ANJOU, House of Naples. - The House of Anjou, a branch of the family reigning in France, already powerful through its domains beyond the Alps and already embarked upon an Italian policy aimed at possessing important passes in the Maritime Alps and large lands in Piedmont, as well as through agreements negotiated with the commune of Asti and with the marquises of Saluzzo and Monferrato, was invited to assume the crown of the kingdom of Sicily, a fief of the Church, in 1263 by Urban IV; and it in fact conquered it, bargaining for the friendship of the Savoys and of the Torriani of Milan, which secured its communications with France to the rear, and, with the powerful support of Clement IV and the Guelphs, defeating King Manfred at Benevento and Conradin of Swabia at Tagliacozzo.
Having made itself master of southern Italy (Campania, Basilicata, Calabria, Apulia, Molise, the Abruzzi) and of Sicily, the House of Anjou, rapidly Italianized, had two aims: to secure predominance 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 Mezzogiorno, which at that time had Mediterranean and European importance, and was ennobled by a flowering of art, literature, law and medicine.
CHARLES I, founder of the dynasty, born in 1220 to Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile, and therefore brother of St. Louis IX, received as an appanage Anjou and Maine, the Provence as dowry from his wife Beatrice of Provence, the Hainaut by conquest, and by submission Alba, Cuneo, Savigliano, Mondovì and other lands of southern Piedmont, which gave him a pretext for keeping the passes of the Maritime Alps open (Col di Nava and Tenda). In 1263, after laborious negotiations, he accepted the offer of the fief of Sicily from Urban IV and almost at the same time his appointment as senator of Rome; in 1265, having received the investiture of the kingdom, he gathered a powerful army and moved against Manfred, whom he routed and killed at Benevento (1266), defeated Conradin at Tagliacozzo (1268) and had him beheaded at Naples, and, having assumed the crown, he won the affection of the people by lavishing privileges and surrounded himself with loyal feudatories, most of whom had come with him on the enterprise as on 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, of Greece (principality of Achaea) and of St. John of 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, although he was aided by the Papacy, France and Florence, he was never able to recover.
CHARLES II, the Lame, his son, born in 1248, on his father's death in 1285 could not ascend the throne, 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. Freed in November 1288, crowned the following year at Rieti, he resumed the struggle to reconquer Sicily; but the reverses he suffered forced him to the peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which, of Sicily, fallen into the lordship of Frederick II of Aragon, left him only the mere title of king. Sicily, however, was to have returned to the A. on the death of the Aragonese. In vain did he then turn to the affairs of the East, in which he had no better fortune: Palestine and part of Greece lost, Albania reduced to the possession of Durazzo. He obtained better success in Piedmont and, outside the Italian borders, in Hungary: in Piedmont he maintained his possessions and political ascendancy, naming his son Raymond Berengar count there and, on the latter's death, assuming the title himself for his son Robert; in Hungary, asserting the rights to that throne that derived to his descendants from his wife Mary, daughter and heiress of Stephen V, he installed his son Charles Martel 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 Elizabeth of Villehardouin entered into a second marriage.
ROBERT I, born in 1278, third-born son of Charles II, ascended the throne in 1309, because his elder brother Charles Martel (d. 1295) had predeceased him and the second-born Louis (v.) had become a Franciscan. Already well tested in the affairs of government through the part he had taken in the enterprise of Sicily and in the vicissitudes 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 came down successively into Italy to reinvigorate the Ghibelline party. He nevertheless succeeded, amid bargaining and hesitations, in saving the kingdom and in leading the Guelphs against those emperors. Vigorously supported by John XXIII, he was also able to conduct an Italian policy with some success: he acquired Genoa (1318), opposed the Visconti, and dominated in Florence and in the center of the peninsula. He also persisted tenaciously in the enterprise of Sicily and succeeded in gaining a foothold there with the reconquest of Milazzo; but he could obtain no further successes. He died in 1343. He was, according to some, the "king of sermons" of Dante (Paradise, VIII, 147). Petrarch, his friend, composed for his splendid tomb in S. Chiara, today almost entirely lost, a eulogy worthy of an emperor.
JOANNA I, born in 1326 to Charles, son of Robert I, on the latter's death (1328) remained the only direct heiress of the Neapolitan throne; and King Robert, in order to secure her succession more easily, gave her in marriage to Andrew of Anjou, son of Carobert king of Hungary, who was in turn a son of Charles Martel. Having ascended the throne at the age of 17 on the death of Robert I, in 1343, she found herself entangled in a palace camarilla, greatly hostile to her spouse Andrew, who was prevented from being crowned with the queen in 1344; and since the Pope imposed that Andrew too 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 reality dominated its sad vicissitudes. Joanna sought 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, and kept both of them far from the 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 had therefore been excommunicated by Urban
VI. The latter supported the cause of Charles III of Durazzo (himself 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, confined in the castle of Muro Lucano, was strangled there in 1382.
CHARLES III of Durazzo, born in 1345, had married his cousin Margaret, legitimate heiress of the crown of Naples, and, having remained master of the kingdom, withstood the invasion of the French rival and governed until 1385, that is, for only three years. In 1385 he was called to Hungary to succeed that king, Louis the Great; but the following year he was strangled at Buda. Charles III too had in the end 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 9, having been born in 1377: his mother, a woman of great ability, governed in his name. Ladislaus was wrong to fight against Louis II of Anjou, of the French branch, who came twice to wrest the crown from him, in 1391 and in 1409. Taking advantage of the vicissitudes 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 in Naples, where he had been carried suffering from an illness that had struck him at Narni, while he was pursuing Pope John XXIII, who was taking refuge in Bologna.
GIOVANNA II, sister of Ladislaus, having ascended the throne, brought the Angevin kingdom to utter ruin, entrusting its fortunes to two favorites: first Pandolfo Alopo, against whom the nobility obliged her to take a husband, whom she chose in James of Bourbon, and then Gianni Caracciolo, opposed by Attendolo Sforza and supported instead by Braccio di Montone. To put an end to the scandal and to the disorders, the nobles, the Pope and Sforza invited Louis III of Anjou to occupy the kingdom; but Giovanna adopted as her successor Alfonso V of Aragon, who succeeded in taking Naples. From this arose two factions, the Angevin and the Aragonese, which ruined the State. Giovanna wavered between the one and the other: she abandoned Alfonso V and adopted Louis III of Anjou first, then returned to the Aragonese and adopted Alfonso of Aragon, finally she abandoned the Aragonese once again and proclaimed as her successor once more Louis III of Anjou, and upon his death, which occurred in 1434, his brother Renato. The following year she died, and the A. were driven from the kingdom forever. During those intestine struggles two of the greatest Italian condottieri disappeared, Muzio Attendolo Sforza, who perished in the Pescara in 1424, and Braccio di Montone, who through the action of Francesco Sforza was killed in 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. the individual entries.