Chinea, Question of the

CHINEA, Question of the. - The chinea was the name used to designate the horse specially trained to the ambling gait. Charles of Anjou bound himself to give every year, for the feast of the Apostles, in addition to a sum of money by way of census (a sum that varied over the course of the following centuries), also a chinea; and this on the occasion when Clement IV invested him with the kingdom of Naples, which he was to conquer against Manfred (29 May 1265). It was Tanucci (v.) who, a tenacious upholder of a jurisdictionalist policy, in 1776 did not wish the offering of the chinea to be continued; the custom, however, was resumed the following year by Ferdinand IV. A long and complicated diplomatic clash between the Holy See and the kingdom arose in 1783, when the king of Naples refused to submit to the ancient tradition. Only in 1855 did Pius IX officially exempt King Ferdinand II from the obligation of the chinea. The legal nature of the payment was disputed during the 18th and 19th centuries; according to some it was a simple attestation of devotion on the king's part; according to Luigi dei Medici (who takes up Giannone's thought) it was an act of recognition of a feudal nature. A recognition that had already been a cause of conflicts during the rule of the Aragonese and also in the 16th century.

Massimo Petrocchi