Even an environment as sexually permissive as court life in Naples apparently had its limits. Charles’s and Maria’s behavior scandalized the kingdom. Worse, it goaded the house of Taranto to drop its diplomatic effort in favor of a strategy centered on armed conflict. Louis, Catherine’s second son, who excelled at warfare, organized a small force of friends and their retainers for the purpose of striking back at his cousin Charles. They captured one of the duke of Durazzo’s outlying castles and some of his other property and made plain their intention to continue hostilities. This necessarily prompted Charles and his mother, Agnes, to band together a group of their vassals for the purpose of defense. Within weeks, Naples stood on the brink of civil war.
If she did not realize her mistake in permitting her sister’s engagement to Charles before, Joanna knew it now. She refused to recognize the sham wedding, denied her sister her dowry, and wrote at length to the pope, complaining bitterly about Agnes’s and Charles’s conduct and the insult they had perpetrated on her family. She insisted that the papacy reverse its earlier decision and annul the marriage. She remonstrated vehemently with her sister, and when Charles and Maria remained defiant, switched her allegiance to Catherine. The king of France, too, wrote to Clement VI demanding an explanation and seeking compensation for the damage to his sister’s interests in Naples. Even the queen mother of Hungary, hedging her bets, weighed in with a letter expressing her extreme displeasure that a dispensation had been issued in direct contradiction to her kingdom’s original, papal-approved marriage contract with Naples—after all, by that document, if Joanna died, Maria was obligated to marry Andrew in her place.
Under the circumstances, Clement’s two dicta about always making everybody happy were put to the test. The pontiff did his best to placate the various parties involved, chiefly by telling a different story to each. On May 29, 1343, he wrote angrily to Sancia and Joanna that he was annoyed with their response to Maria’s marriage since “we have granted a dispensation for this union on account of the benefit to be expected from it.” Ten days later, in reaction to yet another irate letter from Joanna, he softened his language significantly and, in an obvious attempt to achieve a paternal tone, asked her to forgive Charles and Maria, referring to the marriage as an impetuous action undertaken “by reason of their tender years.” (Charles was twenty.) The pope continued to Joanna: “You, as her only sister, nourished and educated beneath the same roof, should palliate these things so imprudently done and guide her [Maria] back to the path of honor and favor.” To Maria he wrote: “The marriage did please and does please us, but it would please us more but for these sinister occurrences. Appease Joanna advisedly.” Elizabeth of Hungary received a disingenuous epistle (a variation of which was also dispatched to Philip VI of France): “As to the arrangement of king Robert that his two granddaughters should be united to two of your sons, we have never counteracted it; but we did concede to Charles, duke of Durazzo, a dispensation of a general sort, by which he could marry any noble lady… no especial person, however, being named therein. Under this dispensation, we being entirely unaware [of the duke of Durazzo’s intention], he married the second daughter of Charles, duke of Calabria [Maria].”
In the end, Cardinal Talleyrand was forced to send his own chamberlain to Naples, charging him with the dual task of settling the controversy in his nephew’s favor and securing from his sister the promised bribe of twenty-two thousand florins. The chamberlain, aided by the fact that Maria was by this time noticeably pregnant, so Joanna really had no choice but to recognize the marriage, succeeded admirably in both instances. On July 14, 1343, an agreement was reached whereby Charles, in exchange for settling some of his own lands on his bride, was officially accepted as Maria’s husband by Joanna’s government. Maria’s position as successor to the throne in the event that Joanna died childless was also formally reaffirmed by the royal court at this time. Catherine and her family were compensated for being outmaneuvered by a substantial cash settlement to Robert of Taranto drawn from funds in the royal treasury. Similarly, Joanna consented to pay Maria’s considerable dowry, although in fact the queen of Naples held up the payment of this money to her sister for years, an indication, perhaps, of the deep distrust she had developed for her new brother-in-law and his family. Agnes, by contrast, having emerged the victor in this contest of wills, paid her brother’s courier promptly and included in her return package to Talleyrand a long, highly flattering letter, thanking him profusely for the many services he had provided to her family.
Agnes’s success did not come without a further price, however. Whatever goodwill the duchess of Durazzo had built up with the new queen before this incident was destroyed by her perfidy. After the agreement in July, Joanna began a policy of deliberately embracing counselors outside the Durazzo circle, particularly Robert of Cabannis, another of Philippa the Catanian’s sons, and Charles of Artois, Robert the Wise’s illegitimate son. Both men were promoted and rewarded with large salary increases in order to ensure their loyalty to the queen. The Durazzos found themselves shunned from the avenues of power by these new political favorites, and even Agnes’s old ally Sancia could not provide them their former access. Although Joanna did not blame her grandmother for the debacle of Maria’s marriage as she did Agnes, the outcome did teach the younger woman not to rely on Sancia’s political acumen.
Having to navigate the dark waters of internecine rivalry, international intrigue, and near civil war in the first year of one’s reign would have taxed the resources of any new ruler, let alone one who was only seventeen. But Maria’s marriage, for all its deeper political implications, turned out to be just the warm-up. Less than two weeks after Joanna’s formal recognition of Maria’s marriage, a challenge of even greater magnitude abruptly materialized in Naples. On July 25, 1343, a procession of some four hundred Hungarian noblemen, knights, and courtiers, accompanied by their respective equipment and retainers, paraded solemnly into the capital city. At the head of this formidable assembly sat Joanna’s mother-in-law, Elizabeth, dowager queen of Hungary.
Elizabeth’s sudden descent upon her son and daughter-in-law had been prompted by disturbing reports of the deteriorating political climate in southern Italy. The pope had yet to revise the terms of Robert’s will in Andrew’s favor despite strong pressure from Hungary to do so. The queen mother was aware that this hesitation, coupled with the obvious influence of Cardinal Talleyrand, as reflected by the marriage of Maria to Charles of Durazzo, was an indication that her son’s coronation was by no means assured. Members of Andrew’s household had also apprised the dowager queen of the many factions jostling for power at the Neapolitan court and the inferiority of her son’s position relative to that of his wife. Frustrated by the failure of her agents to reverse these disquieting trends, Andrew’s mother had come to Naples determined to evaluate firsthand the nuances of the political climate and to alleviate the obstacles to her son’s ascension to power. An experienced professional, Elizabeth made no secret of the manner in which she proposed to accomplish her ends. More intimidating than her entourage was the arsenal of specie accompanying the queen mother on her journey. According to the Hungarian chronicler Thuróczy, Elizabeth had taken the precaution of bringing along “for her expenses” some twenty-seven thousand marks in silver and a further twenty-one thousand marks in gold (“corresponding to 1,449,000 florins but presumably in bars”), not to mention a wagon half full of florins. From the astounding quantity of this potential bribe, estimated to represent some two or three years’ worth of Hungarian mining output, it may be inferred that Elizabeth had some idea of what she was up against.
Almost from the moment she set foot on Italian soil at the port of Manfredia on the Adriatic, the queen mother of Hungary was aware of the awkward status her son occupied in his adopted kingdom. When, as a matter of courtesy, Andrew had ridden out to Benevento to escort his mother to her guest quarters at the Castel Nuovo, he was pointedly not accompanied by his wife. Instead, Joanna, dressed formally
in her robes of state and wearing her crown as befit a sovereign welcoming an official foreign dignitary, received her mother-in-law several days later at Somma, just outside the capital city. These arrangements were entirely reflective of the royal couple’s everyday existence. Except for important state ceremonies and religious holidays, Andrew almost never saw his wife. They took separate holidays—if he went to Salerno, she went to Resina, for example—prayed at separate churches, rode out with different people. Even when family obligation demanded a joint visit, as when Robert of Taranto had fallen ill at the beginning of the summer, Andrew inquired solicitously after his cousin’s health on June 26 while Joanna waited until June 30. There are no records of the number of nights the couple spent together, but it seems likely that, after the initial consummation, Joanna felt that she had done her duty and contrived to keep her lord and master at arm’s length in this activity, as in all others, as much as possible. Evidence indicates that Andrew had to ask permission to enter his wife’s bedroom.
Nor was a lack of intimacy the only peculiar aspect of their relationship. Although everyone in Naples, including Joanna, referred to Andrew as “the king” (a gimmick designed to gull the Hungarians into believing that all was as it should be), it was clear that he was, in fact, no such thing. He had never been officially crowned, nor by this time did it seem likely that he would be. He had no connection with the government and did not seem to have been burdened with any responsibilities, even in the matter of expenses. Joanna paid for the upkeep of his household, right down to the purchase of knives for the kitchen and roses to perfume the soap. She bought him his shirts and doublets and paid for his trips to the seashore. He owed her for the silver he carried in his purse and had to account for his spending whenever he went over his allowance. And yet, before his mother’s arrival, there is no record of Andrew’s objecting to this arrangement, and it is not difficult to see why. He was, after all, only fifteen years old. He had leisure, fine clothes, and fast horses; he lived in a kingdom with many avenues for amusement. He had grown up in Joanna’s shadow, and by this time was used to it.
His mother, however, had come to Naples to improve his position. She first sought to work through Sancia, but Sancia was ill that summer and deferred in favor of her granddaughter the queen. Joanna listened patiently to her mother-in-law’s lectures and did not trouble to disagree with her, hoping to weather the visit by diplomacy. Elizabeth’s arguments, as later employed by her envoys at Avignon, have survived:
There would be no downside in asking the Holy Father that her [Joanna’s] husband be officially granted the title of King, a title she already used for him. Didn’t she [Joanna] also agree that, for the good of the kingdom as well as for her own peace of mind, it would be preferable that her husband assist her in sharing the burden of power? Without even considering the question of marital harmony, there exist issues that their subjects would prefer to see a man tackle rather than a woman; and in the event foes had to be pushed back, this would be a matter for the husband more than for the wife. In the end, she [Joanna] risked nothing in inviting her husband to lead the kingdom. All that would be needed would be to set limits that he should not infringe upon, and to obtain the necessary guaranties regarding this.
Joanna’s outward show of consideration did not, however, fool her mother-in-law. The dowager queen understood that her son’s wife very much approved the current arrangement and would do nothing to expand her husband’s authority in the kingdom. Nor could Elizabeth find the means of circumventing Joanna’s purpose by negotiating with one of the other branches of her family. The queen mother of Hungary soon came to the conclusion that bribing either the Taranto or Durazzo family (or both) was a waste of time, as the one branch was certain to oppose whatever the other supported no matter how attractive the financial incentive. But in short order Elizabeth identified an alternative. The dowager queen dispatched her cash wagons and sacks of gold to a place where she knew she could get value for her money: the papal court at Avignon. The bribe was accompanied by a prestigious delegation that included a bishop, a high-ranking Hungarian count, and Andrew’s cousin the dauphin of Vienne, all charged by Elizabeth with the task of convincing the pope to crown her son king and to vest him with at least some of the powers of sovereignty. Then, having satisfied herself that she had done all she could to promote Andrew’s interests in Naples, the queen mother and the remainder of her entourage took off to Rome for a few months’ sojourn.
The timing of this intercession could not have been more unfortunate. The Hungarian delegation appeared at Avignon with their money, complaints, and demands just as Clement VI, finding the volume of correspondence directed at him from Naples since the death of King Robert to be wearily copious, was weighing the advantages of assigning a legate to the kingdom. The appeal of having a representative on the scene, empowered to act in the pontiff’s name and so save Clement from having to respond personally to the entreaties of the various Neapolitan parties, was obvious. With the arrival of Elizabeth’s emissaries, it became irresistible. Here was yet another faction clamoring to be heard, crowding the halls of the already overcrowded papal palace, demanding an audience, pouring forth a litany of grievances, all of which had to be duly recorded and investigated, and the various principals by degrees cajoled, flattered, or reprimanded according to circumstance or temperament. Clement consigned the Hungarians to his cardinals and made known his intention to procure a legate for Naples.
This news was communicated rapidly to Joanna’s court. The specter of having her reign and kingdom compromised by the introduction of a papal legate who would rule in her place was repugnant. Aside from the humiliation of being publicly stripped of her legitimate sovereign authority by the pope, there was the very real threat that the legate, whoever he might be, would tip the fragile balance of power that currently existed at the Neapolitan court away from Joanna’s family and toward her husband’s. Even if this did not occur, at the very least, Joanna and her subjects knew that the assignment of a legate would result in wide-ranging and significant financial hardship. Papal representatives had a well-deserved reputation for siphoning off as much of a kingdom’s wealth as possible for their own personal use and that of the church. Indeed, this was often the unofficial motive for their appointment. For this reason, legates were abhorred and their rules resisted throughout Italy. Accordingly, on September 5, 1343, after a hurried consultation with the ruling council, Joanna addressed an official petition to the pope, which was presented at the Holy See by Hugo del Balzo, supplemented by a party of Neapolitan advisers, which included two counts and a doctor of civil law, formally protesting the appointment of a legate to her realm on the grounds that it violated the original 1265 agreement between Charles of Anjou and the papacy. This reliance on legal precedent was entirely in keeping with the policies of the previous administration. Joanna knew that, had Robert been presented with a similar imperilment to his rule, he would have handled the situation in precisely the same way.
Unfortunately, the legality of a position in the Middle Ages, however well established, was often undermined by mitigating factors, a category under which Elizabeth’s lucrative offering to the pope unquestionably fell. Nor could Joanna have predicted just how influential Hungarian wealth would be in the coming months. Superstition dictates that misfortune, when it occurs, manifests itself in groups of three. In Joanna’s case, this condition was satisfied in October, when the super-companies began, one by one, to fail.
CHAPTER VI
Papal Politics
The laws of money are as immutable as the laws of nature. Maintaining a successful commercial venture, be it conducted in the twenty-first century or the fourteenth, is a function of the profitability of its underlying business, the ability of management to adapt to changing conditions, and the continued confidence of its investors or depositors, with the first two criteria necessarily influencing the third. The largest of the super-companies, forced by the losses they sustained in the Neapolitan grain
trade to diversify into English wool, found themselves trapped by Edward III’s ever-increasing need for funds to prosecute his war with France. Senior management at these firms, whose partners represented the most sophisticated financial talent the world had yet known, tried desperately to limit their exposure to the English king. Their loans were actually advances against monies due them in trade, or from the taxes or fees assigned them from the royal exchequer. But it took far more time for the super-companies to collect the taxes and fees owed them by the crown than it did for Edward to spend their loans, and once the loans were spent, he wanted more.
The vacillating policies of the Florentine government during the critical period of 1340 to 1343 had only added to the super-companies’ difficulties. Jealous of the emerging economic strength of the neighboring town of Pisa, the commune of Florence had elected to try to solve the problem by declaring war on the city, an expensive undertaking that the Bardi, Peruzzi, and Acciaiuoli partners were obliged to help underwrite. When, in 1341, the war turned against them, the Florentines had solicited Robert the Wise for help, but the old king, preoccupied with the proposed invasion of Sicily under Andrew’s questionable leadership, had failed to send the necessary troops. This had prompted the government of Florence, which until this point had always stood firmly with Naples and the papacy against the Ghibbelines, to appeal to the emperor for military aid in the spring of 1342. Furious, Robert had retaliated by seizing the Neapolitan assets of the super-companies. The pope had followed suit by directing church business routinely handled by the Bardi, Peruzzi, and Acciaiuoli families to other, smaller companies whose politics were reliably pro-Guelph. Although Florence hurried to correct its mistake by canceling its imperial embassy and electing a new leader with unimpeachable Guelphic credentials, the damage was done. Those who had placed deposits with the super-companies clamored to have their money back.
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