AMEDEO VI, count of SAVOIA, known as the GREEN COUNT. — Son of Aimone, count of Savoy, and Iolanda of Monferrato, born on 4 January 1334 at Chambéry. He was orphaned at a very early age, first of his mother (1342) and then of his father (1343); until he came of age (1348), he was governed by his two tutors, Ludovico II of Savoia-Vaud and Amedeo III, count of Genevois. His minority marked a grave crisis for the Savoy dynasty, because during those years the French monarchy succeeded in seizing the Dauphiné, thereby surrounding the Savoyard state and threatening its very existence. The young A. had to react against this situation, not through military action, but through diplomatic and political activity. By the Treaty of Paris (1355), he succeeded in regularizing the borders with the Dauphiné, thus removing every motive for conflict, while through the acquisition of Faucigny he eliminated the danger of French interference in his domains. Prudently, he married a French princess, Bona of Bourbon, thereby making his relations with the court of Paris cordial; but he soon gave the greatest prominence to his ties with the Roman-German Empire, as vassal and imperial vicar, with the aim of legally counterbalancing German influence against that of France, which was nearer and more dangerous. He reacted against the disintegrating tendencies within the House by reabsorbing the domains of the Savoia-Vaud branch and energetically binding to himself the princes of the Savoia-Acaia branch, who desired to create an independent state in their Piedmontese domains. Through skillful diplomatic maneuvering, he sought to detach the marquises of Saluzzo and Monferrato 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, in order to drive them from western Piedmont and take from them the last domains that the Angevins possessed in Piedmont. In this way he succeeded in reclaiming for the House the two highly important strongholds of Biella and Cuneo.
He had vowed to go on crusade in the East, and in 1366 he did not hesitate to organize on his own a relief expedition for his cousin, the Byzantine emperor Giovanni V Paleologo, first fighting the Turks at Gallipoli and then the Bulgarians. From his cousin he obtained a promise that he would renounce the Greek heresy and return to Roman orthodoxy. For this reason, in 1367, after returning to Italy, he visited Pope Urbano V and solemnly accompanied him back to Rome, where the Pope was returning after his long exile in Avignon. Giovanni V in fact came to Italy in 1369 and celebrated the reunion of the two Churches in Rome. A. had acquired such prestige in Italy that in the following years the Pope appointed him head of the papal-Italian league against the Visconti; thus later, in 1381, Genoa and Venice appealed to his mediation in their disputes in the East. In 1382 he reached an agreement with Luigi d’Angiò for the reconquest of the kingdom of Naples, but died during the expedition at S. Stefano di Campobasso, on 1 March 1383. His remains were transported to his homeland and buried Altacomba (v.).