Epilogue
Two months later, Louis of Anjou’s army invaded the kingdom. The duke of Anjou’s journey southward had been prolonged by his decision to avoid Tuscany, and particularly Florence, which still favored Urban in the schism. To protect themselves from attack by the French, the Florentine government had hired John Hawkwood and his men, and Louis, aware of the Englishman’s reputation, had no wish to engage him in battle prior to tackling Charles of Durazzo’s Hungarian forces. So Louis instead went east and took the long, out-of-the-way, Adriatic coast route to Naples, an unfortunate choice that had the dual effect of cutting significantly into provisions while dividing the army from its supply ships, which had been sent by Clement from Provence and were consequently on the Mediterranean. By the time the duke of Anjou finally made it to the northeastern edge of Joanna’s realm, his battalions were already hungry and disease-ridden. Still, on September 17, 1382, he had no difficulty occupying L’Aquila, where he was recognized as king by the local aristocracy. He was in Caserta by October.
But by then Hawkwood’s contract with the Florentines had run out, and Urban was able to hire the English commander for the princely sum of forty thousand florins to fight on Charles of Durazzo’s side against Louis. Hawkwood, accompanied by 2,200 highly experienced, well-fed cavalry, arrived in Naples in November. Hearing of this, and being by this time also aware that Joanna was dead, Louis chose not to march on the capital but instead retreated to Benevento in the interior to make camp for the winter. There, deprived of food and other supplies, sickness and starvation decimated his ranks. “They are all barefoot and nude and in the greatest poverty,” wrote one eyewitness of the invading army. Louis spent Christmas Day composing his will. When his principal ally, the count of Savoy, died of illness in late February 1383, the duke of Anjou broke down and cried.
Cognizant of his advantage, in April 1383, Charles of Durazzo, accompanied by Hawkwood, led an army of some sixteen thousand men toward Benevento to finish off his opponent. Although Louis’ forces were by this time reduced to eight thousand soldiers, of whom only two thousand were mounted, the encounter was not decisive. Instead, the duke of Anjou retreated to Bari, where he had himself crowned king of Naples on August 30, 1383, and called for reinforcements from France. For the next year the realm was split in two, with Louis ruling Apulia and Charles installed in the capital.
With Clement’s help, a new army, led by the powerful French nobleman Enguerrand Coucy, was hastily organized. By July 1384, this force had entered Italy and was ready to assist Louis. But it was too late. The duke of Anjou, weakened along with his men, caught a chill and died at the castle in Bari on September 20, 1384. Relieved of its commander, what remained of the once-mighty French force scattered. Upon hearing the news, Coucy, too, turned his troops around and made for home, leaving the field and the kingdom of Naples to the victorious Charles of Durazzo.
He did not hold it for long. Emboldened by his success, the new king of Naples turned his sights on Hungary. On September 11, 1382, two months after Joanna was murdered, Louis the Great had also died, of a disease similar to leprosy. The day after his burial, Louis’ eleven-year-old daughter, Mary, had been crowned queen, with her mother, Louis’ widow Elizabeth, governing as regent. Many Hungarian nobles were unhappy at the prospect of being ruled by a woman and urged Charles to depose Mary.
In September 1385, Charles heeded their call, left Naples by sea, and landed in Dalmatia. He marched to Buda and called a council of his supporters, who agreeably declared him king. Mary was forced to abdicate, and on December 31, 1385, Charles was crowned sovereign of Hungary, establishing himself at the royal residence at Buda. There, what Louis of Anjou and an army of fifteen thousand warriors had been unable to do, Elizabeth accomplished with dispatch. Feigning motherly warmth and noble family feeling, she waited until the great coronation festivities had passed and everyone had gone home. Then, on February 7, 1386, just thirty-nine days into Charles’s reign, she sent a select band of loyal knights into the castle at Buda to assassinate him. A scuffle ensued in which the new king was severely injured. Elizabeth immediately reestablished her rule, and Charles was taken to Visegrád, where, two weeks later, on February 24, 1386, in a fittingly symmetrical display of medieval retribution, the man responsible for the murder of the queen of Naples died of his wounds.
History has not been kind to, or even honest about, Joanna. Her story, when it is recounted at all, focuses entirely on her notoriety, as the queen who murdered her husband, and not on the many impressive accomplishments of her reign. Only Clement VII, who remained loyal and never forgot that he owed his position and power to her, thought to praise her publicly. “Of all the illustrious women of this world, Joanna, radiant rose among thorns, enfolded us, the whole Roman Church and her subjects in an amazingly sweet scent… She passed on from the misery of this world to the beatitude of God’s kingdom where she lives and reigns and where, despising and mocking her adversaries, she recovers the scepter that has been taken from her and receives her crown among the saint martyrs,” he wrote several years after her death.
But the facts are these. During her long, eventful reign, Joanna held together a large and far-flung dominion, which included Provence and all of southern Italy, and even expanded her rule, however briefly, into Sicily and Piedmont. She was the last medieval ruler to do so; after her death, Provence broke away from the kingdom and was ruled by Louis of Anjou’s heirs, who eventually incorporated the county into France, while Naples came for a short time under the sway of first Charles of Durazzo’s son and then his daughter, before falling in the next century to the crown of Aragon. For more than thirty years, this queen fed the poor and cared for the sick; built churches and hospitals; reduced crime and promoted peace; protected trade and introduced new industry within her borders. She guided her subjects to recovery from the many instances of plague, war, famine, and depression endemic to the second half of the fourteenth century. The odds against her securing her reign were enormous; that she would survive to rule for thirty years impossible. And yet she did. She has earned the right to be remembered for what she was: the last great sovereign in the Angevin tradition, a worthy successor to Charles of Anjou and Robert the Wise.
To this day, there is still no monument or funeral statuary commemorating Joanna I at the church of Santa Chiara, and the ban of excommunication remains in force.
Robert the Wise (kneeling) being crowned by his older brother, St. Louis–a famous scene which never occurred since Louis died in 1297, twelve years before Robert was crowned by Clement V.
The coronation of Pope Clement VII, 1378.
A view of Naples in the Middle Ages including the Castel dell’Ovo on the bay and the Castel Sant’Elmo on the hill.
Illustration from a Hungarian book of saints, called a Legendary, commissioned by Carobert in 1333 and most likely presented to Andrew to further his education while in Naples.
An example of manuscript art created at the court of Naples during the reign of King Robert, a very different aesthetic from Andrew’s Hungarian Legendary.
Distribution of grain in Florence during the famine of 1335. Losses incurred at this time forced the super-companies to look to Edward III and the English wool market for new profits.
Burying victims of plague in 1349.
The Battle of Crécy, 1346.
King John the Good surrenders to the Black Prince in 1356 at the Battle of Poitiers, in an illustration from the Chronicles of Jean Froissart.
Two scenes from The Sacrament of Marriage, commissioned by Joanna to ornament the church of Santa Maria Incoronata in the early 1360s. The frescoes were painted by Roberto Oderisio, a disciple of Giotto and Joanna’s court painter.
An illustration of knights jousting for Queen Joanna and the ladies of Naples, from a manuscript produced for Louis of Taranto in the 1350s.
Petrarch appearing to Boccaccio in his sleep.
The Via Veritatis, or Way of Salvation. Joanna, crowned with blond hair, is kneel
ing, third to the inside; beside her is Catherine of Sweden, with Lapa Acciaiuoli on the end in profile. St. Bridget of Sweden is behind her daughter in black.
Joanna, crowned, on her knees and wearing her robe of state (golden Angevin lilies on a blue background), praying to the Madonna and Child for an heir, one of only two surviving images of the queen painted during her lifetime.
Detail of Joanna I.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Because of the destruction of records and the paucity of translated primary source material, The Lady Queen represented by far the most challenging (and rewarding) work of my career. It is no exaggeration to say that this book simply could not have been written without the generous help of some wonderfully talented individuals. First and most important among these is my dear friend Marie-Paule de Valdivia, a native Frenchwoman transplanted to suburban Connecticut, who is responsible for the majority of the translated material appearing here in English for the first time. I knew Marie-Paule was the perfect person for the job from the very first day, some two years ago, when I brought over the dowager queen Elizabeth’s instructions to her papal ambassadors regarding the inferiority of Andrew’s position at the Neapolitan court, and Marie-Paule took one look, laughed, and said “What a mother-in-law! She’s not interfering too much in her son’s marriage!” To Marie-Paule I owe, among her myriad translations presented here, nearly every long passage from the chroniclers Domenico da Gravina and Giovanni Villani; Louis of Hungary’s infuriated missive to Clement VI in which he presents his plan for taking over Naples after his brother’s murder; and Joanna’s extensive letter to Urban V in which she breaks down and confesses James of Majorca’s insanity and ill-treatment of her, and by implication the failure of her third marriage. I may have provided the window by which to view Joanna’s world, but Marie-Paule opened it and let in the air of that time; she brought the voices of the past to life in a way that I never could, and I am eternally grateful to her.
For most of the Latin translations I am indebted to Dr. Clement Kuehn, a classical scholar who teaches at Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut. Despite a full teaching schedule and his own research, Dr. Kuehn always generously and immediately made time for me. Reviewing my pathetic attempts at translation, in the most chivalric manner possible, he unfailingly responded with “Your interpretation is very good, but you might just consider…” Dr. Kuehn is responsible for most of the elegant translations associated with the Chronicon Siculum; for demystifying portions of some of Joanna’s and Clement VI’s letters; and for the knowledgeable rendering of the queen’s laundry list of jewels and enamels purchased for her coronation ceremony with Louis of Taranto in 1352. Hopkins School is exceedingly fortunate to have such an accomplished and gifted classicist as a member of its faculty; I only wish I could have been one of Dr. Kuehn’s students. Thank you again, so much, for all your help.
Also, a special nod to Tobias Wildman Burns, lately of Harvard and the New York International Fringe Festival, for his Latin translation of those lines from De Casibus and the Chronicon Siculum pertaining to the torture of Philippa the Catanian and her granddaughter Sancia immediately after the two were surrendered to Hugo del Balzo in March 1346. Similarly, I am once again, as always, indebted to the staff at the Westport Public Library and particularly to Sue Madeo, the interlibrary loan coordinator, for her valiant efforts on my behalf to secure the loan of dozens of books, many of them obscure and valuable, from research libraries. Having the opportunity to live with a source book for three weeks at a time, rather than simply take notes on it for a few hours a day at a distant library, made understanding the material so much easier and helped enormously when it finally came time to write. And to Wendy Kann, who took time away from her own writing to read the manuscript, and who was always there to bounce ideas off of, and to offer insight, advice, and unfailing encouragement, a profound thank you.
Several of the beautiful color illustrations for The Lady Queen came from Italy, and I want to emphasize how extremely grateful I am for the aid I received in obtaining images and permissions for this project. I am especially proud and thrilled to have been able to reproduce here the image of Joanna that appears in the lunette above the chapel door of the Certosa di San Giacoma, a fourteenth-century monastery in Capri. There are only two surviving portraits of Joanna painted in her lifetime, and this one is by far the more detailed, defined, and prominent. The other image of Joanna, also reproduced here, may be found in Via Veritatis (Way of Salvation) by Andrea da Firenze in the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, but in that fresco the queen is half hidden by a crowd of familiars and other medieval figures. (The image on the cover of The Lady Queen is not Joanna, but is meant to evoke her story, time, and aura, particularly the Byzantine nature of her court.) To include the Certosa di San Giacoma illustration, it was necessary to have a high-quality photograph taken, a daunting endeavor that would simply not have been possible without the active and enthusiastic intervention of Fawn Wilson White, international chairman of the Friends of the Certosa di Capri; Dr. Sara Oliviero, assistant director of the Certosa and special assistant to Professor Nicola Spinosa, superintendente speciale per il patrimonio storico, artistico, etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della Citta di Napoli; and Annalisa Ciaravola at Pedicini Luciano. I am also indebted to Professor Spinosa for granting me permission to reproduce this unique and exceptional image.
A special photo also had to be taken of the four miniatures from Andrew’s book of saints. Twenty-six leaves of this manuscript, known officially as MS M.360, Hungarian Anjou Legendary, are held at the Pierpont Morgan Library, and I want to thank Heidi Hass, head of the Reference Collection; Carolyn Vega, cataloger for medieval and renaissance manuscript images, reading room assistants Sylvie Merian and Maria Isabel Molestina T.; and Eva Soos, photography and rights, for helping me with my research and for making it possible for me to reproduce this image for The Lady Queen. I am especially grateful to the curator Dr. William Voelkle, head of the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, for allowing me access to the original illustrations in the reading room. For those interested, images from all twenty-six leaves of MS M.360 are now available through Corsair on the Morgan Library Web site (http://corsair.morganlibrary.org).
My deepest gratitude as well to all the people at Walker & Company who worked so hard to bring this project to fruition: to Amy King for her gorgeous cover design; Margaret Maloney for all her administrative help, especially with the illustrations; Greg Villepique and Maureen Klier for all of their hard work on the manuscript; and Peter Miller for his efforts to promote my book. And to my editor, George Gibson, who was there every step of the way and who, despite the overwhelming number of calls upon his time, devoted so much painstaking attention to The Lady Queen, my most heartfelt and sincere thanks. Your experience and insight were invaluable and resulted in a much improved manuscript.
The Lady Queen would not be in print today without the efforts of all those at Inkwell Management who worked so hard to sell the book here and abroad. To Ethan Bassoff, Mairead Duffy, Susan Hobson, and Patricia Burke, thank you! And to my fabulous agent and friend Michael Carlisle, who I knew instantly was the only person I ever wanted to represent my work, my heartiest thanks and appreciation.
At last I come to my family. To my daughter, Emily, who endured way too much takeout Chinese food for dinner these past few years and was burdened in high school by a mother who started every other sentence with “Back in the fourteenth century…,” my total and absolute love. I am so proud of you. And to my brilliant husband, Larry, who often put down his own work to help me with mine, thank you for your love, generosity, unfailing encouragement, and JSTOR password.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nancy Goldstone is the author of six books, including Daughters
of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots; The Rival Queens: Catherine de’ Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal That Ignited a Kingdom; and Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe. She has also coauthored six books with her husband, Lawrence Goldstone. She lives in Sagaponack, New York.
nancygoldstone.com
BOOKS BY NANCY GOLDSTONE
Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots
The Rival Queens: Catherine de’ Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal That Ignited a Kingdom
The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc
Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe
Trading Up: Surviving Success as a Woman Trader on Wall Street
BOOKS BY NANCY GOLDSTONE AND LAWRENCE GOLDSTONE
The Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World
Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World
Warmly Inscribed: The New England Forger and Other Book Tales
Slightly Chipped: Footnotes in Booklore
The Lady Queen Page 39
