d’Acy), 193 194 196

Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Monfrin, p. 365. 195 Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 133. See below, p. 271. Inventaire analytique des chartes des comtes de Flandre, ed. Jules de Saint-Genois, p. 106, no. 345.


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the chancellor of Bayeux (Geoffroi de Beaumont) and the dean of St Quentin (Simon de Paris). Their assumption in turn of this onerous office points to a more than temporary commitment to the Regno, and also to the willingness of their bishops to endorse their absence from their dioceses. In some cases, churchmen came south through the invitation of the king. This was true of Pierre, bishop of Orléans, a member of the Courtenay family.197 There were also canons of various French churches for whom the king provided short-term hospitality, which suggests that he invited them. For example, Robert of Senlis, canon of Chartres, was provided by Charles II with money and six scribes ‘to do Charles very difficult and precise services’, which suggests that he came to Naples in order to copy various manuscripts or administrative registers.198 Charles of Anjou regularly appeared on the great feasts of the church surrounded by important ecclesiastics, usually from his French lands, Anjou and Maine, but sometimes from those of his second wife Marguerite, who was countess of Tonnerre and lady of two lordship in the Perche.199 In addition, three canons of Chartres, and one each from Rouen, Reims, Soissons and Meaux are all recorded as at least temporary members of the king’s familia, along with the archdeacons of Rouen, Orléans and Poitiers.200 Of these, Guillaume de Chaumont, canon of Chartres, is known to have stayed for a long time, to have acted as treasurer to the vicar of Sicily, and to have acquired considerable property in the Regno before he died in Messina.201 Another canon of Chartres was clerk first to cardinal Guillaume de Bray and then to Charles of Anjou.202 A canon of Châlons went on a mission to Achaia for Charles.203 A canon of Troyes became treasurer to Charles II.204 The abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris came down to visit Charles II as soon as the king was released from prison. While there, the abbot asked to be repaid for the two galleys he had commissioned to be built at Marseilles for Charles of Anjou.205 On his way home from the Regno, he agreed to negotiate on Charles II’s behalf with the people of Asti.206 The bishop of Noyon was chancellor 197 198 199 200 201 202 203

204 206

See Dunbabin, ‘The household and entourage of Charles I’, p. 335. RCA CII, vol. 46, reg. lvii, 171. On Queen Marguerite’s connections, see above, pp. 73–6. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 1427; vol. 8, reg. xxxvii, 585, 687, 793; vol. 9, reg. xlv, 113–15; Reg. Nicholas III, no. 476; A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 725. RCA, vol. 10, reg. xlviii, 390; CII, vol. 43, additiones to reg. lxxxix, 41. Guillaume d’Essay, Cartulaire de Notre Dame de Chartres, vol. III, ed. E. de Lépinois and Lucien Merlet (Chartres: Garnier, 1865), Necrology of Chartres, pp. 14 and 101. RCA, vol. 5, reg. xv, 148. This was Jean de Sainte-Maime, who continued to work for Charles II after his return to France; RCA CII, vol. 44, part 2, additiones to reg. lxxxix, 260. 205 RCA CII, vol. 36, additiones to reg. viii, 58. RCA CII, vol. 48, reg. lxvi, 1. RCA CII, vol. 30, reg. viii, 232, 273.

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in 1301–2.207 Visiting churchmen could perform a whole variety of tasks vital to the survival of the Angevin regime in the Regno. Perhaps more important because less itinerant, but also less socially elevated, were the French chaplains who were regular members of Charles’s household.208 Since rather few of these received high appointments in the church of the Regno, it seems likely that the majority returned to France after serving out their term. Unfortunately, it is not possible to trace them on their return. Charles II’s preference for chaplains chosen from the mendicant orders meant that there were fewer Frenchmen in his household in his reign, though they were still not a negligible group. Hardly surprisingly, members of the religious orders were less common visitors than secular clerics. There were, however, fairly frequent visitations from mendicants in their capacity as inquisitors. Both Charleses issued ad hoc orders to their officials to assist these when they came. Charles II’s support for them has been held responsible for the temporary disappearance of the once-flourishing Jewish community of Apulia.209 Probably some inquisitors were of French extraction; others may have worked in France later. Discussion of the scholars from the mendicant orders who were trained in Paris and returned to the Regno is postponed till Chapter 12. There were probably others who came to preach in the Regno and whose presence was not noted in the records. The religious whom Pope Boniface VIII feared had come in order to spy were presumably of Aragonese rather than French origin.210 In addition to churchmen, Charles of Anjou was liberal in his invitations to French scholars. While there is no evidence that most of those invited came, some did.211 And one physician, Jean de Nesle, was an important person whose visit was of real significance, as we shall see in Chapter 13. One distinguished French lawyer, Magister Matthieu de Laon, certainly arrived.212 But another physician accepted a substantial sum to cover the costs of his journey south, and then failed to appear.213 The king also eagerly anticipated the arrival of three masters from Paris, one a lawyer, to teach his subjects.214 Unfortunately there does not seem 207 208

209 210 211 212 214

Camillo Minieri Riccio, Studii storici fatti sopra 84 registri angioini dell’ Archivio di Stato di Napoli (Naples: Archivio di Stato, 1876), p. 53. Anna Maria Voci, ‘La capella di corte dei primi sovrani angioini di Napoli’, in L’état angevin, pp. 447–67, at pp. 452, 454–5, 458. There is a corrected version of this article in Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane 113 (1995), 69–126. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, pp. 86–9; Joshua Starr, ‘The mass conversion of the Jews in southern Italy’, Speculum 21 (1946), 203–11. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. I, no. 1571. RCA, vol. 2, reg. viii, 668; vol. 8, reg. xxxvii, 585, 687; vol. 21, reg. lxxxvii, 115. 213 A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 922. RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxxi, 63. RCA, vol. 8, reg. xxxvii, 764.


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to be any trace of their influence on later southern Italian scholars, though the university records are too scrappy to prove that they did not come. But if they did make their way down to the Regno, the Paris scholars will have been impressed, both by the vocational quality of Neapolitan education and by the degree of royal control over the university. Then there were other visitors of lesser distinction. Charles invited French minstrels, one at least of whom came in 1271;215 he also paid three towards the end of his life. And there were visiting members of the royal family – Queen Marguerite had her sister the countess of Auxerre to stay on an extended visit.216 The conquest of the Regno created a large pool of opportunities for skilled French craftsmen of one kind or another. The most important of these are known to us by name. Among these were the architects Pierre d’Angicourt, Thibaud de Saumur, Pierre de Chaules and Henri and Gauthier d’Assonne, employed by Charles of Anjou to assist in the rebuilding of numerous castles and frequently mentioned in the records of the royal chancery.217 Jacques d’Arras was a goldsmith commissioned to make both a seal and a golden cup for Charles I’s second queen Marguerite.218 Etienne Godfroy, Milet d’Auxerre and Guillaume de Vendelay were goldsmiths commissioned by Charles II in 1304 to make a bust reliquary of St Gennaro.219 Jean de Laon was a master carpenter who worked on the new construction at Lucera after the siege was over, as did Jean de Dinant, a blacksmith.220 But the bulk of the French craftsmen, sculptors, metalworkers, seal-makers and other artists, are not known to us by name; they can be inferred to have made the journey down to the Regno because the styles of their surviving work clearly attest to their French origins.221 If similar numbers of craftsmen in other less durable crafts also came down, the population of the Regno will have been swelled by French potters, painters, dress-makers, parchment-makers, cobblers and candle-makers. It is always possible that the new aristocracy of the Regno 215 216 217 218 219

220 221

RCA, vol. 8, reg. xxxvii, 793; on this whole topic, see Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 203–9. RCA, vol. 20, reg. lxxxvi, 358. Pierluigi Leone de Castris, Arte di corte nella Napoli angioina (Florence: Cantini, 1986), p. 160. RCA, vol. 1, reg. vi, 213, 214. Giuseppe Maria Fusco, Dell’Argeneo Imbusto al primo Patrono S. Gennero da Re Carlo secondo di Angiò decretato (Naples, 1862), p. 18. For this group of French goldsmiths who were members of Charles II’s household, see E. Bertaux, ‘Les artistes français au service des rois angevins de Naples’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1 (1905), 265–78, at 266–7. RCA, vol. 10, reg. xlix, 182; vol. 11, reg. lix, 150. Leone de Castris, Arte di corte nella Napoli angioina, pp. 160–4. For a fascinating example of this, see L’art au temps des rois maudits, pp. 216–17.

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found that local craftsmen more than adequately satisfied their tastes in these fields. But it would be odd if an emigrant sighed for a French seal but was content with Italian clothes. Certainly the king and his wife put in orders to Paris for jewels and elegant robes.222 Lesser men may well have tempted tailors and robe-makers from France to set up business in the Regno. Although such workmen as can be traced are so through their import of French taste into the Regno, if afterwards some of them returned home they may also have played their part in the notable introduction of Italian taste to France that characterised the early fourteenth century. Easily the commonest category of visitor, and those perhaps most likely to retain useful memories, were the messengers, negotiators and ambassadors who moved in a steady stream between Paris and Naples throughout the period, and whose activities have been described above (pp. 36–47). But even without them, between 1266 and 1303 the number of French visitors to the Regno was very high, and these were drawn both from the top layers of society and from those of lower rank. Comradeship and kinship created living links between the two societies on various planes. Knowledge of what was going on in the Regno was consequently fairly widespread within France. The conditions had been created in which some customs from each society might come to influence the other. 222

Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, pp. 65–6 and note 1, and p. 94; RCA CII, vol. 45, reg. li, 48.

Part III

Settlers in the Regno

5

Robert II d’Artois

It might at first sight seem odd that the French provinces with the strongest links to the Regno should be Artois and Flanders, since they were physically the most distant from Italy. But the rulers of these provinces were personal friends of Charles of Anjou and involved in his exploits over a very long period. Both the counts of Artois and the counts of Flanders had reason to feel gratitude to Charles. As to their subjects, Flanders and Artois were famous for providing soldiers for any campaign, or indeed colonists for any newly conquered lands.1 There were in each county enough inhabitants who were freed from agricultural labour and involved either in trade or industry or in searching for steady, lucrative military employment to be enterprising about leaving home. Crusading had always had a strong appeal in this northern soil; in 1263–64 preaching the liberation of the Regno from Hohenstaufen rule fell on willing ears here. Robert II, count of Artois, was the posthumous son of Robert I, the brother of Louis IX who died in the course of a charge (commonly judged to have been foolhardy) at the battle of Mansourah in Egypt in 1250.2 The young count was brought up by his mother, Mahaud de Brabant and his step-father, Gui de Châtillon, count of St Pol. In 1267 Robert was knighted by his uncle, King Louis, and he slowly took over the reins of government in his apanage of Artois. It was hardly surprising that the son of a crusader should hear the siren call of the preachers and participate in the Tunis crusade of 1270. On the way back from that inglorious occasion, Robert and his young wife Amicie de Courtenay met Charles of Anjou (who may well have already known him if, as is likely, he had given the young boy some experience of court life in Anjou or Provence before he set off to conquer the Regno). Almost for the rest of his life, Robert’s fate was to be tied up with that of the Regno. In 1274, he returned to Charles’s itinerant court, probably to obtain some military 1 2

Bartlett, The Making of Europe, pp. 88, 113–16, 136–7, 262–3. Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 443; Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Monfrin, pp. 107–9.

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experience. There may, however, have been another underlying cause for his presence. By the terms of the agreement Charles had made with Pope Urban IV, the succession to the Regno allowed for the inheritance by a nephew of a dead king if the main line failed.3 Charles had only two sons who had survived childhood, the elder of whom (Charles of Salerno) was lame, and the death rate among French immigrants into the Regno was high. It may have occurred to Robert that the throne could come his way. If so, he will have been pleased to be nominated as vicar of the Regno in December 1275 when Charles went on what he anticipated would be an extended visit to Rome.4 Robert had earlier obtained various powers in Lombardy.5 But shortly after his nomination as vicar, he insisted on going to Rome to negotiate some business that he declared no one else could do for him (his first wife Amicie died there), and then he rushed back to Artois.6 There is evidence that he later regarded the baillis whom he appointed to look after his interests in Artois in his absence as failing to fulfil their tasks adequately.7 Whether this or perhaps a sense that he was cramping Charles of Salerno’s style was the reason for his return to France cannot be ascertained. But later events demonstrated beyond doubt that he remained much concerned in the Regno’s future. Like almost all the French aristocrats who had fought in the Regno at any previous time, Robert heeded the desperate appeals for help that came from Charles when the Sicilian Vespers rebellion broke out in late March 1282. Along with Pierre d’Alençon, Philippe III’s younger brother, Robert set off from Paris in late August and marched down with the largest army he could command, expected to have been about six hundred men.8 By the time they arrived, at the end of November, Peter III of Aragon had already laid claim to Sicily, and the rebellion had turned into a war. Furthermore, in what was seen as the first military defeat of his Italian career, Charles had withdrawn from Messina in midSeptember, leaving Sicily at least temporarily to the Aragonese. French help was desperately needed. Robert’s assistance will by now have been disinterested. Any hopes he may earlier have nourished of succeeding to the throne of the Regno will have long disappeared before his Vespers campaign; Charles of Salerno by now had too many sons to make this a realistic possibility. How Robert was employed in the first few months after his arrival is unclear; he seems to have been sent to some other part of Italy. But after the death of Pierre d’Alençon, in October 1283 3 4 6 8

Jordan, Les origines de la domination angevine, vol. II, p. 470. 5 RCA, vol. 11, reg. lx, 247. RCA, vol. 12, reg. lxxviii, 47; see also vol. 12, p. 188. 7 Pas-de-Calais S´ RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxx, 248. erie A, 27/48. De Bouard, Documents français des archives angevines de Naples, vol. II, no. 226.


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the count of Artois assumed the command of all troops trying to repulse the Aragonese attack on Calabria.9 From now on, he was in the thick of things, acquiring both responsibility and military experience at a rapid rate. The absence of his uncle on an extended visit, first to Bordeaux, then to Bourges, and finally to Provence, meant that until June 1284 he was answerable to Charles of Salerno, who was three years younger and less experienced than he was himself. The prospects for the survival of Angevin rule in the Regno looked bleak. The Aragonese cause was picking up supporters all over Calabria, Conrad of Antioch was raising rebellion in the Abruzzi, and Ghibelline towns were banding together all across central and northern Italy. Meanwhile, the great admiral Roger Lauria was providing effective naval support to the Aragonese attack on Calabria and inflicting defeat after defeat on the Angevin navy.10 The return of Charles of Anjou on 6 June 1284 might have brought some relief, had it not been for the disaster that had preceded it the day before. Despite his father’s order to the prince that he take only defensive action, Charles of Salerno had been stung by Roger Lauria’s bold blockade of Naples itself. After taking counsel from his barons, he had decided to attempt to raise the blockade. He therefore manned all the ships that had been stored in Naples for the grand offensive against Sicily planned for later in the summer, and sailed out of the harbour. He was outmanoeuvred by Roger, who captured him, almost all the lords who accompanied him, and practically all the ships. Charles of Anjou came home to a situation that seemed almost irretrievable. Despite his earnest endeavours, he was unable to reverse the odds against him before his death on 7 January 1285.11 As he lay dying, Charles made a will. If Charles of Salerno was not released from captivity, then the prince’s eldest son Charles Martell, by then aged fourteen, was to take the throne.12 In the meantime, the regency was to be held by Robert d’Artois and the captaincy-general by Jean de Montfort. Embarrassingly, however, the dead king’s wishes were not necessarily paramount. The Regno was a fief of the papacy, and the newly elected pope, Honorius IV of the Savelli family, had no intention of sitting quietly on the sidelines. In his capacity as overlord, he nominated both Robert d’Artois and the cardinal Gerard of Parma (who had been 9 10 11 12

Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 132; RCA, vol. 27, parte 1, reg. cxix, 22. The most recent account is Susan Rose, Medieval Naval Warfare, 1000–1500 (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 44–50. For a clear account in English of these events, see Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers, pp. 228–59. RCA CII, vol. 28, reg. iii, 18. Léonard, Les Angevins de Naples, p. 159.

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advising Charles of Salerno since the Sicilian Vespers rebellion broke out) as his baillies for the Regno. At the same time, Honorius produced legislation designed to establish the government of the Regno and the church within it on lines that would, he hoped, win over the rebels.13 There could hardly have been less favourable circumstances in which to take over the government of a country than those that faced Robert d’Artois in 1285.14 The external situation was threatening in the extreme. Internally, rebellions were being fomented wherever Aragonese agents could penetrate. Both money and men to oppose the enemies were very scarce. At the same time, Robert was yoked together in the exercise of whatever power he could muster with a cardinal who, although he knew the Regno well and was determinedly pro-Angevin, represented a pope who put some at least of the blame for the rebellion on the nature of the government Charles of Anjou had exercised. The path of blindly following his uncle was therefore closed to Robert. And then he had to deal with Charles Martell, a teenager whose desire to take control into his own hands was probably great, and that teenager’s mother, Queen Marie, who was weighed down with concern for her imprisoned husband. The diplomatic complications of his position must have made the critical military situation even more stressful for him than it would otherwise have been. It says a great deal for Robert’s abilities that during his extended stay in the Regno – which lasted until November 1291 – he seems to have worked in harmony with Gerard of Parma, that he kept the affection of Charles Martell, and, most importantly, that he succeeded in preventing the disintegration of southern Italy, all that now remained of the Regno. Ptolemy of Lucca (probably a rather biased witness) recorded that the government provided by Robert and Gerard was good.15 It was crucial to Robert’s success that he accepted the papal initiatives of 1285. He described himself as, ‘with the reverend father lord Gerard, legate of the apostolic see, made baillie of the kingdom of Sicily through the Holy Roman Church’.16 In so far as he could, he accommodated his rule to 13

14

15 16

For a critical edition of Constitutio Siciliana by Javier Serra Estelés, see La società mediterranea all’epoca del Vespro (Palermo: Academia di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 1983), vol. IV, pp. 292–307. The records for Robert’s regency are very scrappy. The editors of RCA were fortunate in being able to find a Vatican manuscript which provided some information to help bridge at least part of the gap. See RCA CII, vol. 29, reg. v, pp. ix–x. Perhaps Robert thought he was obliged, as a papal nominee, to give up at least some of the documents for his regency to the pope. He may have taken some of the rest back with him to Artois, but if so only a few have been found. Die Annalen des Tholomeus von Lucca, ed. B. Schmeidler, p. 202. Pas-de-Calais Série A 31/29.


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the wishes of Honorius. But when the pope attempted to insist on the abandonment of a treason trial and the release of the accused in 1286, Robert persuaded Gerard to stand by him in refusing to implement the papal command.17 Adenolfo IV, count of Acerra, had been tried by his peers in a properly constituted court according to the customs of the Regno, had failed to offer any adequate defence, and had been found guilty of treason. Robert was not going to endanger the realm by allowing him to go free. Honorius’s anger made no difference to Robert’s determination to keep Adenolfo in jail, although it did spare the condemned man from execution (at least for the time being).18 Nicholas IV, Honorius’s successor, was apparently less inclined to interfere directly in the affairs of the Regno. And Gerard continued to back Robert. So it came about that the high claims of the papacy were of necessity tempered by the realisation that, without Robert’s strong leadership, there might be no kingdom left over which to impose its authority. Charles Martell’s constitutional position was complicated until December 1288 by the uncertainty over whether his father would be released from prison. Robert was therefore in a fairly strong position in relation to him. But once Charles of Salerno was freed, and had been crowned at Rieti in 1289, things were more difficult. In September 1289, the new king held a parliament at Naples, at which he recognised Charles Martell as prince of Salerno and also vicar-general of the Regno, in preparation for his own departure for Provence, where he was to spend the next three years. Robert had lost his title of baillie with the coronation of Charles II. He now took the lesser title of captain-general, one of the two commanders of the army. In 1291, this was raised to lieutenant of the king.19 Yet his continued presence in the Regno was earnestly sought, and approved by both Pope Nicholas IV and King Philippe IV.20 It was presumably intended that he should fill the position of e´minence grise to the young Charles Martell until such time as that prince was thought fit to run affairs on his own or until Charles II had emerged from the diplomatic maze in which he was ensnared by having surrendered three of his sons and sixty Provençal noblemen as hostages to the king of Aragon in return for his own freedom. Robert will have found himself in a distinctly awkward position, with influence but limited power in any sphere except the military. Yet again, there is no sign of tension between him and 17 18 19 20

Pas-de-Calais Série A 900/1. Reg. Honorius IV, nos. 556, 759. On this incident see Jean Dunbabin, ‘Treason, sodomy and the fate of Adenolfo IV of Acerra’, Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008), 417–32. Le carte di Léon Cadier, no. 93. Letter of Nicholas IV in 1290; Inventaire-sommaire, Archives du Bouches-du-Rhône, vol. I, série B, ed. L. Blancard, B 380.

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Charles Martell; indeed, the indications are rather of affection.21 On the whole, political affairs seem to have run quite smoothly internally during these three years. More important is the fact that Robert contrived to keep southern Italy reasonably safe from external attack from 1285 to the end of 1291. He and Jean de Montfort were assisted in this by the death of Peter of Aragon in 1285 and by the lack of enthusiasm shown in Aragon itself for the Sicilian venture, both before and after the abortive French crusade against Aragon in 1285.22 However, Roger Lauria was still active, and inflicted another serious naval defeat on the Angevins when they attempted to establish themselves at Augusta in Sicily in June 1287. On the mainland, Robert’s aim was to contain Aragonese intervention, which he came close to achieving, though with great difficulty. The chief problem was that the mercenaries employed by the Aragonese were primarily interested in enriching themselves with plunder from raids on the shores, and continued to do so for many years. Robert’s task therefore was to attempt to reinforce the defences and the castles, particularly in the rich area from Naples to Salerno. This was expensive and difficult and only slowly began to have an effect. Robert had some success with an alternative policy, that of winning over some mercenary bands to the Angevin cause.23 He also introduced in July 1290 sumptuary legislation for the Regno in order to ensure that war funds took priority over other forms of aristocratic expenditure.24 The situation remained tense, but fear of internal rebellion slowly diminished, which strengthened the rule of Charles Martell immeasurably. Throughout the period 1285–91, Robert helped the Angevin cause by making substantial loans from his Artois lands for the repayment of debts and the hire of soldiers.25 Although there is no clear evidence to support it, Robert’s most important political contribution to the survival of the Angevin state was probably to stand firmly beside the popes in opposing Charles II’s attempts to secure peace by surrendering Sicily and much else to Alfonso III of Aragon.26 The threat that Robert might simply abandon the Regno and return home was surely a factor in forcing Charles to accept 21 22 23 24 25 26

Pas-de-Calais Série A, 37/25. Thomas Bisson, The Crown of Aragon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 88– 90. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 216. RCA CII, vol. 32, reg. x, 101; Le carte di Léon Cadier, pp. 154–7, no. 165, in which Charles II reinstated Robert d’Artois’s sumptuary legislation in 1292. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 547: Pas-de-Calais Série A, 46/6. For a brief summary in English, see Michael Prestwich, Edward I (London: Methuen, 1988), pp. 318–26.


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` Charles’s first Honorius IV’s 1287 revocation of the Treaty of Cefalu, attempt at appeasement, and then Nicholas IV’s 1289 revocation of the Treaty of Oloron which Edward I had negotiated on Charles’s behalf. Each of these treaties would have seen the abandonment of Angevin claims to the island of Sicily. Robert was probably also influential in May 1289 in making Charles accept his papal coronation as king of Sicily, which went against the terms of the Treaty of Canfranc he had negotiated with Alfonso III of Aragon just before his release from prison in November 1288. A hard line was to be expected of the count of Artois, who had, after all, risked his own life several times in the interests of reasserting Angevin lordship over Sicily. He was not in the business of making peace at any price. He was said by Villani to have been very angry when Charles II, without consulting anyone, negotiated a two-year truce at Gaeta with James of Aragon, Alfonso’s younger brother and king of Sicily, in the summer of 1289.27 The truce certainly conferred on James the benefit of time to consolidate his position, although this should not be exaggerated.28 If Robert, like the pope and cardinals, deplored Charles’s lack of strategical thinking, he accepted the fait accompli. Some months later, he sent an embassy to James to complain of various breaches of the truce by Roger Lauria and others.29 Nevertheless, it must have been a relief to him when Charles withdrew to Provence at the end of 1289, leaving the defence of the Regno primarily in his hands. Charles’s long stay outside the Regno was brought about by his determination to conclude treaties, both between himself and the popes on the one hand and the Aragonese on the other, and between the Aragonese and the French. (He had undertaken to achieve the latter treaty as a condition of his release from his Catalan jail.) Provence had distinct geographical advantages over the Regno as a centre from which to pursue these objectives. (He may even have promised Alfonso before his release that he would stay away from Naples until those treaties had been signed.)30 Negotiating them proved to be more difficult and more timeconsuming than he could have anticipated, especially since Alfonso III’s death in June 1291 and the succession to the throne of Aragon of his 27

28 29 30

Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica, vol. I, ed. G. Porta (Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo, 1990–91), pp. 609–10. Some corroboration of the outline, if not the detail, of Villani’s story comes in a letter of Pope Boniface VIII in 1300, in which he complained that the truce at Gaeta had been concluded without the approval of the papal legates; Paravicini Bagliani, Boniface VIII: un pape hérétique? pp. 49–50. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge de Regierung König Karls II, pp. 213–14. Text in Domenico Tomacelli, Storia de’ Reami di Napoli, vol. II (Naples: Fernandez, 1847), pp. 405–10. Suggestion of Caroline Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266–1343 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 97.

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brother James of Sicily held up the process. Robert grew impatient. He had already been absent from home for seven years by 1289; he wanted to go back to Artois, and Philippe IV was anxious to have him in France to benefit from his advice.31 On the other hand, he was badly needed in the Regno, where his experience was invaluable. He stayed until in October 1291 he received an urgent call from Philippe IV to come home.32 By that time, Charles Martell was, by medieval standards, old enough to cope on his own. As soon as he could pack up and gather his household together, in early November Robert set off for northern France. On his journey home, Robert bore a letter drawn up and sealed by seven of the most important laymen in the Regno, all counsellors and familiares of Charles, assuring anyone who might question this that Robert d’Artois had helped the kingdom in its time of crisis, that he had taken for himself no part of the annual subventio generalis (emergency tax); he had used it exclusively for the war against James II. He had not even taken money for his own expenses.33 The laymen, led by Jean de Montfort, stated that they had taken the unusual step of declaring this in order to prevent any misunderstandings on the matter. This suggests that not all inhabitants of the Regno were inclined to view Robert’s services as gratefully as they might. Those much-taxed people were prone to complain (not entirely without justification) that their revenues were frequently drained off to France. Presumably the statement in the letter was technically accurate – though Robert did later ask for expenses. Yet there were grounds for dissatisfaction about the financial arrangements made for the count. He had been endowed with important fiefs in the Regno by way of reward for his military exploits. But whereas the law of the Regno held that fiefholders who left the Regno for more than a year at a time automatically lost their fiefs, Robert was to continue to hold his, to draw the revenues from them in France, and even to attempt to increase them, for the rest of his life.34 In other words, Robert was considerably enriched from Regno sources until his death at the battle of Kortrijk in July 1302. Those southern Italians who knew that this arrangement had been made could not help but be resentful. On the other hand, without Robert’s intervention between 1282 and late 1291 it is possible, even likely, that there would have been no Angevin realm left at all for anyone to milk. And he had spent his own money lavishly to help Charles that had still

31 32 34

Minieri Riccio, Studii storici fatti sopra 84 registri, p. 29. 33 Pas-de-Calais S´ Le carte di Léon Cadier, p. 145, no. 150. erie A, 36/11. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 36/12; 37/31; A2, fol. 5v, no. 22; 154/1; R.-H. Bautier and J. Sorney (eds.), Les sources de l’histoire ećonomique et social du moyen aˆ ge. Les e´tats de la maison de Bourgogne, vol. I (Paris: CNRS, 1984), p. 265.


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not been repaid when he died.35 In 1292 he joined with Philippe IV in sending an embassy to the Genoese to beg them to desist from helping the Sicilians against Charles.36 Furthermore, he continued to try to raise help for the Sicilian campaign even when he was in the thick of fighting in Aquitaine and Flanders.37 In 1300 he was still engaged in trying to assist the fight against Frederick III. Robert was and remained the most faithful friend of the cause to be found anywhere in France. The nine years Robert had spent in the Regno, holding positions of command and administrative control, had seen him reach the prime of life. The man who returned to Artois in early 1292 was a very different person from the relatively untried young lord who had left in 1282. He had been exposed both to warfare and to the bureaucratic ways of a highly exploitative regime. Even a chronicler hostile to his political stance could describe him as ‘strong, noble, courageous and from his youth practised in battles and expert in tournaments’.38 It was almost inevitable that he should wish to copy at least some of the methods of government to which he had become accustomed in the Regno. The first sign that this would be so came as a result of his 1274–76 stay. On his departure in 1282, he commanded that his chancery should keep registers modelled on those of the Regno.39 This put the county of Artois ahead of the crown of France in up-to-date administrative practice. Then from 1283 onwards, the accounts for the county were preserved, presumably so that Robert could check them on his return – again a practice the crown of France had not yet achieved, but which was well established in the Regno.40 These were vitally important steps in the direction of increasing comital control in both the legal and the financial spheres. They facilitated the task Robert began in June 1291, when 35 36 37 38 39

40

Pas-de-Calais Série A, 46/6. Charles II’s comment that he was unable to calculate how much he owed to Robert for his expenses must have irritated that prince considerably. Léonard, Les Angevins de Naples, p. 181. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. II, nos. 3453, 3454, 3455. Annales Gandenses, ed. and trans. Hilda Johnstone (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), p. 27. Pierre Bougard in Bougard, Y.-M. Hilaire and A. Nolibos (eds.), Histoire d’Arras, (Dunkirk: Beffrois, 1988), p. 55. The earliest registration is Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais Série A, 1, which contains sixty-three charters. The chancery of Artois was quite well developed even before this. The document known as the first cartulary of Artois, Archives départementales du Nord, B/1593, which contains charters going back to the twelfth century, may well have been initially compiled in 1269, before Robert went on the Tunis crusade. It certainly has a large number of documents dating from that year, and would have provided a useful manual for Robert’s officials in his absence. It was kept up to date after this, and although the original now ends around 1280, the eighteenth-century scholar who provided a chronological table of the cartulary had access to material of a later date which once formed part of the cartulary. On the importance of these, see Bautier and Sorney, Les sources de l’histoire ećonomique, vol. I, pp. 247-50; 255–6.

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planning his return home. He clearly anticipated that there would be much to be done in recovering sources of revenue and jurisdiction that his baillis had been either unwilling or unable to defend, and he believed that the methods of the Regno would allow for an increase in his power within the county. Hence he sent to Artois before his return Rinaldo Cognetti of Barletta, a man on whom he had come to rely in the Regno, as his chief agent, with the title ‘guardian of our land’.41 Rinaldo Cognetti was to Robert what Pierre Flotte was at about the same time becoming to Philippe le Bel, a trusted counsellor, a man who understood both finance and law, a man able to conduct a wide range of business so as to leave his employer free for other occupations.42 Cognetti resembled Flotte in having had some legal training, presumably either at Bologna or in Naples – when he was first mentioned he was a judge – but he differed from Flotte in not belonging to the military aristocracy. His origin in Barletta, at that time the most flourishing port in the Regno, suggests that he came from a trading family which had acquired sufficient wealth to set at least one son on the path to social advancement by a university education.43 It was probably Giovanni Pipino, magister rationalis of the Great Court and of a notable Barletta family, who brought him to the attention of Robert d’Artois. Robert appointed him as controller of the ports in Apulia in 1287.44 In this capacity he proved himself highly efficient. He was therefore already a trusted servant before Robert d’Artois and Charles Martell sent him, with a companion, in August 1290, to give precise orders to the various officials of the Regno on a matter apparently too secret to be spelled out in a letter.45 In the same year, he was one of the two ambassadors sent to complain to James of Sicily about breaches of the Truce of Gaeta.46 He was clearly by now a key figure in Robert d’Artois’s administration. In June 1291, Robert sent Rinaldo on ahead to Artois, in anticipation of his own prompt return home. Rinaldo was to work with Simon le

41 42 43 44

45 46

Pas-de-Calais Série A, 2 (register), fol. 20v, no. 111. Delmaire, Le compte général du receveur d’Artois, pp. LX–LXI. On Flotte, see Joseph Strayer, The Reign of Philip IV, esp. p. 97. For an early mention, see Kiesewetter, Die Anfänger der Regierung König Karls II, p. 115. RCA CII, vol. 29, reg. v. The whole of this register (preserved in the Vatican Secret Archives, Armadio xxxv, vol. 150) consists of mandates and receipts issued to Rinaldo and his partner Jean le Noir de Paris. Did the completeness of the documentation and its careful ordering when it was submitted to the chancery recommend Rinaldo for swift promotion? Pas-de-Calais Série A, 35/25. RCA CII, vol. 35, reg. xxiv, 154, 159, 162, 172; Tomacelli, Storia de’ Reami di Napoli, vol. II, p. 410.


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Mauregard as Robert’s principal agent in the county.47 Simon’s function was to introduce Rinaldo to the peculiarities of the Artois region. Although Simon continued to work for Robert throughout the next decade, and was sometimes referred to as co-guardian of Robert’s lands,48 it was Rinaldo who increasingly took on the responsible or difficult jobs; it was he who was usually called either guardian or master of Artois. It fell on Rinaldo’s shoulders to inspect all the officials whom Robert had left in charge during his absence; he was required to check their doings, to hear complaints against them, and to make suggestions as to what should be done about each. He drew up a substantial document ready for Robert to consult and decide on.49 The model for this inquest could, of course, have been found in the enquêtes conducted by Louis IX and Alphonse of Poitiers before and after the 1248 crusade. But Rinaldo’s register shows stronger similarities with the standard conduct of inquests into the deeds and misdeeds of all officials in the Regno at the end of their periods of tenure. The French royal enquêtes were conducted in part by members of the religious orders and dealt mainly with the baillis; Rinaldo’s inquests were conducted entirely by seculars, covered lesser officials as well as greater, and were clearly geared to serving the ruler’s interests. What made Rinaldo’s inquests unique was that they also suggested remedies for complaints.50 Robert’s intention was surely to introduce into Artois the tough surveillance practices that he had learned while in Naples, and to ensure that they were correctly implemented by a man who was thoroughly familiar with them. However, he had learned from the Sicilian Vespers rebellion that it was dangerous to ignore genuine grievances; toughness had to be balanced by a degree of sensitivity. Rinaldo’s register provided him with the means of achieving that balance. No sooner was Robert d’Artois back in his home county than Rinaldo was authorised to launch another inquest, this time into all the count’s fief-holders, their lands and their tenants. Only a fragment of this inquest survives.51 But it is an impressive piece. Elegantly written in FrancoPicard, it specifically recounts that the inquests were made to be reported to Rinaldo (fol. 17v). In one or two cases, it appears that the fief-holder himself provided the information (eg. fols. 21r, 30r–32r). In others it 47 48 50

51

Pas-de-Calais Série A, 36/6; for the title of Master of Artois given to Rinaldo, Série A, 2, fol. 10v, 61; RCA CII, vol. 35, reg. xxiv, 295. 49 Pas-de-Calais S´ Pas-de-Calais Série A, 37/1; 37/15; 37/28. erie A, 37/49. Did Nogaret consciously copy Cognetti in his later inquests? See Claude Gauvard, ‘De la requête a` l’enquête. Réponse rhétorique ou réalité politique?’, in Gauvard (ed.), ´ L’enquête au moyen aˆ ge (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2008), pp. 429–58, at p. 455. Archives départementales du Nord, B 1594, fols. 17v–32v.

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was clearly a clerk who extracted it and wrote it up. In one case, that of the lord of Crozil, it was recorded that the count of Artois would not accept his homage although he had offered it, and ‘Monsieur Renaud well knows the cause’ (fol. 20r). Altogether the inquest must have offered a very exact and detailed account of all the services and dues owed to the count by all his fief holders. The parallel between this and Charles of Anjou’s Liber Donationum, drawn up by Giozzelino della Marra in 1273, is close.52 Rinaldo was accustomed to operating in a system where all administrative orders from the crown and the responses to them from local officials were routinely recorded and where all financial transactions had to be recorded in a separate register.53 As we have seen, registration of some comital acts for Artois had already started before Rinaldo reached the county in 1291. But he developed the system extensively. Pas-de-Calais, série A, 2 is a substantial register, consisting of thirty-two folios, containing 189 charters plus five other documents, all dating from 1294–99.54 While some of the early entries are in Latin, the bulk are in Franco-Picard, presumably because it was easier for those other than Rinaldo himself to understand them. The register offers a vivid insight into Rinaldo’s activities as Count Robert’s paymaster. He collected the count’s revenues, including any judicial fines; he negotiated loans on the count’s behalf; he paid his debts and his expenses; he provided adequate money for the comital household’s immediate needs and salaries for its officials; he paid castellans their stipends; he contrived to find the wherewithal for Robert’s lavish entertainment both of Philippe IV and of Catherine of Courtenay; he financed the journeys of Robert’s legates to Hungary; he both organised and financed the count’s famous palace and gardens at Hesdin, to which we shall return.55 In other words, Rinaldo filled the positions which in the Regno were held both by the chamberlain of the king’s household and by the magistri rationales. But his authority was not limited to the financial sphere. As the register reveals, Rinaldo could also conduct judicial inquests such as that into the dismissal of an e´ chevin of Arras; he was also involved in the punishment of Calais for the murder of its bailli. And he was thought to have sufficient influence with the 52 53 54 55

RCA, vol. 2, reg. x. On the character of the Liber Donationum, see Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, pp. 146–9. Andreas Kiesewetter, ‘La cancelleria angioina’, in L’état angevin, pp. 361–415, at p. 366. Bautier and Sornay, Les sources de l’histoire ećonomique . . . Les e´tats de la maison de Bourgogne, vol. I, p. 243. Van Buren, ‘Reality and literary romance in the park of Hesdin’, p. 126.


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chapter of Arras to secure a prebend for the count’s nominee.56 For all this, he received from Robert an annual salary and permission to acquire property both in Artois and in the Regno.57 Other documents in the Pas-de-Calais archive fill out the picture provided by the register. During Rinaldo’s time as Master of Artois, there was an overhaul of the county’s accounting system, in which Rinaldo played a key part.58 The heading Apodixe used for receipts was a borrowing from the accounts of the Regno.59 Rinaldo was trusted not only to collect the count’s revenues and to receive the accounts of other officials, but also to authorise certain payments.60 He was a true power behind the count’s throne. Then Rinaldo was chosen in October 1293 as an arbitrator to settle a dispute between the count of Artois and the count of Flanders, when those originally nominated for the position excused themselves.61 It was presumably a particularly delicate affair. In 1295, Rinaldo again arbitrated, this time in a dispute between the count of Artois and the count of Nevers.62 On neither of these occasions does the mandate tell what decision he came to. But in a dispute between Robert d’Artois and the bishop of Cambrai in August 1299, caused by the bishop’s men arresting a comital official sent to enquire into a murder, the count won the action, and Rinaldo was given the task of calculating what the damages should be, how much the bishop must pay the count by way of a fine.63 A victory over so grand a prelate will have established Rinaldo’s reputation outside the county.64 There was no doubt that he had become a formidable figure. Was his model Giozzelino della Marra, the doughty financial adviser of Charles of Anjou, who had also achieved a degree of judicial power in the Regno?65 But eight years was to complete Rinaldo’s period of service to Robert and to end the period of powerful Regno influence on the administration of Artois. In 1299 there came the first sign of trouble when a debtor was 56 57 58 59 60 61 63

64 65

Other judicial proceedings heard before Rinaldo in Pas-de-Calais Série A, 903/3. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 2; e.g. fols. 7r, 9v, 10v, 14r, 21v, 25v, 29r, 31r, 39v. On Calais, see also Série A 43/7. Delmaire, Le compte général du receveur d’Artois, pp. XLV–XLVII. Ibid., p. LV; passim in RCA, e.g. RCA CII, vol. 47, reg. lxvii. See Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, pp. 72–3. Delmaire, Le compte général du receveur d’Artois, pp. LX–LXI. 62 Pas-de-Calais S´ Pas-de-Calais Série A, 38/41. erie A, 40/8. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 44/46; but this was not the end of the affair. The bishop appealed to the pope; and in 1308 Robert’s successor Mahaud bowed to the wishes of the bishop, in return for a financial settlement; Delmaire, Le compte général du receveur d’Artois, p. XVII. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. III, no. 3948. M. Caravale in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. XXXVII, pp. 96–100.

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ordered to pay up to Rinaldo or to his successor.66 It may be that Rinaldo’s forced retirement was held up until the end of the case in Cambrai in October 1299. In any case, the register, série A, 2, contains no entries after October 1299. At this point, Robert suppressed the office of Master of Artois. Rinaldo slipped into oblivion in the Artois records. Nor is he mentioned elsewhere, until a furious letter from Mahaud, Robert’s successor, in August 1303 to Charles II of Naples complained that Rinaldo had caused grave damage to Artois during his years of power, that he had falsified accounts, told lies, stolen charters and other documents, and aroused the wrath of the people against him.67 In corroboration of one of Mahaud’s accusations, it is notable that the great receipts for the county of Artois from 1291 to 1299 have disappeared.68 Although a number of these were still in the archive in the sixteenth century, some had presumably vanished in 1299. Possibly Rinaldo foresaw that trouble threatened, took such documents as he thought might be used against him, and retreated rapidly to his lands in the Regno. It is most unlikely that Charles II did anything to disturb his peace there; he had little incentive to do so (if he shared the opinion of Robert, he will probably have regarded Mahaud as an irritant).69 Rinaldo showed himself cleverer than Pierre de la Broce or Marigny (or the children of Giozzelino della Marra) in anticipating the problems that came almost inevitably to late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century ministers of finance. In the end, these others all failed to meet the demands of great nobles who believed that their own or the king’s resources were almost inexhaustible, and that therefore any lack of money must be the result of their servants’ dishonesty. Despite his flight and Mahaud’s indignation, Rinaldo’s innovations continued to be detectable in the chancery practices, the accounting system, and the centralised authority of the comital house in Artois once he had left. We shall consider later the question of whether these impacted on the rest of northern France in subsequent years. Although by far the most prominent, Rinaldo was not the only inhabitant of the Regno to make a career for himself in Artois. Charles II gave permission for both Giovanni Pipino, magister rationalis of the Great Court at Naples, and Rinaldo di Villamania, who had been Robert d’Artois’s chamberlain, to accompany him back to France.70 If he actually went, Giovanni seems to have returned to the Regno by July 1292.71 66 68 69 71

67 Pas-de-Calais S´ Pas-de-Calais Série A, reg. 2, 29r. erie A, 49/23. Delmaire, Le comte général du receveur d’Artois, p. XLVII. 70 RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 36, 38. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 41/23. RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 786. Giovanni became magister rationalis for Charles II, and then count of Altamura, in which capacity he led the troops who put an end to the Muslim colony of Lucera in 1300.


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Of Rinaldo di Villamania we know nothing. But Robert also brought with him his physician, Master Palmerio de Riso, of one of the important pro-Angevin family which had had to flee from Messina in 1282.72 Palmerio was well rewarded by the count for his services, which included ambassadorial as well as medical duties.73 In the war in Aquitaine, when Robert was in command of the French forces, Palmerio played a vital role in obtaining medicines for the wounded and looking after both the sick and the injured behind the battle lines.74 Robert will have been impressed by the high status of physicians in the Regno, as by their sound training at Salerno or Naples. He doubtless believed that he could not find Palmerio’s equal in France. His example is almost bound to have inspired lesser aristocrats in the county with a desire to be treated by Palmerio himself or by someone trained in the same way. The other notable inhabitant of the Regno to enjoy an influential career in Artois was Filippo Fortaletti, whom Robert made castellan of Calais in March 1294.75 Calais was a town that had recently lost all its privileges for murdering its castellan. Filippo was put into a tough assignment. To fulfil it, he needed sixty sergeants.76 He was paid every month, both for himself, for his sergeants, and for his officer in charge of the artillery. His costs included a sum for cord for crossbows.77 On installation, he was given a copy of an inventory which listed all the weapons and other equipment in the castle, for which he would be responsible when he accounted on giving up office. This procedure will have been familiar to any soldier in the Regno called on to take up a castellanship. From these stipulations we may deduce that Robert hoped to put into action in Artois some of the defensive measures that he had implemented for fortresses in the Regno, that he feared an English attack on Artois which might be similar to the Aragonese naval attacks on the Angevin kingdom, 72

73 74

75 77

He was compensated by Prince Charles for losses inflicted by the rebels on his property, RCA, vol. 27, parte 1, reg. cxvii, 22. For other references, see Pas-de-Calais Série A, reg. 2, fol. 10r; Ricordi e documenti del Vespro Siciliano, ed. Società Siciliana per le Storie Patrie (Palermo, 1882), documents from the Crown of Aragon, p. 216, no. 254; p. 242, no. 298. Palmerio was presumably the man whom Charles of Anjou had paid as a professor of logic at Naples, RCA, vol. 4, reg. xiv, 1130. He became a doctor of medicine in 1279; RCA, vol. 21, Additiones to reg. lxxxix, 364. On the Riso family, see Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, pp. 74–5. Is this Palmerio to be identified with the Panormus, nephew of Matthew de Riso, of whom Bartolomeo de Neocastro speaks, Historia Sicula, ed. G. Paladino, p. 20? Pas-de-Calais Série A, 139/25. Recueil des historiens de la France. Documents financiers. Comptes royaux (1285–1314), vol. III, 3 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1956), ed. R. Fawtier with F. Maillard, Supplément, pp. 101–22, nos. 30184, 30196, 30213, 30233, 30255. 76 Pas-de-Calais S´ Pas-de-Calais Série A, 139/18. erie A, 139/7. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 139/30.

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and that he thought it desirable to have a man already familiar with these to give an example in his county. That this was appreciated by townsmen in Artois is evident from the citation of good defences among the benefits that the men of Guines and Ardres had derived from their count.78 Although there were probably other men from the Regno to be found in Robert’s household in Artois, evidence is lacking for all but two, and in the first of these cases, although we know that Robert invited the boy and made plans for him, we cannot be sure that he came. This was Philippe de Toucy, the eldest son of the recently deceased Eudes de Toucy, who had been count of Alba in the Regno, justiciar of the Great Court, and a member of a family whose whole recent history was tied up with Achaia, the Regno and the kingdom of Jerusalem.79 Robert asked his chamberlain to arrange for Philippe to be brought to his court, where he probably intended to train him in the arts of warfare, chivalry and political responsibility.80 Nothing more is known about this. The second case was that of Raymond Berengar, the fifth son of Charles II, who was recorded as fighting in Robert’s army in 1297.81 These instances suggest that other young men from the grander families of the Regno may have spent unrecorded time in Arras at the court of the most prestigious lord in France, growing up and learning to imitate their betters. One place in Artois will especially have reminded these exiles of home: the castle and park of Hesdin, which Robert d’Artois had built for himself during his time as regent of the Regno, and which he continued to add to and improve after his return home. Here, as in so much else, Rinaldo Cognetti was his right-hand man, acquiring the land needed for the extension of the park and paying the workmen.82 The castle was conceived as Robert’s summer residence, a place particularly suited for the lavish entertainment of important visitors – including Philippe IV of France. The chief diversion for guests and host alike was hunting, as it had been in Lagopesole, which Robert will have known well. The most striking feature of Hesdin was the Pavilion with its waterworks, notorious 78

79

80 81 82

Pas-de-Calais Série A, 28/13. If Bertaux’s judgment that Charles of Anjou’s castles owed more to local than to French tradition (‘Les artistes français au service des rois angevins de Naples’, 113–14) is still adhered to by architectural historians, it is likely that Robert d’Artois’s fortifications also owed something to Italian design. See p. 151. Did Robert d’Artois make a mistake here in thinking that Narjaud’s son Philippe, for whom Eudes had been responsible in his minority, was actually Eudes’s son? Or did both Narjaud and Eudes have sons called Philippe? Pas-de-Calais Série A, 37/28. Chronique artésienne, ed. F. Funck-Brentano (Paris: A. Picard, 1899), p. 21. Vale, The Princely Court, pp. 228–9, 279–82; van Buren, ‘Reality and literary romance in the park of Hesdin’, pp. 117–34; Chartes de coutume en Picardie (XIe–XIIIe siècle), ed. Robert Fossier (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1974), pp. 562–4, no. 200.


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for their spouts and deluges which caught visitors unawares, and the marionettes of monkeys that greeted visitors. Professor Van Buren, who has studied the garden more closely than any other recent scholar, does not believe that the inspiration for the Pavilion at Hesdin lay in the famous garden of the Siza palace just outside Palermo, the summer residence of William I and William II of Sicily.83 She is almost certainly correct in maintaining that there were at least some local influences and some reflection of contemporary French literary themes. Nevertheless, Robert will probably have seen the Siza palace on his return from the Tunis crusade, and his nomination of Rinaldo to oversee the project and men from the Regno to assist in the gardens of Hesdin makes it unlikely that this was not an important influence on what he built.84 As the most lavish new noble residence in northern France at this time, the castle and park at Hesdin were bound to excite interest and envy among aspirants to high society at the court of Philippe IV, as indeed they continued to do until their destruction by the emperor Charles V in 1553. It was an appropriate setting for a man of semi-regal standing, and in all probability Robert thought it a suitable monument on which to lavish the revenues he still drew from his lands in the Regno.85 Thus far, the focus has been on Robert himself and on the southern Italians he brought to the Artois. But connections between Artois and the Regno were more widely spread than this. Many men from Arras and the surrounding lands had gone down to the Regno in Robert’s armies, particularly the army of 1282, and others had been attracted to service there during Robert’s regency. The terms offered to those who, like Béraud de Saint-Georges, volunteered to assist Robert, were generous. For one year’s service, Béraud was to get 300 lt in two instalments, to be given livery robes, to have meals in Robert’s household, to be compensated for any horses killed on campaign, and to have his passage and that of his squires and horses arranged for him.86 Only if King Charles wished to take over Béraud’s service would Robert be freed from the huge financial burden imposed. Béraud kept the terms of his contract for a long time, since he was with Robert at Melfi in 1287,87 was justiciar of the Capitanate in 1282–83, where he was burdened with heavy duties in preparing a fleet to attack Sicily, and was still in the 83 84 85

86

Van Buren, ‘Reality and literary romance in the park of Hesdin’, p. 118. Ibid., p. 125. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 154/1 is the register of Robert d’Artois’s lands in Apulia with the accounts for September 1297 to September 1300. Thibaud de Mauregard (probably a relation of Simon) was sent down to the Regno to audit the accounts. See Bautier and Sorney, Les sources ećonomiques . . . Les e´tats de la maison de Bourgogne, vol. I, p. 265. 87 Pas-de-Calais S´ Pas-de-Calais Série A, 30/6. erie A, 900/1.

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Regno to quarrel with Benedict Gaetani, the future pope Boniface VIII, over land in 1294.88 Among others, Robert is also known to have paid Gui Broussart and Guillaume d’Aulnay.89 Guillaume was still in the Regno when Robert set off to return home in November 1291.90 The men of Artois understood the meaning of faithful service. Of those who went, some never returned.91 Others came back to spread knowledge of what life had been like there, and also to disentangle problems caused by their residence for so long overseas. Robert attempted to ensure that those who had been fief-holders in the Regno and who did not want to stay there once he had gone did not lose out completely, though this could only be achieved with the cooperation of Charles II.92 That Rinaldo Cognetti was to be allowed to accumulate fiefs in the Regno and pay for them in Artois will not have worried Robert, at least until the 1299 breach with Rinaldo. A different sort of problem is hinted at by another entry in the register, where it is recorded that, while in Sicily, Robert gave his consent to the marriage of a couple from Artois, who lived there as man and wife until the death of the man.93 Presumably some question of inheritance had arisen in the Regno, and the rights of the widow had been contested. Robert’s testimony was needed to ensure that she got what was due to her. These two cases are probably typical of many others that remained unrecorded and that bore on the consequences for the men of Artois of long residence in the Regno. Easily the most famous of those who went with Robert to the Regno was Adam de la Halle, the poet. Although he died in the Regno, his works came back to Arras, and became widely known. Of these, two are relevant to our subject. The first was the epic Roi de Sezile, of which he wrote only a few verses. These were largely dedicated to a romantic account of how the young chivalric Charles of Anjou had rescued Beatrice of Provence from a most unsuitable forced marriage to the aged Raimon VII of Toulouse, and married her himself.94 It was an interpretation of the facts that almost certainly would have gratified Charles. And then there 88

89

90 91 92 93 94

RCA, vol. 26, reg. cxii, 264, vol. 27, part 1; reg. cxvi, 77, 79, 181; reg. cxxiv, 65; CII, vol. 47, Additiones to reg. xv, 58, 74. Georges Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège de 1285 a` 1304, vol. I (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1936), p. 208, note 3. Pas-de Calais Série A, 29/24 and 30/20. Guillaume d’Aulnay was presumably a relation of the Gauthier d’Aulnay, lord of Mesnil, who was one of three men nominated to look after Artois in Robert’s absence; Pas-de-Calais Série A, 22/17. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 36/11. Baldwin de Sapignies apparently died in the service of Charles II; Pas-de-Calais Série A, 2 (register), fol. 9v. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 2 (register), fol. 9v. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 2 (register), fol. 6r. Œuvres complètes du trouvère Adam de la Halle, ed. E. Coussemaker (Paris: Durand et Pédone-Lauriel, 1872), pp. 286–9. See below, p. 271.


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was Le Jeu de Robin et Marion,95 the light-hearted theatrical piece written to entertain the troops in the Regno as they awaited the assaults of the Aragonese. With its music, dances and songs, it became popular in Artois. Together, these works of Adam will have kept alive the memory of the Regno adventure for many years after those who participated had vanished from the scene. One way or another, there can have been few inhabitants of the Artois who were not caught up in some way in the count’s involvement with the Angevin dynasty’s survival. Almost all of them will have paid taxes or loans at some point to help finance the project. Many will have either participated themselves or been related to someone who did. And most will have experienced the effects of Robert’s stay in the administrative improvements introduced into Artois on his return, or in the sight or sound of the cultural legacy he brought. The impact was both deep and widespread. But it was not particularly long-lasting, except in the survival of administrative practice and in that of the park at Hesdin. Within three years of Robert’s return, he was swept into the wars in Gascony and Flanders. Once again the people of Artois were called on to give of their utmost. And since the threat was much closer to home, it was more difficult for them to escape the consequences. In the violence of the new crisis, much of the old was forgotten. In 1298, Robert’s son Philippe d’Artois, who had been trained to take over from him, died, leaving a baby son who knew nothing of his grandfather’s hopes for the future.96 And with the death of Robert himself at the battle of Kortrijk in July 1302, the hero of the story lost his great reputation as the most skilled French general of his age. The completeness of the Flemish victory over the French came close to wiping out a whole chapter of recent history from the memory of the people of Artois. Robert was succeeded there by his daughter Mahaud. Although she had been married to Otto, count of Burgundy, who had rushed to the Regno to help Charles of Anjou in 1282, Mahaud apparently had neither time for nor interest in the Regno. A significant chapter in the history of the county of Artois was emphatically closed. 95 96

Ibid., pp. 183–93. John of Paris, canon of St Victor, Excerpta e memoriali historiarum, RHF, vol. XXI (Paris, 1855), p. 635.

6

The Dampierres, the comital family of Flanders

The Dampierre family, originally from Champagne, dominated the history of Flanders from the fourth decade of the thirteenth century until the accession of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in 1384. Their sudden rise to power came with the marriage of one of their number, Guillaume de Dampierre, to Marguerite, younger sister and heiress of Countess Jeanne of Flanders. Although by the tests of mutual loyalty and fertility the marriage was a great success, it remained controversial, because Marguerite had earlier been married to Bouchard d’Avesnes, a marriage that the church had annulled, but from which there survived two sons, legitimated by the pope. It was scarcely surprising that the children of the two marriages should have regarded each other as rivals for the rich inheritance of their mother, who became in 1244 ruler both of Flanders and of Hainault. In 1246 Louis IX tried to impose a settlement on the warring step-siblings, whereby he recognised the legitimacy of the two d’Avesnes sons, Jean and Baudoin, and arranged that they should become the heirs to Hainault while the offspring of the second marriage would succeed Marguerite in Flanders. But the compromise was not popular with either party – or indeed with Marguerite, whose affection was confined to the children of her second marriage.1 Against this background of tension was forged the link between the Dampierres and Charles of Anjou, which was to bring them into the Regno. In 1253, while Louis IX was still in Palestine after his disastrous Egyptian crusade, Countess Marguerite provoked a conflict with Florent, count of Holland. Florent, in conjunction with Jean d’Avesnes, his brother-in-law, completely routed the Flemish army and took prisoner the two Dampierre sons who had led the campaign. In her despair, Marguerite turned to Charles of Anjou, to whom she promised the inheritance of Hainault if he would defeat her enemies. Charles agreed – reluctantly, according to a fourteenth-century chronicler.2 The war that followed, 1 2

Duvivier, La querelle des d’Avesnes et des Dampierres, vol. I, pp. 138–60. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 38.

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though destructive, was also very short. William of Holland, king of the Romans and Florent’s brother, challenged Charles to battle. Charles’s counsellors were unanimous in advising him to avoid this. There ensued a stand-off, broken with the return of Louis IX to France. In November 1255, the king went north to negotiate the freedom of the Dampierre sons, the reassertion of Jean d’Avesnes’s right to succeed in Hainault, and the payment by Marguerite of Charles’s substantial expenses. Marguerite’s gains were small; but without Charles’s intervention she might have lost everything. She and her sons remained deeply grateful to him for the rest of their lives. The eldest Dampierre son, Guillaume, married to Beatrice of Brabant, had died in 1251. Marguerite’s heir for Flanders was therefore Gui, her second son (who had been imprisoned in Holland). He married twice. By his first wife Isabel, heiress of Béthune, he had at least five sons, of whom the eldest, Robert de Béthune, and the fifth, Philippe, known in the Regno as Filippo da Chieti, will be major figures in this story. (By his second wife, Isabelle of Luxembourg, Gui had another three sons, of whom only one, Jean de Namur, even visited the Regno.)3 Gui’s chief concern in the early years of his joint rule with his mother (from 1252 – she abdicated in his favour in 1278) was to find heiresses for his sons to marry, so that the wealth of Flanders, already considerable, might be increased. He also wanted a good military training for them all. In 1265, he married Robert, his heir, to the daughter of Charles of Anjou, Blanche, a union that appears to have been happy.4 They had one son, whom they called Charles after his grandfather. Shortly after the wedding, Robert set off for northern Italy in the army of Philippe de Montfort, to give strong support to Charles’s bid for the throne of the Regno. Robert therefore participated in the fighting at Benevento, where there was a large contingent of Flemish soldiers, some apparently rather resistant to Charles’s leadership.5 He also fought at Tagliacozzo, and Flemish tradition preserved an account of his prowess at this battle.6 More dramatically, later legend made of him the public figure who struck with his dagger the judge who read out the sentence of execution on the

3

4

5 6

Marc Boone, ‘Une société urbanisée sous tension. Le comté de Flandre vers 1302’, in ´ R. Van Caenegem (ed.), Le désastre de Courtrai. Mythe et realité de la bataille des Eperons d’or (Antwerp: Fonds Mercator, 2002), pp. 26–77, at p. 35. While Robert married three times, in his will of 1322 he expressed the desire to be buried beside his first wife ‘nos chere compagnion’ Blanche at the abbey of Flines. Archives du Nord, B/448/4.107. Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 154. Jean d’Outremeuse, Ly myreur des histors, vol. V, ed. Stanislas Borens (Brussels: M. Hayez, 1887), p. 376.

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young Corradin.7 But there is nothing of this in strictly contemporary sources, and therefore it is unlikely to be true (unless it represented some ancient ritual of the court, otherwise unattested). Robert spent the most impressionable years of his youth in the Regno, in an enterprise that he seems to have enjoyed. He called his young wife to join him after Tagliacozzo. In 1269, he was rewarded with the gifts of Eboli and five castles.8 He earned the respect of Charles of Anjou, who sent him ahead to make arrangements for provisioning the Tunis crusade.9 From Robert’s point of view, he was earning valuable experience and perhaps also nourishing a hope that, if both Charles’s sons died young, he might himself succeed to the throne as the trusted husband of Charles’s eldest daughter. In 1270, Robert set off with his father-in-law to join the French crusading army led by Louis IX at Tunis. But the Tunis crusade was rapidly aborted by dysentery and death.10 Charles returned to his kingdom as soon as possible, after negotiating a treaty with the emir of Tunis. Among the most important of the leaders who crossed with the king from Tunis to Sicily and then slowly made his way north through Italy was Gui de Dampierre, Robert de Béthune’s father. At Carthage, while they waited for ships to take them to Trapani, there had taken place a ceremony which presented Charles and Gui as lords of almost equal prestige: Charles had added new members to his household, while Gui distributed liveries to his.11 The closeness between the two men will have been clear to all beholders of these ceremonies. Gui’s subsequent arrival in southern Italy along with his son Robert will have brought about a reunion with his daughter-in-law. The count’s journey through the Regno (accompanied, among many others, by the troubadour Adenet le Roi) allowed him to accumulate various gifts and purchases, including an illustrated copy of Frederick II’s tract on hawking, which he bore north with him.12 He apparently acquired more than he could take home on this occasion, for in 1275 he sent an agent to Naples to find the objects he had left behind and bring them to him.13 Had he originally intended to return for a longer visit and left possessions behind to make him comfortable then? Or was he simply thinking of his vow to crusade again, and expecting to 7 8 9 11 12 13

Villani, Nuova cronica, ed. Porta, vol. I, pp. 460–1. Benedetto Croce, Vite di avventure, di fede e di passione, Scritti di storia literaria et politica XXX (2nd edn, Bari: G. Laterzae figli, 1947), p. 4; RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 654. 10 Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 291–7. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxi, 102. Jean Dunbabin, ‘The household and entourage of Charles I’, pp. 317–18 and note 12; Vale, The Princely Courts, pp. 115–16 and, on the size of Gui’s household, p. 153. Francesco Sabatini, Napoli angioina. Cultura e società (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1975), p. 39. See also below, p. 234. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 871.


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go to Outremer by the Regno?14 Although there is no record that Gui and Charles ever met after this, they kept in close touch. In 1274, Charles asked Gui to expel all Genoese from his county in support of his own actions against them. And much later, in 1283, Gui willingly accepted Charles as arbitrator in a sensitive family quarrel over the dowry of his widowed sister-in-law, Beatrice of Brabant, and also accepted Charles’s decision, although it went against him.15 Any plans there may have been for Gui’s return to the Regno were scuppered by a serious blow, the death in 1270 of Robert’s wife Blanche. Robert decided in mid-1271 to return to Flanders, but he left behind Charles, the one son of the marriage, to be cared for, temporarily at least, by King Charles’s second wife, Marguerite, along with various other noble children.16 This suggests that Robert’s departure was not meant to be irrevocable. He might, perhaps, have returned had events proved propitious. As it happened, he only made one more brief visit much later, and his son was later sent north, probably in 1275 along with his grandfather’s agent.17 In the meantime, Robert took Blanche’s corpse home and had it buried at Flines, Countess Marguerite’s new convent, which was only just arising from its foundations and which was probably intended to be the Dampierre family mausoleum. The tomb Robert ordered for his wife constituted a solid memorial to the connection between Flanders and the Regno, with the figures of Blanche’s mother and father, King Charles and Queen Beatrice, carved into the surround.18 It was clearly intended that future generations should remember the social elevation the marriage had conferred on Gui’s son. Although he was no longer an inhabitant of the Regno, Robert’s second marriage proved his loyalty to Charles’s family. He chose Yolande of Nevers, sister of Charles of Anjou’s second wife Marguerite, and married her very soon after returning home. That Queen Marguerite was influential in arranging the marriage is to be inferred from her grant of a house in Le Mans to the pair.19 There were at least two sons of the marriage, Louis, who became count of Flanders on the death of Robert in 1322, and Robert, who inherited substantial lands both from his mother and 14

15 16 17 18 19

Reg. Nicholas IV, nos. 5739 and 5755 demonstrated that he was still intending to crusade as late as 1291. Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. I, no. 959, showed the final papal dispensation to relieve him of the obligation, in 1296. Archives du Nord, B/398 (1.797), (2.504), (2.529), (2.780). RCA, vol. 5, reg. xvi, 50; vol. 6, reg. xxii, 654. A demand for an account for the child Charles’s expenses was entered in RCA for 1278, but that presumably reflected an earlier oversight; RCA, vol. 20, reg. lxxxvi, 363. Anne McGee Morgenstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries, and England (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), pp. 47–50. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, 353.

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from his aunt.20 Later legend portrayed the relationship between Robert de Béthune and Yolande as unhappy. Yolande was said to have been held responsible by her husband for the early death of Charles, Robert’s son by his first marriage, and Robert was alleged to have killed her in retaliation.21 There are no signs of this ground for the family breakdown in more sober accounts, and therefore the rumour should be discarded.22 But it may have been inspired by a widely known antipathy between the couple. If so, the marriage cannot have contributed to keeping alive the link between the houses of Anjou and Dampierre, as it was probably intended to do. Even so, Gui de Dampierre did not forget Charles of Anjou. Although his eldest son was now fixed in Flanders, there were others to take his place. Exactly when Philippe, his fifth son, went to the Regno is not clear, but it was doubtless in response to some appeal from Charles once the Sicilian Vespers had broken out. Later tradition held that Philippe had been studying in Paris by way of preparing for a clerical career when an opportunity for rapid advancement in the secular world opened for him. Charles was determined to keep Philippe with him; so in 1284 he began negotiations with Gui for Philippe’s marriage to Mahaud, daughter of Raoul de Courtenay and Alice de Montfort, who had inherited the county of Chieti from her father when he died in 1271.23 She had probably come to the Regno as little more than a baby in the train of Marguerite of Nevers, Charles of Anjou’s second wife, in 1268.24 From Charles’s point of view, the question of whom Mahaud married was significant because her lands were in the Abruzzi, an area crucial to the defence of the Regno. He was confident he could trust the son of the count of Flanders. Philippe and Mahaud were well endowed both by Charles, who gave them the county of Loreto (also in the Abruzzi), and by Gui.25 As Gui saw it, the point of the marriage was both to provide well for a loved cadet of the family and to keep the friendship with Charles alive. On his side, Charles was willing to pay well for Philippe’s services. The young man therefore began his career as an important fief-holder in the Regno and a significant military figure in the Angevin defence system,

20 21 22

23 24 25

Archives du Nord, B/447 (3.535), 447 (4.640), 447 (5.473), 447 (5.071). Jean d’Outremeuse, Ly mireur des histors, vol. V, pp. 430–1. The reason for the notorious feud between Yolande’s brother, Robert II duke of Burgundy, and her husband, Robert de Béthune, was disagreement over Yolande’s rights to the inheritance of her deceased father, Eudes IV, duke of Burgundy. Croce, Vite di avventure, di fede et di passione, p. 11; RCA, vol. 4, reg. xiv, 28. This is the speculation of Monsieur du Bouchet, Histoire généalogique de la maison royale de Courtenay (Paris, 1661), p. 155. Archives du Nord, B/404 (2.566).


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who yet had a bolthole in Flanders to which to retreat should difficulties overwhelm the Regno. Philippe’s early years of responsibility cannot have been easy. No sooner had he obtained his bride than the Regno was hit by the double blow of Charles of Salerno’s capture in the bay of Naples, followed within six months by the death of Charles of Anjou. He himself was captured by Roger Lauria in a fruitless attempt to reinforce an attack on Augusta in Sicily in 1287.26 Although he was released quickly, he had a huge ransom to find and pay to the victor.27 For most of his life, he was scraping and scrimping to pay off debts of one kind or another, from lands that suffered the devastations of war. The very unflattering portrait of him painted by Benedetto Croce, showing his endless attempts to increase his own revenues and rights at the expense of his tenants and neighbours, should be understood (though not pardoned) against a background of real financial hardship for all those who fought for Charles II.28 Despite the complaints made against him, Robert d’Artois conferred more land on him, including some taken from Adenolfo of Aquino. Philippe did not, however, feature among the king’s chief advisors or long-term companions. Therefore little is known about the main events of his life between 1287 and 1298. Benedetto Croce surmised that he spent at least some of this time fighting to support Angevin allies in Tuscany.29 What happened in April 1298 demonstrated the closeness of the link that Philippe had preserved with his family in Flanders during his long Italian sojourn. The background was the war that had broken out between Philippe IV and Gui de Dampierre in 1297, principally over Gui’s alliance with Edward I of England, and the projected marriage of his daughter Philippine with Edward’s son and heir Edward30 (though the underlying cause was Gui’s resentment at Philippe’s growing claims to intervene in Flanders). Acting in a fashion more characteristic of a king of the Regno than of a king of France, Philippe IV had in 1294 insisted on Philippine being surrendered into his custody (where she remained until 26 27

28 29 30

Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica, ed. G. Porta, vol. I, p. 581. Chronique de Ramon Muntaner, trans. J. A. Bouchon, vol. I (Paris: Verdière, 1827), p. 305; Inventaire analytique des chartes des comtes de Flandre, ed. Jules de Saint-Genois, p. 141, no. 465. Croce, Vite de avventure, di fede et di passione, pp. 22–7. Croce’s belief that the Regno’s aristocrats were responsible for its decline made him unsympathetic to their problems. Croce, Vite di avventure, di fede et di passione, p. 18. Franz Funck-Brentano, Les origines de la Guerre de Cent Ans. Philippe le Bel en Flandre (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1897) provides a full description of events from a French point of view. The clearest brief account is in Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. 324–32.

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she died in 1306). In 1297, for reasons that do not here concern us, trouble between Philippe and Gui blew up again, and this time in a more ominous way for Flemish interests, which were not promoted by the lack of useful support Gui got from Edward I. Gui renounced his fealty to Philippe and was excommunicated by the bishop of Tournai for so doing. In Gui’s name, Robert de Béthune appealed to the pope against Philippe IV, alleging that the king was waging an unjust war against Gui; he also appealed against the bishop of Tournai’s excommunication.31 French troops invaded Flanders and seized much of Gui’s territory. In the meantime, the kings of England and France had made a truce and agreed to put their dispute for arbitration into the hands of the pope, Boniface VIII, the French adding the rider that Boniface should act in his private capacity as Benedict Gaetani rather than as pope. At once, the Flemish count felt obliged to put his case at the Curia before Philippe IV could bend the papal ear. In choosing his envoys for the Curia, Gui will have been conscious of the considerable advantage his son Philippe would have. As a lord in the Abruzzi, Philippe was a close neighbour of several Gaetani relations.32 As a military supporter of the Guelf cause in Tuscany, he knew both the pope and several cardinals personally.33 Gui therefore asked him to support Robert de Béthune, Jean de Namur (his eldest son by his second marriage), and the two lawyers who were to perform the hard work on the embassy, Michel As Clokettes and Jacques Becs.34 Naturally, Philippe arrived at the Curia before the others. He and his wife were warmly welcomed, both by Boniface and by several cardinals. All seemed to augur well when Michel and Jacques turned up. They then received a letter from Gui, imposing on them various tasks: to persuade the pope that Philippine should be released from the custody of Philippe IV; that various men who had been captured by Robert d’Artois at the battle of Furnes in the previous year should be released; that Gui and others excommunicated by pro-French bishops should be absolved; if that could not immediately be granted, then at least that the count should be assured that the Flemish clergy would not be required to contribute money to effecting his own defeat by Philippe IV; that the truce of Tournai should cover the Flemish and that Philippe IV should respect its terms better; that the lands occupied by the French in Flanders should be taken over 31 32 33 34

Archives du Nord, B/1038/3.922, B 1264/3.900. Ed. Pollastri, Les Gaetani de Fondi, nos. 11 and 27. Funck-Brentano, Les origines de la Guerre de Cent Ans, p. 303, where Gui’s dependence on Philippe’s influence at the papal court is plain. Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège, vol. I, pp. 362–7 provides a brief analysis of the documents relating to the embassy, which are to be found in Archives du Nord, B/248.


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by the pope until a peace was made; and that the marriage between Edward’s son and Philippine should be allowed to go forward. The arrival of the French delegation, who contended that Gui had been offered by Philippe IV the judgment of his peers and had rejected this, turned Boniface against the Flemish. On their next papal audience, Robert de Béthune and his fellow ambassadors found themselves faced with the demand that they submit the whole affair entirely to Boniface’s judgment. In an effort to deflect the pope’s anger onto the king of France, whom they portrayed as disobedient to papal commands, they argued that the pope was lord of the king of France both in temporalities and in spiritualities, and therefore Boniface could judge Philippe as any other sovereign could judge those subordinate to him.35 Boniface irritably rejected this red herring and again demanded complete submission to his will. The claim for papal sovereignty over the king of France did the Flemish delegates no good, either in these negotiations of June 1298 or later. But it was to have considerable repercussions in France in 1302. When the papal bull Ausculta fili was launched by Boniface VIII against Philippe le Bel in December 1302, Philippe’s chief minister, Pierre Flotte, produced an inaccurate summary of the bull, Scire te volumus, including the claim that the king was subject to the pope both in temporalities and in spiritualities. The words of the Flemish delegates of four years before were put into the mouth of the pope, much to his fury. The French found the sentiment bizarre. It caused an intellectual ferment. Masters of the university of Paris were to write many long tracts on the subject in the last years of the thirteenth century and the early years of the fourteenth.36 Many young scholars enjoyed their first flirtation with political thought in adding their opinions to the growing pile of reflections on the relation between the papacy and the French king. The claim that the pope was lord of the king of France both in temporalities and in spiritualities was not likely to have occurred to the main participants in the Flemish delegation. They presumably shared the commonly held view that there was a division between temporalities under royal power and spiritualities under papal control. But it would be natural enough for a nobleman brought up in the Regno, of which the pope was the overlord, to express such a sentiment. There is surely a case for arguing that Philippe of Chieti was the author of this part of the 35 36

Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège, vol. I, pp. 363–4. ¨ Jurgen Miethke, ‘Die Traktate De Potestate Papae: Ein Typus politik-theoretischer Literatur im späten Mittelalter’, in Genres littéraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales. Définition, critique et exploitation. Actes du Colloque International de Louvain´ la-Neuve, mai 1981 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’Etudes Médiévales, 1982).

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Flemish delegates’ speech. He probably anticipated that Boniface would be flattered. If so, he was wrong. Although what the pope and his cardinal Matthew of Aquasparta thought came fairly close in practice to what the Flemish delegates said, both were clear that there was a real theoretical difference. Thus Philippe’s words brought no advantage to the Flemish side. Their one result, the outpouring of pamphlets in the university of Paris on the power of the pope, which was still gushing forth in the second decade of the fourteenth century, could not have been anticipated.37 The Flemish envoys were forced to submit entirely to Boniface’s will, and his arbitration granted them almost no concessions. Their failure to move the pope was explained by a new addition to the delegation, Jean de Menin, primarily in terms of the absence of adequate Flemish bribery.38 But it would have been difficult for Boniface to support Gui’s arguments against Philippe IV when he himself was using the French king’s arguments against rebels in the papal states. Besides, he badly needed French support to press on with the war against Frederick III in Sicily. Despite the warmth of his personal relations with Philippe of Chieti, he could not afford to be anything but harsh towards the Flemish. The consequences for the comital family of Flanders were disastrous. In January 1300, King Philippe sent Charles de Valois to invade Flanders, where he captured both Gui and Robert de Béthune. They were subsequently imprisoned in castles in France – according to Jean de Saint-Victor, at the instigation of Robert d’Artois.39 The French king’s triumph then seemed so complete that in 1301 he went on a victory parade through the county. However, events turned around very quickly. The harshness of French rule brought the inhabitants of the Flemish towns to the point of revolt. In May 1302 came the infamous ‘Matins of Bruges’ when the artisans of that town slaughtered soldiers accompanying Jacques de Châtillon the French governor of Flanders (and step-brother of Robert d’Artois), as they lay asleep. While Jacques himself escaped, as did other French leaders, the survivors at once began to contemplate revenge. When it became evident that real trouble was brewing, most of the Flemish towns joined Bruges in the revolt, and sought the leadership of Gui de Namur and Guillaume ¨ de Julich, son and grandson of Count Gui, the only members of the ruling family to be readily available and fit for campaigning. In July the Flemings met the large French army under Robert d’Artois at Kortrijk. There followed the great victory of the Flemings which resounded across 37

38

See for example Jean Dunbabin, ‘Hervé de Nédellec, Pierre de la Palud and France’s place in Christendom’, in Joseph Canning and Otto G. Oexle (eds.), Political Thought ¨ and the Realities of Power in the Middle Ages (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1998), pp. 159–72. 39 RHF, vol. XXI, p. 637. Archives du Nord, B/248.4091.


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Europe, and the deaths of large numbers of French aristocrats, including Robert d’Artois, Jacques de Châtillon and Pierre Flotte.40 The battle of Kortrijk was perhaps the greatest turn-up for the books in the whole of medieval warfare. It was also unusual in the scale of the slaughter inflicted on the French upper classes.41 When the initial euphoria died down, the Flemings were in no doubt that Philippe IV would seek to retaliate in equally brutal style as soon as he could gather another army together. At this point, Philippe de Chieti ¨ re-entered the story. Although Gui de Namur and Guillaume de Julich had commanded the Flemish army heroically at Kortrijk, most Flemings felt that someone older and with more experience of battle was needed for the next stage. Who asked Philippe to come – or indeed if he was asked at all – is unclear. But he was soon entering tricky negotiations with Charles II to obtain permission to leave the Regno, permission that he had to buy by giving up all his fiefs to Charles. In May 1303 he set off for Flanders, where he was greeted with rapture. The anonymous author of Annales Gandenses says: ‘He [Philippe] was a knight of great bodily strength and undaunted courage, and was welcomed by the Flemish as leader, for he was older than Jean [de Namur] and Guy.’42 Among the French, rumour circulated that Philippe was supported by money given to him by Pope Boniface VIII;43 but there is nothing to substantiate this. Philippe’s administration of Flanders between 1303 and 1305 has generally met with the approval of later historians. In military terms, his greatest service was to lead the Flemish army at the battle of Mons-enPévèle in August 1304. Although French sources described this battle as a victory for Philippe IV, and all sources agree that the casualty toll was high on both sides, it certainly was not a resounding defeat for the Flemish.44 Otherwise, Philippe’s main role was as a co-ordinator between his step-brothers and as a prudent negotiator between different factions. Croce credited him with pursuing a democratic policy in relation to Ypres and its artisans, of a very different nature from his treatment of the men of Lanciano in the Abruzzi.45 His best-attested act was an attempt to obtain from the pope more bishoprics for Flanders.46 His justification for the step was that the Flemish needed better spiritual guidance. But in political terms, the request was probably inspired directly by the events of 1297, which demonstrated Count Gui’s vulnerability to the ecclesiastical 40 41 42 44 46

For the story of these two years from the Flemish point of view, see Annales Gandenses, ed. and trans. Hilda Johnstone (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), pp. 19–32. For a list of the dead, see Chronique artésienne, ed. F. Funck-Brentano, pp. 49–51. 43 Les grandes chroniques de France, vol. VIII, p. 222. Annales Gandenses, p. 48. 45 Vite di Avventure, p. 33; Archives du Nord, B/1267.4431. Ibid., pp. 65–76. Archives du Nord, B/1266.4.300.

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discipline wielded by the bishop of Tournai, who was under the protection of the crown of France. Had there been even one bishop based on Flemish territory, Gui might have been spared some of the pain he endured in that year. The absence of Flemish bishops will surely have struck forcibly a man who had lived long in the Regno, where bishops were particularly thick on the ground.47 What Boniface’s response to this plea might have been is unknown, although his own troubles with Philippe IV might have made him sympathetic. But the assault on the pope at Anagni in September 1303 and the death of Boniface six weeks later denied Philippe’s request a hearing. Philippe’s chief impact on Flemish history lay in his negotiations with Philippe IV after Mons-en-Pévèle that resulted in the Treaty of Athis-surOrge in June 1305. Was this treaty affected by the concerns of Charles II? The French chronicler Jean de Saint-Victor recorded that Philippe had been required to promise Charles II before he departed the Regno that he would not use his armed strength to oppose Philippe IV, but would rather seek peace.48 It is, of course, hard to ascertain whether Jean de Saint-Victor really knew what Charles had demanded. On the other hand, the story is plausible, since Charles himself had intervened in 1297 successfully if temporarily to turn back Philippe’s wrath against Gui and his sons.49 The alleged promise may have had a serious effect. Philippe did homage to the French king at Lille in September 1304, only a month after the battle. Clearly the count could not avoid fighting the French at Mons-en-Pévèle; there was no way in which Philippe IV was going to be cheated of his act of revenge, however uncertain it was in its actual results. However, the French king was facing deep dissatisfaction at home in 1304–5. His ability to continue the war was very doubtful. Given this, the increasing solidarity of Flemish opposition, and the scale of the French defeat at Kortrijk two years before, the Peace of Athis of 1305 was surprisingly generous to French rather than Flemish interests. The Flemish were to pay a substantial sum in reparations, and until that sum was paid, Philippe IV was to hold most of French-speaking Flanders, above all Lille and Douai. Did Philippe de Chieti’s concern for the imprisoned members of his family (who were to be freed by the terms of the treaty) and his own desire to return to the Regno persuade him to sacrifice Flemish economic interests to obtain peace at almost any price? Was he guided by Charles II’s concerns? Or was he simply unaware 47

48 49

Giovanni Vitolo, ‘Episcopato, società e ordini mendicanti in Italia meridionali’, in Dal pulpito alla cattedra. I vescovi degli ordini mendicanti nel ’200 e nel primo ’300 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 2000), p. 173. Excerpta e Memoriali historiarum, RHF, vol. XXI, p. 640. Les grandes chroniques de France, vol. VIII, p. 176.


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of what the ordinary men of Bruges and Ghent, beside whom he had fought for two years, could tolerate by way of reparations payments? By the time it became obvious that the terms of the Treaty of Athis were unenforceable on the Flemish towns, Philippe was back in the Regno, and the burden of trying to deal with the consequences fell on Robert de Béthune, now count of Flanders. War between France and Flanders dragged on intermittently until 1320, by which time French ownership of Lille and Douai had become almost accepted. In late 1305 or early 1306, Philippe returned to Naples with his second wife Filippa di Milly and their children.50 He never recovered the counties he had forfeited to Charles II in 1303, and lived for the remaining two years of his life on the revenues from his second wife’s dowry and from his Flemish lands.51 In February 1308 he made his will,52 in which he conferred on Charles II one augustalis (the traditional amount for a fief-holder), and he died shortly after. His death brought to an end a durable and important link between Flanders and the Regno. Neither Philippe’s short-lived descendants nor his surviving half-brothers showed any interest in Charles II’s concerns from this time onwards. Robert de Béthune was far too occupied with events in Flanders to have time or energy for Mediterranean interests. The year 1305, which marked the death of Gui de Dampierre and also the return of Philippe to the Regno, therefore emerged as a turning point in Flemish external relations. The cost to the people of Flanders of involvement in the Regno from the time of the conquest in 1266 until 1305 will have been considerable. Marguerite, countess of Flanders, was a major contributor to Charles of Anjou’s treasury from 1267 to 1271.53 After Philippe’s capture at Augusta in 1287, James II wrote to his family describing the terms offered for his release;54 the implication must surely be that some of the money for his ransom should come from Flanders, from Philippe’s own lands there, and also that other members of his family would lend if not give some of the huge sum needed to effect his release. Then there were the costs of equipping Robert de Béthune for his original expedition in 1266, and Philippe de Chieti’s return voyage to Naples after his period as regent. Besides, the Dampierre family was a regular recipient of pleas for loans 50

51 52 54

Mahaud had died in 1301, and Philippe had married again almost at once; Croce, Vite di avventure, di fede et di passione, pp. 20–1. For the legend that Philippe IV behaved very chivalrously to Filippa when she bore twin boys during the siege of Lille, see ibid., pp. 34–5. Archives du Nord, B/1267.4535. 53 See above, pp. 51–2. Minieri Riccio, Studii storici fatti sopra 84 registri, p. 106. Inventaire analytique des chartes des comtes de Flandre, ed. de Saint-Genois, p. 141, no. 465.

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from both Charles I and Charles II. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the endless streams of loans Gui and Robert took out was intended to subsidise the Regno in some form.55 The creditors of the comital house comprised almost all sections of Flemish society and also the inhabitants of Arras. The impact of this financial overstretch was therefore felt widely. How far any of this was compensated for by revenues deriving from the Regno is very difficult to calculate. The Flemish had always been renowned for their willingness to settle in new lands, and a certain number clearly did make their homes in Italy.56 Among these, the most distinguished was Henri de Guines, who became vice-admiral of the Regno and vice master justiciar. He died in Calabria in 1287.57 The castellan of St Omer also settled, bringing his wife with him.58 Gui de Dampierre had to intervene in at least one case of inheritance rights to lands in Calabria.59 But the general impression given by the sources from the Regno is that relatively few Flemings settled in southern Italy.60 Perhaps by this time the opportunities for expansion in northern Europe were sufficiently varied to give the Flemings all the scope they needed. Whatever the reason, the Flemish connection was apparently quite short-lived. 55 56 57

58 59 60

Ibid., e.g. p. 38, no. 111; pp. 39–41, nos. 113–16, 118–20. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, pp. 113–16. RCA, vol. 27, part 2, reg. cxxiv, 50; CII, vol. 43, reg. xlii, 5; See also John Pryor, ‘Soldiers of fortune in the fleets of Charles of Anjou’, in John France (ed.), Mercenaries and Paid Men. The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 119–41, at p. 132. RCA, vol. 21, reg. lxxxvii, 119; A. de Bouard, Documents en français des archives angevines de Naples, vol. II, no. 94. Inventaire analytique des chartes des comtes de Flandre, ed. de Saint-Genois, p. 47, no. 143. For a list of those specifically called Fleming mentioned in the royal archives, see Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. II, p. 319.

7

Other French aristocratic families

Members of a large number of other French aristocratic families spent time in the Regno and either then returned to France carrying with them at least some noticeable influence from their time abroad, or decided to remain where they were, keeping in touch with their relations in France, and offering temporary hospitality to visiting members of their extended families in their new homes.1 One thing many of the greater families to be discussed here had in common was an interest in the eastern Mediterranean well before Charles of Anjou’s conquest of the Regno. For such families, the disappearance of the Hohenstaufen and the emergence of the Angevins as the ruling house in southern Italy and Sicily channelled their dreams in slightly new directions; but it did not alter those dreams themselves. In practice, many of these found themselves doing more for Charles and his successors than the Angevins were prepared to do for them. By contrast, other lesser families who had been intimately bound up with the Angevin dynasty before the conquest and came to the Regno purely to follow their lord usually found their services reasonably well rewarded. Of the families of the higher aristocracy, the most distinguished were the Courtenays who had been major figures in European society from 1216, the date at which Pierre de Courtenay became Latin emperor of Constantinople. Pierre’s claim to this title came through his wife, Yolande, who was the youngest sister of the first two Latin emperors, Baldwin and Henry, of the ruling family of Flanders and Hainault. Pierre was count of Auxerre and Nevers, and the grandson of King Louis VI of France. Despite his royal blood, the count’s career in France had not been a success, and his new elevation did not change his fate. He was captured in Epiros on his way to Constantinople in 1217 and was never heard of again.2 However, members of his family claimed the crown until 1 2

See below, pp. 160–5; also Pollastri, ‘La présence ultramontaine dans le midi italien’. David Jacoby, ‘The Latin Empire of Constantinople and the Frankish states in Greece’, in Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V, pp. 525–42, at p. 529.

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the fall of Constantinople to the Greeks in 1261, and continued as titular emperors until 1382. From the perspective of this book, the significant titular emperors were Baldwin II (1228–73), son of Pierre; Baldwin’s son Philip (1273–83), who in 1273 married Charles of Anjou’s daughter Beatrice; and their daughter, Catherine of Courtenay (1283–1308), who married Charles de Valois, brother of Philippe IV, in 1301. The inherent flaws in the Latin empire of Constantinople were evident almost from its foundation in 1204. By the time Baldwin II became emperor, when he was still a minor, its problems were severe. There was a serious shortage of troops or indeed western settlers of any kind; and there was an absence of money to buy mercenaries. In 1236 Baldwin began his famous twelve-year-long tour of the courts of western Europe, seeking help. He found no enthusiasm anywhere. The only source of concrete assistance was the French king Louis IX, who gave him a substantial sum of money in return for what was accepted as Christ’s Crown of Thorns, one of the most precious relics of Constantinople. Baldwin also sold off the sponge and napkin of St Veronica, and even the lead from the roof of his palace, to try to raise an army to keep off his Greek and Bulgar enemies.3 In addition he divested himself of Namur, his most substantial western property. In 1263 Gui de Dampierre acquired this as a patrimony for the oldest son of his second marriage, Jean de Namur, of whom we have already spoken.4 But the amount Baldwin raised was negligible in comparison with what was needed. In 1261 Constantinople fell to Michael VIII Paleologus. The chance of Baldwin ever reversing this loss seemed slim. Charles of Anjou’s victory at Benevento in February 1266 and his accession to the throne of the Regno offered an opportunity for the erstwhile Latin emperor to interest the new king in the reconquest of Constantinople. Baldwin had a very weak hand in the negotiations, which were conducted under the eye of Pope Clement IV at Viterbo in 1267. The pope was anxious to get Constantinople back under western domination; he also wanted to direct Charles’s ambitions away from Tuscany and northern Italy. But he was not particularly concerned to preserve Baldwin’s claims. So he pressed Baldwin into a treaty that demanded of him immediate and real sacrifices – the resignation to Charles of his overlordship over Achaia (the surviving Frankish principality in southern Greece) and of his rights on the land between Corfu and Durazzo. Baldwin’s son Philip was to marry Charles’s younger daughter Beatrice; if the couple had no heirs, the titular emperorship was to go to Charles 3 4

Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, pp. 63–4. Boone, ‘Une société urbanisée sous tension’, p. 38.


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or his heirs. In return, Charles promised that he would, in six or seven years, mount an expedition for the recovery of Constantinople, comprising 2,000 horsed warriors, to conduct a whole year’s campaign. This, however, was the extent of his commitment; if the campaign failed there was no further plan. And all depended on what would happen in six or seven years.5 From the point of view of the Courtenay family, the Treaty of Viterbo’s immediate result was to bring both Baldwin and Philip, the heir to the imperial title, firmly within the Angevin circle. Philip’s marriage to Charles’s daughter Beatrice in 1273, just before his father’s death, made of him a resident of the Regno and a faithful performer of various not very onerous tasks for his father-in-law. Consequently the only child of his marriage, Catherine, was born in the Regno and, after her mother’s death in 1278 and Philip’s in 1283, was looked after by Marguerite, Charles of Anjou’s second wife, to whom she seems to have been devoted. All Catherine’s childhood and early adulthood were spent in the Regno, in the castles assigned to Marguerite for herself and the various children for whom she became responsible.6 As the titular empress of Constantinople, Catherine was treated with honour and respect everywhere. As has already been noted, Catherine came to France in 1290 in order to attempt to regain her French lands.7 There, she made Tonnerre her frequent stopping place, and was associated with Queen Marguerite in the development of the hospital.8 She was, however, too important a figure to be permitted to retreat from the world. The pope, Charles II and Philippe IV were all concerned to marry her off in a fashion that suited both their own interests and their wish that the Latin empire of Constantinople might become a reality again. The lady was one of the few known to have refused to consent in a plan of Boniface VIII – who wanted to marry her to Frederick III of Sicily – and survive unscathed.9 An earlier attempt to marry her to Michael, son of the Byzantine emperor Andronicus Comnenus, had also failed.10 In discussing suitable husbands, Catherine spent some time at Philippe IV’s court, and visited Robert d’Artois in Arras. He received her with lavish hospitality and spent 5 6 7

8 10

Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, pp. 60–7; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 93–4. RCA, vol. 20, reg. lxxxv, 9, 55. RCA CII, vol. 46, reg. lvii, 164. Charles II gave notice that he would regard her prolonged absence from the Regno as grounds for his breaching the Treaty of Viterbo, RCA CII, vol. 45, reg. liv, 64; but by this stage, she may not have believed it possible for him to help her effectively in the reconquest of Constantinople. 9 Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. I, nos. 804, 809. See above, pp. 74–6. Reg. Nicholas IV, no. 594.

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much of his dwindling resources on providing her with appropriate jewels and clothes. He also gave her money to cover her expenses in Paris in 1298.11 Meanwhile, she pursued various claims to lands in France.12 As she travelled around in state, those who saw her will have been reminded, not only of her claim to the imperial title, but also of the vital link she represented, through Robert d’Artois and through Queen Marguerite, between France and southern Italy. Catherine’s eventual marriage in 1301, with Philippe IV’s brother Charles de Valois, was intended to reinforce that link. Charles de Valois satisfied the pope, Charles II and Philippe IV as a man suitable in status, wealth and personality, to occupy the imperial throne of Constantinople. As a preliminary to undertaking that conquest, Charles was to uphold the Guelf cause in Italy and to put an end to the Aragonese Frederick III’s pretensions in Sicily. Hence he undertook the campaign of 1301–2, already described,13 which led not to the removal of Frederick III from the throne of Sicily but to a confirmation of his right as king of Trinacria for his lifetime in the Treaty of Caltabellotta in 1302. This treaty strongly displeased Boniface VIII, came as a welcome relief to Charles II (who had ceased to believe that a victory in Sicily was possible), and offered some hope in desperate circumstances to Philippe IV because it meant that Charles de Valois could return to France and assist the French cause after the defeat at Kortrijk in July 1302. What Catherine of Courtenay thought went unrecorded. But she surely must have realised that the chances of the Latin empire of Constantinople ever being reestablished were by now vanishing fast. Charles de Valois had one more possible attempt to conquer Constantinople in 1304–5, as part of a western alliance.14 After this plan failed, his attention was, for the rest of his long life, devoted to western affairs. Still, the marriage of his daughter and heiress to her mother’s title, Catherine de Valois, with Philip of Taranto, son of Charles II, in 1313 showed that old dreams and loyalties died hard. Historians with hindsight may judge the Courtenay family to have been hopeless fantasists. But at the time, the claim to empire lent status even to cadet branches of the family, and correspondingly gave them an interest in the Regno, whence came their best (though never good) prospect of regaining power in Constantinople. The branch of the family that made a significant contribution to Charles of Anjou’s ability 11 12

13

Pas-de-Calais Série A, 2 (register), fols. 21v and 31v. RCA CII, vol. 47, reg. lviii, 288. Presumably she was hoping to recover some at least of the lands that her grandfather had once held in the region of Auxerre. But there is no evidence of her success. 14 Schein, Fideles crucis, pp. 176–80. See above, pp. 45–6.


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to rule the Regno was that descended from Robert de Courtenay, lord of Champignelles (near Auxerre) and his wife, Mahaud de Mehun-surYèvre.15 Among the children of this marriage, all great-grandchildren of King Louis VI, was Raoul, lord of Tanlay. Raoul, heir to Champignelles, and married to Agnès de Montfort, countess of Bigorre, risked his French lands to accompany Charles on the conquest of the Regno. By 1269, he was rewarded with the countship of Chieti in the Abruzzi, an area crucial to the defence of Charles’s new realm.16 Charles always spoke of him as a relation17 and showed warmth to him. But the friendship was short. Like many other Frenchmen who attempted to make a home in the Regno, Raoul became the victim of a killer disease (probably malaria), and died in 1271. His small daughter Mahaud, who had probably come to the Regno in the train of Marguerite of Tonnerre in 1268, succeeded her father. We have already followed her story as the first wife of Philippe de Chieti, son of Gui de Dampierre.18 She died, apparently childless, in 1301. Raoul’s younger brother Robert was trained from boyhood for the church, and won success quite early. His first promotion was to a canonry in Bourges; this was followed in 1247 by a canonry in Chartres, and in 1258 he was elected bishop of Orléans.19 In that capacity, he oversaw the contract of marriage between his niece, Amicie de Courtenay, and Robert d’Artois.20 He visited the Regno in 1268–69,21 before accompanying Louis IX on the Tunis crusade in 1269–70, and on his home journey decided to stay for some time in the Regno as a member of Charles of Anjou’s household. He was given the revenues from Sarno to maintain himself during his stay, and the castle there as his residence.22 He was involved in important business for Charles.23 Presumably he was also concerned for the fate of his very young niece, Mahaud, after the death of his brother Raoul. While there, Robert will have met with 15

16 17 18 20

21 22 23

Patrick van Kerrebrouck, Nouvelle histoire généalogique de l’auguste maison de France, vol. II: Les Capétiens 987–1328 (Villeneuve d’Asq: n.p., 2000), pp. 471–2, modified by the entry for Jean de Courtenay, no. 1366, p. 165 in Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, vol. III: Diocèse de Reims, ed Pierre Desportes (Turnhout: Brépols, 1998). RCA, vol. 1, reg. vi, 346. They were both descended from Louis VI of France; the relationship between the families became much closer after the marriage of Philip and Beatrice. 19 Dictionnaire de biographie française, vol. IX, col. 1019. See above, p. 124. Du Bouchet, Histoire généalogique de la maison royal de Courtenay, p. 118. The importance of this marriage to the ruling family of Artois is very evident in the large number of charters relating to it in the first cartulary of Artois, Archives du Nord, B/1593. RCA, vol. 1, reg. vi, 85, 90, 187. RCA, vol. 2, reg. viii, 519; vol. 3, reg. xiii, 330; vol. 4, reg. xiv, 957. He was still in the Regno in August 1271; RCA, vol. 5, reg. xx, 157. RCA, vol. 2, reg. viii, 776, 778.

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Baldwin II, titular emperor of Constantinople, to renew the family link. In pursuit of Baldwin’s son Philip’s interests, Robert will have encouraged Charles of Anjou in his projected campaign in Albania in 1271– 72. Unlike Raoul, Robert survived the climate and other hazards of the Regno, and returned to France by 1271, apparently satisfied with the arrangements that had been made to look after Mahaud for the rest of her childhood and to preserve her inheritance for her. Once home, Robert entered into relations with Philippe III’s advisor Pierre de la Broce, perhaps acting as a channel of communication between him and Charles of Anjou.24 In 1275 he made the first official request that Louis IX should be canonised – a plan very close to Charles’s heart.25 In 1278 Robert died. There is no concrete proof that he had used the tenure of his episcopal throne in Orléans to preach the cause of Angevin lordship in the Regno, though it is probable.26 That he did feel attachment to that cause is perhaps to be inferred from the promotion of a Pierre de Courtenay (his nephew?), a professor of law in Naples, first to the archdeaconry of Otranto and then to the Treasurership of the Regno in the reign of Charles II.27 For about forty years, the fortunes of the Courtenay family were intimately bound up with the Angevin regime in the Regno. Their royal blood and their imperial claims made them among the leaders of French aristocratic society. Two members, Jean (the fourth son of Robert and Mahaud) and his nephew Robert, were elected to the archbishopric of Reims. They were renowned for their devotion to the crusading cause – Jean died on the Tunis crusade – and for their loyalty to their relations, Philippe III and Philippe IV of France and Charles of Anjou and Charles II of the Regno. Although the re-establishment of the Latin empire of Constantinople was not high on the priorities of these kings, Philippe IV did permit Charles de Valois to make a desultory attempt at it in 1301 and, much more importantly, Charles of Anjou was preparing a serious attempt in accordance with his promise at Viterbo when he was 24 25 26

27

On this see above, pp. 40–1. Van Kerrebrouck, Nouvelle histoire généalogique, p. 473. It is notable that the subdean of Orléans cathedral, Pierre de Motte, was a major figure in the collection of tenths within France for Charles of Anjou; Pietro Farinelli, archdeacon of Orléans, was treasurer and counsellor first to Charles of Salerno and then to Charles of Anjou; and the dean of St Peter’s in Orléans, Guillaume de Faronville, was vicechancellor of the Regno. It is doubtful if Pietro and Guillaume could have remained so long absent from Orléans without the strong approval of their bishop for the work they were doing in the Regno. In addition, Herbert of Orléans worked his way up through the ranks until, at the time of the Vespers, he was Charles’s vicar in Sicily. Various other laymen from Orléans are mentioned in RCA as working for the regime in the late 1260s and 1270s. RCA, vol. 27, part 1, reg. cxvii, 119, 169, 173; RCA CII, vol. 35, reg. xxi, 76.


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distracted in 1282 by the outbreak of the Sicilian Vespers.28 As long as Catherine of Courtenay remained living in the Regno with Marguerite, queen then dowager queen, she focused the attention of all her French relations on the political situation in southern Italy and Sicily. Although after 1290 she spent much time in France, she spent it largely in the company of Marguerite or of Robert d’Artois, both bastions of the Angevin cause. It was not until her marriage with Charles de Valois and the failure of his Italian campaign in 1302 that the link between the Courtenays and the Regno slowly began to disintegrate. Few who had watched the career of Charles II up to that date could imagine him as the devoted champion of any military undertaking, far less one that demanded firm commitment and leadership. On the other hand, until that point, the Courtenay family’s adherence to the Angevin house had enhanced the position of both Charleses as the crucial champions of any attempt to re-establish the Latin empire of Constantinople. The dukes of Burgundy had lesser pretensions than the Courtenays, but a much more substantial power base in France.29 Though they dreamed of enhancing their power by conquest in the Mediterranean, when those dreams became unrealistic they found it much easier than did the Courtenays to shelve them and concentrate on Burgundy. Their debt to the Angevins was not particularly great, and easily forgotten as circumstances changed. So it was only for a few years in the reign of Charles of Anjou that the relationship mattered. Nevertheless, if shortlived, it was of real importance during the rule of Duke Hugues IV (1229–72), whose appetite for acquisition was keen and who had shown his enthusiasm for crusading by participating both in Thibaud of Champagne’s expedition in 1239 and in Louis IX’s first crusade in 1248, and by supporting his son Eudes’s expedition to Outremer in 1265. By 1265, Hugues was probably thinking about resigning his duchy into the hands of his son and finding somewhere else to end his days, preferably somewhere that he could hold as a bastion of Christianity in Outremer. Therefore, after Eudes’s departure to the east, he met with Baldwin II and in January 1266 arranged to assist him in the reconquest of the Latin empire to the best of his ability – he was both wealthy and relatively rich in military resources – in exchange for the principality of Thessalonica once that had been retaken by the Latins.30 Thessalonica had always been the most desirable of the political units in the Latin empire; Hugues was fortunate in securing a promise to it. But he was 28 29

For the view that Charles put the reconquest of Constantinople high on his list of priorities from the very beginning, see Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers, pp. 136–9. 30 Richard, Saint Louis, p. 479. Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne, pp. 294–305.

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doubtless aware that it was most unlikely that he and Baldwin on their own would be able to regain all the territory lost in 1261. The advent of Charles of Anjou to the throne of the Regno and his negotiations with Baldwin II at Viterbo somewhat altered this plan, because Charles seemed a more credible conqueror than did Hugues. As we have seen, Baldwin agreed to marry his son Philip to Charles’s daughter, and to allow Charles or his heirs to inherit the imperial title should Philip and Beatrice have no children. As soon as this was known to Hugues, he came rapidly to the Regno, where in 1268 he extracted from Charles the promise that Thessalonica should be his if he supported the reconquest to his utmost.31 Although by the terms of the Treaty of Viterbo Charles was not bound to attempt the reconquest for at least six years, and then only to fight for one year, Hugues was apparently content to wait. Charles’s liberality in promising to give away so large a part of the empire to Hugues may be taken either as an indication that he realised his own capacity to raise 2,000 armed men for the campaign as he had promised was at least temporarily unrealistic; or that he faced so many pressing problems in 1268, above all the advent of Corradin, that he could not bargain – in 1269 he allowed Baldwin to make another generous donation to Count Thibaud V of quarter of the empire in return for his help;32 or possibly that he was not himself keenly interested in the future of the Latin empire of Constantinople. Nevertheless, as a symbol of the importance of the alliance with Hugues, Charles took as his second wife Hugues’s granddaughter Marguerite. Despite the death of his son Eudes in August 1266 and the imminence of a succession crisis in Burgundy, Hugues remained in the Regno, in close contact with Charles, until 1271. Presumably he expected that Louis IX’s second crusade, which was about to set off, would greatly assist his plans. Hence he willingly lent Charles money to reduce the gaping hole in his finances, and agreed to act as one of the regents in the Regno during Charles’s absence on crusade.33 In this capacity he had little time to show his ability, for the disaster at Tunis meant that Charles returned home within six months of his departure from Trapani, bearing with him the corpse of Louis IX, and a large body of French mourners. At this point, Hugues returned to Burgundy, where he died the following year. His death brought with it a bitter succession dispute, which totally distracted both Robert II, who acquired the duchy, and Robert de Béthune, whose claims through his second wife were passed over.34 Even so, when 31 33 34

32 Richard, Saint Louis, p. 479. Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, p. 67. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 1462; vol. 7, reg. xxix, 82. Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne, pp. 318–26.


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Robert II finally took the title of duke in 1275, he sent at once to Philip of Courtenay an embassy to ensure that Hugues IV’s claims to Thessalonica were accepted as having descended to him.35 He had not forgotten Hugues’s eastern ambitions. Charles and his wife contrived to settle their claims to part of the Burgundian inheritance without creating bitterness, though their relationship with Robert never had much warmth. Still, the new duke allowed his uncle to assist Charles against the Aragonese in 1282.36 In 1283, when Charles was desperate for help, he dangled the prospect of Thessalonica before Robert’s eye; but the duke was too involved with his plans in the Dauphiné at that point to assist.37 Nevertheless, Robert’s seventh child aspired to marry Catherine de Valois and to reconquer Thessalonica; and when this plan failed, Robert’s eighth child, Louis, was given the title ‘King of Thessalonica and Prince of Morea’ in 1313.38 He attempted to regain these lands, but died in 1316 without success. It was not before 1331 that the Burgundian ducal family finally sold their claim to Thessalonica.39 As with other French families, dreams of the east retained their allure for the Burgundian ducal house for a very long time, though after Hugues IV’s death they wasted few resources on them. Other families that had held land in the Latin empire and became increasingly involved in the Regno, while still keeping up contacts with their relatives in France, were the Villehardouin lords of Achaia, who by the Treaty of Viterbo in 1267 came to recognise that they held of Charles of Anjou; and the Burgundian de la Roche rulers of Athens, with whom both Robert d’Artois and Charles II sought and maintained an alliance.40 Despite a marriage between a niece of Guillaume de Villehardouin and the lord of Athens, Gui de la Roche, the two families often disagreed, thereby weakening the defence of the Latin cause against a reviving Greek military capability.41 Guillaume de Villehardouin, grandson of the Geoffrey who had built up his principality of Achaia in Greece in the aftermath of the fourth crusade, had been heavily defeated by the resurgent Greek armies at the battle of Pelagonia in 1259. His authority had crumbled when in 1267 he undertook at Viterbo to recognise Charles of Anjou as his lord and to marry his eldest daughter and heiress Isabelle to Charles’s 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Henri Jassemin (ed.), Le Mémorial de Robert II, p. xxxi. Van Kerrebrouck, Nouvelle histoire généalogique, p. 579. Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, vol. VI, p. 305, no. 4593. Van Kerrebrouck, Nouvelle histoire généalogique, p. 586. Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, p. 67. Cf. Jassemin, Le Mémorial de Robert II, p. xxxi. RCA, vol. 20, reg. lxxxv, 103; RCA CII, vol. 28, Praefazione, p. x; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 92. Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, pp. 364, 375; RCA CII, vol. 48, reg. lxiii, 220.

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son Philip, and agreed that, if there were no children of the marriage, Achaia should pass to Charles. That he had been obliged thus to knuckle under was a bitter blow to Guillaume, especially as his son-in-law died just a few months before he himself in 1278. Achaia lost its independence; Isabelle was required to live out her widowhood in Naples. But in 1289 Charles II, facing serious problems at home, permitted Isabelle to marry again and allowed her new husband, Florent de Hainault (a direct descendant of the first Latin emperor of Constantinople) to rule Achaia in his stead.42 The fate of what came more commonly to be called Morea thereafter concerned not only the Villehardouins of Champagne but also the ruling house of Hainault. And both families kept their interests there alive. Of bluer blood was the Brienne family, some members of which made the journey from Outremer to the Regno. Jean de Brienne, the Champagne warrior who became king of Jerusalem (1210–25) and then coemperor of Constantinople in the minority of Baldwin II (1229–37), was a much married man. One of his sons by his third marriage, Louis, became viscount of Beaumont-en-Sarthe by virtue of a marriage with its heiress, Agnès.43 It was natural that a man of his background should be drawn to the Regno after his new lord, Charles of Anjou, had conquered it. Furthermore, he was presumably concerned with the welfare of his nephew, Philip of Courtenay (son of his sister Marie de Brienne and Baldwin II), heir to the title of Latin emperor. Louis visited the Regno in 1270 in the wake of the Tunis crusade, and left there a daughter to be brought up along with the children of the royal family.44 This arrangement suggests that the child was thought of as a possible bride for any son Charles and Marguerite might have. But if this was the plan, no son of this marriage survived infancy. In 1278, Charles of Anjou sent Louis’s daughter, Marguerite, off to Acre and then to Tripoli, to be married to Bohemond VII, titular prince of Antioch and lord of Tripoli.45 The marriage was clearly intended to reinforce that prince’s weak position in Outremer by connecting him with the Brienne family, and giving him some standing with Charles of Anjou. Unfortunately, Bohemond’s differences with the Master of the Temple, Guillaume de Beaujeu, also a relation and close friend of Charles, accelerated the decline of his power in Tripoli and prepared the city for its fall to the Mamluks, which took place in 1289.46 On 42 43 44 46

Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, p. 95. Dictionnaire de biographie française, vol. IX, p. 1133. I am grateful to Guy Perry for assistance with this matter. 45 RCA, vol. 18, reg. lxxx, 853, 854, 859. RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxx, 369. The principal source for this is The ‘Templar of Tyre’: Part III of the ‘Deeds of the Cypriots’, trans. Paul Crawford (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 69–70, 95–101.


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Bohemond’s early death in 1287 there were no children from the marriage to inherit, so Marguerite returned to the Regno.47 Later she took up residence at Tonnerre with the dowager queen Marguerite, where she continued to live until Marguerite’s death in 1309.48 Another member of a different branch of the Brienne family, Hugues, chose to make his career in the Regno. He was the son of Walter IV, count of Brienne and lord of Jaffa, who was the nephew of King Jean de Brienne and therefore the first cousin of Louis, viscount of Beaumont-en-Sarthe. Walter’s wife had been Maria, sister of King Henry I of Cyprus, through whom their son Hugues acquired claims to the thrones of both Jerusalem and Cyprus.49 Hugues acquired the county of Brienne in Champagne in 1260 on the death of his brother Jean, but determined to remain in Outremer. After his failure to acquire the regency of Jerusalem in 1264, he seems to have thought himself at a loose end. Exactly when he joined Charles of Anjou’s army is uncertain, but he was present at the battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268, and became count of Lecce in 1271.50 He was asked to accompany Charles on a visit to Rome in 1275,51 and fought steadily on the Angevin side throughout the whole of his life. In 1284 he was captured along with Charles of Salerno by Roger Lauria. Having bought his freedom, he was a major player in the defence of Brindisi and Bari for Robert d’Artois.52 He was captured for a second time in 1287 while trying to attack Augusta in Sicily.53 The cost of his ransom was very high, so he had to leave his son as hostage to guarantee payment. He attended Charles II at his coronation in Rieti in 1289, and became butler of the Regno, a grand title, shortly after.54 In 1291, by his second marriage with Helena Doukaina he became bailiff of Athens for his stepson Gui II de la Roche. (In 1308, his own son Gautier became duke of Athens.)55 This involved him in a quarrel with Florent de Hainault and Isabelle de Villehardouin in 1293, in which he showed rather little concern for Charles II’s attempts to mediate.56 He finally died from wounds received in battle in 1296. Superficially, he was a staunch Angevin supporter. Yet in virtue of his family connections he played a role outside the Regno which may have put some strain on his position within them. In 1289 he 47 48 49 50 51 53 54 56

The fullest account is in René Grousset, Histoire des croisades et du royaume de Jérusalem, vol. III (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1936), p. 734. Archives du Nord, B/447(4.621). Peter W. Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), pp. 80–1. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 238, 439. See Pryor, ‘Soldiers of fortune in the fleets of Charles of Anjou’, pp. 124–5. 52 RCA CII, vol. 28, reg. iv, 72. RCA, vol. 12, reg. lxviii, 178. Dictionnaire de biographie française, vol. VII, pp. 278–9. 55 Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, pp. 96, 104. RCA CII, vol. 40, reg. xxxvi, 40. RCA CII, vol. 47, reg. lviii, 552, 553, 554.

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engaged in negotiations with Alfonso III of Aragon about selling to him his claim to Cyprus. This plan was hard, though perhaps not impossible, to reconcile with his loyalty to Charles II.57 Hugues had almost as many irons in his fire as had had his formidable great-uncle, King Jean de Brienne. It was presumably difficult for the Angevin rulers to contain a man of his many interests within their conventions for feudal obedience.58 Yet there is no hint in surviving sources of overt trouble between Hugues and either Charles I or Charles II. Almost as well known as the Briennes were the Montforts, originally from Montfort-l’Aumery. The family was famous throughout France for the career of Simon I, who had led the Albigensian crusade, and throughout England for his son Simon II, who became the most determined of the rebels against Henry III and who was, in Victorian historiography, regarded as a major force in the evolution of the English houses of parliament.59 After Simon’s defeat at Evesham in 1265, two of his sons, Gui and Simon III, joined Charles of Anjou’s army and fought in Italy. We shall be concerned with their fate below (pp. 163–4). The cadet branch of the family, descended from Simon I’s brother Gui, who had married Heloise d’Ibelin, gradually moved from positions of importance in Outremer to power in the Regno. Philippe de Montfort, to whom Louis VIII had given Castres and part of the Albigeois as part of a settlement after the Capetian takeover of Languedoc, had then acquired through marriage the lordship of Tyre, the second most important port in Outremer. But in 1264, moved by a desire to make his peace with the new king of Jerusalem Hugh III, he surrendered Tyre to his son Jean by his second wife, Maria of Antioch.60 His son by his first marriage, also called Philippe, inherited the lands in Languedoc once given to his father, and married into a family with strong local connections. He was deemed to have both the temperament and the military experience to lead the great army of 1265 which marched into northern Italy and then down to Rome in support of Charles of Anjou. As a reward for his competent performance of this difficult task, Charles made Philippe first captain-general of the army sent to defend the pope in Viterbo and 57 58

59 60

Elena Lourie, ‘An offer of the suzerainty and escheat of Cyprus to Alphonso III of Aragon in 1289’, English Historical Review 84 (1969), 101–8, esp. 105–7. Hugues aspired to build up his criminal jurisdiction in the Regno in the same way as it was possible for barons in Cyprus and France; RCA, vol. 12, reg. lxxviii, 348. Charles I trenchantly refused to allow this. Hugues also raised issues about which barons of Lecce were his dependants and which the king’s, RCA CII, vol. 35, reg. xxi, 178. He was accused of illegally taking over a royal chapel in Lecce, RCA CII, vol. 40, reg. xxxvi, 156. But apparently no lasting discord resulted. For a reassessment, John Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Peter W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 91.


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then vicar in Sicily, bestowing on him the countships of Gerace and Squillace.61 He accompanied Charles to Tunis in 1270, where he died. Philippe’s elder son Jean then inherited his father’s lands and became the only sizeable French landholder (apart from the king) in the whole island of Sicily.62 By 1273 Jean was chamberlain of the Regno, at that point a predominantly military office. He was put in charge of various campaigns in Tuscany. By way of reward for faithful service, Charles gave him as his bride Marguerite de Beaumont, heiress of Pierre de Beaumont of whom we shall speak shortly, and conferred on him Pierre’s county of Montescaglioso.63 In 1275, Jean’s surviving brother, Simon, died of wounds after a fight with an Italian enemy, and Charles of Anjou had swiftly to forbid Jean to wreak revenge.64 By this time, it appears that Jean had put his concerns in Castres and part of the Albigeois to the back of his mind; consequently his losses were greater than those of any other French baron when Sicily fell under Aragonese domination as a result of the Vespers rebellion. From this point on, his interests and those of the Angevin kings necessarily coincided in struggling to reassert domination over Sicily. After Charles of Anjou’s death and during the imprisonment of Charles of Salerno, Jean was a vital cog in the military machine of the Angevin defence as captain-general of the army. He was one of many captured by Roger Lauria at Augusta in 1287 and forced to pay a large ransom. When Robert d’Artois went back to France in November 1291, Jean became the chief counsellor of the young Charles Martell, now acting as his father’s vicar in the Regno.65 In this capacity Jean was able to offer help to his cousin Amaury de Montfort, the last surviving member of the family of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, who negotiated to be received into the royal household, and later was given a house in Manfredonia, and the wardship of the dead Gui’s daughter.66 Jean still held the offices of grand chamberlain and captain-general in 1300; but he probably died very shortly after this.67 It was a remarkably steadfast

61 62 63 64 65 66 67

RCA, vol. 1, reg. ii, 225; reg. iv, 6; vol. 3, reg. xiii, 568; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 187. Henri Bresc, ‘1282: Classes sociales et révolution nationale’, in La società mediterranea all’epoca del Vespro, vol. II, pp. 241–58, at p. 245. RCA, vol. 15, reg. lxxvii, 72. On the background to this marriage, see below, p. 165, n. 38. RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxx, 226, 227. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 400. RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 13; vol. 40, reg. xxxvii, 17; vol. 38, reg. xxx, 48. Pollastri, ‘La présence ultramontaine dans le midi italien’, p. 17, has found evidence that he survived in office until 1310. But this is at odds with the entry in Minieri Riccio, Studii storici fatti sopra 84 registri, p. 99, which records the donation of Jean de Montfort’s lands to John Tristan, son of Charles II, in 1302.

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and committed career for a member of one of the most distinguished but headstrong, even rebellious, houses of France. But, like many of his uncles and cousins, in the course of his life Jean had lost much of the land that had once been his. There was not much left to leave to his heirs, and there were no sons to leave it to. The Beaumonts were in origin an entirely different group of people. Jean Richard has demonstrated the family’s rise to significance through service in the French king’s household.68 Their lands were in Beaumonten-Gâtinais, with easy access both to Paris and to Charles of Anjou’s centres of authority in Anjou and Maine. Guillaume de Beaumont, marshal of France, is known through the pages of Joinville’s chronicle as a participant on the first crusade of St Louis, on which he is thought to have died.69 As a young man he had spent time in Orléans acquiring a legal training in the law school that was springing up there.70 Guillaume had at least four sons, all of whom were deeply implicated in the conquest of the Regno and the establishment of Charles of Anjou’s government there. Three were laymen and one, Geoffroi, became an ecclesiastic. Given the family’s significance in French royal administration before 1266, King Louis’s endorsement of the sons’ activities in the Regno was a clear signal of his approval of Charles’s conquest. Of the four sons of Guillaume the Marshal, Guillaume may have been the eldest. He had been an intimate of Charles since at least 1253,71 and had been involved in the conquest of the Regno. Charles nominated him as admiral of the Regno after the battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268, and gave him the countship of Caserta. At the time of his death in July 1269 he was also vicar-general in Sicily.72 He was responsible for attempting to subdue the opposition to Charles in Sicily, a difficult and dangerous task. His death was a real blow to Charles. Once dead, his actions were the subject of vociferous complaints to the royal court, as might be expected of one whose task had been to use force to eliminate pro-Hohenstaufen sentiment.73 He had a daughter, who could have claimed the countship of Caserta, but she failed to arrive in the Regno within the requisite time, and so it was forfeited to the king.74 68

69 70 71 72 73 74

Saint Louis, p. 613; the genealogical table shows their links with the Nemours-Villebéons, the Cléments and the Cornuts. Richard omits from his table the fourth brother, Guillaume. Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Monfrin, pp. 210, 287. Juris Interpretes saec. XIII curantibus scholaribus Leidensibus duce E. M. Meyers (Naples: Francesco Perrella, 1925), p. xxxvii. Reg. Innocent IV, vol. III, no. 6816. RCA, vol. 2, reg. viii, 341. Cf. Peter Herde, Karl I. von Anjou (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1979), p. 71. RCA, vol. 1, reg. vi, 450; vol. 3, reg. xii, 367, reg. xiii, 568. C. Minieri Riccio, Brevi notizie intorno all’archivio angioino di Napoli (Naples, 1850), p. 106.


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The next brother, Pierre, had been involved in recruiting troops and raising money for Charles’s great enterprise.75 He had links of friendship not only with Charles but with Pope Clement IV, who permitted him to establish himself at Charles’s court.76 Charles encouraged Pierre’s marriage with Filippa, the count of Celano’s daughter, as a means of creating harmony between the old and the new aristocracy, and of acquiring for Pierre the county of Alba.77 They had a family of four girls. Pierre became chamberlain of the Regno, a position that combined at this stage control over royal finances with both military and diplomatic roles.78 All taxes came through the chamberlain’s hands, and all financial officials in the Regno were obliged to account to him when they left office. His chief occupation was trying to keep Charles’s creditors calm while he repaid what he could, put off what he could, and looked earnestly everywhere for more loans.79 He was rewarded with the countship of Montescaglioso, and enough patronage to launch the career of his doctor, Nicola of Aversa, as an important figure in the Regno.80 Pierre accompanied Charles on the Tunis crusade. He remained as a major pillar of Charles’s administration until 1272, when he returned to France, in order to negotiate on Charles’s behalf with his sisters-in-law, the queens of France and England, and to obtain a loan from Philippe III.81 On the way, he did some business for Charles in the county of Anjou.82 Pierre died in June 1273 in France. After some delay, his daughter and heiress Marguerite came to the Regno, was recognised as his heir, and was married, as we have seen, to Jean de Montfort in 1274. Of Pierre’s other daughters, only one, the fourth, bore a son, to Geoffroi de Joinville to secure the future of the aristocracy of the Regno; another was married to Jean Britaud de Nangis, constable of the Regno, and the fourth died before her marriage to Simon de Montfort, Jean’s brother.83 A third Beaumont son was Dreux, who outlived his brothers by some distance, and who, like them, continued to possess lands in France throughout his life. He became in 1270 marshal of the Regno, by this 75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83

Maius chronicon Lemovensis, RHF, vol. XXI, p. 771; quoted in Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 148. TNA, vol. II, epae. 347, 348, 349, 407. RCA, vol. 3, reg. xiii, 2. On the definitive split between the treasury and the chamber in October 1277, see Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 423. On Pierre’s diplomatic role, see ed. Sergio Terlizzi, Documenti delle relazioni tra Carlo I d’Angiò e la Toscana, prima parte (Florence: Olschki, 1950), no. 314. Ibid., nos. 313, 314. RCA, vol. 7, reg. xxviii, 74. RCA, vol. 10, reg. xlix, 225. RCA, vol. 10, reg. xlviii, 440; reg. xlix, 157. RCA, vol. 19, reg. lxxxii, 477; Miniero Riccio, Cenni storici intorno i grandi uffizii del regno, p. 265.

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time the most important military post, and was chosen to take Charles’s daughter Isabelle to Hungary to marry Ladislas, the heir to the Hungarian throne.84 Dreux was heavily involved in campaigns on the Adriatic to consolidate Charles’s hold on the crucially important lands from Corfu to Durazzo. In 1271 he was captured by pirates at Ragusa, and although he escaped, the fallout from his wrath was still being felt in 1275.85 By 1272 he was married to the daughter of the titular emperor Philip of Courtenay’s chamberlain, which gave him an incentive to fight hard for Angevin domination of Achaia and Albania, his life’s work.86 He was sufficiently indispensable to Charles’s war effort to dare to put in a serious complaint to the royal court about how the justiciars had harassed his people in the Regno and raised unjust taxes from them in his absence.87 He remained marshal of the Regno till 1276, when he died.88 He had given bountifully of his energy and prowess in the cause of the survival of Achaia. He was succeeded by his son Adenotto, whose career was less brilliant and far shorter than that of his father.89 The one clerical brother, Geoffroi de Beaumont, was more like Pierre than Guillaume or Dreux. Already well embarked on his career – he was chancellor of Bayeux in Normandy – before he became involved in the Regno, he was well known at the papal curia, where he had been appointed a papal chaplain. His first task for Charles was to preach the crusade in Lombardy in 1264. He soon showed that he was a diplomat of skill. Clement IV used him as a legate to help conduct the army under Philippe de Montfort through northern Italy down to Rome in 1265– 66. He was present at Viterbo in 1267 during the negotiations with the emperor Baldwin II, and Charles of Anjou used him to negotiate the contract for his second marriage with Marguerite of Tonnerre.90 Like Pierre, he was involved in borrowing money on a large scale for the payment of the Angevin armies; he took no salary for three years from Charles in order to assist with the king’s financial crisis.91 His most enduring service for Charles was the organisation of his chancery, soon to become exemplary for other European incipient bureaucracies.92 Norbert Kamp called Geoffroi one of the most talented administrators of 84 86 88 89

90 91 92

85 RCA, vol. 14, reg. lxxiv, 25. RCA, vol. 4, reg. xiv, 351. 87 RCA, vol. 10, reg. xlviii, 113. RCA, vol. 4, reg. xiv, 1050. RCA, vol. 14. reg. lxxvi, 309, 411. Sylvie Pollastri calls him the brother, instead of the nephew, of Pierre de Beaumont; ‘L’aristocratie napolitaine au temps des Angevins’, in Tonnerre and Verry (eds.), Les princes angevins, p. 160. RCA, vol. 1, reg. iii, 3; Petit, Les ducs de Bourgogne, vol. V, p. 129. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, nos. 13, 14, 407. Kiesewetter, ‘La cancelleria angioina’, pp. 360–415 at pp. 366–7; Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, p. 159.


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the thirteenth century.93 In his capacity as chancellor, Geoffroi travelled regularly with the king, and made the journey to Tunis in 1270. Despite the key role he played in the consolidation of the Angevin regime, he did not intend to remain in the Regno all his life. He appears to have refused the archbishopric of Monreale in 1266.94 In 1271, he accepted nomination to the bishopric of Laon, left the Regno and set off for France, where he was present at the coronation of Philippe III. Charles asked him to act as his proctor in his dispute with the new king over the salt gabelle ˆ 95 Geoffroi can hardly have reached Laon when he died in on the Rhone. February 1272. His legacy of his theology books to Charles is proof that he knew the king would value them.96 The Beaumont brothers constitute a good example of the rise of royal servants into the aristocracy. The high degree of literacy and numeracy attained by both Pierre, a layman, and Geoffroi, his clerical brother, marked them out for promotion. Their loyalty to Charles was unswerving; yet both kept strong links with their homelands, and both returned to France as soon as they thought the serious dangers to the new regime were over. Without them, Charles would have been unable to establish himself in the Regno. The king’s debts to Guillaume and Dreux were perhaps as great, but because they left less written record of their services, it is hard to be as specific as to what they achieved. One striking feature of the family is that they all kept close connections with their homeland; another is the relative absence of heirs. Although Pierre, Guillaume and Dreux all had children, only Dreux had a male heir.97 Like the Montforts, though more speedily, the Beaumonts disappeared from the records. As the Beaumonts had been to Louis IX, the Toucys had been to the Latin emperor Baldwin II Courtenay. Joinville tells us that the family descended from the sister of King Philippe, that is Philippe Auguste’s sister Agnès, who married the Greek emperor Alexius II in 1180 and then was forcibly married to the usurper Andronicus in 1181.98 If this line of descent for the Toucys was correct, it was probably through Agnès’s third husband, Theodore Branas. It is notable that Charles of Anjou and Charles II always treated members of the Toucy family as relations. Close allies of the Villehardouins, though of lesser social rank, 93 94 95 96 97

98

Kamp, Kirche und Monarchie, vol. III, p. 1200. Reg. Clément IV, 376; Kamp, Kirche und Monarchie, vol. III, p. 1200. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 1660; Minieri Riccio, Cenni storico intorno i grandi uffizii del Regno, pp. 186–7. RCA, vol. 8, reg. xxxvii, 784. On Guillaume’s daughter Isabelle, see RCA, vol. 1, reg. vi, 379. She and her husband never came to the Regno. On Dreux’s heir Adenotto, see RCA, vol. 14, reg. lxxvi, 411. For Adenotto’s death without heirs, see RCA, vol. 21, reg. lxxxvii, 99. Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Monfrin, p. 245.

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the Toucy family was much weakened by the fall of the Latin empire in Constantinople in 1261, where Philippe de Toucy had achieved the rank of bailli. Ancelin de Toucy was reputed to have acquired fame by his ability to speak both Greek and Turkish.99 It was, however, his and his brother Philippe’s knowledge of seamanship and the customs of Achaia that marked them out for high office under Charles of Anjou. Ancelin came to the Regno, probably with Guillaume de Villehardouin to fight at Tagliacozzo, and after the victory was rewarded with lands in the Regno confiscated from some of Corradin’s supporters.100 He was put in charge of the ships sent in 1270 to bring Isabelle de Villehardouin for her marriage to Philip of Anjou,101 and then was one of the two commissioners sent to obtain oaths of loyalty from the inhabitants of Achaia to the newly weds.102 He died childless in 1272, and his lands passed to his brother.103 Meanwhile Philippe de Toucy had become admiral of the Regno, a post he held until his death, and which was rewarded with a salary, some allowances of food and some land in the Regno.104 Philippe’s chief task was to equip the fleets that were needed for Charles’s campaigns to assist Achaia and hold down Albania. On a less exalted plane, he received endless orders to provide ships for taking important people to Achaia, Corfu and other parts of Charles’s empire. One of his less difficult duties was to take responsibility for the arrival of the patriarch of Jerusalem, newly elected Pope Gregory X, at Messina in 1272.105 Every year, he was ordered to equip vessels to take Charles’s ambassadors to Tunis to collect the annual subvention from the emir agreed in 1270.106 Because few of Charles’s French aristocrats had had experience of equipping fleets, Philippe was invaluable to Charles. Unlike his brother, Philippe had two sons, the elder of whom, Narjaud, he was training up to take his place.107 Charles trusted Narjaud sufficiently to make him captain of Durazzo in 1274;108 but by the following year the young man had forfeited that trust and was removed from that office.109 Philippe died in 1277.110 Although Narjaud inherited his father’s title of Great Admiral, until 1287 he had no real control over 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 107 109

Crusaders as Conquerors. The Chronicle of Morea, trans. Harold E. Lurier (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 223–4. RCA, vol. 1, reg. vi, 261. RCA, vol. 3, reg. xiii, 776; vol. 4, reg. xiv, 1029, 1094. RCA, vol. 5, reg. xv, 148 and 348. RCA, vol. 9, reg. xlii, 173; vol. 10, reg. xlviii, 89. RCA, vol. 6, reg. xxii, 724, 1333. See also Pryor, ‘Soldiers of fortune’, pp. 127–8. 106 RCA, vol. 5, reg. xx, 42; vol. 9, reg. xliv, 9. RCA, vol. 8, reg. xxxvii, 365. 108 RCA, vol. 11, reg. lviii, 359. RCA, vol. 10, reg. xlviii, 137. 110 RCA, vol. 14, reg. lxxvi, 339, 346. RCA, vol. 12, reg. lxviii, 84.


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the fleet.111 In 1287, Robert d’Artois put him in command of the ships that were defeated by Roger Lauria at Augusta, an inglorious episode in the history of the Regno. In 1289 Narjaud set out with his wife, Princess Lucia of Antioch, to attempt to gain the lordship of Tripoli after Bohemond VII’s death.112 But he died in September of that year, leaving Lucia to make her bid for power herself. He had a very young son Philippe, who eventually got his inheritance in the Regno.113 In the meantime, his lands went to Eudes de Toucy, Narjaud’s younger brother. By an agreement made with Narjaud before he died, their mother’s lands in Burgundy also went to Eudes, who kept up his connections there.114 Eudes had a more conventional and more influential career in Charles II’s civil service, as master justiciar, and as count of Alba, a position he owed to his marriage with Filippa, widow of Pierre de Beaumont.115 In the difficult period between Robert d’Artois’s return to France in November 1291 and Charles II’s triumphal re-entry into the Regno in the spring of 1294, Eudes played a significant role in supporting Jean de Montfort, the captain-general.116 Towards the end of his life, he was planning to return to France.117 On Eudes’s death in 1297, Robert d’Artois made arrangements for his son Philippe to be brought to his court at Arras to be educated there.118 The direct family link with France which, in the case of the Toucys, long absence might be supposed to have rendered rather tenuous, was thus to be renewed. But nothing more was heard of this. Perhaps Robert was confused over this, and the son he had in mind was actually Narjaud’s; certainly, later Eudes’s Regno lands were in the hands of one Filipotto de Toucy, said to be the son of Narjaud.119 Alternatively, both brothers had sons called Philippe, and Eudes’s son died young.

111 112 113

114 115 116 117 118 119

Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 129 note 7; p. 417. The ‘Templar of Tyre’, trans. Paul Crawford, pp. 95–101. S. R. Davies, ‘Marriage and the politics of friendship: the family of Charles II of Anjou, King of Naples (1285–1309)’, PhD thesis, University of London, 1998, pp. 152–3, describes the brief engagement entered into between Philippe de Toucy and Eleanor, daughter of Charles II and Marie of Hungary, from which Boniface VIII absolved Philippe in 1300. RCA, vol. 21, additiones to reg. lxxxix, 100; RCA, CII, vol. 45, reg. liv, 4. RCA, vol. 12, reg. lxviii, 113; Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. VII, 388. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, pp. 419, 400 note 5; RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxx, 300; RCA, CII, vol. 48, reg. lxiii, 13; reg. lxv, 13. Comptes royaux (1285–1328), ed. R. Fawtier and F. Maillard, vol. III (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1956), Appendix, no. 30242. See above, Chapter 6. Minieri Riccio, Studii storici fatti sopra 84 registri, p. 97; if this was Eudes’s son, then either he had never gone to Artois or he had returned to the Regno while still a minor.

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In addition to his two sons, the older Philippe de Toucy had had a daughter, Marguerite, who was married to Leonardo, chancellor of Achaia and a close personal friend of Charles of Anjou. Charles always spoke of this lady with considerable affection, taking trouble to ensure that she was comfortable on her visits to the Regno, and conferring on her husband a castle that had belonged to Dreux de Beaumont after the death of his son without heirs.120 Altogether, the Toucy family made a substantial contribution, over a period of thirty years, to the stability of the Angevin regime in Naples. Yet while they made their careers in the Regno, they continued to preserve their lands and position in Burgundy. There were of course many more less elevated French families that settled in the Regno, some of which we shall meet in subsequent pages. In addition, there were others like Jean d’Eppes and Aimeri de Narbonne whose chief occupations were fighting for Angevin interests in the Romagna, Tuscany or Lombardy, but who were rewarded with estates in the Regno, even if they had little time to relax there.121 What is clear from these pages is that even families like the Courtenays, who had so long been away from France, saw in a French marriage for the heiress Catherine the best hope for the dynasty. Most other families kept the French connection as alive as possible. One of the major difficulties Charles of Anjou faced was that those to whom he had given fiefs repeatedly left them, and had to be reminded that, if they lingered in France for more than a year, they would lose their lands.122 These included some of his most loyal servants, Jean de Montfort, Simon de Foresta and Jean Britaud de Nangis.123 Similar problems faced his successors. In 1286, in a letter, Gerard of Parma recalled that Robert had recently reissued an edict to require absent barons and fief-holders to return to the Regno or face confiscation of their lands.124 Charles II also had to attempt to control the length of absences from the Regno among his aristocrats.125 It was symptomatic of a widespread homesickness that the ill or exhausted pleaded (successfully) to return home to die, as did Jean d’Eppes and the viscount of Tremblay.126 The Joinville family contrived to negotiate that they should hold their lands in Tonnerre rent free in return for their service in the Regno.127 Charles II must have thought his aristocrats obsessed by their properties in France. The odd man out in this company 120 121 123 125 126 127

RCA, vol. 19, reg. lxxxi, 1; vol. 21, reg. lxxxvii, 99. 122 E.g. RCA, CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 549. RCA, vol. 11, reg. lvii, 43. 124 Pas-de-Calais S´ RCA, vol. 11, reg. lx, 29–41. erie A, 32/14. RCA, CII, vol. 32, reg. xv, 338; vol. 33, reg. xvii, 69. RCA, CII, vol. 43, reg. xlii, 308; vol. 38, reg. xxx, 8. RCA, CII, vol. 35, reg. xxiv, 139.


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was Hugues de Brienne, whose county of Brienne in Champagne apparently weighed less with him than his family’s claims in the Mediterranean world. Jean de Montfort later in his life also thought little of his lands in Languedoc. But all the others were careful to preserve a bolt-hole for themselves in their native land. Having seen the crumbling of the Latin empire in Constantinople and watching the increasing isolation of Acre in Outremer, they must have been more aware than the earlier generations of settlers in the east how rapidly a conquest could be undermined. They would have been foolish not to hold tenaciously to their lands and to cultivate their French relations and other connections, especially after the Aragonese take-over in Sicily. On the other side of the coin, these very family connections of many French men and women with the initial conquest of the Regno and its subsequent rule made it inevitable that the Angevin endeavour should play regularly in minds in France. The image of the French as swashbuckling adventurers, developed over the crusading years, could still be upheld in the Regno when the Latin empire had failed and Outremer had become too dangerous for most men to fight in. That was why a cadet branch of the Joinville family followed its fortunes to Charles II’s realm almost automatically.128 The exploits of the conquerors were celebrated in verses popular across France.129 Indeed, a French version of the Chronicle of Morea, which described the history of the French and Greek peoples in the surviving part of Achaia, still commanded attention in Burgundy in the fifteenth century.130 On a more mundane level, some people had to decide whether to believe rumours that their relations who owned land in France had died in the Regno, and therefore that they might take the land.131 Other heirs and heiresses in France had to calculate whether to risk going to the Regno in order to claim their inheritances;132 yet others considered how best they might look 128

129 130 131 132

On the history of the family in Champagne see Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 233–6. On Jean de Joinville, see Henri-François Delaborde, Jean de Joinville et les seigneurs de Joinville suivi d’un catalogue de leurs actes (Paris: Picard et fils, 1894), pp. 233–4; Geoffrey de Joinville received lands from Charles II (RCA, CII, vol. 48, reg. lxv, 52); Jean de Joinville became constable of the Regno (Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. II, p. 334) and Nicolas de Joinville became master justiciar for Charles II in 1306. See Chapter 17. Teresa Shawcross, The Chronicle of Morea. Historiography in Crusader Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 95–102, 264–5. A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 507. While Pierre de Beaumont’s daughter Marguerite did come, though after delay, Guillaume de Beaumont’s daughter, who had married without the consent of Charles of Anjou, did not.

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after the French lands of their kinsmen who had gone overseas. In France, both the genuinely blue-blooded and those rising into the aristocracy through service to the crown had reason to be constantly aware of their counterparts who had left home to serve Charles of Anjou or Charles II.

8

Foundations and degrees of French aristocratic commitment to the Angevin regime in the Regno

This chapter attempts to explain at least in part the nature of the cement that kept northern French support for Charles I and Charles II firm for about forty years. It also describes what those kings did to reinforce it. The difficulty of establishing the causes of adhesion to the Angevin cause lies principally in the absence of direct evidence from the mouths of Angevin supporters. One or two recruiting songs (to be discussed in Chapter 17) demonstrate what jongleurs or their patrons thought might appeal to would-be participants in the campaign – the chance to earn spiritual reward and earthly glory. Whether these were actually the prime motivations of those who went to fight we cannot be absolutely sure. Almost all of their sentiments have to be deduced from their actions, and this necessarily involves considerable interpretation. Nevertheless, the issue is so important that it seems worth attempting to clarify it. Before turning exclusively to the aristocracy, it is useful to ask how much broad support across northern France there was for Charles of Anjou’s conquest and the continuity of Angevin rule, among those who had no intention of ever going to the Regno in any capacity. It would be very valuable to know to what extent those debarred from fighting by sex, age, weakness, or heavy responsibilities at home, thought fit to encourage others to fight. There are, as we shall see in Chapter 17, some scattered literary references praising Charles I and Robert d’Artois as heroes of epic proportions. The poems in which these were found were commissioned by various nobles, and may have been intended to fire the enthusiasm of young men to go and join these heroes. The evidence on this precise point is not abundant and only some of it is conclusive. But there is enough general praise of the adventure in verse to suggest a widespread pro-Angevin sentiment among the noble class, at least in the early years. The clearest, if somewhat crude, way of gauging more general support is in terms of monetary backing to the enterprise. As we have already seen, ecclesiastical wealth in the form of tithes was crucial to Charles of 155

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Anjou’s initial conquest.1 While there is certainly evidence of resistance among some clerics to the weight of this taxation, the necessary sum was gathered, and many clerics later gave quite willingly, or left legacies. Then we know that the king and many great aristocrats lent money to the Angevin cause.2 The gifts and loans of some, for example the dowager queen Marie de Brabant, were of crucial importance to sustaining the armies in the Regno. That there were many faithful northern French supporters of the cause is beyond dispute. What we do not and cannot know is what all the other noblemen and women who were not noted as loan-makers in the Angevin registers (or in those parts of the registers which are now available to us) thought about the Angevin Regno. It is, however, clear that what monetary support there was diminished once Philippe IV’s wars in Gascony and Flanders broke out, and that the tradition of nobles lending and giving money to the survival of the Angevin regime virtually died out with the peace of Caltabellotta. Of giving by those who were neither clerics nor aristocrats, there is unfortunately only very scrappy evidence, the most telling piece of which, the gift of the inhabitants of Ardres and Guines,3 is more eloquent of support for Robert d’Artois than for the cause that he then represented. Well-wishers who remained at home could never be as important as those willing to risk their lives to further Angevin rule. The prime concern of this book is with the large numbers of northern French who came down to the Regno to fight there over the years before Caltabellotta. Both for the initial conquest and for the later campaigns in 1284, 1297, 1299 and 1302, these warriors fought with the full benefit of a crusading indulgence. Norman Housley has acutely observed of most thirteenth-century crusaders: ‘Increasingly they perceived crusading as a form of service performed to Christ, which was rewarded, as a quid pro quo, with the spiritual gain of the indulgence.’4 In other words, what motivated the soldiers was the belief that they were risking their lives in a holy cause, that if they died on campaign then, at least on some understandings of the papal promise, they would go straight to heaven, and that if they survived they would earn forgiveness for the sins they had thus far committed. The penitential aspects of crusading were still highly valued in the thirteenth century. There is, of course, the major question of whether fighting under the papal banner in Italy was widely regarded as less spiritually satisfactory than fighting for Jerusalem.5 Clearly, not everyone thought it was equally meritorious. Charles of Anjou’s own 1 4 5

2 See above, pp. 53–4. 3 See above, pp. 54–5. See above, pp. 48–50. Contesting the Crusades (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), p. 88. Norman Housley revisits the controversy in a fair review in Contesting the Crusades, pp. 115–20.

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brother, Alphonse of Poitiers, refused to commute his vow to fighting in Italy and insisted that he would try to reach Outremer again (he died before this was possible).6 But large numbers of other Christians were willing to accept the papal diktat and enjoy the spiritual benefits on offer. There was, after all, a solid earthly advantage in accepting the papal case – southern Italy involved for the French a much easier and considerably cheaper journey than Outremer. The enemy was less unfamiliar than the terrifying Saracens (or Mamluks or Mongols) of Outremer. The diseases that wracked the Regno, though serious and often fatal, were less frightening, because less strange, than those of Outremer. And the journey home at the end of the period of service was less difficult to arrange. On the other hand, the prospects of self-enrichment were very thin – the aim was to establish in the Regno a new regime that was popular with the inhabitants of the country, so opportunities for plunder were confined to the immediate aftermath of the battlefield. In addition, there was no obvious eschatalogical meaning to the Regno campaign.7 But recent research among crusading historians has largely discounted desire for self-enrichment as a major motive for crusading in Outremer; plunder is now seen as a necessary means of staying alive while on the march rather than as a lasting and portable benefit.8 And by the thirteenth century, the sheer variety of possible eschatalogical interpretations available, along with the demonstrable failure of some prophecies,9 will presumably have weakened some of their impact. All in all, for those who simply accepted what they were told by papal legates, the Italian campaigns to establish and strengthen Angevin rule were a safer and an easier way of earning salvation than the crusade to the east. It is notable that many of the families who fought for the Angevins already had a distinguished crusading history behind them in Outremer, Constantinople or southern France. For example, the Montforts, the Joinvilles and the Briennes were among the most notable supporters of the crusades in the thirteenth century. Robert de Béthune and Philippe de Chieti were the great-grandsons of Baldwin IX, count of Hainault and Flanders, the first Latin emperor of Constantinople. Robert II d’Artois probably thought of his father’s death at Mansourah as martyrdom. On 6 7

8 9

Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 226–7. The earliest known fully eschatalogical interpretation of Charles’s conquest appears to have been that of the Franciscan Jean de Roquetaillade in the 1340s and 1350s. See Chris Jones, Eclipse of Empire? Perception of the Western Empire and its Rulers in Late-Medieval France (Turnhout: Brépols, 2007), p. 98. For a summing up of recent research, see Housley, Contesting the Crusades, pp. 77–9. For example, Oliver of Paderborn’s reported prophecies of the coming of Prester John; The Capture of Damietta, trans. John J. Gavigan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948), pp. 50–1.

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a slightly lower level, a Vaudémont count had participated in the second crusade,10 and a count of Soissons had been a major figure both on crusades and in the kingdom of Acre.11 There can be little doubt that their descendants believed themselves to be chips off the old block when they fought in Italy for the Angevin cause. That strength of family tradition dictated which men took the cross on any particular occasion is obvious. Pride in the deeds of one’s ancestors, admiration for their chivalric risktaking, a sense that each generation must uphold the tradition established in the past, apparently accounted for this. The nearest modern equivalent is perhaps to be found in the volunteer lifeboat crews recruited from British coastal villages, where the majority of crewmen are the sons or nephews of former crewmen. In both cases, the risk to life was accepted in the pursuit of a higher good. Nevertheless, the crusading indulgence provides a less than complete explanation for the motivation of those who chose to fight in the Regno. The surge of recruits to the south after the conquest was achieved without benefit of indulgence. Then Charles of Anjou’s call for help in 1282 met with a notable response from all across France, despite the fact that it was not until March 1283 that the strongly pro-Angevin pope Martin IV proclaimed the war against the Aragonese in Sicily a crusade. It is of course likely that many of those who rushed down to the Regno continued to think of war there as essentially penitential, whether or not the pope licensed preaching in that cause. The original crusade had been justified, partly at least, on the ground that the possession of the Regno in hands faithful to the church was a necessary preliminary to any successful conquest of Jerusalem.12 This remained as true later as it had been in 1265. Besides, by 1282 Charles of Anjou proudly bore the title king of Jerusalem. His dynasty was seen as the best, almost the only, hope for repulsing the Mamluks in Outremer. It was also the only family willing to take risks to attempt the roll-back of Greek reconquest in the Balkans and the re-establishment of the Latin empire of Constantinople, still seen by some as the key to the permanent defence of Outremer. There were therefore sound religious reasons for taking up the sword again to defend what had been achieved. Surely God would see the case for absolving his people from sin when they performed a godly task, even if the pope was somewhat slow in acknowledging that it was so? 10

11 12

´ N. Kedar and B. Z. Kedar, ‘Le retour du croisé’, in Dei Gesta per Francos. Etudes sur les croisades dédiées a` Jean Richard, ed. M. Balard, B. Z. Kedar and J. Riley-Smith, pp. 29–44. Caroline Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 18, 185–6. Housley, The Italian Crusades, pp. 62–9.


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But clearly the rapid response to Charles’s pleas for help also points to a widespread view that the conquest of Sicily and southern Italy had been an achievement of a French army, and that any challenge to it should be powerfully repelled by the French people. This was a natural enough interpretation. Although the armies of 1265–66 had received important support from Italian Guelfs, the bulk of those who fought at Benevento and Tagliacozzo were either French or Provençaux. The contribution of the Provençaux was probably underestimated by French contemporaries because they were seen as Charles of Anjou’s subjects, and he was undoubtedly French. (That perspective has been shared by most French historians of later years.) It had long been customary to translate gesta Dei per Francos, the title chosen by Guibert of Nogent for his history of the first crusade, as ‘French achievements for God’. The French were accustomed to thinking of themselves as God’s warriors.13 It was hardly surprising that Charles of Anjou’s victories at Benevento and Tagliacozzo should have been interpreted as a resumption of French triumphs more than a century and a half after the first crusade. Then some Frenchmen will have shared the Franciscan chronicler Salimbene de Adam’s view that Charles had wiped out the blot on the Capetian house caused by Louis’s failure in the Egyptian crusade.14 Those of fighting age were not inclined to allow another blot to appear on the escutcheon. This was a powerful force in recruitment in 1282. It probably accounts for the presence among the volunteers of Pierre d’Alençon, Philippe III’s brother, representing the Capetian family in ˆ resistance to the rebels. Men like Jourdain de l’Ile-Jourdain who had fought at Benevento hurried down to join the armies again, although by now they were no longer in their first youth. And others like Henri II de Vaudémont did likewise in deference to their fathers’ example. Prominent among the French who came down were those who had particular ˆ ties with the Angevin family, like Jean, count of Vendome or Jean II d’Harcourt. Local patterns of loyalty were evident. Beyond this lay a broader sense that the Sicilian Vespers was a deliberate insult to French achievements. The Sicilian rebels were alleged to have cried ‘death to the French!’ when they rose against their alien ruler.15 It would have been strange if such a war cry had not evoked at least an equal and opposite sentiment of cohesion and aggression among the French. 13 14 15

Dunbabin, France in the Making, p. 294. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, ed. F. Bernini (Bari: G. Laterza, 1942), vol. II, p. 287. Die Chronik des Saba Malaspina, ed. W. Koller and A. Nitschke (MGH SS, vol. XXXV), p. 194.

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The years 1282–85 were the time when ‘French’ sentiment was at its height. The failure of Philippe III’s crusade into Aragon in 1285 probably blunted it, as did the accession of Philippe IV, who was less active than his father in supporting the Angevin crown (though by no means indifferent to the fate of his Angevin cousins). The records for Robert d’Artois’s regency and then captaincy-general in the Regno are comparatively sparse and possibly skewed. They give the impression that it was Artois that provided the bulk of the support for the much weakened Angevin line during these years. Shortly after Robert’s return to France in 1292, war broke out there in Gascony in 1294 and in Flanders in 1297. From this time forward, neither Charles II nor Charles de Valois could hope to milk a strong ‘French’ willingness to take military risks in the Regno. There were too many obligations closer to home. As was stated earlier,16 between 1266 and 1294 the Regno offered young French aristocrats their best opportunity of acquiring military skills. After 1268, Charles of Anjou was the most famous general in western Europe. It made sense for young men to travel south in order to gain experience and reputation for leadership. Enrolment in Charles’s household, even if only for a short period, provided the opportunity to learn about warfare, which was a constant; when Charles was not subduing rebels, he was defending Achaia or striving to expand across the Adriatic at the expense of the Greeks. Once the war of the Vespers broke out in 1282, defensive war lasted until the peace of Caltabellotta. Only after 1302 would a French youth who ventured south find himself faced with an uneasy peace. Charles of Anjou’s death in 1285 only reduced somewhat the appeal of fighting in the Regno, because Robert II d’Artois also enjoyed a formidable reputation as a warrior. After 1291, however, things changed. Charles II the Lame only led an army himself when he hoped to make peace with the enemy, as at Gaeta in 1289; and neither Jean de Montfort nor Robert, duke of Calabria, Charles’s heir, seems to have made his mark on the French consciousness as a military leader whom it would be an honour to follow. But between 1266 and 1291, the opportunity for proving oneself in war was there. At this distance in time, it is hard to estimate exactly the importance of a triumphant image, such as Charles of Anjou enjoyed between 1268 and 1282, to the recruitment of loyal followers. But the wide coverage given to his deeds in contemporary French chronicles certainly suggests that it was great. The appeal to a youth like Robert de Béthune of fighting at the side of his father-in-law and one of his father’s close friends, of winning a reputation for bravery at the battle of Tagliacozzo, of finding himself 16

See above, pp. 82–3.


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among the greatest at Charles’s court, all the time learning not only military but also diplomatic lessons of value to his future career as count of Flanders, was clear. The value to Robert’s father Gui de Dampierre of having his heir out of the way and meritoriously occupied, while he himself concentrated on the young children of his second marriage, was probably equally great. The hope of spiritual reward, the desire to enhance what were seen as essentially French achievements, and the opportunity for selfimprovement, all acted as powerful inducements to volunteers to fight in the Regno. They probably also helped to create a sense of solidarity among the men who came down from northern France. Many of these came from families which already were known to each other, either as neighbours or as co-participants in past crusades. The journeys south in company with other recruits helped to create new ties. Once arrived in the Regno, those who were members of the royal household were provided with regular meals at which to talk, share experiences, learn to trust one another. There they also mingled with those aristocrats of the Regno whose loyalty to the Angevin house was proven. Regular pay from the royal coffers, in accordance with the agreements they had made before they came down, will have helped to bring harmony (though pay was not always forthcoming, particularly in the aftermath of the conquest, and delays later were frequent). During their time of service, their exposure to life beyond the court and the military camps was in all probability distinctly limited. But that mere fact would have done something to enhance a sense of community among them.17 Each of the aristocratic leaders who came south was accompanied by a body of soldiers whom he had recruited at home, often in accordance with terms previously arranged either with Charles of Anjou or with Robert d’Artois.18 All that can be found out about these men’s motivation or their strength of loyalty to the Angevin cause has to be inferred from what is known of their circumstances. They took the considerable risk of following their lords to southern Italy because they felt some obligation to them and, like them, they expected spiritual reward and also pay for their exertions. In addition, some will have felt a sense of adventure, and some will have found their interest aroused by the strange lands in which they found themselves. As with their superiors, family ties were important. For example, the de Poncey family has left evidence of its commitment to the Regno in that it subsequently provided two justiciars for Charles II, along with a Knight Hospitaller who also performed

17

See below, pp. 174–7.

18

See below, pp. 260–2.

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military duties for that monarch.19 Most knights and footsoldiers will have found companionship among the retinues of other lords with whom they mingled on campaigns. Many, if not most, will have been homesick, at least sometimes. Because they were on contract, they will have thought of their period of service as finite, and looked forward to returning home. What the percentage was of those who lived to return to France we cannot say. It is, however, clear that the large majority of those who came down expected to stay only for a limited period. On the fifth crusade, the chronicler Oliver of Paderborn frequently criticised those whom he regarded as having left the campaign early.20 He was careful not to specify how long he thought they ought to have stayed, so we cannot know how justified his criticisms were. But the feeling of being abandoned before the job was done that he described was doubtless felt equally acutely among the close followers of Charles of Anjou in the Regno. Charles was anxious to encourage French settlement in his newly conquered territories or, if not settlement, then at least prolonged service. Immediately after the battle of Benevento, this was difficult because he had little land to bestow. Anxious as he was to make peace with the inhabitants, he could not confiscate the lands of those who had fought on Manfred’s side (apart from a small number of Manfred’s closest allies) without permanently alienating them. After Tagliacozzo, however, those who had supported Corradin were more harshly dealt with, and land which had belonged to men now deemed to have been traitors was available to bestow on such French lords as Charles could persuade to stay.21 He was not, however, very fortunate in this.22 Sylvie Pollastri has calculated, by counting fiefs granted between 1268 and 1274, that 351 knights taken from 248 Ultramontaine families were given lands in the Regno, a tiny proportion of the original armies.23 Since her figure includes Provençaux as well as French, the number of families from northern France was probably about 180 or 190.24 There is no 19 20 21 22

23

24

Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, pp. 536, 528, 216. The Capture of Damietta, trans. Gavinan, pp. 17, 39, 43–4, 66. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 55–61. Sometimes even those who had apparently settled let the king down. The case of Anselm de Chobros, marshal of the Regno, points to this. In 1294 he was given permission to go to France on business. He never returned. Minieri Riccio, Cenni storici intorno a grandi uffizii del Regno, p. 231. ‘La présence ultramontaine dans le midi italien’, pp. 3–20, at pp. 4–6; ‘Les Bourson d’Anjou, barons de Nocera puis comtes de Satriano (1268–1400)’, in Coulet and Matz (eds.), La noblesse dans les territoires angevins, pp. 89–103, at p. 91. Pollastri, ‘La noblesse provençale dans le royaume de Sicile’, p. 409, estimates the original Provençal strength of the invading army at about a quarter of the French force; this may perhaps provide a rough guide as to the proportions that originally settled (though the Provençaux were more likely to put down roots than the French).


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way of calculating the number of lesser French soldiers who decided to stay as vassals of their lords; but the bulk of fiefs in the Regno were too small to offer sources of income for large numbers of new settlers. It is clear that most French soldiers went home as soon as they honourably could. For the most important of his aristocrats, Charles offered a considerable inducement to settle. Sweeping away one of Manfred’s notable innovation in government, the reliance on his own relations, Charles determined to restore the old (Norman) system of eighteen counties in the Regno.25 The bulk of these he bestowed on his French and Provençal supporters – only four went to local Guelf families. So, for example, the county of Caserta went to Guillaume de Beaumont, the county of Arena to Thomas de Coucy, that of Chieti to Raoul de Courtenay, that of Montescaglioso to Pierre de Beaumont, and that of Lecce to Hugues de Brienne. These promotions were intended to provide a solid basis for French local authority across much of Charles’s new kingdom. Unfortunately for him, the high death rate in the Regno undermined much of his planning. So Guillaume de Beaumont and Thomas de Coucy both died in 1269, Raoul de Chieti in 1271, and Pierre de Beaumont in 1273. Similarly Simon III de Montfort enjoyed the county of Avellino for only three months before his death in 1271.26 Of all those mentioned, only Hugues de Brienne had a male heir, and that heir settled in Achaia, not in the Regno. Luck was not on Charles’s side. As Sylvie Pollastri has noted, the only original comital line to survive past 1300 was that of the Les Baux, the great Provençal family.27 There were other important families whose support Charles had no need to buy. Of these, the most notable were the sons of Simon II de Montfort, earl of Leicester, who had been slain at the battle of Evesham in 1265. Forced into exile by the terrible turn of events, Gui and Simon III turned naturally to one of their father’s closest friends to protect them.28 They joined their cousin Philippe de Montfort’s army which arrived in Rome in January 1266, and assisted in the conquest of the Regno. By 1270, Gui had become Charles’s vicar-general in Tuscany, and one of his most trusted advisors. However, in 1271 he committed the notorious murder of his cousin Henry of Almaine, son of Richard of Cornwall, 25 26 27 28

Enrico Cuozzo, ‘La mala signoria ou l’hypothèque sicilienne’, in L’état angevin, pp. 519–34, at pp. 522–6. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 59. ‘La présence ultramontaine dans le midi italien’, 11. The nature of the tie between Charles and Simon II is debatable; see Madicott, Simon de Montfort, p. 370. But the strength of the friendship is not in doubt. Charles II referred to Jean de Montfort as carissimus gener, RCA CII vol. 40, reg. xxxix, 103.

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at Viterbo, where Henry had come to obtain papal support for his succession to the title of emperor. Naturally Gregory X was outraged, not only by the murder – an act of vengeance for Henry’s part in Gui’s father Simon’s death at the battle of Evesham – but also for the breach of papal peace. Gui was imprisoned, and was not allowed to work for the Angevin cause for a long time, although ironically he was apparently fighting for the pope in Bologna as early as 1278.29 During Robert d’Artois’s regency Gui was back in the Angevin army, was captured at Augusta in 1287, and died in prison.30 His younger brother, Simon III, had died as early as 1271.31 It is probable that their unfortunate history had its effect on their surviving cousin, Jean de Montfort. While in the early years he showed concern for his Languedoc lordship, later he became notable for his single-minded devotion to the survival of the Angevin dynasty in the Regno. He may have deduced that the notoriety of his cousin’s action meant that his own chances of promotion in France were no longer high. The Montfort brothers were unique in finding their only saviour in Charles. But other families served him because they saw no other prospect of fulfilling their ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean. This was an important group. The Courtenays and Villehardouins were tied into arrangements made for them by the Treaty of Viterbo in 1267.32 They were constantly pressing for campaigns against the Paleologi, both in Greece and further east, with the hope of re-establishing the empire of Constantinople. To this end, they were willing to make sacrifices. Similarly the Toucys, Raoul de Soissons and probably also Hugues de Brienne, having lost much in Constantinople or Outremer, believed their best prospect of regaining at least a little lay with the Angevin cause. Behind them stood lesser families with established eastern Mediterranean interests, the Millys, the Sullys, the Beaujeux and the Baumes.33 This group of Frenchmen were of great value to Charles, because they were willing to settle in the Regno and to take on arduous tasks, usually putting their interests in southern Italy ahead of any they still conserved in France. In Hugues de Brienne’s case, this might seem surprising, since 29 30

31 32 33

Waley, The Papal State in the Thirteenth Century, p. 197. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronique latine, vol. I, p. 237. Guillaume passes on the rumour that the reason why he was not allowed to buy his freedom like all the other pro-Angevin barons was because Edward I of England, who had reason to hate him, pressed the Aragonese to keep him in prison. Pollastri confuses father and son in ‘La présence ultramontaine dans le midi italien’, pp. 3–20, at p. 3 note 2. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 93–4. Pollastri, ‘L’aristocratie napolitaine au temps des Angevins’, p. 162.


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his possession of the county of Brienne gave him a solid foundation in Champagne.34 But equally, his ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean will have seemed more achievable than those of the Courtenays, which necessitated the re-establishment of the Latin empire of Constantinople for their fulfilment. In order to encourage such of the French as seemed willing to contemplate more than a brief stay in the Regno to put down roots, royal policy was to push marriages with aristocratic ladies native to the Regno. Until 1283, Charles kept a tight hold on all the marriage plans of anyone who held a fief of him, even a fairly insignificant one. His most striking success was in persuading Pierre de Beaumont to marry the daughter of the count of Celano; the result was, as he hoped, that Pierre’s daughters came to or remained in the Regno. However, the marriage did not ´ produce a son. Guillaume de l’Etandard the younger was given permission to marry the sister of Adenolfo, count of Acerra,35 and Philippe de Chieti’s second marriage was with an heiress, Filippa di Milly. This Filippa was the offspring of a marriage between a French lord, Guillaume de Milly, and the daughter of the countess of Manoppello; she inherited her mother’s lands.36 Tommaso di San Severino received the favour of one of Henri I de Vaudémont’s daughters as a wife.37 But in the higher echelons of French society such marriages were not very common. Jean de Montfort was apparently married to two Italian women and divorced at least one before carrying off Pierre de Beaumont’s daughter as his wife.38 The inclusion in the 1283 reforms of the right of nobles to make their own marriages without royal consent suggests that royal pressure had sometimes been deeply resented.

34

35 36 37 38

It is likely that Hugues’s obsession with his Regno lands made it easier for Philippe IV to absorb Champagne as a consequence of his marriage with Jeanne, countess of Champagne. RCA, vol. 12, reg. lxiii, 41. Minieri Riccio, Cenni storici intorno i grandi uffizii del Regno, p. 222. RCA, vol. 11, reg. li, 36. Minieri Riccio, Cenni storici intorno i grandi uffizii del Regno, p. 171, lists his first two wives as Isabelle, the daughter of Manfred Maletta (King Manfred’s chamberlain) and the daughter of Pandolfo di Fasinella (one of Charles of Anjou’s staunchest supporters among Regno families). It is obvious why Charles may have desired either of these matches for Jean. But Manfred Maletta’s daughters, including Isabelle, were still in jail at the beginning of Charles II’s reign; RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 235. On the death of Isabelle, clearly called wife of Jean de Montfort, in 1294, see RCA CII, vol. 48, reg. lxiv, 77. Did he divorce her? As to the daughter of Pandolfo di Fasinella, nothing is recorded. Perhaps she died very soon after the wedding. In any case, Jean was deemed free to marry Marguerite, but Philippe III had heard rumours about the impropriety of the marriage, and he wrote for reassurance, RCA, vol. 10, reg. xlviii, 583.

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Those of knightly as opposed to aristocratic rank were less disposed to spurn wealthy Italian brides. Philippe de Martello of Anjou willingly married the daughter of a man adjudged a traitor, probably in order to acquire his dead father-in-law’s possessions (though not his fief) along with the lady.39 Jean de Revel married Isabelle Filangieri in what was the last marriage in 1283 for which royal consent was demanded.40 Louis de Mons married Giovanna dell’ Aquila,41 and Adam Fourier married Tommasa di Saponera. These were all social and financial advancements for the French knights, as was the marriage of Philippe de Bourson’s daughter to Adenolfo IV, count of Acerra.42 Perhaps the marriage that did the most to raise a knight’s profile was that of Jacques de Bourson (apparently Philippe’s son) to Ilaria Filangieri, the daughter of a man judged a traitor, who brought her new husband a solid dowry from which his heirs were able slowly to create a barony.43 After 1283, the chance of finding information about fief-holders’ marriages declines, because royal consent was no longer necessary. Clearly the Angevin kings had some success in persuading their most loyal followers, particularly those of knightly rank, to marry into Italian families; but they must have hoped for far more than they actually achieved. Every French soldier of knightly or aristocratic rank who stayed for at least some time in the Regno expected to receive a fief, a pension or an office; as far as we know, they did (although it would be very difficult to trace one who did not, because the chancery records would not mention him). An example was the pension given to Geoffroi de Joinville, consisting of 40 onces of gold a year, in return for the service of twenty knights.44 Geoffroi later acquired fiefs in land instead. On his death, his son (also called Geoffroi) failed to turn up in the Regno within the stipulated period of a year. The fiefs were therefore granted to other men. When Geoffroi did put in an appearance, he had once more to be contented with a pension. But eventually he, too, acquired land.45 The Joinville family comes as close as the records allow to the conventional picture of land-hungry younger sons desperate to make their fortunes in a new land. But for the most part that picture is hard to substantiate from 39 40 41

42 43 44

RCA, vol. 26, reg. cxii, 792. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 116. Louis of Mons defended the coastline of the Regno by 1282, was both captain general and master justiciar from 1285 to 1289, became a counsellor of Jean de Montfort after the departure from the Regno of Robert d’Artois in 1291, and in 1294 became captain of Naples. Dunbabin, ‘Treason, sodomy, and the fate of Adenolfo IV, count of Acerra’, 4. Pollastri, ‘Les Bourson d’Anjou’, 97–8. Jacques held the position of vice admiral of the Regno in 1283. 45 See p. 153, note 128. RCA CII, vol. 39, reg. xxxiv, 12.


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the evidence that survives. Despite the first Angevin king’s wish to settle French knights in the Regno, he was constantly battling against those who wanted to return to France to secure their own lands there.46 Charles’s determination to control fiefs tightly, though perhaps understandable in a conqueror who inherited from the Norman kings a tradition of this kind, almost played into the hands of those who saw their true interests as lying in France. In the first place, all fiefs in the Regno were held at the king’s pleasure. Charles of Anjou frequently asked those who held them to exchange their lands, if it happened to suit the royal convenience.47 Before 1283, fief-holders could only marry with royal permission. They were expected to reside in the Regno, and needed royal permission to leave in order to secure their interests elsewhere.48 If they remained abroad for more than a year, they stood to lose their fiefs.49 As we have already seen, Philippe of Chieti had to surrender his countship of Chieti to Charles II when he went to succour his brothers in Flanders without being able to give a clear date for his return. He never succeeded in getting it back.50 Then, if a fief-holder died, his primogenital heir was forced to come to the Regno within one year to take up his (or her) inheritance; otherwise it was forfeited to the king. This was the reason for Henri II de Vaudémont’s failure to obtain his father’s countship of Ariano.51 These were tough conditions. Perhaps most difficult for the French to grasp, their fiefs conferred few or no judicial rights upon them. Royal officials were often told to investigate what they were doing, and royal tax-gatherers were always around the corner to impoverish their tenants. The obligations of military service were very heavy.52 Making a fief profitable was not easy, especially for those who held lands on the vulnerable frontiers of the Regno. Acquiring offices or enjoying royal favour were the best ways of enhancing income. But both of these were precarious. It was perhaps not surprising that there were apparently rather few cases of disputed succession to fiefs in the Regno among possible French heirs or heiresses (although there were many disputes about borders and 46 47 48

49 50 52

Those, like Michel de Beaulieu, who were given permission to go to France had to provide guarantors that they would return; RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxx, 484. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 63. By the reign of Charles II, those who inherited estates in France could usually count on receiving permission to go to collect homages from their new dependants there, though within a strictly limited time frame: for example, on the death of Jean d’Eppes, seneschal of the Regno, 1292, his son Jean inherited his father’s lands both in the Regno and in France, RCA CII, vol. 43, reg. xlii, 287; vol. 44, reg. xliii, 174. The case was the same for Jean de Lagonesse, RCA CII, vol. 32, reg. xv, 338. Both were given permission to go, under strict orders to return quickly. RCA, vol. 11, reg. lx, 29–41; CII, vol. 44, part 1, reg. xliii, 626. 51 See above, p. 92. See above, pp. 129–31. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 61–4.

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homages). For those who had the choice, life was pleasanter and more lucrative in France. From the royal point of view, the most frustrating aspect of trying to settle the French in the Regno will have been the absence of male heirs. This must have been particularly galling for Charles II, who produced at least eight legitimate sons (and one illegitimate one) without any trouble, but presided over a kingdom in which his feat was never emulated by Frenchmen.53 Charles II’s physical defect, his lameness, meant that he hardly ever fought or engaged in sieges, which gave him a considerable advantage over his subjects. The cause of death of Henri I de Vaudémont’s eldest son Renaud is not known; but he died in the Regno, whereas his younger brother, brought up in Brabant, lived to ´ succeed his father.54 Guillaume de l’Etandard did have a son to succeed him, but that son was already at least a teenager before his father came down to the Regno. There was only one son in the second generation of the Beaumont family, and he did not outlive his father Dreux by many years. The Toucy brothers also had only one male heir between them. Guillaume, viscount of Melun and Matthieu de Plessy died without (legitimate) heirs.55 The families of Lagonesse and Tremblay were luckier, but they were apparently unusual. That death on the battlefield (as with Guillaume de Beaumont) or in violent quarrels (as with Jean de Montfort’s brother Simon) or in prison (as with Gui de Montfort) was the chief explanation for this deficiency is to be inferred from the fact that daughters were not so difficult to conceive or rear. Pierre de Beaumont had four daughters and Guillaume one. But French girls were hardly plentiful in the Regno. Of those that there were, the relatively few who survived until marriage contrived to produce few children for their husbands. As an experiment in colonisation, the Angevin kings largely failed with their French lords, had a small amount of success with their French knights, and were generally more successful with their Provençaux. How far their very patchy performance should be laid at their own door and how far to circumstances beyond their control it is now impossible to say. There can, however, be no question that they were better at inspiring men to come and fight for them than at persuading them to settle in the Regno. The equivalent for the higher clergy of a countship and marriage with a local heiress was the grant of a bishopric. There is no doubt that both 53 54 55

On Galasso, illegitimate son of Charles II, see Minieri Riccio, Studii storici fatti sopra 84 registri, p. 1. See above, p. 92. RCA, vol. 19, reg. lxxxii, 348, 368; CII, vol. 48, reg. lxiii, 2, 25.


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Charleses would have wished to confer bishoprics on various of their French supporters. But there were difficulties in their path. One of the conditions that Charles of Anjou had sworn to observe before his coronation was the preservation of ecclesiastical liberties. Initially he obtained only a very few sees for his clerical advisors, and he failed to persuade either Geoffroi de Beaumont or his own clerk Garnier de Viellier-leBel to take the sees he offered to them.56 In 1273, he did manage to get the archbishopric of Palermo for his faithful clerk Jean de Mesnil; but like so many Frenchmen appointed to high office in the Regno, Jean died within five months of his nomination.57 Charles II was rather luckier with his chancellor, Adam de Doucy, whom he had elected archbishop of Cosenza in 1290, although he was not consecrated because Charles continued to need his services as chancellor until 1294, when he died.58 One way or another, French bishops were rare in the Regno. The frequent clerical visitors, some of whom were willing to put in several months’ or even years’ service in the Angevin administration, were apparently happy usually to hold on to their French benefices; for example, Alberic, canon of Troyes, retained that position while working for both Charles Martell and Charles II, eventually holding the office of treasurer.59 How such an arrangement might work was illuminated when Master Martin d’Armentières nominated a citizen of Paris to collect and keep all the revenues of his prebend until he returned home to collect them.60 He, like most of the other canons and archdeacons who visited the Regno, had no intention of putting down permanent roots there.61 The lure of France was as strong for them as for their lay counterparts. Master Simon de Chaumont, professor of laws, who became dean of Agrigento, was rather unusual.62 Robert d’Artois’s chaplain became a canon of Nola, but may well subsequently have surrendered this piece of patronage and gone home with his master.63 Most canons and bishops visited the Regno at the tail end of a stay at the Roman curia, which provided them with an opportunity for further exploration to the south. The pattern suggests that curiosity was more widespread among reasonably affluent medieval clergy than has usually been assumed. Curiosity in itself argues for a degree of receptivity on their part, but not for a desire to acquire patronage. 56 58 59 60 61 63

57 Ibid., p. 150. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 144. RCA CII, vol. 47, reg. lvii, 628; Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, pp. 301–2. RCA CII, vol. 48, reg. lxiii, 131, and reg. lxvi, 1. RCA CII, vol. 44, part 2, additiones to reg. xxx, 585. 62 RCA vol. 21, additiones to reg. lxxxix, 129. See above, pp. 94–6. RCA CII, vol. 38, reg. xxx, 26.

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There can be no denying the depth of commitment to the Angevin regime among northern French aristocrats, at least before 1294. It was made obvious in the large numbers who answered Charles of Anjou’s call for help in 1282–84. But only in a minority of cases did that commitment extend to settlement in the Regno. And of that minority, those willing to sacrifice permanently all their French interests for those of the Regno could probably be counted on the fingers of two hands.

9

The French experience in the Regno

As a preliminary to discussing the influence of Regno institutions and culture on France, some picture must be drawn of the kind of life led by the French who came down to the Regno, in order to assess what their opportunities were for meeting the locals or understanding the new world in which they found themselves. Clearly such opportunities were very unequally distributed. Those who had the richest cultural exchanges with locals were those who were least likely to return to France, because they had married local women and settled down in one of the towns of the Regno. Therefore they could not be very useful conduits for influence, the subject of this book. On the other hand, the majority of fighting men, who came down only for a year or two, had much more limited intercourse with the locals; they necessarily formed their impressions on a rather partial view of society. Only a small number of lay and ecclesiastical officeholders had the chance to penetrate quite deeply into this intriguingly different political, cultural or ecclesiastical set-up. But that small number comprised men and women who wielded authority when they returned to France. To start with the bulk of fighting men: they came to acquire military experience, and it was predominantly military experience that they got. Many of them had horses to carry them on the journey and to face their enemies in battle, should that occur. If their horses were killed, in most cases their commanders were obliged to replace them. The soldiers were usually offered wages, and sometimes meals in part payment. Their everyday companions were those who had been recruited by the same military leader as themselves – in other words, the men from their own locality in France. Thus far, all must have seemed reasonably familiar. But the actual fighting they encountered was very different from the odd skirmishes or feuds in which they might have participated in France. In the first place, they will frequently have been transported by sea to Achaia, to the Adriatic coast or to Sicily, before being expected to fight. Such journeys were always uncomfortable and could, on occasion, be dangerous, as when in June 1287 Roger Lauria defeated the fleet of Jean 171

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de Montfort and Philippe of Chieti and captured some 5,000 troops who had been on their way to relieve their friends besieging the Sicilian town of Augusta.1 Roger’s willingness to accept ransoms from his prisoners meant that not many lives were lost, but a heavy burden of debt fell on all the leaders, and probably on the knights also. They were, however, more fortunate than had been the combined French and Angevin army that left Tunis after the abortive crusade and the death of Louis IX in 1270. A large number of those soldiers were drowned when eighteen of the ships that had come to take them to Trapani were hit by a storm and sank.2 There was little in the history of Angevin naval exploits against the Aragonese to arouse a desire to emulate among the ordinary French knights once they had returned home. Nor was it likely that there had been either the time or the desire to make friends with the sailors, mainly inhabitants either of the Regno or of Pisa or Genoa, to whose mercy they were reluctantly forced to consign themselves on their sea voyages. Then there was the problem of mercenary allies recruited from unfamiliar parts of the world. It was not that the French had never used mercenaries.3 But they were a relative rarity in France after the defeat of King John of England in 1214 and before the outbreak of the Gascon war. In Italy it was different. Whenever Charles’s soldiers fought alongside those of Florence or other Guelf towns in Tuscany or Lombardy, they had to adjust to groups of men recruited from far away, fighting as a means of making a living.4 Although many of the French themselves were hoping to receive wages for fighting, they were less professional and more emotionally involved in the objectives of the campaign than were the mercenaries hired by the Italian cities. Doubtless the French learned much about tactics from these more experienced soldiers, but there was also an emotional gulf between them. More disconcerting, especially for those who had taken on board anti-Hohenstaufen propaganda before they arrived in the Regno, must have been the need to fight alongside the Saracens of Lucera. From the subjugation of Lucera in 1270 until Charles II disbanded them in 1300, the Saracen contingents were a crucial part of the Angevin armies. They were not, however, always to be relied upon. A number deserted in 1283.5 Again, a sense of comradeship with them was unlikely. Almost as difficult to accept will have been those Almogavars whom Robert d’Artois induced to change sides and serve him. These Aragonese warriors had made themselves unpopular 1 3 4 5

2 Ibid., p. 144. Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers, pp. 63–4. For example Philippe Auguste’s commander Caduc. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, pp. 133–4. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 514.


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in Sicily, where they showed little respect for the possessions of the local population.6 More importantly, they had also inflicted much damage on parts of Val di Crati and Basilicata.7 Those who were seduced to the Angevin cause may have helped to secure the survival of the kingdom of Naples, but they cannot have been welcome allies for the French.8 Then in 1301, Charles II was said to have expressed serious doubt about the employment of Catalan soldiers on his side in the Regno, fearing that they and the French would not get on.9 One way and another, fighting for the Angevin monarchy must have been a stiff learning curve for those who came down from France. It introduced them to a very different world. It did not, however, necessarily broaden their outlook. Nor did it necessarily provide them with lessons that could easily be adapted to the circumstances of fighting in France. The constant campaigning will have given the soldiers rather little time to escape from their camps and meet the inhabitants of the world into which they had been catapulted. But those who had the entrée into the royal household – probably a sizeable minority of the whole – did have regular opportunities to familiarise themselves with a notable part of Regno life. For the first four years of Charles of Anjou’s reign, the royal household was the high command of the army; life will have been very much the same as in any other major military camp. But from the end of the siege of Lucera in 1270 until the siege of Messina in the late summer of 1282, Charles sent out his generals to fight; he himself remained in the Regno, moving from castle to hunting lodge to castle again, with the knights of his household around him.10 During the troubled period from 1282 to 1289, evidence is scarce, and the household may well have reverted to a military camp. But from the accession of Charles Martell as regent in 1289 until the end of Charles II’s reign, the court was distinct from the military command. Therefore, in any time that the French troops attached to the household were not fighting on the Adriatic coast, in Achaia, in Tuscany, Lombardy or Piedmont, or in Calabria or Sicily, they will have returned to take their ease in the company of the king (or the regent). There, most of them received regular meals and fodder for their horses, and the most important also got robes, candles and wine.11 6 8

9 10 11

7 Saba Malaspina, Chronicon, p. 352. Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers, p. 245. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 216. Charles II also used them, and placed them under the command of a Hospitaller: RCA CII, vol. 47, reg. lviii, 363, 370. H. Finke (ed.), Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII, Funde und Forschungen. Quellen, no. 9 ¨ (Munster, 1902), p. xxxiii. Dunbabin, ‘The household and entourage of Charles I’, 315–16. See for example the arrangement made with Jean Scot, erstwhile seneschal of Provence, when he became seneschal of the Regno in 1293, RCA, CII, vol. 44, part 1, reg. xliii,

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They mixed on equal terms with the natives of the Regno whom the king trusted enough to make knights and valets of his household.12 They had the chance of meeting some at least of the endless flow of visitors who came to the court, including those from Hungary after Charles Martell claimed the throne of that country in 1292. It was a much more cosmopolitan environment than most of them were used to. They also participated in the displays and entertainments that marked the great liturgical feasts of the church. On these occasions, they probably heard their leaders’ and their own struggles transmuted into epic triumphs by jongleurs. While the lingua franca of the court was French in Charles of Anjou’s reign, as was much of the personnel in the early days, the local contingent grew steadily as time went on. Even from the start, natives of the Regno formed a large majority of three categories of subject regularly found at court: the financial agents of the crown headed by the magistri rationales, the physicians and the lawyers. By the time Charles II took up regular residence in Naples in 1294, locals were also preponderant among the knights of the household, the bishops and the valets. Whereas letters to the treasurers had usually been written in French in the latter part of Charles I’s reign, in the reign of Charles II all letters were produced in Latin.13 It follows that, while there were far fewer French soldiers in Charles II’s armies after 1291 than before, those who did receive privileges in the royal household in the later period were sucked into an atmosphere that was decidedly different from the one they had been brought up in. At least as important from the point of view of exposure to local custom was the fact that, from about 1277, the court was increasingly based on Naples. The completion of Château Neuf in 1284 provided a splendid background for the royal household, though just at a time when warfare made it unlikely to benefit from splendour. By 1284, the chief officials of the Regno had mainly established permanent quarters in Naples.14

12 13

14

702. Jean and his socii were to eat in the household along with two swordbearers for him and one for each socius. He was to receive robes, candles and wine; and the man he chose as his vice-seneschal was also to receive robes, candles and wine, as if he were a knight of the household. Dunbabin, ‘The household and entourage of Charles I’, 325–6. Though Charles II himself appears to have found Latin difficult to read. He ordered a French copy of the register of income and expenditure to be made for him, so that he could see quickly what was going on; RCA CII vol. 44, part 2, additiones to CII, reg. xxx, 560. In this respect, Naples took precedence over Paris. It was not until the completion of ˆ the first building campaign of the royal palace on the Ile-de-la-Cit´ e in 1302 that the French administration began to find a permanent home in Paris; Favier, Philippe le Bel,


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Before the death of Charles of Anjou in January 1285, Naples was a capital city in the full sense of the term, housing about 30,000 inhabitants.15 There can be little doubt that the city suffered badly during the war of the Vespers; but even before the peace of Caltabellotta Charles II was spending money to rebuild its walls and gates and place a new fountain in the market place.16 Many visiting French soldiers will have had a chance to see Naples, perhaps to take lodgings there for at least a week or two, to admire the harbour and the fine new churches going up in the city.17 They may have been dazzled by its apparent wealth. They will have been struck by the importance of trade and sea communications, the endless business of the law courts, the mob of students and the bustle of clerical visitors. But they are unlikely to have experienced, even in the 1290s, any lengthy exposure to the ordinary inhabitants of the city – or, indeed, to the ordinary inhabitants of any part of the Regno. They were essentially outsiders. The same was not necessarily true of the small body of French soldiers who decided to stay in the Regno for at least a short time, and were posted as castellans, captains, or members of the garrison to the various defensive points across the country. For example, Renaud, chamberlain of Robert d’Artois, and Baudoin de Sapignies together held a castle in Basilicata called Fiorenza. After Baudoin’s death in the service of King Charles II, Renaud and Baudoin’s heir decided to pass it on in 1298 to Rinaldo Cognetti, provided King Charles agreed to the transaction.18 It is clear from the charter that details the transaction that Renaud had returned to Artois by 1298; probably he came home in 1292, in the company of his lord. When either or both of these men had been in residence in their castle in Basilicata, presumably during and after the years of Robert d’Artois’s regency, they will have had at least some opportunity to mix socially with their neighbours. In the course of their performance of feudal service, they will have found themselves in command of troops from the locality. And they will have been visited frequently by local officials on various kinds of business. They probably learned to speak in the local dialect. As far as is known, neither Baudoin nor Renaud married a local woman; however, some French knights

15

16 17 18

pp. 62–4. The judgment in La culturà angioina, p. 114, that Paris was the model for Naples is, at least in this respect, open to question. Cordelia Warr and Janis Elliott, ‘Introduction: reassessing Naples 1266–1713’, Art History 31, no. 4 (2008), Special issue: Import/Export in Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in the Kingdom of Naples, 1266–1713, 423–37, at 424. Minieri Riccio, Studii storici fatti sopra 84 registri, pp. 83, 94, 115, 119. Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples, pp. 76–131. Pas-de-Calais Série A, 2, fol. 19v, no. 53.

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did, thereby opening the way to much more cordial relationships and greater understanding of Regno traditions. But, as with all agents of law and order, most castellans will not have been encouraged to engage in excessive fraternisation. They lived behind gates and high walls, charged with the incarceration of prisoners and with the care of armour for military forays. If they were not perceived as somewhat intimidating, they were not fulfilling their role. Sometimes, particularly in the early days of Angevin rule, a French castellan might take intimidation too far, as in the case of Ardouin, a knight from Anjou, who tried to impose by force what he thought to be his right of ‘high and low justice’ upon his inferiors, and was punished by Charles of Anjou for his temerity.19 A man like Ardouin, who found adjustment to new circumstances difficult, was unlikely, on his return home, to think of his time in the Regno as stimulating or enriching. Nevertheless there is some evidence that French soldiers might mingle with the locals on friendly terms, and that in a surprising place. The accounts of how the Sicilian Vespers rebellion broke out offer a clue as to socialising between the French and the locals, which is an essential pointer as to how far the French might understand the new world in which they found themselves. But before proceeding to consider this, it is necessary to observe that relations between the Sicilians and the French were clearly worse than those obtaining over much of southern Italy. Sicily had been the focus for prolonged resistance to the Angevin conquest, and consequently for violent repression in 1270. Charles of Anjou’s promise to return all lands taken from the church under the Hohenstaufen, and his reliance on Frederick II’s registers to reconstitute the large royal demesne on the island, had together deprived many Sicilian lay families of land which they had started to regard as their own. The heavy burdens imposed by Angevin agents through taxation and military dues were not sweetened in Sicily by the presence of the king, with his ability to mitigate misery when he saw it. Charles of Anjou came to Sicily only on his way to Tunis in 1270 and on his return at the end of that year. In his absence, his agent was a vicar, who had neither the charisma nor the dispensing power of a king. Sicilian grievances were therefore deeply felt.20 Comradeship with French soldiers was not probable. Yet Saba Malaspina’s famous story of the beginnings of the rebellion shows the trouble beginning when various inhabitants of Palermo had gone to a shrine outside the city to celebrate a feast. That French soldiers should join the crowd was apparently not in itself unusual. In fact, the young local men who had come secretly armed to the feast were 19

Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 61.

20

Ibid., pp. 105–6.


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expecting them.21 The soldiers joined the dancing as if it were a matter of course. Were they completely insensitive in assuming they would be welcome, or was the violence that followed as much of a surprise to the crowd as it was to the French? The less than chivalrous conduct of the French towards the Sicilian women was allegedly the match that kindled the blaze. The rapid spread of the rebellion is incontrovertible evidence of the deep Sicilian resentment of Angevin rule. Yet Saba Malaspina blamed the insolent Palermitan youth along with some exiles from Gaeta for the initial trouble. His words suggest that this was a conflagration that could have been avoided, that there was nothing extraordinary in the circumstances of French soldiers attending the feast. He also makes it clear that several local women had slept with French soldiers and were pregnant with their offspring.22 As has been shown to be the case with another army of occupation,23 relations between soldiers and locals were clearly far more complicated, at least before the outbreak of the rebellion, than the slogan ‘Death to the French!’ would imply.24 If this was true in Sicily before 1282, it is likely to have been more true in southern Italy, where attitudes towards Angevin rule were by and large much less hostile, and in many places positively cordial. Some socialising can be assumed. Even so, the picture should not be distorted; the average French soldier probably spent most of his time on campaign or in barracks, with comparatively little opportunity for fraternisation. Above the soldiers, captains and castellans, and with far more opportunity for getting to know all aspects of local custom, were the justiciars. These officials, their jobs given new definition by Frederick II,25 were the chief agents of local government in the Regno. Their task was to enforce the law, to carry out specific royal orders, and to see that the tax collectors of the Regno enriched the king, not themselves. Inevitably this involved the ability to use force where necessary, even in times of peace. Once the war of the Vespers began, the military aspect of the task grew more pronounced as the need for local defence against Aragonese raids grew rapidly. Justiciars were appointed by the king and answerable to him throughout their tenure. No one who held this office can have had only a superficial knowledge, either of the law of the Regno 21 23 24

25

22 Ibid., p. 289. Saba Malaspina, Chronicon, p. 287. Cf. Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains. In Search of the German Occupation of France 1940–45 (Basingstoke: Pan Macmillan, 2002). For an example of a family which began as Angevin supporters but rapidly switched allegiance, see the Rosso of Messina; Clifford R. Backman, The Decline and Fall of Medieval Sicily. Politics, Religion, and Economy in the Reign of Frederick III, 1296–1337 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 133–7. Matthew, The Norman Kingdom, pp. 355–6.

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or of its administrative procedures; all must also have been considered competent to take on the task of defending their areas in time of danger. For example, the justiciar of Val di Crati in 1284 led his troops against the Almogavars who attacked the province, but was caught in an ambush, and lost several of his men.26 That justiciars frequently had to command soldiers in the field probably explains the choice of Frenchmen when available. Of the 132 justiciars chosen by Charles of Anjou, 70 per cent were either French or Provençal.27 During the period 1270– 82, Charles was trying hard to use as many Ultramontaines as possible in these positions, presumably to strengthen his own hand in his new realm, so that he could concentrate on his ambitious overseas expansion programme. From 1282 and throughout the first half of the reign of Charles II, French justiciars declined in number, but still formed a sizeable minority.28 Naturally, this was not a job for a newcomer to the Regno. Almost all French justiciars can be traced in the record fulfilling other responsible roles, usually military, before they were appointed. And once appointed, they often stayed less than a year in post. Sometimes this was because they were moved to another province; for example, Guillaume de Poncey was justiciar in Terra di Bari in 1289, and in the Abruzzi in 1291–92.29 The king was apparently worried lest his officials dig themselves too deep in one area. But sometimes a nine-month or so stretch was all they were called on to perform. Since the burdens of the post were substantial, most will have been relieved to be allowed (after lengthy investigation of their financial and other transactions) to quit. Although the regime they administered was harsh, at least in time of war, not all French justiciars were unpopular with the locals. Geoffroi de Polisi, justiciar in Calabria from 1277 to 1279, and later justiciar in the Abruzzi, was said by Saba Malaspina to have been a merciful, gentle and amiable man despite being French.30 Several of these justiciars are known to have died in the Regno. Of those who survived their tour of duty, some will have returned to France, but it is unfortunate that French records, being less full than those of the Regno, offer little opportunity for tracing men of their class once home. It can only be assumed that the experience they had endured in the Regno will have left them with higher expectations of bureaucratic efficiency than they could usually hope to meet with in local government 26 27 28 29

Saba Malaspina, Chronicon, p. 352. ` in L’état Serena Morelli, ‘I giustizieri nel regno di Napoli al tempo di Carlo d’Angio’, angevin, pp. 491–517. For a list of known justiciars 1289–95, see Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, pp. 536–9. After 1295, French justiciars became rare. 30 Saba Malaspina, Chronicon, p. 261. Ibid., pp. 536 and 538.


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in the French provinces, and also with an awareness of the adjustments almost certain to be demanded of the civilian population in time of war. Only a relatively small number of French laymen and clerks had the opportunity to participate in the central administration of the Regno. But these men may have been crucially important in influencing French procedures later. It was unprecedented in western society for a prince of one realm to have ruled another in a time of extreme danger, as was the case with Robert II d’Artois, and then to draw on his experiences to the benefit of his cousin ruling at home when events in France took a turn for the worse. Much has already been said of the results, and more will be said in Chapter 15. For the moment, we shall concentrate on other French members of the central administration who had full opportunity to comprehend and work the system they found in the Regno after the death of King Manfred in 1266. As Saba Malaspina made plain, Charles of Anjou had no intention of getting rid of the personnel who had managed the financial affairs of the Regno in the reigns of Frederick II and Manfred.31 To do so would have been to kill the bird that laid the golden eggs. Therefore, throughout the period 1266 to 1305, local men predominated among the magistri rationales who kept the accounts for the royal fisc and controlled the local financial agents, the secreti and their inferiors. But one Frenchman was magister rationalis for about thirteen years: Pierre Boudin of Anjou. Introduced to the work by Giozzelino della Marra, who had held office for many years and thoroughly understood the job, Pierre Boudin continued to serve Charles II until 1294, when the enquiries conducted into his years of office suggest that he was on the point of returning to France.32 Having worked with those trained in mercantile traditions and also with top lawyers, Pierre Boudin will have learned to understand the complete financial administration of the Regno, presided over inquests into the financial probity of all officials from justiciars down, and co-operated with the treasurers in the attempt to keep royal expenditure under some kind of control. It must be assumed that he was chosen for this onerous office because he could converse easily with his fellow local magistri rationales, his arithmetical skills were outstanding, and he had a sharp eye for any failure in accounting. His initial appointment probably points to a determination by Charles of Anjou to prevent his local financial officials from operating in their own, rather than his, interests. Pierre Boudin must have given satisfaction, or he would not have held the office so long. He cannot be traced after he resigned his office in the Regno. But if, as is likely, he returned to France, he would have had a great deal to teach those interested in establishing 31

Ibid., p. 179.

32

RCA CII, vol. 44, part 1, reg. lxiii, 445, 479.

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the royal Chambre des Comptes in Paris at just this time,33 or indeed those concerned with princely or episcopal accounts. All Charles of Anjou’s chancellors or vice-chancellors were French, while only Adam de Doucy among Charles II’s chancellors came from the north – the others were all from southern France, and in fact from Quercy. With the appointment of Bartolomeo da Capua as protonotary in 1291, the office of chancellor declined in importance.34 Only two chancellors or vice-chancellors are known to have left the Regno for France, Geoffroi de Beaumont, the most remarkable administrator of Charles of Anjou’s reign, and Guillaume de Farumville. Geoffroi died shortly after coming back to be consecrated bishop of Laon, so his time for introducing the French to Angevin ways of registration was strictly limited. Unfortunately it is not possible to trace Guillaume de Farumville on his return to France in 1278 (Kiesewetter believes that he simply failed to return to resume his post as vice-chancellor of the Regno after his permitted visit to his homeland). But he would certainly have had a great deal to teach any episcopal or comital or indeed royal servant in a chancery about efficient methods of keeping track of what the executive had done, both in the immediate and in the more distant past.35 In the later thirteenth century, only the papal chancery and possibly that of England could compare with the chancery of the Regno in terms of output; and the use of registers in the Regno was far more convenient than the rolls favoured by the English chancery. While those who had been office-holders in the Regno had the best foundation for explaining the system to others, they were not the only conduit to France for information on bureaucratic procedures. The substantial number of visiting French clergy36 who spent some months, sometimes longer, as members of the royal household in the Regno, will have had time to appreciate and to some extent understand the relative complexity of the Angevin administrative machinery, with its apparent contribution to the strength and wealth of the monarchy. In particular, they could admire the care with which all financial transactions were recorded. Since those clerics who can be traced were bishops, archdeacons and canons of the French church, they were in a position to 33

34 35 36

Unfortunately the early records of the Chambre des Comptes in Paris have largely disappeared. The fire in October 1737 was responsible for much of the destruction. On the early history of the Chambre, see Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. 179–91. Kiesewetter, ‘La cancelleria angioina’, pp. 360–415, at pp. 383, 389. What follows also comes from Kiesewetter’s article. See above, pp. 94–6. See below, pp. 256–8. Note also the suggestion above, p. 79, n. 3, that Pierre de Condé may have learned something from his time in the Regno.


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influence record-keeping, both secular and ecclesiastical, when they returned home. Some, like Alberic, canon of Troyes, who had been intimately connected with Charles II’s administration, were almost bound to attempt to put some at least of what they had learned into circulation once back at home. Others, like Simon de Matifas, canon of Reims and professor of civil law from Bologna, had the right qualifications to absorb what they saw the king’s servants doing; and in Simon’s case, his future as bishop of Paris (1289–1304) gave him the perfect opportunity to use his knowledge.37 As temporary members of the royal household, French clerics would automatically meet the learned men, lawyers, physicians and university teachers who were royal counsellors and regular visitors to the court. They will have admired the collection of books the king had gathered together and kept in his treasury.38 This was an impressive set, comprising law books, principally in origin those that had belonged to Master Peter of Burgundy, the Digest, twenty-six religious works, the Bible, the works of Josephus, several medical works in Arabic, and the interesting collection, including various vernacular romances, that had belonged to the chancellor of Achaia.39 These were intended for consultation by those who could benefit from them. Because we know so little about the contents of cathedral libraries in France at this time, it is difficult to estimate quite what the effect of this collection on learned visiting Frenchmen would have been. But surely they will have been struck by the range of texts kept by the king. The care devoted by royal scribes to correcting copies and translations of texts will also have surprised them.40 Then those visitors who came in 1280 will have had the chance to meet the famous French physician Jean de Nesle, appointed as royal doctor and keeper of the king’s books, who was engaged in writing a chronicle during his time in the Regno. And anyone who knew anything about law will have been amazed by the wealth of legal talent available to the court. In the few months most of the canons and archdeacons spent in the household, they surely saw enough to be deeply impressed by the cultural depth of the civilisation they encountered. The contrast with the court of Philippe IV, where the king was preoccupied with hunting and 37 38

39 40

RCA, vol. 9, reg. xlv, 113, 115; Pierre Desportes, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae, vol. III: Diocèse de Reims, p. 525, no. 1185. There is some disagreement as to who was responsible for the foundation of the royal library; but if it cannot be ascribed to Charles of Anjou, he not only collected books (RCA, vol. 26, reg. cxiv, 3), he also had some translated from the Arabic; see below, pp. 230–2. RCA CII, vol. 43, additiones to reg. cii, 178; to reg. cviii, 187, 188, 191; to reg. cxviii, 205; vol. 38, reg. xxx, 754. RCA CII, vol. 43, additiones to reg. cviii, 194, 196–202.

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took an entirely utilitarian attitude towards learning, was after all remarkable. Admittedly, the contrast was less marked in the reign of Charles II, Philippe’s contemporary.41 As clergy, these visitors will also have been interested in the church of the Regno. Initially, they probably felt themselves quite at home in a court much frequented by men of the religious orders, where some bishops were regular visitors, and where ecclesiastical rituals shaped the lives of the principal laymen when they were not actually at war. The major local saint’s cult, that of Nicholas of Bari, was one with which they had long been familiar. The intellectual dominance of Thomas Aquinas in theological teaching at Naples will have seemed up-to-date. There were, of course, far more bishops than they were accustomed to in France; 42 but that in itself probably did not make much impression. Only after a month or two would the differences in ecclesiastical life begin to sink in. In the first place, papal intervention was far commoner than in France. Charles of Anjou was dependent on his papal coronation for his position in the Regno; he had recognised without equivocation that he held it as a fief of the papacy. Consequently he was constantly negotiating with the various popes, whose approval he needed for his foreign policy.43 He valued the papal alliance not only for itself, but also for the access it gave him to the goodwill of the Guelf towns of Tuscany and Lombardy. It really mattered to him that the popes should be well disposed to him. He therefore spent time at the papal curia on several occasions, especially during the period from January 1276 (the death of Pope Gregory X) until November 1277 (the election of Nicholas III), when there were four papal elections in seventeen months. He hoped that his presence might induce the cardinals to vote for a candidate pleasing to him. When he was not at the curia, he was in close touch with it. All those who visited his court will have met papal messengers and heard of the stream of letters that passed between the pope, the cardinals and the king. After Charles’s death in January 1285, papal influence was even more strongly felt in the Regno. Honorius IV both produced a constitution in accordance with which the kingdom was to be ruled during the imprisonment of Charles of Salerno, and chose a cardinal, Gerard of Parma, to act in harness with Robert II d’Artois in the government of the Regno. No one could fail to take on board Gerard’s authority from his appointment until the release of Charles of Salerno at the end of 1288. He was regularly involved in trying to find solutions to arguments over ownership of land 41 42 43

Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung Köning Karls II, pp. 521–2. Vitolo, ‘Episcopato, società e ordini mendicanti in Italia meridionale’, p. 173. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 129–42.


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in the Regno,44 and in dispensing individuals from the law of the Regno in specific cases where the law operated unfairly.45 After Charles II’s coronation, he continued to keep in touch with various inhabitants of the Regno, and was frequently a go-between in the negotiations between Charles and James II of Aragon. For a few years, during the pontificate of Nicholas IV and then in the papal interregnum, a French visitor might have been rather less conscious of papal intervention in the affairs of the Regno. During the brief pontificate of Celestine V, he would have observed rather papal submission to the will of the Angevin king. But the accession of Boniface VIII to the papal throne changed the atmosphere decisively. As a member of a family which held extensive lands in the Abruzzi and as Charles II’s trusted counsellor, Boniface could not but assert himself in Angevin affairs.46 More emphatically than Charles II, he was determined to attempt the Angevin reconquest of Sicily; his irritation with Charles’s pacific instincts as the war dragged on was dramatically recorded by two of James II’s envoys to the papal court.47 They described Boniface threatening Charles with loss of the Regno if he did not submit to his overlord’s demands. No one resident in Naples for even a month at this time could have been unaware of the claims Boniface was making for the amount of control his lordship implied. Nor, of course, could they be unaware of the events of Anagni in September 1303, which brought this period to a close. But Charles II punished all those he could catch who were connected in any way with the attack on Boniface VIII.48 The French clergy, who were accustomed to preserving a distance between themselves and the papacy, will have found the results of the Regno’s closeness to the curia more than a little disconcerting. Before 1303, papal lordship was not confined to politics. Inquisitors were regularly sent into the Regno to keep an eye on potential heretics.49 The king offered his protection and support to these papal agents. Again, this was not a phenomenon which northern French clergy were trained to expect. In Charles of Anjou’s reign, the inquisitors’ activities apparently caused little upheaval; arrests were few and far between. But under Charles II, and presumably inspired by that king’s already expressed 44 46 47

48 49

45 Pas-de-Calais S´ RCA CII, vol. 44, part 1, reg. xliii, 604. erie A, 32/14 and 34/12. Pollastri, Les Gaetani de Fondi, passim. Heinrich Finke, Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII, Quellen, pp. xxvi–lviii, nos. 9–11. Deploring Charles’s lack of pugnacity, the pope allegedly said he was not a man but the lowest of camp followers, p. xlv. Pollastri, Les Gaetani de Fondi, nos. 59, 60. For a list of inquisitors, see Gennaro M. Monti, ‘Nuovi documenti sulla inquisizione nel regno di Sicilia da Carlo I a Roberto’, in Da Carlo I a Roberto di Angiò. Ricerche e documenti (Trani: Vecchi, 1936), pp. 24–65, at pp. 45–6.

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dislike of Jewish ways, they made a determined attack on the Jewish communities of the Regno, particularly the long-established communities in Apulia. In 1293 the chancery recorded that Jews fleeing from the inquisitors had taken refuge in Lucera, where they were to be captured.50 This incident took place during the long papal interregnum, which perhaps explains the absence of a restraining hand from the curia.51 The king and his ministers determined on a programme of mass forced conversion which, once begun, was carried through very thoroughly.52 The only alternative to baptism was flight, and there was no obvious safe refuge in easy reach of southern Italy. Once baptised, fear of being charged with apostasy kept the erstwhile Jewish communities docile. Synagogues were turned into churches. Jews disappeared from the landscape of southern Italy, at least for a year or two.53 The church militant seemed to have triumphed. French observers were no doubt impressed. But those who knew anything about the Jews in Provence at the same time will have been puzzled, as are modern historians. Charles II’s policy towards Jews there was ambivalent, inconsistent but basically tolerant.54 Indeed, in 1306 Provence formed the chief refuge for Jews fleeing France.55 Perhaps the discrepancy is explicable in terms of the dire financial straits in which Charles II found himself in the Regno in the early 1290s as a result of the war of the Vespers. He had already gained financially by putting to flight the Jews of Anjou and Maine; perhaps he hoped that more Jews in the Regno would flee than would convert. This would be very profitable for the crown, which could then confiscate their property. He was rather less pressed financially in Provence, so he could just about afford to adhere to the traditional policy of toleration there, though he was occasionally tempted to abandon it. The campaign against the Jews in the Regno was followed by that against the Saracens, who had proved themselves unreliable in fighting the Aragonese.56 In 1294, the famous Ramon Lull was asked to come to Naples in order to speak to the Saracens of Château d’Œuf.57 Presumably 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57

RCA CII, vol. 44, part 1, reg. xliii, 49, 80. For standard papal teaching on Jews, see Kenneth R. Stow, ‘The Church and the Jews’, in Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol V, pp. 204–19. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, pp. 85–8; RCA CII, vol. 46, reg. lvii, 359. Abulafia, ‘Monarchs and minorities’, p. 255. Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, pp. 518–21; RCA CII, vol. 45, reg. lv, 23, 83; vol. 49, reg. lxviii, 144, 146, 147, 198. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, p. 230. Though in 1291 Robert d’Artois knighted two Saracens of Lucera and gave them robes, RCA CII, vol. 35, reg. xxiv, 301, so their unreliability as a group should not be exaggerated. RCA CII, vol. 47, reg. xlviii, 220.


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these composed the garrison of the castle. The invitation shows that Lull was regarded primarily as a competent communicator in Arabic and a committed converter of Muslims. Whether he had any success is not recorded, but shortly afterwards Charles called the inquisitors in to deal with those whose conversion from Islam had proved purely temporary.58 The scene was set for the campaign that ultimately led to the sale of most of the Saracens into slavery in 1300. Once again, Charles’s Christian convictions and his financial interests coincided neatly.59 The point of these last two paragraphs is to demonstrate how unlikely it was that churchmen from France who came to the royal court of the Regno would obtain a broad-based picture of the religious landscape there. Strict, not to say militant, orthodoxy was the first requirement for active membership of the household. The small surviving Greekspeaking element in the Regno was poorly represented at court;60 before their elimination in 1300, Saracens were largely penned up in Lucera; and Jews, though tolerated before 1289, were never treated as equals. The regular visits of inquisitors, the strong position of the mendicant orders, the presence among the landholders of the Regno of various families with close connections to cardinals, and the obligation on the kings to demonstrate their wholehearted support of the papacy at all times, created an atmosphere uncongenial to any form of free thought. Neither Ramon Lull nor Arnau of Vilanova, men whose original minds have aroused the interest of modern historians, though they visited the Regno, chose it as a background for the development of their ideas. In this respect, Naples was very different from Provence, where the church was more relaxed, and more willing to engage with new ideas or new saints, and where, after 1266, the inhabitants and their rulers shared a sense that their goals, both spiritual and temporal, were very similar.61 In Naples all toed the canonists’ line. Clerical visitors to the courts of Charles I and Charles II in the Regno saw and heard only what it was deemed right for them to see and hear. The one section of the French population that had both the time and the opportunity to get to know local people and local customs thoroughly was composed of those who took up residence in towns. Of this section, those who married local women were doubtless reasonably quickly absorbed into local society. Tantalisingly, the chancery records offer only a few hints of their presence and almost nothing about their lives. Initially 58 59 60 61

Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II, p. 516. Taylor, Muslims in Medieval Italy, pp. 177–81. Dunbabin, ‘The household and entourage of Charles I’, p. 336. Boyer in La Provence au moyen aˆ ge, pp. 207–28; Mazel, ‘Piété nobiliaire et piété princière’.

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many of them appear to have been in the category of those who owed personal military, or in the case of maritime towns possibly naval, service to the crown, rather than having to pay heavy taxes for the support of the army.62 This may have aroused some resentment, but the French simply joined a group of ‘knights’ long resident in the towns of the Regno. There was no innovation here. In any case, as the war dragged on and became increasingly defensive, proving personal immunity from taxation grew harder.63 There were many complaints that those who had already fulfilled their service obligations were now being pressed for taxes on top. In addition, ordinary citizens had to play their part in the defence of their towns, in night guard, in the guarding of prisoners both in peace and in war (though this latter duty was banned by Honorius IV in his constitution for the government of the Regno), and in the carrying of letters around the country.64 The few French craftsmen known to us by name,65 along with those others whose existence can be inferred from the objects they created, probably joined the bulk of citizens in the various towns. How long they stayed, whether they integrated with the locals, what they learned, it is impossible to say. If, as is likely for many of them, they settled down, married, and continued to make a living in their new home, they will have been in the best position to understand the world in which they had come to live, though from an unprivileged perspective. On the other hand, not being wealthy or having important relations left in France, it is unlikely that they kept up communication of any sort with their previous friends or family. What they knew therefore went to the grave with them in the Regno. Although opportunities for getting to know local customs and local people were very unevenly distributed among the French who came down to the Regno, all those who returned home afterwards will have gained at least something – usually military experience – by their stay. And a few, but an influential few, had both the time and the opportunity to learn a good deal. 62 63

64 65

A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 1106; RCA, vol. 21, additiones to reg. lxxxix, 145. In the Capitula issued by Charles Martell and Robert d’Artois in September, 1290, it was stated that there would be no immunity from general subventions, no payment of money instead of service except where the conditions of the fief explicitly declared this privilege; and no right for communities to defer payment unless enemy action had made it impossible; RCA CII, vol. 35, reg. xxiv, 46. RCA CII, vol. 44, part 1, reg. xliii, 33; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 176. See above, pp. 97–8. This category does not include architects of distinction like Pierre d’Angicourt, who held fiefs.

Part IV

Cultural and political impacts

10

Royal ideology: the saintly family

The Capetian dynasty has long enjoyed a reputation for brilliance in the forging of an image of kingship. From the earliest years of political weakness, the family had striven to elevate its status by casting kingship in a sacral aura.1 It might therefore seem pointless to speculate that the French kings could owe anything to their cousins in the Regno, who after all only obtained their crown during the reign of St Louis, the king noted for doing more than any other French ruler to enhance the reputation of the office he fulfilled.2 Yet there is at least one aspect of thinking about later medieval French kingship which was consciously formed by Charles of Anjou, and which came to have a profound effect on later generations: that of the beata stirps (saintly lineage).3 Since Charles was already king of the Regno before any sign of this development appeared, it seems reasonable to ascribe it to his experience beyond the borders of France, and to the connections his family had made with the Hungarian royal family, where beata stirps was already well entrenched.4 In 1269, Charles began negotiations with Stephen V of Hungary to secure a double marriage with the Hungarian royal family; his eldest son Charles was to marry Maria, Stephen’s daughter, and Stephen’s son Ladislas – the future Ladislas IV – was to marry Charles’s daughter Isabelle. In defence of his choice, Charles described Stephen as ‘a valiant,

1

2 3

4

See for example Jacques Krynan, L’empire du roi. Idées et croyances politiques en France, XIIIe–XVe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), pp. 32–6; Jean Dunbabin, ‘West Francia: the kingdom’, in T. Reuter (ed.), New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 372–97, at pp. 395–7. Even Voltaire fell under his spell: ‘Il n’est pas donné a` l’homme de porter plus loin la vertu’, Essai sur les mœurs, ch. LVIII, quoted in the frontispiece of Le Goff, Saint Louis. André Vauchez, ‘“Beata stirps”: sainteté et lignage en occident aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles’, in G. Duby and J. Le Goff (eds.), Famille et parenté dans l’occident médiéval (Rome: ´ Ecole Française de Rome, 1977), pp. 397–406. Although the belief in beata stirps did not survive the disappearance of the Capetian dynasty in 1328, it had a revival in the sixteenth century, and traces of it can still be found in the reign of Louis-Philippe. Gabor Klaniczay, ‘La noblesse et le culte des saints dynastiques sous les rois angevins’, in Coulet and Matz (eds.), La noblesse dans les territoires angevins, pp. 511–26, at p. 527.

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strong prince, descended from a line of saints and great kings’.5 It was almost certainly at this time that Charles became aware of the formidable Hungarian tradition of extolling the line of royal saints, both male and female, in order to confer legitimacy on their descendants.6 It is perhaps unlikely that Charles was given enough information to appreciate the value of this tradition to the first King Ladislas, who turned it to good effect in stabilizing his rule over his people after his deposition of his predecessor.7 But he will surely have remarked the value of saints to a ruling dynasty, and contrasted the wealth of saints in the Hungarian royal line with the absence of those in the Capetian. There is little doubt that the seeds of his own contribution to Capetian ideology were sowed at this time. Until the death of Louis IX in 1270, Capetian propaganda was firmly centred on the person of the king, his virtue, his Christianity, his defence of the church and of his people, his innate sense of justice which created trust among his subjects. His legitimacy derived, not merely from his hereditary right, but also from his innate superiority. From the time of his unction in the coronation ceremony until his death, the Capetian king of France was a blessing to his people. As an outward sign of this, it was believed that he might heal people suffering from scrofula.8 But there was no overflow of blessedness from him to any other member of his family. Without unction, a Capetian was an ordinary individual. This was mirrored in the relative obscurity of cadet lines of the family before the thirteenth century. Neither their marriages nor their inheritances were sufficiently remarkable to set them up among the great princes of France.9 In the reign of Louis VIII, cadet branches suddenly attained new heights. In part, this was the result of the family wealth, now greatly enhanced by the conquests of Philippe Auguste and Louis himself. The rights of lesser members of the family need no longer be sacrificed to the overwhelming interest of the heir to the throne.10 Louis created apanages for his second, third and fourth sons, and he and his wife, Blanche of Castile, made arrangements for these sons to marry well. The newly privileged sons were to help with the assimilation of recently acquired lands into the French environment by ruling their apanages in a way 5 6 8 9 10

Gabor Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power. The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), p. 111. 7 Ibid., pp. 79–86. Ibid., pp. 92–4. Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch. Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, trans. J. E. Anderson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973). Andrew W. Lewis, Royal Succession in Capetian France. Studies on Familial Order and the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), esp. pp. 155–92. Wood, The French Apanages, pp. 7–9, 11–14.


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compatible with the needs of their brother, the future King Louis IX. These arrangements created a sense of cohesion and co-operation which made the family remarkable among the ruling elites of western Europe. Although probably born after his father’s death and certainly lacking his father’s oversight in his childhood, Charles of Anjou, the youngest member of Louis VIII’s and Blanche of Castile’s extensive family, gained greatly from the treatment of cadets that his father had developed. Not only was he given as an apanage the counties of Anjou and Maine after the death of his brother Jean in 1246; in the same year, he also obtained the county of Provence through a glittering marriage with its heiress, negotiated on his behalf by his brother and his mother.11 Given this generosity, it was unsurprising that Charles should regard the members of his family as forming a permanent alliance to the benefit not just of each other but of the world at large. As the most articulate Capetian, he came to be the spokesman of a distinctive theory about their status and obligations which went on to have an impact on future generations, particularly on Philippe IV. This theory adapted the Hungarian idea of a dynasty of saintly kings to the needs and attributes of the Capetian family in the later thirteenth century. The first occasion on which Charles set forth his view was when, in 1272, he tried to persuade his nephew Philippe III to claim the emperorship. He called on the young king to remember his father’s crusades, his grandfather’s campaign against the Cathars, and his great-grandfather’s participation in the third crusade. It was incumbent on Philippe not just to imitate these deeds of heroism but to surpass them. As a necessary preliminary to achieving this aim, he should combine the empire with France to give himself a suitable foundation for a final and successful reconquest of the Holy Land.12 In Charles’s eyes, the Capetian dynasty was intended to achieve for God and his creatures blessings that increased in each generation. That he failed to persuade Philippe to follow the course he advocated affected his overall picture not one whit. He had bigger fish to fry. For a family that claimed to be morally superior to other ruling groups, a public sign of this in the elevation of one of its members to the company of the saints of the church was, by the thirteenth century, highly desirable.13 Louis IX was the perfect Capetian candidate for such 11 12

13

Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 3–4. Lewis, Royal Succession in Capetian France, p. 125; Chris Jones, ‘ . . . mais tot por le servise Deu? Philippe III le Hardi, Charles d’Anjou, and the 1273/74 imperial candidature’, Viator 34 (2003), 208–28. Cf. Kornél Szovák, ‘The image of the ideal king in twelfth-century Hungary. Remarks on the Legend of St Ladislas’, in Anne J. Duggan (ed.), Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe (London: King’s College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1993), pp. 241–64.

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elevation. Charles was determined to obtain the canonisation of his brother. Although he died before he achieved his end (Louis was canonised by Boniface VIII in 1297), without Charles’s energetic pursuit of this goal it is unlikely that Louis would have become a saint. From the moment of Louis’s death from dysentery in Tunis in 1270, Charles stagemanaged the procession that brought his corpse up through Sicily and Italy to France. The opportunity was deliberately created for miracles to occur, in order to prove Louis’s sanctity. The dead king’s body was divided, with Charles keeping the entrails and possibly also the heart for burial in his monastery of S. Maria di Realvalle, later moved to the royal abbey of Monreale, while the dead king’s bones were taken slowly through the countryside so that the people could demonstrate the public reverence necessary to convince the sceptical that Louis had been a holy man.14 Louis was a saint by popular acclaim in 1270, despite the need for another twenty-seven years of hard work before the pope formally concurred in the verdict. Charles’s second contribution to the canonisation process was to bring the matter to the attention of all the popes with whom he dealt throughout his life. Charles’s relationships with the various popes were often difficult. Yet most of them wanted to be on good terms with him for powerful political reasons. Even Nicholas III, who was less than friendly, had no desire to frustrate him in matters not concerned with Angevin power in Rome itself or its surrounding areas. As soon as he was elected in 1272, Pope Gregory X began the process of canonisation by asking Geoffroi de Beaulieu, confessor of Louis’s queen Marguerite of Provence, to produce a life of the dead king which would demonstrate his saintly virtues. Gregory’s concern with the Holy Land and other urgent business at the second Council of Lyons in 1274 prevented him from taking the business further. His death in 1275, followed by the extremely brief pontificates of Innocent V, Adrian V and John XXI, meant that nothing was done for several years. Nicholas III instituted a first formal enquiry into Louis’s sanctity, but died before he could take action. The French pope Martin IV gave the matter high priority, introducing a second enquiry that lasted from May 1282 to March 1283. But the war of the Sicilian Vespers postponed action on the matter, and Martin died two months after Charles of Anjou in 1285. The deaths did not put an end to the process, although they certainly delayed it. Charles II was in no position to influence papal policy before his coronation in 1289, and had to put 14

Jean-Paul Boyer, ‘“La foi monarchique”: royaume de Sicile et de Provence (mi-XIIIe – mi-XIVe siècle)’, in Cammarosano (ed.), Le forme della propaganda politica nel due e nel ´ trecento (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1994), pp. 85–110 at pp. 95–6.


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the cause behind other more serious concerns, at least until the Peace of Anagni in 1295. But the election of Boniface VIII in that year was propitious. As Benedict Gaetani, the new pope had long been a member of Charles of Anjou’s household, and was a friend of Charles II.15 Although his strongest motive for canonising Louis IX in 1297 was doubtless to please Philippe IV of France, Boniface was fully aware that it would also give pleasure to the Angevin king of Naples. At least as important as his perpetual pressure for canonisation was Charles of Anjou’s own justification for it. During the second enquiry, conducted at the behest of Martin IV in 1282–83, King Charles was asked to provide written testimony to his brother’s sanctity. Some fragments of this have survived.16 Hardly surprisingly for one who was himself a crusader, Charles saw Louis’s chief claim to canonisation as lying in his dedication to the cause of the Holy Land, and in his impeccable behaviour while forwarding that cause, even in the terrible times that occurred after the defeat and capture of the French army at Mansourah in 1250. According to Charles, Louis put the safety of all his soldiers well before that of himself and his family, and refused any conditions of surrender that he regarded as demeaning to his Christian faith. What has struck readers of this testimony is its stress on the expedition as a family affair, the crusade of Louis and his brothers, not just Louis alone. Charles treated the death of Robert, count of Artois, at Mansourah as an instance of martyrdom, because he recorded that the count had expressed a desire to die for the faith before he set out for Egypt. The brothers left alive after this shared the burden of royal responsibility. When the terms of the surrender to the sultan were agreed, both Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou refused to allow Louis to remain as hostage with the sultan while the ransom money was collected, and volunteered themselves to be hostages for the king’s good faith (Alphonse actually fulfilled this role). Then in the short excerpt about the Tunis crusade of 1270 Charles emphasised his own and Alphonse’s significance as leaders of the army after the death of Louis.17 In his testimony, Charles embedded his crusade narrative into a history of his whole family. With an adroitness that might become a modern 15

16

17

Pollastri (ed.), Les Gaetani de Fondi, nos. 4, 6, 9, 11. For a full account of the canonisation procedure, Louis Carolus-Barré in Le procès de canonisation de Saint Louis (1272–97). ´ Essai de reconstitution (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1994), pp. 68–76. They were found by Count Riant in the Vatican ms of Pierre de la Palud’s Liber bellorum Domini. They have been edited by Carolus-Barré in Le procès de canonisation de Saint Louis, pp. 68–76. Cf. dynastic sanctity in Central Europe at the time, see Gábor Klaniczay, ‘The paradoxes of royal sainthood as illustrated by central European examples’, in Duggan (ed.), Kings and Kingship, pp. 351–74.

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psychologist, he traced the origin of Louis’s saintly virtue to his upbringing and education by his mother, Queen Blanche of Castile, who was personally responsible for forming the young king’s character. While she taught him virtue, she retained masters to teach him letters. Then, as Charles stressed, Blanche ensured that all her children enjoyed the same upbringing and education, Louis’s sister Isabelle included. He talked also of Blanche’s entry into the religious life at Pontoise just before her death, and her pious end. His account of this episode concludes thus: ‘Holy root from which grew the holy branches, first the king, then the count of Artois, a martyr by deed, and also the count of Poitou, who was a martyr by disposition of mind (affectu).’18 What Charles meant by this rather strange claim about Alphonse was probably that it was only his premature death from other causes that prevented him from dying in the cause of the Holy Land, to which he had dedicated himself. The assertion that Robert and Alphonse shared in Louis’s martyrdom was the claim that they, like him, suffered in imitation of the sufferings of Christ.19 No higher proof of sanctity could be offered. At almost the same time as Charles produced this testimony to the sanctity of the males in his family, he was also engaged in lauding his dead sister Isabelle. She had chosen to remain a virgin, devoting herself to prayer and alms-giving while remaining for many years at the court of her father. Then she moved to be within range of the convent she had founded at Longchamp where, while remaining a lay woman, she lived a notably holy life, building up admirers among the nuns of her convent and the brothers of the Franciscan order to whom she had bound it.20 She died in 1270. She had built up a local reputation as a miracle-worker but might well soon have been forgotten, had not Charles of Anjou asked the third abbess of Longchamp, Agnès de Harcourt, sister of one of his staunchest supporters in the Regno,21 to write a vita for the princess in 1282 or 1283. Agnès’s vita became the solid rock of Isabelle’s cult. In this, Blanche of Castile once more took centre-stage in the early years, as the educator of Isabelle’s mind and the former of her character (though Agnès allowed for a degree of friction between the domineering mother and the determined daughter in a fashion rather different from the portrayal of Charles of Anjou). As Agnès depicted Isabelle, while seeking always to be humble, she remained a princess and a member of the ruling family of

18 19 20 21

Carolus-Barré (ed.), Le procès de canonisation de Saint Louis, p. 75. Cf. Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 883–6. Sean L. Field, Isabelle of France. Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre Dame, ID: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). On Jean II d’Harcourt, see above, pp. 85–6, and below, p. 266.


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France. The whole portrait provided for France an almost exact parallel to St Elizabeth of Hungary.22 Charles’s testimony to the second enquiry and his prompting of Agnès de Harcourt to write the vita of Isabelle fitted together as major planks in a platform to raise all the children of Blanche of Castile to the rank of holy persons. While he made no overt case for his own sanctity, his praise for crusading was surely meant to redound to his own credit, because he was the most famous crusader of his generation. But he failed to convince his contemporaries that Robert d’Artois was a martyr – they were more likely to dismiss him as a hot-headed general who had brought defeat upon the French army at Mansourah, as did the contemporary English chronicler Matthew Paris.23 Charles also failed to impress with his argument that Alphonse de Poitiers was a martyr by disposition. A rather sickly man who died in his bed, Alphonse offered little parallel with the early Christian martyrs. More surprisingly, through a concatenation of circumstances, Isabelle was not beatified until 1521. Some well-informed contemporaries may have dismissed all Charles’s literary endeavours as desperate propaganda to distinguish the most Christian Capetians from their Aragonese rivals burdened by papal excommunication from 1283 onward. Yet if Charles’s precise aims in writing were frustrated in the short term, this does not mean that his broad picture was without influence. Much of what he said was transmitted to a wider audience through the vita of St Louis written by Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, who had clearly come across Charles’s testimony, and who gave Charles himself a major role in his story.24 It is naturally difficult to isolate Charles’s exact contribution to the future ideology of the family, because there were other reasons why Capetian blood should have come to be rated highly by the end of the thirteenth century.25 But Charles’s determination that Louis should be canonised without doubt made a vital contribution to what came to be known as ‘the religion of monarchy’, that belief that the Capetian dynasty had been chosen by God to protect the church, to elevate Christianity, to defend God’s interests on earth.26 Charles’s testimony reinforced the strong link between the moral superiority of the Capetian kings and 22 23 24 25 26

Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Power, pp. 93–4, discusses the model. Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 443. Carolus-Barré (ed.), Le procès de canonisation de Saint Louis, pp. 69–71. Lewis, Royal Succession in Capetian France, pp. 193–7. Strayer, ‘France, the Holy Land, the chosen people, and the most Christian king’; Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 827–34; Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ‘Laity, laicisation and Philip the Fair of France’, in P. Stafford, J. L. Nelson and J. Martindale (eds.), Law, Laity and Solidarities. Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 200–17, at pp. 203–7.

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their history as crusaders for the Holy Land. And his picture of a holy Capetian family, virtuous both by inheritance and by training, seems to have struck home, at least with future generations of that family and with the preachers who strove to flatter them.27 Surely his emphasis on the holy branches of the holy tree went some way to explaining why Louis IX’s offspring emphasised their relationship with the dead king in their titles, and why the whole family was increasingly seen as participating in the distinction of its ruling figures.28 The emergence of the ‘princes of the blood’ was not just a matter of changes in inheritance custom; it was also a recognition that the moral claims made for the first-born of the line ought to extend to his most active supporters and potential heirs, his brothers. Both Philippe III and Philippe IV were cadets who acceded to the throne when their elder brothers unexpectedly died. Both therefore had personal reasons for subscribing to a view of the family close to that of their uncle and great-uncle Charles of Anjou. Philippe III’s views on family are unfortunately difficult to trace because a series of disasters left him virtually the sole male of his generation. His brother Jean Tristan died on the Tunis crusade in 1270, the next brother Pierre died in attempting to assist Angevin forces against the Aragonese in 1283 in the aftermath of the Sicilian Vespers,29 and the third brother, Robert de Clermont, sustained so serious a head wound in a tournament in 1279 that he was mentally handicapped for the rest of his (long) life. Although his sister Blanche did all she could to encourage the spread of her aunt Isabelle’s work at Longchamp, there was not much to show of imitation for the generation of Louis IX’s own children. But imitation was both more possible and equally desirable for Philippe IV. He was the first king of France known to have been painted surrounded by the most important of his own children.30 This was the artistic parallel of Charles of Anjou’s verbal portrait of Blanche of Castile and her children. Philippe IV’s version of fraternal co-operation was rather less straightforward than that of Louis IX, partly because his own situation was 27 28 29

30

D. L. d’Avray, Death and the Prince. Memorial Preaching before 1350 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 121–6. Lewis, Royal Succession, pp. 178–87. There is an intriguing account of Pierre d’Alençon’s death, probably produced at the behest of Charles of Anjou’s wife Marguerite; Xavier Hélary, ‘La mort de Pierre, comte ´ d’Alençon, fils de saint Louis, dans la mémoire capétienne’, Revue d’Histoire de l’Eglise de France 94 (2008), 5–22. It is notable that Charles ordered Pierre’s entrails to be buried in the monastery he had constructed to memorialise his victory at Benevento; Carolus-Barré (ed.), Le procès de canonisation de Saint Louis, p. 164. The picture is found in the introduction to Raymond de Béziers, Liber de Kalila et Dimna; see L’art au temps des rois maudits. Philippe le Bel et ses fils (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1998), no. 179, p. 271.


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different. His father had married twice and had had one son, Louis, by his second wife Marie de Brabant. Philippe was not inclined to look on his half-brother with the same warmth as he favoured Charles de Valois, his full brother. On the other hand, he did not slight Louis, who received an adequate landed endowment and was given a position on the royal council. Those whom Philippe regarded as his near-equals and proper sharers of his power were Charles de Valois and his cousin Robert d’Artois, both of whom he created peers of the realm, and offered access to at all times. Joseph Strayer denied that Philippe took much notice of his family;31 but this is to overlook the fact that Robert d’Artois and Charles de Valois were the king’s chosen generals in his battles with Aquitaine and Flanders. Philippe trusted Robert to the extent of giving him in 1296 viceregal authority over most of southern France.32 In 1300, Charles de Valois was put in charge of the army that invaded Flanders. And in 1302 Robert was in command of the army from the Matins of Bruges until his death at Kortrijk. In other words, as soon as Philippe faced serious trouble within the boundaries of France, it was to his own closest relations he turned. As Louis IX had trusted his brothers to extend his rule in newly conquered parts of France where loyalty to the throne could not be taken for granted, so Philippe IV relied on Robert and Charles to fight his battles in dangerous times. The elevation of his cousin Robert to what was virtually the status of brother was an echo of his grandfather’s reliance on Robert’s father, as well perhaps as a minor snub to Louis d’Evreux, his own half-brother. Of the count of Artois, it was always recorded that he was ‘of the blood royal’.33 The more spiritual aspect of family cohesion also appealed to Philippe, but it manifested itself most clearly in a particularly unpleasant way. In 1314, he accused two of his daughters-in-law of adultery, imprisoned them and left one of them to die there, after executing with great barbarity the two knights accused of having seduced them. This action has aroused amazement among historians, because it publicly humiliated the heir to the throne and one of his brothers, it endangered the succession, and it caused an outcry.34 It only makes sense if Philippe regarded Capetian blood as quasi-holy, its violators as sacrilegious. There is no trace of such an opinion among family members before Charles of Anjou suggested it in his canonisation testimony. Charles must be counted among the more influential ideologues of the French monarchy.35

31 33 35

32 Vale, The Angevin Legacy, p. 208. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. 17–19. 34 Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, p. 19. Favier, Philippe le Bel, p. 15. For a rather different take on the same theme as it survived in the kingdom of Naples, see the description of Marie of Hungary’s tomb in Darleen Pryds, The King Embodies the Word. Robert d’Anjou and the Politics of Preaching (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 47–8.

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There is at least some evidence that Frenchmen less involved than the kings in the Capetian family myth accepted parts of it without question. For example, Henri de Mondeville, in the rather overblown dedication of his Chirurgie to Philippe IV and his four sons in 1306, after naming the sons, prayed: ‘May they all, with their brilliant lineage, enjoy fortunate, happy and long lives, so that they may govern the French people to the common profit.’36 It would not have occurred to a writer of the first half of the thirteenth century to assume that all the sons of the family would be involved in governing the French people. As it happened, Henri’s words were truer than he can have known, since three out of Philippe IV’s four sons did in fact become kings of France. Passing now from Charles himself, it is possible that later rulers of the Regno played a creative role in producing the image of the royal saint that so endeared him to the French people. Colette Beaune has given a twist to the story, by arguing that Charles II and his descendants created a legend whereby the canonised king was turned into a man with deep and abiding links with the Franciscans.37 Beaune thinks that later Angevin memory confused the French king with the sainted Angevin, St Louis of Toulouse, and made both devoted followers of St Francis. Jacques Le Goff regards this as an exaggeration of the truth rather than a complete legend.38 It would, of course, be wrong to deny that Louis IX admired the Franciscans, even if his most clearly defined affiliations were with the Dominicans. But it is probably fair to say that later generations put the king’s dislike of finery and preference for simplicity in a more Franciscan context than he himself had done, and that this had much to do with the image of him propagated at the Angevin court.39 In other words, Charles I was not the sole member of his family to paint St Louis’s image for later generations in western Europe. 36 37 38 39

Chirurgie de Maˆıtre Henri de Mondeville, chirurgien de Philippe le Bel, Roi de France, composé de 1306 a` 1320, trans. and intro. E. Nicaise (Paris: Alcan, 1893), p. 1. The Birth of an Ideology. Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late Medieval France, trans. Susan Ross Huston (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 101. Saint Louis, p. 331, note 3. On the cult of St Louis in the Regno, see Cecilia Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis. Kingship, Sanctity and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 85–6.

11

Religious politics and practices

In earlier chapters, there has already been mention of two important and interconnected ways in which ecclesiastical policies forged in or for the Regno affected France: the further development of a crusading ethos and the impact of ecclesiastical taxation.1 The first of these themes will be taken up again here, and the second mentioned in passing. But the aim of this chapter is to provide a broader perspective on the whole question of south Italian influence on the French church, meaning by that term both the French clergy and the French laity when engaged in Christian practices. There is, and has long been, a debate about whether the lengthy war introduced by the Sicilian Vespers and ending with the (supposedly temporary) loss of Sicily by the Treaty of Caltabellotta created cynicism about crusades in general or at least cynicism about papally inspired crusades directed to parts of the world other than Outremer.2 It is true that initially there were complaints from, among others, the archbishop of Tyre that monies promised for the Holy Land were being diverted to the campaign Charles was to lead.3 But this did little to arouse doubts about its holiness.4 There can be little dispute about the enthusiasm originally felt in France for Charles of Anjou’s victories against Manfred

1 2

3 4

See above, pp. 48–51, 156–8. Palmer A. Throop, Criticism of the Crusade. A Study of Public Opinion and Crusade Propaganda (Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1940); Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985); Housley, The Italian Crusades, esp. pp. 252–7; and see his historiographical discussion, pp. 1–8. Housley, The Italian Crusades, p. 102. The crusade was preached not only against the Hohenstaufen, but also against the Muslims of Lucera; Taylor, Muslims in Medieval Italy, p. 133. It would be interesting to know if Eudes of Châteauroux’s take on the dangers of the Muslims of Lucera to Christendom (Christopher T. Maier, ‘Crusade and rhetoric against the Muslim colony of Lucera: Eudes of Châteauroux’s Sermones de Rebellione Saracenorum Lucherie in Apulia’, Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995), 343–85) was known in France. Eudes had close ties with the French royal family, and the manuscript of the sermon is now in Arras. But there is as yet no solid evidence that it was known at this time.

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and Corradin.5 In 1273, the noted preacher Giles of Orléans called for prayers for Charles in the royal chapel in Paris, referring to that king as ‘the arm and champion of Holy Church’.6 Slowly this enthusiasm diminished, particularly among the hard-pressed clergy who found the financial burden of supporting the Sicilian campaign as well as other crusades increasingly burdensome. But whether later events did or did not call into question among Frenchmen the value of crusading as a spiritual end is difficult to establish. In any case, it is almost impossible to isolate the results of the Sicilian war from those of other diversionary campaigns conducted by the popes (notably, the crusade against the Colonna); and it is equally difficult to trace much cynicism about crusading specifically to northern France (as opposed to Languedoc).7 That the Sicilian campaign, by offering an alternative arena for the employment of soldiers and money, actually made Latin Outremer more vulnerable before 1291 and more unlikely to be recaptured after that date can hardly be questioned.8 But that it increased doubt among Frenchmen of the north as to whether crusade itself was a worthwhile objective is much less clear. There was, however, a public outburst of anger among the citizens of Lille at the papal wars in Italy in 1284.9 And there may have been other demonstrations that have not been recorded. To raise another aspect of crusading history, it can plausibly be argued that Philippe IV and his court were influenced by a view of the purpose and function of crusade that was formed in the Regno by Charles II and to a lesser extent by Charles I. There is probably now a consensus among historians that, whatever may have been his priorities earlier in his reign, Philippe was genuinely interested in attempting (though preferably not in person) to reconquer Outremer from about 1305 onwards.10 Some contemporary commentators had begun to see him in this role even before that date.11 Others, again, while endorsing the argument that French might was essential to any project of the kind, were apprehensive of sending the king himself to war, and wanted the chief military role to 5 6 7 8

9 10

11

They were widely reported by French chroniclers. Jean-Paul Boyer, ‘La prédication et l’état’, in L’état angevin, pp. 127–37, at p. 129. Throop, Criticism of the Crusade relies extensively on troubadour poetry for his material. For a forceful expression of this fact, see John France, The Crusades and the Expansion of Catholic Christendom, 1000–1714 (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 202. For the views of contemporaries on this, see Schein, Fideles crucis, p. 133. Christopher Tyerman, God’s War. A New History of the Crusades (London: Allan Lane, 2006), pp. 904–5. Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ‘The prince is father of the king: the character and childhood of Philip the Fair of France’, Medieval Studies 49 (1987), 282–334, at 296–7; reprinted in Brown, The Monarchy of Capetian France and Royal Ceremonial (Aldershot: Variorum 1991), V. Schein, Fideles crucis, p. 147.


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be played by a prince, either the king’s brother or a son.12 Their various opinions had been collected in a series of pamphlets instigated by Pope Nicholas IV’s request for guidance on the matter in August 1291. One of these tracts was written by King Charles II, probably in the papal interregnum after Nicholas IV’s death in 1292.13 Sylvia Schein, who has studied this against the similar tracts of Fidenzio of Padua and Ramon Lull, points out that there was little distinctive in the king of the Regno’s views. Like Fidenzio, Charles thought a major expedition directed against Mamluk might in Egypt would be bound to fail – indeed would be an act of folly – unless it was preceded by an economic boycott that undermined resistance to a western push. Naval power was essential to the success of a boycott, and to the sacking of Alexandria, which would weaken seriously the sultan’s grip on his almost boundless resources. Charles apparently took for granted the right of Christians to conquer any lands necessary for the safe holding of Jerusalem, although he did not specify any land other than Egypt. The king then sketched out a plan for a campaign led by all the military orders, reformed and united under the leadership of a prince, preferably of royal blood – again, a proposition found also in Fidenzio and in Ramon Lull, and one about which Nicholas IV had particularly asked for advice.14 Charles developed the standard response by suggesting that various other small orders, particularly those connected with hospitals, should also be amalgamated into the new one. He was unique in specifying that the prince set at the head of this new order should become king of Jerusalem, and he went on to argue that the Holy Land, once repossessed, would need to be defended by a permanent army of about 2,000 knights and colonised by inhabitants of the Italian maritime republics. In other words, Charles saw a little further into the future than the other pamphleteers. In conclusion, he called on the pope to convene a general council to make peace across the western world as a preliminary to the crusade. There is no solid evidence that Charles’s Conseil was known in France; but, given the frequency of embassies between Paris and Naples, it is perfectly possible that the tract did make its way to the court of 12 13

14

Pierre Dubois, The Recovery of the Holy Land, ed. and trans. W. I. Brandt (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), p. 203. ‘Le conseil du Roi Charles II’, ed. G. I. Bratianu, Revue Historique du Sud-Est Européen 19 (1942), 353–61. I am most grateful to Professor A. J. Forey for lending me a xerox of this. See also Schein, Fideles crucis, pp. 107–11; A. J. Forey, ‘The military orders in the crusading proposals of the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries’, Traditio 36 (1980), 317–45. Charles of Anjou’s Jerusalem experiences had made him favour this expedient before most other people thought of it: Nicholas Courcas, The Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195– 1312 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), p. 130.

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Philippe IV. Pierre Dubois’s assurance in his famous Recovery of the Holy Land that the king of Sicily would willingly surrender the title of king of Jerusalem to the leader of the new crusading army (Philippe IV’s second son was the candidate he had in mind) may suggest that he at least knew Charles’s comment on this.15 If the tract was known in France, its author’s status in the western world will have given it an authority that Fidenzio or Ramon Lull could never have hoped to enjoy.16 The warning against a direct assault on Egypt without prior weakening of the Egyptian economy will have struck a cord with the grandson of St Louis, who knew all about the failure of the 1248-50 crusade. Plans for uniting the military orders had been discussed at least since 1274 at the second Council of Lyons.17 There was little to surprise in Charles’s advice. But the fact that it came from him may have carried weight with Philippe. The French king was clearly exasperated in 1307 by the master of the Temple’s refusal to agree to unification.18 If he thought that unification already had the blessing of his cousin, perhaps his violent reaction in arresting the Templars and attempting to try them for heresy, blasphemy and sodomy is rather more explicable.19 Then the role for a prince of the blood sketched out by Charles provided Philippe with a potential answer to the problem of what to do with Charles de Valois, his brother who had had to renounce the throne of Aragon in 1295, who had failed to reconquer the Latin empire of Constantinople, and who urgently sought a similarly exalted position. The title of king of Jerusalem would satisfy the ambition of a man who had been brought up to think of himself as king of Aragon (even though he had never actually enjoyed that position more than nominally). This point leads to the one characteristic of Philippe’s crusade plans not dwelt on by Charles in his Conseil, but perfectly in tune with the aims of that king’s father, Charles of Anjou, in 1281. This was that the Latin empire of Constantinople should be reconstituted as a pillar to the defence of the Holy Land.20 Charles de Valois’s marriage with Catherine of Courtenay in 1301 was a crucial step in justifying this for Frenchmen. While, therefore, it is probably stretching the evidence to claim that 15 16 17 18 19 20

Dubois, The Recovery of the Holy Land, p. 200. G. I. Bratianu was convinced that Dubois knew the Conseil: ‘Le conseil du Roi Charles II’, pp. 317–18. For the view that Lull did have some impact on Philippe IV, see Hillgarth, Ramon Lull and Lullism in Fourteenth-Century France, p. 66. It should be noted that Charles of Anjou was a party to these discussions: Hillgarth, Ramon Lull and Lullism, p. 60. Forey, ‘The military orders’, 321–4. I do not mean to imply that Philippe had no other motive for his arrest of the Templars. Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 45–71. Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 93–5.


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Philippe’s view of how a crusade should be conducted was the product of the thinking of his Angevin relations, it is perfectly possible that their known views helped to shape his. Their ideas fitted in with his needs, they were fairly conventional at the time, and they came from men who might be thought to understand the eastern Mediterranean better than could those resident in France. If Angevin crusade plans had some impact on France, much more important was the impact of the very brief pontificate of Celestine V, July to December 1294. Pietro Morrone, the hermit chosen as pope after an interregnum of nearly two and a half years, had lived all his life in the Regno, in the Abruzzi mountains, where he had acquired a reputation for personal sanctity; he also enjoyed a devoted group of followers which had been given official recognition as a congregation of the Benedictine order by Pope Gregory X in 1275. After his return from Provence at the beginning of 1294, Charles II had visited Pietro and had been lavish in his gifts to the order.21 Although there is no evidence that the king was actually responsible for the surprise election of Pietro as pope, he certainly moved at once to act as the protector and guide of the unworldly pontiff. The king’s son, Charles Martell, now titular king of Hungary, was among the first to ascend to the hermitage on Mount Majello to give the news of his election to the aged and ill-prepared hermit. King Charles hurried to join him. He was doubtless delighted to hear the new pope declare that he was too old and unwell to go to Perugia for his consecration, and call on all the cardinals who had not yet come to join him to go to Aquila for the ceremony. Celestine thence made his way slowly south-westward to Naples, where he arrived in November. It appeared that he was intending to settle there. But, persuaded by his critics, he abdicated on 13 December.22 Celestine V’s pontificate was therefore extremely short. But it was far from having a negligible effect on Christendom, and in particular on France. There can be no doubt that the pontificate represented a volte-face, in that the pope deliberately sought the shelter of Charles II’s entourage, while his predecessors at least since the time of Innocent III had all tried to maintain papal independence of any lay power and the security of the papal states to the north of the Regno.23 A pope resident long term in Naples, which was what Celestine apparently 21 22 23

Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège, vol. I, pp. 174, 179 note 6. Peter Herde, Cölestin V (1294). Peter vom Morrone, der Engelpapst (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1981). Contrast Celestine’s stay with the residence of Innocent IV and Alexander IV, October 1254 to May 1255, in Naples, when they came to impose their lordship on the Regno after the death of Conrad IV.

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envisaged, was an offence to much Italian public opinion. It was hardly surprising that there was an outcry. Furthermore, Celestine was willing to repay Charles for his protection to the extent of virtually handing over much of papal patronage to his hands. Celestine’s first appointments to papal offices were of men devoted to the Angevin cause.24 The twelve cardinals – including five from France – he rushed to create were promoted at the direct behest of Charles.25 Furthermore, the pope granted extensive tithing rights both in lands on the borders of France and in England to Charles to assist him in his war against Aragon.26 While Celestine’s successor Boniface VIII abrogated the appointments of officials to the curia and the grants of tithes, Celestine’s chosen cardinals remained. Charles’s allies were almost as quick as the king himself to press for privileges and rights from the compliant pope. As soon as he heard the news of Celestine’s elevation, Robert d’Artois wrote three separate letters about the need for the rapid promotion of Guillaume de Lagonesse (of a family noted for its services to the crown of Anjou in Italy)27 to a canonry with a prebend in the church of Senlis. Hardly surprisingly, he received a fine charter granting this. The chapter of Senlis was very reluctant to do as bidden, but just before Celestine’s abdication became known, it complied out of deference for the count of Artois’s noble character.28 Presumably only the shortness of the pontificate put an end to other requests of this kind. Philippe IV had very little time to react to the events of Aquila, Sulmona and Naples. If Guillaume de Nangis was expressing official views in his account of the matter, the French court accepted that Celestine had been elected through divine inspiration, and knew no reason for his subsequent abdication.29 But this probably represents a view of the affair that emerged as a result of subsequent events rather than being a record of what the king actually felt at the time. In regard to the pope’s policies, Philippe was probably broadly in sympathy with what he took to be the new pope’s aim of putting papal affairs into better order and rising above feuds at the curia. While he had no objection in principle to a pope who was the puppet of his Angevin cousin, he is unlikely to have looked with any favour on Celestine’s demand that the dioceses of Vienne and Besançon should, along with those of Provence, pay tithes for four years to Charles II to help with the costs of the Sicilian war.30 The French king 24 25 28 30

Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège, vol. I, pp. 181–2. 26 Ibid., p. 188. 27 Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 122. Ibid., p. 186. 29 Chronique latine, vol. I, pp. 284–5. Pas-de-Calais Série A/39, 40 and 41. Herde, Cölestin V, p. 106.


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well knew that such arrangements could be a preliminary to a renewed claim of the house of Anjou to the traditional kingdom of Arles, a claim Philippe was determined to refute.31 On the other hand, he must have been pleased with the rapid election of five French cardinals, to add to the two already in place before Celestine’s election.32 And whereas an Angevin kingdom of Arles was a distant threat, the cardinals were an immediate gain.33 That the five were chosen by Charles II, with the help of Cardinal Hugues Aycelin, did nothing to dim Philippe’s satisfaction (as Charles had presumably calculated). Of the new French cardinals, two were to play significant roles in later French history as a result of their elevations. Of these, the more important was Jean Lemoine, a clerk of Philippe IV, dean of Bayeux and bishopelect of Arras at Celestine’s accession. Jean was already a distinguished canon lawyer, whose eminence had ensured his call to Rome, where he had been vice-chancellor to Pope Nicholas IV.34 On account of his connections with the French court as well as the curia, Boniface VIII was to choose him as his chief negotiator with Philippe during the tense years 1302–3. Jean’s total failure to create warmth or understanding between pope and king led to the crisis at Anagni in September 1303. In the pontificate of Benedict XI, Jean was to be found among the proFrench party at the curia which obtained substantial concessions for Philippe from the new pope.35 Jean’s closeness to events was evident in his gloss on Unam sanctam, which expressed Boniface VIII’s claims in a more intransigent way than the pope himself had cared to do.36 But the cardinal may also have been responsible for another gloss offering a diametrically opposed view of the matter.37 These glosses, along with

31 32

33 35 36

37

Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. 365–7. I have omitted two from the usual list of French cardinals: Bérard de Got, archbishop of Lyons, because in 1294 Philippe is likely to have regarded him as Gascon rather than French, and the prévot of Marseilles, who was clearly Provençal. 34 Ibid., pp. 93, 103–4. Herde, Cölestin V, pp. 97–104. Favier, Philippe le Bel, pp. 314, 336, 362–3, 366, 371, 397, 417. Jean Rivière, Le problème de l’église et l’état au temps de Philippe le Bel (Paris: Champion, 1926), pp. 150–3; but see also the different twist given to this work by Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), p. 90: ‘From his point of view there seemed no danger in subjecting the whole church to the Pope as long as the Pope in his turn was subjected to the cardinals.’ Ibid., pp. 153–5. Rivière thought this attribution to Lemoine necessarily false because quite inconsistent with the other gloss. But it is worth noting that Pierre de la Palud ascribed it to Jean Lemoine as early as 1317; Jean Dunbabin, A Hound of God. Pierre de la Palud and the Fourteenth-Century Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), p. 89. If Jean did produce both, the inconsistency could well be accounted for by his increasingly pro-French stand; or alternatively, the glosses should both be understood as scholastic exercises to make out the best case possible for the different causes espoused.

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his important commentary on the Liber sextus, were much studied in the university of Paris in the early decades of the fourteenth century.38 It was appropriate, therefore, that Lemoine’s most lasting memorial should be a college at the university founded on a site he purchased from the Austin friars on the rue des Thermes.39 In the later middle ages, this college was known as the collège de Cardinal LeMoine, and played an interesting if small role in intellectual discourse. The career of Simon de Beaulieu, archbishop of Bourges before he was created cardinal by Celestine, also had an effect on Philippe’s reign, though more because of the rumours that collected around him than on account of anything he is known to have done. As soon as Boniface was established on the throne, the new pope sent Simon, along with Bérard de Got, to Philippe’s court to try to negotiate a peace between Philippe and Edward I. It was later (1310-11) alleged that on this occasion Simon had warned Philippe that Boniface had been accused of heresy, and that he had tricked Celestine out of the papacy. These allegations seem inherently unlikely, since Simon in 1297 signed a pronouncement in Boniface’s favour, along with sixteen other cardinals, among them Jean Lemoine, Nicolas de Nonancourt and Robert, the Cistercian.40 Simon died a few months after this, and therefore was not around either to confirm or deny the rumours of his views that rapidly circulated in the party favourable to the Colonna cardinals and which were to play a major part in the indictment against Boniface VIII in 1310–11. A year before his death, Simon had been chosen as the papal emissary to present Philippe with the bull Clericis laicos.41 Simon’s years as a cardinal would therefore come, not wholly unjustifiably, to symbolise the great divide that grew up between the French monarchy and the papacy between 1300 and 1312. The other three French cardinals created by Celestine were much less significant. Nicolas de Nonancourt had been dean of Notre Dame in Paris before his elevation. Earlier, he had been chancellor of the university of Paris, which explains why Boniface VIII later chose him to invest as chancellor of the university Pierre de Saint-Omer.42 Simon, prior of the 38 39

40

41 42

Jean sent the commentary to the university in February 1301: CUP, vol. II, no. 617. For example Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. III, nos. 4720, 5011. See map in William J. Courtenay, Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century. A Social Portrait (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 61. Thomas Boase, Boniface VIII (London: Constable, 1933), p. 174; John Marrone and Charles Zuckerman, ‘Cardinal Simon of Beaulieu and relations between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII’, Traditio 21 (1975), 195–222; Herde, Cölestin V, p. 122. Pace Jo Ann McNamara, ‘Simon de Beaulieu and clericis laicos’, Traditio 25 (1969), 155–70. Marrone and Zuckerman, ‘Cardinal Simon of Beaulieu’, 210–17. CUP, vol. I, nos. 522 and 527; vol. II, no. 595.


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Cluniac monastery of La Charité, appears to have died shortly after his elevation, perhaps without ever reaching Rome. Robert, abbot of Cˆıteaux, played a part in obtaining the consent of the exempt abbeys of the Cistercian order to Philippe IV’s demand for a tenth in 1294 or 1295.43 After this, he was engaged in the organisation of the cardinals’ finances in Rome. But if these three had little effect on events in France after their elevations, the mere fact that there were so many French cardinals created an expectation that this number would become the norm. Clement V played up to this by creating nine French cardinals (of whom six were Gascon) at the beginning of his pontificate, among ´ whom were Philippe’s keeper of the seals, Etienne de Souzy, and the king’s confessor, Nicolas de Fréauville. With numerous French cardinals came almost inevitably the hope that a Frenchman might again be elected pope. Philippe’s efforts to get Cardinal Nicolas de Fréauville elected in 1314 can be explained, in part at least, by the prospects raised in the pontificate of Celestine V.44 When Celestine V abdicated in December 1294, he posed a serious problem for his successor. The aged hermit hoped to return to the way of life he had chosen before he became pope. But Boniface could not tolerate the prospect of Celestine, with his reputation for sanctity, living freely among those who continued to regard him with reverence, especially since some of his admirers were suspected of Joachite leanings. Fear of schism induced Boniface to put Celestine under guard. The aged pope escaped and succeeded in hiding for a few months, till he was recaptured and strictly confined in the tower of Castel Fumone. There he died on 19 May 1296. Among his followers it was taken as certain that he had been ill-treated at best, murdered at worst. These allegations might slowly have passed into oblivion had they not been of great political advantage to the Colonna family when they rebelled against Boniface VIII in early 1297. In an endeavour to engage others on their side in what began as a quarrel over property in the Campagna, the Colonna cardinals Jacopo and Pietro spread rumours about the illegality of Boniface’s election, about his unorthodox beliefs, and about his ill-treatment of Celestine. As we have already seen, these allegations rapidly became known across France, where some of them were later given respectability by being put into the mouth of Simon de Beaulieu. When Boniface VIII excommunicated the Colonna cardinals and removed them from office, they made a dossier of the pope’s alleged crimes and hawked them around 43 44

Jeffrey H. Denton, Philip the Fair and the Ecclesiastical Assemblies of 1294–5 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991), pp. 20–2, appendix K 2. Favier, Philippe le Bel, pp. 511–14.

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the crowned heads of Europe, looking for support.45 Over the next fifteen years, these allegations repeatedly surfaced in France as and when Philippe IV found it useful to call on them. Initially Philippe listened with only limited interest to the Colonna dossier. He had already had one serious breach with Boniface VIII over the implications of that pope’s 1296 bull Clericis laicos (which asserted the necessity for papal consent before kings could tax the clergy and threatened with ecclesiastical censure clerics who obeyed the demand for royal taxation without papal sanction). But by the time of the Colonna revolt, Philippe knew he could squeeze concessions out of Boniface of greater import than anything the pope’s enemies could provide. He therefore offered no immediate help to the Colonna cardinals, and was rewarded by Boniface both with understanding on his financial difficulties (caused by the war with Edward I in Aquitaine and the outbreak of war in Flanders) and with the canonisation of his grandfather, Louis IX. In return, the theology faculty at the university of Paris gave its formal endorsement to the abdication of Celestine V.46 But if the Colonna family derived no benefit from their dossier when they needed it most, their allegations remained alive in the minds of Philippe and his servants. When the next breach with Boniface occurred, this time sparked by the arrest of Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, in 1302 for treason, Philippe’s advocate, Guillaume de Plaisians, cherrypicked among the allegations to blacken the name of Boniface before a large audience of clerks and laymen in Paris in June 1303. He accused the pope of having treated Celestine inhumanly, of having locked him up, and of causing his death, at a time when there was still a dispute over whether his abdication was valid or not.47 At least one member of the audience thought that Guillaume accused Boniface of having put to death various people who maintained that Celestine’s abdication was invalid.48 Boniface’s own death in November 1303 might have been expected to lay Celestine’s ghost for good. But it did not do so. Philippe was not disposed to surrender easily a weapon that had proved so useful to him in alienating the affections of his own people and others from Boniface. Future papal resistance to French royal demands in the financial or any other sphere was therefore met by a determined effort by the French king to have 45 46 47 48

Boase, Boniface VIII, pp. 171–3, 176. After Giles of Rome’s De renuntiatione Papae in 1297 there appears to have been no more argument about the matter among the masters of the theology faculty. Plaisians’s charges against Boniface VIII in Pierre Dupuy, Histoire du différend entre le pape Boniface VIII et Philippes le Bel, roy de France (Paris, 1655), pp. 102–6. Register of John de Halton, Bishop of Carlisle, ed. W. N. Thompson (Canterbury and York Society, 1913), vol. I, p. 210.


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Boniface VIII tried and condemned as a heretic. As a second string, if he could not obtain all he wanted in a prosecution of the dead pope, Philippe made up his mind to have Celestine V recognised as a saint. The canonisation of Celestine V, finally achieved by Philippe in 1313 after a campaign of nearly a decade, owed little to the French king’s knowledge of or reverence for the saint of the Abruzzi mountains. It was rather one of a series of concessions made by Pope Clement V which were designed to soften his refusal either to carry on further with the trial of Boniface or to allow Philippe to benefit as much as he had hoped from the suppression of the Templars.49 Clement was careful to proceed with the inquisition into the character and miracles of Pietro Morrone, rather than of Pope Celestine, because he wished to underline that Celestine’s abdication of the papal tiara had been legitimate.50 But, given the connection between some of Celestine’s followers and the Joachites and others who claimed to be Spiritual Franciscans, the pope will have found even this a hard pill to swallow.51 Once Philippe had won this minor political victory, the sanctity of the hermit from the Regno was celebrated far more in Italy than at the French royal court. Celestine’s pontificate and particularly his abdication marked the beginning of an unusual preoccupation by the French king with the politics of the Roman curia. Famously, it also saw a church–state conflict in which Philippe thought himself the complete victor.52 The sense of triumph he felt was addictive. His alleged invitation to Clement V in 1307 to settle in France was presumably issued in the expectation that he could prolong this.53 He doubtless hoped to recreate with Clement the dominant relationship that Charles II had enjoyed, however briefly, with Celestine V. In this, he was neither wholly successful nor wholly disappointed. But he achieved too little to make his course attractive to his successors. There was, however, one result for France of Celestine’s pontificate that transcended the ecclesiastical politics of Philippe’s reign. This was the establishment of the Celestines within its borders. Philippe’s invitation in 1300 to the order to send a deputation to France should be seen against the background of his willingness to remind Boniface of his 49 50 51 52 53

Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 108-9, 221–42; André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du moyen aˆ ge (Paris and Rome, 1981), pp. 91, 454. Ugo Paoli, Fonti per la storia della congregazione celestina nell’ Archivio segreto vaticano (Cesena: Centro Storico Benedittino Italiano, 2004), pp. 18–21. David Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom. A Reading of the Apocalypse Commentary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 67–71. For a brief, clear introduction to this famous clash, see Charles T. Wood, Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967). Sophie Menache, Clement V (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 18.

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vulnerability; but the French king may also have heard the monks’ praises sung by Charles II of Naples on his visits to France. In the course of Philippe’s reign only two houses of Celestines were founded in France, one near Orléans (founded by the original deputation in 1304) and the other near Compiègne (founded in 1308).54 Both of these claimed to have relics of Pietro Morrone. By his will of 1311, Philippe left a bequest of 4,000 lt to the Celestines.55 At that point, no one could have anticipated the expansion of the order to twenty-one houses and the extensive patronage to be shown to the Paris house (refounded in 1352) by the French kings of the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.56 From small beginnings, the Celestine order grew to be admired in France for its discipline and piety; there it rapidly shrugged off its earlier connections with radical movements in Italy. If the pontificate of Celestine V and its aftermath brought France closely into contact with the religious life of the Regno, it was not the only connection with that part of the world’s ecclesiastical organisation or spirituality – though it was by far the most important and, in one aspect at least, long-lasting. There were in addition at least three items of ecclesiastical ritual worthy of note that had some impact. David d’Avray has convincingly suggested that a revived tradition of memorial preaching spread from the Regno to France – and elsewhere – in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.57 The considerable number of sermons concerning Angevin kings and princes provided models for preachers elsewhere in Europe. Given that sermons constituted the chief means of communication between the upper clergy and the man in the street, this was not a negligible matter. In d’Avray’s words, the point of such sermons was ‘not only to bring to mind transitoriness, the afterlife, and the needs of the suffering in purgatory, but also to give instruction about virtue in this life and to praise the person who was being remembered, if the life of the deceased warranted it’.58 The spread of such preaching reinforced the glow of righteousness cast on the powerful of western Europe, the French kings conspicuously among them. The cult of St Nicholas of Bari was already well entrenched in northern France before 1266, and cannot therefore be attributed to influence from the Angevin kingdom. Apparently brought north by the Norman pilgrims 54 55

56 57

Ibid., pp. 21–2. Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ‘Royal salvation and the needs of state in Capetian France’, in W. C. Jordan, B. McNab and T. Ruiz (eds.), Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 365–83, at p. 371. Cazelles, Nouvelle histoire de Paris, pp. 53–4. 58 Ibid., p. 222. D’Avray, Death and the Prince, pp. 41, 89.


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who visited their kinsmen in southern Italy in the years after the supposed translation of St Nicholas’s bones from Myra to Bari in 1087, dedications of churches to St Nicholas had become common in northern France in the early twelfth century.59 It was presumably familiarity with the cult, probably through the church of St Nicolas at Angers, that persuaded Charles of Anjou to turn to the saint at Bari during the illnesses of his sons Charles and Philip.60 Presumably because he thought St Nicholas had saved his life, Charles II became a notable patron of the cult during the war against Aragon.61 Although there can be no proof of this, it is at least probable that Angevin enthusiasm for St Nicholas in the Regno, brought home by Frenchmen returning from military service there, helped to rekindle and keep alive the cult in northern France.62 On a more mundane note, it is likely that the Regno adventure had a strong impact on another ritual practised in France at this time, that of dismembering corpses on death and burying different parts in different places. It was a well-established custom in the later thirteenth century. But, as Elizabeth Brown pointed out, the commonest reason for eviscerating, dividing up bodies and boiling them was to facilitate the return of a corpse to its family burial place.63 In accordance with this, after his death near Tunis in 1270 St Louis’s body was eviscerated, and the entrails (and perhaps the heart) were given to Charles of Anjou, who buried them at Monreale. The rest of the body was boiled to separate the bones from the flesh, and the bones were then placed in a coffer to be returned to Saint-Denis for burial. St Louis’s absence from home at the time of his death was, of course, accounted for by his being on crusade. This was probably the commonest reason for deaths of members of the military classes far from home by the second half of the thirteenth century. But there is little evidence that the bones of those who died in Outremer were returned to France for burial. Presumably burial in the Holy Land was regarded as an asset. On the other hand, there was no reason why 59 60 61

62

63

Meisen, Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch, pp. 510–13. RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxxvii, 281; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 185. Meisen, Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch, pp. 102–6; for Charles’s extensive gifts to the church’s treasury, see Bertaux, ‘Les artistes français au service des rois de Naples’, 265–78, at 267–8. It must be admitted that the information on relics and dedications provided by Meisen, Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch, pp. 126–42, on the dates of dedications and acquisitions of relics in northern France, only supports this assumption in the diocese of Thérouanne, at Bruges and at Ghent, pp. 141–2. For the intriguing suggestion that Adam de la Halle presided over a staging of the Jeu de saint Nicolas in Bari before his death, see Symes, A Common Stage, pp. 275–6. ‘Death and the human body in the later middle ages: the legislation of Boniface VIII on the division of the corpse’, Viator 12 (1981), 221–70, at 227; reprinted in The Monarchy of Capetian France, VI.

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the relatives of those who died in the Regno should not wish to have the bones of their kindred brought back to France, while leaving some memorial in the place where they had died. The first wife of Philippe III, Isabelle of Aragon, who died at Cosenza on her way home from Tunis, was eviscerated, her entrails buried at Cosenza and her bones returned to Saint-Denis for burial.64 The same fate befell Louis IX’s son Pierre d’Alençon when he died in the Regno in 1283.65 It was not, therefore, a coincidence that Pope Boniface VIII was alerted to the practice of dividing corpses, and condemned it in 1299 by the bull Detestande feritatis. Interestingly, the precise case that aroused his determination to stamp out the practice was the dismemberment of the corpse of Nicolas de Nonancourt, one of the five French cardinals appointed by Celestine V. Detestande feritatis did not prevent the removal of the corpse to France; but it delayed it. When Gui d’Harcourt, bishop of Liseux, asked Boniface VIII for permission to exhume the body of his brother Jean II d’Harcourt, who had died on Charles de Valois’s abortive campaign to the Regno in 1302, he was allowed to do so, but had to wait until the flesh had decomposed and fallen off the bones before the skeleton could be moved.66 Subsequently important members of the French royal family began to request the pope for exemption from the legislation, so that if they died away from home their bodies might be dissected and some parts buried separately from others. In this way a practice that had been popularised among the French families of the Regno came to be seen as desirable in the highest circles in France. In this connection, it was Robert d’Artois’s doctor from Messina, Palmiero de Riso, who in 1296 sent a letter to Philippe IV’s surgeon, describing the principal ingredients needed for embalming a king’s body.67 The French still apparently needed guidance on matters relating to the techniques of royal burial from physicians of southern Italy. To turn to a very different subject, it is perhaps worth noting here that in the reigns of Charles I and Charles II there was no notable support for Spiritual Franciscans at the court of the Regno. Indeed, both kings were lavish in their patronage of the Dominican order,68 in which could be found the Spiritual Franciscans’ most vocal adversaries. Despite Charles II’s determination to have his son Louis of Toulouse, a known supporter of the Spirituals, canonised, and despite his own friendship 64 65 66 67 68

´ Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort. Etudes sur les funérailles, les sépultures et les tombeaux des rois de France jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1975), pp. 168–70. Hélary, ‘La mort de Pierre, conte d’Alençon’. Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort, p. 222. Carolus-Barré, Le procès de canonisation de saint Louis, p. 206. Paul, ‘Angevins, frères prêcheurs et papauté’, in L’état angevin, pp. 221–51.


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with Ramon Jaufré, he did not commit himself openly to that cause even in Provence, and certainly not while he was resident in the Regno with its border with the papal states.69 It was not until the reign of Robert that that king and particularly his wife Sancia were alleged to have turned the court at Naples into a haven for Spirituals.70 Therefore any sign of support for Spirituals in northern France before the second decade of the fourteenth century (and there appears to have been very little) is not likely to reflect Regno influence. In conclusion, the impact of Charles II’s domination over Celestine V on French religious politics was sharp, if not prolonged. Crusading plans mulled over in the Regno probably also had currency in France. Familiarity with religious rituals in the Regno bore far less fruit, but some of what it did was both interesting and colourful. One way and another, the religious life of France was widely affected by that of the Angevin kingdom. 69 70

His friendship with Ramon Jaufré and his circle was confined to Provence; Mazel, ‘Piété nobiliaire et piété princière’, pp. 542–3. Roberto Pociocco, ‘Angioni e “spirituali”’, in L’état angevin, pp. 263–87. For the view that this aspect of Robert’s reign has in any case been greatly exaggerated, see Samantha Kelly, The New Solomon. Robert of Naples (1309-43) and Fourteenth-Century Kingship (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 74–90.

12

The universities of Naples and Paris

Frederick II rightly gains the credit among historians for the foundation of the university of Naples in 1224, with its vocational structure and its close linkage to the royal court. These features marked it out from all other thirteenth-century studia generalia. The emperor conceived it as a training ground for the Roman lawyers and physicians who were needed to keep his administration going. Its brightest graduates could all aspire to employment at court, whether temporary or permanent. From the start the university bore his stamp on all its doings. Yet because Naples was a pro-Guelf city, for the latter part of Frederick’s reign and in the reign of Manfred the university fell into the doldrums (although King Manfred is known to have been present at a disputation held by Master Peter of Ireland at the royal court).1 Charles of Anjou’s conquest of the Regno and his rapid development of what Frederick had begun made a considerable difference to its fortunes. Under his assiduous patronage, scholars were recruited from across the Regno and beyond (Charles himself may even have been responsible for having Thomas Aquinas sent to Naples in 1272);2 masters were paid for from the royal treasury; examinations were conducted under the eyes of royal servants; licences to practise medicine or law were granted by the king; student privileges were carefully protected. In 1294, Charles II nominated the chancellor of the Regno as ex officio rector, head of the university.3 In return, the king was able to recruit men of great ability from among the lawyers and doctors trained there.4 And these men constituted a body of his most articulate defenders, no easy task considering the circumstances of his rise to power and his numerous enemies.5 1

2

3 5

Clemens Baeumker, Petrus von Hibernia, der Jugendlehrer des Thomas von Aquin. Seine Disputation vor König Manfred, in Sitzungsbericht d. Bay. Acad. d. Wissenschaften (Munich: Bayerische Academie, 1920). The suggestion is that of Jean-Pierre Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, vol. I: The Person and his Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), p. 249. 4 Ibid., pp. 18–20. Sabatini, Napoli angioina, p. 18. See for example Marino da Caramanico, Proemium to his gloss on Frederick II’s Liber Constitutionum, ed. F. Calasso in I glossatori e la teoria della soveranità. Studio di diretto

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215

By the 1270s, Naples under royal direction was a very different kind of studium generale from that at Paris. Whereas Naples had been founded for a specific purpose at a precise time, Paris had come into existence very slowly. The moment when it ceased to be a handful of separate and potentially ephemeral schools and became instead a university is far from clear. But by 1200 at the very latest, the masters in the city had seen the advantage of joining in what was probably initially thought of as a guild with its own rules, in order to create a sense of identity for themselves and to confer mutual protection against those who did not take them seriously. By 1260 the university had grown substantially and taken on its lasting medieval form. Its foundation was a large arts faculty, where might be found students not only from northern France and the Low Countries, but also from the rest of western Europe. By this time, the curriculum in the faculty was largely based on Aristotelian philosophy. Therefore, in order to read Arts at Paris, it was necessary already to have a good grounding in grammar, rhetoric and dialectic (the subjects of the late Roman trivium) before beginning on the course. Boys (and the schools were open only to boys) in the arts faculty at Paris had previously studied for several years, either with a tutor or at a grammar school, before matriculating.6 The Naples arts course, on the other hand, seems to have emphasised the trivium rather than philosophy – its professors were usually referred to in the chancery records as professors of logic. Presumably there was also some teaching in the quadrivium and some in Aristotelian works.7 But little trace has survived of this for the early Angevin period. Hardly surprisingly, the Naples faculty lacked the great reputation and drawing power of the Paris arts faculty. How much preparatory schooling was necessary before joining its ranks is not known. As to the higher faculties, the Paris theology faculty was the largest and the grandest. By the 1260s, it was drawing students from across the Latin world, the majority being men from the two great mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, who provided many of the most distinguished students. The foundation of the Sorbonne as a college for secular theologians in c.1257 offered some kind of patronage for the seculars (those not members of the religious orders); secular theologians began to increase in number and in reputation. As a result, the faculty

6 7

commune pubblico (Milan: Giuffré, 1951), pp. 179–208; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 219–21. Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York: John Wiley, 1968), pp. 15–55. There certainly had been when Thomas Aquinas attended the university; see James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino. His Life, Thought and Works (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), pp. 15–19.

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was riven by disputes that were essentially fuelled by secular–mendicant rivalry.8 The other two higher faculties at Paris, those of canon law and medicine, were much smaller. The canon law faculty was firmly under the control of the theologians, who regarded it as a subsidiary discipline because all candidates for a doctorate in theology had to have at least some knowledge of canon law. The canon lawyers’ chance of independence was also limited by the absence of a civil law faculty at Paris. Pope Honorius III had forbidden this in 1219 by the bull Super speculam.9 Therefore it was impossible at Paris to acquire a doctorate in both laws, as men could at Oxford or Cambridge and all the Italian universities. The Paris medical faculty was in the process of establishing, some time between 1270 and 1274, its first statutes listing the books to be read by those seeking the licenciate at Paris.10 Although it was to have a reasonably distinguished future, it never came near to rivalling the theology faculty in terms of standing in western Europe. Historians have perhaps underestimated the significance of the university of Naples in the early Angevin period.11 Its interests were admittedly narrow, and members of the royal household, in almost all cases also quondam teachers within the law or medical faculties, had powerful influence over what it was permitted to study and who should earn its prizes. But the move into royal service did not automatically undermine the intellectual inheritance. Some lawyers and physicians of great distinction fitted themselves into the prepared slots. Throughout the period we are considering, there was life in the university. This can be seen in both higher faculties. The Regno, and in particular Salerno, had always been a major source for Greek and Arabic medical texts since the eleventh century at the latest. At Salerno there had grown up the first medical school known to western Europe, characterised by concentration not only on texts but also on practical remedies and cures.12 It had provided the initial stimulus that led to the creation of medical schools at Montpellier, Paris, Bologna and Padua. Among Salerno’s most distinguished teachers in the reign of Frederick II was Giovanni de Casamicciola, reputed to have taught Arnau de Vilanova; Giovanni was appointed royal physician

8 9

10 11

12

Ibid., pp. 160–77. On this, see Jacques Verger, ‘Des e´ coles a` la université: la mutation institutionelle’, in ´ R.-H. Bautier (ed.), La France de Philippe Auguste. Le temps des mutations (Paris: Editions de CRNS, 1982), p. 844. For the earliest statutes, see CUP, vol. I, nos. 433–44; 451–6. Jacques Verger, ‘The universities and scholasticism’, in Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V, pp. 256–76, at p. 270, argues that it had so little autonomy that it ‘does not in some senses qualify as a university at all’. Sabatini, Napoli angioina, pp. 27–8.


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to Charles of Anjou.13 But by the third quarter of the thirteenth century, Charles of Anjou was actively building up a group of household physicians which constituted what amounted to a medical faculty for the university at Naples, in order to take advantage of all the work south Italians had done over the previous two centuries. He then provided employment for the best graduates.14 Although he did later patronise Salerno, his enthusiasm for the older establishment was strictly limited. It was Naples that he hoped would become a beacon for the rest of the world.15 In relation to the law faculty, Charles was less innovative. He was able to recruit as teachers men like Marino da Caramanico, Andrea Bonello of Barletta, and Andrea di Capua who had been trained in the reign of Frederick II. His own urgent need for legal advice on arrival in the Regno led him to build up the faculty as much as he could afford to do – the salaries for doctors of law at the university came from the royal treasury; he then used them in embassies and other public business so that their names became known well beyond the borders of their home country. Charles II benefited from this policy. He achieved renown for the brilliance of his lawyers, particularly Bartolomeo da Capua and Andrea di Isernia.16 But the heavy war expenditure in a large part of his reign meant that there was little money to support the university in the lavish way his father had done. By 1309 decline was setting in within the law faculty. However, the fact that it was not to have a great future should not be used to undermine its achievements in the later thirteenth century. Medicine and law were the only true higher faculties. Naples did not in the early years have an independent theology faculty. But Charles of Anjou treated the Dominican studium in the city as though it was part of the university. It is probable that lectures at the studium were open to such members of the laity and clergy as chose to come. The king paid the salary for Thomas Aquinas to teach there between 1272 and Thomas’s death in 1274.17 Both Charles and his son avidly supported Dominican scholarship and preaching throughout their lives.18 And distinguished theologians were to be found in Naples during their reigns, particularly Ptolemy of Lucca and the Augustinian friar James of Viterbo. There was also an important Franciscan studium in Naples, which in its turn 13 14 16 17 18

La culturà angioina, ed. G. Musca, F. Tateo et al. (Milan: Silvana editorale, 1985), p. 96. 15 Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 214–18. RCA, vol. 19, reg. lxxxii, 322. On Bartolomeo, I. Walter and M. Piccialuti, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. VI, pp. 697–704; on Andrea, F. Calasso in ibid., vol. III, pp. 101–3. RCA, vol. 9, reg. xlvii, 2. Jean Paul, ‘Angevins, frères prêcheurs et papauté’, in L’état angevin, pp. 221–51; Paul, ‘La monarchie de Sicile-Naples et Thomas Aquinas’, in de Cervans and Matz (eds.), Formation intellectuelle et culture du clergé, pp. 277–303.

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attracted Angevin royal patronage.19 By 1302, Naples had an established theological faculty, the large majority of whose doctors came from the studia of the various orders of Friars. There were some clear direct links between the universities of Paris and Naples. No sooner was Charles of Anjou fairly solidly established on the throne of the Regno than, in 1272, he wrote to the masters and scholars of the universities of Paris and Orléans, asking them to come to Naples to teach and learn. He pointed out that Naples was famous for its salubrious climate, its amenities, its fruitfulness and the ease of sea communication. He promised that he would be liberal with graces and benefices to any masters or scholars who did come.20 Acutely, he timed his letter to coincide with a moment of tension between the university of Paris and its chancellor.21 Though the initial invitation does not seem to have met with much enthusiasm in Paris, Charles continued to invite specific masters throughout his reign, and he did have some success.22 In fact, the degree of his success may well be hidden by the poverty of university records in his reign. He certainly managed to attract a number of important Orléans-trained Roman lawyers to his household.23 Some at least of these may have originally come to the Regno with the intention of teaching in the university. Then there were other links between Paris and Naples. During Charles’s reign, the Dominican house in Naples, as part of the Roman province,24 established the custom of sending friars to read theology at the Paris convent on a regular basis; they then returned home to put their new learning to good use.25 The Franciscan and the Augustinian houses followed suit. Then one of the rectors of the university of Naples who was also chancellor of the Regno was the Frenchman Pierre de Ferrières, who held sway from 1298 to 1301, before his election to the archbishopric of 19 20

21 22 23 24

25

Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education 1210–1517 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. 50. RCA, vol. 8, reg. xxxvii, 772; CUP vol. II, 616. Among lawyers, Robert de Laveno, who had worked for Charles in Provence, came to teach at Naples, as did Robert de Saint-Quentin; among physicians, there were Simon de Chaumont, Jean de Nesle and Jean de Saint-Maime. Pearl Kibre, Scholarly Privileges in the Middle Ages (London: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1961), p. 123. See below, pp. 229–30, 241. Juris interpretes saec. XIII, curantibus scholaribus Leidensibus duce E. M. Meijers (Naples: Francesco Perrella, 1924), p. xxxvii. According to Bernard Gui, the Roman province was divided in 1294, so that the Regno had its own province from that time: Letizia Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 1999), p. 147. William J. Courtenay, ‘The instructional programme of the mendicant convents at Paris in the early fourteenth century’, in P. Biller and B. Dobson (eds.), The Medieval Church. Universities, Heresy and the Religious Life (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1999), pp. 77–92.


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Arles.26 There was therefore enough traffic from Paris to Naples to create the expectation that Parisian customs would begin to infiltrate Naples. But there is no overt sign of this. Rather, the period in the middle of the reign of Philippe IV saw changes in Paris that made it more like Naples. At the least, this may suggest that those who went down to the Regno and then returned to France found their visits intellectually invigorating. Whereas in the 1260s the universities of Paris and Naples had very little in common other than their basic function of teaching, by the first decade of the fourteenth century they had become more similar. While Naples changed not at all in nature, Paris became more like the southern studium, in more than one respect. Paris’s medical faculty grew; its teachers were often royal physicians; it drew on books translated in the Regno. It started to protect its practitioners against competition from elsewhere.27 There can be little doubt that it, like the other medical faculties in western Europe, had originally modelled itself on Salerno.28 The big, and as yet unanswered, question must be how far the important developments in the Paris medical faculty during the period 1270–74, when it acquired its statutes, were affected by the direct connections with the Regno forged after 1266. Another link between Naples and Paris lay in the fact that some men from the Regno held positions of eminence in the university, as did Francesco Caracciolo, of a distinguished Neapolitan family, who came to Paris in 1304 as Charles II’s ambassador, and became chancellor of the university in 1309.29 This was surely a proof of the high standing in which scholars from the Regno were held. Exactly how Francesco exploited his position cannot be discovered. But he did promote his fellow countrymen and kept in touch with his king while enjoying that position of eminence in Paris.30 More important evidence of the change in Paris, King Philippe IV began to intervene in university affairs, getting its masters to give their opinions on political questions and using them to write propaganda for him.31 Was this an entirely spontaneous change, or was Philippe influenced in his handling of the university by his chief advisor, Robert 26 27

28

29 31

On Pierre’s career, see Strayer, Les gens de justice du Languedoc, p. 18. Philippe IV’s ordinance of 1311 (Ordonnances des Roys de France, vol. I, pp. 490–1) prohibiting any surgeon from working in Paris, unless he had been examined by the master surgeons of Paris convoked by the first surgeon of the king, was perhaps modelled on legislation in the Regno relating to all medical practitioners. On the similarities and small differences between the syllabus at Paris and that at Naples and Salerno, see Cornelius O’Boyle, The Art of Medicine. Medical Teaching at the University of Paris, 1250–1400 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p. 127, note 151. 30 CUP, vol. II, i, pp. 146–7, no. 686 and p. 170. CUP, vol. II, i, p. 15. Much has been written on this theme. See for example Rivière, Le problème de l’église et de l’état; Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siège.

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d’Artois, who had had much experience of the situation in Naples? In support of this idea, which at first sight may seem far fetched, Robert d’Artois clearly did involve himself on one occasion at least in a controversy within the university of Paris. He was present at the trial of Arnau de Vilanova by the Paris theologians, and his support may well have been the reason for Arnau’s rapid release from prison in 1300.32 Robert will have known of Arnau’s high reputation among the physicians of Naples, although whether Arnau had any direct connection with the Regno before 1305 is unknown.33 (It is unlikely that Robert d’Artois had at this stage any knowledge of Arnau’s religious views.)34 What the theology masters of Paris had thought of as an internal matter, their right to censor unorthodox opinions, had thus on this occasion become a matter of high politics. Before the reign of Philippe IV the Capetian kings of France had looked with pride upon the university of Paris, had protected its masters by recognising their right to benefit of clergy, had sought to ensure the safety of foreign students at Paris, and had punished the prévot of Paris when he overstepped the mark in suppressing student riots. Louis IX had shown respect for individual masters, most notably Robert de Sorbonne.35 Most of the mendicants with whom the king famously surrounded himself were university trained.36 But, as far as we know, the king had not regarded the masters as a corporation of wise men whose opinion might be sought to give backing to controversial new royal policies because the masters were accepted by the rest of the population as wise. Nor had they chosen to express opinions on royal policies, whether bidden or unbidden. All this changed in the course of Philippe IV’s notorious quarrel with Boniface VIII, 1295–1303.37 As he ventured on untrodden ground, the French king was increasingly inclined to pit the authority of the university of Paris, with its formidable theology faculty, against the authority of the pope. Ernst Kantorowicz was the first historian to detect the degree to which Philippe’s lawyers in responding to Boniface’s criticisms, most 32

33 34

35 36 37

For this dramatic episode, see Joseph Ziegler, Medicine and Religion c. 1300. The Case of Arnau de Vilanova (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 21–8. For Robert d’Artois’s presence, see CUP, vol. II, p. 88, no. 616. Sabatini says that he was professor at Naples in 1305; Napoli angioina, p. 27. Later, Arnau dedicated various medical works to Charles II’s son King Robert. For the dating of Arnau’s earliest religious works, see Michael McVaugh, ‘Moments of inflection. The careers of Arnau de Vilanova’, in P. Biller and J. Ziegler (eds.), Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages (York: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 47–67, esp. pp. 50–2, 66–7. Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Monfrin, pp. 15–17. Le Goff, Saint Louis, pp. 328–44. For a brief, clear description of the quarrel and the various papal bulls involved, see Wood, Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII.


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clearly in the tract Antequam essent clerici of 1296,38 relied on and adapted theories that had first been discussed in the theology faculty of the university. In the second quarrel with Boniface, Philippe’s lawyers drew on the canon lawyers’ comments on Johannes Teutonicus on the Decretum, dist. 40, c. 6, to develop their theory that a general council of the church might depose the pope for a serious crime, for example heresy.39 It was a theologian, John of Paris, who produced the most systematic and clear-headed defence of limitations on papal power in his famous tract De potestate regia et papali. John argued that there was a correct balance between royal and papal power. Given that there were circumstances in which the pope might act with the nobility to force the abdication of a secular ruler, so equally there were circumstances in which rulers might act with the cardinals to force the abdication of a pope. Behind this lies the assumption that bodies vested with some kind of right of election should also possess the right of deposition. In order to enforce this right, these bodies must also have the backing of the wider community, whether ecclesiastical or lay. Furthermore, because the temporal power now held by the king of France was established before Christianity came to the country, temporal power was independent of the pope. Its end was the good of the community, which gave it the potential for goodness irrespective of the religious views of its holder.40 While Philippe IV probably did not want to be reminded that his nobility might legitimately act against him, the convenience to the king’s programme in 1302 of John of Paris’s teaching, that the pope might be deposed for heresy or serious criminal activity, was obvious, as was the view that there was a purely temporal role for rulers with which the pope should only meddle in very clearly defined circumstances. That Philippe IV began to exploit the masters of Paris in a fashion long familiar to the Hohenstaufen and Angevin kings of Naples does not of course mean that the French king was consciously following a Neapolitan pattern. Circumstances – including the facts that the Colonna cardinals had appealed to learned opinion in Paris against Boniface VIII in 1298 and that the pope called the Paris masters of theology to his council in Rome in November 1302 – certainly had their effect on French policy. Yet these circumstances may also have been affected by Neapolitan experience. It was Boniface himself who enunciated the doctrine that the masters of the university of Paris should be counsellors 38 39 40

The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 257–8. Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory, p. 173. Jean Leclerq, Jean de Paris et l’ecclésiologie du XIIIe siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1942); English trans. John Watt, John of Paris on Royal and Papal Power (Toronto: Pontifical Institute, 1971).

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to kings.41 That pope was completely familiar with the practices of the kingdom of Naples, since his family had lands there and he himself had been a counsellor of Charles II.42 Besides, some of the same pressures to pursue an anti-papal policy operated in England, yet it was not until the reign of Henry VIII that an English king exploited the opinions of Oxford and Cambridge masters for political purposes. Furthermore, Robert d’Artois’s dominance of Philippe’s councils in just the years the first steps in this direction were taken may seem more than a coincidence. On a different plain, it can be argued that scholars trained in Naples before they came to Paris brought with them an outlook, particularly in the realm of political ideas, which offered a contrast with opinions commonly held by French scholars. Of Regno scholars, the most famous was, of course, Thomas Aquinas, who studied in Paris from 1252 to 1256; was regent master there from 1256 to 1259; returned there for a second regency between 1268 and 1272; and concluded his career in Naples between 1272 and his death in 1274.43 Jeremy Catto suggested in 1976 that some at least of Aquinas’s political ideas, as expressed in his didactic work De regimine principum, Books I and II (as far as chapter 4), can best be understood within the context of his experience in youth in the Regno.44 That tyrannical rule might be easily overturned, that loyalty to the church and to the divine law might, on occasion, outweigh the duty of obedience owed to a secular ruler, were lessons anyone who had known the history of the Hohenstaufen fall and the Angevin rise to power in the Regno was almost obliged to learn. In Thomas’s case, since it is likely that at least one of his brothers had been caught up in the conspiracy against Frederick II in 1246 and had perished as a consequence, the lesson must have been a painful one. On the other hand, the value of strong secular rule in maintaining peace will have been equally evident to someone of Thomas’s upbringing. To reiterate Catto’s conclusion, ‘It should not be surprising that so profoundly an Aristotelian thinker should be prepared to learn from the events and conditions of his time.’45 In the 41 42 43 44

45

Paravicini Bagliani, Boniface VIII. Un pape hérétique? p. 125. RCA, vol. 13, reg. lxx, 270; Pollastri (ed.), Les Gaetani de Fondi, e.g. docs. 11 and 12. The dates are drawn from Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, vol. I. ‘Ideas and experience in the political thought of Aquinas’, Past and Present 71 (1975), 3–21. On the question of Thomas’s authorship, the most recent treatment is by James M. Blythe, Ptolemy of Lucca on the Government of Rulers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 3–5. Those who attempt to determine this only on stylistic points might find it interesting that Ptolemy of Lucca himself attributes De regimine principum to Brother Thomas in his Tractatus de jurisdictione ecclesiae super regnum Apulie et Siciliae in quo ostenditur quadripliciter ad ipsam solem ecclesiam pertinere, ed. J. Mansi, appendix to Etienne Baluze, Miscellanea novi ordine digesta, vol. I (Lucca, 1761), p. 472. Catto, ‘Ideas and experience’, p. 21.


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same mode as Catto, Hubert Houben has argued that Aquinas’s letter to the countess of Flanders about government of the Jews reflected the situation in southern Italy.46 In advising the countess to force the Jews to make their livings through their own labour, rather than exclusively through usury, Aquinas was simply following a custom with which he had long been familiar in his homeland. There is, however, some evidence that this precept was already well known in France before this.47 Moving from De regimine principum and the letter to Thomas’s more often quoted teachings in Summa theologiae, there is one famous discussion that summed up the teaching of his De regimine principum, though now in scholastic form: this is IIa–IIae, question 42, art. 2, where he concluded that the overthrow of tyrannical government is not strictly sedition, although it is clearly dangerous if it causes major disorder in society. This is a conclusion that would no doubt have pleased Charles of Anjou, at least after 1270, because it will have seemed that he had overthrown the Hohenstaufen tyranny without causing serious political trouble in the Regno, and that he was therefore morally justified in what he had done. He presumably found it a less comforting doctrine once he faced all-out rebellion in Sicily and in Calabria in 1282. But by then Thomas had been in his grave for eight years. Aquinas’s upbringing in the Regno did more than teach him some lessons in political morality: it also prepared him to reflect on the whole nature of law. Few Paris theologians in the period before Thomas wrote had had anything much to say about law. On the other hand, the Regno under Frederick II and Manfred was a society in which lawyers flourished, and where thinking about Roman law, imperial law and divine law was central to intellectual culture. Given this background for his early education in Naples, it can be argued that Aquinas’s definition of the ruler’s business as principally the making and enforcing of the human positive law was a simple deduction from experience.48 (It would not yet have been an obvious definition to any contemporary French thinker.) More broadly, Thomas was responsible for bringing into the political discourse of Paris theologians an understanding of the various types of law that gave a new perspective on the subject. The crucial distinctions he drew so clearly between divine, natural and human positive law underpinned the most widely admired thesis of his political thinking, that while 46

47 48

‘Religious toleration in the south Italian peninsula’, in G. A. Loud and A. Metcalf, The Society of Norman Italy (London: Brill, 2002), pp. 336–7. Houben keeps the traditional recipient, the duchess of Brabant. But I follow Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, vol. I, pp. 218–19, in preferring Marguerite of Flanders. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, p. 131. Summa theologiae Ia–IIae, question 90, art. 3.

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an unjust law has some binding force in practice on subjects, it cannot bind them in their consciences to obey.49 Thomas’s Dominican followers in France must have had to make a certain leap of faith to understand his point of view on politics because it was infused with assumptions unfamiliar till that time to the Paris theology faculty. But what he said was to have a powerful impact, especially once he had become an official teacher of the Dominican order in 1286.50 While Aquinas was by far the most influential thinker to emerge from the Regno in our period, James of Viterbo was also significant. James’s claim to belong to the Regno was different from that of Aquinas. As far as is known, he had no relation with that country before his move from Paris to Italy in 1300, when he was appointed master at the Austin friars’ studium generale in Naples. From then until the end of his life in 1308, he remained in the south, from December 1302 as archbishop of Naples. So while the Regno had no formative effect on him, it was there that he produced his most famous work, De regimine christiano,51 and it was there that he used the archiepiscopal pulpit to defend his ideas. James’s views on papal supremacy were well known in Paris, and provided the theologians there with a set of arguments different from those of his elder Austin friar Aegidius Romanus in his De ecclesiastica potestate,52 which also required to be answered by such French theologians as favoured more limited papal power in temporalities.53 For James, as for Thomas Aquinas before him, the ideal was a perfect harmony of spiritual and temporal leadership, so that the subjects of the kingdom might be led to moral virtue ending in earthly happiness and to Christian virtue leading to eternal salvation. The central function of all holders of power, both temporal and spiritual, is jurisdiction: ‘The principal and special action of royal power is to judge.’54 Jurisdiction includes the right of legislation: ‘Because judgment must be given according to determinate laws, it therefore pertains to kings, whose office it is to judge, to make laws or to receive and promulgate those established by others and to secure their observance.’55 Temporal power drew legitimacy from its natural function, but it was subordinated to spiritual power because its end was a lesser one. ‘Because the spiritual power is related to grace and 49 50 51 52 53

54

Summa theologiae Ia–IIae, question 92, art. 1; question 96, art. 4. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino, p. 342. James of Viterbo, On Christian Government, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995). Giles of Rome, On Ecclesiastical Power, trans. R. W. Dyson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986). For the argument that John of Paris was responding to both Aegidius Romanus and James, see Matthew S. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), pp. 265, 282. 55 Ibid., p. 74. On Christian Government, p. 73.


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the temporal to nature, the spiritual power therefore does not exclude the temporal, but forms and perfects it.’56 While the spiritual power should not exercise temporal power indiscriminately, it must do so in certain cases of necessity.57 All this both was Thomist in origin and also fitted well with the position of the ruler in the Regno, where the king had a near monopoly of criminal jurisdiction over the laity across the realm, and could therefore easily be envisaged as the punisher of the wicked in the interest of the common good; yet the king also acknowledged that he held that power directly from the pope and was ultimately answerable to him. (Without acknowledging papal supremacy, the Angevin dynasty would have been unable to plead its legitimacy.) Furthermore, the pope’s right to supervise the temporal rule of the Regno had been publicly acknowledged in the period after the death of Charles of Anjou and before the release from prison of Charles of Salerno. It was not surprising that Charles II was as pleased as Pope Boniface VIII with James’s writing.58 He probably thought, correctly, that his own rule came closer than that of other kings to James’s dictum that royal power is sanctified through the blessing of the church and is ‘formed’ through its institution by the sacerdotal power.59 James’s way of defending papal power provided a challenge to French thinkers. That John of Paris was replying directly both to James of Viterbo and to Giles of Rome in his De potestate regia et papali has not yet been proved by textual analysis. But how far such proof is necessary is open to question. Since the outline of James’s argument was to be found in his earlier quodlibet of 1293–94,60 there is no need to assume that a messenger had hotfooted it over the Alps with a text of De regimine christiano to lay on John’s desk. Paris theologians presumably went on discussing the themes that had been proposed by magistri long after the time when the views were first propounded. It is reasonable to assume that much of John’s text had already been written well before the crisis between Boniface VIII and Philip IV, and for a rather different purpose than was evident in the final form.61 It is equally reasonable to assume that John had thought hard about aspects of the problem of political obedience, well before he wrote. On the other hand, it seems determinedly obscurantist to discount the clear references to the 1302–3 crisis in De potestate regia et papali as it finally appeared. If John’s tract was not a direct 56 58 59 61

57 Ibid., p. 117. Ibid., p. 103. Charles asked the pope to elevate James to the archiepiscopal throne of Naples. 60 Ibid., p. 272. Kempshall, The Common Good, p. 273. Janet Coleman, ‘The Dominican political theory of John of Paris in its context’, in D. Wood (ed.), The Church and Sovereignty c. 590–1918. Essays in Honour of Michael Wilks (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 187–223.

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response to the text of De regimine christiano, it was a response to some of the arguments contained therein and to particular points found there. It was also a sign that masters of Paris needed to transcend their local environment by engaging with others teaching in very different political circumstances. In addition to Thomas Aquinas and James of Viterbo, John of Naples, just beyond the reaches of our period, made a reputation for himself as a major figure among the theologians of Paris. His political ideas were much more conventional than those of either Thomas or James. He believed in almost unadulterated papal supremacy over all temporal powers.62 But he showed his Neapolitan origins more clearly than any other master by debating the question of whether a Christian king could ever be justified in using Saracen soldiers to defend his kingdom. This was a question that both Charles of Anjou and Charles II had had to cope with. It had been one of the accusations made by the popes against both Frederick II and Manfred that they had used Saracen soldiers.63 It would therefore be expected that their Angevin successors would surrender this advantage. But, given the huge problems they faced, they had not been able to do so before 1300, when Charles II disbanded the remaining group. Since John did not debate this tricky question before 1313, he no longer faced an embarrassing moment. He initially argued that such use of Saracens was not in itself sinful; but he went on to say that it should never be resorted to unless there was absolutely no alternative.64 His words might almost have formed an official justification for Angevin policy, both past and present.65 Therefore the large group of mendicants who came up from the Regno to study in Paris did not just absorb, sponge-like, the atmosphere and learning of the French city. They also contributed something to it; and in relation to political ideas, that something was of considerable interest. It follows from what has been said that Philippe IV was not in a position to prevent masters of theology from concluding that temporal powers should be subjected to spiritual. On the other hand, he and his ministers saw that the kind of modified Thomism embraced by John of Paris could be extremely valuable to the crown. The problem lay in controlling the university’s output. Unlike the Angevins in Naples, he could not grant 62

63 64 65

Fr. Ioannis de Neapoli ordinis praedicatorum quaestiones variae parisiis disputatae, ed. Dominicus Gravina de Neapoli (Naples, 1618), quaestio XXXIX, de potestate papae. D’Avray, Death and the Prince, pp. 52–3. On this, see most recently Taylor, Muslims in Medieval Italy, pp. 52–7; 130–5. Also Maier, ‘Crusade and rhetoric against the Muslim colony of Lucera’. Fr Ioannis de Neapoli, quaestio XXXVIII. For the later career of John of Naples, see Kelly, The New Solomon, pp. 36–7.


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the licence to teach only to such men as he thought fit. He had to find another means of getting unmitigated support from the learned. And he found it. In his quarrel with Boniface VIII, he first purged the theology faculty of all foreign or dissident mendicants; and then used the authority of the purged faculty to back up his chosen policy.66 Other lesser mortals were expected to subscribe to his view of Boniface’s conduct because they knew that the men of superior learning in the university had already lent their authority to it. Thus Philippe IV attempted to undermine the autonomy of Paris, so that the university might become an agent of royal policy as the university of Naples had been since its inception. Was he innovating because events forced him to do so? Or was he consciously following what he knew to be the path of Naples? One hint that the latter may have been true was his employment of Aimeri de Narbonne, the famous military leader of Charles II, as the chief agent for obtaining letters of adherence to his call for a council in the region of Montpellier.67 66 67

Register of John de Halton, Bishop of Carlisle, vol. I, p. 211; William J. Courtenay, ‘Between pope and king: the Parisian letters of adhesion, 1303’, Speculum 71 (1996), 577–605. ´ Documents relatifs aux Etats-G´ enéraux et assemblées réunis sous Philippe le Bel, ed. Georges Picot (Paris, 1901), doc. 83ff.

13

Medicine and science

Medical knowledge in the middle ages was never contained within the walls of universities, despite earnest attempts by graduates in medicine to pour scorn on the qualifications of all those who had not attended a university. The gap was considerable between the more theoretical knowledge acquired from a study of Galen and Hippocrates in Salerno, Bologna, Montpellier or Paris and the cures handed down from generation to generation of wise people in the countryside. Yet a certain fusion between the two had occurred among Arabic-speaking physicians in the Abbasid empire, and western Europe came to benefit slowly from Arabic works in the high and late middle ages.1 Southern Italy and Sicily played a crucial role in the translation of these Arabic works into Latin and their transmission to other centres of medical learning. As an illustration of this from just prior to our period, King Manfred commissioned a translation into Latin of Ibn Botlân’s treatise on health at some point during his reign (1258-66). Known in the west as Tacuinum sanitatis, it was glossed in Paris by the French physician Jean de Saint-Amand before he left there in 1298.2 Knowledge therefore travelled reasonably fast. It would be a distinct exaggeration to claim that the Angevin invasion of southern Italy created a flow of medical knowledge from the Regno to northern France. A trickle and sometimes more had been in existence at least since the days of Constantinus Africanus in the eleventh century, and probably from well before that time. All that can be claimed is that the flow moved somewhat faster during the period 1266–1305, when men 1

2

Heinrich Schipperges, ‘Die Assimilation der arabischen Medizin durch das lateinische Mittelalter’, Südhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, Beihefte 3 (1964), 166– 72; Danielle Jacquart and Françoise Michau, La médecine arabe et l’occident médiévale (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1990). Lisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook Tacuinum Sanitatis, trans. Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1976); Lynn Thorndike and Pearl Kibre, A Catalogue of Incipits of Medieval Scientific Writings in Latin (London: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1963), col. 215, ‘liber Tacuini de curis morborum cum additiones Johannis de Sancto Amando’. On dates of John’s residence in Paris, O’Boyle, The Art of Medicine, p. 121.

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with medical knowledge were passing reasonably frequently between the two countries. No sooner was Charles of Anjou adequately secure on the throne of the Regno than he began to invite scholars of all sorts from northern France to take up residence in Naples. While the original invitations were open to all disciplines, as the reign went on he increasingly emphasised his willingness to assist physicians. Most French physicians, having a high opinion of their own knowledge and abilities, probably inferred that Charles wished them to provide sound teaching for the benighted inhabitants of the Regno.3 Rather few are known to have availed themselves of the king’s offered patronage, which was considerable. For example, he offered one man described as a professor of medicine 200 lt to cover the costs of his journey to the Regno.4 There is no sign in the chancery registers that this individual chose to accept – but that is not proof of his failure to come. The king also ordered that Jacques de SaintQuentin, physician, be given by the seneschal of Provence 30 lt to come to Apulia.5 Those who did venture south will rapidly have discovered the superiority of medical knowledge in the Mediterranean world. Had the Sicilian Vespers not broken out, it might have become fashionable for French physicians to vist the Regno. As it was, Charles II’s reign was less conspicuous than his father’s as a time of recruitment. The names of one or two French physicians who joined the royal household in the Regno for at least some months can be found.6 These, like their counterparts in other countries, were expected to fulfil secretarial or ambassadorial as well as medical duties. But only one of these, Jean de Nesle, was a considerable figure both in French medical circles and in the Angevin royal court.7 He had been rector of the university of Paris in 1259, and was a master in the faculty of medicine by 1274. By 1281 he was rector of Nocera and physician and household clerk to Charles of Anjou. He had been in the Regno for at least a year, during which time he was able to appreciate the culture of the place. He may have been an 3 4 5 6

7

On the similarities and small differences between the syllabus at Paris and that at Naples and Salerno, see O’Boyle, The Art of Medicine, p. 127, note 151. RCA, vol. 25, reg. ciii, 141. Inventaire-sommaire des archives départementales antérieures a` 1790. Bouches-du-Rhône. Archives civiles. Série B, vol. II (Marseilles, 1879), ed. M. Blancard, B 2024. E.g. RCA, vol. 27, parte 1 reg. cxix, 695, where a Paris professor of arts was given the doctorate in medicine; for Jean de Sainte-Maime, canon of Châlons, see above, p. 95 and n. 3; Simon de Chaumont, Charles’s personal physician, Camillo Minieri Riccio, Nuovi studii reguardanti la dominazione angioina nel Regno di Sicilia (Naples: Archivio di Stato, 1876), p. 3. E. Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au moyen aˆ ge, 2 vols. (1936, reprinted Geneva: Droz, 1979), vol. II, p. 456.

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important conduit for south Italian medical knowledge when he returned to Paris at the time of the Sicilian Vespers. He was certainly still in touch with the Angevin royal family in the reign of Charles II.8 More importantly, while in the Regno, Jean de Nesle was in charge of Charles of Anjou’s medical books (and probably the whole of his quite extensive library).9 In this capacity, he will have known of the numerous Arabic works, both newly acquired and inherited from his Hohenstaufen predecessors, that Charles possessed. Of these the most important was that of Razi’s Kitab al-Hâwi. This huge encyclopaedia of medical knowledge came to Charles from the emir of Tunis, who was encouraged to give Charles a copy.10 The king then put it into the hands of the already eminent Jewish translator from Agrigento known as Farag ben Salem, who finished his hard work of producing a Latin version on 13 February 1279.11 Charles took a personal interest in the matter, writing to Farag to find out whether he had yet received the piece on the diseases of the ear which seems to have become detached from his Arabic original, and asking him to have it sent from Palermo if necessary to be incorporated.12 The king also tried to obtain a dictionary of Arabic medical terms to assist his translator.13 Furthermore, he arranged for the completed translation to be formally approved by his household physicians and representatives from among the physicians of Naples and Salerno, all of whom endorsed it enthusiastically. If the fine ms Bibliothèque Nationale, Latin 6912 is indeed Farag’s autograph copy, he was responsible not only for the translation but also for the beautiful script. When he had finished, the manuscript was handed over to brother Giovanni of Montecassino to produce a famous set of miniatures for the frontispiece. A group of scribes was then apparently engaged to produce another copy, under the direction of Jean de Nesle.14 This is probably the one (Ms Vat. Lat. 8 9 10 11

12 13

14

Fusco, Dell Argenteo Imbusto al primo Patrono S. Gennero, p. 58, no. 4. His predecessor as royal physician, Master Amand, had also been in charge of the royal library; Sabatini, Napoli angioina, p. 34. RCA, vol. 21, reg. xci, 43. This original text is now in the Escorial in Madrid; see La cultura angioina, p. 108. Colette Sirat, ‘Les traducteurs juifs a` la cour des rois de Sicile et Naples’, in G. Contamine (ed.), Traduction et traducteurs au moyen aˆ ge (Paris: CRNS, 1989), pp. 169–91, at p. 178. ¨ Hubert Houben, ‘Neue Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden und Sarazenen in Konigreich Sizilien (1275-80)’, QFAIAB 74 (1994), 349. RCA, CII, vol. 43, additiones to reg. cviii, 188. It is worth noting that Charles’s personal interest in translation from Arabic may have been influenced also by Provençal tradition. He will surely have known the treatise on hygiene translated from Arabic into French by Aldebrandino of Siena for his mother-in-law, Countess Beatrice of Provence; see Le régime du corps de maˆıtre Aldebrandin de Sienne, ed. L. Landouzy and R. Pépin (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1911), esp. pp. xxv, liv–lv. RCA, vol. 21, reg. xci, 50.


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2398–9) discovered by Angela Daneu Lattanzi.15 If so, the miniatures were very similar to those in the original. According to Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese, this was the copy that the chancellor of Achaia, Leonardo da Veroli, was permitted to have made.16 It is clear that Charles was reluctant to have the manuscript copied extensively. Nevertheless, as we shall see, it did circulate. How Farag’s translation of al-Hâwi got to Paris is unknown.17 By Ockham’s razor, the hypothesis would be that Jean de Nesle brought one copy back with him to the city. But there is no evidence to back this up, and the first known use of the text in Paris was not before about 1310. By this time, the treatise was known by its Latin name, Totum continens (or just Continens). It was cited extensively in Henri de Mondeville’s Chirurgie, which was written between 1306 and 1314.18 This work was written while Mondeville was surgeon to Philippe IV. Danielle Jacquart has said that it aimed to construct a true science of surgery for the first time, by tightly knitting together theory and practice.19 The earliest quotations from Continens were incorporated into the text before 1312. The value of the translated work to French physicians was potentially great. They were already familiar with several of Razi’s other works, so the new one will have been greeted with enthusiasm. Kitab al-Hâwi was organised under title headings, each of which was then followed by the opinions of the Greek classical writers on the topic. In some cases, opinions of Syrian, Indian and Arab doctors were also included. Razi demonstrated his skill at precise diagnosis and minute description.20 His book therefore filled an important gap in the understanding of medical

15

16

17

18

19 20

` in ‘Una “bella copia” di Alhawi tradotto dell’ arabo di Farah Moyse per Carlo I d’Angio’, Miscellanea di Studi in Memoria di Anna Saitta Revignas, ed. Leo S. Olschijski (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1978), pp. 149–69. I am grateful to Martin Kauffmann for referring me to this work. See her entry in the catalogue for the exhibition L’Europe des Anjou. Aventure des princes angevins du XIIIe au XVe siècle (Paris: Somagy, 2001), p. 302. Cf. RCA, vol. 21, reg. xci, 47, 50. It may have reached Montpellier earlier. In 1309 Clement V produced new statutes for the Medical Faculty there, in which ‘the books of Razes’ were cited as one of the alternatives that might be studied. For a translation, see O’Boyle, The Art of Medicine, p. 148. Whether this included Continens is unclear. Julius Leopold Pagel, Die Chirurgie des Heinrich von Mondeville (Berlin: Auguste Hischwald, 1892). I am most grateful to Professor Michael McVaugh for pointing out this work to me, and for giving me valuable advice on the matter – I am of course responsible for any mistakes I may have made. Danielle Jacquart, La médecine médiévale dans le cadre parisien, XIVe–XVe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1998), p. 49. Danielle Jacquart and Françoise Michau, La médecine arabe et l’occident médiévale (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1990), pp. 57–68.

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science in northern France, even if it was not as influential within the Paris medical faculty as it perhaps deserved to have been. The value of Razi’s al-Hâwi to my subject lies in the fact that the Latin translation can be traced directly from the court of Charles of Anjou to Parisian medical circles. Sadly, that cannot yet be said of the other works translated in the reign. At the instance of Charles of Anjou,21 Farag translated an eleventh-century work by Abu Ali ibn Djazla on hygiene, called Tacuini aegritudinum et morborum corporis. Farag probably also translated Pseudo-Galen De medicinis expertis,22 but I have not yet been able to trace the early use of either of these texts in northern France.23 Moses of Palermo’s translation of Pseudo-Hippocrates De curationibus infirmitatum equorum, finished in 1277, was probably also achieved at the court of Charles of Anjou.24 It became fundamental to later studies of veterinary science. But again, there is no clear evidence of its early arrival in France. Interestingly, Charles II in 1308 paid for translations of medical works from Greek to Latin.25 The only one known to have been finished in his reign was Niccolo` of Reggio’s translation of Galen’s De flebotomia.26 One way and another, the first two Angevin kings of the Regno kept alive the tradition of royal patronage for medical works that they had inherited from Frederick II and Manfred. The reception of Razi suggests close links between the intellectual communities of the Regno and of France, and the enrichment of the French medical tradition with works of a practical nature. We have already seen the important position held by Palmerio de Riso at the court of Robert d’Artois.27 The infiltration into courts, particularly royal courts, of medical men and medical interests is a clear feature of the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.28 Interestingly, Lanfranc of Milan dedicated his Chirurgie magna to Philippe IV, a sign that 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Most manuscripts and the printed edition of Strasbourg, 1531, agree on this. Sirat, ‘Les traducteurs juifs’, p. 179. Note, however, the mentions of Tacuini aegritudinum in Thorndike and Kibre (eds.), A Catalogue of incipits of mediaeval scientific writings in Latin, cols. 373, 538, 697, 1554. Pearl Kibre, Hippocrates latinus. Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages (rev. edn, New York: Fordham University Press, 1985), p. 163, XXII. Minieri Riccio, Studi storici fatii sopra 84 registri, p. 20. Michael McVaugh, ‘Niccolò of Reggio’s translations of Galen and their reception’, Early Science and Medicine 11 (2006), no. 3, pp. 276–7. See above, p. 115. For a description of the Aragonese royal family’s personal involvement with the medical culture of its time, see Michael McVaugh, Medicine before the Plague. Practitioners and their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285–1348 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 4–24; for an earlier French example, Dietrich Lohrmann, ‘Pierre Lombard, médecin de Saint Louis. Un italien a` Paris et ses maisons au quartier latin’, in Septième centennaire, pp. 165–81.


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this new slant was appreciated in the wider medical world.29 On occasion there is evidence that those with experience in the Regno were at the forefront of expanding these interests. When the famous physician and spiritual writer Arnau of Vilanova appealed to Boniface VIII against the condemnation issued against some of his theses by masters of the university of Paris in 1300, one of his vociferous supporters was Viscount Aimeri VI of Narbonne, the man who had won fame as a military leader of pro-Angevin forces in Italy. And Count Robert d’Artois took the trouble to turn up to hear the indictment, presumably out of goodwill towards Arnau, whose reputation as a learned man and an excellent doctor was widespread across the Mediterranean world. Arnau is known to have visited the Regno in 1305, and may possibly have been there before that date. Perhaps Robert’s support explains why the king’s clerk and counsellor, Guillaume de Nogaret, allowed himself to be counted among Arnau’s friends.30 Given the interests arrayed against the Paris theologians on this occasion, it is not surprising that Boniface VIII temporised over the affair. In a very unfair twist of politics, the pope’s failure to anathematise Arnau’s controversial Tractatus de tempore adventus Antichristi was used against him by Philippe IV’s ministers in 1303, when they badly needed the support of the Paris theologians in their attempt to depose the pope.31 By that time, Robert d’Artois was dead, Aimeri was employed by Philippe in the south, and Guillaume de Nogaret was on the road to Anagni, where Boniface VIII was captured and humiliated. Arnau had no one left in Paris to support him. But because the measure was aimed against the pope rather than against him, it may not have worried him too much. Arnau of Vilanova remained a highly controversial figure. He was not, however, the only scientific thinker of his age to have connections both with the Regno and with France. Petrus Peregrinus finished his important treatise De magnete while he was participating in the siege of Lucera in 1269.32 How Petrus came to be there we do not know. He was presumably one of the French crusaders who had failed to return home after Tagliacozzo, either through loyalty to Charles or in hopes that he would obtain all the pay due to him. Since Roger Bacon seems to have got access to this treatise shortly after it was finished, Petrus probably brought it back to France himself. It provides an intriguing insight into the 29 30 31 32

Jacquart, La médecine médiévale dans le cadre parisien, p. 42. CUP, vol. II, i, p. 88, no. 616. See Ziegler, Medicine and Religion, pp. 26–8. Guillaume de Plaisians’s charges against Boniface VIII, no. 8; Dupuy, Histoire du différend entre le pape Boniface VIII et Philippes le Bel, pp. 102–6. Alastair C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), p. 206.

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occupations possible to an army engaged in a long siege. It also constitutes a major contribution to thirteenth-century scientific thinking, being hailed as ‘a marvel of clarity and experimental sagacity’.33 On a less elevated, but nevertheless useful, level of applied science, the count of Flanders, Gui de Dampierre, acquired on his journey through the Regno a notable copy of Frederick II’s treatise on falconry. This was the very fine manuscript Vat. Pal. Lat. 1071, which King Manfred had edited and had copied. The illustrations of all the birds discussed in the text have aroused much praise.34 Once back in France, it was presumably either lent or given to one of Gui’s younger sons, Jean, lord of Dampierre in Champagne (who had inherited his father’s family lands). He asked Simon d’Orléans to illustrate a French translation of the work, as the manuscript Paris BN fr. 12400 declares.35 Although Frederick’s tract is not thought by modern historians of biology to have had much effect on scholarship, it probably did extend understanding of anatomy among laymen, because it was a work based on observation and experience.36 The French version, like the Latin, was copied elsewhere. While it would be wrong to exaggerate the importance of the contribution of works translated in the Regno and scientists who had links with the Regno to knowledge in France, it also would be wrong to overlook it. There was still in the Regno a liveliness, an absorption with the practical, with the visible effects of cures or experiments, that provided a valuable stimulus to northern medicine and science. 33 34 35

36

Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), p. 225. Sabatini, Napoli angioina, p. 39. The Art of Falconry, being the De arte venandi cum avibus of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, ed. and trans. Casey A. Wood and F. Marjorie Fyfe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1934), pp. lxx–lxxii. Baudoin van den Abeele, La fauconnerie au moyen aˆ ge. Connaissance, affaitage et médecine des oiseaux de chasse d’après les traités latins (Paris: Klincksieck, 1994), pp. 26–8.

14

Law

As with medicine, so with law: much of the most interesting work was conducted, both in Naples and in Paris, at the royal court or in the most important courts of each country rather than within the law faculties of the universities. Lawyers in royal service have left fuller records of what they did than have physicians. But they were less likely than were physicians to leave identifiable traces of what they borrowed from where. Therefore this section is a rather loose one. Its argument is that French royal law became increasingly similar to that of the Regno in the period 1266 to c.1305, and that the facts are compatible on occasion with direct borrowing. In cases where this cannot be stated with confidence, because alternative hypotheses are also plausible, it is still worth considering possible influences from the Regno because they may yield some fresh insights on the French legal scene. The Regno became, under Frederick II, the beacon for the legal development of western Europe in the later thirteenth century. Within a relatively compact area, the emperor was able to create his own version of law to a degree unthinkable anywhere else before 1250. Conscious as he was of the historical role of Roman emperors in legislating, it was as king of the Regno that he fulfilled this role in a thorough-going way. Initially claiming simply to be reasserting the customs of the country that had been corrupted during the difficult years since the death of King William II, Frederick grew aware of the need to define the law more exactly. In 1231 he produced the famous Liber Constitutionum or Liber Augustalis.1 This was remarkable for its interest in judicial procedure. In addition to the many precise laws to be observed in the Regno, some derived from the legislation of his Norman predecessors, Frederick included the Constitutio ‘Puritatem’, laying down a hierarchy of laws to be applied by judges in particular cases. Where royal law provided a relevant ruling, judges were to observe it; where royal law said nothing, they should refer to local customs that had been approved by the king; and where neither 1

Liber Augustalis, trans. Powell.

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of these helped, they might use ius commune, defined as comprised of Roman and Lombard law.2 In order to ensure that judges did proceed in accordance with this (and other) instructions, Frederick organised a system of appeals from the lower court to the crown.3 In other words, the king was entrenching himself both as the source of legislation and as the supreme means of enforcing it. Royal control over the appointment of justiciars in the provinces, a royal near-monopoly over the enforcement of criminal justice on laymen, and royal enquiries into the conduct of officials, completed the machinery for reforming the laws of the Regno.4 It was not surprising that Frederick was able to provide jobs for many if not most of those who became learned in the law at the university of Naples. But in the absence of judicial records for the Regno, how effectively the machinery worked in practice remains an open question. When Charles of Anjou seized the throne of the Regno at the end of February 1266, the impact of Frederick’s legal activities was still clearly visible. Pope Clement IV had required Charles to swear to reintroduce the good laws of King William to the country. Embarrassingly enough, these were thought by most of the inhabitants of the Regno to have been encapsulated in the Liber Augustalis.5 Therefore in practice the change in the Regno’s legal system on Charles’s accession was much less than might have been expected from a regime allegedly dedicated to the elimination of Hohenstaufen tyranny. Like Frederick II, Charles of Anjou added by ordinance to the body of royal law – and Charles II was to increase this substantially.6 While not formally endowing the Liber Augustalis with authority, both of the first two Angevin kings accepted most of its provisions as lex scripta. Both kings proceeded with an ostentatious regard for law and precedent. Both surrounded themselves with coteries of well-known lawyers. And Charles of Anjou at least carefully preserved the means of enforcement on which Frederick had insisted. (Under Charles II, there were various small dents in the royal near-monopoly 2 3 4 5

6

Manlio Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe, trans. L. D. Cochrane (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), p. 89. Liber Augustalis, trans. Powell, Book I, tit. XLVIII; Matthew, The Norman Kingdom, pp. 343–4. Liber Augustalis, Book I, tit. XLIV, tit. XL (part 2), tit XLI, tit. L. Marino da Caramanico’s famous commentary on Frederick’s work, written in the reign of Charles of Anjou and with Angevin interests clearly in mind, shows that this was appreciated; Sabatini, Napoli angioina, p. 23. But for the anti-imperial basis of Angevin sovereignty propounded by Caramanico, see Patrick Gilli, ‘Culture politique et culture juridique chez les Angevins de Naples (jusqu’au milieu du XVe siècle)’, in Tonnerre and Verry (eds.), Les princes angevins, pp. 131–54, at pp. 151–2. Gérard Giordanengo, ‘Arma legesque colo: l’état et le droit en Provence (1246–1343)’, in L’état angevin, pp. 35–49, and pp. 71–4 for a list of the ordinances of the first two Angevin kings.

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of criminal justice over laymen by means of grants to towns and nobles, particularly to members of the royal family.)7 Therefore visitors to the Regno from France should have encountered there a system in which royal law was both theoretically paramount and being added to regularly, in which a clearly defined series of appeals could be launched from lower courts to the king himself, and in which judges of lower courts had relatively little discretion about the judgments they gave.8 The contrast with France in 1266 was great. But by 1305, there were many points of similarity, because the French system had evolved markedly. It can, of course, be argued that this development in France needs no external explanation, that the growing similarity depended predominantly on common borrowings from Roman law in each country, and that the features evident in Frederick II’s Regno came to characterise other European monarchies as much as France. It is true that, in the later thirteenth century, in all European monarchies – as well as in most Italian city states – legislation was passed by the rulers to regulate the lives of all the subjects of these states (though how far it did so in practice is much less clear). It is true that, in all, justice became more centralised, and enforcement was increasingly by officials chosen by the rulers. It is also true that in all these states much innovation drew on concepts articulated by Roman lawyers. But Alfonso X’s choice of the vernacular for his Siete partidas marked out its distinctive character, as did the opposition his legislation faced from his nobles. It was to be another half-century before Castilian royal law prevailed against its opponents.9 And while royal law did prevail in England, by the second half of Edward I’s reign English common law was becoming increasingly independent of Roman law and more distinct in its practices from canon law.10 Meanwhile, the disintegration of the empire in the post-Hohenstaufen period meant that 7

8 9

10

For the development of customary law codes among cities of the Regno in the late thirteenth century, Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe, p. 91. For Charles II’s concessions to nobles, Kiesewetter, Die Anfänge der Regierung König Karls II , pp. 433– 43; Kelly, The New Solomon, pp. 145–8. The absence of most judicial records for the period means that we have only a few clues as to how far the legislation was carried out in practice in the early Angevin period. R. A. Macdonald, ‘Law and politics: Alfonso’s program of political reform’, in R. I. Burns (ed.), The Worlds of Alfonso the Learned and James the Conqueror (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 150–202, esp. pp. 180–2, 187–92; for the opposition Alfonso’s laws faced in Castile, see The Chronicle of Alfonso X, trans. S. Thacker and J. Escobar (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), pp. 92–3. For the view that opposition to the new forms of law was widespread, see Daniel Lord Smail, The Consumption of Justice. Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseilles, 1264–1423 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 4–10. Paul Brand, The Origins of the English Legal Profession (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 154–7, 159.

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the in any case rather feeble attempts of Frederick II to impose a degree of judicial centralisation there failed altogether. By 1305, France and the Regno were more alike than either was like Castile or England or Germany. In 1266, France had already taken some steps along the path she was to follow under Philippe III and Philippe IV. Louis IX had made increasing numbers of ordinances in his own name that were intended to apply to the whole of the realm (that still rather hazy concept).11 The extensive conquests of Philippe Auguste’s and Louis VIII’s reigns had vastly increased the area of France subjected to the direct oversight of royal baillis. And the Parlement of Paris had emerged as a body to which appeals could be taken from across the country.12 But the courts of first instance across the bulk of France were not controlled even indirectly by the king. Most were in the hands of barons, knights, castellans or churchmen, who sorted out local quarrels in accordance with local custom. Whereas, in Normandy, local custom covered a whole province,13 elsewhere, as when Beaumanoir recorded the customs of the Beauvaisis in 1283, the very act of recording them assisted in making them more widely observed. In Languedoc, the growing reliance on Roman law was beginning to create a pervasive custom rather like that in the neighbouring imperial province of Provence (by now ruled by the Angevin dynasty of Naples).14 But some very localised customs still persisted in France. When the Parlement of Paris decided a case, it decided it in accordance with the law of the region in which the protagonists lived. Therefore, although there was a degree of centralisation, there was very little uniformity and royal law covered a lesser range of topics than did the royal law of the Regno. Most importantly, there were large areas of France where the king was recognised as monarch, but where his judicial rights were either non-existent or much contested. These were the great principalities, the duchies of Burgundy, Gascony and Brittany, the counties of Flanders and Champagne, and potentially the apanages of Toulouse and Poitou, Anjou and Maine, and Artois. Admittedly Louis IX had very little trouble in practice with the apanages, whose rulers (his brothers and his nephew) usually recognised his authority (although allegedly he had once had to impose the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris on Anjou and Maine, ruled by his youngest brother 11 12 13 14

Harding, Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State, p. 198; Gouron, ‘Royal ordonnances in medieval France’, pp. 60–1. See above, pp. 17–18. On the evolution of Norman custom, see Power, The Norman Frontier, pp. 151–3. Esther Cohen, The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Late Medieval France (Leiden: Brill, 1993), pp. 34–40. For Philippe IV’s statement of the conditions in which Roman law might be treated as custom, see Gilissen, Introduction historique au droit, p. 330.

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Charles of Anjou).15 But there was still a long way to go before all France clearly recognised the judicial supremacy of the royal court in Paris. The period 1266–c.1305 saw major steps taken along the road to greater legal sovereignty of the crown of France in the country. In the first place, the death of Alphonse de Poitiers in 1271 brought Poitou and Toulouse (though in the former case not without considerable struggle) into the royal demesne by 1284. The marriage of the future Philippe IV with the heiress to Champagne brought that once-brilliant principality into the king’s hands, along with the kingdom of Navarre. Baillis appointed by the crown henceforth enforced the law across these territories. Although the crown failed to get Anjou and Maine into its own hands, the grant by Charles II of Naples of these counties in 1291 to Charles de Valois, Philippe IV’s brother, put an end to the possibility (never actually realised) that Neapolitan practices might be introduced directly into the legal operations of these two counties. Charles de Valois put up even less resistance than had Charles of Anjou to the creeping authority of royal law in these crucial territories. Perhaps ironically, royal legal sovereignty was asserted in its most strident form in a local code, the Coutumier d’Artois, drawn up in one of the apanages some time before 1307. There it was asserted that the king had no sovereign over him in temporal affairs and held of no one except God and himself; from his judgment appeal was possible only to God.16 A royal lawyer could hardly have expressed it better. Despite the real increase in royal judicial authority, there remained serious problems. Neither Flanders nor Gascony would accept Philippe IV’s right to use royal law to interfere with the jurisdiction of their own rulers. The long and bitter war with Flanders that began in 1297 was partly caused by Count Gui de Dampierre’s refusal to accept the expansion of royal jurisdiction within his territory. Similarly the war between Philippe IV and Edward I of England over Gascony was largely aimed on Edward’s side to deny the competence of the Parlement of Paris inside his territory. This remained a major bone of contention between the French and the English monarchs until Henry VI was forced to yield up all his French lands except Calais in 1453. Neither the dukes of Brittany nor those of Burgundy were so provoked by Philippe IV as to refuse accommodation with him,17 and the count of Artois remained the king’s closest advisor 15 16 17

If the hagiographer Guillaume de Saint-Pathus was correct (RHF, vol. XX, pp. 1115– 16). On this see Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 29 and note 5. Coutumier d’Artois publié d’après les mss 5248 et 5249 français de la Bibliothèque Nationale, ed. Adolf Tardif (Paris: A. Picard, 1883), pp. 42–3. On Brittany, Ordonnances des roys de France, vol. I, p. 329; on Burgundy, Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne, pp. 190, 193–6.

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until his death in 1302. But Gascony and Flanders constituted problems that Philippe was quite incapable of solving, and in attempting to deal with which he lost much blood, toil, sweat and tears. If the crown was thwarted in two regions in its attempt to enforce the sovereignty of the Parlement of Paris, it was successful in increasing the scope of that sovereignty. Increasingly it came within the competence of the royal councillors in Parlement to demand the alteration of such customary laws as struck them as inherently unjust.18 Therefore, although custom continued to be a powerful force in French law, it was now subject to some curbs imposed from the top. Furthermore, the obligation of the crown to enforce peace everywhere tended towards both a more active role for royal officials in prosecuting crime by use of the inquest procedure and the possibility of harsher punishments for those found guilty.19 At the same time, the growing number of royal ordinances modified custom in specific respects. Therefore while by 1305 the jurisdiction of the king of France was subject to many more limitations than that of the king of the Regno (although Charles II was beginning to relax the determination of his father to preserve as much as possible of the royal monopoly over criminal jurisdiction for laymen),20 the two systems were more alike by 1305 than they had been in 1266. Of Philippe IV and Charles II it has been said that they were ‘deux capétiens, deux bigots, deux amateurs de conseillers juristes’.21 Were the likenesses simply a matter of family character, was the model Provence, as has already been suggested, or was there some element of deliberate imitation by the French king of what he knew to occur in his cousin’s realm in southern Italy? Some possible sources of direct influence may be posited. During the period 1273–84 when Charles of Anjou’s proctors at the Parlement of Paris were arguing his case to inherit at least some of the lands and possessions of his brother Alphonse de Poitiers, there was constant communication between Paris and Naples. Charles’s case, while dependent on French customary law, also involved much quotation from both Roman 18

19

20 21

Pierre Chaplais, ‘La souveraineté du roi de France et le pouvoir législatif en Guyenne ˆ 69 (1963), 449–69; Cohen, The Crossroads of au début de XIVe siècle’, Le Moyen Age Justice, pp. 18–19. Claude Gauvard, ‘De grace especial’. Crime, e´tat et société en France a` la fin du moyen aˆ ge, 2 vols. (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991), vol. II, pp. 946–51. But neither the efficiency nor the harshness should be exaggerated. Control of local officials on a day-to-day basis remained tenuous, bringing alleged criminals to court remained very difficult, and fines remained the usual form of punishment for those convicted. On grants of merum et mixtum imperium under Charles II, see Kelly, The New Solomon, pp. 147–8. Giordanengo, ‘Arma legesque colo’, p. 69.

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and canon law.22 In this sense, it pointed towards the greater application of ius scriptum to French law which was to become increasingly common in the next two decades. The same was probably true of the arguments used in the Parlement in support of Queen Marguerite’s rights to Tonnerre.23 Furthermore, various visits to Paris by eminent lawyers from the royal coterie at Naples can be traced in the records.24 These learned, French-speaking lawyers will have had much to discuss with their French counterparts at the courts of Philippe III and Philippe IV. Then there was a group of French lawyers who responded to Charles of Anjou’s invitation to the university of Orléans to send masters to the Regno. Among these were Simon de Paris (who became Charles’s chancellor), Jean de Mouchy, Guillaume de Farumville (who became Charles’s vice-chancellor), Eudes de Blois and possibly also Pierre de Pierregrosse. Gerbert de Saint-Quentin was probably also trained in Orléans. Jacques de Duèze (Charles II’s chancellor and later Pope John XXII) may also have belonged to this group.25 While Simon de Paris died in the Regno and Jacques de Duèze went on to become bishop of Avignon, some of the others may have returned to France to spread knowledge of the legal system that prevailed in the south. Nor was it necessary to be a professional lawyer to appreciate the main outlines of the legal system in a country different from one’s own. All the French lords who came to the Regno will have had considerable grounding in the law of their own areas, since virtually all wielded judicial power of some sort in their lands, and some (e.g. Hugues, duke of Burgundy, Robert d’Artois, Robert de Béthune) wielded a great deal. They were perfectly capable of making comparisons and drawing lessons. The case for borrowing does not rest only on plausibilities. There is at least one example of what appears to be imitation. In November 1292, Charles II wrote to his son Charles Martell, now titular king of Hungary, commanding him to re-enact the sumptuary legislation that Robert d’Artois had introduced into the Regno during his time in office there. (His original ordinance of 1290 had been revoked in 1291, along with other such acts of his regency as were not specifically endorsed by Charles II.) The letter reproduced Robert’s edict. It began with a lengthy arenga on the necessity for temperance and moderation in all forms of 22 23 24

25

A. de Bouard, Actes et lettres, no. 1046. RCA CII, vol. 44, additiones to reg. lxxxix, 260. Bartolomeo da Capua’s visit to Paris in 1290 in the company of Charles II is attested in Tomacelli, Storia de’ Reame di Napoli, vol. II, p. 445; Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. VI, p. 697. Giordanengo, ‘Arma legesque colo’, p. 49; Juris interpretes saec. XIII curantibus scholaribus Leidenensibus duce E.M. Meyers (Naples: Francisco Perella, 1925), pp. xxxii, xxxvii.

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consumption in time of war. What was saved by self-restraint could be spent on defeating the enemy. It went on to lay down that no holder of a fief in the Regno, from counts downwards in the social scale, was to have banquets for his followers that consisted of more than two courses if at midday or one course in the evening. This limitation was to be understood quite strictly, and was to apply in time of fasting as well as at feasts. Nor were any of them, unless given a specific royal licence, to wear rich furs, except for hoods or tippets. No one should presume to have clothes made of materials costing more than 15 tari per canna, and they were only to have new outfits twice a year, one for summer and one for winter. With the exception of the top ranks of society, who were allowed two, no one was to have more than one saddle-cloth for his horse each year. Lest the men be tempted into extravagance by their wives, all ladies were forbidden to have lengthy trains or fringes on their dresses. Transgression of these rules was to incur a monetary fine, graded in accordance with social rank.26 There is reason to think that this legislation was the model for the sumptuary laws introduced by Philippe IV in 1294.27 By this time, Robert d’Artois was well established again in France as an important advisor to his cousin the king. He may have suggested the need for such legislation when the war with Edward I broke out. There were of course differences between France and the Regno at the time: the French financial situation was at this stage nothing like as serious as was that of the Regno. Therefore the restrictions imposed on clothing were less harsh. And French society was more hierarchical than that of the Regno, so greater social distinction was allowed for.28 But much of the substance was the same.29 The sumptuary legislation appears to demonstrate that the government of Philippe IV had no problem with applying to France solutions worked out in the heat and toil of war in the Regno. This instance gives plausibility to others where the timelag between the action taken in the Regno and the possible French imitation was greater and where there were not such clear indications of borrowing. The trial and condemnation of Adenolfo IV, count of Acerra, for sodomy in 1293 was well known in court circles in Paris. Guillaume de Nangis, the Saint-Denis chronicler, commented on it at length.30 Since Robert d’Artois had been intimately connected with the story, it is likely that he and his entourage talked about it when in Paris. The case was one of considerable complexity. Adenolfo had been 26 27 28 30

RCA CII, vol. 32, reg. x, 101; Le carte di Léon Cadier, pp. 154–7, no. 165. Ordonnances des Roys de France, vol. I, pp. 541–3. 29 See Appendix at the end of this chapter. See Vale, The Princely Court, p. 98. Chronique latine, pp. 286–7.

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condemned for treason by a court presided over by Robert d’Artois in 1286. Pope Honorius IV had claimed to exercise lordship in the Regno at that time because Charles of Anjou was dead, Charles of Salerno had been imprisoned in Catalonia, and Charles Martell was a minor. In his capacity as overlord, the pope expressed shocked horror at the doings and verdict of the court. Honorius saved Adenolfo from the death penalty that was the penalty for serious treachery,31 but was forced to accept that Adenolfo must remain in prison and await the return of Charles II from Catalonia in order to acquire what the pope thought inevitable, his complete and public exculpation from the alleged crime. Robert d’Artois and Adenolfo’s original accuser, Rinaldo d’Avella, remained convinced of Adenolfo’s guilt. Although Charles II was released from Aragonese captivity in December 1289, it was not until almost two years later that he published a full pardon for Adenolfo.32 But by November 1293, Adenolfo was again imprisoned, tried – this time for sodomy – convicted and burned alive.33 The details of the case need not concern us here. What is significant is the ferocious punishment that was finally inflicted on the count of Acerra, and the obvious political motive for his second trial – he was afterwards always referred to in the chancery records of the Regno as a traitor, although he had been pardoned for this offence. Much recent scholarship has been devoted to the appearance of appalling punishments for sodomy in isolated cases at the very end of the thirteenth century and much more frequently in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.34 From Robert d’Artois’s point of view, Adenolfo’s final end was presumably seen as thoroughly justified; the man was a traitor who had failed to meet his proper punishment in 1286 because the pope intervened without due cause. The long papal interregnum after the death of Nicholas IV (1292–94) permitted Charles II to dispose of Adenolfo on a different charge, one clearly within the competence of the lay courts, and one that carried with it the possibility of an even more ghastly death than that of a 31 32

33 34

Liber Augustalis, Book I, tit. 1. This letter may possibly be of interest to the theme of this book, because it dates from 1291, whereas the first known letter of remission issued by Philippe IV dates from 1302. Did Robert d’Artois tell the French king how to do it (Michel François, ‘Notes sur les ´ lettres de rémission dans les registres du trésor des chartes’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 103 (1942), 317–24, at 321)? Dunbabin, ‘Treason, sodomy, and the fate of Adenolfo IV of Acerra’. Michael Goodich, The Unmentionable Vice. Homosexuality in the Later Medieval Period (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1979), pp. 41–88: James. A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 399–400, 533–5; Trevor Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, 1200–1550 (Harlow: Longman, 2001), pp. 57–91.

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traitor. While the case and its conclusion were clearly innovations in the law of the Regno, they were in accordance with canon law theory, if not with the usual practice either of the ecclesiastical or of the secular courts at the time. They also illustrate vividly the terrible punishments coming to be inflicted in royal courts on personal enemies of the king.35 By the end of the thirteenth century, sodomy remained a very rare charge in France; and in the only two cases known, the accused were both cleared.36 There was therefore little precedent for the trial of the Templars and the charges of sodomy as well as heresy and blasphemy brought against them in 1307.37 That there was a strong political motive for the trial hardly admits of a doubt.38 Although the university of Paris in the end forbade it, Philippe IV had clearly hoped to try the Templars in a secular court.39 For this purpose, a charge of sodomy was far more appropriate than one of heresy, the preserve of ecclesiastical courts. Is it likely that this would have occurred to the French king if he had not known of the case of Adenolfo of Acerra, and sympathised with Robert d’Artois’s view of his misdeeds? The willingness of many Templars, led by the Visitor of France, Hugues de Pairaud, to confess to condoning or practising this vice suggests that they were not at all aware of the possible consequences of such a confession.40 The future was to see many cases of this sort. There were, of course, reasons other than imitation of Regno practice for the increasing ferocity of some judicial punishments in France in this period.41 The growing responsibility of rulers for the maintenance of peace and their frustration over unsolved crimes lay at the root of what happened almost everywhere in western Europe during the later thirteenth century. Louis IX’s determination that even so eminent a man as Enguerrand de Coucy should be punished for hanging without due process three young Flemings who had strayed into his woods in 1259 was characteristic of the period.42 So was Louis’s legislation in 1254 for the use of torture in cases where there was strong suspicion but no proof 35

36 37 38 41

42

There is little evidence to support the case that Angevin law in the Regno was notably harsh towards anyone other than the king’s enemies. But the absence of most judicial records from the period makes it hard to know. Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, p. 59. The punishments for blasphemy were fines, whipping or the pillory: Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 286–7. 39 Ibid., pp. 81–4. 40 Ibid., p. 67. Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 243–7. For a connection between the desire to reform, the need to purify, and harsh punishments, see Claude Gauvard, ‘De grace especial ’, vol. II, p. 946; but it should be stressed that the normal punishments for crime in ordinary courts continued to be fines rather than mutilations or death. Richard, Saint Louis, p. 374.

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of guilt of a serious crime.43 The slow movement from accusation by the injured party to inquest of witnesses by a royal official was perhaps the most obvious sign of the emergence of the state in France.44 Yet none of these quite prepared the way for the summary trial and public execution of Pierre de la Broce in 1278. Pierre had been trusted by Louis IX. When Philippe III, soon after his accession to the throne, fell ill, he made a will in which he nominated his brother the count of Alençon as regent in the event of his death, and commended to him the counsel of Pierre de la Broce.45 Pierre’s position as the power behind the throne looked impregnable. His sudden fall was difficult for the chroniclers to explain satisfactorily, except in terms of his having comported himself as a great aristocrat when he was not.46 The charge of treason against him, that he had attempted to estrange Philippe III from his new wife, Marie de Brabant, was clearly underpinned by Robert d’Artois’s belief that Pierre had failed him on his expedition to Navarre, and by other complaints about Pierre’s failure to pay the great lords the sums due to them.47 Charges of high treason were not a novelty in France;48 but that the traitor should be led to the gibbet by the dukes of Brabant and Burgundy and the count of Artois, and then hanged before a crowd, was.49 It was a blatant act of revenge dressed up as a defence of the crown by its natural supporters – the two dukes were Philippe III’s brothers-in-law and the count was his cousin. Would this have happened if Robert d’Artois had not seen punishments of this type in the Regno, where public executions for treason were established procedures, both in the troubled years of the end of Frederick II’s reign and in the early years of Charles of Anjou’s 43 44

45 46 47 48

49

Le Goff, Saint Louis, p. 224. Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, trans. F. R. P. Akehurst (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), p. 15: ‘A bailli can do no greater good (all things considered) than to weed out evil men from among the good by strictness of justice.’ For recent discussion see Claude Gauvard (ed.), L’enquête au moyen aˆ ge (Rome: ´ Ecole Française de Rome, 2008). Edward Peters, Inquisition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 17, provides a clear description of the growing role of the magistrate in the law of the Roman empire under the Christian emperors, the model for later developments. Smail, The Consumption of Justice, pp. 35–95, offers a colourful picture of how the courts actually operated in Marseilles at this time. Ordonnances des Roys de France, vol. I, p. 295. RHF, vol. XX, Vie de Philippe III par Guillaume de Nangis, p. 512. RHF, vol. XXII, Anciennes chroniques de Flandre, p. 345. See for example John Gillingham, ‘The Norman Conquest and chivalry’, in G. Garnett and J. Hudson (eds.), Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 31–55. But note the long period of absence of such charges in the later twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth centuries. Vie de Philippe III par Guillaume de Nangis, p. 511. On this incident, see William Chester Jordan, ‘The struggle for influence at the court of Philip III: Pierre de la Broce and the French aristocracy’, French Historical Studies 24 (2001), 439–68.

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reign, when he faced strong opposition? If this was imitation, then it was the start of a blood-thirsty trail in French history.50 We now turn to a very different aspect of the subject, the new rewards given to lawyers in the reign of Philippe IV. Philippe IV is well known to have employed in large numbers lawyers trained in the schools of Orléans.51 Until Philippe’s reign, lawyers, like other men trained in the northern universities, were expected to be clerks. If they retained that status, which involved taking at least lower orders and refraining from marriage, they could hope to be rewarded with bishoprics, as indeed some continued to be in Philippe’s time; for example, Pierre de Mornay became bishop first of Orléans and then of Auxerre, and Pierre de Belleperche became bishop of Auxerre.52 But a new and enticing career path opened up at the end of the thirteenth century: lawyers might become full laymen, be knighted, and receive a fief from the crown. The most famous of these lawyer-knights, Guillaume de Nogaret, said of himself and his companions: ‘They are not nobles but knights, knights of the king; since the king has accepted them for his men, and from this comes their honour and dignity.’53 Although Nogaret carefully differentiated this group from nobles, their knighting constituted the first step towards the creation of the French noblesse de robe.54 Therefore the origins of this custom are clearly worth investigating. Philippe IV was not the first French lord to knight a lawyer. That honour seems to belong to Duke Hugues IV of Burgundy, who at some time in the 1240s knighted Lambert de Rouvres, his counsellor, and then in 1263 knighted the famous Burgundian Jean de Blanot and conferred on him the fief of Brançon.55 Because Jean had studied at Bologna, he is unlikely ever to have been a clerk, and therefore his metamorphosis into a knight involved no great cultural shock. Hugues was presumably 50

51

52 53 54

55

See for example S. H. Cuttler, The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), although Cuttler does not consider the la Broce trial. It is noteworthy that Robert d’Artois was also blamed for the imprisonment of Gui de Dampierre and his sons, which so much embittered relations between the French and the Flemish; John of Saint-Victor, RHF, vol. XXI, p. 37. ´ M. E. Meijers, Etudes d’histoire du droit III. Droit roman au moyen aˆ ge. Universités du XIIIe siècle. Sources, ed. R. Feenstra and H. W. D. Fischer (Leiden: University of Leiden Press, 1959), p. 20. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. 59, 69, 78 and note 23, 95. Quoted in Frantz Funck-Brentano, The National History of France in the Middle Ages, vol. II (London: Heinemann, 1922), p. 361. Jean Dunbabin, ‘From clerk to knight: changing orders’, in C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (eds.), The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood II (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988), pp. 26–39. Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne, pp. 432–3; Gérard Giordanengo, Le droit féodale dans les pays de droit ećrit. L’exemple de la Provence et du Dauphiné, XIIe – début du XIVe siècle ´ (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1988), p. 134.

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anxious to have him at Brançon to reinforce his attempted expansion into the county of Burgundy. These cases established a precedent whereby jurists who were ducal counsellors might expect to rise to knighthood. Therefore it is perfectly possible that Philippe IV imitated a Burgundian precedent. But perhaps that Burgundian precedent had originally been drawn from the Regno, where Hugues IV had very clear connections later, and may have had them before the period at which a record survives. Pispisa has argued that one of the great innovations of King Manfred’s reign was the raising to noble status and the enfeoffment of lawyers, both judges and notaries.56 As a monarch who claimed to have studied briefly at Paris and Bologna, Manfred was well qualified to make such a social change in favour of the learned.57 Two at least of Manfred’s promotions continued to hold their fiefs under the first Angevin monarch, thus preserving the memory of the mode of elevation.58 Perhaps surprisingly, Charles of Anjou followed this Hohenstaufen custom. Although the earliest known occasion in his reign was the knighting of Sperano di Bari in 1283,59 the lists of knightings in the registers are very incomplete, and it is likely that there had been other lawyers before him. Sperano’s knighting was followed by the grant of the hereditary fief of Altamura, a grant the regents for Charles II confirmed among their earliest actions.60 Others, including the famous Andrea di Isernia, were similarly promoted under Charles II.61 Since lawyers at the university of Naples, like those at Bologna, were usually laymen, there was no major difficulty in knighting them and permitting them to rise in the ranks of the aristocracy. Bartolomeo da Capua, who was well known in France, was probably the most successful Angevin lawyer in terms of accumulating lay fiefs.62 But many other lawyers pursued the same road. From the king’s point of view, he was reinforcing the military aristocracy of the country while paying his lawyers. That a large supply of fiefs was available was the consequence of high death rates in war and of the failure of many French heirs to come to the Regno to claim their inheritances. 56 57 58 59 60

61 62

Pispisa, Il regno de Manfredi, pp. 157–66. Arsenio Fugoni with Enrico Pispisa, Scritti su Manfredi (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2006), Manfred’s Manifesto, p. 68/28∗. Pispisa, Il regno de Manfredi, pp. 158–66. RCA, vol. 27, part 1, reg. cxviii, 26; reg. cxix, 602, 635. RCA CII, vol. 28, reg. i, 2. Sperano’s father had been a knight; Camillo Minieri Riccio, Della dominazione angioina nel reame di Sicilia: studii storici estr. da’ registri della cancelleria angioina di Napoli (Naples: Archivio di Stato, 1876), p. 34. F. Calasso in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. III, pp. 101–3. I. Walter and M. Piccialuti in Dizionario biografica degli Italiani, vol. VI, pp. 697–704. This does not mention the grants Bartolomeo received in 1293 as a result of the fall of Adenolfo IV of Acerra, presumably because he held them only for a short time.

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Philippe IV is bound to have known what happened in the Regno, and will have appreciated its value to the crown. For him, the knighting of lawyers was rather more complicated since those from the schools at Orléans and Toulouse and probably also those from Montpellier had been clerks. The change was significant. The future knights lost any tax and legal advantages of the clerical state. But they gained the right to marry and to accumulate wealth in ways hitherto blocked to them.63 The claiming of lay status by lawyers facilitated the growth of the profession in France, with all the consequences for the development of French law that were so marked in the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries. In the context of possible borrowings from the Regno, it is worth remarking that Flanders, which had many links with the Regno, was notable for the appearance of Roman lawyers in numbers in the entourages of its counts under Gui de Dampierre and Robert de Béthune.64 Indeed, one of Gui’s sons, Jean, was reputed to have studied law at Bologna.65 This may have been a purely spontaneous change, brought about by increasing business with the papal curia; but it may equally plausibly have been an imitation of something with which Robert de Béthune at least will have been thoroughly familiar at his father-inlaw’s court in southern Italy. All in all, it would not be stretching the case too far to claim that precedents set in the Regno had a significant effect on both French law and French lawyers in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Appendix. The sumptuary laws of 1290 and 1294 Both sets of sumptuary laws were modelled on that of Philippe III of 1279. On this, see H. Duplès-Agier, ‘Ordonnance somptuaire inédite de ´ Philippe le Hardi’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 3/5 (1854), 176– 81. The major stipulations of all three laws, in regard to the number of courses at meals and the need to restrain extravagance in dress, both for men and for women, were very similar. All three also stipulated the fines to be exacted in case of infringement of the laws. But the similarities between the 1294 ordinance and that of Robert d’Artois are 63

64

65

Dunbabin, ‘From clerk to knight’, pp. 26–39. For a different, but compatible, view of the rise of doctors of law into the aristocracy, see Gérard Giordanengo, ‘Droit nobiliaire en Provence angevine’, in Coulet and Matz (eds.), La noblesse dans les territoires angevins, at pp. 286–7, and note 149. Gilissen, Introduction historique au droit, pp. 331–2; Dirk Heirbaut, ‘Le cadre juridique. Institutions et droit en Flandre vers 1302’, pp. 106–39 in van Caenegem (ed.), 1302. Le désastre de Courtrai, though note specially pp. 138–9; Algemene Geschiednis der Nederland, vol. III, p. 87. Heirbaut, ‘Le cadre juridique’, p. 137.

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stronger than those of either with Philippe III’s. Neither of the later laws contains the detailed instructions about horses to be maintained by the various classes which take up the last third of Philippe III’s legislation. Both the 1290 law and the 1294 law stipulate that a portion of the fine levied for any infringement will be given to the person who brought the infringement to the attention of the authorities. While Robert d’Artois’s law has a long arenga explaining the need for moderation, particularly in time of war, Philippe IV’s ends by saying that his law was re-enacted for the tranquillity of the realm, which surely expresses the same idea. Philippe III’s merely says that it was enacted ‘for the common profit of the realm’. The major differences between the 1290 and the 1294 laws lie in the facts that the French king legislated in greater detail for townsmen than did Robert d’Artois, and he legislated for clerics, while Robert only legislated for all those who owed fidelity or service of any sort to the crown; that the French king had to assume that fines would go to the lords of those who committed infringements, while Robert could assume that they would go to the royal fisc; and that Frenchmen were more likely to spend money on expensive furs while Regnicoles had the choice of many fine fabrics. On the subject in general, see Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200–1500 (Oxford University Press, 2002).

15

Administrative practices

That the French kingdom might be indebted to the Regno in administrative practices should arouse no surprise. Whether by deliberate innovation to make central government more efficient or by a pragmatic response to circumstances that pushed him in the same direction, the emperor Frederick II had created a body of civil servants in the localities of his realm and channels of communication between them and his court that appear to have been reasonably efficient in carrying out his orders.1 Charles of Anjou maintained or restored Frederick’s work. Most historians have regarded the governmental inheritance of the Angevin kings in the Regno as far in advance of (in the sense of being more bureaucratic than) what prevailed in France in 1266. Given the exposure, on occasion prolonged, of many French administrators to the courts of Charles I and Charles II, some copying is therefore almost to be expected.2 In a context like this, the historian is bound to wonder, for example, whether the increasingly dirigiste line taken by Philippe III towards foreign merchants in France was a reflection of what he had seen in Charles of Anjou’s realm.3 But wondering is far from knowing. And the differences between the two kingdoms make long-lasting effects of exact copying hard to achieve. The standard histories of Philippe IV’s reign have been much concerned with his civil servants, with Pierre Flotte, Guillaume de Nogaret, Guillaume de Plaisians and Marigny.4 Indeed, one of the principal questions relatively recent historians have concentrated on is how far it was 1 2 3

4

Matthew, The Norman Kingdom, pp. 315–62. For what was perhaps unconscious copying, see Joseph Strayer, ‘Notes on the origin of English and French export taxes’, Studia Gratiana 15 (1972), 401–21. On Philippe III’s measures, Reyerson, ‘Commerce and communications’, in Abulafia (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V, pp. 50–70, at p. 54. Charles initially restored the system of control by state warehouses and export taxes and licences that had operated under Frederick II; see Abulafia, Frederick II, pp. 214–16. Later in his reign he was forced to make more concessions to north Italian merchants in order to get financial and military help in his wars. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair; Favier, Philippe le Bel.

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these men who ruled, and how far Philippe himself was in control.5 Because Philippe’s reign was the first period in French history for which it was possible to know a good deal about the men who guarded his seals and gave him specialist legal or financial advice, it is right that there should be emphasis on them. But arguably Philippe was always at least as much influenced by his own relations as earlier kings had been. And this was probably particularly true during the period 1294–1302, when his brother Charles de Valois and his cousin Robert d’Artois commanded the royal armies in a period of intense warfare in Aquitaine and Flanders.6 Of the two, Robert d’Artois had unusually good qualifications as an advisor, because he had been in charge of government in the Regno for six years during a period of endless military struggle. It would be natural for Philippe to trust to his experience and listen to his counsel. It is the argument of this chapter that Robert’s ideas were at least temporarily put into practice in various fields in France, in ways that have often been thought to constitute the innovations of Philippe IV’s reign. The most obvious imitation was in the realm of taxation. As Adam Smith later declared, ‘There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.’7 The imitation occurred between 1295 and 1301, a period during which Robert d’Artois was prominent at the French court. Joseph Strayer was the first to point out the importance of the French experiment in national taxation tried in these years.8 As the war with Edward I in Gascony proved increasingly expensive and war in Flanders loomed, Philippe and his counsellors imposed taxes for the defence of the realm on all laymen (and clerks who owned secular property) above the poverty line. In 1294, the inhabitants of the south, who were most affected by the war in Languedoc, were required to pay a hearth tax of six sous to help defray the costs of defence. In 1295, laymen and women across the whole realm of France were asked to provide a hundredth part of their personal property, in 1296 a fiftieth, and in 1297 another fiftieth. The fiftieth of 1300 was the last of the series that constituted the experiment under consideration. In each case, Philippe sent his collectors out without the formality of calling out an army. Knights, squires and those above them in the social scale were exempted from payment on the ground that they were obliged to render military service in person. Despite this exemption, the most innovative feature of this series was the social inclusiveness of the 5 6 8

Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, pp. xii–xiii, 4–5, 99. 7 The Wealth of Nations, V.ii. Vale, The Angevin Legacy, pp. 196–200, 208–15. Joseph Strayer and Charles Taylor, Studies in Early French Taxation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), pp. 45–56.

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tax-paying group. Admittedly, the government seems to have increased the number of those exempted on grounds of poverty as time went on.9 But the principle behind the tax was that all who benefited from being shielded from the enemy ought to pay for the privilege. As one of the royal propagandists said: ‘Plain reason tells us that the commonwealth is defended by means of its national wealth, and that whatever part of the commonwealth enjoys this defense ought to bear the burden with the others.’10 While many could understand that there were rational grounds for the royal demands, all were conscious that they were being subjected to a new obligation. It has correctly been argued that this innovation owed much to Roman law.11 But it seems probable that the direct model for Philippe’s government was that of the subventio generalis in the Regno (which had, since its inception, been justified in Roman law terms).12 This tax, paid in the Regno since 1223, was designed to provide cash quickly in an emergency. It was levied against the movable goods and income of all laymen below the rank of knight, except for the very poor.13 And it was justified by ‘evident necessity’. Robert d’Artois had regularly employed it during his years of power in the Regno, though the amount which could be raised was by now limited by the dictate of Pope Honorius IV.14 Given his central role in Philippe’s army from 1295 to 1302, it seems more than likely that Robert was the moving force behind the royal tax policy of 1295 to 1301. The similarities in terms of justification for taxation, the unit taxed and the classes exempted from taxation are striking. Naturally the French tax had to be modified slightly from its Regno origins; the most noticeable of these modifications being that the king had to grant a slice of the proceedings from the great principalities to the princes, including Robert d’Artois. And as resistance to the taxation spread, so the share-out came to include lesser lords also.15 Furthermore, consent to taxation had to be obtained from individual communities, one by one, because there was not yet an institution through which it could be sought from France as a whole. Even so, the resistance which the royal collectors 9 10 11 12

13

14 15

Ibid., pp. 47, 54. Dispute between the Priest and the Knight, ed. and trans. Norma N. Erickson, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 3, no. 5 (1967), 308. Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought. Public Law and the State, 1100–1322 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 15–19, 310–32 and 361. It is perhaps worth noting that Philippe referred to his 1296 fiftieth as subventio (FunckBrentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, p. 164, note 4). On subventiones generales, see Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, pp. 86–90. Percy, ‘The revenues of the kingdom of Sicily under Charles I of Anjou 1266–1285, and their relationship to the Vespers’, PhD thesis, University of Princeton, 1964, pp. 52–4; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, pp. 57, 102–3. Léonard, Les Angevins de Naples, p. 165; Dunbabin, Charles I of Anjou, p. 112. Strayer and Taylor, Studies in Early French Taxation, pp. 47–53.


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met with convinced the royal government by 1301 that there was need to find another, less controversial, foundation for taxation. Therefore from 1302 on, the supposed obligation of all free men to give military service or tax in lieu in a time of crisis – the arrière ban – was substituted for the universal obligation of all who benefited to contribute to defence. The king’s advisors had also learned to show a greater willingness to negotiate with individual communities over how much they gave and how it was collected.16 Modification of the original tax was therefore necessary. Nevertheless, the experiment of 1295–1301 was not forgotten. The principle of extensive public obligation to pay taxes in time of emergency remained, contested and partial though it was. And once it was possible to detach it from the arrière ban, as it became after 1356, the tax on movables lay at the heart of the later taxation system in France.17 More tentatively, it is possible (though not more than that) that Robert d’Artois was behind the great assembly called in April 1302 to challenge the authority of Boniface VIII over the king of France.18 This, the first of the great assemblies of the reign, was summoned in circumstances where the king knew he was taking a great risk – that of questioning the actions of a pope. He must have been aware that, to do this successfully, he needed a considerable degree of support. He called for very wide representation of towns, nobles and clergy to demonstrate the degree of solid backing he was receiving from the nation at large. There were, of course, precedents for great assemblies in other parts of Europe at this time. And there were, as Bisson has shown, customary assemblies of different classes in France before 1302, from which the great assembly might have grown.19 On the other hand, Robert d’Artois had seen the value to the government of the Regno of the San Martino reforming parliament, called by the regent Charles of Salerno with the powerful backing of the papal legate in 1283, to appease grievances and bring the people of mainland southern Italy together in opposition to the seizure of Sicily by Peter III of Aragon.20 After 1283, parliaments were held 16 17

18

19 20

Ibid., p. 55. John Bell Henneman, Royal Taxation in Fourteenth-Century France. The Development of War Financing, 1322–1356 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 320, 329; John Bell Henneman, Jr, ‘France in the Middle Ages’, in R. Bonney (ed.), The Rise of the Fiscal States in Europe, 1200–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 101–22, esp. pp. 106–9, 112–15. Thomas N. Bisson, ‘The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair: their character reconsidered’, Studia Gratiana 15 (1972), 537–64; reprinted in Bisson, Medieval France and Her Pyrenean Neighbours (London: Hambledon, 1989), pp. 96–122. Ibid., pp. 99–106. M. Hébert, ‘Les assemblées representatives dans le royaume de Naples et dans le comté de Provence’, in L’état angevin, pp. 475–90.

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quite frequently in the Regno during the reign of Charles II. It is not unlikely that Philippe, in considering how to strengthen his own position in the realm, was at least encouraged to take the somewhat daring step of summoning representatives from across France because one of his closest advisors had had experience of a similar means of manipulating opinion and regarded it as relatively risk-free. Should this suggestion be regarded as plausible, then the experience in the Regno of Robert II d’Artois would be considered relevant not only to the later development of the French taxation system but also to the emergence of the assemblies later used to give consent to taxation. One of the more striking features of administration in France between 1270 and 1314 was the somewhat belated appearance of the fully developed royal chancery. The French king had for a long time had scribes whose function it was, among other things, to write his letters, but in the eleventh and most of the twelfth centuries he preferred usually to have grants produced by the recipient and to validate them with his seal. By the reign of Philippe Auguste, this changed; a much higher percentage of grants and letters were produced by royal scribes.21 Furthermore, the king required all outgoing correspondence to be copied, so that a record could be kept and forgeries easily detected. Perhaps ironically, as the scribes grew more important, their head, called the chancellor, was first reduced in importance by Louis VII and then the office was deliberately kept vacant at the instigation of Philippe Auguste from 1185.22 In the household ordinance issued by Philippe le Bel in January 1286, there were already ten notaries described as being in the chancery.23 They began to sign the letters they issued, although this still remained fairly rare by 1314.24 Unlike the English kings or the emperor Frederick II, Louis IX did not demand of his chancery clerks that they enter all the copies they made of his privileges, letters and grants (actes) on a roll or a register, so that they could easily be accessed. The loose copies were filed under various headings and kept together. But it was not until the royal palace on the ˆ Ile-de-la-Cit´ e in Paris was completed in the early years of the fourteenth century that there was a permanent place for these copies to be kept, a small building next to the Sainte-Chapelle, later known as the Trésor des Chartes.25 Many actes were presumably lost before this happened. And even when the Trésor came into existence, the documents were not 21 22 23 25

Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, p. 404. Georges Tessier, Diplomatique royale française (Paris: A. and J. Picard, 1962), p. 134. 24 Ibid., p. 165 and note 1. Ibid., p. 153. Georges Tessier, ‘L’enregistrement a` la chancellerie royale française’, Le Moyen Age, 4th series, 11 (1956), 41–62.


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easily accessed. Each file (layette) had to be riffled through to find the vital piece of parchment. From 1269, efforts were made to catalogue some of them. Still, the obvious cure was to imitate the papal, English and Regno chanceries in copying all documents on to a roll, or better still a register, at the time of issue, before sending the originals to their destination. This ensured that actes were kept in chronological order and under headings that made it easy to find them. Registration allowed the monarchy to discover forgeries or, conversely, to replace valid documents that had been accidentally destroyed. It depended for its effectiveness on registering almost all royal letters of all types. French administrators were notably slow in discovering the value of this form of record-keeping. Certainly some French royal chancery registers were produced in the thirteenth century, the first to have survived being the famous register of Fr. Guérin, the Hospitaller who contributed extensively to the administration of France in the reign of Philippe Auguste.26 But this was a collection of actes, along with some incoming material, put together for the convenience of a monarch who was constantly on the move, and who needed to consult a certain number of documents on a fairly regular basis to keep the machine of government running smoothly.27 It was deliberately limited in scope. Guérin’s register continued to be of use well into the reign of Louis IX, and then set a model for similar compilations.28 Perhaps the most interesting of these are the two volumes compiled in 1305 or 1306, dedicated to all the letters and other business documents from 1302–5 related to Flanders during those critical years just before and after the French defeat at Kortrijk.29 These seem to mark a recognition by the French government that it had been forced to innovate during the war with Flanders, and because those innovations were likely to be used in future, it would need to reproduce on future occasions many of the formulae it had invented in these years. These registers were of different character from those that emerged on a regular basis in the second half of the reign of Philippe IV, when there were the first signs that all outgoing correspondence would be copied as a matter of course. The earliest true chancery registers that survive contain only such grants, privileges and other matters as were sealed with green wax as a sign that their contents should be of perpetual relevance – there 26 27 28 29

John W. Baldwin, Les registres de Philippe Auguste, vol. I (texte) (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1992). Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 412–18. Archives nationales. Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, vol. V, ed. H.-François Delaborde (Paris: Plon-Nouret et Cie, 1909), Introduction, p. x. Robert Fawtier, Registres du Trésor des Chartes, vol. I: Règne de Philippe le Bel (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1958), pp. xvii–xviii.

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is argument over whether even these registers were comprehensive or not.30 But there are signs that the earliest compilers intended also to produce registers relating to the more everyday matters of administration.31 Guillaume de Nogaret, by 1307 keeper of the royal seal, was certainly responsible for registering correspondence sealed with clear wax (therefore of immediate though possibly only short-term importance) from his time in office, in the register known as JJ42A. But the experiment had been tried earlier, perhaps under the direction of Pierre Flotte.32 Robert Fawtier, who edited the earliest surviving chancery registers, saw this as a vital moment in the development of French royal administration, when it began to bear comparison with the papal and the English models. The use of registers, as in the Regno, rather than rolls, as in England, made the French documents easier to find. On the other hand, the earliest French registers, because they were confined to documents sealed with green wax, offered only a very limited view of the activity of the chancery in the early fourteenth century.33 Fawtier was naturally interested in finding out what had spurred Philippe’s administration to invest in the recording of its own more ephemeral doings in the second half of the reign. He commented that in 1271 the Trésor des Chartes received the archives of Alphonse de Poitiers, which were already registered in the new way. But Fawtier thought the considerable interval between 1271 and the emergence of registration in Paris worked against direct borrowing from Alphonse’s example. He suggested rather that the chancery changes emerged naturally out of the accounting system being produced in the Chambre des Comptes at about the same time.34 While the interrelationship between the activities of the Chambre des Comptes and the chancery is more than plausible, French historians have always emphasised the meagreness of chancery registration in France as against that of other countries,35 and therefore dismissed any idea of external stimulus to change.36 Hardly surprisingly, they have not considered the chancery of the Regno as a possible model for France. Against the endless copying into different registers, always at time of issue, that went on in the chancery of the Regno, the efforts of the French royal chancery in the reign of Philippe le Bel may seem miserable. Whereas, in 30 31 32 34 36

Tessier, Diplomatique royale française, pp. 288–9. Fawtier, Registres du Trésor des Chartes, p. xvi. Tessier, Diplomatique royale française, p. 236. 33 Ibid., p. xv. Fawtier, Registres du Trésor des Chartes, p. xviii. 35 Tessier, ‘L’enregistrement’, pp. 52, 61–2. Ibid., p. xix. But note Kiesewetter, ‘La cancelleria angioina’, p. 400, note 177, suggesting the direct influence of the meeting of Charles II and Philippe IV at Poitiers in 1308 on the development by Nogaret of the first systematic registration system.


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the Regno chancery, clerks (both notaries and registrars) dealt with all business, by 1270 keeping regularly at least three different registers for the purpose, and by 1291 four,37 in France much work was apparently carried out by the clerks of the Chambre des Comptes and by those of Parlement – the destruction of the early Chambre des Comptes archives makes it difficult to be certain about the extent of their participation.38 Furthermore, such copying as was done might be completed several years after the original document was sent. And the registers that do survive deal with only a small part of chancery business. Besides, the efforts of Pierre Flotte, Etienne de Souzy and Guillaume de Nogaret were not followed up in their entirety by their immediate successors. The chanceries of France and the Regno therefore appear to be at opposite ends of the efficiency scale in the early fourteenth century. Still, there was a chance of direct contact between the two: when Charles II came to Paris, he divided his chancery in two, left part in Provence and brought the rest with him.39 The Paris keepers of the seal may well have learned something from conversation with their visitors. However, in attempting to suggest stimulus for the undoubted improvements of Philippe IV’s reign, it is also worth considering as a possible model the chancery of the count of Artois. This, as we have already seen,40 derived from that of the Regno yet offered a simpler format that may have appealed to the keepers of the seal in Paris during this crucial period of experimentation. Robert d’Artois had for a considerable period worked with the complex system of registration initially developed under the Hohenstaufen and perfected in the reign of Charles of Anjou. Even before Robert took on the job of baillie in the Regno he had started to imitate some of its ways in Artois. On his return from the Regno in 1291 he enjoyed the able help of Rinaldo Cognetti. As we have seen, Rinaldo was a layman, a member of Robert’s household. In that respect, he provided an example for Philippe le Bel in the promotion of Pierre Flotte and Guillaume de Nogaret, both household knights, to the office of keeper of the seal.41 It is notable that Flotte and Nogaret both played roles in royal administration that far outstripped their significance

37

38 39 40 41

Ibid., pp. 366–7; Durrieu, Les archives angevines, vol. I, p. 45. The registers were those of the chamber, the chancery and the magistri rationales; in 1291 a further register for the protonotary was begun. Tessier, Diplomatique royale française, p. 160. Kiesewetter, ‘La cancelleria angioina’, p. 391. See above, pp. 112–13. On the importance of promoting laymen, see Tessier, Diplomatique royal française, pp. 135, 137.

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as keepers of the seal. Again, the parallel with Cognetti, Master of Artois, is striking. Among the many improvements to record-keeping Cognetti introduced in Artois were the two chancery registers now known as Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais, série A, 1 and 2. Of these, register 2 was by far the more important, and offered a possible model for the early efforts of the Paris scribes. It comprised a large number of Robert’s actes, put together very shortly after their issue, covering a five-year period, presumably for the use of the count in everyday government of his lands. In terms of a time-lag, this register was completed only a decade before the appearance of a similar register in Paris, and was closer in time to what Fawtier thought was the first experiment of this type. Therefore it is more likely to have stimulated imitation than Alphonse de Poitiers’s registered correspondence, which arrived in the royal archive in 1271.42 This suggestion, however, depends upon postulating, with both Tessier and Fawtier, that the collection of actes now known as JJ42A points to a clear desire of Guillaume de Nogaret’s scribes to register all letters sealed with clear wax, not just those sealed with green.43 If this was so, then Nogaret also wanted a compendium that was of administrative utility. Obviously, Pas-de-Calais, série A, 2, bears no relation to the other registers of the Paris chancery (except possibly JJ35 and JJ36, the Flemish ones), which are compilations of actes sealed with green wax, grants, privileges and other donations intended to last in perpetuity. But as models for future developments, Nogaret’s experiments have inevitably drawn historians’ eyes. If Robert d’Artois was the keeper of the seal’s mentor in this matter, it was significant.44 Whether the suppression of the order of the Temple should be classed as an administrative rather than a political, religious or financial matter is open to debate. But the sudden arrest of all Templars in France in 1307 certainly involved a complex administrative network.45 Clearly this was a much more radical step than Robert d’Artois had undertaken in 1287, when he simply confiscated all the goods of both the Hospital and the Temple in the Regno as a punishment for the orders’ failure to oppose the coronation of Henri II, king of Cyprus, as king of Jerusalem, in 42

43 44

45

An alternative hypothesis is that the spur to innovation came after the absorption of Champagne within the royal demesne in 1284. For the early organisation of an effective chancery in Champagne, see Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, pp. 43–4. This also would involve a delay before the appearance of the new registers. Tessier, ‘L’enregistrement’, p. 61; Fawtier, Registres du Trésor des Chartes, p. xvi. See the judgment of Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 34, that chancery clerks played an essential role in the development of medieval states. Barber, The Trial of the Templars, pp. 45–7.


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contravention of the rights of the then imprisoned Charles of Salerno.46 That this confiscation was known at the French court is evidenced by its recording by the Saint-Denis chronicler.47 It seems to have been a very temporary affair, probably ended when Pope Nicholas IV was elected. But it did show that the military orders were not invulnerable to the activities of the secular powers. Philippe IV probably reflected on this very restricted act as well as on his own attacks on the Jews and the Lombards before taking the drastic step that led him to charge the Templars with heresy, blasphemy and sodomy. Overall, it is likely that various of the administrative practices of the Regno proved to be a stimulus to changes in France. In some cases the results were clearly of importance for future developments, while in other cases the connections were more disputable but are still worth considering. In all cases, direct borrowing had to be squared with rather different existing institutions, so the process necessarily kept a creative character. But the seed of an innovation is as important as the process of training its growth and nurturing it. 46 47

Les grands chroniques de France, vol. VIII, pp. 130–1. For an account of the Masters’ behaviour from a witness in Outremer who was close to Guillaume de Beaujeu, the Master of the Temple, see The ‘Templar of Tyre’: Part III of the ‘Deeds of the Cypriots’, trans. Paul Crawford (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 86–7. The absence of evidence from Naples is to be explained by the scanty records in RCA for the period of Robert d’Artois’s power. The incident is confirmed in Reg. Nicholas IV, no. 607.

16

Navy and army

In the chapter on visitors to the Regno, it was stressed that the great majority of those Frenchmen about whom we know something came south for purposes of fighting, whether by way of religious obligation or in order to get valuable military experience. During the whole of the period 1266 to 1302, there were in southern Italy and Sicily either rebellions to be suppressed or wars against the Greeks or the Aragonese to be prepared for and then fought. Charles of Anjou was the most admired military leader of his age. To take service under him – or to a lesser extent under his successor Robert d’Artois – was to acquire skills and also reputation that would stand a man in good stead once he had returned home. (It follows that, after Robert d’Artois went back to France in November 1291, fighting in the Regno lost some of its appeal to French soldiers.) Gathering an army to fight far from home involved organisation and paperwork that attacking one’s neighbour in France did not. Methods of recruitment to the crusades of Outremer had changed vastly over the nearly two centuries between the first crusade of 1097–1100 and the Tunis crusade of Louis IX in 1270. By the time Louis IX planned his second expedition, he appreciated that he needed to be surrounded by men on whose loyalty he could rely, who were also trained in the arts of warfare. The inner core of his great crusading army was to be made up of knights of his household, men whom he knew and with whom he had practised manoeuvres for the field of battle. But he needed large numbers of other fighters to support his inner core. Louis therefore made contracts with various lords whom he trusted, who then produced bands of soldiers to fight in the royal army in return for monetary payments. The most ´ famous of these contracts was with Erard de Valery,1 who promised to bring twenty-nine knights with him on crusade, each knight to be accompanied by an agreed number of horses, and each horse accompanied by 1

´ On Erard’s previous career, Richard, Saint Louis, p. 528.

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´ a groom. In return for this, Erard was to be paid 8,000 lt for their wages, which they were to receive in two instalments, and the king was to pay for their passages by sea and for any horses lost during the campaign. ´ But Erard and his men were not to eat with the household.2 Beyond the extended royal household, other French crusaders made similar contracts, both with men of sufficient importance to gather large groups of soldiers for the crusade, and with lesser men who were to fight in the lord’s own entourage.3 Written contracts with precisely defined terms of service spread all over France in the immediate prelude to the king’s marshalling of his forces at Aigues Mortes. Because the Tunis crusade was the last royally led French crusade that actually departed on its way, these written contracts might have disappeared from sight after 1270. Their raison d’être was intimately bound up with military service far from home, and that now seemed unlikely. However, they set a pattern followed by lords employed in the wars in the Regno. Robert d’Artois, leaving home in 1282 to assist with the Sicilian Vespers, made a contract with Béraud de Saint-Georges, in which Béraud was promised a wage of 300 lt in two instalments, passage overseas for himself, his squires and his horses, and the right to eat in Robert’s hôtel. Only if King Charles demanded Béraud’s service would Robert be freed from his obligation to pay and feed Béraud.4 The need for such careful stipulation of conditions and for their recording arose naturally enough from the length and danger of the enterprise Béraud contemplated. But over the years of war in the Regno the French became so accustomed to contracts of this sort that, by 1294, Philippe IV offered similar terms for his wars in Gascony and Flanders.5 They had become part of the normal baggage of warfare, whether at home or abroad. Not everyone approved. The opinionated Norman lawyer Pierre Dubois regarded this method of paying for war on French territory as unnecessarily expensive, and urged Philippe to return to feudal military 2

3 4

5

RHF, vol. XX, 305, discussed in Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 537–8 and Simon Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade, 1216–1307 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 137. See, as examples of each kind, Lille, Archives départementales du Nord, B 1593, fols. 56r and v, 57r, for Robert d’Artois’s contracts with Gui de Châtillon and Pierrot de Wailly. Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais Série A, 30/6. For signs of similar contracts, see Série A, 29/24 and 30/20. For a nuanced treatment of this development, see Xavier Hélary, ‘Pierre de la Broce, seigneur féodal, et le service militaire sous Philippe III. L’Ost de Sauveterre (1276)’, Journal des Savants (2006), 275–305, at 290–7. Vale, The Angevin Legacy, pp. 204–5. For the costs of Philippe III’s Aragonese campaign of 1285, where the army was largely raised by contract, see Sivéry, Philippe III le Hardi, pp. 250–1.

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obligation, which was free (though limited both in terms of duration and probably also geographically).6 War taxation became in the late thirteenth century one of the principal causes of discontent in France.7 It would, of course, be exaggerating to argue that the recruitment of French household knights, whether by the king or by others, at the end of the thirteenth century was modelled on what had become necessary for campaigns in the Regno. After all, the English household knights acquired indentures at roughly the time without such a stimulus.8 Nor does the appearance of documentation at the time of the Tunis crusade prove the novelty of the system in the late 1260s. On the other hand, it is likely that the use of documentation in itself tightened up the arrangements and made obligations on both sides clearer. The point is that the contracts for campaigns in the Regno fill a gap in our knowledge, may have filled a gap in practice, and probably facilitated a change in French military recruitment and payment of armies which might have happened anyway but which was fraught with consequences. The claim is a small one, but it could be significant. Because the system demanded that would-be military leaders attract to their entourages men of the right age and physique to perform the tasks of footsoldiers as well as knights, it was necessary to break new ground in methods of recruitment. The Regno campaign of 1265–66 provides some of the earliest evidence of recruiting songs, designed to encourage individuals not hitherto attached to a lord’s household to come and join the army on the journey to Italy. Rutebeuf’s two songs Chanson de Pouille and Le dit de Pouille are the most famous of these. Nancy Regalado has suggested that these were written at the behest of one of the papal legates given special responsibility for recruitment.9 More difficult to interpret is the recruiting song for Charles’s armies in Le garçon et l’aveugle, attributed to the blind man as he attempts to attract alms.10 But both point to a desire to get at groups of potential soldiers unlikely to be attracted by the more conventional crusading sermons. If such attempts were successful, then the new recruits will not have known each other or initially enjoyed the camaraderie which creates trust in warfare. But the land journey from France to Italy will have provided at least some opportunity for them to 6 7 8 9 10

The Recovery of the Holy Land, ed. W. I. Brandt, pp. 183–4. Henneman, Royal Taxation in Fourteenth-century France, esp. pp. 17–33. Michael Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward I (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), pp. 62–3. Poetic Patterns in Rutebeuf. A Study in Noncourtly Poetic Modes of the Thirteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 44. Le garçon et l’aveugle. Jeu du XIIIe siècle, ed. M. Roques, trans. and comment Jean Dufournet (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1989), lines 83–90. See below, pp. 273–4.

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make friends and to mix easily with the household knights of the lords who led the army. By the time of arrival some cohesion will have been created. Given the almost total absence of fighting within France from 1247 to 1294, the Regno provided the best kind of military training in this period, available to both knights and footsoldiers. Charles of Anjou’s great victories of 1266 and 1268 made him seem invincible to his contemporaries, and therefore the ideal general under whom to learn the arts of war. Furthermore, the sense that God was behind the conquest and preservation of the Regno gave conviction and energy to those who risked much for the opportunity. Frenchmen could fight either offensively, as in the campaigns to extend Charles’s hold in Achaia or around Durazzo, or defensively, against the rebels of 1269–70 or against the Sicilians and Aragonese from 1282 onwards. They learned the arts of ambush, of assault and of siege. They got used to riding the horses from the stud farms of Apulia and Calabria, which were to be in increasing demand in France when war broke out there in the 1290s.11 Those who survived the tough training they received in the Regno were bound to be of use to their own king in the wars of Gascony and Flanders. We have already seen that Robert d’Artois applied in Artois the methods of equipping castles that he had learned in the Regno.12 Others doubtless similarly applied their experience to solve problems when war broke out at home. Despite all this, a case can be made out that, although French campaigning in the period 1294–1302 was influenced by lessons learned in the Regno, this influence was overall malign. The argument runs thus: the most famous victories in the second half of the thirteenth century were those won by Charles of Anjou at Benevento and Tagliacozzo; these victories were known to have been principally brought about by the French cavalry;13 admiration for what had been achieved on these fields led future French commanders, particularly Robert d’Artois, to rely too heavily on cavalry; it was the underestimate of the contribution of the infantry to warfare that brought about the heavy defeat of the French by the Flemish on the field at Kortrijk in July 1302.14 Since Kortrijk was not just a humiliation for the French but also saw the slaughter of a majority of the country’s experienced military leaders, the results 11 12 13 14

R. H. C. Davis, The Medieval Warhorse. Origins, Development and Redevelopment (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), pp. 62–4. See above, pp. 115–16. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, pp. 178–84. For this interpretation, see Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century. Discipline, Tactics and Technology (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996), pp. 9–22.

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of this miscalculation were long lasting. The war with Flanders dragged on almost without interruption until 1320, and ceased then because the Flemish wanted peace, not because the French were able to impose their complete list of terms on them. This is a seductive line of reasoning, and must have some persuasive force. Robert d’Artois is reputed to have said that ‘a hundred knights are worth a thousand footsoldiers’.15 Even if this statement of serious bias is a later legend, it merely exaggerates a widely held view of the knightly class. It is beyond dispute that Robert regarded Charles of Anjou principally as an heroic knight, because he demanded of his minstrel Adam de la Halle an epic to celebrate his uncle’s achievements. This poem was far from finished when either abandoned or forgotten as a result of the king’s or the poet’s death. But its image of Charles, mounted securely in his saddle like a tower rising above its castle, will have made an impact on all its hearers.16 Robert had not himself been engaged in fighting at either Benevento or Tagliacozzo, therefore his knowledge of what happened will all have been from hearsay. His talkative companions were unlikely to have minimised the contribution of Charles himself and his fellow horsemen to the successful outcomes. Robert will have learned to think of strong leadership and the perfect timing of a cavalry charge as the two criteria that almost guaranteed success on the battlefield. Neither of these proved the answer to the problem set for him and his troops by the Flemish at Kortrijk. The conventional name, the battle of the golden spurs, highlighted the capture by the Flemish infantry of the badges of honour worn by the French cavalry. The mighty were brought low through their own pride and excessive self-confidence. But blame cannot necessarily be apportioned so simply as this.17 There is a serious problem in finding out exactly what happened on most medieval battlefields: the descriptions were usually penned by clerks who were not eye-witnesses, knew little of tactics, and were inclined to ascribe military defeat to the sins of the defeated. There is rather little reason, for example, to believe the Flemish rumour that the French infantry was about to win the battle when a knight implored Robert d’Artois to let the cavalry have the triumph and the order was given for the horsemen to charge over the bodies of the infantry.18 Robert certainly underestimated 15 16 17 18

Serge Dauchy, ‘Le désastre de Courtrai. L’image de la bataille de 1302 dans les manuels français’, in van Caenegem (ed.), 1302. Le désastre de Courtrai, pp. 241–61, at p. 255. Le roi de Sicile, in Adam de la Halle, Œuvres complètes, ed. Coussemaker, pp. 183–93. See France, The Crusades and the Expansion of Catholic Christendom, pp. 246–7. Ancienne chronique de Flandre, p. 378, cited by DeVries, Infantry Warfare, p. 17. Some of the evidence cited for Robert’s arrogance comes from an early fifteenth-century source, the Chronographia Regum Francorum; see ibid., p. 11. On the explanations for French

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his opponents. But he had defeated a Flemish army fairly easily at Furnes in 1297.19 His self-confidence had some rational basis. It had, after all, been usual for a besieging army to withdraw when a relieving one drew up.20 That the Flemish did not do so outside Kortrijk will have surprised him. The Flemish victory seems to have been owed to competent leadership, an excellent choice of the site for the battle, the clever construction of ditches, and the firm determination of the soldiers to fight to the death. This determination was evident in the agreement they had made beforehand that no chance of booty-taking should be allowed to distract them from the fighting, that the enemy should be killed rather than ransomed.21 The strategy paid off handsomely, but the massacre of French soldiers earned Philippe IV’s relentless hatred and determination for revenge. In other words, the battle of Kortrijk was not just a simple proof of the superiority of infantry over cavalry in warfare by the early fourteenth century. There were other factors of importance. Nevertheless, Robert’s reverence for the example of his uncle Charles of Anjou was probably not insignificant in the defeat. That knights were the backbone of the army was not the only lesson learned in the Regno. The value of sea power to military success was obvious to all those who had suffered from the stream of defeats inflicted on the Angevins by Roger Lauria. This was something that Philippe IV quickly came to appreciate. The French king’s decision to confiscate the duchy of Aquitaine from its duke, Edward I of England, has provided historians with much to puzzle over.22 But, whatever his motives in starting the conflict, Philippe soon came upon a problem that was relatively new in French warfare: how to prevent Edward from using his sea power to reinforce and supply his troops in Gascony. The French had had, until this point, very little experience of waging war at sea. It is true that Louis IX had paid for ships for his second crusade in 1270, and these had been led by a French admiral, Florent de Varennes.23 Philippe III

19

20 21 22 23

ˆ military defeats, Xavier Hélary, ‘“Vous Etes du Poil du Loup!”. Genèse du récit de défaite, Mansourah (8 février 1250) a` Courtrai (11 juillet 1302)’, in D. Barthélemy and J.-C. Chenet (eds.), Guerre et société, Byzance – Occident (VIIIe–XIIIe siècle) (Paris: Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2009). According to La chronique métrique attribuée a` Geffroy de Paris, ed. A. Diverrès, lines 974–80, the loss of the Flemish commander in the course of the battle was vital to Robert’s success on this occasion. According to Les grandes chroniques de France, vol. VIII, pp. 175–6, the Flemish footsoldiers were all killed in this battle, which may explain why the Flemish showed no mercy to the French at Kortrijk. R. C. Smail, Crusading Warfare 1097–1193 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), pp. 24–5, 198. Annales Gandenses, ed. and trans. Hilda Johnstone (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), p. 31. For an impressive discussion, see Vale, The Angevin Legacy, pp. 175–200. Richard, Saint Louis, pp. 542–7. Richard calls this the beginning of the French navy.

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had also used a navy under Guillaume de Lodève to reinforce his attack on Gerona in the Aragonese crusade of 1285. But it had been defeated by Roger Lauria and his Catalan sailors.24 Furthermore, French experience was almost entirely confined to the Mediterranean. There was not yet a well-established tradition to help Philippe IV in 1295, when it became obvious that Charles de Valois could not occupy the whole of Gascony without defeating Edward’s fleet. With Bayonne, Bourg and Blaye remaining firmly attached to Edward, and supplied and reinforced on a regular basis by the English fleet, and with Flemish ports remaining open to English shipping, Philippe’s hopes of total domination over Gascony looked bound to be frustrated.25 Philippe’s (or his ministers’) reaction was to build up a navy, relying on the Genoese and the Provençaux to build his ships.26 Charles II showed himself very co-operative in this endeavour. The Angevin chancery register for 1293–94 describes an arrangement whereby Charles allowed twenty galleys which he had ordered from the Genoese to be handed over to the French king, in return for the cancellation of a substantial amount of the debt owed by Charles to Philippe.27 These galleys were no doubt at the core of the French navy in 1295. Philippe then appointed two admirals, Jean II d’Harcourt, marshal of France, and Matthieu de Montmorency, both of whom had had much experience in the Regno and therefore knew something (though not necessarily through experience of commanding ships) about naval warfare.28 Their function was to disrupt the supply line, to seize wine going from Gascony to England, to launch an attack on the English coast, and to try to blockade Bayonne.29 The cost was considerable, the results minimal.30 The two admirals were, according to Guillaume de Nangis, criticised for their failure to take Dover, the capture of which some people apparently believed would have led to a successful conquest of England.31 Five hundred men were said to have been lost in the attempt. The admirals were therefore recalled. Eudes de Toucy, now returned to France after a long period in the Regno, was asked to take 24 26

27

28 29

30

25 Vale, The Angevin Legacy, pp. 193–4. Sivéry, Philippe III le Hardi, p. 277. Charles de la Roncière, Histoire de la marine française, 3rd edn, vol. I (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1909), p. 333. For the significance of the foundation of Clos des Galées at Rouen, see Rose, Medieval Naval Warfare, pp. 61–2. RCA, vol. 49, reg. lxviii, 207. Presumably Charles was willing to do this because, by April 1293, he already foresaw the success of his peace negotiations with James II of Aragon. But he had to build more ships in Provence in 1296; Reg. Boniface VIII, vol. I, no. 1637. See above, pp. 85–6, 88. Seizures of wine are mentioned frequently in the account of naval expenses for Aquitaine in 1296, Comptes royaux (1285–1328), 4 vols., ed. R. Fawtier and P. Maillard (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1953–6), vol. III, pp. 596–610. 31 Chronique latine, vol. I, p. 291. Comptes royaux, vol. III, pp. 649–56, 596–610.

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over. Although Eudes himself had not held an official position concerned with the Regno navy, his father had been responsible for provisioning and commanding it, so Eudes probably knew more about the job than did most others in France.32 He accepted the appointment, but had to resign after four months, as he was dying.33 Therefore once again Philippe IV’s nomination of a man with long experience in the Regno to the precarious position of admiral of his navy proved to have little positive effect.34 But these appointments highlight the absence of alternatives available. G. I. Bratianu regarded this naval campaign of 1295–96 as of considerable importance in applying in northern Europe the notion of blockade already familiar in the Mediterranean.35 The choice of admirals who knew about warfare in the Regno to lead the French ships supports this view. On the other hand, there is no reason to believe that Philippe’s navy did succeed in enveloping and paralysing British (sic) commerce, as Charles de la Roncière believed it aimed to do.36 The Flemish ports were open to English shipping, and Bayonne, Bourg and Blaye remained tenacious in their loyalty to Edward I.37 The outbreak of war with Flanders pressured Philippe to make a truce in 1297 and the defeat at Kortrijk in 1302 finally forced him to restore Gascony to Edward in 1303. As the French king discovered, lessons from the Regno were not always easily transposed to French soil. Philippe’s later naval essays showed no Regno influence on their design. Nevertheless, it is interesting that the earliest French naval campaigns of his reign consciously sought inspiration from the south of Italy. If experience could mislead the generals, it was sometimes of benefit to lesser men. Having campaigned in southern Italy could be a source of pride and, in some cases, of support. One story illustrates this graphically. A poor knight, Pierre Pillert, was arrested by the prévot of Beaumont-surOise and imprisoned for having assaulted a clerk and stolen two horses from him. One of the horses had been found at Pierre’s house, and his explanation for this was too thin to convince the prévot. Initially Pierre’s imprisonment was not uncomfortable, but he was warned by one of the 32 33 34

35 36 37

See above, pp. 150–1. De la Roncière, Histoire de la marine française, vol. I, p. 53; Minieri Riccio, Alcuni studii intorno a Manfredi et Corradino, p. 65. For the contrasts between the weaknesses of the Regno navy under Charles I and Charles II and the strength of the Aragonese navy see Lawrence V. Mott, Sea Power in the Medieval Mediterranean. The Catalan-Aragonese Fleet in the War of the Sicilian Vespers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003). ‘Le conseil du roi Charles’, pp. 308–9; de la Roncière, Histoire de la marine française, vol. I, pp. 5, 349. De la Roncière, Histoire de la marine française, vol. I, p. 349. Vale, The Angevin Legacy, pp. 194, 209–11, 215–26.

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women who worked at the prison that he was about to face much more rigid confinement. In his misery, he wrote to Jean d’Acre, the king’s chamberlain, who acted as master of requests. Jean d’Acre was the son of Jean de Brienne, king of Jerusalem, and brother of Louis, viscount of Beaumont, long-term ally of Charles of Anjou. Pierre’s appeal to Jean protested his innocence, asked for a trial by his peers – other knights – and pointed out that he had fought at Damietta (on Louis IX’s first crusade), in Sicily (probably in 1266), at the siege of Marseilles (probably in 1262) and at the siege of Tunis (in 1270). From this information, it may be deduced that he had been a loyal soldier of Charles of Anjou throughout the major campaigns of this prince. Pierre said that many of his fellow knights on these campaigns could swear to his good character. On receipt of the appeal Jean intervened, demanded a trial by other knights and, when they found Pierre not guilty, told the prévot to release him. But this the prévot refused to do. Pierre then sent another letter recounting the whole business to the king – probably Philippe III.38 Unfortunately, we do not know what happened in the end. But the story shows that relatively minor figures might, through fighting in the Regno, acquire consequence and make contacts which they hoped would be of real value to them in their later life 38

Berger, ‘Requête addressée au roi de France par un vétéran’, pp. 343–50.

17

Literature

Dante moulded the verdict of later literary scholars when he lauded the emperor Frederick II and his illegitimate son Manfred for their patronage of poets of ‘the Sicilian school’, and damned rulers of his own period, prominently including Charles II of Anjou, for their failure to preserve the traditions of the past.1 But nowadays this very negative view of Angevin literary achievement is being convincingly challenged. Stefano Asperti, in his book Carlo I d’Angiò e i trovatori,2 has produced a radically different picture. By examining seven chansonniers of Provençal, Italian or north French provenance in which troubadour lyrics of the mid and later thirteenth century were preserved,3 he has demonstrated, first, the major role played by members of Charles’s entourage as recorders of these verses, including many unflattering to Charles himself.4 More importantly, he has seen Charles’s court, first in Aix and then in the Regno, as a melting pot for different poetic traditions, particularly the Provençal and the northern French. According to him, from this fusion there emerged a new metrical form, the dansa, which rapidly developed in northern France into the virelai, and in Italy into the ballata. In other words, the court (though probably not the king himself) played a central part in the evolution of a poetic form that was to be extremely popular across Europe throughout the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. As one of what nineteenth-century scholars called the three formes fixes of French lyric poetry – the other two were the ballade and the rondeau – the virelai brought together song, dance and music in a new, engaging way.5 In the early years of its popularity it was hard to distinguish from 1 2 3

4 5

De vulgari eloquentia, I, xii; ed. and trans. S. Botterill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 29. Ravenna: Longo, 1995. William Burgwinkle, ‘The chansonniers as books’, in S. Gaunt and S. Kay (eds.), The Troubadours. An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 246– 62. For comment on this feature, see the review by Martin Aurell in Revue des Langues Romanes (1995), 143–5. For the great changes taking place in French verse and music towards the end of the thirteenth century, including the introduction of the virelai, see Christopher Page,

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the ballade, both being fluid arrangements of stanzas dependent on fixed rhythms; but Guillaume de Machaut gave it clearer shape in his highly esteemed lyrics.6 This was verse and music intended for the enjoyment of townsmen and country people as well as the courtiers who had been the audience of the earlier troubadours and trouvères. If Asperti is correct, then members of Charles of Anjou’s entourage triggered significant changes in French music and lyrical poetry – as well as even more striking developments in Italian literature. Asperti’s methodology, precisely based on manuscript evidence, permits an insight into a society where, beneath the constant wars and rebellions, the headlong encounter of different traditions forced creativity on the part of Charles’s courtiers who aimed to attract both old and new inhabitants of the Regno to support the new regime. That Charles’s court could provide stimulus to literary innovation is evident in Adam de la Halle’s Jeu de Robin et de Marion.7 Adam accompanied his patron, Robert II d’Artois, to the Regno in 1283, in the shadow of the Sicilian Vespers. When he arrived there, he produced his Jeu, presumably for Robert and his following. Here theatre, dance and song were combined in what has been called ‘the first comic opera’.8 The story relates the determined but ultimately fruitless attempt of a knight to seduce the shepherdess Marion, whose love for Robin remains steadfast, despite Robin’s sometimes less than noble conduct. The conclusion offers the peasant company an opportunity for rejoicing and play-acting, as a preliminary to the wedding of Robin and Marion, and that of another shepherd and shepherdess. One of the two manuscripts that contain the Jeu also contains a complete version of the music intended to accompany the songs. The Jeu de Robin et de Marion has always excited praise among modern literary and musical critics, both for the elegance of the versification and for the purity of the melodies. It was clearly also successful among Adam’s northern contemporaries when it was performed for the first time in Arras in 1289, a year after the presumed date of Adam’s death.9 This performance argues for the careful preservation and transport of the script to Arras, possibly in the luxurious manuscript BN français 25566 which Carol Symes has tentatively ascribed to Count Robert’s

6 7 8 9

‘Tradition and innovation in BN fr. 146: the background to the Ballades’, in M. Bent and A. Wathey (eds.), Fauvel Studies. Allegory, Chronicle, Music and Image in Paris, Bibiothèque Nationale de France, MS Français 146 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), pp. 353–94, esp. pp. 373–4. Jean Maillard on virelai in Dictionnaire des lettres françaises. Le moyen aˆ ge, p. 747. Œuvres complètes, ed. Coussemaker, pp. 346–412; Symes, A Common Stage, pp. 233–8. Œuvres complètes, ed. Coussemaker, p. LII. Jean Maillard, Adam de la Halle. Perspective musicale (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1982), p. 15.

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patronage.10 It also demonstrates that the appeal of the Jeu was not confined to the kind of audience for which it had originally been intended. In its original setting, one theme may well have constituted an amusing way of warning the French knights who came down to the Regno in 1283 that local peasant girls should not be regarded as easy prey. In Arras, knights would have been rare among the audience; the Jeu offered sheer entertainment for townsfolk. The only other work Adam is known to have composed in Naples was not innovative in form. Le roi de Sicile is a chanson de geste praising Charles of Anjou in alexandrine verses.11 Only a fragment survives; perhaps only a fragment was written. We know that it circulated in France, because it was mentioned by Giles de Musis as the most important of the poems written about Charles.12 Adam paints his hero in a chivalric light, first as a crusader and then (though actually this happened before the 1248–50 crusade) as the gallant young knight who rescued Beatrice of Provence from the clutches of the aged count Raimon VII of Toulouse and married her himself. The fragment ends as Charles, the pope’s nominee, is making preparations to attack Manfred and take over the crown of the Regno. As easily absorbed propaganda, Le roi de Sicile had the elements for great success. There is, however, too little evidence to establish that it did become popular.13 The other poet who had experience in the Regno and whose works subsequently circulated in France was Adenet le Roi. Adenet accompanied his patron Gui de Dampierre, count of Flanders, on the Tunis crusade and then on the journey through the Regno, by way of Rome, and back to France.14 Many years later, his knowledge of Naples and Sicily was reflected in his poem L’enfances Renier. There may also be a reference to Naples in his romance Cléomadès, which was quite widely known, both in France and outside.15 From the point of view of this study, Cléomadès is interesting because Adenet claimed to have heard the original story on which he drew from Queen Marie (the widow of Philippe III). He expressed his gratitude to Gui de Dampierre (as well as to duke Henri of Brabant, Queen Marie’s brother), and he sent off a copy of his poem to Robert d’Artois.16 This suggests that there were literary and cultural links of some significance among those who were also Charles of Anjou’s strongest political supporters in France. 10 12 13 14 15 16

11 Œuvres complètes, ed. Coussemaker, pp. 283–93. A Common Stage, p. 271. Ibid., p. XLIX. Though see Symes, A Common Stage, p. 264 for the spread of Adam’s story about Charles’s wooing of Beatrice of Provence. Les Œuvres d’Adenet le Roi, vol. I, ed. Albert Henry (Bruges: De Tempel, 1951). Ibid., vol. II, pp. 561–7, 661–4. See Sabatini, Napoli angioina, p. 37. Ibid., t. 5, vol. 1, ch. XVII; for Queen Marie’s loans to Charles II, see above, p. 54.

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Most Frenchmen who wrote about southern Italy or about the Angevin conquest did not have first-hand knowledge of their subjects. Rutebeuf’s Chanson de Pouille and Le dit de Pouille, both written to encourage his countrymen to join the original campaign of conquest in 1265, have already been mentioned.17 There is no evidence that these poems were particularly popular among his contemporaries. Almost certainly more influential, because better known, was the praise bestowed on Charles of Anjou by Jean de Meun in the second part of the Roman de la rose. Drawing an analogy between politics and a game of chess, Jean saw in Charles the king with the power to checkmate, the model of effective kingship, demonstrated in his slaughter of Manfred, his execution of Corradin, and his long imprisonment (which Jean wrongly thought ended in death) of Henry of Castile. These men’s terrible fates were entirely the results of their own misdeeds – they opposed the will of the church; Corradin and Henry were also guilty of running away instead of facing their enemy. Charles, on the other hand, stood his ground, began by conquering his opponents in Marseilles and was then given Sicily to rule.18 Charles was not Jean’s only hero. He later compared Robert II d’Artois with King Arthur’s nephew, Gawain, who was noted for his ‘gentillesse’.19 Writing at some time in the reign of Philippe III, Jean’s glowing words probably reflected the predominant French opinion of the matter in the period before the Sicilian Vespers. An echo of the same enthusiasm is well expressed by the poet from Tournai, allegedly called Sarrazin, author of the Roman du Hem,20 who remembered with nostalgia Charles’s great victories. The roman begins with a lament for the deaths of three great warriors, of whom Charles was the most distinguished. He is described as having been humble as a lamb before God, but proud as a lion in the face of those who did him wrong (lines 8–11). The poet then goes on to attack the present king for forbidding tournaments.21 The result will be to undermine the French contribution to the crusading movement. This criticism forms a lengthy preface to the description of an imaginary tournament, in which Robert II d’Artois plays a leading role as the epitome of chivalrous valour. The roman is arguably redolent of the frustration felt among those who had fought in the Regno when they came face to face with the later French 17 18 19 20 21

Above, p. 262. See also Smith, Crusading in the Age of Joinville, pp. 26–30. Le roman de la rose, ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris: Hatier, 1974), lines 6631–68, 6727–37. Ibid., lines 18,697–706. Roman du Hem. Sarrazin, trouvère, ed. Albert Henry (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1938). This step is ascribed to Philippe III, ‘the son of Louis’, but is more likely to refer to the ordinances of Philippe IV, the first of which was produced in 1292. On these, see Richard Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 101–2.

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king’s determination to control violence and reduce practice in the arts of warfare that the warrior class regarded as essential to the future standing of France in the world. The high reputation of Robert II d’Artois survived in verse the terrible tragedy of Kortrijk. In the metrical chronicle that was traditionally attributed to Geffroi de Paris,22 the author devoted five lines to Robert’s valour in Italy as a form of elegy, while laying the responsibility for the defeat on God’s will, with the suggestion that Pierre Flotte (killed in the battle) had perhaps not been totally loyal.23 The author of La branche des royaux lignage broke into verse to remember Robert as: Le plus franc, le plus débonnaire, Le plus félon vers son contraire.24

But it is perhaps unlikely that this view of matters survived long in court circles around Philippe IV. Dead generals usually have to take the blame for catastrophe. Harder to interpret is the recruiting song put by the author of Le garçon et l’aveugle into the mouth of a blind man seeking alms:25 Je vais vous parler du roi de Sicile, Que Dieu lui porte secours! Chaque jour, il est sur la brèche Contre l’ennemi maudit. Voici qu’il a convoqué La chevalerie du monde entier: Tous ceux qui n’ont pas d’affaire sur les bras Vont s’y rendre en rangs serrés.

Jean Dufournet, who commented on the poem, found the presence of this song in the middle of a farce strange. He suggested that it was perhaps a genuine popular recruiting song, composed long before the main poem. If so, the anonymous poet may have been trying for comic effect by making his characters sing such an unfashionable piece. This song, like another on the Virgin, could have been sung seriously to act as a counterweight to the farcical elements in the rest of the play; or it could have been sung grotesquely, as mockery. Given that Dufournet thinks 22

23 24 25

La chronique métrique attribuée a` Geffroi de Paris, ed. A. Diverrès; Jean Dunbabin, ‘The metrical chronicle traditionally ascribed to Geffroy de Paris’, in Bent and Wathey (eds.), Fauvel Studies, pp. 233–46. La chronique métrique attribuée a` Geffroi de Paris, lines 1844–9. RHF, vol. XXII, p. 222, lines 1315–16. Le garçon et l’aveugle, lines 83–90, and comment on pp. 15 and 88. For a lively reading of this poem, suggesting that it was written around 1265, therefore much earlier than Dufournet thought, see Symes, A Common Stage, pp. 130–3.

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the blind man’s reverence for the Virgin is rapidly shown to be hypocritical, perhaps the poet intended mockery here. Whatever may be the true interpretation of these lines, they and the other surviving snippets in the poetry of the period are sufficient to demonstrate that the average French audience in the later thirteenth century was familiar with the story of events in the Regno, and that many, if not all, took some pride in it. Moving from the realms of poetry, there is evidence of continuing French interest in the early history of southern Italy. At some stage after the Angevin conquest of the Regno, one of the new French lords, referred to as the Conte de Militrée but not yet identified,26 asked for a translation from the original Latin into French of Amatus of Montecassino’s History of the Normans ‘for his own pleasure and that of his friends’. The manuscript also contained in translation Isadore of Seville’s Cronica, Paul the Deacon’s Historia Romana and his Historia Langobardorum, and an anonymous Historia Sicula.27 This corpus of histories subsequently arrived in France.28 Although there is no evidence for the manuscript’s presence in France before the sixteenth century, there is no particular reason for thinking that its advent was delayed until the capture of Naples by Charles VIII’s army in 1494. It is just as likely to have come earlier through a family connection of the Conte de Militrée, whoever he may have been, or through one of the many French visitors to the Regno in the Angevin period. Similarly it would be interesting to know when the Chantilly manuscript of Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César reached France. With its beautiful illuminations thought to have been painted in the Regno in the reign of Charles of Anjou, it points to interest in even more ancient history among the inhabitants of that country, and later also of France.29 Between the arrival of Charles in the Regno in 1266 and the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302 there were very few tranquil years in the kingdom. Yet the new dynasty was eager to make its cultural mark. And in some respects, that mark was strong enough to survive transition to France and to flourish and develop further there. 26

27 28 29

One possibility is that the county of Mileto in Calabria was one of the titles of one of Charles II’s sons. Alternatively, could the count be Geoffroi de Milly, named seneschal of the Regno by Charles II in 1294? Sabatini, Napoli angioina, p. 39. L’Ystoire de li Normant et la chronique de Robert Viscart, par Aimé, moine du Mont-Cassin, ed. J. Champollion-Figeac (Paris, 1835). Rebecca W. Corrie, ‘Angevin ambitions: the Conradin Bible Atelier and a Neapolitan localization for Chantilly’s Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César’, in Weiss and Mahoney (eds.), France and the Holy Land, pp. 230–49. The author suggests that the manuscript may have been commissioned for the wedding of Robert de Béthune with Charles’s and Beatrice’s daughter Isabelle.


By 1305 the business of the Regno was sinking into the background of French life and politics, although there were odd moments in which it came again to the forefront, for example with the marriage of Catherine de Valois and Philip of Taranto in 1313.1 But for long after this, there were places in northern France where the memory of the great adventure was kept alive, where inhabitants and visitors would pause to reflect on the past. In Paris, there were several of these. Perhaps the one that will have attracted most attention, at least for some years, was the rue du Roi-deSicile in the Marais, which acquired its name from Charles of Anjou’s hôtel, once situated on this street.2 The name will have been known to large numbers of people, both literate and illiterate, who went about their business in this increasingly busy part of the city. Every time they mentioned it, they will have had the image of Charles in mind. Then those who entered the Dominican church – the well-known one on the rue Jacob, at the heart of the university – will have found some indication of the burial place of Charles of Anjou’s heart, sent there after his death in January 1285. According to Alexis de Saint-Priest, the casket in which it was kept was inscribed ‘le coer di grand roy Charles qui conquit Sicile’.3 In 1309 Marguerite of Tonnerre’s heart came to the same place.4 There will have been masses said for both at regular intervals. In 1326 Clemence of Hungary, Charles’s great-granddaughter, requested and obtained a proper tomb for Charles’s heart in that church,5 thereby creating a 1 2 3 4 5

For the survival of rather tenuous links between the kings of France and the Regno, see ` l’ombre des fleurs de lis’. Contamine, ‘A Philippe Lorentz and Dany Sandron, Atlas de Paris au moyen aˆ ge (Paris: Parigromme, 2006), p. 109. The hôtel passed to Charles de Valois when he married Charles’s daughter. Histoire de la conquête de Naples par Charles d’Anjou, frère de Saint Louis, vol. IV (Paris: Aymot, 1849), p. 166. Archives du Nord, B/447 (4.621). Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort, p. 118. For an illustration of the heart tomb, see Julian Gardner, ‘Seated kings, sea-faring saints and heraldry’, in L’état angevin, opposite p. 123.

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long-lasting memorial in the city. There was presumably also some form of memorial to Charles in the chapel of St James he founded in the church of St Michel.6 Finally, until her death in 1321, in the hôtel de Flandre Marie de Brabant, widow of Philippe III, will have continued to talk about her old friends connected with the Regno and recalled them to the minds of her visitors. Perhaps she regularly wore the cross which had once belonged to Charles of Anjou that Queen Marguerite had left her. In Flanders, the church of l’Honneur-Notre-Dame in Flines, founded by Countess Marguerite as a necropolis for the Dampierre family, enjoyed particular connections with the Regno until it passed out of Flemish hands in 1312. It was there that Blanche, daughter of Charles of Anjou and Beatrice of Provence, had been buried by her husband, Robert de Béthune, future count of Flanders, who in his first will expressed the hope of being buried beside her. Blanche’s tomb was remarkable for its carved figures in six niches around the side. Prominent among these were her parents as well as two French kings to whom she was related through Charles.7 If Anne McGee Morganstern is correct in her surmise, their presence implied that prayers would be said for them as well as for Blanche herself.8 Charles of Anjou and his wife Marguerite of Tonnerre also featured in carvings on the tomb of Marie de Bourbon, countess of Dreux (Marguerite’s great-niece), in the abbey church of St Yved at Braine.9 But in this instance, they were surrounded by so many other notables that they probably made less impression on those who saw the tomb. Less grand but more informative was the epitaph on the tomb of Jean d’Eppes in the church of St Vincent in Laon:10 He was in Apulia, and at Tunis; He performed many feats of arms in Calabria, And suffered much pain for the love of God In Abruzzi and in Romagna.11

One can imagine many young men passing by, stopping to read, and being touched, at least temporarily, by the chivalric conduct of one of Charles of Anjou’s most dedicated generals. 6 7 8 10 11

Petit, Charles de Valois, pièce justicatif, no. 8, p. 381. Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship, pp. 47–50 and 55. Archives du Nord, B/448 (4.107). 9 Ibid., pp. 37–45 and 161–2. Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship, p. 4. Andreas Kiesewetter in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. XLIII, pp. 29–43. Jordan, Les origines de la domination angevine, vol. II, p. 404 note 4.


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While most commemoration related to the dead, there were two great monuments in France that conveyed for many centuries a sense of what life had been like in the Regno in the early Angevin period: the park at Hesdin and the hospital at Tonnerre. The park at Hesdin was, from its inception, conceived as a place in which the count of Artois would receive the great of his age, where guests would be amused, delighted and awed by the Italian influence translated to Artois, and where the comital family could remember their past glory.12 The hospital at Tonnerre, on the other hand, stirred up memories of a queen of Sicily who had spent her wealth on looking after the poor and the sick, who had nursed them with her own hands, and who had taught other noble ladies to share her tasks. There, in the glass windows of the choir, were two small portraits traditionally said to have been those of Charles of Anjou and his second wife Marguerite.13 At both places, future generations were, for many years, brought face-to-face with the world of Angevin Italy. Only slowly did the great adventure sink into oblivion. But when it was forgotten, it was gone for good, at least from popular memory.14 Although it had acquired a foundation in popular literature that might have given it mythical status in French history, it never in fact attained that status. Even when the next wave of French invaders spread into Italy towards the end of the fifteenth century, the soldiers did not consciously hark back to the days of Charles of Anjou. For them, as for everybody else, the great figure of the thirteenth century was and remained Louis IX, the sainted king. The brother who had done so much to ensure that king’s canonisation was scarcely mentioned. Though he became, for a brief time, a popular hero among the rebels in Aragonese Naples, he made no impression on the French psyche. Perhaps it was because the Angevin conquest failed to lead up to the re-establishment of the Latin empire of Constantinople, and probably contributed to the loss of Outremer, thereby causing deep disappointment in France. Perhaps it was because, in the century and a half after Charles’s death, France was so deeply involved in the struggle with England that the Mediterranean failed to impinge. But chiefly it was because a conquest that had been 12 13 14

Anne H. Van Buren, ‘Reality and literary romance in the park of Hesdin’, pp. 120–2. L’art au temps des rois maudits, p. 387. The kings of France remembered that they had a claim to the throne of Naples through Charles of Anjou; see Georges Peyronnet, ‘The distant origins of the Italian wars: political relations between France and Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, pp. 29–53; and Alan Ryder, ‘The Angevin bid for Naples, 1380–1480’, pp. 55–69, both in D. Abulafia (ed.), The French Descent into Renaissance Italy 1494–5. Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995). But this did not apparently impinge on the soldiers.

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perceived as an essentially French achievement very rapidly turned into a land that seemed to northerners to be run by Italians in accordance with Italian conventions. The kingdom of Robert the Wise could not be considered French in any meaningful way.15 Just as the land the Normans conquered in 1066 came to be called England and to speak English, so the land Charles of Anjou conquered came to appear thoroughly Italian by the second decade of the fourteenth century. 15

Cf. the somewhat different point of view, based on literary evidence, of Shawcross, The Chronicle of Morea, pp. 95–102.

Conclusion

It has been the argument of this book that cross-cultural communication was a concept which, though then nameless, was well understood in the thirteenth century. The career of the most famous Angevin ally, Robert II d’Artois, was typical of French soldiers who came down to the Regno. Most of them, like Robert, intended to contribute to a campaign they believed to be blessed by God, to earn a noble reputation, and to return home wiser in the ways of the world. Only a small percentage of those who fought in the Regno aspired to remain there. Since the death rate was very high, far more ended their lives on the battlefield or on their sick beds in Italy than had hoped for this conclusion. Most of those who escaped these fates went home, some after a short time, some after much longer, all having learned lessons about the applications of naval and military power that they could not have acquired at home. Whether these lessons could appropriately be applied to the different conditions of France remained to be seen. But few French soldiers wanted to stay for ever in the country where they had learned them. From their aspiration there followed two conclusions: in the first place, the French commitment to the Regno could last only as long as other more pressing needs at home did not undermine it. As has been pointed out for armies in an entirely different context, ‘Although recruitment from the homeland represents the most important source of manpower, it is also invariably the most unreliable.’1 Once war broke out in France in 1294, there was very little energy left for sustaining Angevin government in southern Italy, far less reconquering Sicily. The campaign of Charles of Valois in 1302, which began during what was optimistically seen as the end of fighting against the Flemish, proved to be the last gasp of energy from France. The defeat at Kortrijk in July 1302 made the resumption of fighting by the French in the Regno virtually impossible. It also forced Boniface VIII to accept the Peace of Caltabellotta. Sicily remained in 1

Matthew Bennett and Paul Latawski (eds.), Exile Armies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), editors’ conclusion pp. 171–8, at p. 175.

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the hands of the Aragonese Frederick III, and Charles II kept Calabria. What was intended to be a purely temporary settlement in fact became permanent. The second consequence was that those who had returned to France after a sojourn in the Regno brought back memories, soon to be encapsulated in literature. I have argued that this was only one of a number of other exports, cultural, administrative or religious, that came with them and with the numerous clerical visitors to the Regno. These exports did much to shape what have conventionally been regarded as the innovations of Philippe IV’s reign. I have also argued that neither soldiers nor clerical visitors were exposed to the whole range of experience of Regno life. On the other hand, those, the most important of them, who were offered membership of the royal household did have a real opportunity to find out much about the administration, the law, the medicine and the university life of the Regno. They also saw a church run on rather different lines from that in France. In the case of Robert d’Artois and his immediate entourage, they had the chance, unrivalled in the middle ages, to see and operate the intimate workings of a political system unlike that in which they had grown up. I have argued that Philippe IV was far from indifferent to what they told him when they returned to France. As the king’s cousin and the leader of his armies, first in Gascony and then in Flanders, Robert II d’Artois was in a perfect position to influence royal thinking. I have argued that, until his death at Kortrijk, he regularly encouraged Philippe to experiment with forms of taxation and the administrative practices with which he had become familiar during the period 1283–91. Jean de Meun saw Robert as the modern embodiment of Sir Gawain, than whom ‘no better knight has ever been born down the ages’.2 His reputation, his charisma, especially when compared with that of his untried cousin, the French king, ensured that his views would prevail. If his influence was not long-lasting, it was powerful in the crucial 1290s. Like his uncle Charles of Anjou, Robert was a determined and courageous warrior, a believer in bureaucratic procedures, unbending in the pursuit of what he thought to be right, ambitious for the expansion of French dominion. Like his uncle, he left his mark on French history. 2

Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), p. 254.

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Index

Abruzzi, 103, 124, 126, 129, 178, 183, 203, 209, 276 Abulafia, David, 22 Achaia, 24, 77, 80, 81, 85, 91, 92, 116, 134, 141, 142, 148, 150, 153, 160, 163, 171, 173, 263 Adenet le Roi, 94, 122, 271 Adenolfo IV, count of Acerra, 105, 125, 165, 166, 242–4 Aimeri VI, viscount of Narbonne, 152, 227, 233 Aix-en-Provence, 32, 72, 93, 269 Albania, 23, 64, 138, 148, 150 Alençon, Pierre d’, 55, 85, 91, 102, 159, 196, 212, 245 Alexander IV, 24, 25 Alfonso III, king of Aragon, 43, 44, 105, 106, 107, 144 Alfonso X, king of Castile, 237 Almogavars, 106, 172–3, 178 Alphonse of Poitiers, 16, 31, 41, 84, 85, 111, 157 in the testimony of Charles of Anjou, 193, 194, 195 the inheritance of, 13–14, 41, 73, 239, 240, 256, 258 Anagni, 36, 44, 76, 130, 183 Treaty of, 40, 88, 193 Angers, 66, 67 bailli of (also called bailli of Anjou), 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 73, 74 St Laud, 66 St Martin, 66 dean of, 60, 64 St Nicolas, 211 Angevin royal family, 4, 6, 32, 54, 59, 133, 139, 144, 152, 164, 198, 210, 221, 225, 230, 238 Angicourt, Pierre d’, 97 Anjou-Maine, counties of, 10, 14, 37, 39, 43, 59–68, 146, 147, 176, 184, 238, 239

cession to Charles de Valois, 43, 45, 52, 62, 239 revenues from, 45, 61, 67 trade in, 67 Annales Gandenses, 129 Apulia, 19, 20, 21, 23, 96, 110, 184, 263, 276 Aquasparta, Matthew of, cardinal, 128 Aquitaine, duchy of (Poitou), 10, 13, 41, 109, 115, 197, 208, 238, 239, 251, 265 Aragon, 10, 44, 50, 87, 106, 177, 202, 211, 263 Aragonese crusade, 40, 50, 86, 160, 266 Aragonese navy, 22, 103, 115, 172 Isabelle of, 212 See also Alfonso III, James II, Peter III, Roger Lauria Ardres, 54, 116, 156 Arles, kingdom of, 205 Arras, 32, 112, 118, 132, 151, 205, 270–1 Artois, 10, 52, 101, 102, 108, 109–19, 160 accounts in, 113, 114 defence of, 115–16, 263 Asperti, Stefano, 269, 270 Asti, 95 Athis-sur-Orge, Treaty of, 130, 131 Augusta, 106, 125, 131, 143, 145, 151, 164, 172 Aurell, Martin, 70 Auxerre bishop of, 88, 94, 246 count of, 88, 133 countess of, 97 Avignon, 31, 73, 241 Baldwin II, emperor of Constantinople, 12, 80, 134, 138, 139, 140, 142, 149 Bar, count of, 15, 81, 91, 92 Bari, 77, 78, 211 St Nicholas, 182, 210, 211

305

306

Index

Barletta, 110 Bartlett, Robert, 2 Basilicata, 91, 173, 175 Beatrice, d. of Charles of Anjou, 45, 134, 135 Beatrice of Provence, queen of the Regno, 37, 63, 118, 271 Beaulieu, Simon de, 206, 207 Beaumont family, 168 Adenotto, 168 Dreux, marshal of the Regno, 147–8, 149, 152, 168 Geoffroi, chancellor of the Regno, 95, 148–9, 169, 180 Guillaume, admiral of the Regno, 65, 146, 148, 149, 163, 168 Guillaume, marshal of France, 146 Marguerite, d. of Pierre, 145, 147 Pierre, chamberlain and count of Alba and Montescaglioso, 52, 145, 147, 148, 149, 151, 163, 165, 168 Benedict XI, 205 Benevento, battle of, 7, 8, 25, 37, 59, 66, 83, 91, 94, 121, 134, 159, 162, 263, 264 Blanche of Castile, queen of France, 190, 191, 194 Blanche, first wife of Robert de Béthune, 121, 123, 276 Blanot, Jean de, 246 Bohemund VII, prince of Antioch, 142–3, 151 Bologna, 33 university of, 5, 17, 110, 216, 228, 246, 247, 248 Boniface VIII, 36, 44, 45, 46, 50, 55, 76, 135, 206 Benedict Gaetani, 118, 126, 193 and Charles II, 183, 225 and detestande feritatis, 212 and the Flemish, 81, 126–8, 129, 130 and Philippe IV, 89, 205, 206, 220–2, 227, 253–4 and Pietro Morrone, 207–9 and Sicily, 88–9, 96, 136, 279 and the canonisation of Louis IX, 192, 193 and the university of Paris, 206, 220–2, 233 Bordeaux, 38, 93, 103 Boudin, Pierre, 64, 179–80 Boulogne, count of, 85, 86 Bourges, council of, 39 Brabant, 15, 271

Beatrice of, 121, 123 Jean, duke of, 46, 245 Mahaud de, 101 See also Marie de Brabant Brienne family, 142–4 Gauthier, duke of Athens, 143 Hugues, count of Brienne and Lecce, 143–4, 153, 163, 164–5 Jean, king of Jerusalem, 142, 143, 144 Louis, viscount of Beaumont-en-Sarthe, 61, 63, 64, 142, 143, 268 Marguerite, princess of Antioch, 74, 75, 142, 143 Walter, count of Jaffa, 143 Britaud de Nangis, Jean, 147, 152 Brittany duchy of, 14, 238 dukes of, 14, 53, 65, 239 Brown, Elizabeth, 211 Bruges, 128, 131 Matins of, 128, 197 Burgundy, county of, 15 Otto, count of, 86, 119 Burgundy, duchy of, 15, 76, 139–41, 152, 153, 238, 239, 245; see also Hugues IV, Robert II (dukes) Calabria, 19, 20, 21, 38, 80, 103, 132, 173, 178, 223, 263, 276, 280 Calais, 112, 115, 239 Caltabellotta, peace of, 8, 44, 46, 50, 82, 89, 136, 156, 160, 175, 199, 274, 279 Canfranc, Treaty of, 87, 107 Capetian family, 4, 12, 189–98 Capua, Bartolomeo da, 180, 217, 247 Caramanico, Marino da, 217 Carcassonne, 13, 56 Catalonia, 50, 70, 173, 243 Catto, Jeremy, 222, 223 ` Treaty of, 107 Cefalu, Celestine V, 183, 203–9, 213 Pietro Morrone, 203, 209, 210 canonisation of, 209 Celestine order, 209–10 Châlons-sur-Marne, canons of, 50, 95 Chambre des Comptes, 180, 256, 257 Champagne, 11, 14, 15, 120, 142, 143, 153, 165, 234, 238, 239 fairs, 18, 48, 52 Chancery (registers), in the Regno, 6, 42, 53, 64, 90, 148, 156, 180, 184, 185, 243, 256–7, 266

Index in Artois, 109, 112–14, 118, 257 in France, 254–8 Charles I of Anjou, 6, 7–8, 28, 34, 40, 56, 101, 122, 152, 275–8, 280 and bureaucracy, 112, 178, 179, 180, 250, 257 and debts, 61, 140, 147 and fiefs in the Regno, 166–7, 247 and Hainault, 51, 120–1 and law, 69, 176, 236, 240–1, 245 and medical knowledge, 229–31, 232 and patronage of the arts, 97, 269, 270, 274 and the Capetian family, 189–97 and the counties in the Regno, 124, 163 and the university of Naples, 96–7, 214, 217, 218, 223 and Tonnerre, 74, 75–6 as count of Anjou and Maine, 40–1, 59–67 as count of Provence, 16, 31, 32, 37, 59, 69, 71–2 as military leader, 83–4, 101–3, 122, 138, 140, 141, 160, 199, 200, 260, 263, 264–5, 268 as recipient of money, 48–53 death of, 86, 243 in literature, 118–19, 155, 271, 272 relations with Louis IX, 14, 16, 36–7, 193, 211, 238 relations with Philippe III, 36, 40, 79 relations with papacy, 25, 134, 182, 185, 225 relations with the church, 66–7, 95, 96, 169, 176 Charles II, 6, 8, 33, 36, 70, 86, 95, 129, 139, 143, 168, 211 Charles of Salerno, 32, 38, 61, 67, 71, 86, 102, 103, 104, 105, 125, 143, 145, 182, 225, 243, 253–4, 259 and administration, 250, 253 and Aragon, 87, 88, 106, 107–8, 160, 183, 204, 280 and Charles de Valois, 45–6, 81, 89, 160 and law, 42, 69, 217, 236–7, 240, 241, 243, 247 and patronage of culture, 97, 175, 214, 232 and Piedmont, 33, 34 and relations with aristocrats in the Regno, 152, 167 and the clergy, 169, 210, 212–13 and the papacy, 183, 203–4, 209, 213, 222, 225 and the Saracens of Lucera, 184–5, 226

307 as count of Anjou and Maine, 62–3, 66 as recipient of money, 48–54 as ruler of Provence, 68, 69, 72, 105, 107, 266 conseil, 201–2 debts, 61, 108–9 in Paris, 43–4, 257 relations with Philippe IV, 36, 40, 42–3, 130, 219, 266 Charles Martell, 103, 104, 105, 243 as regent, 44, 88, 93, 105, 106, 108, 110, 145, 173, 174 as titular king of Hungary, 203, 241 Charles de Valois, 197, 266 acquisition of Anjou and Maine, 43, 45, 52, 54, 61, 62, 239 and Catherine of Courtenay, 45–6, 88, 134, 136, 202 and Flanders, 128, 197, 251 Italian expedition, 46, 50, 53, 88–9, 136, 138, 139, 160, 212, 279 title to throne of Aragon, 39, 202 Charles, son of Robert de Béthune, 123, 124 Chartres canons of, 95, 137 edict of, 16 Chaumont Guillaume de, 95 Master Simon de, 169 Chieti, county of, 124, 137, 163 Philippe, count of, 51, 121, 124–31, 137, 157, 165, 167, 172 Mahaud and Raoul, see Courtenay family Chronicle of Morea, 153 Cistercians, 49 Clement IV, 25, 66, 77, 134, 147, 148, 236 Clement V, 207, 209 Cognetti, Rinaldo, 110–14, 118, 257–8 Colonna family, 200, 207–8 Jacopo and Pietro, 207, 221 Constance, queen of Aragon, 24, 39 Constantinople, 20, 24, 77, 133, 134, 135 Latin empire of, 23, 46, 78, 80, 88, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 142, 150, 153, 157, 158, 164, 165, 202, 277 Corfu, 23, 134, 148, 150 Corradin, grandson of Frederick II, 8, 24, 37, 52, 84, 122, 140, 162, 200, 272 Courtenay family, 76, 95, 133–9, 152, 164 Amicie, 101, 102, 137 Catherine, 45–6, 74, 88, 112, 134, 135–6, 139, 152, 202

308

Index

Courtenay family (cont.) Mahaud, 124–5, 137, 138 Pierre, emperor, 133 Raoul, 124, 137, 163 Robert, bishop of Orléans, 95, 138 See also Baldwin II and Philip (emperors); Robert, bishop of Orléans Coutumier d’Artois, 239 Craon, Maurice de, 61, 64 Croce, Benedetto, 125, 129 Dampierre family, 15, 79, 120–32, 276 Gui de Namur, 128, 129 Jean de Namur, 121, 126, 129, 134, 248 See also Gui and Robert de Béthune (counts of Flanders); Chieti, Philippe, count of d’Aulnay family, 71, 118 d’Avesne Baudoin, 51, 120 Jean, 51, 120, 121 d’Avray, David, 210 de la Halle, Adam, 94 Roi de Sezile, 118, 264, 271 Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, 119, 270–1 de la Roche family, rulers of Athens, 81, 91, 141 Gui I, 141 Gui II, 143 della Marra, Giozzelino, 112, 113, 114, 179 d’Eppes, Jean, 152, 276 des Baux family, 59, 83, 163 Dubois, Pierre, 202, 261 Durazzo, 64, 77, 134, 148, 150, 263 Edward I, king of England, 39, 107, 125, 126, 127, 206, 208, 237, 239, 242, 251, 265, 266, 267 England, 3, 26, 237, 266 Eudes, count of Nevers, 15, 41, 73, 139 Farag ben Salem, 230–2 Farumville, Guillaume de, 180, 241 Fawtier, Robert, 256, 258 Ferri III, duke of Lorraine, 92 Ferrières, Pierre de, archbishop of Arles, 68, 70, 218 Flanders, 10, 11, 15, 17, 50, 101, 120–32, 133, 238, 239, 248, 276 financial contribution to the Regno, 51–2

towns of, 18, 89, 128, 131 war in, 87, 109, 119, 160, 197, 208, 239, 240, 251, 255, 261, 263, 264–5, 267, 280 See also Gui, Marguerite, Robert de Béthune, Dampierre family Florence, 5, 33, 172 Flotte, Pierre, 110, 127, 129, 250, 256, 257, 273 France, 2–6, 33, 158 kingdom of, 9–19, 44, 155 clergy of, 42, 48–51, 156, 169, 180–5 economy, 10, 18–19, 55 law in, 17–18, 237, 238–40 movements of money from to the Regno, 48–56, 156 taxation in, 251–3 France, John, 83 Frederick II, emperor, 7, 20, 22, 25, 176, 214, 216, 222, 232, 269 and bureaucracy, 26, 177, 179, 236, 250, 254 and law, 27, 223, 235–6, 237, 238, 245 De arte venandi cum avibus, 122, 234 Frederick III, king of Trinacria, 46, 88, 89, 93, 109, 135, 136, 280 Furnes, battle of, 265 gabelle (salt tax), 37, 149 Gaeta, 177 truce of, 107, 110, 160 Galen, 228, 232 Le garçon et l’aveugle, 262, 273–4 Gascony, 14, 17, 39, 50, 238, 239, 240, 265 war in, 87, 156, 160, 239, 251, 261, 263, 266, 267, 280 Geffroi de Paris, 273 Genoa, Genoese, 22, 24, 32, 33, 34, 109, 123, 172, 266 Gerard of Parma, cardinal, 103, 104, 105, 152, 182–3 Gregory X, 50, 150, 164, 182, 192, 203 Gui de Dampierre, count of Flanders, 15, 44, 113, 132, 161, 234, 248, 271 and friendship with Charles I, 123, 124 and the clash with Philippe IV, 125–31, 239 and the Tunis crusade, 31, 34, 51, 79, 80, 94, 122, 271 Guines, 54, 116, 156 Henri de, 86, 132

Index Hainault county of, 15, 51, 81, 82, 91, 120–1, 133, 142 Florent of, 81, 142, 143 Harcourt Agnes de, 194–5 Jean II d’, 84, 85, 86, 88, 159, 212, 266 Henry III, king of England, 10, 12, 14, 144 Hesdin, 112, 116–17, 277 Hohenstaufen family, 7, 21, 22, 23, 39, 48, 77, 176, 221, 222, 223, 230, 257 Holland, 51, 82 Florent, count of, 120, 121 Holy Land, 50, 55, 191, 199, 201, 202, 211 pilgrimages to, 65, 78 See also Outremer Honorius IV, 45, 52, 103, 104, 105, 106, 182, 186, 243 household of the Angevin kings, 42, 90, 95, 96, 122, 137, 160, 173–4, 193, 218, 229, 230, 280 Housley, Norman, 48, 55, 85, 156 Hugues IV, duke of Burgundy, 15, 53, 139–40, 241, 246–7 Hungary, 46, 93, 112, 148, 174, 189–90, 241 St Elizabeth of, 195 St Margaret of, 75 Innocent IV, 24, 39 Isabelle, d. of Louis IX, 194–5, 196 Isernia, Andrea di, 217, 247 Italy, 5–6, 21, 25, 33, 53, 103, 156, 172, 210, 233, 277 Jacquart, Danielle, 231 James II, king of Aragon and Sicily, 44, 46, 51, 86, 88, 107, 108, 110, 131, 183 James of Viterbo, 217, 224–6 Jerusalem, 73, 78, 116, 143, 156, 158, 201 king of, 42, 142, 144, 158, 201, 202, 258 patriarch of, 150 Jews in France, 62, 76, 223 in Provence, 63, 184 in the Regno, 21, 96, 183–4 Joinville family, 152, 153, 157, 166 Geoffroi de, 147, 166 Geoffroi II de, 166 Jean de, 12, 146, 149 John of Naples, 226 John of Paris, 221, 225–6

309 Kamp, Norbert, 148 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 220 Kiesewetter, Andreas, 62, 180 Kitab al-Hâwi, 230–2 Kortrijk, battle of, 8, 44, 89, 108, 119, 128, 129, 130, 136, 197, 255, 263, 267, 273, 279, 280 la Broce, Pierre de, chamberlain, 40–1, 46, 114, 138, 245 Lagonesse family, 71 Charles de, 93 Guillaume de, 204 Languedoc, 13, 31, 56, 67, 70, 71, 144, 153, 164, 200, 238 Latini, Brunetto, 5 Lauria, Roger, 103, 106, 107, 125, 143, 145, 151, 171, 265, 266 Laveno, Roberto di, 70 Le Mans, 65–6, 67, 123 Saint-Pierre-de-la-Cour, 40, 66, 67 Lemoine, Jean, cardinal, 205–6 Liber Augustalis or Constitutions of Melfi, 27, 235–6 ˆ l’Ile-Jourdain, Jourdain de, 85, 159 Lille, 130, 131, 200 Lombardy, 7, 33, 34, 35, 70, 83, 84, 88, 94, 102, 148, 152, 172, 182 Lotharingia, 91 Louis VIII, 190–1, 238 will of, 13 Louis IX (St Louis), 10, 11–12, 13, 33, 40, 84, 91, 211, 245, 260, 265 1248 crusade of, 11, 48, 111, 139, 146, 159, 193, 202, 268 and Hainault, 51, 120 and his brothers, 14–15, 16, 36–7, 59, 146, 197, 238 and law, 18, 238, 244 and the chancery, 254, 255 and the church, 11, 198, 220 and the enquêtes, 17, 111 and the Sainte-Chapelle, 12, 134 canonization of, 138, 192–3, 208, 277 See also Tunis crusade Lucca, 54 Lucera, 172, 173, 184, 185, 233 Saracens of, 20, 172 Lull, Ramon, 184–5, 201, 202 Lusarches family, 71, 73, 74, 76 Lyons, 16, 32, 33, 34, 49 Council of, 7, 24, 25 Second Council of, 50, 192, 202

310

Index

magistri rationales, 26, 64, 92, 110, 112, 114, 174, 179 Mahaud, countess of Flanders, 114, 119 Malaspina, Saba, 176, 177, 178, 179 Manfred, king of the Regno, 20, 21, 22, 23–8, 34, 39, 71, 163, 179, 247 and culture, 214, 223, 228, 232, 234, 247, 269, 272 death of, 7, 34, 52, 162, 179, 199 Marguerite, queen of France, 37, 61, 192 Marguerite, queen of the Regno, 43, 45, 46, 65, 95, 97, 123, 140, 148, 275, 276, 277 as guardian to children, 92, 123, 135, 137 in Tonnerre, 41, 45, 73–6, 135, 139 Marguerite, d. of Charles of Anjou, 43, 45, 46, 54, 61 Marguerite, countess of Flanders, 15, 51, 120–1, 123, 131, 223, 276 Marie de Brabant, queen of France, 46, 54, 75, 156, 197, 245, 271, 276 Marie of Hungary, queen of the Regno, 75, 104 Marseilles, 31–3, 73, 77, 78, 90, 95, 268, 272 Martin IV, 39, 45, 158, 192, 193 Meaux, canon of, 95 mendicant orders, 96, 185, 220, 227 Dominicans, 198, 212, 217, 218, 224 Franciscans, 194, 198, 212, 215, 217, 218 inquisitors, 96, 183–4, 185 Mesnil, Jean de, archbishop of Palermo, 64, 67, 169 Messina, 19, 77, 95, 102, 115, 150, 173 Meun, Jean de, 272, 280 Michael VIII Paleologus, 20, 24, 78, 134 military orders, 23, 49, 202 Hospitallers, 78, 161, 258 Templars, 54, 78, 142, 202, 209, 244, 258 Milly, Filippa di, 93, 131, 165 Mondeville, Henri de, 198, 231 Mons-en-Pévèle, battle of, 129, 130 Montfort family, 144–6, 157 Amaury, 145 Gui, 144, 163–4, 168 Jean, count of Montescaglioso, 103, 106, 108, 145–6, 147, 151, 152, 153, 160, 164, 165, 168, 171 Philippe, count of Squillace, 34, 53, 83, 91, 121, 144–5, 148, 163 Philippe, lord of Tyre, 144

Simon II, earl of Leicester, 144, 145, 163, 164 Simon III, count of Avellino, 144, 163–4 Simon IV, brother of Jean, 145, 147 Montmorency, Matthieu de, 86, 266 Montpellier, 227 schools, 17, 70, 216, 228, 248 Muslims, 19, 184–5 Namur, county of, 134 Nangis, Guillaume de, 36, 44, 86, 242, 259, 266 Naples, 4, 6, 31, 32, 35, 71, 103, 105, 107, 131, 174–5, 201, 203, 271 archbishop of, 224 Great Court of, 62, 65, 69, 72, 110, 114, 116 university of, 27, 110, 115, 175, 182, 214–27, 230, 247 Nesle, Jean de, 96, 181, 229–31 Nicholas III, 76, 182, 192 Nicholas IV, 45, 76, 87, 105, 107, 183, 201, 205, 243, 259 Nogaret, Guillaume de, 233, 246, 250, 256, 257, 258 Nonancourt, Nicolas de, 206, 212 Normandy, duchy of, 10, 11, 14, 17, 41, 73, 238 Noyon, bishop of, 95 Oleron, Treaty of, 107 Orléans, 210 bishop of, 95, 137, 138, 246 canons of, 95 law schools of, 70, 146, 218, 241, 246, 248 Outremer, 15, 22, 23, 36, 42, 87, 139, 142, 143, 144, 153, 157, 158, 199, 200, 211, 260, 277, see also Holy Land Outremeuse, Jean, 81 Palermo, 25, 64, 117, 169, 176, 177, 230 Moses of, 232 Paris, 6, 31, 33, 38, 47, 79, 146, 169, 201, 242, 275 bishop of, 181 ˆ Ile-de-la-Cit´ e, 12, 254 luxury goods made in, 42, 98 Parlement of, 12, 18, 40, 41, 65, 73, 92, 238, 239, 240 prévot of, 17 Sainte-Chapelle, 12, 200, 254 Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 95 Temple in, 55

Index Treaty of, 10, 14 university of, 10, 96, 124, 127, 128, 206, 208, 214–27, 228, 233, 244, 247 Peter III, king of Aragon, 24, 34, 38, 39, 40, 93, 102, 106, 253 Petrus Peregrinus, 233–4 Philip, titular emperor of Constantinople, 45, 134, 135, 138, 140, 142, 148 Philip of Taranto, 44, 136, 275 Philippe II Auguste, 10, 149, 190, 238, 254, 255 Philippe III, 6, 12, 33, 149, 191, 241, 245, 248–9, 250, 268, 272 and his family, 196, 212, 245 assistance to Charles I, 36, 37–8, 39–40, 52, 53, 147 attack on Aragon, 40, 46 mortgages, 60, 61, 67 procession through Italy, 33, 34, 38, 79 Philippe IV, 6, 49, 73, 81, 89, 181, 232, 250–1, 254, 280 and his family, 196–7, 198, 239 and law and lawyers, 71, 239–40, 241, 242, 244, 246–8, 249 and taxation, 251–3, 262 and the chancery, 255 and the Jews, 63 and the Templars, 202, 244, 259 and the university of Paris, 219–22 mortgages, 67 relations with Charles II, 36, 42–3, 44, 53, 136 relations with England, 126, 265–6 relations with papacy, 87, 89, 193, 204–6, 208–9, 210, 253–4 relations with Robert II d’Artois, 86, 105, 108, 112, 116 war in Flanders 44, 87, 89, 109, 119, 125–31, 156, 261, 263–5 war in Gascony, 44, 87, 119, 156, 261, 265–7 Piedmont, 33, 34, 35, 46, 83, 94, 173 Pillert, Pierre, 90, 267–8 Pipino, Giovanni, 110, 114 Pisa, 5, 22, 24, 32, 172 Plaisians, Guillaume de, 208, 250 Pollastri, Sylvie, 68, 162, 163 Provençaux in the Regno, 68, 83, 159, 162, 163, 168, 178 Provence, county of, 16, 31, 32, 33, 41, 49, 68–73, 103, 185, 191, 257 Charles II’s stays in, 32, 53, 54, 68, 69, 72, 105, 107, 213

311 Jews in, 63, 184 law in, 69, 238 seneschal of, 71, 72, 229 ship building in, 266 Ptolemy of Lucca, 104, 217 Raimon VII, count of Toulouse, 13, 118, 271 Ravello 52 Raymond Berengar V, count of Provence, 71 Regno, 2–5, 6, 7–8, 19–28, 31, 269, 279 Angevin conquest of, 7–8, 33, 34, 36–7, 53, 82, 83–4, 133, 137, 142, 146, 153, 155, 156, 159, 163, 214, 228, 262, 272, 277 bureaucracy in, 252, 256–7 law in, 27, 176, 217, 235–6 parliaments in, 105, 253–4 trade in, 21–2, 61 See also kingdom of Sicily Richard, Jean, 146 Richmond, count of, 65 Riso, Palmerio de, 115, 212, 232 Robert I, count of Artois, 14, 101, 157, 193, 194, 195 Robert II, count of Artois, 33, 34, 44, 52, 53, 101–19, 157, 179, 233, 279 and literature, 155, 270, 271, 272–3 as military leader, 85, 89, 102–3, 129, 143, 151, 160, 197, 245–6, 260, 261, 263, 264–5 in Artois, 15, 16, 54, 55, 109–19, 135, 156, 212, 263 in France, 40, 46, 128, 139, 145, 204, 219, 222, 233, 239, 242, 245–6, 251, 252 in the Regno, 6, 41, 85, 86, 87, 94, 101–11, 152, 160, 172, 182, 241, 242–3, 248–9, 252, 253, 257, 258 revenues of, 108, 112, 113 Robert II, duke of Burgundy, 92, 140–1 Robert de Béthune, count of Flanders, 65, 121–3, 126–8, 132, 140, 241, 248, 276 in the Regno, 80, 81, 83, 121–4, 157, 160–1 Robert, duke of Calabria, 89, 160 Robert the Cistercian, cardinal, 206, 207 Roman du Hem, 272–3 Roman law, lawyers, 17, 27, 214, 216, 218, 223, 236, 237, 238, 248 Rome, 33, 34, 53, 73, 81, 83, 94, 102 Roucy, count of, 53, 80

312

Index

Rouen archbishop of, 11 canons of, 95 Rutebeuf, 262, 272 Saint-Amand, Jean de, 228 Saint-Denis, 211, 212, 242, 259 Saint-Georges, Béraud de, 117–18, 261 St Omer, castellan of, 132 Saint-Pathus, Guillaume de, 195 Saint-Victor, Jean de, 128, 130 Salerno, 106 medical school of, 115, 216, 228, 230 Salimbene, 159 San Severino family, 92, 165 Schein, Sylvia, 201 Sicily Aragonese lordship in, 8, 52, 90, 153, 173, 279 island of, 19, 20, 24, 80, 102, 107, 146, 171, 176–7, 199, 268 kingdom of (or Naples), 1, 18, 222, 272; see also Regno Soissons canons of, 95 count of, 80, 83, 158 Raoul de, 164 Strayer, Joseph, 6, 71, 197, 251 subventio generalis, 25, 26, 108, 252 Symes, Carol, 270 Tagliacozzo, battle of, 37, 84, 121, 122, 143, 146, 150, 159, 160, 162, 233, 263, 264 Thessalonica, principality of, 139, 140, 141 Thomas Aquinas, 182, 214, 217, 222–4 De regimine principum, 222 Summa theologiae, 223–4 Tonnerre county of, 37, 45, 73–6, 152, 241 hospital at, 75–6, 135, 277 Torchevache, Jean de, 63 Toucy family, 76, 164, 168 Ancelin, 150 Eudes, count of Alba, 116, 151, 266–7 Filipotto, 116, 151 Marguerite, wife of Leonardo da Veroli, 152 Narjaud, admiral of the Regno, 150–1 Philippe, admiral of the Regno, 150, 152 Toulouse county of, 13, 238, 239

schools of, 70, 248 Tournai, 272 bishop of, 126, 130 truce of, 126 Tremblay, viscount of, 86, 87, 152, 168 Trésor des Chartes, 254, 256 Troyes, 33, 52 canons of, 95, 169, 181 Chrétien de, 9 Tunis, 23, 53, 79, 90, 176, 192, 211, 212, 268, 276 emir of, 23, 37, 52, 122, 150, 230 gold from, 23, 37–8 Tunis crusade, 33, 34, 37–8, 41, 51, 65, 84, 101, 117, 122, 137, 138, 140, 142, 145, 147, 149, 172, 196, 260, 261, 262, 265 Tuscany, 7, 33, 35, 83, 84, 88, 125, 134, 145, 152, 172, 173, 182 Angevin vicars in, 92, 163 Urban IV, 25, 26, 48, 50, 77, 102 ´ de, 260, 261 Valery, Erard Vaudémont family, 91–3, 158 Gui, 92, 93 Henri I, 91–2, 165, 167, 168 Henri II, 92–3, 159, 167, 168 Renaud 92, 168 ˆ Vendome counts of, 63, 83, 85, 86, 159 seneschal of, 64 Vermandois, seneschal of, 84 Veroli, Leonardo da, chancellor of Achaia, 152, 181, 231 Vespers rebellion of, 8, 24, 54, 69, 72, 85, 102, 104, 111, 124, 139, 145, 159, 176, 229, 230 war of, 52, 78, 89, 90, 93, 160, 175, 177, 192, 196, 199, 200 Vilanova, Arnau of, 185, 216, 220, 233 Villani, Giovanni, 86, 107 Villehardouin family, 81, 141, 142, 149, 164 Geoffrey de, 80, 141 Guillaume de, 24, 80, 141, 150 Isabelle de, 80, 141, 142, 143, 150 Viterbo, 76, 88, 144, 164 Treaty of, 80, 134–5, 138, 140, 148, 164 William II, king of Sicily, 117, 235, 236 Yolande, 2nd wife of Robert de Béthune, 65, 123, 124, 140

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The French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1266-1305

Sicily

The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily

In the Kingdom of Men

Sicily

Death in the Kingdom

The Kingdom in the Sun

The Kingdom in the Sun

The Kingdom of Shadows

The Kingdom of Childhood

The Kingdom of Carbonel

The Kingdom of Dog

The Kingdom of Childhood

The Kingdom of Shadow

The Kingdom of Childhood

The Kingdom of Gods

THE KINGDOM OF SHAOW

The Kingdom of Shadows

The Kingdom of Childhood

The Kingdom of Bones

The Kingdom of Bones

The Kingdom of Gods

The Kingdom of Shadow

The Kingdom Of Gods

The Kingdom of the Hittites

The Kingdom of the Nine

The Kingdom of the Wicked

The Kingdom of the Wicked

The Parables of the Kingdom

The Kingdom of the Nine

The Kingdom Of The Blind

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