Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500

by Jeffrey Anderson

  In terms of his personality, it is easy to sneer at Robert as Dante did, and call him the ‘King of Sermons’, more fit for preaching than to wear a sword. Certainly his sermons are tedious to read and do not suggest he was the most engaging personality. Yet if we step aside from his intellectual activity for the moment and look at his cultural interests, he fits very well in the long line of Angevin patrons. It was Robert who commissioned Giotto to decorate the chapel at the Castel Nuovo, and although the paintings are no longer extant, a 14th-century poem describes the decorations, which showed pairs of illustrious men and women from the Bible and antiquity. Giotto is the most recognizable name today, but Robert also commissioned the Sienese master Simone Martini to paint the magnificent and profoundly propagandistic panel of Louis of Toulouse enthroned in majesty and crowning Robert, now in the Capodimonte Museum. Robert patronized other artists, such as the Tuscan Tino da Camino, who produced six royal tombs, and the Roman Pietro Cavallini who decorated Santa Maria Donna Regina with frescoes celebrating Angevin rule.17

  Besides the Simone Martini panel, the most magnificent object to survive from Robert’s reign is the Bible of Malines, now in Louvain, which the Neapolitan artist Cristoforo Orimina painted in the style of Giotto, again celebrating Angevin rule and explicitly setting out Robert’s dynastic connections and legitimacy. It is one of the best and most striking illustrations of the Angevin dynasty, depicting the entire family in three bands across the frontispiece, showing Charles I, Charles II and Robert with their wives, children and heirs set out clearly to demonstrate the succession. The bible was commissioned as a present for Robert’s granddaughter and heiress, Johanna, and her husband Andrew of Hungary, son of Carobert and so a potential rival, and their marriage was meant to unite the two dynasties, with the results we will see below.18

  Robert was also associated with the two greatest composers of the 14th century. Marchetto da Padova, a music theorist whose work was fundamental in establishing modern tuning and time notation, dedicated his Pomerium to Robert and was employed in the royal chapel. Philippe de Vitry, author of the treatise Ars Nova, which gave its name to the musical style of the period, composed a motet glorifying Robert and giving him all the virtues, of which the first letters of each line spell ‘Robertus’. As with the visual arts, so too with music: the usually foreign artists who worked for Robert would return to their native cities and spread Robert’s fame as a learned patron.19

  However, Robert’s reputation for wisdom and literary merit really rests not so much on his own literary production, impressive as it was, but because of his relationship with Petrarch. Petrarch has been described as the ‘first celebrity’, and the Fontaine de Vaucluse, where he lived and first wrote his sonnets about his idealized love, Laura, was a tourist attraction even in the 14th century. He was the most famous private citizen of his day, as well as being described as the ‘last of the Troubadours’ and ‘the originator of modern literature’20, and these descriptions are justified. He had a profound and lasting cultural influence through his use of the vernacular in a literary context, his pioneering use of sonnets, his conception of history and his coining of terms such as the ‘Dark Ages’ to describe the period between the fall of Rome and his own enlightened times. Perhaps most enduringly, it is believed that the italic script still used in printing today was based on his handwriting.

  As the preeminent literary figure of the day, Petrarch was invited to Rome to be crowned with laurel as the first poet laureate since Roman times, but he modestly asked to be examined first to prove he was worthy of the honour. For Petrarch, there was only one candidate qualified to perform the examination, and that was Robert the Wise, though Robert’s position as a king who could dispense lucrative patronage would not have been lost on Petrarch.21 Petrarch was probably also partial to the Angevins because they were the rulers of Provence, and in one of his first letters around 1325 he commented that Sicily ‘now lies under the dominion of a hostile ruler, or tyrant, as I might say’22, i.e. the house of Aragon. In 1341, Petrarch went to Naples and was publicly examined by Robert for three days in a piece of theatre that did more for Robert’s subsequent reputation than Petrarch’s. Despite this revival of Roman tradition fitting very neatly into the origins of humanism and the Renaissance in the 14th century, it should be noted that the form of the examination was actually quite close to a medieval degree ceremony for academics. As for Robert’s qualifications for performing the examination, Petrarch later remarked that although Robert was well versed in theology, philosophy and the sciences, he showed little interest in poetry or classical literature.

  Robert’s own writings consist of sermons and his two theological treatises. His critics accused him of having only superficial learning, and there is some evidence for this, since he had a Franciscan friar prepare a summary of Aristotle for him, and this seems to be the basis for his references to Aristotle in his sermons, rather than a profound understanding of his own. Yet this may be unfair, since a comment in a manuscript of Paolino da Venezia’s Historia satyrica says that Robert read and annotated the text himself. Paolino also says that on the basis of the information contained therein, Robert ‘spoke to foreign ambassadors about their homelands as if he had been there, wherefore they rightly marvelled at his wisdom’, confirming that Robert actively cultivated his reputation for wisdom and liked to show off his knowledge.23

  There can be no question that he had a genuine love of learning. He had an official scriptorium and provided lodging for a team of copyists, and we know that he commissioned many works to be copied for the royal library, some of them relevant to Angevin interests. For example, Robert acquired the Gesta Francorum, the account of the First Crusade; a history of Robert Guiscard, his predecessor in southern Italy; and Marco Polo’s book about the wonders of China, which Robert had copied and lavishly illustrated. He continued Charles of Anjou’s and Charles II’s commitment to the improvement of the university in Naples, and he invited many other leading scholars besides Petrarch to work in Naples.24

  One reason Robert could afford to commission literary works and other luxury items for the court is notable. Villani reports that when he was crowned in 1309, Robert ‘was entirely acquitted of the loan which the Church had made to his father and grandfather for the war in Sicily, which is said to have been more than 300,000 ounces of gold’.25 It is not coincidental that at a time when the papacy was in turmoil, with its resettlement in Avignon and the potential renewed prosecution of Boniface VIII by Philip IV, that the pope would choose to offer an inducement to his staunchest supporter, the Angevin king of Naples who was also the ruler of Avignon.

  Robert may have provided stable and secure rule for Naples, but one group of Angevin possessions was in complete disarray: Morea and Albania. The complicated history of the Balkans only impinges on Angevin history occasionally, but an outline of events is important for a few key future developments, and some familiar players such as the Byzantine Empire and the kingdom of Aragon will make an appearance.

  Angevin Rule in Morea

  Charles of Anjou concluded marriage alliances for his children that, in addition to bringing Hungary into the Angevin orbit, also brought Morea and a claim to the Latin Empire of Constantinople to the Angevins. The Latin Empire should have been irrelevant after the Byzantines recaptured the city in 1261, but it still carried a tangle of rights in mainland Greece and the islands that the Angevins wanted to pursue. This had long-ranging consequences, because it forced the newly re-established Byzantine Emperors to look west rather than east, and to their cost they neglected matters in Anatolia. By 1300 most of Anatolia was controlled by Turkish tribes, and the future conquerors of Constantinople, the Ottoman Turks, were growing in power throughout the 14th century.

  The Angevins first acted as suzerains of the principality of Achaea and the duchy of Athens, and did not directly rule Greece. However, after Isabelle the Princess of Achaea (daughter of William of Villehardouin) made an imprudent marriage in 1301, and her husband
pillaged Achaea for his own benefit, in 1302 Charles II named his son Philip of Taranto direct ruler of Achaea. Philip had another local connection, having married Ithamar/Tamara, daughter of the Despot of Epirus (the region between northwestern Greece and Albania, which had a Greek ruler), and her dowry brought fortresses in Epirus to add to Philip’s nominal rights as suzerain of Achaea, Corfu and his meagre possessions in Albania.

  A new power that burst on the scene in 1303 was a group of Catalan mercenaries. Their behaviour prefigures that of the mercenary companies that would appear during the Hundred Years War and prove so damaging to France and Italy, though they were more successful. A group of 6,500 Catalans was hired by the Byzantine Emperor to fight the Ottomans in Anatolia, and achieved some success. As was inevitably the case, their pay fell into arrears, and they divided into three separate companies that began to ravage areas of northern Greece. Despite one of the bloody ambushes at a dinner that are such a feature of medieval history (and reminiscent of scenes from modern Mafia films when enemies are murdered in restaurants), which removed one of the Catalan captains, the companies remained in Greece and their power grew.

  They were next hired by Charles of Valois, widower of Robert the Wise’s sister Margaret. Charles had now married Catherine of Courtenay, daughter of Charles of Anjou’s sister Beatrice and her husband Philip of Courtenay, and carried the claim to the Latin Empire. With the support of the pope, Venice, the Serbs and the Catalan mercenaries, Charles of Valois invaded Greece in 1308, at which point the Catalans promptly deserted him. Catherine of Courtenay died in 1309 and Charles’s claim to the Empire passed to his daughter Catherine of Valois-Courtenay (who married Philip of Taranto from the Neapolitan Angevins, as discussed below), and Charles returned to France where the Valois would be compensated for losing the non-existent Latin Empire of Constantinople by inheriting the very real throne of France.26

  The Catalans were then hired by the Duke of Athens, but once again they turned on their master, and this time took Athens and ruled the duchy for themselves from 1311–1388. They invited Frederick of Sicily to be their overlord to give them legitimacy, and Frederick accepted, making his son titular Duke of Athens and sending a viceroy, but having little else to do with them. This new Catalan state formed part of a chain of Catalan-Aragonese possessions stretching from Barcelona and including the Balearics, intermittently Sardinia, Sicily and now Greece. The kings of Aragon would seem to have created the Mediterranean Empire that Charles of Anjou so coveted, though in reality each Catalan state was independent and they had little connection with each other, and the Catalan companies in Greece were eventually driven out.27

  Charles II finally made his son Philip of Taranto Prince of Achaea in 1307, but Philip almost immediately returned to Italy and left his Greek possessions to be governed by bailiffs. In 1309 he accused his wife Tamara of Epirus of adultery and imprisoned her, where she died, which would seem to have weakened his position in Greece. However, Philip now married Catherine of Valois-Courtenay, his first cousin’s daughter, and heiress to the Latin Empire. She had broken off an engagement to the Duke of Burgundy’s brother to marry Philip, so the disappointed suitor was married to Isabelle of Villhardouin’s daughter Matilda and became Prince of Morea very briefly, before dying – or perhaps being murdered by the Angevin agents in Achaea who resented his presence – in 1316. Philip decided to bring Morea back to the Angevin fold, and forced Matilda to marry his brother John of Gravina. Matilda refused to accept the marriage, and was forced by the Angevins to leave Greece in 1318, with John of Gravina keeping Achaea.

  Robert the Wise’s policy in the east always seemed to be one of benign neglect, and he left members of his family to sort things out. This did not mean that he was unaware of the value of these territories, and in 1311 he proposed giving Achaea and Durazzo to Frederick of Aragon in exchange for Sicily, perhaps because the Angevins were not currently ruling Achaea directly. Robert offered Philip of Taranto 70,000 ounces of gold to recompense him, and the proposal was promoted by the Angevins until 1316, although Frederick never really seems to have considered accepting it.28

  Philip of Taranto died in 1331, and his right to Achaea plus Catherine’s claim to the Latin Empire passed to their son Robert of Taranto. John of Gravina objected to this counterclaim to what he viewed as his territory of Achaea, but he was persuaded in 1332 to sell Achaea to Robert of Taranto. John was given Durazzo in return, and this territory gave its name to John and his descendants, the Dukes of Durazzo, who would become the rulers of Naples in 1382.

  Before leaving Greece, John had undertaken military operations against various Byzantine territories, which required a great deal of money. As usual, John raised loans with Florentine bankers, in this case from the house of Acciaiuoli. The security for his loans consisted of several fortresses, and when John left Greece he ceded them to the Accaiuoli, who duly took charge of them and became increasingly active in Greece. They proved more effective than most other powers by virtue of having enough money to hire mercenaries.29

  Catherine of Valois-Courtenay maintained a much keener interest in Greece than her husband or brothers-in-law, and in Naples she began to work with the representatives of the house of Acciaiuloi. In particular she befriended Niccolo Acciaiuoli, who managed the fortresses in Greece forfeited by John of Gravina. Niccolo was knighted in 1335 and received additional territory in Achaea, where he and his family would become the dominant power on behalf of the Angevins until the 1360s. However, Niccolo played an even more important role in Naples, of which we will hear more shortly.

  The story of Morea takes us beyond Robert’s reign, when the history of Naples and Hungary became completely intertwined, so we must catch up with Hungarian affairs, where Carobert’s reign had also flourished. Hungary will loom so large for the Angevins in the 14th century that we must take a moment to consider its history. The situation in Hungary in the late 13th and early 14th centuries was shaped by the Mongol invasions of the 13th century.

  Hungary and the Mongols

  The Mongols burst on the scene in the 13th century, and if they were like nothing that Europe had experienced in the memory of anyone living, they were very much like the repeated waves of invasions at the end of the Roman Empire, and which had continued with the Magyars themselves, who after terrorizing southern Germany and northern Italy had settled down to form the kingdom of Hungary.30 However, the Mongol Empire was so vast and the Mongols themselves had become so sophisticated through their long contact with China, that they conducted themselves as conquerors rather than nomads. It was their practice to send an ultimatum to each new land before they attacked, demanding its inhabitants’ submission. King Béla IV of Hungary received such an ultimatum, and although he would later be criticized for not preparing for the onslaught that followed, other rulers such as Frederick II had also received these communications from the Mongols and ignored them.

  Béla was not as lucky as they were. The Mongols invaded in 1241, with one group attacking Poland and defeating all the forces ranged against it, then moving on to Hungary to join the rest of the Mongol army. Béla led his own army to meet them, and given the mobile nature of the Mongols, he chose to surround his force with carts to limit potential avenues of attack. The Mongol commander Batu contemptuously described how the Hungarians ‘closed themselves in a narrow pen in the manner of sheep’; the Mongols surrounded them and slaughtered the Hungarian soldiers with arrows.

  Béla escaped from the battle and tried to rally support, but the conflict between Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX meant no one in the Empire or Italy had any interest in helping him. The Mongols were unopposed in Hungary and inflicted unimaginable devastation: ‘In this year’, noted an Austrian annalist under the year 1241, ‘the kingdom of Hungary, which had existed for 350 years, was destroyed by the army of the Tatars.’31 They continued their conquest in 1242, but then something utterly inconceivable happened: the Mongols simply left. The Mongol Great Khan Ögedei, who succeeded Genghis Khan, had di
ed at the end of 1241, and when this news reached the Mongols in Hungary they were required to return to Mongolia for the election of a new Great Khan.

  Although the Mongols had gone, Béla would not risk being caught unawares again. Hungary had not had a social structure like that of other countries in Western Europe before the 13th century. Noble status in Hungary had never been linked to military service, and so ideals of knighthood, castle-holding and chivalry had not developed as in France or England. In Hungary, noble status was attained by owning land freely rather than as a tenant of another, so many of the ‘nobles’ in Hungary would simply have been considered wealthy peasants in the rest of Europe. This lack of a firmly established class of soldiers had been one of the reasons for the defeat by the Mongols, and the lack of castles had also hindered resistance after the battle. Béla initiated a programme of castle building and distributed additional land to nobles on condition that they provide military service, thus establishing a class of knights as in the rest of Europe. This is analogous to what we saw in Anjou and other border lands in the 10th and 11th centuries, when land grants were made to local leaders so they could build fortified positions and defend their borders against the Normans, creating local strongmen like the Count of Anjou.

  Naturally this policy in Hungary led to the same situation that it had in France in the 11th century, and England during the civil war between Matilda and Stephen: royal authority waned as local leaders firmly ensconced themselves in their fortified manors and castles, and by the 14th century were asserting their independence. Like Louis VI or Henry II, Carobert reasserted royal rights and began to reclaim revenues and estates, and entered into a protracted war with his nobles. Although he had already faced ten years of struggle merely to be crowned, Carobert faced another decade of intermittent warfare before finally prevailing against the nobles in 1323. As a sign of his victory, Carobert founded a new royal residence at Visegrad to isolate him from the turbulent people of Buda. Carobert recognized that 1323 was his pivotal year, and manufactured a new seal and revoked previous grants to confirm that his authority was now supreme.32