ALFONSO III of ARAGON and II of CATALONIA. — Born in 1265, died in 1291. He succeeded Pietro III (II) in 1282 under difficult circumstances caused by the Angevin-Aragonese rivalry over possession of Sicily, complicated by the hostility of the Holy See. Favoring the French, Pope Martin IV had declared Pietro III deposed in 1283 and granted his states to Carlo di Valois. Given the difficult internal situation and the hostility of Navarre and Castile, in 1291 A. made peace with the Pope and France on rather burdensome terms: he declared himself the Pope’s vassal, undertaking to pay an annual tribute and abandoning the cause of Sicily, which was held by his brother Giacomo. He also had to make concessions to the Aragonese nobility, which had rebelled against him as soon as he ascended the throne.
ALFONSO V d'ARAGONA — Drawing by Pisanello for a medal (1448). Vallardi Codex — Paris, Louvre, Cabinet of Drawings.
Candi, Itinerari del rey Anfós III «lo Liberal», in Bol. de la R. Ac. de B. L. de Barcelona, 10 (1921), pp. 61-83; J. Wincke, Staat und Kirche in Katalonien und Aragon während des Mittelalters, I, Münster in V. 1931; id., Documenta selecta mutua civitatis Arago-Cathalanicae et ecclesiae relationes illustrantia (Biblioteca histórica de la biblioteca Balmes, XV), Barcelona 1936; B. Sánchez Alonso, Fuentes de la historia española e hispano-americana, 2ª ed., Madrid 1927, nn. 1171-1825, 2141-48; and Apéndice, there 1946, n. 21052 ff. Mario Scaduto