Martin I, King of Aragon and Sicily

MARTIN I, King of Aragon and Sicily. - Last Aragonese king of the Catalan dynasty, called the Humane, b. at Gerona in 1356 to King Peter IV and Eleanor of Sicily, he succeeded his brother John I in 1395. He first had to struggle against his widowed sister-in-law and her adherents, then he also had to defend his crown with arms, claimed by the count of Foix, whose army however was routed, and finally to send military legions and a strong fleet against the rebels, whom he reduced to obedience to himself and to his son Martin of Sicily.

In the religious sphere he was exemplary, but he always upheld the legitimacy of the pope of Avignon against that of Rome during the Western Schism: it should be remembered that Benedict XIII was Aragonese and brother-in-law of M. I. When the said Pontiff was besieged in Avignon in 1398 by the French army, the Aragonese came to his aid with some ships that arrived by way of the Rhone; encouraging his brother-in-law and disregarding the excommunication of Boniface IX, he took Sicily and Sardinia, fiefs of the Church, and he did not abandon the cause of Benedict even when the other sovereigns in 1408 withdrew from obedience to him; indeed the latter, a fugitive from Avignon, found a safe asylum at Perpignan, then an Aragonese city, where he was able to celebrate a council in opposition to that of Pisa. King M. died at Barcelona in 1410, leaving the nation in a terrible crisis for lack of a determined heir.