| Robert | |
|---|---|
 Robert in a miniature bySimone Martini, 1317 | |
| King of Naples Count of Provence andForcalquier | |
| Reign | 5 May 1309 – 20 January 1343 |
| Predecessor | Charles II |
| Successor | Joanna I |
| Born | 1276[1] |
| Died | 20 January 1343 (aged 67) Kingdom of Naples |
| Spouse | Yolanda of Aragon Sancha of Majorca |
| Issue More | Charles, Duke of Calabria Louis of Anjou Charles d'Artois Hélène of Anjou Maria d'Aquino Louis de Bethanie |
| House | Anjou-Naples |
| Father | Charles II of Naples |
| Mother | Mary of Hungary |
Robert of Anjou (Italian:Roberto d'Angiò), known asRobert the Wise (Italian:Roberto il Saggio; 1276 – 20 January 1343), wasKing of Naples, titularKing of Jerusalem andCount of Provence andForcalquier from 1309 to 1343, the central figure of Italian politics of his time.[2] He was the third son of KingCharles II of Naples andMary of Hungary, and during his father's lifetime he was styledDuke of Calabria (1296–1309).
Robert's early life was marked by his family's participation in theWar of the Sicilian Vespers, in which conflict Robert served as a military commander. Upon the death of his father in 1309, Robert ruled as the king of Naples. His reign brought relative stability to Naples when compared to the reigns of his father and grandfather, but was also marked by rivalries against Germanic powers in northern Italy and theHouse of Barcelona in the western Mediterranean. Robert was pre-deceased by his son and heirCharles of Calabria, and so willed his throne to his granddaughter,Joanna of Naples.
Robert was born around 1276, the third son of the future Charles II of Naples (then heir apparent) and his wife Mary of Hungary.[3] His father was the son of the incumbent King of Naples,Charles of Anjou, who had established an Italian realm a decade earlier in 1266. In 1282, the Angevin kingdom was shaken by theSicilian Vespers, a revolt by the Sicilians against the rule of his grandfather Charles. The ensuingWar of the Sicilian Vespers against the Sicilian rebels widened when the crown ofCrown of Aragon intervened in support of the Sicilians.
The Sicilian conflict had a major effect on Robert's early life; in 1284, his father was capturedin battle and became a prisoner of the Aragonese, and in 1285 Robert's grandfather died atFoggia while on campaign. When his imprisoned father assumed the throne of Naples in 1285, a period of stalemate in the war led to his father negotiating for his freedom from Aragonese captivity. Robert's elder brother,Charles Martel of Anjou, was named as heir apparent to Naples, while Robert was sent to the Aragonese court as a political hostage.
After the death of his elder brother in 1295, Robert became heir to the throne of Naples, passing over his child-nephewCharles of Hungary. That same year, Naples and Aragon signed theTreaty of Anagni, in whichJames II of Aragon pledged to return the throne of Sicily to Charles II. As part of the treaty, Robert married James' daughter,Yolanda of Aragon, thereby tying the two former combatants together by marriage. The treaty, however, did not end the conflict; the Sicilian parliament refused to allow the House of Anjou to regain control of the island, and so elected James' brother,Frederick II, as king of Sicily.
Faced with stiff Sicilian resistance, in 1298 Robert and his new father-in-law James launched amajor invasion of Sicily, in which Robert led the Angevin forces. After some initial successes, the invasion became bogged down in Sicily, and in 1299 his younger brother,Philip of Taranto, was captured by the Sicilians. The war ended in 1302 with the signing of thePeace of Caltabellotta; Robert and theAngevin dynasty lost Sicily forever, their rule limited to the south of peninsular Italy.
Charles II of Naples died in 1309, leaving Robert to inherit the throne of Naples. In addition to inheriting the throne, Robert - as the new Angevin king of Naples - was seen as the papal champion in Italy, as had been his father and grandfather; his reign being blessed from the papal enclave within Robert's Provence, by the FrenchPope Clement V, who made him papal vicar inRomagna andTuscany, where Robert intervened in the war of factions inFlorence, accepted the offered signiory of that city, but had to abandon it due to Clement's opposition.
The leader of theGuelph party in Italy, Robert opposed the sojourn ofEmperor Henry VII in Italy (1311–13) and his occupation ofRome in 1312. After Henry's death, the Guelph reaction against theGhibelline leaders in northern Italy,Matteo Visconti andCangrande della Scala, made it seem for a time that Robert would become the arbiter of Italy.[4] Already ruler of wide possessions inPiedmont, Robert's prestige increased further when in 1313 the pope named himSenator of Rome,[5] and when he became Lord ofGenoa (1318–34) andBrescia (1319) and from 1314 onwards held the resounding papal title of imperial vicar of all Italy, during the absence in Italy of the Holy Roman Emperor,vacante imperio.[6]
In 1328 he fought another emperor who had ventured into Italy,Louis IV of Bavaria, and in 1330 forcedJohn of Bohemia to quit northern Italy. Robert's hegemony in Italy was diminished only by the constant menace of the House of Barcelona, which controlled both Sicily and Aragon.
When the succession to themargraviate of Saluzzo was disputed betweenManfred V and his nephewThomas II in 1336, Robert intervened on behalf of Manfred, for Thomas had married into theGhibellineVisconti family. Robert advanced onSaluzzo and besieged it. He succeeded in taking it and sacking it, setting the city on fire and imprisoning Thomas, who had to pay a ransom. The whole dramatic incident is recorded bySilvio Pellico. However, when his viceroyReforza d'Angoult was defeated in theBattle of Gamenario (22 April 1345), Angevin power in Piedmont began to crumble. With his second wifeSancha of Majorca, Robert established thekingdom of Naples as a center of early Renaissance culture and of religious dissent, supporting theJoachimite prophesies of theSpiritual Franciscans.[7]
At Robert's death in 1343, he was succeeded by his 16-year-old granddaughter,Joanna I of Naples, his sonCharles having predeceased him in 1328. Joanna was already betrothed to her cousin, the 15-year-oldAndrew of Hungary, son of the Angevin king of Hungary, Charles Robert. In his last will and testament Robert explicitly excluded the claims of Andrew of Hungary, clearly mandated that he becomeprince of Salerno and specified that Joanna alone assume the crown in her own right, to be succeeded by her legitimate offspring. If she were to die without heir, her younger sisterMaria, newly named the duchess of Calabria, and her legitimate offspring would inherit the throne. There is no mention in the will that Andrew be crowned king; and this historiographical tradition is largely the result of later historians' accepting without examination the assertions of Hungarian royal propaganda following Andrew's murder atAversa in 1345. This propaganda, the Hungarian assault on Joanna following the murder of Andrew, and the invasion of the Regno byLouis I of Hungary eventually led to the end ofAnjou-Naples rule in Naples.[8]
King Robert was nicknamed "the peace-maker of Italy" due to the years of significant changes he brought toNaples. The city and nation's economy lay in the hands of Tuscan merchants, who erected superb buildings, monuments and statues that drastically changed King Robert's capital from a dirty seaport to a city of elegance and medieval splendor. Robert commissionedTino di Camaino to produce a tomb for his son, who should have been his heir, andGiotto painted several works for him. TheUniversity of Naples flourished under the patronage of the king dismissed byDante as are di sermone, "king of words", attracting students from all parts of Italy.[2] There was virtually no middle class in the South to balance the local interests and centripetal power of the entrenched aristocracy, who retained the feudal independence that had been their bargain with the Angevins' Norman predecessors.
Unusually, Robert preached sermons throughout his reign, at universities, religious houses, and on other ceremonial occasions, making use of an authoritative form of oratory ordinarily reserved for clerics. Records of hundreds of these sermons survive in extant manuscripts, providing an important case study in the history of medieval lay preaching.[9]
He was remembered byPetrarch andBoccaccio as a cultured man and a generous patron of the arts, "unique among the kings of our day," Boccaccio claimed after Robert's death, "a friend of knowledge and virtue."[10] Petrarch asked to be examined by Robert before being crowned as poet in theCampidoglio in Rome (1341); hisLatinepicAfrica is dedicated to Robert, though it was not made available to readers until 1397, long after both Petrarch and Robert were dead.
By his first wife,Yolanda,[11] daughter of KingPeter III of Aragon, Robert had two sons:
Robert's second marriage, toSancia,[11] daughter of KingJames II of Majorca, was childless. He had the following extramarital children:
King Robert's last descendant through a legitimate line was QueenJoanna II of Naples.
| Ancestors of Robert, King of Naples |
|---|
...Robert of the famous house of Anjou, king of Naples, had an illegitimate daughter whom he wished to marry to a French gentleman of Greece...
...You should also know that King Robert, who was the King of Naples, sent one of his bastard daughters to the Prince of Morea for wife...
...verschwägerte König Robert so erzählt Musachi hatte seine natürliche Tochter dem Bailli von Morea vielleicht dem Bertrand de Baux zur Gattin bestimmt und...
...Robert of the famous house of Anjou, king of Naples, had an illegitimate daughter whom he wished to marry to a French gentleman of Greece. En route, her ship touched Durrës, where she met and fell in love with Tanush Thopia. They were married and had a son Karl. King Robert, feigning pleasure at the marriage, invited the daughter and her husband to Naples, where he killed them both...
… da deren Besitzungen bald darauf in der Hand jenes Tanussio Thopia (1328–1338) waren, dem König Robert von Neapel 1338 den Besitz der Grafschaft Mat bestätigte. Des letztern Sohn oder Bruder Andreas war es, der sich mit dem Hause Capet verschwägerte. König Robert, so erzählt Musachi, hatte seine natürliche Tochter dem Bailli von Morea – vielleicht dem Bertrand de Baux – zur Gattin bestimmt und sie nach Durazzo gesandt, wo damals Thopia weilte. Er verliebte sich in sie, entführte und heirathete sie. Zwei Söhne, Karl und Georg, entsprossen dieser Ehe. Aber schwer traf die Gatten bald die Rache des erzürnten Vaters; unter dem Scheine der Versöhnung lud er beide zu sich nach Neapel ein und ließ sie dort hinrichten; die Kinder aber, in denen somit wirklich das Blut der Angiovinen floß, wurden gerettet; in der festen Burg Kroja , die er später ausbaute, nicht, wie die Sage meldet , erst gründete "), wuchs Karl auf, entschlossen, den Mord des vaters zu rächen
Robert, King of Naples Cadet branch of theCapetian dynasty Born: 1276 Died: 20 January 1343 | ||
| Regnal titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | King of Naples Count of Provence andForcalquier 1309–1343 | Succeeded by |
