ANGIÒ, dynasty of NAPLES. — The house of Angiò, a branch of the family reigning in France, already powerful through its dominions beyond the Alps and already embarked upon an Italian policy because of its possession of important passes in the Maritime Alps and extensive lands in Piedmont, as well as through the agreements negotiated with the commune of Asti and with the marquises of Saluzzo and Monferrato, was invited in 1263 by Urban IV to assume the crown of the kingdom of Sicily, a fief of the Church; and it in fact conquered it, securing the friendship of the Savoyards and the Torriani of Milan, who guaranteed its communications with France behind it, and, with the powerful support of Clement IV and the Guelphs, defeating King Manfred at Benevento and Corradino of Swabia at Tagliacozzo.
Having become master of southern Italy (Campania, Basilicata, Calabria, Apulia, Molise, the Abruzzi) and Sicily, the house of Angiò, which rapidly became Italianized, pursued two aims: securing preponderance in Italy and expanding into the nearby East. Its government, despite the upheavals that troubled it, may be regarded as among the best in the Mezzogiorno, which at that time acquired Mediterranean and European importance, and was ennobled by an artistic, literary, juridical, and medical flourishing.
CARLO I, founder of the dynasty, born of Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile in 1220, and therefore brother of St Louis IX, received Anjou and Maine as an appanage, Provence as the dowry of his wife Beatrice of Provence, Hainaut by conquest, and, through submission, Alba, Cuneo, Savigliano, Mondovì, and other lands of southern Piedmont, which gave him a pretext for keeping open the passes of the Maritime Alps (Col di Nava and Tenda). In 1263, after lengthy negotiations, he accepted from Urban IV the offer of the fief of Sicily and, almost at the same time, the appointment as senator of Rome; in 1265, having received the investiture of the kingdom and assembled a powerful army, he moved against Manfred, whom he routed and killed at Benevento (1266), defeated Corradino at Tagliacozzo (1268), having him beheaded at Naples, and, having assumed the crown, won the people’s affection by granting privileges and surrounded himself with loyal feudatories, most of whom had come with him on the expedition as if on a chivalric adventure. He then pursued a policy of expansion: in Tuscany and Latium, as leader of the Guelphs; in the southern and eastern Mediterranean through the conquest of Tunis, Greece (the principality of Achaea), and St Jean d’Acre (with the title of king of Jerusalem); and in the Adriatic through the conquest of Albania (with the title of king). He also attempted to seize Sardinia and Constantinople; but the Sicilian Vespers cut short his aspirations to expansion and deprived him of Sicily, which, although he received assistance from the Papacy, France, and Florence, he was never again able to recover.
CARLO II, the Lame, his son, born in 1248, could not ascend the throne upon his father’s death in 1285, because he was being held prisoner by the king of Aragon, having been captured in the naval battle in the Gulf of Naples in 1284, which determined Sicily’s fate. Released in November 1288 and crowned the following year at Rieti, he resumed the struggle to reconquer Sicily;
but the reverses he suffered forced him to accept the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which, of Sicily, now under the rule of Frederick II of Aragon, left him only the bare title of king. Sicily, however, was supposed to return to the A. upon the Aragonese ruler’s death. He then turned in vain to affairs in the East, where he had no better fortune: Palestine and part of Greece had been lost, and Albania had been reduced to possession of Durazzo. He achieved greater success in Piedmont and, beyond the Italian borders, in Hungary: in Piedmont he retained his possessions and political influence, appointing his son Raimondo Berengario as count and, upon the latter’s death, assuming the title on behalf of his son Roberto; in Hungary, asserting the rights to that throne deriving from his wife Maria, daughter and heiress of Stephen V, he installed his son Carlo Martello when Ladislaus IV, successor and son-in-law of Stephen V, died in 1290. As leader and protector of the Guelph communes, he was active in Tuscany and central Italy. In 1305, when Queen Elisabetta of Villardouin remarried, he secured for his son Filippo, prince of Taranto, the title and kingdom of Achaea.
ROBERTO I, born in 1278, the third son of Carlo II, ascended the throne in 1309, because his elder brother Carlo Martello had died before him (in 1295), while the second son Ludovico (v.) had become a Franciscan. Already well experienced in affairs of government through the part he had taken in the expedition to Sicily and in the events of Tuscany, he soon found himself facing a situation that could have been highly dangerous for the crown, when Henry VII of Luxembourg and Louis the Bavarian successively descended into Italy to reinvigorate the Ghibelline party. Nevertheless, amid negotiations and uncertainties, he succeeded in saving the kingdom and in leading the Guelphs against those emperors. Vigorously supported by John XXIII, he was also able to pursue an Italian policy with some success: he acquired Genoa (1318), opposed the Visconti, and dominated Florence and the centre of the peninsula. He also persisted tenaciously in the enterprise of Sicily and succeeded in gaining a foothold there through the reconquest of Milazzo; but he could achieve no further successes. He died in 1343. According to some, he was Dante’s «re da sermone» (Paradiso, VIII, 147). Petrarch, his friend, composed for his splendid tomb in S. Chiara, now almost entirely lost, a eulogy worthy of an emperor.
GIOVANNA I, born in 1326 to Carlo, son of Roberto I, became, upon her father’s death (1328), the sole direct heir to the Neapolitan throne; and King Roberto, in order to secure her succession more easily, married her to Andrea d’Angiò, son of Caroberto king of Hungary, himself the son of Carlo Martello. Ascending the throne at the age of seventeen upon the death of Roberto I in 1343, she found herself entangled in a palace camarilla strongly hostile to her husband Andrea, who was prevented from being crowned with the queen in 1344; and when the Pope insisted that Andrea too should be crowned, the unfortunate man was strangled in the castle of Aversa. Luigi, king of Hungary and Andrea’s brother, took this as a pretext for invading the kingdom and in reality dominated its unhappy fortunes. Giovanna sought to maneuver: with her second husband, Luigi d’Angiò of the Taranto branch, she fled to Avignon and returned to be crowned; she had a third husband, Giacomo of Aragon, and then a fourth, Ottone of Brunswick, and kept both of them away from the government; finally, she adopted as her successor Luigi d’Angiò, brother of the king of France. But Giovanna had adhered to the antipope Clement VII and had therefore been excommunicated by Urban
VI. He supported the claims of Carlo III of Durazzo (also an Angevin), who invaded the kingdom and was crowned by Urban VI on 2 June 1381. Carlo invaded the kingdom, and Giovanna, having taken refuge in Castelnuovo, was captured after surrendering and, interned in the castle of Muro Lucano, was strangled there in 1382.
CARLO III of Durazzo, born in 1345, had married his cousin Margherita, legitimate heir to the crown of Naples, and, having remained master of the kingdom, resisted the invasion of the French contender and ruled until 1385, that is, for only three years. In 1385 he was summoned to Hungary to succeed that kingdom’s king, Louis the Great; but the following year he was strangled at Buda. Carlo III had also ultimately turned against Urban VI and had besieged him in Nocera, forcing him to flee.
LADISLAO, son of Carlo III of Durazzo, ascended the throne at the age of nine, having been born in 1377; his mother, a woman of great ability, governed in his name. Ladislao was wrong to fight against Luigi II d'Angiò, of the French branch, who came twice to wrest the crown from him, in 1391 and in 1409. Taking advantage of the events of the schism, he attempted to extend his dominion against the Papal State and succeeded in occupying Rome twice. He died still young, in 1414 at Naples, where he had been taken while suffering from an illness that had struck him at Narni, as he pursued Pope Giovanni XXIII, who was retreating to Bologna.
GIOVANNA II, Ladislao’s sister, having ascended the throne, brought the Angevin kingdom to utter ruin by entrusting its fortunes to two favorites: first Pandolfo Alopò, against whom the nobility compelled her to take a husband, whom she chose in Giacomo di Borbone; and then Gianni Caracciolo, opposed by Attendolo Sforza and instead supported by Braccio di Montone. To remove the scandal and put an end to the disorders, the nobles, the Pope, and Sforza invited Luigi III d'Angiò to occupy the kingdom; but Giovanna adopted Alfonso V d'Aragona as her successor, and he succeeded in taking Naples. Two factions arose from this, the Angevin and the Aragonese, which ruined the state. Giovanna wavered between the two: she abandoned Alfonso V and first adopted Luigi III di Angiò, then returned to the Aragonese and adopted Alfonso d'Aragona; finally, she once again abandoned the Aragonese and proclaimed Luigi III d'Angiò her successor, and, upon his death in 1434, his brother Renato. The following year she died, and the A. were permanently driven from the kingdom. During these internal struggles, two of the greatest Italian condottieri disappeared: Muzio Attendolo Sforza, who perished in the Pescara in 1424, and Braccio di Montone, who was killed through the agency of Francesco Sforza at the battle of L'Aquila in the same year.
For the names of the members of the house of A. who ascended the throne of France, V. le singole voci.