Robert, King of Naples

"Robert the Wise" redirects here. For the king of France sometimes known by this nickname, see Robert II of France.

Robert of Anjou (Italian: Roberto d'Angiò), known as Robert the Wise (Italian: Roberto il Saggio; 1276 – 20 January 1343), was King of Naples, titular King of Jerusalem and Count of Provence and Forcalquier from 1309 to 1343, the central figure of Italian politics of his time.^[2] He was the third son of King Charles II of Naples and Mary of Hungary, and during his father's lifetime he was styled Duke of Calabria (1296–1309).

Robert
Robert in a miniature by Simone Martini, 1317
King of Naples Count of Provence and Forcalquier
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 Charles d'Artois
House	Anjou-Naples
Father	Charles II of Naples
Mother	Mary of Hungary

Biography

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. During the Sicilian Vespers directed against his grandfather Charles, Robert was the hostage of Peter III of Aragon, his grandfather's enemy. In 1285, Robert's grandfather died at Foggia in Italy, leading to his father (then a hostage) becoming King of Naples as Charles II, with Robert's elder brother, Charles Martel of Anjou as heir apparent.

After the death of his elder brother, Charles Martel of Anjou in 1295, Robert, became heir to the crown of Naples, passing over his child-nephew Charles; to obtain the crown of neighbouring Sicily, he married King James of Sicily's sister Yolanda, in exchange for James's renunciation of Sicily. However, the Sicilian barons refused him and elected James' brother, Frederick II. The war continued, and with the Peace of Caltabellotta (1302) Robert and the Angevin dynasty lost Sicily forever, their rule limited to the south of peninsular Italy.

Robert inherited the position of papal champion in Italy; his reign being blessed from the papal enclave within Robert's Provence, by the French Pope Clement V, who made him papal vicar in Romagna and Tuscany, where Robert intervened in the war of factions in Florence, accepted the offered signiory of that city, but had to abandon it due to Clement's opposition.

The leader of the Guelph party in Italy, Robert opposed the sojourn of Emperor Henry VII in Italy (1311–13) and his occupation of Rome in 1312. After Henry's death, the Guelph reaction against the Ghibelline leaders in northern Italy, Matteo Visconti and Cangrande della Scala, made it seem for a time that Robert would become the arbiter of Italy.^[4] Already ruler of wide possessions in Piedmont, Robert's prestige increased further when in 1313 the pope named him Senator of Rome,^[5] and when he became Lord of Genoa (1318–34) and Brescia (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 forced John of Bohemia to quit northern Italy. Robert's hegemony in Italy was diminished only by the constant menace of Aragonese Sicily.

 

Silver gigliato of Robert I of Anjou King of Naples, 1309-1343.

When the succession to the margraviate of Saluzzo was disputed between Manfred V and his nephew Thomas II in 1336, Robert intervened on behalf of Manfred, for Thomas had married into the Ghibelline Visconti family. Robert advanced on Saluzzo 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 by Silvio Pellico. However, when his viceroy Reforza d'Angoult was defeated in the Battle of Gamenario (22 April 1345), Angevin power in Piedmont began to crumble. With his second wife Sancha of Majorca, Robert established the kingdom of Naples as a center of early Renaissance culture and of religious dissent, supporting the Joachimite prophesies of the Spiritual Franciscans.^[7]

At Robert's death in 1343, he was succeeded by his 16-year-old granddaughter, Joanna I of Naples, his son Charles having predeceased him in 1328. Joanna was already betrothed to her cousin, the 15-year-old Andrew 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 become prince 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 sister Maria, 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 at Aversa in 1345. This propaganda, the Hungarian assault on Joanna following the murder of Andrew, and the invasion of the Regno by Louis I of Hungary eventually led to the end of Angevin rule in Naples.^[8]

Legacy

King Robert was nicknamed "the peace-maker of Italy" due to the years of significant changes he brought to Naples. 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 commissioned Tino di Camaino to produce a tomb for his son, who should have been his heir, and Giotto painted several works for him. The University of Naples flourished under the patronage of the king dismissed by Dante as a re 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 by Petrarch and Boccaccio 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 the Campidoglio in Rome (1341); his Latin epic Africa is dedicated to Robert, though it was not made available to readers until 1397, long after both Petrarch and Robert were dead.

Family

By his first wife, Yolanda,^[11] daughter of King Peter III of Aragon, Robert had two sons:

• Charles (1298–1328), Duke of Calabria (1309), Viceroy of Naples (1318), who was the father of Queen Joanna I
• Louis (1301–10)

Robert's second marriage, to Sancia,^[11] daughter of King James II of Majorca, was childless. He had the following extramarital children:

• Charles d'Artois, member of the regency council and grand chamberlain for Queen Joanna I, executed for murder of King Andrew
• Louis de Bethanie, Prince of Bétha, representative of the court of Louis I of Hungary, managed Polish lands on behalf of the dynasty.
• Maria d'Aquino (Boccaccio's Fiammetta)
• Hélène of Anjou, who fell in love with and married Andrea I Thopia, Count of Matia, without her father's consent. Hélène was possibly due to marry Philip, son of Baldwin II^{[clarification needed]}, when this happened. Thopia's emblem contains three lilies separated by a dotted line, indicating an illegitimate child. Andrea and Hélène had Charles (named after his famous grand grandparent), Georges and Helena together. The marriage was not accepted by Robert, therefore he invited the couple to Naples with the pretext of reconciliation where he had them secretly executed at night.^{[12][13][14][15][dubious ]}

King Robert's last descendant through a legitimate line was Queen Joanna II of Naples.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Robert, King of Naples
8. Louis VIII of France 4. Charles I, Count of Anjou 9. Blanche of Castile 2. Charles II, Count of Anjou 10. Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence 5. Beatrice of Provence 11. Beatrice of Savoy 1. Robert of Naples 12. Béla IV of Hungary 6. Stephen V of Hungary 13. Maria Laskarina 3. Mary of Hungary 14. Köten 7. Elizabeth the Cuman

Other sources

• Coat of arms of the House of Anjou-Sicily (in French)

References

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Robert of Naples.

1. Musto 2003, p. 78.
2. Hearder & Waley 1963, p. 60.
3. Hoch 1995, p. 22.
4. Abulafia 2000, p. 488.
5. Fleck 2016, p. 129.
6. Abulafia 2000, p. 491.
7. Kelly 2003, p. 83-85.
8. Ronald G. Musto, Medieval Naples: A Documentary History, 400-1400. A Documentary History of Naples. [1]. New York: Italica Press, 2013, "The Angevins: Robert of Anjou, Giovanna I," pp. 192-298
9. Pryds, Darleen N. (2000). The king embodies the Word: Robert d'Anjou and the politics of preaching. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-47482-X.
10. Kelly, Samantha, The New Solomon: Robert of Naples (1309-1343) and Fourteenth-Century Kingship, page 2 Google Books
11. O'Connell & Dursteler 2016, p. 158.
12. Sainty, Guy Stair (2018). The Constantinian Order of Saint George: and the Angeli, Farnese and Bourbon families which governed it. Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado. p. 503. ISBN 978-84-340-2506-6.
13. "1515 John Musachi:Brief Chronicle on the Descendants of our Musachi Dynasty". Retrieved 2023-12-28.
14. Carl Hermann Friedrich Johann Hopf (1960). Geschichte Griechenlands vom Beginn des Mittelalters bis auf unsere Zeit. B. Franklin. … 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
15. Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse (in German). Gerold. 1869. p. 106-107.

Sources

• Abulafia, David (2000). "The Italian south". In Jones, Michael (ed.). The New Cambridge Medieval History: c.1300-1415. Vol. VI. Cambridge University Press.
• Fleck, Cathleen A. (2016). The Clement Bible at the Medieval Courts of Naples and Avignon. Routledge.
• Hearder, H.; Waley, D.P., eds. (1963). A Short History of Italy. Cambridge University Press.
• Hoch, Adrian S. (1995). "The Franciscan Provenance of Simone Martini's Angevin St. Louis in Naples". Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte. 58. Bd., H. 1.
• Kelly, Samantha (2003). The new Solomon: Robert of Naples (1309-1343) and Fourteenth-Century Kingship. Brill.
• Musto, Ronald G. (2003). Apocalypse in Rome: Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age. University of California Press.
• O'Connell, Monique; Dursteler, Eric R (2016). The Mediterranean World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Napoleon. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Pryds, Darleen N. (2000). The King Embodies the Word : Robert d'Anjou and the Politics of Preaching. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-47482-X.

Robert, King of Naples Capetian House of Anjou Cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty Born: 1276 Died: 20 January 1343
Regnal titles
Preceded by Charles II	King of Naples Count of Provence and Forcalquier 1309–1343	Succeeded by Joanna I