That Robert of Taranto, who six months previously had threatened Joanna’s rule, should have been the one to come to the queen’s rescue in her extremity is an indication of just how seriously the threat from the king of Majorca and the free companies was perceived at court. It took a madman to do it, but in their detention of James, Joanna’s family, famously and historically renowned for discord, finally seems to have found a subject on which everyone could agree.
Her husband’s breakdown and the danger posed by a possible invasion by the White Company were by no means the only challenges Joanna faced during this period. As she was trying to temper and hide James’s outbursts (for these, if known, would only add to the perception of potential weakness), the queen was also confronted with a crisis in Sicily.
Despite the treaty and coronation of 1356, Neapolitan hold over the island had never been fully realized. The Catalan party had remained in opposition, slowly building strength, although the strategically critical city of Messina, under the governorship of Niccolò Acciaiuoli’s son, remained loyal to Naples. As early as 1359, Joanna had recognized that she did not have the military resources necessary to secure a lasting victory over Sicily and that consequently some sort of diplomatic arrangement would have to be made with the Catalans and their hereditary monarch, Frederick III, if she wished to continue to exert influence over the territory. Accordingly, she had offered to marry Maria’s youngest daughter, Margherita, to Frederick III, aspiring in this way to wrest the Catalans away from their traditional ally, the crown of Aragon. Joanna was especially eager to negotiate this compact while Naples still held Messina, as possession of that city represented a tactical advantage that allowed her to press for much more favorable terms. But the Catalan advisers surrounding Frederick the Simple had rejected the Neapolitan offer and instead had surreptitiously smuggled Constanza, daughter of the king of Aragon, to Sicily to wed Frederick in 1361, hoping that the marriage would encourage her father to send an army to help topple the Neapolitan government in Messina.
The desired Aragonese military support never materialized, however, dampening Catalan prospects. The party was just at the point of considering reopening peace negotiations with Naples when plague reemerged on the island in the summer of 1363, claiming the life of Frederick’s new young wife. Suddenly, a marriage alliance with the Neapolitan royal family was again a possibility, and this time, both sides leaped at it. The only problem was that Frederick wanted not Margherita, but her older sister, Jeanne.
Jeanne, duchess of Durazzo, was Maria’s eldest daughter and the likely heir to the throne, given the queen’s childless condition, a situation for which there was not much prospect for improvement considering the current state of Joanna’s third marriage. As Jeanne happened also to be the wealthiest woman in the kingdom, she made for a most attractive potential bride and was the focus of a number of matrimonial intrigues. One of these schemes, by far the most damaging to Neapolitan interests, originated at the highest level of the papal court.
Cardinal Guy of Boulogne had not forgotten that as early as 1355, Philip of Taranto had promised that Jeanne would be married to Guy’s brother Godfrey, in return for Guy’s active intervention in support of Taranto interests with Innocent VI. To Guy’s displeasure, this alliance between his family and the duchess of Durazzo had never come to fruition, owing to Louis of Taranto’s having, in the cardinal’s opinion, reneged on Philip’s promise by later stipulating that Godfrey could have Jeanne but not her money. With Louis dead and Urban V in the papacy, Guy now thought to resurrect a variation on this ménage, substituting his nephew Aimon of Geneva for Godfrey as the prospective bridegroom. To ensure that this time he was not thwarted by internal politics at the Neapolitan court, the cardinal, seeking a local surrogate, secretly enlisted the archbishop of Naples as his personal representative in this matter, charging the clergyman with the delicate task of closing the deal.
The archbishop had his work cut out for him. Aimon, who was so poor that the archbishop had to put up his own money as collateral against a seven-hundred-florin loan to allow the eager suitor to finance a trip to Naples, was the least impressive of the candidates for Jeanne’s hand. In addition to Frederick III, the duchess of Durazzo was also pursued by Louis, count of Navarre, brother of the powerful Charles the Bad, king of Navarre; and by Louis II, duke of Bourbon, whose mother, Isabella of Valois, had been Joanna’s mother’s sister. “The lord Louis of Navarre has been much praised here,” wrote a worried archbishop to his sponsor Guy of Boulogne on July 5, 1363, “and the lady [Jeanne] has stood up for him, until now, and has set her heart upon him quite remarkably until she heard that our candidate is handsomer, about which matter she is quite unwilling to believe anyone until she sees him… And so I would by all means have him [Aimon] come here quickly, for she has secretly indicated to me that she will expect him within two months, during which time she will become betrothed to no one else, nor even after that will she become betrothed to anyone except the lord Louis, and this only after deliberation with me.” The archbishop further suggested that Cardinal Guy secure a bishopric for Jeanne’s chancellor and some other method of bribery for the chancellor’s brother, Jeanne’s seneschal, as the archbishop considered the support of these two men to be instrumental to the happy conclusion of “the business of the marriage.”
Taking the archbishop’s advice, Aimon hurriedly traveled south, arriving in Aversa, where the court was staying, on November 15. He was greeted graciously by the royal family, including Joanna, who granted him an audience, and by Jeanne herself; afterward everyone took part in a dance hastily organized in celebration of the marriage of one of Joanna’s servants. The next day, Aimon was treated to lunch by James of Majorca, who must have been having one of his good days, and danced again with Jeanne. Aimon made an extremely good impression on Jeanne, particularly after he had presented her with some expensive jewelry (supplied by the archbishop) as a token of his affection. There is no way to tell if he was in fact handsomer than Louis of Navarre, as Louis, of higher rank, declined to make a trip to Naples simply to woo Jeanne. He must have been good-looking enough, because the duchess’s overly attentive manner toward the visitor from Geneva prompted the rumor that she was already secretly married to Aimon. Joanna herself raised this suspicion the next day with the archbishop, who denied the gossip and pressed for a decision regarding Aimon’s suit. “The next day I addressed the Queen,” the archbishop wrote to Cardinal Guy on November 23, “in the presence of all her Council… The Queen then finally said some things. Her answer is, in effect, that the Sicilian undertaking still hangs over us, and in the event that marriage should not take place, there remains the question of Duke [Louis] of Bourbon, her own near relative… But if this marriage should also not take place, and if our lord the Pope should approve of the lord Aimon, she would for her own part be content, and so, as I believe, she is writing to our lord the Pope.” In other words, Aimon was in third place.
Unfortunately for the archbishop, Cardinal Guy’s interference in the duchess’s nuptial arrangements had by this time come to the attention of Cardinal Talleyrand of Périgord, who had no intention of marrying his great-niece, possibly the future queen of Naples, to his chief rival’s impoverished nephew. Talleyrand did not bother with surrogates; he went straight to Urban. As a result, the archbishop had also to regretfully inform Cardinal Guy that Jeanne had received “a letter which the lord of Périgord [Talleyrand] has recently written to her, in which among other things I read that the Sicilian marriage had the approval of our lord the Pope, and in the event of this marriage’s not taking place, he was himself sending the Archbishop of Patras to negotiate for the Duke of Bourbon, and he encourages her to fix her mind upon one or the other of these, despite the fact that that consummate swindler, the Archbishop of Naples, who is generally regarded as such by all who know him, was intriguing for some other marriages, as he said, which were not consistent with the distinction of her royal blood, and that she was in no wise to be induced to
accept such a marriage.”
Urban, too, wrote to both Jeanne and Joanna. To Jeanne, the pope expressed his strong approval of her projected marriage with the king of Sicily “as a means of bringing back Frederick to obedience and devotion to the Holy Roman Church” and warned her not to bind herself to anyone else. “You own uncle [Talleyrand], who is a man of great prudence and loves you like a father… will guide and assist you loyally and wisely in this matter and in your other undertakings,” Urban noted in a letter dated November 28. To Joanna, in a letter written the same day, the pope went further: “Because it would not be fitting that the famous title of the house of Durazzo… should pass into alien hands, which we have learned is being attempted [a reference to the prospective marriage with Aimon], we wish and command you that, if the aforesaid Duchess should wish to transfer the city and duchy to another outside the aforesaid house, you should in no wise consent thereto, but expressly forbid her to do so, and impede her with all your strength.”
But Jeanne, who was already twenty years old by this time, and more interested in sex appeal than state policy, did not want to marry the king of Sicily, whom she had heard was not as attractive as either Aimon or Louis of Navarre, and who had furthermore acquired the unpromising nickname of Frederick the Simple. To promote her own agenda, the duchess took steps to sabotage the prospective alliance. Secretly, she sent one of her servants to Sicily to “see and learn about certain things which were being generally said both about the miserable state of the kingdom and the poverty of the King and the late Queen as well as about the person of the said King,” wrote the archbishop of Naples. The servant’s mission went beyond mere surveillance, however, as was discovered when he was taken into custody at Messina by soldiers loyal to Joanna and the grand seneschal. Jeanne had also given him letters addressed to Frederick III in which she warned the king of Sicily that Niccolò Acciaiuoli was not to be trusted in the peace negotiations, as he intended to seize the island of Malta for himself “and some other things… touching the city of Messina to the prejudice of the said Lady Queen,” reported the archbishop.
Joanna, although of course intent on the Sicilian marriage as a way of salvaging the one great foreign policy achievement of her reign, had nonetheless tolerated her niece’s unhelpful attitude up until now. (“I would marry him [the king of Sicily] myself if I could!” Joanna is reported to have exclaimed on more than one occasion.) But this was treason. The queen, who had correctly identified the archbishop of Naples as the catalyst for Jeanne’s obstinacy, moved quickly to punish the culprits. On December 22, 1363, Jeanne’s seneschal and others of her household staff were arrested on the charge of conspiring against the crown (or “using their influence with her [Jeanne] in favor of our business,” as the archbishop put it in a December 29 letter to Cardinal Guy). Jeanne herself was placed under house arrest at the Castel dell’Ovo. “The said lady Duchess… is still detained, in the strictest custody, to such an extent that no one, however great or small, familiar or outsider, has access to her; so that she did not even hear the divine office on Christmas day,” wrote the archbishop. Although the archbishop was protected by his position, he was accused of deliberately undermining the treaty with Sicily, which by this time had been negotiated on terms highly favorable to Naples. “Open war” existed between the archbishop and Niccolò Acciaiuoli. The former feared his correspondence was being intercepted and read, and took the precaution of writing in cipher. He also begged Cardinal Guy to get the pope to assign a legate to the kingdom to aid him in his task.
To the queen, the idea that her niece would rebel against a marriage that would help cement one of the principal goals of all the Angevin rulers, and would furthermore bring peace and stability to the kingdom, was unthinkable. And so, on January 16, 1364, she had Jeanne brought to Robert of Taranto’s house, and there the duchess of Durazzo broke down before an audience consisting of her aunt, the queen; her mother, Maria; and her uncle, the emperor; and consented to marry Frederick III. It looked as if the Neapolitan alliance with Sicily had been saved after all.
And then, the next day, Cardinal Talleyrand of Périgord unexpectedly died.
The speed with which the papal court reversed itself on the subject of Jeanne’s marriage was marvelous. Overnight, Urban, who until this point had been busy appeasing Talleyrand, found himself suddenly relieved of this responsibility, leaving ample opportunity for accommodating the now-dominant cardinal, Guy of Boulogne. On February 27, ten days after the cardinal of Périgord’s demise, Urban wrote to Joanna ordering her to release Jeanne from custody in order to permit her to marry Aimon, threatening sanctions if the queen did not obey his commands. At the end of April, at Cardinal Guy’s behest, Urban signed bulls excommunicating both Joanna and Maria for failing to allow Jeanne to marry whom she pleased and sent them to the archbishop of Naples for publication. The archbishop did not dare present the bulls at court. “Because there is no wickedness greater than the wickedness of a woman, especially of those two, in truth I now begin to be afraid, above all because they put on such a good face when they see me: since Easter the Queen has invited me to dine with her four times, and always I have presented my excuses!” Eventually, the kingdom was threatened with interdict for failing to allow Jeanne to marry Aimon. As Cardinal Guy of Boulogne wrote in a letter to Niccolò Acciaiuoli, “And in truth, my very dear friend, up to now we have not heard that in the land of any other prince in Christendom people are compelled by force to contract marriage,” a stirring statement of feminist principle that would no doubt have been of great interest to Christendom’s many female subjects, had the Curia felt the slightest need to apprise them of it.
With the marriage arrangements thus stymied, popular opinion in Sicily swung away from the Latin party and toward the opposition. Emboldened by Naples’s apparent weakness, and insulted by Jeanne’s disparagement of their sovereign, the Catalan faction struck. On June 1, 1364, Frederick III’s forces retook Messina with aid from within the city itself. The fall of Messina brought an end to the Latin party’s dominance, the prospective marriage alliance, and Joanna’s all-too-brief reign as queen of Sicily.
Stunned and furious, the ruling elite of Naples turned on the archbishop. On June 18, the highest-ranking barons and court officials, with the full endorsement of the queen, sent a sharply worded grievance to the pope complaining of interference in the kingdom’s affairs and calling the archbishop “the great deceiver, who got around one man with flattery, another with promises… [who] had succeeded in blocking the marriage of the Duchess with Frederick, destroying every hope of peace and tranquility in the kingdom… [The nobles further swore] to resist to the bitter end the marriage of Jeanne of Durazzo with Aimon of Geneva.” Guy of Boulogne fought back by convincing Urban to send a papal legate, who arrived in the kingdom in early July with new bulls excommunicating Joanna and Maria if Jeanne was not handed over to papal authority by August 20; these were made public in the capital on July 11. Joanna coldly informed Urban’s representative in a private audience that evening that the duchess of Durazzo was under her mother’s care, and not the queen’s. Maria, incensed by this tampering with what she considered to be a private family affair, harangued the archbishop in front of the papal legate, and then had her servants attack the archbishop’s palace, kidnapping two of his retainers who were subsequently rescued by other church officials. Faced with such open hostility, the archbishop judged it prudent to withdraw, and he fled the kingdom. The papal legate waited until the deadline of August 20, and when Jeanne was not released into his custody, he pronounced the bans of excommunication and placed the kingdom under interdict. Then he, too, fled.
In defiance of the papal court, Jeanne was eventually betrothed on November 23, 1365 “on the advice of Queen Joanna, her aunt, and… her mother [Maria]” to Charles the Bad’s younger brother Louis of Navarre, and married him the following year. “On the 18th of June, 1366, the lord Louis of Navarre entered Naples with three galleys and the next day married the lady Jeanne,
duchess of Durazzo, and that same night slept with her,” reported an official chronicle. For his part, Aimon, having failed to secure his heiress, instead embarked on a crusade against the Turks in Constantinople in 1366. Although he returned safely to Venice in the summer of 1367, he fell ill on the journey home to Geneva and died on August 30. Jeanne’s new husband was similarly cursed: intent on asserting his authority over his wife’s property, he hired a free company of Navarrese mercenaries and in 1372 launched a carefully prepared attack against the city of Durazzo, which had fallen into enemy hands. No sooner had he arrived at the port than, in the process of achieving his military objective, he fell ill or was wounded (the record is unclear) and promptly died.
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