AMADEUS VIII, DUKE OF SAVOY. - Son of Amedeo VII, Count of Savoy, and of Bona of Berry, born at Chambéry on 4 September 1383. He succeeded his father on 1 November 1391. His minority fostered bitter clashes among the court factions, which contended for his guardianship and the regency; and the reciprocal accusations concerning the causes of Amedeo VII's death served to eliminate his mother and his grandmother Bona of Bourbon from the government and to bring about the triumph of the predominance of the Duke of Burgundy. For the young prince, Oddone of Villars governed with the title of governor and Aimone of Aspremont with the title of guardian. Having come of age in 1397, A. only a few years later began to exert a direct influence in the government; the Burgundian influence took root with the marriage of the prince to Maria, daughter of Duke Philip the Bold.
No warrior, but rather a lover of a tranquil life, A. sought by the arts of diplomacy to intervene in the political life of his time, so as to increase the domains of his House. The conferral of the ducal dignity by the Emperor Sigismund in 1416 demonstrated the prestige attained by the prince and the importance of the results he had obtained. In 1418, upon the death of Ludovico of Savoy, of the Acaia-Piedmont branch, A. inherited all his domains in Piedmont, giving the Savoyard State a new compactness and strength. On the other hand, the annexation of the county of Genevois, of various fiefs in the Vaud, of the county of Tenda, etc., greatly increased the extent of the Savoyard State. His political activity was certainly favored by the events unfolding in France and in Italy. The French civil wars not only freed the dynasty from the dangerous French primacy, but allowed A. to intervene as a peacemaker with the secret intention of making territorial acquisitions on the Rhône: he succeeded in acquiring the Valentinois, which his successor later lost. In Italy, the disintegration of the Milanese State after the death of Giangaleazzo Visconti facilitated his acquisition of many lands in the Biellese and temporarily also of the Val d'Ossola. In the conflict between Filippo Maria Visconti and the Venetian-Florentine League, he intervened by negotiating with both parties and succeeding in obtaining from Visconti the cession of Vercelli. Now the Savoyard predominance seemed to take stable root throughout upper Italy.
Continuing the ancestral policy, A. sought to subjugate the Marquises of Saluzzo and of Monferrato, binding them feudally and obtaining from the Palaeologi of Monferrato the cession of Chivasso. Left a widower, already in 1422, he inclined toward the solitary life; in 1434 he ceded the government of the duchy to his son Ludovico and withdrew to the hermitage of Ripaille (Thonon), where he created the chivalric order of St. Maurice. The attention of the Council of Basel, in conflict with the Pope of Rome, Eugene IV, came to rest upon him, and when the latter was deposed and excommunicated by that Council (1439), A. was elected pope (5 Nov.
1439). The duke accepted (14 Dec. 1439) and, under the name of Felix V, was crowned on 24 July 1440. (v. FELICE V, ANTIPOPE). Pope Nicholas V, after A. had abandoned the tiara (7 Apr. 1449), behaved magnanimously toward him, recognizing him as a cardinal. A. died on 7 Jan. 1451 at Geneva, and was buried at Ripaille: at present his ashes rest in Turin in the chapel of the Shroud, in the monument erected to him by Charles Albert.
Bibliography4 works
Francesco Cognasso