Mediaeval Italy bridges three different political and cultural spheres:
While there was such a division quite early in the history of Italy, with (1) Celts in the north, (2) Etruscans and Latium in the center, and (3) obscure indigenous people surrounded by Greek colonists in the south, the distinctive Mediaeval division of the country began with the invasion of the Lombards in 568. This was after Justinian and his great general Belisarius had retrieved the country from the Ostrogoths (536-553). The Lombards secured the north and broke through into the south; but this left a Roman corridor from Rome to Ravenna, and Lombard rule south of this only consisted of the montane Duchies of Benevento and Spoleto. The rest of the south, especially the littoral areas, principal cities, and all of Sicily, remained in Roman hands. When the Lombards finally took Ravenna in 751, Pope Stephen III appealed to the Franks. In response, King Pepin "donated" the Rome-Ravenna corridor, the Exarchate of Ravenna, to the Papacy in 754; and, after defeating the Lombards in 756, he delivered government of this area to the Pope. This established the Papal States, which survived until 1870 -- 1116 years. The Lombards were finally overthrown by Charlemagne in 774, and the Kingdom remained part of the Carolingian Empire until 888. It was then independent under Carolingian in-laws until conquered by Otto I of Germany in 961. An independent Italian Kingdom then did not exist until 1861 -- exactly 900 years later.
The policy of the Papacy was, understandably, to prevent the unification of Italy, which would have endangered Papal power. For a while, this was not much of an issue. The South remained in Lombard and Roman hands and constituted an area that was politically and culturally very different from Francia. It was culturally still part of Romania, and indeed there were still many Greek speakers, especially in Sicily, who had been living there since Greek colonization began in the 8th century BC. This was first compromised by the Islamic conquest of Sicily (827-878). Next came the Norman conquest of southern Italy, which then extended also to Sicily. The Normans finished the expulsion of the Romans in 1071, and of Islâm in 1072. This established the region as a distinct part of the Periphery of Francia. It would be the Regnum (Regno), the center of European politics and culture under the brilliant Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, the Stupor Mundi, "Wonder of the World." The modern tourist might be puzzled to find the massive prophyry sarcophagus of a Mediaeval German Emperor in Palermo. But that was Frederick's capital.
The Regnum did not include Sardinia, but then Sardinia's status is often ambiguous. Since it ended up in the hands of Aragón, it can be treated as part of the Periphery. Later, it passed to Savoy, which puts it in the Core of Francia. This is the kind of ambiguity characteristic through the Middle Ages of Italy as a whole. Spoleto, which begins as one of the detached southern Lombard Duchies, becomes more fully integrated into Lombardy and Francia after the Carolingian conquest -- rendering its own assignment, like Sardinia, ambiguous.
The Regnum was unusual among the territories of Francia in that the Normans received it as a fief directly from the Papacy. That was a theoretical curiosity -- ironically part of the settlement after Pope Leo IX had been defeated and captured at the Battle of Civitate in 1053 -- but in practice had little effect on the behavior either of the Normans or of Frederick II. It had some significance when the Pope, as suzerain, got Charles of Anjou to exterminate the Hohenstaufen. But then Sicily revolted against Charles in 1282 and attached itself, to the chagrin and fury of the Pope, to Aragón. Eventually, Sicily, Sardinia, and Naples all ended up in the hands of the Kings of Aragón, and so finally the Kings of Spain.
Even Napoleon, although annexing Rome itself and ruling the north as the King of Italy, kept the south as a separate Kingdom. The Congress of Vienna restored the Bourbons, who had maintained themselves in Sicily, to the whole of Sicily and Naples, now called the Kingdom of the "Two Sicilies". This was the situation until 1860, when Garibaldi landed in Sicily with the intention of reunited Italy. The Kings of Sardinia became the Kings of an Italy, now joining the north and south for the first time since the Lombards invaded in 568 -- 1293 years. This left part of the original dividing line, Rome itself, still in the hands of the Pope, defended by French troops. The capital of Italy was temporarily at Florence (after another brief stint at Pisa -- now a matter for trivia questions). When Napoleon III withdrew his troops in 1870, to use them against Prussia, Rome was occupied, despite the protests of the Pope, and made capital of the completely reunited country. The only exception to Italian unification visible on the map here is Corsica, which was sold by the Republic of Genoa to France in 1768. Although Italy entered World War I to regain Italia Irredenta, "Unredeemed Italy," this ended up meaning the Tyrol, Trieste, and Istria -- Austrian possessions -- not Corsica. Italy abandoned its alliance with Germany and Austria, from which a victory might had netted Corsica (or even Savoy and Nice, ceded to France in 1860), in order to seek, and win, the Austrian areas (1918). Italy returned to a German alliance in World War II, and ended up losing the Slavic speaking part of Istria to Yugoslavia. In modern Europe, there now seems little prospect of Corsica ever returning to Italian rule, although a movement for detaching Corsica from France exists.
The Margraves of Tuscany and Spoleto, 812-1115 AD
| The Margraves of Tuscany | |
|---|---|
| Boniface I | 812-813 |
| Vacant, 813-828 | |
| Boniface II | 828-834 |
| Aganus | 835-845 |
| Vacant, 845-847 | |
| Adalbert I | 847-884 |
| Vacant, 884-886 | |
| Adalbert II | 886-915 |
| Guido/Wido (III) | 915-930 |
| Lambert | 930-931 |
| Boso of Arles | 931-936 |
| Humbert | 936-961 |
| Hugo | 961-1001 |
| Boniface III | 1001-1012 |
| Vacant, 1012-1014 | |
| Rainier | 1014-1027 |
| Attoni | |
| Boniface IV of Canossa | 1027-1052 |
| Spoleto, 1043 | |
| Frederick | 1052-1053 |
| Beatrice of Bar | 1053-1076 |
| Matilda | 1076-1115 |
| Margraves/Dukes of Spoleto | |
|---|---|
| Wido (Guy) I | 842-866 |
| Lambert I | 866-879 |
| Wido II | 879-c.880 |
| Wido (Guy) III | c.880-894 |
| King/ Emperor, 891-894 | |
| Lambert II | 894-898 |
| Wido IV | 898-900 |
| Duke of Benevento, 895-900 | |
| Alberic I | 900-915 |
| Peter | 924-928 |
| Alberic II | 928-954 |
| Berenger II | 949-961 |
| King of Italy, 950-961 | |
| Octavian | John XII 955-964 |
| 954-c. 962 d. 964 | |
| Otto of Saxony | King of Germany, 936 |
| King of Italy, 951, 961 | |
| Emperor, 962 | |
| Spoleto Imperial Fief | |
At right are the contemporary Margraves of Spoleto. Spoleto had been one of the semi-autonomous Lombard Duchies of Southern Italy, under rather closer control of the Lombard Kings in the north than the more distant, and durable, Duchy of Benevento. Some dates and numberings in the table, from Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies, are contradicted by the genealogy in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume III, c.900-c.1024 [Timothy Reuter, editor, Cambridge, 1999, p.702], given below. Alberic II in Gordon and Anscar II (Margrave of Ivrea) of the History seems to have divided Spoleto between them. I have been able to sort out some of this using the Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997]. But it seems to be a very obscure period, and I have not been able to account for the identity of all the figures listed by Gordon and the History.
The line of the Margraves of Spoleto shifts to Alberic of Fermo or of Camerino in 900. This line becomes entangled with the Tusculani, in association with which we find no less then eight Popes. Alberic's grandson, Pope John XII, crowns Otto I Emperor but also cedes Spoleto to him.
This genealogy doesn't
cover much of the history of Tuscany, but does show the interesting marriages of the Margraves of Spoleto, Tuscany, and Ivrea.
In the later days of the Margravate, it became a battlefield of the conflict between the German Emperors and the Popes. The final family of Margraves was of the house of Attoni, founded by Atto Adalbert, son of the Baron Siegfried of Lucca, who helped Queen Adeleide of Italy escape the attentions of King Berengar II, protecting her at Canossa castle. When she married the King (then Emperor) Otto I, he granted Atto a County of Canossa. Atto's grandson, Boniface, then succeeded to Tuscany. Two years after Boniface was assassinated in 1052, the widowed Marchioness, Beatrice, married Godfrey II (the Bearded), Duke of Upper (1044-1047) and Lower Lorraine (1065-1069). In 1055 the Emperor Henry III then kidnapped Beatrice and her daughter, Matilda, but before he died (1056) the Emperor reconciled with Godfrey and released the women. When Godfrey died in 1069, Matilda married his son Godfrey III (the Hunchback), Duke of Lower Lorraine (1069-1076). When her child by Godfrey died, Matilda returned to Italy.
When her mother Beatrice died in 1076, Matilda succeeded to the Margravate and took the side of the Pope Gregory VII in the Investiture Controversy. The Emperor Henry IV stood barefoot in the snow outside Matilda's family castle at Canossa in 1077. In 1089 the 43-year-old Matilda married the 17-year-old Welf V, of the principal German family of Papal supporters. The marriage didn't work out, and when Matilda and Welf separated in 1095, this complicated the Imperial-Papal conflict, since the Emperor took the side of the Welfs. In 1110, a confused settlement was patched up. The Popes were so grateful for Matilda's support that eventually, in 1634, her body was moved to St. Peter's Basilica.
Montferrat, Monferrato in Italian, was a domain in the north of Italy, near modern Alessandria. Originally a County, it was elevated to a Margravate in the course the transition from the rule of Berengar II, King of Italy, to that of Otto I of Germany, who was then crowned Roman Emperor. Presumably Count Aledram benefited from the conflict, ending up as an adherent of Otto.
I have chosen to use the term "margrave." In feudal usage, this is equivalent to "marquess" in English and "marquis" in French. "Marquis" is the term most frequently seen in relation to Montferrat. Since the Italian form of the name "Montferrat" is also rarely seen in English, one is often left with the false impression that this is a French, not an Italian, feudatory.
This genealogy is entirely from the Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 1997, pp. 257-261]. The early dates seem consistently uncertain.
The family achieves prominence with the Crusades. Of the sons of William VI, two married Queens of Jerusalem. William VII married Sibylla and fathered King Baldwin V of Jerusalem. Sibylla's second husband, Guy of Lusignan, was the King of Jerusalem who lost the battle of Hattin to Saladin in 1187. Conrad marries Queen Isabella. Their daughter Maria married John Brienne, who acted as King of Jerusalem and then Emperor of Romania. Their daughter Yolanda married the German Emperor and "Wonder of the World" (Stupor Mundi) Frederick II.
The biggest splash, however, was made by their brother Boniface. He had been in service in Romania with his other brother Rainier -- both of them were made Caesars by the Emperor Andronicus I Comnenus (before, of course, the Emperor was lynched for his tyrannies by the furious citizens of Constantinople). Boniface had fought at Hattin and with Richard the Lionheart on the Third Crusade. Then in 1201 he was elected leader for the Fourth Crusade. This, of course, ended up going poorly.
The Crusaders didn't have enough money to pay Venice for passage to Palestine. But the Venetians offered passage in exchange for a couple of little jobs. First was to take the Dalmatian city of Zara. This was done, and Pope Innocent III excommunicated the entire force for attacking Christians instead of Muslims. The next task was to restore Isaac II on the throne in Constantinople, which was accomplished in 1203, under the direction of his son, who was also installed as Alexius IV. When Alexius was unable to pay off Venice and the Crusaders as promised, and was then overthrown by the outraged Greeks in 1204, the Crusaders took and sacked the City.
This appalling deed destroyed the last bastion of continuity with the Classical World and ushered in the brief and pathetic Latin Empire in Romania. Boniface was the obvious choice as Emperor in Constantinople but his election was vetoed by Venice, which didn't want anyone so vigorous or competent. But it was left to Boniface to reduce the rest of Romania to Latin authority. With his capture of the second city of the Empire, Thessalonica, he made himself King thereof. He then established feudal dependencies as the Duchy of Athens (1205-1456) and the Principality of Achaea (1205-1432). His own rule was short-lived, with him dying at the hand, or at least the forces, of the Bulgar Tsar Kalojan in 1207. His minor son Demetrius barely had time to come of age before Thessalonica was taken by Epirus in 1224.
Demetrius himself was childless, so the title to Thessalonica passed to his nephew Boniface II back in Montferrat. That might have been the end of it, and the claim to Thessalonica could have floated around for years like many such claims, if not for the marriage of Boniface's granddaughter Yolanda, who fell heir to Montferrat with the death of her brother in 1305. Yolanda married the Emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus. His son by his first marriage would succeed as the Emperor Michael IX; but now Yolanda's son Theodore would succeed as Margrave of Montferrat. Their other son, John, is listed by Andreas Thiele as the "titular" King of Thessalonica; but now, of course, the claim to Thessalonica has returned to the Sovereign who actually holds the territory, John's father Andronicus. John's title thus now derived from the relevant suzerain; and while its possession may have been largely honorary, like the Heir of England being the Prince of Wales, John, who was already a Despot of the Empire, was going to be exercising a lot more authority on the spot than any "titular" authorities off in Francia would ever be able to do.
This extraordinary turn means that subsequent Margraves of Montferrat are of the Imperial Palaeologi family. The irony of this is considerable. The domain of the leader of the Fourth Crusade passes to the family of the Greeks who ejected the Latins from Constantinople and ruled as the last Emperors of Romania. In 1536 Montferrat passes to the husband of the Heiress Margaret, Duke Frederick II Gonzaga of Mantua (Mantova). Under Frederick's son William (XII), Montferrat itself was raised to the status of a Duchy, but then in 1708 it was absorbed by Savoy. The Gonzaga line, illustrious in its own right, was absorbed by the Hapsburgs.
However, Margaret was not the only descendant of Montferrat. After her brother Boniface IV died in 1530, the Margravate passed to her uncle John George. John George had a son, Flaminio. Andreas Thiele lists Flaminio as legitimate, and this confused me for a long time; but apparently Flaminio wasn't legitimate. He wasn't going to inherit Montferrat, which passed to Margaret and her Gonzaga husband. Flaminio lived and had two sons. Thiele cites one descendant living in 1900. Information on line gives the descendants of the elder, Theodore, down to the present. These are the Paleologhi-Oriundi. The direct line can be examined on a popup. The four most recent descendants are younger than I am. With collateral lines that are not shown, one is left to wonder just how many Italian Paleologhi there are today -- bend sinister descendants of the Imperial Palaeologi of Montferrat.
| Republic of Mantua, c.1272-1309 | |
|---|---|
| Captains-General of Mantua | |
| Rinaldo Passarino | Lord, 1309-1328 |
| Luigi, Ludovico (Louis) Gonzaga | 1328-1360 |
| Guido (Guy) | 1360-1369 |
| Ludovico II | 1369-1382 |
| Francesco (Francis) I | Count, 1382-1407 |
| Margraves of Mantua | |
| Gianfrancesco (John Francis) | 1407-1433; Margrave, 1433-1444 |
| Ludovico III | 1444-1478 |
| Federico (Frederick) I | 1478-1484 |
| Francesco (John Francis) II | 1484-1519 |
| Dukes of Mantua | |
| Federico (Frederick) II | 1519-1530; Duke, 1530-1540 |
| Margrave of Montferrat, 1536-1540 | |
| Francesco III | 1540-1550 |
| Guglielmo (William) | 1550-1587 |
| Duke of Montferrat, 1573-1587 | |
| Vincenzo (Vincent) I | 1587-1612 |
| Francesco IV | 1612 |
| Ferdinando | 1612-1626 |
| Vincenzo II | 1626-1627 |
| War of the Mantuan Succession, 1628-1631 | |
| Carlo (Charles) I of Nevers | 1631-1637 |
| Carlo II | 1637-1665 |
| Ferdinando Carlo (Charles III) | 1665-1708 |
| Mantua to Emperor, Montferrat to Savoy, 1708 | |
Francesco II (also Gianfrancesco, John Francis, II or III) married Isabella d'Este (the house of Modena). Andreas Thiele says, "Sie macht den Hof v. Mantua zum strahlenden Mittelpunkt der italien. Renaissance(!)" -- "She made the court of Mantua into the shining center of the Italian Renaissance" [see Thiele below, p.249].
Federico II married Margaret of Montferrat. Margaret was the heiress of Montferrat, which brought the Margravate, soon to be a Duchy also, to Mantua -- though it was separated from Mantua by the territory of the much more powerful Milan. But Margaret was actually also the heiress of the Roman Palaeologi family, who had become the heirs of Montferrat. Boniface of Montferrat had led the Fourth Crusade against Constantinople and then become King of Thessalonica. Nevertheless, Yolanda (d.1317), the heiress of Montferrat, married the Emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus, and it was her son Theodore who inherited Montferrat.
Federico's son Ludovico (or Luigi) married the heiress of Nevers. This was ultimately a possession of Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy and came to the Gonzagas by way of Cleves & Mark-Altena.
The Gonzagas of Nevers became Dukes of Mantua in the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628-1631). The succession of Charles (Carlo) I of Nevers was disputed by his cousin Ferrante (Ferdiniand) II of Guastalla, and by the Count of Savoy, Charles Emanuel I (1580-1630), just because his grand-daughter, Maria, was the child of Duke Francesco IV of Mantua, and was thus, according to him, the heiress of Montferrat, which was detached from Mantua and adjacent to Savoy. Since Maria ended up marrying the son of Charles of Nevers (also Charles), the Savoyard claims ended up in the hands of Nevers. However, what decided the conflict were the roles of France and Austria in what amounted here to a sideshow of the Thirty Years War. The Austrian candidate, Ferrante of Guastalla, ended up put aside for Charles of Nevers, despite an Imperial army taking and sacking Mantua itself.
The Gonzagas were made Margraves by the Emperor Sigismund, and then Dukes by the great Emperor Charles V. When the male line failed (1708), right in the middle of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the Emperor Joseph I took possession of Mantua, while Montferrat passed to his ally Savoy, per the claims of Charles Emanuel. The Nevers and Guastalla lines had just been united in the last Duke, Ferdinand Charles IV, but without children, this was for nought. The Dukes of Guastalla, who might have claimed the whole Mantuan inheritance, were ignored -- again as a sideshow of the larger war.
Meanwhile Eleonore, a granddaughter of Duke Carlo I, had made a very good marriage, to the Emperor Ferdinand III. This was Ferdinand's third marriage, so it did not contribute any heirs to Austria, but their own daughter Eleonore, after marriage to an ephemeral King of Poland, married Duke Charles IV of Lorraine. This led to their grandson, the Duke Francis III, who then married the great Maria Theresa, the Heiress of Austria, founding the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine. All the subsequent Hapsburgs are thus descendants, not only of Gonzaga, but of the Imperial Palaeologi. I imagine that there are others, but this is the only line of modern descent from the Palaeologi that I have noticed.
| Ludovico III Gonzaga and family, by Andrea Mantegna (c.1431-1506), fresco at San Giorgio Castle, Mantua, c.1470; the Margrave is being informed that his son Francesco has been named a Cardinal |
|---|
Standing behind his mother in the famous painting above is Rodolfo, who will be made Margrave of Castiglione, Goffredo, and Solferino. He would become a condottiero and be killed at the Battle of Fornovo (1495), as Charles VIII of France was invading Italy. His descendants, however, became a cadet line of the Gonzagas, as we see in the genealogy at right. The greatest claim to fame of this line may be that it leads to a Saint, Aloysius (Aloisio, Luigi) de Gonzaga. He joined the Jesuits and died at Rome, only 23 years old. Nevertheless, it is after him that institutions like Gonzaga University (Spokane, Washington, 1887) are named.
The Princes of Castiglione, who might have pressed claims for the Mantuan inheritance themselves in 1708, were dispossessed by force. Ferdinando (Ferrante) II died in exile in Venice, borrowing money to live on.
The list of Captains-General, Margraves, and Dukes is originally from the Oxford Dynasties of the World by John E. Morby [Oxford University Press, 1989, 2002, p.107], with help from Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies. The genealogical diagram beginning with Gianfrancesco is based on the Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, by Andreas Thiele, Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa [R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 1997], now with help from Wikipedia. The map of Italy is adapted from April Blood, by Lauro Martines [Oxford, 2003].
| Montefeltro Counts & Dukes of Urbino | |
|---|---|
| Buonconte | Count of Montefeltro, Urbino 1226-1241 |
| Montefeltrano | 1241-1253 |
| Guido | 1253-1296 |
| Papal Rule, 1285-1294 | |
| Federico I | 1296-1322 |
| Nolfo | 1322-1360 |
| Papal Rule, 1322-1324 | |
| Federico II | 1360-1363 |
| Antonio | 1363-1404 |
| Papal Rule, 1369-1375 | |
| Guidantonio | 1404-1443 |
| Oddantonio | 1443, Duke, 1443-1444 |
| Federico (Federigo) III | Count, 1444-1474, Duke, 1474-1482 |
| Guidubaldo I | 1482-1508 |
| Della Rovere Dukes of Urbino | |
| Francesco Maria I | 1508-1538 |
| Guidubaldo II | 1538-1574 |
| Francesco Maria II | 1574-1621, 1623-1631 |
| Federico Ubaldo | 1621-1623 |
| Papal Rule, 1631 | |
Urbino was no less than the birthplace of the divine Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, 1483-1520), to whom we owe, among so much else, the extraordinary "School of Athens." Raffael spent his more productive years in Florence and Rome (patronized by the della Rovere warrior Pope Julius II), but his youth was in Urbino where his father was a Court painter for the Duke Federico (Federigo) III, himself a great patron who drew artists and architects to Urbino. Among these were Bartolomeo de Giovanni Corradini (Fra Carnevale, d.1484), Donato Bramante (the architect of St. Peter's in Rome, d.1514), and Piero della Francesca (d.1492). Urbino now contains the National Gallery of the Marches museum. Federico began his career as a successful condottiero mercenary, including work for Francesco I Sforza of Milan. This side of his life was inhibited when he lost an eye in a tournament. He subsequently had surgeons remove the bridge of his nose, as we see in his portraits, to improve the field of vision in his remaining eye. I would not have had such confidence in the safety of such a procedure at the time. His later military career, equally splendid, was mainly in his own interest as Duke of Urbino.
At right we see the front of the grand Palazzo Ducale built by Federico, which overlooks the lands to the south, which include the small domain possessed by Federico before he inherited Urbino, after the death of his half-brother.
Federico's own origin is obscure enough that some believe he was not an illegitimate son of Count Guidantonio, but the illegitimate son of a daughter of Guidantonio, then adopted and legimated by Guidantonio. Federico's mother otherwise seems to be unknown.
Fiefs in the Papal States were often granted by Popes to their relatives. With Urbino, Count Federico is made a Duke by Pope Sixtus IV, Francesco della Rovere, even as Federico's daughter Giovanna marries Sixtus' nephew Giovanni. The son of Giovanna and Giovanni, Francesco Maria, then succeeds to the Duchy, which is then in the possession of the della Roveres until the male line fails and the territory reverts to the Papacy.
Other genealogical connections of the della Rovere Popes are given with the list of Popes. Francesco Maria II married a granddaughter, Lucretia, of Lucretia Borgia, whose children otherwise failed to continue the line of d'Este in Modena. Finally, the della Roveres intermarry with the Medici of Florence, whose own line then shortly afterwards dies out.
Federico's son Guidubaldo became the patron of Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), the author of The Book of the Courtier (Il Cortegiano, 1528). Giudubaldo and Castiglione are remembered by W.B. Yeats in his poem, "To a Wealthy Man, who promised a second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if it were proved the People wanted Pictures."
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino’s windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds’ will.
Here we see Federico, with a young Guidobaldo by his side, probably by Pedro Berruguete (1450-1504), c.1475, quietly reading -- but in full armor. Kenneth Clark comments that the armor was necessary, since the security of Federico's domain depended strongly depended on his abilities as a warrior.
Guidobaldo failed to produce any heirs, and his nephew Francesco Maria became the next Duke. Thus, Guidobaldo's Gongaza wife, Elisabetta, did not contribute to the lineage. However, another Gongaza, Elisabetta's niece, married Francesco Maria, making the Gonzagas ancestors of all the Montefeltro descendants.
The list of Counts and Dukes is from the Oxford Dynasties of the World, by John E. Morby [Oxford University Press, 1989, 2002, p.105]. The genealogical diagram is based on Morby, on April Blood, by Lauro Martines [Oxford, 2003, p.xv], and on the Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, by Andreas Thiele, Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa [R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 1997, p.249], and Volume III, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser, Ergänzungsband [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 2001, p.210].
The "Venus of Urbino" is a painting by the great artist Titian (1488/90-1576). This may be a portrait of a well known Venetian courtesan, Angela Zaffetta. The painting, completed in 1534, is associated with Urbino because it was bought by Duke Guidobaldo II della Rovere. When the Urbino line passed to the Medici, the painting, with many others, was moved to Florence, where it remains. It later occasioned what seems an uncharacteristic condemnation from no less than Mark Twain, who called it "the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses." However, this may be stated so strongly in contrast with the puritanism enforced in life, but allowed in such art. Indeed, the sensuality of the portait was something that always had the potential to generate protest. Part of the problem seemed to have been that her left hand, although near the traditional placement to conceal her genitals, doesn't conceal much, which led many to think that it is there because she has been pleasuring herself.
Here is the wood paneled study of Federico Montefeltro, where Kenneth Clark did a stand-up, talking about the Duke's enlightened attitudes. This is on September 18, 2019, with our guide in Urbino, Christina, at left, and two of my friends, Daphne and Robert, who we traveled with, center and right. Other rooms in the palace were stone or plastered, and this room is unique, warm and cozy.
| da Romano, Ghibelline | |
|---|---|
| Ezzelino | 1226-1233 1236-1259 |
| Di Sehio, Ghibelline | |
| Giovanni | 1233-1236 |
| San Bonifazio, Guelph | |
| Rizzardo. | 1247-1253 |
| Ludovico | 1253-1263 |
| della Scala, Ghibelline | |
| Mastino I | 1260-1277 |
| Excommunicated for supporting Conradin Hohenstaufen, 1267 | |
| Albert I | 1277-1301 |
| Bartolomeo I | 1301-1304 |
| Alboin | 1304-1311 |
| Cangrande I | 1308-1329 |
| Mastino II | 1329-1351 |
| holds Parma, 1335-1341 | |
| Alberto II | 1351-1352 |
| Cangrande II | 1352-1359 |
| Paolo Alboin | 1359-1375 |
| Cansignorio | 1359-1375 |
| Bartolomeo II | 1375-1381 |
| Antonio I | 1381-1387, d.1388 |
| To Milan, 1387-1404 | |
| Guglielmo | 1404 |
| Bruno | 1404 |
| Antonio II | 1404 |
| To Padua, 1404; both to Venice, 1405 | |
How to label the rulers and the realm of Verona is a little confusing. The Northern Italian cities of the 12th century, such as the members, including Verona (1167-1226), of the Lombard League, the Lega Lombarda, were essentially republics. The podestà (like potestà, "power") was the elected mayor. Once Mastino I made his office hereditary (1263), he became the Signore, the "Lord." This made Verona a signoría, a domain or "seignitory." Nevertheless, the Lord of Verona is often called the "Prince," and Bruce R. Gordon lists the state as a "Principality." This is reasonable, since a "lord" may be no more than a baron at the bottom of a very deep feudal hierarchy, while any ruler who is essentially sovereign and autonomous may be called a "prince." In the 15th century, as the political arrangements in Italy matured, the surviving independent cities, which had not remained Republics (like Genoa), tended to become Duchies (like Milan).
Cangrande I della Scala (1308-1329) was one of the archetypes of the Renaissance Prince, sheltering Dante Alighieri in exile (as had Bartolomeo I), and patronizing Petrarch and Giotto. Dante wrote a letter to Cangrande explaining the levels of interpretation that would apply to The Divine Comedy. And Dante repaid Cangrande's attentions by placing him in The Paradiso. Modern Verona repaid Dante's attentions with a statue of him in the middle of the city. The prince also appears favorably in Boccaccio's Decameron. Notice that Dante moved on to Ravenna, where he is buried.
Since the traditional date of the story of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is thought to be 1302, the Prince of the story would have been Bartolomeo I (1301-1304). The Prince is called "Escalus," which looks like a Latin version of "Scalla." Romeo and Juliet's families, the Montagues (Montecchi) and the Capulets, respectively, are feuding because of the conflict between Guelphs (the Papal party of the Welfs) and Ghibellines (the Imperial party of the Hohenstaufen or Waiblingen) that troubled the politics of many Italian cities -- note that Verona left the Lombard League, which resisted the Emperors, in 1226 when the Ghibellines achieved control of the city.
The Montagues were Guelphs and the Capulets Ghibellines. In the play the Prince, who was a Ghibelline, does not in general seem to favor one family over the other, which may reflect his policy of reconciling the factions to his rule. However, at the beginning of the play, where there is a street fight between the two families, with the heads of the families present, the Prince does seem to show some favoritism. He says;
You, Capulet, shall go along with me:
And, Montague, come you this afternoon,
To know our farther pleasure in this case,
To old Freetown, our common judgment place.
"Freetown" is Villafranca di Verona, where we find the ancestral castle, "Castello Scaligero," of the della Scalas, ten miles outside Verona. Since the Montagues are the Guelfs, it is noteworthy that the more burdensome and threatening instruction is given to them them. The Prince, as we might expect, seems less harsh to the Ghibelline Capulets. However, the Prince does not want civil disorder in Verona, so he tolerates no nonsense from either family.
The houses of the two families, or at least what are thought to be, are still pointed out and marked in Verona. Richard Paul Roe traveled Northern Italy and identified the Italian sites in Shakespeare's plays, as recounted in The Shalespeare Guide to Italy, Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels [Harper Perennial, 2011]. Since William Shakspere of Stratford is not known or thought to have ever left England, it has been typical to think that many of the details of locations in the Italian plays came from his imagination, or from reports of some travelers, casually examined. There were no Michelin Guides to Italy at the time, although there were some maps.
However, many details look like one would need personal local knowledge to be aware of them. Thus, since Romeo and Juliet begins with a reference to sycamore groves outside the western walls of Verona, where earlier versions of the story, upon which the play relies, mention nothing of the sort, this looks like a case requiring real familiarity with the place. Other details about Verona are of the same kind. This is relevant to debates about the authorship of the Shakespearean plays. Edward de Vere is known to have lived and traveled in Northern Italy for more than a year.
Shakespeare set another play in Verona, the self-explanatory The Two Gentlemen of Verona. However, there is little about Verona in the play, since the "gentlemen" straightaway leave and go to Milan. The issue is how they got there. Since they are said to have gone by boat, this is often thought to have been one of Shakespeare's mistakes, since both cities are landlocked. However, Richard Paul Roe identified the canals that connected Verona, on the Adige River, with the Po River, which led by other canals, in two different ways, to Milan. The wealthy would travel by boat rather than risk robbers and other inconviences, like dirty inns, going by land. The canals to Milan led to the actual moat around the city, which had been enlarged to accomodate actual shipping. In modern times, the moat was filed in and became a ring road aroung Milan, the way the city walls of Vienna were demolished and became the ring road there.
Alexander Waugh cites another example of Shakespeare scholarship about Verona:
Let us take, for example, the seeming trifle of St. Peter’s in Verona, a church mentioned three times by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet. Stratfordian John Doherty ["Bookbinder at Martext, Author," Melbourne, Australia] has this to say about it:There has never been a Saint Peter’s Church in Verona. There is a San Tomaso’s, a San Stefano’s, a Santa Anastasia’s etc... There is also a San Bernadino’s church with an attached Franciscan monastery. This would have been a suitable location for Friar Laurence’s cell... However, Saint Peter’s was as good a name for a church as any for Shakespeare [The Ignorance of Shakespeare, Eloquent Books, 2009].The difference between this and the method used by non-Stratfordian scholars is both considerable and typical, for where the Stratfordian is content to affect the carefree pose of an armchair pundit, the non-Stratfordian rolls up his sleeves, gets himself to Verona, trawls the streets and minutely examines the local archives -- not in order to discover if there is a church in Verona called St. Peter's, but to establish which of the four churches of that name -- San Pietro in Castello, San Pietro in Archivolto, San Pietro Martine or San Pietro Incarnario -- might have been the one that Shakespeare had in mind ["Keeping Shakespeare out of Italy," Beyond Doubt? The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, 2013, 2016, p.73 -- it turned out to be San Pietro Incarnario].
Waugh speculates that the author here "may not have known that 'Peter' translates into Italian as 'Pietro'." This seems unkind; but if not, one wonders how Mr. Doherty can have read off the names of a number of churches in Verona and not have realized that several were named after St. Peter.
Cangrande and his brother Bartolomeo married sisters whose father was Conrad of Antioch, the son of Frederick of Antioch, an illegitimate son of the Emperor Frederick II. Frederick's mother, who was the source of his connection to the Principality of Antioch, is called "Maria" or "Mathilda." I had difficulty identifying her parentage among the de Hauteville Princes of Antioch. I could not track her down in my regular sources, and I had even gotten the idea that she was the wife rather than the mother of Fredrick of Antioch. Fortunately, a correspondent, Jan van den Burg, found some references, including Detlev Schwennicke, Europäische Stammtafeln Neue Folge Band I.1, Die fränkischen Könige (...) Kaiser desen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation, Tafel 16 Die Staufer III. This is a curious feature of the della Scala genealogy, although the subsequent descent of the family was the result of neither marriage.
The Princes of Verona were from the della Scala family -- a name that can also be rendered as "de Scalis" or "Scaliger" (Scaligeri). There is a curious sequel involving this name. Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609), who introduced the device of Julian Day Numbers, was the son of the Humanist scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558), after whom the Day Numbers were actually named (not directly after Julius Caesar). The elder Scaliger was born in Italy; and although he styled himself as "Giulio Cesare della Scala," his own father's name was Benedetto Bordone and he went as a Bordone in his youth. It was later that he claimed to actually be a della Scala, a Scaliger. Although this seems to make it unlikely that he was an actual Scaliger, the present fame of the name is principally due to Joseph Justus.
Thus, for its very brief period of fame, the influence of Verona survives in literature and even in the history of science.
The d'Este family was from an old Lombard family. Otbert I achieves prominence with the coming of the Germans, King then Emperor Otto I, to Italy. Otbert becomes the Count Palatine of Italy, i.e. the keeper of the Imperial Palace, and his successors continue as Margraves of Milan and of other Northern Italian locales. There are then two significant landmarks in the history of the family. First Albert Azzo II marries Kunigunde, the Heiress of the Welfs. Their son founds the line of the "Younger Welfs" detailed elsewhere. By his second marriage, the line of d'Este continues in Milan. As Milan shifts to communal government, the d'Estes shift to other cities, like Ferrara and then Modena. It is as Dukes of Modena that they continued to the 19th century.
| d'Este | |
|---|---|
| Azzo I | Podestá of Ferrara, 1196-1212 |
| Aldobrandino I | 1212-1215 |
| Azzo II | 1215-1264 |
| Obizzo II | Lord of Ferrera & Modena, 1264-1293 |
| Azzo III | 1293-1308 |
| Francesco/ Fresco | 1308-1312 |
| Aldobrandino II | 1308-1326 |
| Niccolò I | 1317-1344 |
| Rinaldo | 1317-1335 |
| Obizzo III | 1317-1352 |
| Aldobrandino III | 1352-1361 |
| Niccolò II | 1361-1388 |
| Alberto | 1388-1393 |
| Niccolò III | 1393-1441 |
| Leonello | 1441-1450 |
| Borso | 1450-1452, Duke of Modena & Ferrera, 1452-1471 |
| Ercole I | 1471-1505 |
| Alfonso I | 1505-1534 |
| Ercole II | 1534-1559 |
| Alfonso II | 1559-1597 |
| Cesare | 1597-1628; loss of Ferrera, 1598 |
| Alfonso III | 1628-1629, 1644 |
| Francis I | 1629-1658 |
| Alfonso IV | 1658-1662 |
| Francis II | 1662-1694 |
| Rinaldo | 1694-1737 |
| Francis III | 1737-1780 |
| Ercole III | 1780-1796, d.1803 |
| Modena annexed to Lombard Republic, 1796; Cisalpine Republic, 1797, Kingdom of Italy, 1805-1814 | |
This list was originally from Brian Tompsett's Royal and Noble genealogy, which left a few obscurities. Now the list has been modified and the entire genealogy produced from Andreas Thiele's Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, Volume I, Part 1, Deutsche Kaiser-, Königs-, Herzogs- und Grafenhäuser I [Third Edition, R. G. Fischer Verlag, 1997, p.33], Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa [R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 1997, pp.231-236], and Volume III, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser, Ergänzungsband [R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 2001, pp.163-164].
| Hapsburg | |
|---|---|
| Ferdinand Frederick | 1803-1806 |
| Francis IV | 1806-1846 |
| Francis V | 1846-1859, d.1876 |
| Annexed by Sardinia to Italy, 1859 | |
When the Duke of Modena was deposed by Napoleon, he was compensated by the Treaty of Campo Formio (between France and Austria, 1797) with Breisgau. Francis IV would have been able to return in 1814.
In 1859 a plebiscite voted for union with Sardinia, whence it passed into the Kingdom of Italy when that was formed in 1861.
| Doges of Genoa | |
|---|---|
| Corsica taken from Pisa, 1284; Marco Polo captured, 1296; defeat of Venice, Battle of Curzola, 1298 | |
| Simone Boccanegra | 1339-1344, 1356-1363 |
| Caffa in Crimea taken, 1343 | |
| Giovanni I di Murta I | 1344-1350 |
| Giovanni II di Valenti | 1350-1353 |
| occupied by Milan, 1353-1356; war with Venice, 1353-1355 | |
| Gabriele Adorno | 1363-1370 |
| Domenico di Campofregoso | 1370-1378 |
| Antoniotto I Adorno | 1378, 1383, 1385-1390, 1391-1392, 1394-1396 |
| Nicholò Guasco | 1378-1383 |
| war with Venice, 1378-1381 | |
| Frederico de Pagana | 1383 |
| Leonardo Montaldo | 1383-1385 |
| Geiacomo Fregoso | 1390-1391 |
| Antoniotto II Montaldo | 1392-1393, 1393-1394 |
| Pietro Fregoso | 1393 |
| Clemente Promonorio | 1393 |
| Francesco Giustiniano di Garibaldo | 1393 |
| Nicholò Zoagli | 1394 |
| occupied by France, 1396-1409; occupied by Montferrat, 1409-1413 | |
| Giorgio Adorno | 1413-1415 |
| Barnaba Guano | 1415 |
| Thomas di Campofregoso | 1415-1421, 1436-1442 |
| occupied by Milan, 1421-1436 | |
| Isnardo Guarco | 1436 |
| Raffaele Adorno | 1443-1447 |
| Barnaba Adorno | 1447 |
| Giao I di Campofregoso | 1447-1448 |
| Lodovico I di Campofregoso | 1448-1450, 1461-1462, 1462 |
| Pietro di Campofregoso | 1450-1458 |
| occupied by France, 1458-1461 | |
| Prospero Adorno | 1461, 1477 |
| Spinetta Fregoso | 1461 |
| Paolo Fregoso | 1462, 1462-1463, 1483-1488 |
| occupied by Milan, 1463-1477 | |
| Battista Fregoso | 1478-1483 |
| occupied by Milan, 1488-1499; occupied by France, 1499-1507 | |
| Paolo da Novi | 1507 |
| occupied by France, 1507-1511 | |
| Giano II di Campofregoso | 1512-1513 |
| Ottaviano Tregoso | 1513-1515 |
| occupied by France, 1515-1522 | |
| Antoniotto II Adorno | 1522-1527 |
| occupied by France, 1527-1528 | |
| Andrew Adorno, Andrea Doria | Censor, 1527-1555, d.1560 |
| Republic, 1560-1798 | |
| Oberto Cattaneo Lazzari | 1528-1531 |
| Battista Spinola | 1531-1533 |
| Battista Lomellini | 1533-1535 |
| Cristoforo Grimaldi Rosso | 1535-1537 |
| Giovanni Battista Doria | 1537-1539 |
| Gianandrea Giustiniani Lungo | 1539-1541 |
| Leonardo Cattaneo della Volta | 1541-1543 |
| Andrea Centurione Pietrasanta | 1543-1545 |
| Giovanni Battista di Fornari | 1545-1547 |
| Benedetto Gentile Pevere | 1547-1549 |
| Gaspare Grimaldi Bracelli | 1549-1551 |
| Luca Spinola | 1551-1553 |
| Giacomo Promontorio | 1553-1555 |
| Agostino Pinello Ardimenti | 1555-1557 |
| Pietro Giovanni Chiavica Cibo | 1557-1558 |
| Girolamo Vivaldi | 1559-1561 |
| Paolo Battista Giudice Calvi | 1561 |
| Giovanni Battista Cicala Zoagli | 1561-1563 |
| Giovanni Battista Lercari | 1563-1565 |
| Ottavio Gentile Oderico | 1565-1567 |
| Simone Spinola | 1567-1569 |
| Paolo Giustiniani Moneglia | 1569-1571 |
| Gianotto Lomellini | 1571-1573 |
| Giacomo Grimaldi Durazzo | 1573-1575 |
| Prospero Centurione Fattinanti | 1575-1577 |
| Giovanni Battista Gentile Pignolo | 1577-1579 |
| Nicoló Doria | 1579-1581 |
| Gerolamo de Franchi Tosso | 1581-1583 |
| Gerolamo Chiavari | 1583-1585 |
| Ambrogio di Negro | 1585-1587 |
| Davide Vacca | 1587-1589 |
| Battista Negrone | 1589-1591 |
| Giovanni Agostino Giustiniani Campi | 1591-1593 |
| Antonio Grimaldi Cebá | 1593-1595 |
| Matteo Senarega | 1595-1597 |
| Lazzaro Grimaldi Cebá | 1597-1599 |
| Lorenzo Sauli | 1599-1601 |
| Agostino Doria | 1601-1603 |
| Pietro de Franchi Sacco | 1603-1605 |
| Luca Grimaldi de Castro | 1605-1607 |
| Silvestro Invrea | 1607 |
| Gerolamo Assereto | 1607-1609 |
| Agostino Pinelli Luciani | 1609-1611 |
| Alessandro Giustiniani Longo | 1611-1613 |
| Tomaso Spinola | 1613-1615 |
| Bernardo Clavarezza | 1615-1617 |
| Giovanni Giacomo Imperiale Tartaro | 1617-1619 |
| Pietro Durazzo | 1619-1621 |
| Ambrogio Doria | 1621 |
| Giorgio Centurione | 1621-1623 |
| Federico de Franchi Toso | 1623-1625 |
| Giacomo Lomellini | 1625-1627 |
| Giovanni Luca Chiavari | 1627-1629 |
| Andrea Spinola | 1629-1631 |
| Leonardo della Torre | 1631-1633 |
| Giovanni Stefano Doria | 1633-1635 |
| Giovanni Francesco I Brignole Sale | 1635-1637 |
| Agostino Pallavicini | 1637-1639 |
| Giovanni Battista Durazzo | 1639-1641 |
| Giovanni Agostino de Marini | 1641-1642 |
| Giovanni Battista Lercari | 1642-1644 |
| Luca Giustiniani | 1644-1646 |
| Giovanni Battista Lomellini | 1646-1648 |
| Giacomo de Franchi Toso | 1648-1650 |
| Agostino Centurione | 1650-1652 |
| Gerolamo de Franchi Toso | 1652-1654 |
| Alessandro Spinola | 1654-1656 |
| Giulio Sauli | 1656-1658 |
| Giovanni Battista Centurione | 1658-1660 |
| Gian Bernardo Frugoni | 1660-1661 |
| Antoniotto Invrea | 1661-1663 |
| Stefano de Mari | 1663-1665 |
| Cesare Durazzo | 1665-1667 |
| Cesare Gentile | 1667-1669 |
| Francesco Garbarino | 1669-1671 |
| Alessandro Grimaldi | 1671-1673 |
| Agostino Saluzzo | 1673-1675 |
| Antonio da Passano | 1675-1677 |
| Giannettino Odone | 1677-1679 |
| Agostino Spinola | 1679-1681 |
| Luca Maria Invrea | 1681-1683 |
| Francesco Maria Imperiale Lercari | 1683-1685 |
| Pietro Durazzo | 1685-1687 |
| Luca Spinola | 1687-1689 |
| Oberto della Torre | 1689-1691 |
| Giovanni Battista Cattaneo della Volta | 1691-1693 |
| Francesco Invrea | 1693-1695 |
| Bendinelli Negrone | 1695-1697 |
| Francesco Maria Sauli | 1697-1699 |
| Girolamo de Mari | 1699-1701 |
| Federico de Franchi Toso | 1701-1703 |
| Antonio Grimaldi Cebá | 1703-1705 |
| Stefano Onorato Ferreti | 1705-1707 |
| Domenico Maria de Mari | 1707-1709 |
| Vincenzo Durazzo | 1709-1711 |
| Francesco Maria Imperiale | 1711-1713 |
| Giovanni Antonio Giustiniani | 1713-1715 |
| Lorenzo Centurione | 1715-1717 |
| Benedetto Viale | 1717-1719 |
| Ambrogio Imperiale | 1719-1721 |
| Cesare de Franchi Toso | 1721-1723 |
| Domenico Negrone | 1723-1725 |
| Gerolamo Veneroso | 1726-1728 |
| Luca Grimaldi | 1728-1730 |
| Francesco Maria Balbi | 1730-1732 |
| Domenico Maria Spinola | 1732-1734 |
| Stefano Durazzo | 1734-1736 |
| Nicoló Cattaneo della Volta | 1736-1738 |
| Costantino Balbi | 1738-1740 |
| Nicoló Spinola | 1740-1742 |
| Domenico Canevaro | 1742-1744 |
| Lorenzo de Mari | 1744-1746 |
| Gian Franceso II Brignone Sale | 1746-1748 |
| Cesare Cattaneo della Volta | 1748-1750 |
| Agostino Viale | 1750-1752 |
| Stefano Lomellini | 1752-1752 |
| Giovanni Battista Grimaldi | 1752-1754 |
| Gian Giacomo Veneroso | 1754-1756 |
| Giovanni Giacomo Grimaldi | 1756-1758 |
| Matteo Franzoni | 1758-1760 |
| Agostino Lomellini | 1760-1762 |
| Rodolfo Giulio Brignone Sale | 1762-1764 |
| Francesco Maria della Rovere | 1765-1767 |
| Marcello Durazzo | 1767-1769 |
| Corsica sold to France, 1768 | |
| Giovanni Battista Negrone | 1769-1771 |
| Giovanni Battista Cambiaso | 1771-1773 |
| Ferdinando Spinola | 1773-1773 |
| Pier Franco Grimaldi | 1773-1775 |
| Brizio Giustiniani | 1775-1777 |
| Giuseppe Lomellini | 1777-1779 |
| Giacomo Maria Brignole | 1779-1781 |
| Marco Antonio Gentile | 1781-1783 |
| Giovanni Battista Ayroli | 1783-1785 |
| Gian Carlo Pallavicino | 1785-1787 |
| Raffaele de Ferrari | 1787-1789 |
| Alerame Maria Pallavicini | 1789-1791 |
| Michelangelo Cambiaso | 1791-1793 |
| Giuseppe Maria Doria | 1793-1795 |
| Giacomo Maria Brignole | 1795-1797 |
| occupied by France | Ligurian Republic, 1798-1805 |
| 1798-1814 | |
| annexed to Sardinia, 1814 | |
The first cities responsible for maritime commercial culture on the West side of Italy were the Duchies of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, which drifted into autonomy and independence after the Roman reconquest of Italy in the 6th century. Amalfi emerged as the most successful seapower of the Duchies. But then as Amalfi began to be overshadowed by the new Norman states in the 11th century, it was Pisa that emerged as its most powerful rival.
Pisa, however, as with Genoa later, had difficulty achieving and maintaining its independence. At first it was a possession of the Duchy of Lucca. In the 9th & 10th centuries, fleets from the city were already involved in naval actions from Italy to North Africa. In 1003 a communal government revolted against Lucca. By 1052, Pisa had occupied Corscia, to the distress of Genoa, and in 1060 defeated Genoa in a naval battle. In 1077 Pope Gregory VII recognized Pisan independence; and in 1092 Pope Urban II recognized Pisan rule over Sardinia and Corsica. A communal government survived from 1081 to 1312 (encompassing episodes like Schopenhauer's "dungeon of Ugolino" in 1289). Thereafter Pisa's independence began to be interrupted, and finally Florence took over 1406-1494 and permanently after 1509.
By the end of the 13th century, however, Genoa had surpassed Pisa, taking Corsica from it as Aragon took Sardinia (1323), and challenging Venice in both war and trade -- and sharing with England the symbol of the red on white Cross of St. George. The city completely replaced Venice as the most favored nation in Constantinople under the Palaeologi, receiving the city of Galata, across the Golden Horn from the capital, as a Genovese colony.
Although officially neutral during the Turkish siege of Constantinople in 1453, and contributing only a single ship to the defense of the city, a Genovese captain, Giovanni Giustiniani Longo (1418-1453), did lead an unofficial contingent of defenders, which he raised and paid for himself, from Genoa. Giustiniani was perhaps militarily the most effective leader of the defense. On May 29th, when he was wounded and left the walls, one is then not surprised to learn that the city fell on that day. As the last Emperor's name, Constantine XI, recalls the founder of the city, Giustiniani's name echoes the Emperor, Justinian, who recovered Genoa itself from the Ostrogoths. Giustiniani was evacuated to Chios, a possession of Genoa at the time, where he died on his wound on June 1st.
In 1298 the Genovese defeated a Venetian fleet and captured 5,000 prisoners, including Marco Polo, who began to recount his travels to China while sitting in a Genovese prison. Polo is also said to have been captured two years earlier in a separate action.
As modern history began, the significance of Genoa, as of Venice, declined, but Genoa suffered repeated occupations, while Venice did not, as the armies of France moved in and out of Italy. Later, it may not have been considered significant enough to occupy, until the French Revolution ushered in an era in which small mediaeval remnants got scooped up by larger states. Or the city may have been sufficiently strengthened by the reforms of Andrea Doria, who converted the Dogeship into a biannual office. Among subsequent Doges we see many familiar names, like Doria itself, Grimaldi, the name of the present Princes of Monaco, and even Giustiniani.
Genoa had a way of dealing with its occupation by the Great Powers, so as to preserve what really counted, wealth and business. Andrew Lambert says:
| When the national Bank of San Giorgio ceased trading in 1444, it continued to manage the city's debts, collect taxes, pay dividends to investors, and administer subject citities and colonies. The state was run by the shareholders of a bank. The Genoese carefully hid this fact from foreign rulers, to whom they frequently ceded control, using the bank to ensure real power remained with the oligarchy. Genoa was almost an anti-state, relying on private wealth, private naval forces and mercenary troops. [Seapower States, Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict that Made the Modern World, Yale University Press, 2018, p.212] |
This extraordinary subterfuge served to preserve "continuity of government" even as the passing armies of Milan, France, and others would occasionally occupy the city. It all remained just business as usual. We also see in this that, like many north Italian cities, Genoa was, of course, a center of banking. For many years, in the heyday of Spanish power, it was one of the principal sources of loans to the Kings of Spain, who borrowed against future revenues from the New World -- so much so that the revenues were not enough and many defaults occurred. Since one of the defaults (1576) left the Spanish Army in the Netherlands unpaid, it mutinied, allowing the Dutch to regroup their defenses and achieve independence.
Pisa, meanwhile, was annexed by Florence in 1406, was briefly freed (by the French, 1494), and then was permanently incorporated into Florence in 1509. Venice, of course, survived until occupied by Napoleon in 1797. Corsica, always difficult to control, was sold to France in 1768. Still a troublesome possession, it contributed, of course, Napoleone Buonaparte (or Napoleon Bonaparte) to be the first Emperor of France.
The most famous resident of Genoa was probably Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Columbo), celebrated by Italians, sometimes with opposition, on Columbus Day every year. Columbus, however, may originally have been of Spanish (Cristóbal Colón), or even Jewish, derivation. The latest theories are that he was actually Catalan and deliberately tried to obscure his origins because of a brief stint at piracy. Since he married Spanish nobility, chances are that he was not of an origin that would have been prevented such a marriage, i.e. Jewish or a Genovese commoner.
This list was originally from Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies. It had English equivalents for Italian, where the Italian names are often more familiar. I had seen the name "Tregoso" given as "Fregoso." Now I have updated the list from the data at Wikipedia, replacing all the Anglicized names that Gordan had before 1527, including "Fregoso" for "Tregoso." Also, there have been minor corrections in dates. The changes are almost entirely before 1527.
| Bishops of Milan | |
|---|---|
| St. Barnabas | c.52 AD |
| St. Anathalon | c.53 |
| St. Caius | 61-85 |
| Vacant | |
| St. Castricianus | 97-138 |
| St. Calimerus | 138-191 |
| Vacant | |
| St. Mona | 195-251 |
| St. Maternus | c.282 |
| St. Miroclus | c.303 |
| St. Eustorgio | c.315 |
| Vacant | |
| St. Protasius Algisi | c.351 |
| St. Dionysius Mariani | 351-365 |
| Vacant | |
| St. Ambrosius/Ambrose | 374-397 |
| Council II, Constantinople I, Arianism condemned, 381; orders public penance of Emperor Theodosius I for massacre at Thessalonica, 390 | |
| St. Simplicianus Soresini | 397-400 |
| St. Venerius Oldrati | 400-408 |
| St. Marolo | 408-423 |
| St. Martinianus Osio | 423-435 |
| St. Glycerius Landriani | 436-438 |
| St. Lazarus Beccardi | 438-449 |
| St. Eusebius Pagani | 449-462 |
| St. Gerontius Bescapè | 462-465 |
| St. Benignus Bossi | 465-472 |
| St. Senator Settala | 472-475 |
| St. Theodorus I de' Medici | 475-490 |
| St. Laurentius I Litta | 490-512 |
| St. Eustorgio II | 512-518 |
| St. Magnus de' Trincheri | 518-530 |
| St. Dacius Agliati | 530-552 |
| Vitale de' Cittadini | 552-555 |
| Frontone | schismatic, 556-566 |
| St. Ausanus Crivelli | 566-567 |
| St. Honoratus Castiglioni | 568-572 |
| Lombards conquer northern Italy, 568 | |
| Laurentius II | 573-592 |
| Constantius de' Cittadini | 593-600 |
| Deodatus | 601-629 |
| Asterius | 630-640 |
| Forte | 641-643 |
| St. Giovan I Bono | 649-660 |
| St. Antonino Fontana | 660-661 |
| St. Maurisilio | 661-662 |
| St. Ampelio | 667-672 |
| St. Mansueto Savelli | 672-681 |
| St. Benedetto I Crespi | 681-725 |
| Theodorus II | 725-739 |
| St. Natale | 740-741 |
| Arifred | 741-742 |
| Stabile | 742-744 |
| Leto Marcellino | 745-759 |
| Archbishops | |
| Tommaso Grassi | 759-783 |
| Pietro I Oldrati | 784-801 |
| Vacant | |
| Odelperto | 803-813 |
| St. Anselmo I Biglia | 813-818 |
| St. Buono Castiglioni | 818-822 |
| Angilberto I | 822-823 |
| Angilberto II Pusterla | 824-859 |
| Tadone | 860-868 |
| Ansperto Confalonieri da Biassono | 868-881 |
| Anselmo II Capra | 882-896 |
| Landolfo I Grassi | 896-899 |
| Andrea da Carcano | 899-906 |
| Aicone Oldrati | 906-918 |
| Gariberto di Besana | 918-921 |
| Lamperto | 921-931 |
| Elduin | 931-936 |
| Arderico Cotta | 936-948 |
| Adelmano | 948-953 |
| Valperto de' Medici | 953-970 |
| Arnolfo I | 970-974 |
| Gotofredo | 974-979 |
| Landolfo II da Carcano | 980-998 |
| Arnolfo II da Arsago | 998-1018 |
| Ariberto da Intimiano | 1018-1045 |
| St. Guido da Velate | 1045-1069, d.1071 |
| Attone | 1070-1075 |
| Gotifredo da Castiglione | anti-bishop, 1070-1075 |
| Tebaldo da Castiglione | 1075-1080 |
| Vacant | |
| Anselmo III da Rho | 1086-1093 |
| Arnolfo III | 1093-1097 |
| Anselmo IV da Bovisio | 1097-1101 |
| Grossolano | 1102-1112 |
| Giordano da Clivio | 1112-1120 |
| Olrico | 1120-1126 |
| Anselmo V Pusterla | 1126-1133 |
| Vacant | |
| St. Bernardo | 1135 |
| Robaldo | 1135-1145 |
| Umberto I da Pirovano | 1146-1166 |
| St. Galdino della Sala | 1166-1176 |
| Algisio da Pirovano | 1176-1182 |
| Umberto II Crivelli | 1182-1185 |
1185-1187 | |
| Milone da Cardano | 1185-1195 |
| Umberto III da Terzago | 1195-1196 |
| Filippo I da Lampugnano | 1196-1206 |
| Umberto IV da Pirovano | 1206-1211 |
| Gerardo da Sessa | 1211-1212 |
| Enrico I da Settala | 1213-1230 |
| Guglielmo I da Rizolio | 1230-1241 |
| Leon da Perego | 1241-1257 |
| Ottone Visconti | 1262-1295 |
| Ruffino da Frisseto | 1295-1296 |
| Francesco I da Parma | 1296-1308 |
| Cassone Torriani | 1308-1317 |
| Aicardo da Intimiano | 1317-1339 |
| Vacant | |
| Giovanni II Visconti | 1342-1354 |
| Roberto Visconti | 1354-1361 |
| Guglielmo II Pusterla | 1361-1370 |
| Simon da Borsano | 1370-1380 |
| Antonio de' Saluzzi | 1380-1401 |
| Petros II Philargos | 1402-1410 |
1409-1410 | |
| Francesco II Crippa | 1409-1414 |
| Bartolommeo Capra | 1414-1433 |
| Francesco III Piccolpasso | 1433-1443 |
| Enrico II Rampini | 1443-1450 |
| Giovanni III Visconti | 1450-1453 |
| Nicolň Amidano | 1453-1454 |
| Timoteo Maffei | 1454 |
| Gabriele Sforza | 1454-1457 |
| Carlo I da Forlě | 1457-1461 |
| Stefano Nardini | 1461-1484 |
| Giovan IV Arcimboldi | 1484-1488 |
| Guido Antonio Arcimboldi | 1488-1497 |
| Ottaviano Arcimboldi | 1497 |
| Ippolito I d'Este | 1497-1520 |
| Ippolito II d'Este | 1520-1550 |
| Giovan Angelo Arcimboldi | 1550-1555 |
| Filippo II Archinti | 1556-1558 |
| Vacant | |
| St. Carlo Borromeo | 1560-1584 |
| Gaspare Visconti | 1584-1595 |
| Federico I Borromeo | 1595-1631 |
| Cesare Monti | 1632-1650 |
| Alfonso Litta | 1652-1679 |
| Federico II Visconti | 1681-1693 |
| Federico III Caccia | 1693-1699 |
| Giuseppe I Archinti | 1699-1712 |
| Benedetto II Erba Odescalchi | 1712-1737 |
| Carlo Gaetano I Stampa | 1737-1742 |
| Giuseppe II Pozzobonello | 1743-1783 |
| Filippo Maria Visconti | 1784-1801 |
| Giovan Battista Caprara | 1802-1810 |
| Vacant | |
| Carlo Gaetano II Graf von Gaisruck | 1816-1846 |
| Bartolomeo Carlo Romilli | 1847-1859 |
| Paolo Angelo Ballerini | 1859-1867 |
| Luigi Nazari di Calabiana | 1867-1893 |
| Andrea Carlo Ferrari | 1894-1921 |
| Achille Ratti | 1921-1922 |
1922-1939 | |
| Eugenio Tosi | 1922-1929 |
| Ildefonso Schuster | 1929-1954 |
| Giovanni Battista Montini | 1954-1963 |
1963-1978 | |
| Giovanni Colombo | 1963-1979 |
| Carlo Maria Martini | 1979-2002 |
| Dionigi Tettamanzi | 2002-2011 |
| Angelo Scola | 2011-2017 |
| Mario Delpini | 2017-present |
For a while this gave the Bishops of Milan a status all but equal to that of the Popes, a circumstance conspicuous in the career of St. Ambrose, who was elected Bishop before he had even been baptised. Ambrose himself would baptize St. Augustine in 387. He bullied Emperors like Gratian to remove pagan symbols, like the Altar of Victory in the Roman Senate (382), deposed Arian bishops, and finally, in a confrontation like that of the Emperor Henry IV with Pope Gregory VII at Canossa, made Theodosius I do public penance for ordering a (retaliatory) massacre at Thessalonica.
The Germanic invasions eroded the position of Milan; and the Lombards chose nearby Pavia as their capital. All the cities of northern Italy languished until the Crusades. Then, with the revival of trade, they all grew rapidly in size, wealth, and power. The Lombard League became strong enough to defeat the Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa at Legnano in 1176.
By the 13th century, Milan and Venice were the largest cities in Western Europe. Under the Visconti (1312-1447), Milan would emerge as a Power in its own right, once again dominating the Plain as the Roman city had. Milan was also especially fortunate in being bypassed by the Black Death (c.1334-1351).
Although the Archbishops did not gain the temporal power of other ecclesiastical princes, three Popes and one major Anti-Pope would eventually emerge from their ranks, most recently Pope Paul VI. Milan remains the most important city in Northern Italy, and the center, with Paris and London, of the European fashion industry.
There are no less than seven Visconti Archbishops of Milan. Only two of them may be found in the Visconti genealogy below. The others, beginning with Roberto, are from collateral lines. Indeed, four of the seven, beginning with Giovanni III in 1450, do not serve until after the main line of the Visconti died out in 1447. We also see two Borromeo Archbishops, the family whose crest, the Borromean Rings, is the icon for The Proceedings of the Friesian School.
Another noteworthy name among the bishops of Milan is Castiglioni, the name of two -- St. Honoratus (568-572) and St. Buono (818-822). Later we get the name as Castiglione, born by two bishops, Gotifredo (anti-bishop, 1070-1075) and Tebaldo (1075-1080). The Oxford Dictionary of Surnames lists the names under "Castille": "French: regional name for someone from Castille, the Fr. name of Sp. Castilla" [Oxford, 1988, p.98]. However, it is unlikely to impossible (Castille didn't exist yet in the 6th century) that Italian archbishops would be named after Castille, let alone in some French version of the name. Clearly, however, all such names are derived from Latin castrum or castellum, "fortress, castle."
The tradition in the families of the Castiglioni and Castiglione is that the names came from Castrum Stiliconis, the "Camp of Stilicho," the German general who in 395 was left by the Emperor Theodosius I as the Magister Militum, the "Master of Soldiers," of the Roman Army. There is no doubt that Stilicho's camp would have been in Northern Italy, near Milan and Ravenna. There are several towns in Italy named "Castiglion" or "Castiglione," including a Castigilione near Mantua where Napoleon defeated the Austrians in 1796.
| Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, 1514–1515, Raphael (1483-1520), Louvre Museum |
|---|
It is noteworthy that Castiglione studied Greek at Milan with Demetrios Chalcondylas, an Athenian who fled to the West in 1447 -- one among many Greeks who characterized, or in part initiated, the Italian Renaissance. The Book of the Courier was first printed by the Aldine Press in Venice, which specialized in printing Greek books.
There is a history of Il Cortegiano in England. The book was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561. In 1572 there was another translation, into Latin, by Bartholomew Clerke. This was sponsored by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who also wrote a Latin foreword for it. This pulls Castiglione into the question of the authorship of the plays of Shakespeare, since de Vere is a candidate as the real author, Il Cortegiano is a manifest source for the plays, and contemporary references to de Vere's foreword enter into evidence about authorship.
This list is entirely from Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies.
Dukes of Milan,
Visconti & Sforzas, 1312-1535 AD
| Visconti | |
|---|---|
| Matteo I Visconti | 1312-1322 |
| Galeazzo I | 1322-1327, d.1328 |
| Republic, 1327-1329 | |
| Azzone | 1329-1339 |
| Lucchino | 1339-1319 |
| Giovanni | 1339-1354 |
| Matteo II | 1354-1355 |
| Bernabò | 1354-1385 |
| Galeazzo II | 1354-1378 |
| Gian Galeazzo | 1378-1395, Duke of Milan, 1395-1402 |
| Giovanni Maria | 1402-1412 |
| Filippo Maria | 1412-1447 |
| Republic, 1447-1450 | |
By the time three grandsons of Matteo came to power, Matteo II, Bernabò, and Galeazzo II, Milan dominated the region and the brothers ruled, respectively: Piacenza, Parma, Bologna, Lodi, and Bobbio; Cremona, Crema, Brescia, and Bergamo; and Como, Novara, Vercelli, Asti, Tortona, and Alessandria. Matteo was done away with by his brothers, and then Bernabò met a similar fate after his nephew Gian Galeazzo came to power. Gian Galeazzo obtained (i.e. bought) the title of Duke from the Emperor (1395) and began acting like nobility, contracting marriages for himself and his family with the Royal houses of Europe. This led to more trouble than he could have imagined.
When the male line of Visconti came to an end, the Milanese briefly tried to do without their Duke, but then the husband of Filippo Maria's illegitimate daughter Bianca, Francesco Sforza, seized power.
| Sforza | |
|---|---|
| Francesco I Sforza | 1450-1466 |
| Galeazzo Maria | 1466-1476 |
| Gian Galeazzo | 1476-1479, d.1494 |
| Ludovico Maria | 1479-1500, d.1508 |
| French Occupation, 1499-1512, 1515-1522, & 1524-1525 | |
| Massimiliano | 1512-1515, 1522-1524, & 1525-1526, d.1530 |
| Spanish Occupation, 1526-1529 | |
| Francesco II Maria | 1529-1535 |
| Spanish Rule, 1535 | |
When Louis invaded Italy in 1499, Milan was not strong enough, and, frankly, the Sforza's were not popular enough, to offer effective resistance. Duke Ludovico died in French custody. With Spanish help, the French were eventually ejected and the Sforzas restored, but then the new French King, Francis I, decided to try his luck. Twice he recovered Milan (1515 & 1524) but then was decisively defeated and even captured by the Spanish at the Battle of Pavia (1525).
After getting back to France, Francis put together the League of Cognac with the Pope, the Sforzas (strangely enough), Venice, and Florence. But the Spain of Charles V was not now to be resisted, and the League only accomplished the loss of Milan (1526) and the memorable sack of Rome by the Spanish army (1527).
The French gave up on Italy, and Charles installed the last Sforza, Francesco II, in Milan (1529). When Francesco died in 1535, Charles, who himself was a descendant of the Visconti (through Virida, daughter of Bernabò), claimed Milan for Spain. Francis tried to dispute this, but he only ended up occupying part of the Piedmont. Milan's days as an independent player were over. Passed to Austria after the War of the Spanish Succession, Milan remained Austrian, except for French occupation again during the Revolutionary era, until 1859, when Sardinia and Napoleon III threw the Austrians out. Milan then became part of the new Italy.
The genealogy shows two collateral lines of Visconti beginning with an uncle and a brother of Matteo I. I would really like to know the future of those lines, and of any others, because of the existence of a Prospero Visconti (1543/4-1592) in the 16th century. He may be the inspiration for the deposed Duke of Milan Prospero in the play The Tempest by William Shakespeare. And, in particular, Prospero Visconti is only likely to have been known to William Shakespeare if the Shakespeare plays were actually written by the Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who lived and traveled in the North of Italy for a year in 1575-1576, well within Prospero's lifetime. I have not yet been able to find any information about this Prospero's ancestry.
In formulating the genealogy of the Visconti, initially before sources were available on the Internet, a major obscurity I encountered concerned the marriages of Gian Galeazzo. An Encyclopedia of World History; Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chronologically Arranged, compiled and edited by William L. Langer [Houghton, Mifflin, Company; the Riverside Press, Boston, 1940, 1948, 1952, 1960] on its own diagram (p.297) showed him married to his cousin Catharine, who is the mother of the children shown. However, in the text (p.298), the same book said that he married Isabella, daughter of King John II of France, which was confirmed by their diagram for the Valois (p.275).
Once there were Internet sources, I found that Brian Tompsett's Royal and Noble genealogy had Isabella marrying an otherwise unidentified "John Galeas," with them as the parents of Valentina. It looked like I was going to need a much more detailed history of the Visconti to clear this up, though I did find this "John Galeas" person improbable -- it must be just an Anglicized and/or garbled rendering of Gian (pronounced in Italian like "John") Galeazzo (with "s" replacing "zzo").
I then found a more detailed treatment in the Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 1997, pp. 237-241], where Gian Galeazzo's marriages and children are as shown. For a long time, I felt that Thiele was likely to be as exhaustive and accurate as anything I might find on the Internet. However, I became disillusioned when I began looking for the antecedents of Giovanni Sforza, the second husband of Lucretia Borgia. Neither Thiele nor Thompsett were helpful in that respect. The answers seemed to be on Wikipedia, including the Italian language Wikipedia. This what I now show.
| Florence under the Medici | |
|---|---|
| Cosimo the Elder, Pater Patriae | 1434-1464 |
| Piero I the Gouty | 1464-1469 |
| Giuliano | 1469-1478 |
| Lorenzo I the Magnificent | 1469-1492 |
| the Pazzi War, 1478-1480 | |
| Piero II the Unfortunate | 1492-1494, d.1503 |
| Invasion of Charles VIII, Medici expelled, 1494-1512; Savonarola's "Bonfire of the Vanties," 1497; Savonarola executed, 1498 | |
| Lorenzo II | 1512-1519 |
| Giulio, Clement VII | 1519-1527 |
1523- 1534 | |
| Sack of Rome, 1527 Medici expelled, 1527-1530 | |
| Alessandro | Duke, 1530-1537 |
| Cosimo I | 1537-1569; Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1569-1574 |
| Francesco I | 1574-1587 |
| Ferdinand I | 1587-1609 |
| Cosimo II | 1609-1621 |
| Ferdinand II | 1621-1670 |
| Cosimo III | 1670-1723 |
| Gian Gastone | 1723-1737 |
| End of the Medici | |
When the family first came to power in Florence, it was not through any formal office, position, or status. These rotated rapidly in the Republic. But the Medici gained in wealth and prestige and began to organize a political machine that gradually took over the electoral apparatus. The tenure of Lorenzo was so brilliant that he came to be called il Magnifico, "the Magnificent," an epithet shared by few other leaders in history. This gradual takeover was not without opposition. Many distinguished citizens were exiled and families attacked with punitive taxation just for opposing the Medici. Lorenzo's "Magnificence" may have been matched by his (Machiavellian) ruthlessness.
| The Pazzi Chapel, Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence, 2019 |
|---|
The Pazzi were a venerable family. They became important at Florence through banking, like the Medici themselves; and their chapel at Santa Croce is regarded as one of the minor jewels of Renaissance architecture. The name came from an ancestor in the First Crusade, whose courage as one of the first to climb over the walls of Jerusalem earned him the sobriquet Pazzo, "Madman."
Now the "Madmen" launched another dangerous attack. They succeeded in killing Giuliano, but then Giuliano was not really running things. The attempt on Lorenzo was botched. The professional soldier hired to do it, Giovan Battista, Count of Montesecco, refused to participate when last minute changes called for the assault to take place in the cathedral.
| Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, the Duomo (i.e. Domus), Florence, 2019 |
|---|
Revenge was swift and bloody. The Medici treated the attacks as treason, even though neither Lorenzo nor his brother held any public office. The Pazzi men were killed, imprisoned, or exiled, and all the property of the family confiscated. Even distant relatives were prohibited from any longer using their name or the family crest.
The result, however, was a war with the Pope and King Ferrante of Naples -- the Pazzi War, 1478-1480. Lorenzo was excommunicated, Florence placed under an interdict, and southern Tuscany invaded. For a while things looked bad, and murmurings again rose against the Medici, but eventually a compromise was reached, and Lorenzo emerged with solidified power. Some conspirators, like Count Girolamo Riario (d.1488), an in-law of Sixtus IV, were still being assassinated years later. Medici banking and other interests, however, had suffered, and this, together with Lorenzo's patronage of the arts, began to cost the family its fortune, with an undetermined bit of public money thrown in as well. All was well until his death, and then his less able son Piero had to reap the consequences.
It was the invasion of Italy by the French King Charles VIII in 1494 that disrupted the rule of the Medici. The Florentines expelled them for siding with the French. The Pazzi were exonerated, rehabilitated, and the exiles returned. They never returned to their former prominence, however, and later historians, dazzled by the culture surrounding the Medici, tended to repeat Medici propaganda about them. It even looks like the modern American gangster term "patsy," for a dupe, is from the name of the Pazzi.
This continues, in an interesting fashion, in Hannibal by Thomas Harris [1999], where the eponymous anti-hero murders a modern day Pazzi policeman the same way Francesco Pazzi was hung from a window of the Palazzo Vecchio -- most graphically shown in the 2001 movie. A more balanced treatment of the Pazzi may be found in April Blood, by Lauro Martines [Oxford, 2003] -- the source of the Pazzi genealogy given here.
During the last republican period in Florence, we get the notable but brief ascendency of the monk Savonarola, whose puritanical reign of terror was for a time popular and appalling. Most memorable was the "Bonfire of the Vanities," where Savonarola publicly burned art and other frivolities, either seized or brought by enthusiasts. Important works of art may thus have been lost.
But this sort of thing, although lingering in memory (cf. The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe, 2008), wore out its welcome with the Florentines. After the execution of Savonarola in 1498, we find Niccolò Machiavelli beginning his own political career, becoming a secretary and diplomat for the Republic. He continues when Pier Soderini becomes Gonfalonier for life in 1502. As his diplomatic activities continue, in 1506 Machiavelli also begins to organize a Militia of the citizens, the kind of thing we know he believed in. In 1508 he is even put in charge of the operation to regain Pisa, which had seceded in 1494. This was successful in 1509.
In 1512 Spanish troops enter Tuscany and we get the fall of both Sonderini and Machiavelli. In 1513, Machiavelli retires to San Casciano and begins up write up his political ideas. Popes Leo X and Clement VII, i.e. the Medici Popes, nevertheless both consult with Machiavelli, who died in 1527, just as the Medici are about to be expelled, briefly, again.
The family returned to Florence thanks to the power within the Church of Lorenzo's son Giovanni, a Cardinal at 13 and elected Pope Leo X in 1513. Leo is supposed to have said, "God has given us the Papacy, so we may as well enjoy it." Leo's tenure, of course, was marked by the beginning of the Reformation. He is reputed to have at first dismissed Martin Luther as "some drunken German." Leo appointed his nephew Lorenzo to rule Florence,
| Battistero di San Giovanni, Piazza del Duomo, Florence, 2019 |
|---|
On Leo's death, Giulio became the head of the family and in short order was elected Pope as Clement VII. He had difficulty choosing the right side in the wars between France and the Emperor Charles V. The traditional anti-Imperial policy of the Papacy would indicate alliance with France. Unfortunately, Charles V was far more powerful than any Emperor had been in centuries. Clement allying himself with France thus brought a Spanish army into Italy. It sacked Rome and captured the Pope in 1527. The Medici were also, again, expelled from Florence.
They say that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The Mediaeval Emperors would have installed their own Pope, but Clement and Charles made up instead. In 1530, the Emperor installed Clement's illegitimate son, Alessandro, as Duke of Florence (he was, after all, the de jure lord of Lombardy and Northern Italy), and the Pope formally crowned Charles Emperor, the last time this was to happen, in Bologna -- a little too soon to use Rome after the sack of 1527. Thus the Medici achieved the princely rule so long feared by their enemies. The Republic of Florence was dead. The alarm of the Pazzi was proven fully justified; and their sacrifice, after various ups and downs of fortune, turned out to be in vain. The Medici came to be remembered for their culture, not for their lust for power, legitimated by success.
| Lorraine | |
|---|---|
| Francis/ Francesco II | III, Duke of Lorraine, 1729-1737 |
| Tuscany, 1738-1745 | |
| I, Emperor, 1745-1765 | |
| Hapsburg-Lorraine | |
| Leopold I | 1745-1790 |
| II, Emperor, 1790-1792 | |
| Ferdinand III | 1790-1801, 1814-1824 |
| Elector of Salzburg, 1803-1806 | |
| Elector of Würzburg, 1806 | |
| Grand Duke of Würzburg, 1806-1814 | |
| Louis of Parma | King of Etruria, 1801-1803 |
| Charles Louis of Parma | 1803-1807 d.1883 |
| Maria Louisa of Parma | Regent, 1803-1807 |
| Annexed to France, 1807-1814 | |
| Leopold II | 1824-1859, d.1870 |
| Ferdinand IV | 1859-1860, d.1908 |
| Annexed by Sardinia to Italy, 1860 | |
Although only two lines of descent are shown in the genealogical diagram, it must be remembered that there were other branches of the family. A popup diagram may be examined that shows the descent of the family of Giovani di Bicci from the earliest Medici ancestors, together with the branch of the family that led to another Medici Pope, Leo XI -- though he reigned less than a year (1605). This extended Medici genealogy is derived from the "Genealogie delle Dinastie Italiane" website.
A tendency of the family to ally with France is evident in the marriages. Lorenzo the Magnificent's great grand-daughter Catherine married King Henry II of France. Three of her sons became Kings of France, and then her daughter Margaret married the next King, Henry of Navarre. Margaret had no children and eventually consented to an annulment. Henry, however, then married another Medici, Maria (Marie, in French), a daughter of Grand Duke Francesco I. Marie then became the mother of the future King Louis XIII. When Henry was assassinated in 1610, and Louis still a child, Marie actually ruled France as Regent. Rubens painted a series of 25 pictures to illustrate the life of the Queen. Although the Medici ruled Florence for another century, this was their last great moment on the stage of European history.
When the Medici Dukes died out in 1737, the Duchy ended up being offered to Duke Francis III of Lorraine. This was, oddly, part of the settlement of what was called the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1735). The French candidate for the throne of Poland in 1733 was Stanislas Lesczynski, who had briefly been King before (1704-1709) and was the father-in-law of King Louis XV. Russia wanted its own candidate, Augustus II of Saxony. The Russians won. In the protracted deal making that followed the actual war, Stanislas was compensated with Lorraine (which would then be inherited by his daughter, and so by France), and Francis was compensated with Tuscany, which had simply become available with the end of the Medici. Francis, as it happened, was married to the heiress of Austria, Maria Theresa.
And so, the patrimony of the Medici, won with so much blood, betrayal, and political manipulation, was simply swept up, like so much else, in the vast marriage bag of the Hapsburgs. The Medici, like the Pazzi, simply became a name and a memory -- finely parodied in the movie version of Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One [1965], where a Hollywood bearer of the illustrious name does not want to be identified as Italian.
When Maria Theresa's father, Charles VI, died in 1740, this set off the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). When Austria did well enough in the War that Francis was elected Emperor (1745), he and Maria Theresa left Tuscany to their second son, Leopold. Their first son, however, Joseph, died without issue, and so the Empire passed to Leopold. Leopold then left Tuscany to his second son, Ferdinand. This time the Hapsburgs were a bit more fertile, and Tuscany remained in the line of Ferdinand, except for exile during the Revolutionary Era (1801-1814), until the Unification of Italy, when Tuscany voted to join the Kingdom of Sardinia, soon to become the Kingdom of Italy.
During that Revolutionary Era, Napoleon had strangely created a "Kingdom of Etruria" for the Bourbons of Parma, until the area was annexed to France in 1807. The line of those Bourbons can be examined at Parma.
The diagram shows a little more of the Hapsburg family than is necessary just for the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. In particular, it shows the line of the Hapsburg Dukes of Modena, the first of whom, Ferdinand, had married the heiress of the d'Este family, the previous Dukes of Modena, Maria Beatrice. Maria's father had been deposed in 1796. He died in 1803. Presumably, Ferdinand and Maria were both in exile until the defeat of Napoleon in 1814.
With the end of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, as Italy is being united by Sardinia, the line of the family went elsewhere, as the daughter of the last Duke, Louise, married the last King of Saxony, Frederick Augustus III. Since a King of Saxony originally bumped Francis of Lorraine out of his own Duchy, perhaps it is fitting that Saxony should take in his ultimate heiress of Tuscany. Though the Kingdom of Saxony itself ended in 1918, there are living descendants.
| Farnese | |
|---|---|
| Pier Luigi | Duke of Parma & Piacenza, 1545-1547 |
| Ottavio | 1547-1586 |
| Alessandro/ Alexander I | Regent of the Netherlands, 1578-1592 |
| 1586-1592 | |
| Ranuccio I | 1592-1622 |
| Odoardo I | 1622-1646 |
| Ranuccio II | 1646-1694 |
| Francesco | 1694-1727 |
| Antonio | 1727-1731 |
Paolo had been made a Cardinal by Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia). The traditional story is that this happned in part perhaps because his sister, the beautiful Giulia Farnese, as we see at right ("Lady with Unicorn," by Rafael Santi), was Alexander's mistress. This now seems unlikely. Giulia was married to Orsino Orsini, from one of the major aristocratic families of Rome, often at odds with the Borgias. Nevertheless, Orsino's mother was a Borgia, and so his little part of the Orsini family was sometimes a friendly part of the Borgia cirle. Nothing of the sort is likely to have been the case were the Pope begetting illegitimate children on Giulia. Paolo already had an honorable eccelesiastical career, and the rumors about Giulia apparently come from political enemies. His own illegitimate son, as it happened, established the Farnese family for some time -- their line continues even today as the Ducal House of Luxembourg.
Alessander I was appointed regent of the Netherlands by King Philip II of Spain at the height of the Dutch revolt. He was ineffective at defeating the United Provinces but did retain what would become Belgium.
This list was originally from Brian Tompsett's Royal and Noble genealogy, which left a few obscurities and hiatuses. Now the genealogy here is from the Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, pp.242-243].
| Bourbon | |
|---|---|
| Don Carlos, Charles I/III | 1731-1736 |
| King of Naples & Sicily, 1734-1759 | |
| King of Spain 1759-1788 | |
| Hapsburg possession, 1738-1748 | |
| Philip | 1748-1765 |
| Ferdinand | 1765-1802 |
| Annexed to France, 1805-1814 | |
| Marie Louise of Hapsburg | 1814-1847 |
| Charles II Louis | 1848-1849, d.1883 |
| Charles III | 1849-1854 |
| Robert | 1854-1859, d.1907 |
| Annexed by Sardinia to Italy, 1859 | |
What happened during the French Revolutionary period is a little confusing, until the region was annexed to France in 1805. The Bourbons seem to have been compensated with Florence during part of the period. In 1814, the Congress of Vienna gave Parma to the widow of Napoleon, Marie Louise of Austria, who, we might think, really had something coming for having endured the marriage to Napoleon: When he asked her to join him on Elba, or return to France during the 100 days, she declined. Parma was her possession, however, only during her lifetime. It was to be returned to the Bourbons afterwards, and it was, with a little glitch introduced by the revolutionary year of 1848. Meanwhile, the Bourbons, meaning Charles Louis and his mother Maria Louisa, had been compensated with Lucca.
In 1859 a plebiscite voted for union with Sardinia, whence it passed into the Kingdom of Italy when that was formed in 1861. The stranded heir of Parma, Felix, however, married Charlotte, the Grand Dutchess of Luxembourg. In this way, the house of Farnese-Bourbon succeeded to the Grand Duchy, and it continues on the throne there. This may not be the highest profile royalty, but it is a far better fate than that of other Houses dispossessed by modernity. It certainly would have pleased Elizabeth Farnese, back when she put her son Philip on the throne of Parma.
In the history of Mediaeval Francia, the South of Italy was a distinct cultural and historical region.
Indeed, for a long time, we might not regard it as part of Francia at all. Retrieved by Justinian from the Ostrogoths, its story at first was part of that of Romania. Even the intrusion of the Lombards still belongs to the history of Germania in Late Antiquity. There were even many Greek speakers, especially in Sicily, who had been living there since Greek colonization began in the 8th century BC.
Some of the thinking now is that Greek may have died out on the mainland in the first centuries AD, but it was then certainly reintroduced by Justinian's reconquest -- and I suspect that it had never died out at Naples.
The dynamic of the Lombard Duchies, surrounded and more or less contained by Romania, was first compromised by the Islamic conquest of Sicily (827-878). This deprived Romania of its local stronghold, safe from the Lombards, in Sicily. Next came the Norman conquest of southern Italy, which then extended also to Sicily. The Normans finished the expulsion of the Romans in 1071, and of Islâm in 1072. This established the region as a distinct part of the Periphery of Francia. It would be the Regnum (Regno), the center of European politics and culture under the brilliant Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, the Stupor Mundi, "Wonder of the World." The modern tourist might be puzzled to find the massive prophyry sarcophagus of a Mediaeval German Emperor in Palermo. But that was Frederick's capital.
The Regnum did not include Sardinia, but then Sardinia's status is often ambiguous. Since it ended up in the hands of Aragón, it can be treated as part of the Periphery. Later, it passed to Savoy, which puts it in the Core of Francia.
The Regnum was unusual among the territories of Francia in that the Normans received it as a fief directly from the Papacy. That was a theoretical curiosity -- ironically part of the settlement after Pope Leo IX had been defeated and captured at the Battle of Civitate in 1053 -- but in practice had little effect on the behavior either of the Normans or of Frederick II. It had some significance when the Pope, as suzerain, got Charles of Anjou to exterminate the Hohenstaufen. But then Sicily revolted against Charles in 1282 -- the "Sicilian Vespers," one of the most dramatic events of the Middle Ages -- and attached itself, to the chagrin and fury of the Pope, to Aragón. Eventually, Sicily, Sardinia, and Naples all ended up in the hands of the Kings of Aragón, and so finally the Kings of Spain.
Even Napoleon, although annexing Rome itself and ruling the north as the King of Italy, kept the south as a separate Kingdom. The Congress of Vienna restored the Bourbons, who had maintained themselves in Sicily, to the whole of Sicily and Naples, now called the Kingdom of the "Two Sicilies". This was the situation until 1860, when Garibaldi landed in Sicily with the intention of reunited Italy. The Kings of Sardinia became the Kings of an Italy, now joining the north and south for the first time since the Lombards invaded in 568 -- 1293 years.
The South, however, remained distinct in language, culture, food, and economic development. The dialects of Naples and Sicily are still pretty much unintelligible to Northern Italians, where the standard language of Italy is based on the dialect of Florence. But the most serious disability of the South has been its economy, even though in 1860 Naples was still the larget city in Italy. From being one of the cultural centers of Europe in the 13th century, Sicily and Naples entered the 20th century with little better than a Third World level of economic development. Up in the rugged mountains of the area, life had not changed much for some centuries.
Hence, the first large body of Italian immigrants to the United States were from the South -- and suspicious of things like public education the way they had been suspicious of the designs of national authority back in Italy. They were hard working and often skilled but not, at first, particularly entrepreneurial. And they brought along the high level of potential violence traditionally found (and still found, in great measure, today) in Naples and Sicily. Ironically, this often reduced crime in some Manhattan neighborhoods. Previously, a great deal of violence and crime in New York City was due to Irish-Americans. The Irish found out very quickly, however, that Italians were usually armed, at least with a knife, and were not at all reluctant to fiercely defend themselves. Italian women, who in Mediterranean fashion held their honor as worth their lives, were dangerous targets for crime or even insult; and their relatives were ready to exact terrible revenge for any level of outrage. Italian neighborhoods became no-go areas for Irish toughs.
At the same time, the age old form of Sicilian crime, in the Mafia (Moranu li Franchiski, "Death to the French," dating to the Sicilian Vespers), immigrated also. This could involve legitimate business, such as the importation of olive oil, and could also reduce street crime, with ferocious sanctions for unauthorized illegalities; but, of course, its dark side began to give Italians a certain kind of reputation, especially when Prohibition created a vast Black Market, with a high level of demand, for illegal alcohol. After Prohibition, gansterism easily continued through gambling, prostitution, drugs, and labor unions -- where the frequent role of the latter in the equivalent of strong-arm extortion rackets (see On the Waterfront, 1954) and money laundering operations (see Casino, 1995) perfectly suited them for Mafia infiltration and control. A casual mention by Rodney Dangerfield of Mafia control of garbage collector unions in Back To School (1986) was followed by actual prosecutions of this connection in New York City. We are still waiting to find out what happened to Jimmy Hoffa, whose 1975 fate remains chillingly concealed by the omertà, the secrecy of Mafia operations.
Most modern Italian-Americans, however, have left the Mafia far behind. Little Italy in Manhattan is now mostly overrun with immigrants from China, and tourists looking for Italian restaurants on Mulberry Street must be startled that Chinatown has grown completely around the area. In 1980, the average family income of Italian-American families was actually higher than that of German-Americans and Anglo-Saxons (cf. Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America, 1981, p.5). Some distinctively Italian dishes, like spaghetti and pizza, have become so Americanized (often quite different from the Italian originals) that they are all but essential to American national identity -- and there is no certainty that popular and successful pizza chains, for instance, are run or even founded by Italians.
Although some famous Italian gangsters still loom in recent memory, like John Gotti (1940-2002), organized crime today might be expected to involve Ukranians, Columbians, or Mexicans before Italians. Fictional orgaized crime, however, has featured a New Jersey Italian crime family on the HBO series The Sopranos (1999-2007). But this has been followed by new stereotypes that have emerged with the "Guidos," i.e. Italian-Americans, seen on the popular MTV series, Jersey Shore. But drunk, stupid, and promiscuous do not seem like an improvement for the image of the successful and prosperous Italian-American community. The cast, filming a season of Jersey Shore in Italy, became an embarrassment to the Italian government -- not to mention to America. New Jersey governor Chris Christie denounced the show with the information that all but one of the cast members is actually from New York. The South of Italy, meanwhile, remains troubled with crime and poverty, with outrages by the Mafia fresh in recent memory.
| Dukes of Benevento | |
|---|---|
| Zottone | 571-591 |
| Monte Cassino sacked & abandoned, 580 | |
| Arechi I | 591-641 |
| Aione I | 641-642 |
| Radoaldo | 642-647 |
| Grimoaldo I | 647-662 |
| King of Lombardy 662-671 | |
| Romoaldo I | 662-677 |
| campaign of Constans II, 663 | |
| Grimoaldo II | 677-680 |
| Gisulf I | 680-706 |
| Romoaldo II | 706-732 |
| Monte Cassino resettled, 718 | |
| Andelais/Adelais | 732-733 |
| Gregory | 733-740 |
| Godescalco | 740-743 |
| Gisulf II | 743-749 |
| Liutprand | 749-758 |
| Arechi(s) II | 758-774 |
| Prince, 774-788 | |
| Lombard Kingdom annexed to Francia, 774 | |
| Grimoaldo III | 788-806 |
| Grimoaldo IV | 806-817 |
| Sico(ne) | 817-832 |
| Sicard(o) | 832-839 |
| Dukes of Spoleto | |
|---|---|
| Faroald I | c.570-584 |
| Ariulf | 590/1-600/1 |
| Atto | ?-c.665 |
| Transamund I | c.665-703 |
| Faroald II | 703-720+ |
| Transamund II | 720+-739, 740-742, 744-c.745 |
| Hilderic | 739-740 |
| Agiprand | 742-744 |
| Lupus | c.745-751 |
| Aistulf of Friuli | King of Lombardy 749-756 |
| 751-756 | |
| Ratchis of Friuli | King of Lombardy 744-749 |
| 756-757 | |
| Alboin | 757-758 |
| Daufer, Desiderius of Brescia | King of Lombardy 756-774 |
| 758-759 | |
| Gisulf | 759-761 |
| Theodicius | c.768 |
| Hildeprand | 774-c.776 |
| to the Franks | |
Spoleto, beginning about the same time as Benevento, but with a somewhat more obscure history, was not so lucky when it came to the Frankish conquest. With three Dukes doubling as Kings of Lombardy, and some of them also Dukes of Friuli, Spoleto clearly had stronger ties to Northern Italy, and so was more vulnerable to the fate of the Kingdom. Spoleto was then revived, however, as a Duchy or Margravate under the Carolingians. As such it survived until Berengar II of Italy, who took it from the last Margrave, who had become Pope John XII, in 959. Otto I then made it part of the Papal States. Spoleto thus belongs to Italy as part of Franica Media, while Benevento shares the fate of Southern Italy, in the Periphery of Francia.
| Princes of Benevento | Princes of Salerno | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Radelchi(s) I | 839-849 | Sikenolf, Sicone II | 839-849 |
| Bari held by Arabs, 847-871; The Divisio of Benevento & Salerno, 849 | |||
| Radelgarius | 849-854 | Sigo | 849-853 |
| Adelchi(s) | 854-878 | Peter | 853-856 |
| Emperor Louis II resident at Benevento, 866-871; ejects Arabs from Bari, 871; ejected from Benevento, 871; dies at Capua, 875 | Ademar | 856-861 | |
| Guaifer, Waishar | 861-880 | ||
| Gaideri(s) | 878-881 | ||
| Radelchi(s) II | 881-885, 894/7-900 | Guaimar, Waimar I | 880-900 |
| Monte Cassino sacked by Arabs & abandoned, 883 | |||
| Aio(ne) II | 885-891 | ||
| Orso | 890-891 | ||
| occupied by Romanian Strategos, 891-895 | |||
| Guy/Wido (IV) of Spoleto | 895-900 | ||
| Atenulf I of Capua | 900-910 | Guaimar, Waimar II | 900-946 |
| Prince of Capua, 887-910 | |||
| Landulf I | 910-943 | ||
| Arab base at Garigliano River (c.884) wiped out in combined operation, 915; victory over Romania at Basintello River, 929; Monte Cassino reoccupied, 934 | |||
| Atenulf II | 911-940 | ||
| Atenulf III of Carinola | 933-943 | ||
| Landulf II | 943-961 | Gisulf I | 933-977 |
| Landulf of Conza | 973-974 | ||
| 943-959, 961-981 | Pandulf I Ironhead | 977-981 | |
| Landulf III | 959-968 | ||
| Landulf IV | 968-981 | ||
| 981-1014 | Pandulf II | 977-981 | |
| Manso, Duke of Amalfi | 981-983 | ||
| Landulf V | 987-1033 | John | 983-999 |
| Pandulf III | 1014-1053, 1054-1059 | Waimar III | 999-1030 |
| Landulf VI | 1038-1053, 1054-1077 | Guimario, Waimar IV | 1030-1052 |
| Papal Fief, 1051; Norman occupation, ceded to Pope by Emperor Henry III, 1053 | |||
| Rodolf | 1053-1054 | patron of the Normans, assassinated | |
| Pandulf IV | 1056-1074 | Gisulf II | 1052-1077 |
| restored by Normans to Papacy, 1077 | to Normans, 1077 | ||
| Counts of Capua | |
|---|---|
| Landulf I the Old | 840-843 |
| Lando I | 843-861 |
| effectively independent of Salerno, c.860 | |
| Lando II Cyruttu | 861, deposed |
| Pando il Rapace | 861-862 |
| Pandenulf | 862-863, 879-882 |
| Landulf II il Vescovo | 863-866, 871-879 |
| Lambert I | 866-871 |
| Duke of Spoleto, 866-879 | |
| Lando III | 882-885 |
| Landenulf I | 885-887 |
| Atenulf I | 887-910 |
| Landulf III | 901-910 |
| reunited with Benevento, 910-982 | |
| Princes of Capua | |
|---|---|
| Landulf VI | 981-982 |
| Landenulf II | 982-993 |
| Laidulf | 993-999 |
| Adhemar | 999 |
| Landulf VII | 999-1007 |
| Pandulf II | 1007-1022 |
| Pandulf III | 1009-1014 |
| Pandulf IV, Wolf of the Abruzzi | 1016-1022, 1026-1038, 1047-1050 |
| Pandulf V | 1022-1026 |
| John | 1023-1026 |
| Guaimar (IV) | Prince of Salerno, 1030-1052 |
| 1038-1047 | |
| Pandulf VI | 1050-1057 |
| Landulf VIII | 1057-1058 |
| Norman Conquest | |
The Normans represented the first intimation of modern Europe. England would soon cease to be some strange Anglo-Saxon place and would receive the French infusion, from the Norman conquest (1066), that would characterize it ever since. Romania was gone from Italy forever (1071). And the Crusades (1092) would revive trade, urban life, and a cash economy -- features that had been preserved by Romania and Southern Italian cities like Naples and Amalfi but which had been largely missing from the rest of Christendom for centuries. The Italian cities, indeed, had maintained their trade in great measure through commerce with Islam, something that had always scandalized the Popes and became increasingly awkward in dealings with other Christian states.
The original lists here were from Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies. The treatment of Benevento and Salerno has now been revised on the basis of Before the Normans, Southern Italy in the Ninth & Genth Centuries, by Barbara M. Kreutz [University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991]. Her Appendix with the succession of "Southern Lombard Rulers" is revealing but has some lacunae and obscurities and does not continue all the way to the Norman Conquest, which is not entirely consistent with the purpose of the book. Also, the long line of Dukes of Capua, given in full by Gordon, is barely touched upon by Kreutz. I found the treatment of Capua at Wikipedia to be clearer than Gordon's lists, and so I have supplied tables for the earlier independent Counts and the later independent Princes. I have had trouble with several rulers of Benevento, especially late ones, listed by Gordon, who seem to represent rivals or coregents, but who are not present in Kreutz's list at all. I have tried to get this organized, which is why there are several cases of overlapping dates. Where the dates differ between Gordon and Kreutz, I have tried to use the latter, but in some cases it was impossible to know what the right idea would be.
A correspondent, Jan van den Burg, has drawn my attention to some problems in Gordon's lists, e.g. he has Grimoaldo II ruling from 687 to 680, which is a good trick without a time machine. Wikipedia has 677-680.
Ἡ δὲ Νεάπολις καὶ ἡ Ἀμάλφη καὶ ἡ Συρεντὸς ὑπῆρχον
ἀεὶ ὑπὸ τὸν βασιλέα Ῥωμαίων.
Naples and Amalfi and Sorrento have always been subject
to the Emperor of the Romans.Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (d.959 AD), "Of the province of Lombardy and of the principalities and governorships therein," De Administrando Imperio [Dumbarton Oaks Texts, Greek text edited by Gy. Moravcsik, 1967, 2008, pp.116-117]
Naples was originally a Greek colony, the northernmost in Italy. The date of its founding is obscure, and it seemed have a closer relationship
to Syracuse in Sicily than to a founding city back in Greece. Its original name was Παρθενόπη, Parthenópê -- one of the Sirens who was believed to have lured Odysseus in the vicinity -- but it came to be known as the "New City," Νεάπολις, Neápolis (11 Parthenope is now an asteroid).
This becomes Napoli in Italian, although Napule in the local dialect of Naples. "Naples" is a plural form in English (like Flanders), and this is probably because "Napoli" looks like a plural in Italian (sing. *Napolo). But the "i" is no more than an artifact of the vowel in the Greek name, so the English form is based on a misapprehension, unlike the case with Flanders, which is a plural in Dutch.
| Dukes of Naples | |
|---|---|
| Basil | 661-666 |
| Visit by Constans II, 663 | |
| Theophilatus I | 666-670 |
| Cosmas | 670-673 |
| Andrew I | 673-677 |
| Caesarius I | 677-681 |
| Stephen | 681-687 |
| Bonello | 687-696 |
| Theodosius | 696-706 |
| Caesarius II | 706-711 |
| John I | 711-719 |
| Theodore | 719-729 |
| George | 729-740 |
| Gregory I | 740-755 |
| effectively independent | |
| Stephen II | 755-766 |
| Papal suzerainty, 763 | |
| Gregory II | 767-794 |
| Theophilatus II | 794-801 |
| Anthemus | 801-818 |
| unknown, 818-821 | |
| Stephen III | 821-832 |
| coins without Roman Emperor | |
| Bonus | 832-834 |
| Leo | 834 |
| Andrew II | 834-840 |
| hires Arab mercenaries, 835 | |
| Contardo | 840 |
| complete independence, 840 | |
| Sergio I Contardo | 840-860 |
| Arab fleet destroyed off Ostia by force organized by Pope Leo IV & commanded by Caesar, son of the Duke, 849 | |
| unknown, 860-864 | |
| Gregory III | 864-870 |
| Sergio II | 870-877 |
| Athanasius | 877-898 |
| Fleet arrives from Romania to patrol against Arabs, 879; Duke excommunicated by Pope John VIII for collaborating with the Arabs, 880; whole Duchy excommunicated, 881 | |
| Gregory IV | 898-915 |
| John II | 915-919 |
| Marino I | 919-928 |
| John III | 928-968 |
| Arab fleet destroyed off Provence by Romania, 941 | |
| Marino II | 968-975? |
| Sergio III | 975?-999? |
| John IV | 999?-1002 |
| Sergio IV | 1002-1027, 1030-1036 |
| To Capua, 1027-1030 | |
| John V | 1036-1050 |
| Sergio V | 1050-1082? |
| Sergio VI | 1082?-1097? |
| John VI | 1097?-1120 |
| Sergio VII | 1120-1139 |
| To Kingdom of Naples & Sicily | |
The Greek form of the name is remembered in the English adjective "Neapolitan," from Greek Νεαπολίτης (Italian Napolitano), which is applied to ice cream as well as to the city and its inhabitants (with the Italian form as a common surname).
Other Greek colonies were also the "New City," including one in Palestine whose name is now rendered in Arabic as . The great opponent of Rome, Carthage, was, of course, a Phoenician colony. Its name in Punic also meant "New City," Qart-ḥadašt (
in the Hebrew equivalent, writing the "t" in the adjective that is latent in what is ordinarily written and pronounced as an "h" in Hebrew and Arabic). In Italian usage, there was also a Napoli di Romania, a Naples in Mediaeval Romania; but this was the Greek city of Nauplia, Ναυπλία, or Nauplion, Ναύπλιον, in Modern Greek pronounced Nafplio. This could also be Naioplia in Italian, and in Turkish could even be called the Mora Yenişehiri, i.e. the "New City" (the "new, its city,"
) of the Morea, the Mediaeval Peloponnesus. Nauplia was the capital of Modern Greece from 1821 to 1834.
The Bay of Naples became a resort in the Roman period. The delightful prospect of Mt. Vesuvius at the head of the Bay became a byword for disaster when the volcano erupted in 79 AD, burying Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other towns under ash. The Roman naturalist, Pliny the Elder, observed the volcano from the naval base at Misenum, where he had been put in command by Nero, just outside the Bay to the north. Taking to boat to observe the eruption better, Pliny landed on the south shore of the Bay, planning to spend the night. He was too close to the volcano, however, and he seems to have been asphyxiated by an outflow of gas. His body was neither burned nor buried. Naples itself, potentially in some danger from Vesuvius, has suffered ashfalls from it at times over the years but has not been catastrophically affected. On the other hand, Naples is adjacent to a dormant caldera of a much larger volcano, whose eruption would be far more disastrous than anything that Vesuvius has done. With it, however, it is not clear what sort of timeline we're looking at.
Naples passed with Italy to the Ostrogoths, but then was recovered by Belisarius. After the advent of the Lombards, the city became isolated from other Roman possessions. Visited by Constans II in 663, it began to drift into autonomy, like Venice, under its own Dukes -- i.e. the Dux, "Leader," a Roman frontier military commander -- rendered δούξ in Greek. By 840, all remnants of Roman control had disappeared, and Duke Stephen II had already acknowledged the (ineffective) overlordship of the Pope in 763 (after the fall of Ravenna in 751).
| Dukes of Gaeta | |
|---|---|
| John I | 877-933 |
| Arab base at Garigliano River, c.884; wiped out in combined operation, 915 | |
| Docibilis | 915-954 |
| John II | 933-962 |
| Gregory | 963-966 |
| John III | 966-? |
| Marinus | 978-984 |
| John IV | 984-1008 |
| John V | 991-1012 |
| Leo I | 1012-1015 |
| John VI | 1012-1040 |
| Leo II | 1015-1021 |
| Emilia | 1023-1032 |
| to Salerno | |
| Dukes of Amalfi | |
|---|---|
| Sergio I | 958-966 |
| Manso(ne) I | 966-1004 |
| Giovanni I | 1004-1007 |
| Sergio II | 1007-1028 |
| Giovanni II | 1028-1034 |
| Mansone II | 1034-1038 |
| Sergio III | 1038-1039 |
| Guimario I (IV) | Salerno, 1030-1052 |
| 1039-1043 | |
| Mansone III | 1043-1052 |
| Giovanni III | 1052-1069 |
| Giovanni IV | 1069-1073 |
| To Apulia, 1073-1088 | |
| Gisulf of Salerno | 1088-1089 |
| To Apulia | 1089-1096 |
| Marino Sebasto | 1096-1100 |
| To Apulia; sacked by Pisa, 1133 | |
Gaeta, up the coast, and Amalfi, on the southern peninsula of the Bay of Naples, themselves became in time autonomous and independent. All of the cities, however, faced common threats. The southern Lombards, of course, were a continual problem; but even the Lombards, with everyone else, needed to worry about a new enemy: the Arabs. Sicily, invaded by Aghlabids in 827, was completely conquered by them with the fall of Syracuse in 878. This campaign put Arab forces in Italian waters. The Vatican and Ostia were sacked in 846; but then the Pope was able to assemble a local fleet that defeated the Arabs in 849. This did not end the Arab threat, but it meant that perhaps it could be handled. In 846 a group of raiders had been stranded on a hilltop west of Tivoli, north-east of Rome. Surrounded, they agreed to convert to Christianity and settle on the spot, which even today is the village of Saracenesco (i.e. of the Saracens).
Meanwhile, Naples had been suspected of collaborating, and even of offering refuge to the defeated Arab fleet, even though the Christian fleet had been commanded by Caesar, son of the Duke of Naples. The Arab fleet, in any case, was finished off by a storm at sea. Similarly, Gaeta apparently tolerated the base of Arab raiders established on the Garigliano River in the 880's, despite its actions like the sacking of Monte Cassino, since the Arabs actually helped protect Gaeta from local enemies. Pope John X secured the neutrality of Gaeta, and in 915 the Arab base was surrounded and annihilated in a combined operation of the Papacy, Capua, Benevento, Salerno, Spoleto, and even a fleet from Romania.
Beginning in the 9th century, with the Macedonian Emperors, we see a revival of the power of Romania and an extension of Roman possessions against the Lombards in the South of Italy. This culminated in an ambitious and initially successful counter-invasion of Sicily commanded by George Maniaces (1037-1038). However, conflict among commanders, suspicion of the loyalty of Maniaces, and finally a revolt of Norman mercenaries (1040) led to a rapid collapse of the Roman position in Italy, as examined in the following section.
Shipping supplied to the First Crusade (1096-1099) initially involved Amalfi, which might have joined Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and other Italian cities in the future growth of Mediterranean trade. However, the restless Lombards, and an even newer enemy, the Normans, would spell the final end of independent cities in the South of Italy.
We soon cease to hear of Naples or Amalfi in the Italian commerce that would dominate the former Mare Nostrum. Indeed, Amalfi would be sacked by Pisa in 1133 -- one of whose greatest prizes was a copy of the Justinian's Digest of Roman Law. Such a thing probably dated from the days of Romanian administration.
Naples, however, would soon become the capital of Southern Italian Kingdoms, Sicily and/or Naples, all the way into the 19th century. But the days of the commercial importance of Naples and Amalfi would be over, sunk in the domination, and then the stagnation, of the Mezzogiorno Kingdoms. Commercial prominence passed to the North -- to Pisa, Venice, and Genoa. In 1406 Pisa itself would be defeated and absorbed by Florence, with the copy of Justinian's Digest seized by the victors. It joined other copies of Justinian's Code in renewed study of Roman law.
The maps of Southern Italy featured in this section and in other sections on this webpage are adapted from the map of 980 AD in Before the Normans, Southern Italy in the Ninth & Tenth Centures, by Barbara K. Kreutz [University of Pennsylania Press, 1991, p.xvi]. The maps for other dates (737, 888, 1025, 1042, 1071, 1092, 1130, & 1173) are based on The Norman Conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily, by Gordon S. Brown [McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003, p.11], The Anchor Atlas of World History, Volume I [Hermann Kinder, Werner Hilgemann, Ernest A. Menze, and Harald and Ruth Bukor, 1974, p.118], the Historical Atlas of the World [Barnes & Noble, 1970, 1972, p.38; original edition by Oddvar Bjørklung, Haakon Holmboe, and Aders Røhr, J.W. Cappelengs Forlag, Oslo, 1962], and The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History [Colin McEvedy, 1992]. The is considerably uncertainty about precise borders, and the sources do not always agree.
Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!Wallace Shawn, The Princess Bride, 1987; immediately falls over dead.
I guess it's the Sicilian in me, but if someone ever looks at me wrong, I'm like "I wish you nothing but death forever."
Emily Compagno, Gutfeld!, 22 January 2024
The South of Italy, except for the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, its offshoots, like Salerno and Capua, and the city-state Republics, led by Dukes, of Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta, remained within Romania until the Islâmic conquest of Sicily. As a whole, it entered the Frankish world only when the Normans expelled both Moslems and Romania.
| Norman Counts of Aversa | |
|---|---|
| Rainulf I | 1030-1045 |
| Asclettin | 1045 |
| Rainulf II Trincanocte | 1045-1048 |
| Princes of Capua | |
| Richard I of Aversa | Aversa, 1049-1078 |
| Capua, 1058-1078 | |
| Jordan I | 1078-1091 |
| Richard II | 1091-1092, 1098-1106 |
| Lando IV | 1092-1098 |
| Robert I | 1106-1120 |
| Richard III | 1120 |
| Jordan II | 1120-1127 |
| Robert II | 1127-1135, d.1156 |
| To Apulia | |
Southern Italy and Sicily had not been united with the North since the Lombard invasion of 568, and then Sicily was detached from Romania by the Aghlabids between 827 and 878. The Normans, mainly through one group of brothers, ended all this by uniting the whole area, in 1139, one of the great achievements of Norman arms -- following by a few years the conquest of England by Duke William of Normandy in 1066.
The feat of Italian conquest was accomplished more slowly than England, beginning with the arrival of Norman mercenaries, helping the Lombards, just in time to be defeated by Basil Boioannes, the Byzantine/Romanian governor, at Cannae in 1018. Soon Normans were fighting for Boioannes, not against. When the German Emperor Henry II invaded Italy in 1022, Normans fought both for and against him, and decisively against him at the failed siege of the Byzantine stronghold of Troia in April, May, and June. Amid all the shuffling alliances, in 1030 the Norman Rainulf was presented with a fief, at Aversa, by the Duke of Naples, Sergio IV, whose sister he then married. This was the first Norman landed possession in Italy. When his wife died in 1034, however, Rainulf switched loyalties to Pandulf IV, the "Wolf of the Abruzzi," Prince of Capua
| the de Hauteville brothers arrive in Italy from Normandy, 1035 | |
|---|---|
| William Iron Arm | mercenary for Romania in Sicily, 1038-1040 |
| Count of Apulia 1042-1046 | |
| becomes "Iron Arm" by defeating the Amir of Syracuse in single combat, 1040; joins rebellion in Italy, 1040; Battles of Venosa/Olviento & Montepeloso, in Apulia, Romania defeated, 1041 | |
| Drogo | Count of Apulia 1046-1051 |
| Humphrey de Hauteville | Count of Apulia 1051-1057 |
| defeated & captured Pope Leo IX at Civitate, 1053 | |
| Robert Guiscard | Count of Apulia 1057-1059 |
| Duke of Apulia & Calabria 1059-1085 | |
| invasion of Sicily, 1061; capture of Bari, last Romanian city in Italy, 1071; capture of Palermo, 1072; rescues Pope Gregory VII | |
| Roger I | Count of Sicily 1072-1101 |
| conquest of Malta, 1090; conquest of Sicily completed, 1091 | |
| Roger Borsa | Duke of Apulia 1085-1111 |
| Simon | Count of Sicily 1101-1105 |
| Roger II | Count of Sicily 1105-1154 |
| Duke of Apulia & Calabria 1127-1154 | |
| King of Sicily 1130-1154 (& Naples, 1138) | |
| defeated & captured Pope Innocent II at Galluccio, annexation of Naples, 1139; attack on Corinth and Thebes, silk workers kidnapped and deported to Sicily and Calabria along with mulberry crops and production machinery, 1147 | |
| William | Duke of Apulia 1111-1127 |
| William I the Bad | King of Sicily (& Naples) 1154-1166 |
| gift of a copy of Ptolemy's Almagest by the Emperor Manuel I (1143-1180); revolt and unsuccessful campaign in Italy by Michael Palaeologus, 1155-1156 | |
| William II the Good | 1166-1189 |
| Tancred | 1190-1194 |
| William III | 1194 |
| Henry (VI) | Emperor 1190-1197 |
| 1194-1197 | |
| son-in-law of Roger II | |
| Frederick I (II of the Empire) | 1197-1250 |
| Emperor, 1212-1250 | |
| King of Jerusalem 1225-1228 | |
| Conrad (IV) | 1250-1254 |
| Emperor 1250-1254 | |
| Manfred | 1250-1266 |
| defeated with Epirotes by Empire of Nicaea, Battle of Pelagonia, 1259; killed by Charles I of Anjou, 1266 | |
| Conradin | 1267-1268 |
| killed by Charles I of Anjou, 1268; Kingdom passes to Anjevians | |
In 1035 began the sojourn of a group of brothers, the de Hautevilles, from Normandy. They enlisted with Rainulf, who in 1036 defected from Pandulf to Guimario (or Waimar, Gaimar, Guaimar) IV (or V), Prince of Salerno. With the help of the Emperor Conrad II, Guimario was installed in Capua and Pandulf fled. Rainulf's fief was transfered to Salerno and he was installed by the Emperor himself as a Prince of the Empire.
When Constantinople attempted a reconquest of Sicily (1038-1040), under the gifted but mercurial leadership of George Maniakes, the de Hautevilles were part of a contingent contributed by the Prince of Salerno/Capua. The eldest brother, William de Hauteville, distinguished himself. At the seige of Syracuse, an Arab sortee from the city led to William killing the Amîr in single combat, earning himself the sobriquet "Iron Arm" (Bras de Fer). This may have been the Amîr of Sicily itself, Abddullâh, who is otherwise reported to have died in the same year (1040). The fall of Syracuse, at the time, was in vain. Maniakes offended the Normans, who returned to Italy. A victim of Court intrigue, Maniakes was then recalled to Constantiople and imprisoned. Rebellion then began in Italy, which soon destroyed the position of Romania in Italy and, for the time being, led to the Christian abandonment of Sicily (1042).
After disputes among the local Lombards about leadership, with some of them even going over to Romania, in 1042 William de Hauteville was elected by the Normans to be the Count of Apulia. This was confirmed by Guimario of Salerno, who in turn was proclaimed Duke of Apulia and Calabria. However, in 1047 the Emperor Henry III intervened in Southern Italy, returning Capua to Pandulf the Wolf and reducing Guimario to Prince of Salerno but confirming Drogo, William's brother and successor, as Count of Apulia. This intervention was part of the colorful history of the Papacy, especially the unique triple tenure of Benedict IX, whom Henry replaced with Clement II in 1046 -- the Pope who then crowned him Emperor.
Robert Guiscard de Hauteville became Duke of Apulia and Calabria in 1059. By 1071 the last city of Romania in Italy, Bari, had been taken by Guiscard, who then spent a lot of time trying to expand against Romania on the mainland of the Balkans. He kept defeating Alexius Comnenus, memorably at Dyrrhachium in 1082, where many Englishmen from the Varangian Guard fell; but Alexius nevertheless maintained his resistance until defeating his son Bohemond at Larissa in 1083, after which the Norman invasion collapsed. Guiscard returned in 1085. After defeating the Venetian fleet, the Norman army was incapacitated by disease, which then carried off Guiscard himself.
In 1061 Sicily was invaded by Roger de Hauteville (Count of Sicily in 1072) and the conquest completed by 1091. When the mainland territory was inherited by Roger in 1127, he turned the whole area into the Kingdom of Sicily, the Regnum. This involved some difficult diplomacy. As the price of his support, Roger obtained a Crown from Pope Anacletus II, who, despite residing in Rome, lost support elsewhere to a rival, Innocent II, who canvased the rulers of Europe, obtaining, with the help of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, their support. Although Anacletus could claim a legitimate election, and lived out his reign in Rome, he is now regarded as an Anti-Pope. Free of his rival, who predeceased him, Innocent was not going to recognize Roger's kingship, and it was not until the Normans captured him at Galluccio in 1139 that Innocent was prepared to confirm the existence of the Kingdom. Since the Pope was often at odds with the German Emperors, it remained sensible to court the support of the Normans, who had previously rescued Gregory VII. Sometimes things worked this way, sometimes not; and the Popes sometimes tried playing the Germans off the Normans. Usually, since the Germans left, this strategy could not be maintained. The status of the Regnum continued to sometimes be disputed by Popes and Emperors, with Romania sometimes also trying to reestablish itself in Italy.
In Palermo, with Arab, Greek, and Latin influences all affecting the culture, policy, and art, we see mosaics representing King Roger in Byzantine form and identified in Greek as Ῥογέριος Ῥήξ. "King" would be Rex in Latin, and Ῥήξ is Rex borrowed into Mediaeval Greek, as I have discussed elsewhere. It is noteworthy that the Sicilian artists, who may in fact have come from Constantinople, accepted this terminology, which actually implied subordination to the Emperor of Romania.
Since Apulia and Calabria are not Sicily, modern usage has tended to characterize the Kingdom as that of Sicily and Naples, but this was not the construction at the time -- Naples was not even acquired until 1139, and even then the Mainland Capital of the Kingdom remained at Salerno -- and the divergence has resulted in some peculiarities (i.e. the "Two Sicilies"), as discussed below. In one form or another, this Kingdom survived as a distinct political unit, though often with Sicily and Naples divided, until 1861. But it would never again be as fragmented as it was at the time that the Normans arrived in the 11th century.
While Naples had fallen to Roger II, his first cousin Bohemond had gone on the First Crusade and become the first Prince of Antioch, founding a line that continued (though one heiress, Constance) until the end of Outremer, and which later included Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem. Maria of Antioch even married an Emperor of Romania, Manuel I Comnenus.
Meanwhile, the Pope got some bad news: The German Emperor Henry VI of Hohenstaufen had married the heiress Constance of Sicily and Naples. The domain of the Pope's greatest protectors was suddenly in the hands of his greatest enemies, though it was a few years before the son of Henry and Constance, Frederick II, reached his majority and began to give the Popes the kind of trouble that they would have expected. This all turned out to be trouble indeed, but eventually Frederick died, his son had only a brief reign, Germany pretty much lapsed into anarchy, and the Popes could begin plotting the end of the Hohenstaufen. This was accomplished through Charles of Anjou, the brother of King Louis IX (St. Louis) of France. Charles defeated and killed Frederick's illegitimate son Manfred, and his legitimate grandson Conradin. What he hadn't reckoned on was public opinion, which tore Sicily from his grasp in 1282 and destroyed his plans to move on to Constantinople, if not Jerusalem.
The following genealogical tables follows the relevant descendants of Tancred de Hauteville, including the Princes of Antioch and the Hohenstaufen, and then the Anjevians and Bourbons. This has taken some piecing together, since Sicily and Naples form another one of those places that is peripheral to most histories (like Lorraine, Burgundy, & Navarre). This uses the trees and information in Byzantium, The Decline and Fall, John Julius Norwich [Knopf, 1996, pp. xxiv-xxv], The Normans in the South, 1016-1130, by John Julius Norwich [1967, Faber and Faber, 2010, pp.332-334], The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194, by John Julius Norwich [1970, Faber and Faber, 2010, pp.394-395], A History of the Crusades, by Steven Runciman, Volume II, The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East 1100-1187 [Cambridge University Press, 1951,1993, p. 492], and Volume III, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades [1951, 1993, pp. 530-531], The Norman Conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily, by Gordon S. Brown [McFarland & Company, 2003], and the Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, by Andreas Thiele, Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa [R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, pp.205-207]. These are supplemented with information from other prose histories, like Medieval Europe by Martin Scott [Longmans, London, 1964, 1967], and on line from Brian Tompsett's Royal and Noble genealogy.
Note that sometimes the numbering of the Aragonese Kings of Sicily is complicated by counting the Emperor Frederick II as King Frederick I of Sicily. Also note that although Jerusalem had fallen to Saladin in 1187, the Kingdom of Jerusalem continued to consist of coastal cities, like Acre, until 1291. These possessions are only called the "Kindgom of Acre" in modern scholarship. Charles of Anjou petitioned the Pope for the title for Jerusalem, which was granted, but the nobles of Outremer, who always regarded the office as elective, chose King Hugh III of Cyprus.
| Charles I of Anjou | King of Sicily, 1266-1285 |
| the Sicilian Vespers, 30 March 1282; Sicily revolts against & massacres the French; Pedro III of Aragon, with money from Michael Palaeologus, invited in; Aragonese line begins in Sicily | |
|---|---|
One of the most dramatic events of the Middle Ages destroyed his plans. A French soldier insulted a local woman in Palermo, as she was going into Church for Vespers. This was as much a bad idea then as it still would be today, and by the day's end all the French in Palermo were dead and Sicily was in full revolt. Such was the "Sicilian Vespers," the last great moment of Sicily in European history.
Even now, the word "Mafia" is sometimes said to be a contraction of "Death to the French" in Italian (Moranu li Franchiski in 13th century Sicilian). Pedro of Aragon lent help to the Sicilians, and the island was soon lost forever to the Anjevians. A cadet line of Aragon was begun there, eventually to attach it to Spain.
A nice detail of the Sicilian war was when an Anjevian fleet raised the Sicilian siege of the Anjevians in Malta. When word got to the Aragonese admiral in Messina, Roger of Lauria (1245-1305), he immediately headed for Malta. Although he could have surprised the Anjevians, he alerted them to his presence, drew them out, let them expend their arrows and other missiles, and then attacked and crushed them -- 8 July 1283. Of 19 Anjevian galleys, 14 were destroyed, with no Aragonese losses. Roger defeated the Anjevians in five more battles, helping to ensure the defeat of Charles of Anjou. It is a nice touch that this began at Malta, considering the later, spectacular history of the place.
The following table follows the whole House of Anjou from Charles I to the end of its career in Naples, including the branch that was established in Hungary.
The Anjevian genealogy contains two persons after whom Franciscan Missions in California were named. One is Louis IX of France, brother of Charles of Anjou, for whom the Mission "San Luis Rey de Francia," near Oceanside, is named. The other is a son of Charles II, St. Louis the Bishop of Toulouse, for whom the Mission (and city) of "San Luis Obispo" is named. Apart from specific information about the Missions, I had never seen Louis of Toulouse listed as an Anjevian.
| Aragonese Kings of (First) Sicily | |
|---|---|
| Pedro III, I of Sicily | Aragón, 1276-1285 |
| 1282-1285 | |
| James II of Aragon | 1285-1296 |
| Frederick II (or I) | 1296-1337 |
| Peter II | 1337-1342 |
| Louis | 1342-1355 |
| Duke of Athens, 1342-1355 | |
| Frederick III (or II) the Simple | 1355-1377 |
| Duke of Athens, 1355-1377 | |
| Mary | 1377-1401 |
| Duchess of Athens, 1377-1388 | |
| Martin I the Younger | 1390-1409 |
| Martin the Older, the Humane, II of Sicily | Aragón, 1395-1410 |
| 1409-1410 | |
| Interregnum, 1410-1412 | |
| Ferdinand I | Sicily & Aragón, 1412-1416 |
| Anjevian Kings of Naples (Second Sicily) | |
|---|---|
| Charles II | 1285-1309 |
| Robert the Wise | 1309-1343 |
| patron of Boccaccio, Paul of Perugia, & Greek literature | |
| Joanna I | 1343-1382 |
| Charles III | 1382-1386 |
| Charles II of Hungary 1385-1386 | |
| Ladislas | 1386-1414 |
| Joanna II | 1414-1435 |
| Anjevian line ends; claim to Naples passes to René the Good of Anjou, Duke of Lorraine, but by 1442 Alfonso V of Aragon conquers the Kingdom | |
Joanna I of Naples willed her domains to Louis I of Anjou. Louis was able to secure Provence, but Naples fell to her cousin Charles III after he murdered Joanna. Later, Joanna II of Naples left her rights to René I the Good of Anjou, but he was unable to hold off Alfonso V of Aragon and Sicily. Both Sicily and Naples are subsequently part of the history of Spain and Austria.
| Aragonese Kings of Sicily & Naples (First & Second Sicily) | |
|---|---|
| Alfonso V, I of Naples | Aragon & Sicily 1416-1458 |
| Naples (Second Sicily), 1442-1458 | |
| Ferdinand I (Ferrante) | Naples 1458-1494 |
| defeated by Anjevians at Sarno, 1460; Turks occupy Otranto, 1480-1482 | |
| John II | Aragon & Sicily 1458-1479 |
| Alfonso II | Naples, 1494-1495, d.1495 |
| Ferdinand II (Ferrantino) | 1495-1496 |
| Invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France, French Occupation of Naples, 1495-1496 | |
| Frederick IV (or III) | 1496-1501, d. 1504 |
| Ferdinand II, V of Spain, III of Naples | Aragon & Sicily 1479-1516 |
| Naples, 1501-1516 | |
Alfonso left Naples to his illegitimate son Ferdinand (Ferrante), with the rest of the Aragonese holdings going to his brother, John II. Ferrante had a hard but successful time fighting off the Turks, Anjevians -- now meaning John I (or II), Duke of Lorraine -- and other enemies. Ferrante was helped, as he helped in turn, Skanderbeg, the hero of Albania, who freed his lands from the Turks from 1443 to 1463. If Ferrante was able to capture an enemy, the torments of imprisonment and death might be followed by mummification, so that the King could display him for his amusement. He is said have kept his collection in a museum or even at a banquet table. I know of no precedent for his macabre practice.
According to Andreas Thiele, Ferdinand was einer der grausamsten und barbarischsten Despoten Istaliens überhaupt, "One of the most cruel/horrible and barbaric despots of Italy altogether" [Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, p.210]. This reputation was irresistable to the producers of the recent Showtime series The Borgias [2011-2012], who nevertheless also could not forebear altering the history to make things worse. Thus while Ferrante was succeeded by his son Alfonso II, who abdicated on the eve of the French invasion of 1495 (and died within the year in Sicily) and was thus succeeded by his young son (aged 26) Ferdinand II, The Borgias skips Alfonso and goes directly to Ferdinand, who is then captured, tortured to death, and mummified, by Charles VIII of France.
However, in fact Ferdinand fled the French, kept his forces together, obtained refuge and help from his cousin, Ferdinand II of Aragón and Sicily (V of Spain), successfully fought his way back into Naples as Charles withdrew, and pursued French forces until they were quit of the Kingdom. The French had been no more popular than they were in Sicily in 1282. Then, after marrying his aunt (who was actually younger than he was), Ferdinand died a natural death. We might also keep in mind that the torture and murder of a fellow Monarch, even if captured in battle -- as happened to John II of France -- is something that was simply not done in Mediaeval Europe. John was feasted in London. If Charles had actually killed Ferdinand in such a way, the outrage of Europe would have been great, and, more to the point, the hosility of the House of Aragón would have been implacable. Aragón was going to be hostile enough, as it happened. It is unlikely that a Monarch like Charles VIII, for all his faults, would be been so gratuitously impolitic.
Before modern television, these Kings had already been fictionalized in a far more memorable work of art, Shakespeare's The Tempest. There we have Alonso (i.e. Alfonso), King of Naples, and his son Ferdinand. While there were indeed two Kings of Naples named "Alfonso" with sons named "Ferdinand," the history and personalities of Shakespeare's Alonso and Ferdinand match up with neither pair of them. Alfonso II was King far to briefly to be anything like King Alonso; and Ferdinand I was very far from being anything like the sweet and innocent Ferdinand of The Tempest. Instead, Alonso is more like Alfonso I, while Ferdinand seems to be much like the young and earnest Ferdinand II. We can just see him marrying Miranda. But Alfonso I had nothing to do with the Ducal succession in Milan, and Ferdinand II did not marry a princess of Milan. However, Ferdinand's father, Alfonso II did marry a princess of Milan, Ippolita Sforza, daughter of Duke Francesco I Sforza. She was Ferdinand's mother. At Milan, also, there was indeed an irregularity in the succession, as in The Tempest, but this was Ippolita's brother, Ludovico Maria, deposing his nephew, Gian Galeazzo, in 1479 -- not the fictional Duke Prospero being deposed by his brother Antonio. Thus, Shakespeare's story is entirely fictional (and the name "Miranda" evidently a novel coinage), with little more than names and places supplied from the history of Naples and Milan. The meaning of The Temptest, in turn, has nothing to do with any of this history or its participants.
In the genealogy above, we see three Aragonese Counts of Malta. The marraige of Count Louis/Luis to a Palaeogina princess is noted at the genealogy of the Palaeologi. Further marriages to Serbia are shown on the popup, where we also see that Helena Cantacuzena and her daughter, the widow Countess of Malta, Maria, were both captured by the Ottoman Sulṭân Bâyezîd, at Salona in 1394, and sent to his harem, where they soon died.
The "Catalan Company," mercenaries from Aragón who had fought for Romania and then mutinied, killed the Duke of Athens and seized the Duchy in 1311. In 1312, a brother of King Peter II of Sicily was brought in to rule. Two more brothers followed. Then King Louis of Sicily took over the Duchy from his uncle John II in 1432, and for a while Athens was united to Sicily. Just as Sicily was about to be reunited to Aragón, Athens was lost to the Acciaiuolis. The genealogy for all this can be examined at Aragón and at Athens.
Frederick IV of Naples was deposed by his cousin Ferdinand II of Aragón, who had already united Spain by marrying Isabella of Castile. Sicily and Naples remained united to Spain until Naples (and Sardinia) was ceded to Austria, and Sicily to Savoy, after the War of the Spanish Succession (1713).
| Savoyard King of Sicily | |
|---|---|
| Victor Amadeus II | Duke of Savoy, 1675-1730 |
| King of Sicily, 1713-1720 | |
| King of Sardinia, 1720-1730 | |
| Bourbon Kings of the Two Sicilies | |
| War of the Polish Succession, 1733-1735, Sicily & Naples to Bourbons, 1735 | |
| Charles | 1734-1759 |
| King of Spain, 1759-1788 | |
| Ferdinand I/IV | 1759-1825 |
| Parthenopean Republic in Naples, 1799; Bourbons restored, 1799; Bourbons deposed, 1805 | |
| Joseph Bonaparte | Naples, 1806-1808 |
| Joachim Murat | Naples, 1808-1815 |
| Bourbons restored in Naples, 1815; Bourbons, deposed 1820, restored by Austria, financed by Rothschilds, 1821 | |
| Francis I | 1825-1830 |
| Ferdinand II/V | 1830-1859 |
| Francis II | 1859-1860, d. 1894 |
| Garibaldi defeats Bourbons, 1860; Sicily & Naples joined to Sardinia & Italy, 1861 | |
Sicily and Naples became separated during the Revolutionary Era, when French forces could easily occupy the mainland of Italy but the British Navy prevented them from landing in Sicily. An interesting footnote to that situation is when Admiral Horatio Nelson developed a relationship with Lady Emma Hamilton, wife of the British Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton. Lady Hamilton even bore Nelson a daughter. Nelson's plea that Britain should support this girl in the event of his death, however, was overlooked, despite undying gratitude for his victory and death at Trafalgar in 1805.
An association a bit more intrinsic to the area was the discovery of Pompeii, which had been buried by an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. In 1710 a local peasant, Giovanni Battista Nocerino, began digging up artifacts at what turned out to be Herculaneum. An Austrian officer, Maurice de Lorraine, Prince d'Elboeuf, learned of the artifacts, bought the land, and excavated it for a while himself. After the Bourbons came to power, excavation was reopened by order of King Charles in 1738. The Museo Borbonico was created just to house the discoveries. In 1745 excavation moved over to the site that proved to be the city of Pompeii proper. In 1748 the first fresco and skeletal victim were discovered. Less edifying discoveries soon followed. By 1758 rumors were circulating of obscene art. King Charles himself ordered a statue of a satyr Of particular interest at Herculaneum were the carbonized scrolls of an entire library, in what then came to called the Villa de Papyri. Reading these books was soon attempted, with both successes and failures, and continues to the present day. Many of the works turned out to be those of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara, who is discussed on the page of Hellenistic Philosophy.
It was during this period that the English Ambassador, Sir William Hamilton again, who was in the Kingdom from 1764-1800, studied the volcanoes of Naples and Sicily. His 1774 book, Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and Other Volcanoes, has been called the beginning of volcanology. Hamilton thus has a claim to fame that is both intrinsic to Naples and Sicily and is rather more important than just his being cuckold to Horatio Nelson.
Restored to Naples in 1815, the Bourbons acquired, or cultivated, the reputation of one of the most reactionary regimes in Europe. When Garibaldi landed an army in Sicily in 1860, Bourbon authority collapsed quickly, and the North and the South of Italy were finally reunited for the first time since the invasion of the Lombards in 568. Nevertheless, the two ends of Italy remain culturally and politically rather different until today.
copulating with a goat (found in 1752) to be kept locked away. By 1786, however, books were being published with references to this and other objects. The "Secret Museum" at Pompeii was soon well stocked with nudes, lucky phalluses, and representations of intercourse and bestiality. Access to the brothels of Pompeii, which were not alone in possessing such embarrassing artifacts, but were particularly rich, as might be imagined, with them, had to be restricted. Thus began both the modern arguments over pornography and over the decadence that brought about the Fall of Rome.
Copyright (c) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
| Kings of Sardinia | |
|---|---|
| Victor Amadeus II | Duke of Savoy, 1675-1730 |
| King of Sicily, 1713-1720 | |
| King of Sardinia, 1720-1730 | |
| Prince Eugène of Savoy (1663-1736), second cousin of Victor Amadeus II, becomes supreme commander of Imperial Armies, 1697 | |
| Charles Emanuel III | 1730-1773 |
| Victor Amadeus III | 1773-1796 |
| Charles Emanuel IV | 1796-1802 |
| Victor Emanuel I | 1802-1821 |
| Charles Felix | 1821-1831 |
| Charles Albert | 1831-1849 |
| Victor Emanuel II | King of Sardinia, 1849-1861 |
| Savoy & Nice ceded to France, 1860 | |
| King of Italy, 1861-1878 | |
Eugène's mother was a niece of the Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661) who succeeded Cardinal Richelieu (d.1642) as the First Minister of King Louis XIII. Mazarin then continued under the Regency of Queen Anna, 1643-1651, and under Louis XIV until the Cardinal's death in 1661, when Louis announced he would rule without such a Minister.
On his arrival in Paris, Mazarin had brought along no less than seven of his nieces, who were then called the Mazarinettes. All of these then grew up with the young Louis XIV, eventually with ambitions to marry him, or at least become an offical mistress. As thin and dark Italians, the nieces were not always thought well of; and their ambitions with Louis were frustrated. Eugène's mother, Olympia, was involved in various Court conspiracies and consequently went into exile in 1680. Meanwhile, her husband, a Prince of Savoy, had died (1673).
From Brussels Olympia landed in Spain, where she did well until accusations of conspiracy again in 1690, when she was obliged to return to Brussels. Although Eugène remined in France through all this, it is hard to say how the problems of his mother influenced his place at Court, where the King regarded him as ugly as well as short, and ordered a clerical career for him. Instead, in 1683 Eugène, having lived his whole life in Paris, decamped for service with the Hapsburgs.
In short order, the 20-year-old Eugène was with the relief Army at the Siege of Vienna, where Louis XIV had helped get the Turks to besiege the city. Eugène distinguished himself in the great attack that broke the siege.
After the Turks were defeated, Imperial forces, with recruits and enthusiasm from all over Europe, began to drive them right out of Hungary, which had been under the Ottomans since 1526. The first great victories in Hungary were won by Charles (V) of Lorraine, Louis of Baden, and Maximilian of Bavaria. Later, Eugène, who had become a general fighting in Italy, was given command of the Imperial Army in Hungary.
Although ordered to keep on the defensive, Eugène attacked and utterly destroyed the Turks at the battle of Zenta (1697), earning fame that would continue well into the next century. On his return to Vienna, however, he was relieved of command for having disobeyed orders. In short order the Emperor thought better of this, but Eugène refused reinstatement unless he would be given a free hand in the future. He was.
This all was bad news for Louis, who tried to help the Turks with his own war; but the War of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) did not save Hungary for the Sulṭân. Soon, the death of the last Spanish Hapsburg set off the greatest conflict of the Era, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713).
Here Eugène, and his friend, John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, transformed European warfare from the slow sieges and counter-marches of the previous half century into battles of annihilation. The first meeting of Eugène and Churchill, on the eve of the Battle of Blenheim, must be one of the key moments in military history.
| Portrait of Eugène, Prince of Savoy, 1718, Jacob van Schuppen (1670–1751), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
|---|
After the great War, Eugène continued to win battles against the Turks, culminating in the defeat of the Turks at Belgrade, and the capture of the city, in 1717. Having found his fortune with Austria, Eugène is buried in Vienna, in the crypt of the Stephansdom Cathedral. His statue stands in the Heldenplatz ("Hero's Plaza") of the Hofburg Palace. His summer palace, overlooking Vienna, the Belvedere, is now a museum -- lately a center of controversy over some stolen paintings of Gustav Klimt.
As Eugène and Churchill inflicted stunning defeats on the French, Victor Amadeus switched to the Imperial side, and Eugène drove the French right out of Italy. As a result, while Spanish possessions in the Mediterranean mostly went to Austria, Savoy obtained Sicily, which of course had been a Kingdom since 1130. So the Duke of Savoy was now a King.
But this arrangement turned out to be awkward. After Spain invaded both Sardinia (1717) and Sicily (1718) and had to be defeated by Britain and Austria, Victor Amadeus traded in Sicily for Sardinia (1720). Now, Sardinia had never been as important as Sicily and had not been a kingdom; but it was promoted to one so that Savoy would not lose status with the trade of Sicily.
In 1814, Savoy also became the ruler of Genoa, which had been an independent, Mediaeval republic until the French Revolution. At this point, we see a flag that is designed to represent the rule of Savoy, Genoa, and Sardinia. The Sardinian flag is simply that of Aragón, of which Sardinia was long a possession, showing four "Moors heads." The first version of this is the flag of Savoy with the "Moors head" flag in one quarter and the Genoese Cross of St. George on the diagonal.
Soon, a more interesting design was developed, containing the three crosses of Savoy, Genoa, and Sardinia. Meanwhile, the flag of Savoy had sometimes been placed in a blue field, or as the canton of a blue flag, apparently in each case to represent the Piedmont. The new multiple cross flag for the Kingdom of Sardinia thus came to be put as the canton of a blue flag also.
In 1848, however, this interesting flag was abandoned and replaced with the nationalist tri-color for Italy, representing the goal of Sardinia to unite Italy -- which it did.
The list of Kings of Sardinia is given under the periphery of Francia, because that is really where Sardinia belongs, since it was long a possession of Romania, Islâm, and then Aragón. Its only "Core" association was as a possession of Pisa for a while. This is a little awkward, since Savoy, now as Sardinia, remained a core territory of Francia and, most importantly, would go on to form the nucleus of a new Kingdom of Italy. However, since the new Kingdom would integrate the unambiguously peripheral area of Sicily and Naples, it is worth the emphasis of putting Sardinia there also.
The process of unification would mainly be in antagonism to Austria, which became the dominant power in Italy after Napoleon. Ironically, Prince Eugène is now remembered as a German national hero because of his service to the Empire -- there was even a German heavy cruiser in World War II named the Prinz Eugen (sunk after the War at the Kwajalein atomic bomb test in 1947). But Italians would later have little love for Austria.
The House of Savoy is continued under Kings of Italy.