As a further expression of his good will and sincerity, Robert then graciously invited the king of Hungary to be his guest at the Castel Nuovo to celebrate the marriage of six-year-old Andrew to seven-year-old Joanna in a spirit of family unity and amicability.
Carobert and Andrew left Hungary for Naples in June 1333 accompanied by an impressively vast retinue of high-ranking Hungarian barons and churchmen. The queen and her eldest son, Crown Prince Louis, remained at home. Elizabeth’s father, Wladyslaw, had just died, and Carobert needed his wife at home to help support her brother Casimir’s ascension to the throne of Poland.
Arrangements for the journey were managed by Carobert’s Florentine bankers, the Bardi and Peruzzi families, who, with their rivals the Acciaiuolis, comprised the richest and most successful super-companies in Italy. No expense was spared to ensure appropriately luxurious conveyances and provisions. The royal entourage traveled through Croatia to the Adriatic and crossed by ship. Having no choice but to submit to this compromise, the empress of Constantinople made the best of it by lending one of her fleetest vessels, a galley equipped with 120 oarsmen, to help ferry the king and his party across the sea. The royal luggage, which included more than two hundred horses, came by separate passage. “Truly the Angevins traveled more handsomely than emperors,” observed a later scholar.
Carobert and Andrew landed at the port city of Vieste, on the eastern coast of the kingdom of Naples, on July 31, 1333. There they were greeted by John, duke of Durazzo, the most senior prince at court, along with a party of suitably eminent Neapolitan nobles whom Robert the Wise had commissioned to escort the Hungarians to the western coast of the kingdom. To mark the seriousness and splendor of the occasion, in a gesture of exceptional hospitality, the king of Naples himself rode out to meet his nephew and great-nephew halfway, near Melfi, to accompany them personally to the capital. The procession, Neapolitan and Hungarian alike, swept majestically into Naples on September 18, 1333, to the delight of the crowds that had gathered to get a glimpse of the two sovereigns and their magnificent trains.
The king of Hungary no doubt retained fond memories of his childhood in southern Italy, but nothing could have prepared his son or his retainers for the grandeur, opulence, and sophistication that was the kingdom of Naples under Robert the Wise. “Italy, as always, presents a somewhat distinct case since she was in essence the fashion leader of the world and the model for luxurious style.” The teeming metropolis was filled with merchants and diplomats from what must have seemed to be every quarter of the known world. The heady scent of exotic spices like clove and nutmeg hung in the air, and the banquet tables proffered unfamiliar foods like figs and eel. An astonishing array of riches was on display: precious jewels glittering in ornate Byzantine settings; ivory combs imported from Alexandria and carved by Parisian masters; exquisite white soap produced with olive oil from Castile; the rarest Chinese silks, damasks, linens, and brocades, brilliantly multicolored and gorgeously patterned in intricate designs depicting flowers and birds, and embroidered with gold and silver thread such as “could only be afforded by emperors, kings, popes and their courtiers, or by bishops and princes.” The kingdom of Hungary was geographically larger than the kingdom of Naples, but it was far from established shipping routes and no match for its counterpart in terms of population. The number of people living in the twin towns of Buda and Pest, which during the fourteenth century represented the two largest metropolitan boroughs in Hungary (they would not be consolidated into a single entity for centuries), would not reach twenty thousand for another hundred years. Moreover, the leading members of the Hungarian aristocracy spent the majority of their time on remote estates carved out of forests. To walk suddenly into a magnificent capital of one hundred thousand souls, the cultural and mercantile crossroads of east and west, north and south, must have been bewildering.
Carobert’s barons were further dazzled by the elegant manners and carefree lifestyle of the Neapolitan court. Robert’s extravagant establishment at the Castel Nuovo boasted nearly four hundred domestics. One hundred and four horsemen were on hand to accompany the king on his processions and twelve mule drivers saw to his luggage and other supplies. Forty-two valets and twenty-two demi-valets were on hand to see to the sovereign’s every need. The kitchen was crowded with sauciers, pastry cooks, a green grocer, and porters for wood and water. Two servants watched over the tablecloths, and the henhouse had its own keeper. The household staff included carpenters, cleaners, doctors, chamber men and women, copyists of manuscripts and translators of Greek. Twenty-four chaplains and clerics oversaw the King’s Chapel, and a lion tamer helped out at the menagerie. During their stay, the Hungarians were feted in a manner commensurate to the loftiness of the occasion, but which very probably seemed to them scandalously decadent. Boccaccio was at the court and left detailed descriptions of the entertainments and diversions in which the grand knights and ladies of Naples indulged during the long summer days. Of society life at Baia, for example, a favorite spot of the nobility during the hot weather, Boccaccio wrote:
There more than anywhere else even the most chaste women forget their feminine modesty and seem to take more liberties on all occasions… For the most part, time is spent in idleness, and when it is spent more actively, women, either alone or in the company of young men, speak of love; there people consume nothing but delicacies, and the finest old vintage wines strong enough not only to excite the sleeping Venus but also, if she were dead, to bring her back to life inside every man, and those who have tried the power of the baths know to what extent their beneficial effects also contribute to this. There the beaches, the lovely gardens, and every other place always resound with festivities, novel games, most graceful dances, music, and love songs composed, sung, and played by young men and by young women as well… In some places an extremely desirable sight appeared before the young men’s eyes: beautiful women covered by sheer, silky tunics, barefooted, and with bare arms, walking in the water, picking sea shells from the hard rock, and as they bent in their task they revealed the hidden delights of their ripe bosoms.
The Neapolitan aristocracy, particularly members of the royal family like Catherine of Valois and Agnes of Périgord, although forced to accept the arrangement with Hungary, were distinctly displeased by it, and not only because it prevented one of their own sons from marrying Joanna. An ugly ethnic prejudice also colored their opposition to this marriage. Andrew was only a second son, and his mother was the daughter of a Polish king. Many of the future king’s attendants were native Hungarians who dressed differently, behaved differently, even smelled differently. Their appearance and general unfamiliarity with the formal customs and refined manners of their hosts put the Hungarians at a disadvantage in that haughty society; privately, Andrew and his retinue were patronizingly dismissed as barbarians. That all of Eastern Europe was stereotyped in this manner by the cultural and political elite of Italy and France is underscored by a letter from Petrarch to the archbishop of Prague, in which the Italian scholar referred to a visit he had once made to the imperial court in Bohemia. “I recall,” wrote Petrarch, “how courteously you [the archbishop] repeatedly said to me, ‘I pity you, O friend, for having come among barbarians.” Likely in recognition of these deep cultural divisions, Robert asked Carobert to leave Andrew in Naples after the signing of the engagement papers, to be brought up with Joanna at the royal court. This seems to have been an attempt to ameliorate the problem by familiarizing the young prince with the habits of the kingdom.
The marriage ceremony, coupled with the investiture of Andrew with the duchy of Calabria and the principality of Salerno (formerly denied to his father), took place on September 27, 1333. The magnitude of the interests at stake was reflected in the heightened degree of pomp and splendor that accompanied this affair. The actual event was preceded by days of stirring jousts and sumptuous feasts. Ambassadors from all over Italy were invited; Florence alone sent 150 of its most prominent citizens to the exalted proceedings. Unlike his
1330 assembly naming Joanna heir to the throne, Robert the Wise made sure that this time each and every member of the royal family along with the whole of Neapolitan elite society were on hand to witness his granddaughter’s marriage to the king of Hungary’s son. The illustrious guests arrived on jeweled caparisoned horses, attired in the finest costumes that the wealth of the kingdom could afford, and the great hall of the Castel Nuovo was filled with a riot of silks, gold, and precious gems. Robert and Sancia appeared in gorgeous robes of azure emblazoned with fleur-de-lis. There was in this deliberately elaborate spectacle an element of intimidation. If doubt, ambition, and disloyalty could be stamped out by a show of prodigious ornamentation, Robert would do it.
At the center of this stunning tableau stood a little boy and girl of six and seven, respectively. Perhaps Andrew had some small idea of what it meant to be a knight and thought that was what was happening when he knelt before this strange man, the king of Naples, and did homage for his lands; but if so, he confused the ceremony in which he was so intimately involved. Similarly Joanna, a bejeweled gold diadem formerly belonging to her step-grandmother perched atop her head in imitation of her elders (for which Sancia had been reimbursed with 450 ounces of gold by Robert), was still too young to fully comprehend the role she played as she did obeisance before that august assembly and listened to her grandfather sermonize on the sanctity of the marriage rite. They could not know, this childish pair, that when, during the ceremony, they exchanged vows and a chaste kiss, as they were instructed to do by their relatives, they had committed themselves to each other for the rest of their lives. They were innocent of the motives for the solemn occasion to which they had been invited; innocent of the hope for the future they represented to Robert and Carobert; innocent, too, of the bitterness and jealousy their union inspired within their families.
Trust was hardly the prevailing emotion at work among the hard-eyed spectators appraising this scene, however. The sixteenth-century Italian historian, Angelo de Costanzo, one of the earliest scholars of these events, reported that the empress of Constantinople and her sons, the princes of Taranto, and John and Agnes, duke and duchess of Durazzo, and their sons, in conformity with their sovereign’s wishes, made an especially impressive appearance at the betrothal. But their magnificence created the opposite effect to that which Robert had intended. It was interpreted as a form of aggression, a statement of social superiority, and a show of the veiled power attendant on their high rank. They knew well that six years would pass before this marriage could even be consummated, and at least another eight before Joanna would be old enough to rule. They could afford to wait.
And so the oligarchs of Taranto and Durazzo observed the ceremony they had been required to attend and participated in the ritual banquet following the formalities. They were present as well to bid their royal visitor Carobert farewell on his journey home. The succession crisis in Poland demanded his immediate attention, obliging the king of Hungary to set off soon after the rite had ended and the papers were signed, leaving the care of his son, the future king consort, to his Neapolitan relations.
CHAPTER IV
A Royal Apprenticeship
Carobert’s abrupt departure in October 1333 signaled an end to the wedding festivities. The houses of Taranto and Durazzo resumed their sharp negotiations over the ownership of Achaia. Catherine, especially, seems to have subordinated her opposition to her niece’s arranged marriage in order to focus once again on the acquisition of an eastern empire. Andrew, now duke of Calabria, and his impressive household staff, composed of nearly sixty people, including his childhood nurse, Isabelle the Hungarian, settled without incident into rooms at the Castel Nuovo.
Joanna’s upbringing proceeded unhindered by either her marriage or her new title (formerly her mother’s) of duchess of Calabria. She continued to share a household and rooms with her younger sister, Maria, as she had before Andrew’s arrival. Sancia persisted in her efforts to inculcate the future queen of Naples with the precepts of her own religious vision. Joanna arose each morning, washed her face and hands, and attended Mass along with Maria in the Castel Nuovo’s private chapel. At some point during the day, the young duchess received religious instruction in the company of her grandmother and her confessor; presumably, this is also where she learned her letters by reading a psalter, the preferred manner of instruction in the Middle Ages. Her grandmother instilled in her a deep spirituality as well as a lifelong devotion to charity. Even as a little girl, Joanna was known for her concern for the poor, generously distributing handfuls of coins whenever she traveled through the city to visit her parents’ tombs at the church of Santa Chiara and, together with Sancia, washing the feet of beggars at the Feast of Maundy during Holy Week.
But religious training was only one aspect of Joanna’s life at court. As befit her station, the future queen of Naples grew up wrapped in the luxurious trappings of royalty, surrounded by courtiers and servants. It was expected that the daughters of all the highest-born Neapolitan families would be attached to the royal court, and so Joanna and Maria between them shared some twenty-four ladies-in-waiting. The two little girls also had their own kitchen staff, including a sommelier, a servant each for the sauce and the soup, and even a special valet specifically assigned to the orchard—the new duchess was apparently very fond of quince jam. When she rode out in procession, Joanna was accompanied by two guards on horseback and a page in livery. She slept on a bed covered in red and green satin, and her saddle was overlaid in red velvet brocaded with peacocks and her parents’ coat-of-arms. Even as a young child, the future queen wore velvet gowns of deep purple stitched with fleur-de-lis of silver thread, which identified her instantly, even from a distance, as royalty.
For recreation, she gave herself up to the pleasures of the court. The Castel Nuovo was renowned for its gardens, and Joanna and Maria played in the shade of the trees and amid the profusion of flowers and fountains. The children learned to ride early. When Joanna was a toddler, her grandfather had given her a wonderful wooden horse carved in imitation of an Arab steed, complete with a saddle similar in fashion to those used by Saracen princes. Later, she and Maria had a stable of their own mounts. Hunting was popular in Naples, even among ladies, who used bows and arrows in addition to hunting dogs and falcons. Once cornered, the game was ensnared by nets. In hot weather Joanna, her sister, their cousins, and other children of the nobility went for boat rides and picnics. The culture of Naples worshipped youth and beauty. Winsome Joanna made an appealing impression on her subjects. Boccaccio was much taken with the royal family and the delights of aristocratic life in Naples during Joanna’s youth, and left detailed descriptions of their days:
It often happened that because of the very hot weather brought by the season many women… took to the sea on a very swift galley in order to pass the time more pleasantly; we plowed through the waves, singing and playing musical instruments, searching for remote rocks and caverns naturally carved into the mountains and most inviting with their shade and fresh air… When we reached the place we were seeking and occupied a broad stretch for our amusement, following our own desires, we went to look around, now at one group of young men and young women and then at another, because every little rock or beach even slightly protected from the sun by the mountain’s shadow was full of them… In many places around there one would see the whitest of tables spread so beautifully and so preciously decorated that the mere sight of them could arouse appetite even in the most indifferent person, and elsewhere people could be seen having their morning meal, since it was already that time, and we or anyone else passing by were cheerfully invited to join their pleasure.
Evenings were spent at banquets with music and dancing. Robert the Wise patronized artists of all types: painters, musicians, troubadours, and storytellers were constant presences at the Castel Nuovo. The royal court showed a taste for theater—the records show that in June 1335 the king paid a group of Apulian actors six tarins (small gold coins) to put on a play. As s
he got older, Joanna participated in these amusements. The only real difference the duchess’s marriage made in her life was that now she and Maria sometimes had to include this strange boy, her cousin and husband, Andrew, in their games and various diversions.
Andrew’s situation was very different from his wife’s. A child of six, he had been left with strangers, far from his family. Instead of affection and intimacy, Andrew had luxury: His rooms were sumptuously appointed and hung with banners depicting his family’s coat of arms, and he had his own household staff, even grander than Joanna’s; his father had made sure of that before heading back to Hungary. When Andrew rode out, he was accompanied by eighteen horsemen. He had three sommeliers, a furrier, a doctor, a surgeon, and a large and impressively costly kitchen staff—but no parents, siblings, or friends. As a mark of respect for his rank, Robert assigned a number of high-ranking Neapolitan and Provençal barons to help supervise and advise the new duke of Calabria, but since Andrew spoke neither Italian nor Provençal, it is not clear how much use they were to him. Occasionally Joanna or one of her younger cousins played marbles with him (they must have gambled on the outcome, because the accounts mention that one month he owed Joanna three tarins in compensation) but in general Andrew felt out of place.
His discomfort led to surliness and rudeness of behavior, the not-unnatural response of a misunderstood and unhappy little boy. His private suite did no better. The native Neapolitans did not hide their general disdain for the Hungarians, who reacted by holding themselves aloof and withdrawing into their own small society. The court soon realized it needed a strategy for assimilating the duke of Calabria to his new surroundings. To this end, a special tutor and confessor, paid at the goodly rate of four ounces of gold a year, was attached to Andrew’s household in 1336. Since responsibility for Andrew’s education, like that of Joanna and Maria, fell to Sancia, it was she who made the appointment. Not surprisingly, the queen assigned a Spiritual Franciscan by the name of Friar Robert to the position.
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