AMADEUS VI, COUNT OF SAVOY, Known As the Green Count. - Son of Aymon count of Savoy and of Yolande of Montferrat, b. 4 January 1334 at Chambéry. He was left an orphan of his mother quite early (1342) and of his father (1343); until his majority (1348) his two guardians Ludovico II of Savoy-Vaud and Amedeo III count of Geneva governed for him. His minority marked a grave crisis for the Savoyard dynasty, because in those years the French monarchy succeeded in seizing the Dauphiné, so as to outflank the Savoyard State and threaten its very existence. Against this situation the young A. had to react, and not with military action, but with diplomatic and political activity. He succeeded by the treaty of Paris (1355) in regularizing the borders with the Dauphiné, so as to remove every cause of strife, while by the acquisition of Faucigny he eliminated the danger of French interference in his domains. Prudent, he married a French princess, Bona of Bourbon, so as to make his relations with the court of Paris cordial, but he soon brought his ties with the Roman-German empire to the greatest prominence, as vassal and imperial vicar, with the aim of legally counterposing the German influence to the nearer and more dangerous one of France. He reacted against the disintegrating tendencies of the House, reabsorbing the domains of the Savoy-Vaud branch and energetically drawing to himself the princes of the Savoy-Achaia branch, eager to create an independent State in their domains in Piedmont. By skillful diplomatic play he sought to withdraw the marquises of Saluzzo and of Montferrat from the influence of the Visconti of Milan; then he did not hesitate to engage in a long diplomatic and military struggle with Galeazzo II and Bernabò Visconti to drive them back from western Piedmont and to take from them the last domains that the Angevins held in Piedmont. Thus he succeeded in reclaiming for the House the two very important strongholds of Biella and Cuneo.
He had made a vow to go as a crusader to the East, and in 1366 he did not hesitate to organize on his own an expedition of aid to his cousin the emperor of Byzantium, John V Palaiologos, fighting first against the Turks at Gallipoli and then against the Bulgarians. From his cousin he obtained the promise that he would abjure the Greek heresy and return to Roman orthodoxy. For this reason in 1367, having returned to Italy, he visited Pope Urban V and solemnly escorted him back to Rome, where the Pope was returning from the long exile of Avignon. John V in reality came to Italy in 1369 and in Rome celebrated the reunion of the two Churches. A. had attained such prestige in Italy that in the following years the Pope named him head of the papal-Italic league against the Visconti; thus later, in 1381, Genoa and Venice turned to his mediation for their eastern disputes. In 1382 he came to an agreement with Louis of Anjou for the reconquest of the kingdom of Naples, but he died during the expedition at S. Stefano di Campobasso, on 1 March 1383. His body was transported to his homeland and entombed in the ancestral burial place of Altacomba (v.).