The Lady Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  Joanna’s ties to Talleyrand deepened in January 1344, when her sister, Maria, gave birth to a son who lived only a few hours. Pity and grief for the young duchess of Durazzo’s loss reconciled whatever lingering grievances existed between the sisters, and Joanna moved sufficiently closer to her brother-in-law’s family to send Charles of Durazzo’s younger brother Louis to Avignon to support Cardinal Talleyrand in his efforts to quash the Hungarian campaign to have Andrew crowned and a legate appointed. But the new year also brought the resignation of a valuable ally when Sancia abruptly decided to abandon the cares of political office in order to enter the Clarissan convent of Santa Croce.

  The older queen had made no secret of her desire to retire from society and take up religious vows in the past, but her permanent withdrawal on January 21, 1344, almost a year to the day after the death of her husband, represented a victory for the Hungarian party and a validation of their methods. Clement VI’s assignment of a legate to administer the kingdom she and her husband had ruled absolutely since 1309 was a blow from which Sancia did not recover. As there is no evidence of a falling out between Joanna and her grandmother, Sancia likely considered that the matter had been taken out of her hands by the pope’s dissolution of the ruling council. At fifty-eight and failing, Sancia understandably wished to devote herself fully to matters of the spirit; however, in doing so, she left her granddaughter alone to manage a particularly complex and dangerous situation. After Sancia’s withdrawal, among Joanna’s nearest advisers, only her surrogate mother, Philippa the Catanian, remained of the triumvirate that had once ruled Naples.

  If the Hungarians thought that the removal of one of their Neapolitan adversaries would weaken the young queen’s resolve, they were soon disabused of the notion. On January 24, just three days after Sancia entered the convent, Joanna addressed another letter to Clement in which she reaffirmed her position in the strongest possible terms. After advising the pope again to withdraw the legate and resist Hungarian demands to have Andrew crowned king at her expense, she asserted her conviction that she alone was best suited to manage both her husband and her kingdom. “Your Holiness will deign to call to mind kindly my steadfast and immutable purpose not to make over the administration [of the realm of Naples] to my revered lord and husband,” she wrote, “for it must reasonably be understood that there is none living who will strive after his advantage and honor as I shall; and when I know how to arrange our respective affairs, that will be made manifest to all.”

  Persuaded by Joanna’s letters and envoys, Clement compromised. Although he agreed to bestow the title of king on Andrew, promising him in a letter dated January 19, 1344, that he would be crowned along with his wife if both he and Joanna demonstrated true obedience to the legate, the honor was empty. Andrew was very deliberately not given a share in the government of the realm. Instead, on February 3, Clement specified in a letter to Joanna that, while her husband would be crowned with her, only her coronation would be considered blessed by God. The kingdom of Naples, the pope declared, unambiguously for once, belonged to Joanna alone as the rightful heir of King Robert “tanquam vir ejus” (“just as if she were a man”). Then, to ensure there was no confusion on the part of the Hungarians as to his true intent, on February 22 Clement penned a missive to Andrew’s older brother, Louis, king of Hungary, in which the pope explained he was acceding to the Hungarian request that Andrew be crowned king but only in his capacity as Joanna’s husband and under the strict understanding that should Joanna die before an heir was produced, the kingdom would pass to Maria.

  Aware that this decision was a victory for Joanna, Clement sought to soften the blow to Andrew by singling him out for preferential treatment in matters of the spirit. Clement threw in a grab bag of religious favors: Andrew was now allowed to carry his own portable altar when he traveled; he had the right to celebrate Mass before dawn if he so chose; he and a small party of followers were even permitted to enter the cloister of secluded nuns if ever the need to do so arose. Additionally, perhaps as a means of increasing the honorary king’s popularity in his adopted realm, or at least providing a decent turnout at religious festivities, Clement decreed that any Neapolitan subject who attended a church ceremony at which Andrew was present would earn absolution for a year’s worth of sins and an extra forty indulgences. As a final measure of Clement’s desire to compensate the young king fully for the loss of his rule, Andrew, alone in the kingdom of Naples, was allowed to eat meat on fast days.

  The arrival of the letters acquainting the Neapolitan court with the official papal position on the all-important question of the role Joanna’s husband would play in the royal government happened to coincide with the return of Andrew’s mother to the capital. Having completed her tour of Italy, Elizabeth decided to see her son one last time before embarking on the sea voyage home. She could not have chosen a more inauspicious occasion for a return visit. The degree of animosity displayed by the native courtiers toward the Hungarian party, and her son in particular, took her aback. Everyone knew that, as a result of her interference, the royal government was about to be replaced by a legate, and that, further, the dowager queen and her eldest son were actively trying to put Andrew on the throne and had at least partially succeeded.

  Elizabeth was able to experience personally the results of her handiwork when the Hungarian members of Andrew’s household grimly informed her that they had uncovered evidence of plots and intrigues against her son’s life. The queen mother wrote to the pope complaining of the danger and demanding action, but Clement had had enough of Hungarian disgruntlement by this time and likely considered Elizabeth’s letter yet another thrust in her offensive to put her son in power, and so he ignored her warnings. Failing to achieve satisfaction from official channels, Elizabeth then determined once again to take matters into her own hands and announced that she was taking Andrew back to Hungary with her.

  The dowager queen was only dissuaded from carrying through on this resolve by the combined appeals of Joanna, Agnes of Périgord, and Catherine of Valois, surely the first time in the history of the kingdom that these three women had agreed to act in concert on anything. The most likely explanation for this united front was the recognition that if Elizabeth succeeded in removing Andrew from Naples, he would certainly reappear later accompanied by his brother the king and a large Hungarian army, a situation to be avoided at all costs. Domenico da Gravina reported that Joanna was in tears during the interview, although he cast doubt on her motives and those of the empress; only Agnes was portrayed as honestly concerned with Andrew’s rights and welfare.

  Elizabeth’s desire to remove Andrew suggests that he was still being treated as a child, though he would turn seventeen that year. Petrarch, while attributing to him a “lofty mind” (this was after Andrew had sided with the poet in the controversy over the Pipini brothers), nonetheless referred to the prince as a “boy” in a letter to Cardinal Colonna, while Joanna was always denoted as “the Queen.” Clement, too, made this distinction between them. In a later letter to Joanna, the pope, seeking to reconcile the queen of Naples to her husband, commended Andrew, but “his praise sounds like the praise that would be given a child, and shows that the pope considered Andrew as such, even though he was only about twenty months younger than his wife.” At seventeen, Edward III of England had had the energy and presence to overthrow the government of his mother, Queen Isabella, and her consort Roger Mortimer. No one would have dared to suggest taking Edward home for his own good. This adds credence to the idea that Andrew was immature and somewhat backward for his age.

  The Neapolitan strategy worked. Elizabeth allowed herself to be convinced of the court’s good intentions regarding her son, and Andrew stayed. Since the queen mother was hardly a neophyte politically, it may be presumed that she judged Joanna’s emotions and intentions to be genuine. Having secured her purpose, Joanna hastened Elizabeth on her way by commissioning three of her own galleys to take her mother-in-law and her entourage across the Adriatic on
February 25, before the older woman had a chance to change her mind.

  The dowager queen’s tender concern for her son’s welfare did not prevent her from continuing to demand that he share power with his wife. On the contrary, upon her return to Hungary, she and King Louis increased their efforts to pressure the pope to amend his decision regarding Andrew’s right to govern Naples, even though Elizabeth was perfectly aware that it was this very policy that most put her son’s life at risk.

  CHAPTER VII

  Nest of Vipers

  Two months later, the papal legate, Cardinal Aimeric de Châtelus, rode into Naples.

  A career diplomat with a long history of dogged service and equally persistent failure in the employ of the church, Aimeric’s principal utility seems to have been his willingness, at least initially, to be transferred into whatever locality or situation his superiors deemed necessary, however hopeless. His first appointment, more than two decades earlier, had been as rector of Romagna, a particularly turbulent region incorporating the cities of Ravenna and Rimini, where his subjects assiduously ignored his pronouncements and decrees. Aimeric had retaliated by complaining vociferously by letter to the Curia, calling the province “vainglorious” and “always ripe for deceit… its inhabitants are… cunning… and in trickery, supreme in Italy.” In the end, jurisdiction over the province had to be allocated instead to Robert the Wise. Aimeric’s desultory performance did not deter his career; after Romagna, he was promoted to archbishop and, after a series of similarly inept postings, eventually to cardinal. He had been more successful at his most recent task, which was the relatively modest errand of returning to Rimini and Ravenna to wring from their citizens the proceeds of a tax previously imposed by the church. But this sort of bill collecting was hardly preparation for the complex demands of the royal court of Naples.

  If the legate was under any illusions that the queen of Naples had reconciled herself to his presence, he was immediately disabused of the notion. Before he arrived, Joanna had sent a wave of emissaries of ever-increasing rank—first a court official, then two high-ranking members of the baronage, and finally a duke—to intercept Aimeric along his journey and prevent him from entering the kingdom and discharging his orders. Her ambassadors at Avignon, Louis of Durazzo and Cardinal Talleyrand, had given her reason to believe that the legate’s term of office would be fixed to six months, and Joanna wanted Aimeric to delay his arrival until this negotiation had been finalized. But the legate, who had already been accused by the pope of tardiness in possessing himself of his new posting, journeyed so quickly in an effort to clear himself of this charge that he eluded all the queen’s intermediaries. He was at the border in early May, where he took the precaution of tacking a copy of the papal bull officially announcing his appointment to the door of the cathedral at Rieti; by May 12 he was in Capua. Joanna, informed of Aimeric’s imminent arrival only at the last minute, had to scramble to mobilize a welcoming ceremony of sufficient dignity to satisfy protocol. The streets of Capua were hastily hung with silk banners and the usual ornaments, and a makeshift dais knocked together at which the entire royal family, roused from their respective castles and rushed to the city, were sullenly assembled to greet the cardinal. Andrew rode out to meet him at Aversa, and on May 20, 1344, Joanna herself accompanied Aimeric to the monastery of Saint Antonio, just outside the capital city, where permanent lodgings had been prepared for him.

  Taming the powerful factions of the royal court of Naples would have taxed the resources of the most skilled administrator. The situation cried out for the appointment of an individual equipped with imagination, keen judgment, subtlety of manner, and the ability to adapt quickly to fluctuating conditions. Aimeric was patently none of these. He had a functionary’s horror of criticism; his greatest fear was of making a mistake and earning the censure of his superior. Accordingly, he fell back on caution and delay, and a rigid adherence to rules and instructions. The day after his arrival, Joanna came to see him, intending to take privately the odious vow of obedience that the pope had decreed a condition of her vassalage. But Aimeric refused to accept her pledge on the grounds that he had not yet communicated his presence in Naples to the Curia, nor received specific orders regarding his assignment. Frustrated, Joanna returned many times over the next two weeks to try to fulfill this requirement, but “he persists in his inflexibility,” she observed icily in a letter to the pope. Eventually, Aimeric forced both Joanna and Andrew to take the oath of obedience in a very public ceremony in front of the whole court, and even then did not accept their submission until a precise written account of the proceedings had been filled out and sent to Clement for approval. Beginning in this fashion did nothing to improve relations, already strained, between the papal representative and his host kingdom, and Aimeric was made to feel the court’s hostility. Joanna’s family was very good at making other people uncomfortable. In no time at all, Aimeric was writing to the pope begging to be transferred.

  But Clement consoled his legate with forty florins a day, in addition to the ability to draw on Joanna’s treasury for whatever amounts Aimeric deemed necessary to maintain a lifestyle appropriately opulent to his position. The pope also gave the cardinal the right to raise taxes on the clergy and to increase his personal income further by selling temporal and spiritual favors as he saw fit, and Aimeric resigned himself to his task. The next step in the elaborate ritual governing the transition of power from Joanna to the cardinal was for Aimeric to accept the queen’s oath of homage to the church, at which point she would in turn officially recognize church authority over her realm, and the government of Naples would formally pass to the legate. But Joanna fell seriously ill that summer, and the ceremony had to be postponed until August. This delay added to the confusion and unrest in the kingdom, as no one was quite sure who was in charge. The ruling council had been disbanded by the pope’s bull of the previous November; the legate stubbornly refused to take responsibility for Naples until the queen had formally made him an oath of homage; and Joanna herself was incapacitated. During the approximately two-month period of her illness, then, the kingdom effectively functioned without a government.

  That the vacuum created by these conditions would inevitably lend itself to opportunism by the various parties jockeying for power was predictable; that it would be Andrew who would step forward and seize the initiative was not. Nonetheless, on June 24, Andrew took advantage of the unsettled state of the government to order the release of the three incarcerated Pipini brothers, and then, on the afternoon of their liberation, personally knighted them.

  If he had let Genghis Khan out of prison and knighted him, Andrew could not have caused greater controversy. The already delicate balance of power between the varying Neapolitan court factions disappeared completely as members of the nobility who had been recipients of the brothers’ property rushed to ally themselves with other like-minded families against the Pipini. For their part, the Hungarian party instantly gained three intimidating warriors, not to mention all their family members, known associates, and servants as allies. “Being puffed up with triumph, they [the Pipini brothers] began to live luxuriously, riding in royal state, holding jousts, and appearing in the presence of the Queen and Andrew with loftier banners than their own,” Domenico da Gravina observed. Buoyed by his success, Andrew made it clear that those who opposed his coronation could expect retribution. “Sometimes toward the Queen and sometimes toward the magnates he employed threats, which contributed, with other causes, to hasten his cruel and violent death,” Villani observed.

  During this atmosphere of turmoil, Joanna recovered sufficiently to take her oath of homage. On August 28, at a ceremony conducted at the church of Santa Chiara and witnessed by the whole court, Aimeric formally recognized Joanna alone as heir to the kingdom and then accepted command of her government according to his instructions.

  As galling as it must have been for Joanna to lose her rule in so demeaning a fashion, she surely must have taken some satisfaction in wa
tching Aimeric fail so convincingly in her former position. The legate’s first acts were to remove from authority all the members of the ruling council and other respected and powerful courtiers belonging to the old regime, as well as to replace each of the governors of the various provinces in the kingdom with new officials. The old appointees immediately protested their respective demotions; the countryside rebelled against the new nominees; large numbers of citizens used the resulting chaos as an excuse to avoid payment of their taxes; revenues fell; civil salaries went unpaid; violence broke out; banditry increased; the crime rate soared. Open opposition to the legate in the form of letters and complaints censuring Aimeric’s policies flooded the court. The cardinal rebuked transgressors and ordered reprisals, but no one carried out his orders. Joanna herself used the legate’s rule as grounds to refuse to render the pope the yearly Angevin tribute of seven thousand gold florins, claiming, that, as she was no longer in possession of her kingdom, she was no longer under the obligation to pay according to the original contract. This turned out to be an extremely effective argument.