Montferrat, Marquises of

MONTFERRAT, MARQUISES OF. - The dynasty of the marquises of M. begins in the 10th century with ALERAMO, prince coadjutor of Berengar II, whose daughter Gerberga he married. To the domains given him by the King he succeeded in joining others given him by Otto I after his triumph. He then held the marchional government of several comitati between the Po and the sea: Vado (Savona), Acqui, Loreto, Torresana. The two branches of the family soon divided the government of the vast domains: the Anselmian branch, called del Vasto, settled in the territories of Savona; the Ottonian branch called itself of M., from the name that was beginning to be used for the county of Torresana. While in the 11th century the princes of the Anselmian branch prevailed, in the 12th century the marquises of M. prevailed, who later ended by establishing themselves as the only true successors and heirs of Aleramo.

With great skill they managed to remain faithful to the emperors of the House of Franconia and then of that of Swabia; they bound themselves by marriage ties to the Capetian house of France, and later WILLIAM V married Judith of Babenberg, daughter of the margrave of Austria and aunt of Frederick Barbarossa. William V in the middle of the 12th century was, thanks to imperial support, the hegemonic prince of western Italy, and though he was a faithful supporter of Frederick Barbarossa in his struggle with the Communes, he was nevertheless unable to derive considerable profit for his family from it. Of his various sons, the first, WILLIAM, tried his fortune in the East: he married the sister of the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV, but died before he could obtain that throne; another, RANIERI, having gone to Constantinople, married the daughter of the basileus Manuel I, but died in the civil strife of that court; a third, CONRAD, took an active part in the events of the Third Crusade; by a marriage he procured rights to the crown of Jerusalem, but died suddenly at the hands of the ruffians of the Old Man of the Mountain. On the death of William V, the marquisate remained to his only surviving son, BONIFACE I: he too, seduced by the Eastern mirage, took part in the Fourth Crusade, acclaimed leader by the French and Flemish Crusaders. In the partition of the Byzantine Empire he secured Macedonia for himself, creating the Kingdom of Thessalonica, but after Boniface's death in 1207, the son born of his second marriage, DEMETRIUS, was unable to preserve that domain for long. In M. Boniface was succeeded by his son WILLIAM VI, who remained faithful to the ancestral policy of devotion to the Empire. Frederick II made him his vicar in the Kingdom of Arles, but could not lend him aid in the struggles against the neighboring Communes, especially Asti and Vercelli. After the death of William VI in 1225 at Thessalonica, whither he had gone to bring aid to his brother Demetrius, the government of the marquisate passed to BONIFACE II. His government corresponds to the period of the struggles of the emperor Frederick II with the second Lombard League and with the Church. Boniface II was compelled, in order to preserve his domains, to waver between one side and the other. In 1227 he adhered to the Lombard League, arousing deep discontent in the Emperor; in 1228 he allied himself with Asti, but provoked the opposition of Alessandria and Milan. Attacked by the Milanese in 1232, he was forced to submit feudally to the victor. Only after the battle of Cortenuova did he return to devotion toward the Empire. But when the conflict broke out between Frederick II and Innocent IV, the marquis, won over by the financial subsidies of the Genoese, again abandoned the Emperor and went over to the Church; yet as soon as Frederick II appeared in Piedmont, Boniface II hastened to make declarations of imperial fidelity. The imperialist troubadours reviled him for this unscrupulous passing from one side to the other, perjuring himself with the greatest nonchalance. Boniface II, however, preoccupied with saving his State, could not but attend to the political wavering of the great neighboring Communes. In 1247 he again abandoned Frederick and allied himself with the Pope, but, threatened by the imperialist forces, he was forced to yield. The Emperor in 1248 received him back into his graces, but he was an untrustworthy vassal. After the death of Frederick II in 1250, Boniface declared himself once more a partisan of the Church, but in 1253 he passed to fidelity toward Conrad IV. Between 1253 and 1254, on the death of Boniface II, the marquisate passed to his son WILLIAM VII. More able than his father, the young prince replaced Boniface's prudent, often passive policy with an active, bold, often reckless policy. His goal seems to have been to procure for himself political and economic bases richer and more robust than the old, scarcely productive land of M. The conflict between Manfred and Charles of Anjou gave him the opportunity to offer the Angevins his support, but then against the Angevins he relied on Alfonso of Castile, whose imperial aspirations he recognized, and later he favored Rudolf of Habsburg. He made skillful use of the conflicts between the different political currents to force not a few Communes to call him as peacemaker of their internal struggles or as captain or as lord. Ivrea, Vercelli, Acqui, Tortona, Casale thus entered into his political game. William VII could not delude himself that he could annex these Communes to his clearly feudal State, but it was enough for him to succeed in coordinating these communal forces under his hegemony. A momentary triumph was his summons to Milan, where the archbishop Otto procured him the government in order to obtain aid against his enemies, the Torriani; William VII, however, believed he could play at balance between Torriani and Visconti, and his domination in Milan came to a rapid end. Also in the West he clashed with the hostility of the counts of Savoy: in 1280, during his journey to the court of Castile, he was captured by the Savoyard forces and had, in order to regain his freedom, to consent to abandon Turin, which he had succeeded in occupying. William VII, however, persisted in his anti-Angevin policy, and his adherence to the coalition against Charles of Anjou determined the marriage between the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus and the daughter of the marquis William, Violante, who at Byzantium took the name Irene. The Visconti, the Savoys, and the Republic of Genoa organized a coalition against the marquis to eliminate the danger of the formation on the Po of a State threatening to various parties. The conflict ended with the rebellion of Alessandria: the marquis was captured and died in prison (1292). The collapse of the Monferrine political construction was exploited above all by the Visconti of Milan. In M. the young JOHN I began his government under the protection of the king of Naples Charles V and of the marquis of Saluzzo, Thomas. The marquis John died as early as 1306 without leaving heirs.

M. was then contested by John's sister, the empress of Byzantium, Irene, and by his kinsman, the marquis of Saluzzo. The Monferrine feudatories decided in favor of the Byzantine Emperor, who sent his second-born son Theodore to govern the marquisate. Thus in M. the second marchional dynasty, that of the Palaeologi, began. THEODORE I Palaeologus and his son JOHN II hoped to be able to carry on an independent policy with the aim of attaining a predominant position in western Italy. They, however, clashed with the opposition of the major political forces, the Visconti of Milan and the Savoys in the west, agreed in repressing Monferrine ambitions, eager to secure predominance over the marquises. During the second half of the 14th century and the whole of the 15th century the Palaeologi of M. returned to the policy of William VI and Boniface II: to secure the preservation of the State by balancing Savoyard influence with Visconti-Sforza influence. The extinction of the Palaeologan dynasty made it possible for the emperor Charles V to decide on the future of the marquisate of M.: in order to prevent too great a strengthening of the the house of Savoy, he assigned the march to the house of the Gonzagas of Mantua. Thus there arose in M. the third marchional dynasty, that of the Gonzagas, who under the protection of the Empire and of Spain ensured the existence of the march until the 18th century: in 1708 the Emperor occupied Mantua and authorized the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, to occupy M. in accordance with the secret agreements of 1705. Thus after a life of seven centuries M. disappeared as an autonomous state.

Francesco Cognasso