ANGIÒ, dynasty of Naples. — The House of Anjou, a branch of the royal family ruling in France, already powerful for its domains beyond the Alps and already embarked on an Italian policy through the possession of important passes in the Maritime Alps and extensive lands in Piedmont as well as through agreements negotiated with the commune of Asti, the marquises of Saluzzo and Montferrat, was invited in 1263 by Urban IV to assume the crown of the Kingdom of Sicily, a fief of the Church; and in fact it conquered it, securing the friendship of the Savoyards and the Torriani of Milan, who guaranteed its communications with France, and with the powerful support of Clement IV and the Guelphs, defeating King Manfred at Benevento and Conradin of Swabia at Tagliacozzo.
Having become master of southern Italy (Campania, Basilicata, Calabria, Apulia, Molise, Abruzzi) and of Sicily, the House of Anjou rapidly became Italianized and pursued two aims: to secure preponderance in Italy and to expand into the Near East. Its government, despite the convulsions that disturbed it, may be considered among the best in the South, which at that time held Mediterranean and European importance, and was ennobled by a flourishing of art, literature, law, and medicine.
CHARLES I, founder of the dynasty, born to Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile in 1220, thus brother of St. Louis IX, received in appanage Anjou and Maine, Provence as dowry from his wife Beatrice of Provence, Hainaut by conquest, and by submission Alba, Cuneo, Savigliano, Mondovì and other lands of southern Piedmont, which gave him reason to keep open the passes of the Maritime Alps (Col di Nava and Tenda). In 1263, after laborious negotiations, he accepted Urban IV’s offer of the Sicilian fief and almost at the same time the appointment as senator of Rome; in 1265, having received the investiture of the kingdom, having gathered a powerful army, he moved against Manfred, whom he routed and killed at Benevento (1266), defeated Conradin at Tagliacozzo (1268), having him beheaded in Naples, and, having assumed the crown, won the people’s affection by granting privileges and surrounded himself with loyal feudatories, many of whom had come with him on the enterprise as if it were a chivalric adventure. He then pursued a policy of expansion: in Tuscany and Latium as head of the Guelphs; in the southern and eastern Mediterranean with the conquest of Tunis, Greece (Principality of Achaea) and St. Jean d’Acre (with the title of King of Jerusalem); in the Adriatic with the conquest of Albania (with the title of King). He also attempted to seize Sardinia and Constantinople; but the Sicilian Vespers cut short his expansionist ambitions and deprived him of Sicily, which, despite aid from the Papacy, France, and Florence, he was never able to recover.
CHARLES II, the Lame, his son, born in 1248, could not ascend the throne at his father’s death in 1285 because he was a prisoner of the King of Aragon, having been captured in the naval battle in the Gulf of Naples in 1284, which decided the fate of Sicily. Released in 1288, crowned the following year at Rieti, he resumed the struggle to reconquer Sicily; but defeats forced him to the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which left him with only the bare title of King of Sicily, which had fallen under the lordship of Frederick II of Aragon. Sicily was to return to the Angevins at the death of the Aragonese. In vain he then turned to the affairs of the East, where he met with no better fortune: Palestine and part of Greece were lost, Albania reduced to the possession of Durazzo. He achieved better success in Piedmont and, outside Italian borders, in Hungary: in Piedmont he maintained his possessions and political influence, appointing his son Raymond Berengar as count and, at the latter’s death, assuming the title for his son Robert; in Hungary, asserting the rights deriving from his wife Mary, daughter and heir of Stephen V, to the throne of that kingdom, he placed his son Charles Martel there when in 1290 Ladislaus IV, successor and son-in-law of Stephen V, died. He was active, as head and protector of the Guelph communes, in Tuscany and central Italy. For his son Philip, Prince of Taranto, he obtained the title and kingdom of Achaea in 1305, when Queen Isabella of Villehardouin entered into a second marriage.
ROBERT I, born in 1278, third son of Charles II, ascended the throne in 1309, since his elder brother Charles Martel (d. 1295) and the second son Louis (q.v.) had become Franciscans. Already well experienced in government through his part in the Sicilian enterprise and the affairs of Tuscany, he soon found himself facing a situation that could be very dangerous for the crown when Henry VII of Luxembourg and Louis the Bavarian successively came to Italy to reinvigorate the Ghibelline party. Yet, through negotiations and uncertainties, he managed to save the kingdom and lead the Guelphs against those emperors. Strongly supported by John XXII, he was also able to pursue a successful Italian policy: he acquired Genoa (1318), opposed the Visconti, and dominated Florence in the center of the peninsula. He persisted tenaciously in the enterprise of Sicily and succeeded in regaining a foothold there with the reconquest of Milazzo; but he could achieve no further successes. He died in 1343. According to some, he was the king referred to in Dante’s sermon (Paradiso, VIII, 147). Petrarch, his friend, composed for his splendid tomb in S. Chiara, now almost lost, an epitaph worthy of an emperor.
JOANNA I, born in 1326 to Charles, son of Robert I, at the latter’s death (1328) remained the sole direct heir to the Neapolitan throne; and King Robert, to secure her succession more easily, gave her in marriage to Andrew of Anjou, son of Charles Robert, King of Hungary, who was in turn son of Charles Martel. Having ascended the throne at the age of seventeen upon the death of Robert I in 1343, she found herself entangled in a palace camarilla strongly opposed to her husband Andrew, who was prevented from being crowned with the queen in 1344; and since the Pope ordered that Andrew also be crowned, this unfortunate man was strangled in the castle of Aversa. Louis, King of Hungary, Andrew’s brother, took this as a pretext to invade the kingdom and in fact dominated its sad vicissitudes. Joanna tried to maneuver: with her second husband, Louis of Anjou of the Taranto branch, she fled to Avignon and returned to be crowned; she had a third husband, James of Aragon, and then a fourth, Otto of Brunswick, keeping both far from government; finally she adopted as her successor Louis of Anjou, brother of the King of France. But Joanna had adhered to the antipope Clement VII and was therefore excommunicated by Urban VI. The latter supported the cause of Charles III of Durazzo (also an Angevin), who invaded the kingdom and was crowned by Urban VI on 2 June 1381. Charles invaded the kingdom, and Joanna, having taken refuge in Castelnuovo, was captured upon surrender and, imprisoned in the castle of Muro Lucano, was strangled there in 1382.
CHARLES III OF DURAZZO, born in 1345, had married his cousin Margaret, considered the legitimate heir to the crown of Naples, and having become master of the kingdom, he withstood the invasion of the French rival and ruled until 1385, that is, for only three years. In 1385 he was summoned to Hungary to succeed that king, Louis the Great; but the following year he was strangled in Buda. Charles III had also turned against Urban VI and had besieged him in Nocera, forcing him to flee.
Ladislao, son of Charles III of Durazzo, ascended the throne at the age of nine, having been born in 1377; his mother, a woman of great ability, ruled in his name. Ladislao was wrong to wage war against Louis II of Anjou, of the French branch, who twice came to wrest the crown from him, in 1399 and 1409. Taking advantage of the events of the Schism, he attempted to expand his dominion against the Papal State and succeeded in occupying Rome twice. He died still young, in 1414 at Naples, whither he had been carried afflicted by an illness that had struck him at Narni while pursuing Pope John XXIII, who had fled to Bologna.
Joanna II, Ladislao’s sister, who ascended the throne, brought the Angevin kingdom to its final ruin by entrusting its fate to two favorites: first to Pandolfo Alopo, against whom the nobility forced her to take a husband, whom she chose in James of Bourbon, and then to Gianni Caracciolo, opposed by Attendolo Sforza but supported by Braccio di Montone. To put an end to the scandal and disorder, the nobles, the Pope, and Sforza invited Louis III of Anjou to occupy the kingdom; but Joanna adopted Alfonso V of Aragon as her successor, who succeeded in taking Naples. Two factions arose, the Angevin and the Aragonese, which ruined the state. Joanna wavered between the two: she abandoned Alfonso V and adopted Louis III of Anjou first, then returned to the Aragonese and adopted Alfonso of Aragon, and finally abandoned the Aragonese once more and proclaimed Louis III of Anjou as her successor again, and at his death, which occurred in 1434, his brother René. The following year she died, and the Aragonese were driven from the kingdom forever. During those internal strife, two of Italy’s greatest condottieri perished: Muzio Attendolo Sforza, who died in the Pescara in 1424, and Braccio di Montone, who was killed in the battle of L’Aquila that same year by Francesco Sforza.
For the names of the members of the House of Anjou who ascended the throne of France, see the individual entries.