#sancia de provence

[dwellordream]

“...Johanna’s date of birth is unknown, but she was likely born in 1326 or 1327, the daughter of Marie of Valois (1309–32) and Charles of Calabria (1298–1328), the son and heir of King Robert of Anjou (r. 1309–43). Charles’s death made Johanna and her sister, Mary (b. 1329), Robert’s only direct lineal heirs; Robert designated Johanna his successor in 1330. …Johanna grew up in a court noted by contemporaries for its scholarly culture—although she apparently received no formal education. Instead, she came under the tutelage of her step-grandmother, Sancia of Majorca (ca. 1285–1345), after her mother died in 1332. Sancia was famous for her piety, her devotion to the Franciscan order, and her active religious patronage, and she provided an important model for Johanna. She lived austerely even before widowhood, when she retired to a Clarissan convent, and she had more interest in contemplation and prayer than in the more worldly aspects of queenship, but she wielded great power at court and took a forceful role in the dispute about evangelical poverty. 

The Angevin court was not entirely given over to piety, however. The Angevins had long patronized arts and letters, and Robert was famous for his learning. His court attracted and fostered the leading lights of fourteenth century culture, including Giotto, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. It was frequented as well by Robert’s younger brothers, Philip, prince of Taranto (1278–1331), and John of Gravina, duke of Durazzo (1294–1336), and their wives and children, including six sons whose rivalry dominated court gossip and helped shape the first two decades of Johanna’s reign. Johanna was thus the product of a court marked, on the one hand, by religious fervor and a fledgling humanist culture and, on the other, by intrigue and simmering factionalism. In 1343, Johanna succeeded Robert ahead of nine male cousins who could (and did) stake claims to her throne. She would struggle with their resentment, as with their plays for power. 

From the outset, she faced criticism for the perceived iniquity of her succession, along with uncertainty about what it actually meant for her to inherit Robert’s throne. Would she truly govern? Would she incorporate her husband into her reign, or would he become the kingdom’s ruler? The conceptual and political importance of the Kingdom of Naples made such questions particularly pressing. It was the most significant European polity yet to be ruled by a woman in her own right. From their capital in Naples, the Angevins ruled the southern half of peninsular Italy, the counties of Provence and Forcalquier, and portions of the Piedmont, Albania (the duchy of Durazzo), and Greece (the Morea). Under Johanna’s forebears, the Angevin realm had approached empire; its kings exercised de facto rule over much of northern Italy while aggressively spreading their territory to the East. 

Until 1282, it also included the island of Sicily; even after its loss to Aragon in the Sicilian Vespers, Angevin kings fought to reclaim the island and referred to their realm as the Kingdom of Sicily—although historians refer to the kingdom as it existed after 1282 as the Kingdom of Naples, or simply as the Regno. In addition, the Regno’s kings had claimed the symbolically potent (but territorially empty) title king of Jerusalem since 1277, when the first Angevin king, Charles I (1227–85), bought the title from Marie of Antioch. By the time of Johanna’s succession, the Regno’s rulers were as prominent as the king of France or England or the emperor himself. The competing claims of the senior branch of the Angevin family, which ruled Hungary, rendered Johanna’s succession particularly controversial. 

According to the rule of primogeniture—widely accepted by the fourteenth century—Robert, the third son of Charles II (1254–1309), should not have become king. Rather, the son of his eldest brother, Charles Martel (1271–95), should have done so. However, when Charles Martel died, his young son, Charles Robert, or Carobert (1288–1342), was removed from the line of succession to protect the Regno from instability. Charles II’s second son, the future St. Louis of Toulouse (1274–97), had become a Franciscan friar and bishop and renounced his hereditary rights, so Robert succeeded Charles in Naples, while Carobert inherited the Hungarian crown. Carobert insisted that he and his sons were the Regno’s rightful rulers—a charge that his son, Louis “the Great” of Hungary (1326–82), took up in his turn. 

That Robert should bequeath his kingdom to a female child when Carobert’s youth had barred him from the succession added insult to injury and was to have profound ramifications for Neapolitan history. The thorny question of the Hungarian Angevins’ rights to Naples formed the backdrop to the early years of Johanna’s reign. As a child, she was betrothed and then married to Andrew of Hungary (1328–45), the second of Carobert’s three sons, in an effort to secure peace and stability. The Hungarians saw their union as reparation for Robert’s unjust succession. Yet Johanna refused to accept Andrew as a co-ruler, and he was murdered after a protracted power struggle in 1345. The ensuing scandal, which included accusations that Johanna had first cuckolded and then murdered Andrew, would haunt her throughout her reign. It also nearly cost her kingdom: Louis of Hungary twice invaded Naples (1348–50) to avenge his brother and claim what he insisted was his birthright—an argument with which many contemporaries agreed. 

Marriage, and the balance of power within marriage, posed a consistent challenge to Johanna. It had important implications for her reputation, as contemporary expectations of marriage and femininity shaped how contemporaries responded to Johanna. After Andrew’s death, she married Louis of Taranto (1320–62), another cousin with designs on her throne. Louis was the only one of Johanna’s four husbands to rule in his own name, effectively co-opting her power from 1350 to 1362 and inspiring sympathy for Johanna. Her subsequent two marriages proved less problematic for her exercise of sovereignty. Her third husband, James IV of Majorca (1336–75), was reportedly insane, and Johanna was able to enforce his secondary status and govern independently without incurring contemporaries’ ire. 

Her fourth husband, Duke Otto of Brunswick-Grubenhagen (1320–98), acted as the Regno’s military leader without seeking the throne and supported Johanna loyally until her death. The latter half of Johanna’s reign differed starkly from its beginning, which was wrought with scandal, violence, and strife. Johanna emerged, over the course of the 1360s and 1370s, as a respected figure on the European political stage. She became a noted papal ally and a leader in the league that defended papal prerogatives in northern Italy. She helped to return the papacy from Avignon to Rome, and she formed friendships with the most celebrated female religious of her day, Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, and Katherine of Vadstena. She emulated her grandparents in patronizing religious orders and foundations, and she helped to foster a vibrant artistic culture in Naples. 

In the process, Johanna became known and acted as a legitimate, sovereign monarch. Ironically, her leading role in religious politics proved Johanna’s downfall after the Great Schism of the Western Church began in 1378. She was the first monarch to recognize Clement VII as pope. Her abjuration of Clement’s rival, Urban VI, led many of Johanna’s former allies to turn against her. It also resulted in her deposition and, ultimately, in her death, after Urban crowned her cousin, Charles of Durazzo—backed by her old enemy, Louis of Hungary—king in her place. Johanna died in prison, reportedly at Charles’s hand, in 1382. Childless, she had adopted the French prince Louis of Anjou as her heir; Louis and Charles waged a long war that permanently divided Johanna’s realm, plunging Angevin lands into disorder. Johanna’s reign ended even more bloodily than it had begun, leading many—particularly in Urbanist lands—to see violence and suffering as her legacy to her people.”

- Elizabeth Casteen, “Introduction. “ in From She-Wolf to Martyr:  The Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna I of Naples

#johanna i of naples #history #late middle ages #italian #medieval #elizabeth casteen #from she-wolf to martyr