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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924087981720 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL 
 QUEEN 
 
 JOANNA I. OF NAPLES 
 

THE BEAUTIFUL 
 QUEEN 
 
 JOANNA I. OF NAPLES 
 
 By 
 FRANGESGA M. STEELE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " The Village Blacksmith; 1 " The Story of the English Pope? 
 " St. Bridget of Sweden? etc. 
 
 WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS, 
 INCLUDING TWO PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES 
 
 New York 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1910 
 

 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY .... I 
 
 ii. joanna's childhood ... 17 
 
 in. petrarch's first visit to Naples 33 
 
 IV. THE LAMB AMONG WOLVES . . 48 
 
 V. PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS . . 66 
 
 VI. THE MURDER OF ANDREW . . 80 
 
 VII. WHAT FOLLOWED THE MURDER . 96 
 
 VIII. JOANNA MARRIES A SECOND TIME . 112 
 
 IX. THE KING OF HUNGARY'S VENGEANCE 128 
 
 X. JOANNA PLEADS BEFORE THE POPE 
 
 AND CARDINALS . . . I42 
 
 xi. joanna's acquittal and its 
 
 RESULTS ..... I58 
 
 v 
 
VI 
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XII. 
 
 PEACE IS PROCLAIMED 
 
 
 172 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE CORONATION OF JOANNA . 
 
 
 187 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Joanna's second widowhood 
 
 
 204 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE DEATH OF ACCIAJUOLI 
 
 
 222 
 
 XVI. 
 
 URBAN V. RETURNS TO ROME . 
 
 
 236 
 
 XVII. 
 
 JOANNA AND CHARLES OF SWEDEN . 
 
 247 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 joanna's fourth marriage . 
 
 
 263 
 
 XIX. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT SCHISM 
 
 276 
 
 XX. 
 
 JOANNA IS EXCOMMUNICATED . 
 
 
 292 
 
 XXI. 
 
 JOANNA IS BESIEGED 
 
 
 3°3 
 
 XXII. 
 
 THE CAPTIVE QUEEN 
 
 
 3*5 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 THE FINAL TRAGEDY 
 
 
 3 2 7 
 
 GENEALOGICAL TABLE .... 
 
 facing 
 
 33 6 
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION AND BOOKS 
 
 CON- 
 
 
 SULTED IN WRITING THIS BIOGRAPHY . 
 
 337 
 
 INDEX 
 
 • . . 
 
 . 
 
 339 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 queen joanna Photogravure Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 PETRARCH 34 
 
 PORTRAIT OF A LADY (FORMERLY ATTRIBUTED TO 
 
 Leonardo da vinci) . . . Photogravure 44 
 
 BOCCACCIO 106 
 
 PONT BENEZET . .148 
 
 CLEMENT VI. 154 
 
 AVIGNON 164 
 
 QUEEN JOANNA (WOODCUT) 200 
 
 QUEEN JOANNA 226 
 
 URBAN V 244 
 
 ST. BRIDGET ON HORSEBACK . .... 260 
 
 GREGORY XI. 272 
 
 ST. BRIDGET DELIVERING HER RULE . . . .286 
 
 URBAN VI 298 
 
 CHARLES III. OF NAPLES 312 
 
 CASTEL D'OVO 3 2 4 
 
 TOMB OF QUEEN JOANNA 330 
 
 vii 
 
THE 
 
 BEAUTIFUL QUEEN 
 
 JOANNA OF NAPLES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Introductory 
 
 " For she was beautiful ; her beauty made 
 The bright world dim, and everything beside 
 Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade." 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 THE subject of this biography was, according 
 to all accounts, one of the loveliest women 
 of all time, but there is much difference of opinion 
 among historians about her character. Some of 
 her biographers regard her as a saint and a 
 martyr, a victim to calumny ; others have cast 
 the vilest reproaches against her, even suggesting 
 that she was, as her detractors maintained, one 
 of the conspirators in the assassination of her 
 first husband ; but all are agreed that she was 
 supremely beautiful and exceedingly talented. 
 
 Joanna I. of Naples, whose romantic story re- 
 sembles in many respects that of Mary Queen of 
 Scots, with whom she is often compared, is said 
 
2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 to have been the most beautiful Queen that ever 
 lived. The theme of poets, whose friend and 
 liberal patroness she was, all Europe rang with her 
 praise in the middle of the fourteenth century, 
 when she was known in all the foreign courts of 
 Europe as "la douce Reine." Her own court 
 was magnificent and highly civilised and refined ; 
 it attracted the principal men of genius of the age, 
 poets, of whom Petrarch was the first, and writers, 
 with Boccaccio as chief, frequented it. 
 
 If it be true that the women and the countries 
 that have no history only are happy, we may rightly 
 infer that intensely unhappy must have been the 
 " sweet Queen " whose story is related in the 
 following pages, and the kingdom over which she 
 ruled, for their history during the whole of her 
 reign, from 1343 to 1382, was most exciting and 
 often dramatic in its interest. 
 
 The scene is constantly changing from the luxury 
 of the most brilliant court in Europe to the hard- 
 ships of the battle-field, from the gay songs of the 
 troubadour to the war-cry of the barbarian invader, 
 from palace to prison, from the ballroom to the 
 torture-chamber, from the love-stories of brave men 
 and lovely women to the devastating ravages of 
 the Plague, from that " fragment of Heaven vouch- 
 safed to earth, Naples," to the fiends that in- 
 habited it. 
 
 The mysteries of history are more enthralling 
 
Introductory 3 
 
 than the mysteries of fiction, which only remain 
 mysteries to the end of the volume, while most 
 of the former remain unsolved to the end of time. 
 The central event of the reign of Joanna, the 
 murder of Andrew of Hungary, is one of the 
 unguessed mysteries of history : we look " down 
 the long arches of the years," and we see historians 
 attempting to solve it, some accusing Joanna — who 
 was certainly innocent of consenting to it ; others 
 fixing the guilt upon Louis of Taranto, Joanna's 
 second husband ; others on Charles of Durazzo ; 
 others again on Philippa the Catanese, and her grand- 
 daughter Sancha ; and yet others on the Countess 
 of Durazzo, — all of whom are dramatis fersona in 
 the drama we are about to describe ; but the actual 
 murderers will never be known — probably they were 
 some hired assassins. One thing is certain : there 
 was a plot to assassinate Andrew the Hungarian, 
 and it succeeded ; but who all the chief conspirators 
 were can never be certainly affirmed, though we may 
 be able to fix upon them with a high degree of 
 probability. 
 
 Just as difficult is it to get a true picture of a 
 Queen whose biographers vary so much in their 
 estimation of her character, and this from reasons 
 national, political, and religious. The fact that in 
 her later years Joanna was unfortunately the partisan 
 of the anti-pope Clement VII. prejudiced some 
 writers so deeply against her that their judgment 
 
4 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of her character was completely warped. The 
 gentle, learned, and refined Pope Clement VI. was 
 her best friend and a firm believer in her innocence, 
 while the haughty, passionate Urban VI., although 
 a Neapolitan himself, was one of her bitterest 
 enemies. 
 
 It is gready to be regretted that neither of her 
 celebrated contemporaries, Petrarch and Boccaccio, 
 ever wrote her biography, for both knew her in- 
 timately, and were in a position to throw light on 
 her character, and on the mystery which darkened 
 her youth and cast a shadow on the whole of her 
 life. Both of these men of genius had a great 
 admiration for her, especially Petrarch, who was 
 one of her domestic chaplains. One of the later 
 biographers of this " famous princess — as famous 
 as ever lived" — Giannone, calls her "the wisest 
 of princesses, the Light of Italy, and the Jewel 
 of the World." 
 
 Before we begin to tell the story of her life, it 
 will be as well to clear the ground by giving a brief 
 sketch of her immediate predecessors on the throne, 
 and, to help to the better understanding of sub- 
 sequent events, to show the relation in which she 
 stood to Andrew of Hungary and the princes of 
 Taranto. As many readers dislike retrospective 
 writing, this shall be done as shortly as possible. 
 
 The crown of Naples passed from the house 
 of Swabia to the house of Anjou in 1269, when 
 
Introductory 5 
 
 Charles of Anjou was invested with the Two 
 Sicilies — that is, the island of Sicily and the kingdom 
 of Naples — by Pope Clement IV. 
 
 Manfred, the illegitimate son of Frederick II. of 
 Swabia, was then acting as Regent for his nephew 
 Conradine, at that time a minor, and he sent am- 
 bassadors to Charles I. to try to avert the loss of 
 the Neapolitan throne. Charles's reply was more 
 forcible than polite. " Go," he said, " and tell the 
 Sultan of Lucera from me, that I will either send 
 him to hell, or he will send me to Paradise." 
 
 Manfred was subsequently slain at the battle 
 of Benevento, and Charles I., after being crowned 
 in Rome, proceeded without further opposition 
 to Naples ; but young Conradine now attempted to 
 retain possession of his throne, aided by the Duke 
 of Austria, and falling into Charles's hands was 
 executed with seven or eight of his followers on 
 a scaffold covered with crimson velvet and erected 
 in the market-place of Naples. 
 
 Charles of Anjou, a bold and ambitious king, 
 was succeeded by his son, Charles II., Prince of 
 Salerno, who at the time was a prisoner in Spain 
 and only obtained his liberty two years after his 
 father's death, on condition of leaving his three 
 elder sons as hostages in Spain, where they were 
 compelled to remain twelve years. 
 
 Charles II. was a true father to his people, and 
 administered the government of his kingdom with 
 
6 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 a strict sense of justice, not suffering the Neapolitans 
 to be oppressed by Provencal adventurers, as they 
 had been in his father's reign. 
 
 In the fourteenth century kings transferred their 
 rights to kingdoms, just as fathers divided their 
 property among their children — by will ; and 
 Charles II., whose wife, Maria of Hungary, had 
 brought him the Hungarian crown, left Hungary to 
 the heirs of his eldest son, Charles Martel. His 
 second son, St. Louis, the Bishop of Toulouse, 
 died in his father's lifetime, at the age of twenty- 
 three, and was afterwards canonised. To his third 
 son, Robert, he left the Two Sicilies — that is, the 
 island of Sicily and the kingdom of Naples — and 
 also the duchies of Provence and Piedmont. To 
 his fourth son he left the principality of Taranto, 
 which embraced nearly half the kingdom of Naples, 
 and to his fifth son, afterwards the Duke of Durazzo, 
 a considerable part of the remaining half, so that 
 the King of Naples was really only the chief of 
 princes who, if they combined against him, were 
 as powerful as himself. 
 
 Charles Martel's descendants never liked the dis- 
 position of Charles II. 's dominions, and the great 
 tragedy of Joanna's life was due in a large measure 
 to the fact that the Hungarians were ever en- 
 deavouring to gain possession of Naples. Thus we 
 find Canrobert of Hungary, son of Charles Martel, 
 claimed the throne of the Two Sicilies as his right 
 
Introductory 7 
 
 on Charles II. 's death, and the case was pleaded 
 before Pope John XXIL, who decided in favour of 
 Robert, granting him also Provence and Piedmont. 
 
 The Neapolitans had cause to be very grateful to 
 the Pope for this decision, for Robert proved an 
 excellent king, and earned the titles of the Wise and 
 the Good from his subjects, by whom he was greatly 
 beloved. In 1309, the year of Charles II. 's death, 
 Pope Clement V. transferred the Papal See and the 
 Curia or Papal court from Rome to Avignon, which 
 being in Provence was within the dominion of the 
 King of Naples : this move very much weakened 
 the temporal power of the Popes in Italy, and left 
 Rome forlorn and deserted, a prey to her turbulent 
 inhabitants. 
 
 Robert, with his two brothers, Charles and 
 St. Louis, had only been liberated from their 
 captivity in Spain a few years before he came to the 
 throne. During his imprisonment he had acquired 
 studious habits, and a great love of literature which 
 never afterwards forsook him, and which made him 
 a great patron of learning and learned men, so that 
 his court became the most intellectual in Europe, 
 and the resort of men of genius, who found in 
 Robert the Wise a liberal and powerful protector. 
 
 He gathered together at enormous expense the 
 richest library in Europe, and placed it under the 
 care of Paul of Perugia, one of the greatest scholars 
 of his age. He was indeed almost too passionately 
 
8 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 fond of books for a sovereign in those warlike 
 times, and used to read even in his walks. He 
 was a philosopher, a theologian, and a physician, 
 but he had his limitations, for he despised poetry 
 and was unacquainted with the works of his great 
 contemporary, Dante. He was also a brilliant 
 soldier, and is said to have been an excellent orator. 
 
 He married, at the age of eighteen, Violante, 
 Princess of Aragon, by whom he had an only son, 
 Charles Duke of Calabria, the father of Joanna, to 
 whom he was most tenderly attached, and whom he 
 treated more as a brother than a son, making him 
 his companion and confidant, and entrusting him 
 from his earliest youth with the government of 
 Naples, from which he was himself often called away 
 on military business. 
 
 The Duke of Calabria was neither so learned a 
 student nor so celebrated a soldier as his father, but, 
 like his grandfather Charles II., he was distinguished 
 for his justice — a quality which he transmitted to 
 his daughter Joanna in an eminent degree. Two 
 anecdotes are told of him in connection with this 
 virtue. 
 
 He was in the habit of visiting all his dominions 
 once a year, to see that his humbler subjects were 
 not oppressed by the great barons, and on one 
 occasion he discovered that a certain Count had 
 taken an estate by force from a vassal, because it 
 afforded a pleasant site for his own residence. 
 
Introductory 9 
 
 Charles sent for the Count, and praising the lovely 
 view and beautiful situation of his house, begged him 
 as a friend to give it up to him, that he might build 
 a royal palace there, promising to pay the full price 
 for the property. The Count angrily refused to do 
 anything of the kind ; but said if the Duke chose to 
 take it by force he must do so, but, as he was famed 
 for his justice, he did not fear this alternative. 
 
 The Duke replied, " Now you know what your 
 vassal must feel ; and unless you restore his lands 
 immediately, I will take your head as well as your 
 estates." Needless to say, the Count at once made 
 restitution to his vassal. 
 
 Another of the Duke's customs was to sit every 
 day in the palace of justice, in front of the Castel 
 Nuovo, which his father built, and hear the pleas of 
 all his subjects who had any grievances ; and lest 
 the servants should prevent the poor from having 
 access to him, he had a large bell placed at the 
 outer gate for the applicants to ring, that he might 
 hear it. 
 
 One day an old horse, that belonged to a knight 
 named Marco Capece, which was straying about the 
 city, rubbed itself against the wall, and inadvertently 
 rang the bell. The Duke ordered the porter to 
 bring in the complainant, and amid the laughter of 
 the court the man returned to announce that it was 
 only Marco Capece's old horse. 
 
 Charles, however, said that a horse deserved 
 
io The Beautiful Queen 
 
 justice as well as his other subjects, and sent for 
 the owner and rebuked him severely for his neglect 
 of an old and faithful servant, and ordered him 
 to take better care of it, under pain of losing the 
 pension he in a measure owed to it. 
 
 It is a pity the Neapolitans do not take this old 
 story to heart, for there is perhaps no city in 
 Europe in which horses are worse treated than in 
 Naples. 
 
 In 1326 Charles left Naples for Florence, which 
 he had agreed to govern for ten years at the request 
 of the inhabitants, taking with him his wife, Maria 
 of Valois, his uncles, the princes of Taranto and 
 Durazzo, sixteen of the great Neapolitan barons, 
 and two hundred other knights with golden spurs, 
 their wives and children. 
 
 The princes and knights travelled on richly 
 caparisoned horses, wearing cloaks of cloth-of-gold 
 of various colours over their brilliant armour : the 
 ladies wore dresses and mantles of cloth-of-gold or 
 silver, or velvet or silk, either violet, crimson, 
 purple, or green, both material and colour being 
 determined by their rank. They travelled either 
 on horseback or in litters, or in springless chariots 
 covered with the gayest coloured velvet or some 
 other costly material. Both knights and ladies 
 wore for travelling long silk hoods embroidered 
 with grotesque devices, these were fastened under 
 the chin with jewelled clasps, and hung down 
 
Introductory 1 1 
 
 behind in two long points almost reaching to the 
 ground. 
 
 Each knight had at- least three squires, one of 
 whom carried his master's arms on high. Hence the 
 expression " With a high hand." Another carried his 
 helmet on his saddle, and the third led his charger. 
 
 This cavalcade is said to have been the most 
 magnificent which had travelled through Italy since 
 the fall of the Roman Empire. In its train were 
 1,500 sumpter-mules of the barons, followed by 
 large numbers of other animals carrying the baggage 
 of the knights, and a large body of infantry. They 
 started on May 31st from Naples, but stayed some 
 weeks at Sienna, so they did not reach Florence 
 until July 31st. Here they received a splendid 
 reception, the streets being brilliantly decorated and 
 their path strewn with flowers. 
 
 The court of Joanna's mother, Maria, Duchess of 
 Calabria, at Florence was famed for its magnificence 
 and for the sumptuous entertainments, both banquets 
 and balls, given by the Duke and his wife. Maria 
 appears to have won the hearts of the Florentine 
 ladies, by a policy calculated to appeal to the femin- 
 ine mind in all ages. It seems that the Florentine 
 men had forbidden their wives and daughters to 
 wear what they considered a disreputable ornament 
 of thick tresses of white and yellow silk, which they 
 arranged round their faces instead of their hair. In 
 December, 1326, the Florentine dames petitioned 
 
12 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 the Duchess to get her husband to repeal the sump- 
 tuary law which forbade them to wear this hideous 
 head-dress, and the Duchess prevailed upon her 
 husband to do so. The Duke probably thought 
 in this fourteenth century that " wilful woman must 
 have her way," just as it is allowed her as generally 
 in the twentieth. 
 
 In the spring of 1327 Maria of Valois, Duchess 
 of Calabria, gave birth to a prince, who died a few 
 days after his public baptism, to the great grief of 
 all the royal family, for he was the heir to the throne 
 of the Two Sicilies. The following December the 
 Duke was recalled by his father, Robert, to Naples 
 to assist in repelling an invasion of Louis the 
 Bavarian, Emperor of Germany. The next March 
 Joanna was born. 
 
 It must be remembered that in the fourteenth 
 century the year began on March 25th, instead 
 of on January 1st, so that the date of the future 
 Queen's birth was 1327 according to the old style 
 of reckoning, 1328 according to the Gregorian or 
 new style — which, by the way, England was the 
 last country in Europe to adopt. 
 
 It will not be uninteresting perhaps to pause for 
 a moment to describe briefly the apartments of 
 the Duchess of Calabria upon this interesting 
 occasion. 
 
 There was a suite of three apartments. The first 
 was called " the chamber of parade," and was hung 
 
Introductory 1 3 
 
 with crimson satin, embroidered with gold ; the 
 floor was covered entirely with crimson velvet. 
 This room contained one bed, curtained with crimson 
 satin, and with a counterpane of the same material. 
 The bed was only used to accommodate Joanna 
 upon the day of her baptism. A low chair and a 
 buffet, under a canopy of crimson cloth-of-gold, 
 completed the furniture of this apartment. The 
 shelves of the buffet were covered with the finest 
 white linen, and on them stood flagons, cups, and 
 vases of gold and silver. 
 
 This ante-chamber opened into the bedroom of 
 the Duchess, the walls of which were completely 
 draped with white silk damask hangings; curtains 
 of the same material were festooned over the 
 windows and doors and between and round the 
 two beds, which stood five feet apart under one 
 tester or canopy, similarly draped. The counter- 
 panes of these beds were of ermine. 
 
 This apartment also contained a huge buffet, 
 which stood under a canopy of crimson cloth-of- 
 gold ; the shelves were covered with the finest 
 damask cloths, and on them were placed crystal 
 vessels, ornamented with gold and jewels, and never 
 used except upon these august occasions. Massive 
 gold candlesticks stood at each end of the buffet, 
 and the huge wax-candles in them were only lighted 
 upon the entrance of visitors, but two smaller tapers 
 were kept burning day and night for fifteen days 
 
H The Beautiful Queen 
 
 after the birth, during which period it was not 
 Etiquette to admit daylight. 
 
 The innermost room, which was assigned to the 
 new-born infant, was also draped in white silk, but 
 of an inferior quality. 
 
 Immediately Joanna was born she was placed in 
 the hands of Philippa the Catanese, who was destined 
 to play a tragic part in the drama of which Joanna 
 was the heroine. 
 
 In the same year that Joanna was born her father 
 founded the celebrated monastery of San Martino, 
 between Naples and the Castle of St. Elmo. It was 
 one of the last acts of his life, for before the year was 
 ended Robert the Wise and the Neapolitans were 
 overwhelmed with grief by the death of the Duke, 
 caused by a fever while engaged in his favourite sport 
 of hawking. During Charles's last illness Robert 
 sat day and night by his son's bedside, endeavouring 
 to prolong his life by his own skill as a physician. 
 When all remedies failed, and the unfortunate Duke, 
 still in the prime of life, passed away, the King 
 exclaimed : " The crown has fallen from my head. 
 Woe to me, woe to you ! " 
 
 Charles had always been the darling of the people 
 and the support of the throne, and his death was a 
 great blow to the nation, as well as to the King, 
 who idolised his only son and the heir to his 
 kingdom. The late Duke was a handsome man, 
 of fine figure, courageous, though not fond of 
 
Introductory 1 5 
 
 war ; his abilities were inferior to those of his father 
 and daughter, but he was of an amiable disposition 
 which endeared him to every one. 
 
 He was buried in the church of St. Clare, founded 
 by his father in 13 10. A story is told of the Duke 
 and his father with regard to this church, on which 
 Robert had expended immense sums of money, both 
 in building and ornamenting it. When finished 
 he took. Charles to see it, and pointed out its 
 beauties, to him ; then, suspecting from the Duke's 
 manner that he did not particularly admire it, he 
 asked him what he thought of it. The Duke 
 with more candour than tact said he thought it was 
 more like a stable than a church. 
 
 " May it please God, my son, that you are not 
 the first to eat in this stable," said Robert, irritated 
 at Charles's criticism. As it happened, the poor 
 Duke was the first member of his family to be 
 buried in this church, which the Neapolitans took to 
 be the meaning of the rebuke. 
 
 There was still a hope that Charles might be 
 succeeded by a son, for Maria of Valois was 
 expecting an addition to her family when her 
 husband died ; but a few months after his death 
 she gave birth to another daughter, who was named 
 Maria, and from that time Joanna was recognised 
 as her grandfather's heiress and successor. 
 
 The Duchess only survived her husband three 
 years. She died in 1321, leaving the two little 
 
1 6 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 princesses, Joanna and Maria, to the care of their 
 grandfather and his second wife, the devout Queen 
 Sancha. Maria, whose brother Philip of Valois, 
 the first King of France of the house of Valois, 
 came to the throne in 1328, left half her fortune 
 of sixty thousand francs, which she received from 
 her father, and half her lands in Naples, to each 
 of her daughters, but to Joanna she left the largest 
 share of her jewels, clothes, and personal effects. 
 
 Little is known as to her character, beyond the 
 fact of her popularity in Florence ; but she is 
 believed to have been a good and virtuous princess, 
 whose early death is to be lamented as it deprived 
 her children of a mother's care. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Joanna's Childhood 
 
 A MINOR mystery in the life of Joanna I. is 
 -**■ why so wise a man as Robert the Good 
 should have chosen Philippa the Catanese, whom 
 historians speak of as " a woman sprung from the 
 dregs of the people, originally a laundress," as the 
 most fitting person to have charge of the heiress 
 to the Neapolitan throne. Whether Philippa was 
 worthy of the confidence reposed in her by the King 
 and Queen or not, it was an unwise choice Philippa's 
 low origin afterwards reflected injuriously upon her 
 royal charge, and roused at the time the envy of 
 her contemporaries, who, prejudiced by the favour 
 shown her, were ready to attribute every vice to 
 Joanna's governess. 
 
 Philippa was a native of Catania in Sicily, the 
 wife of a Sicilian fisherman and herself a laundress, 
 who was called in by Violante of Aragon to act as 
 wet-nurse to her son Charles, the Duke of Calabria, 
 
 '7 2 
 
1 8 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 when she was in Sicily with her husband, who was 
 engaged in an expedition against the Sicilians. 
 Philippa was not only beautiful and graceful, but 
 intelligent also, and she soon acquired courtly man- 
 ners, and took such tender care of her foster-son 
 that Violante henceforth heaped honours upon her. 
 
 Robert's seneschal, Raymond de Chabannes, had at 
 this time a favourite Moor who acted as his cook 
 and steward, and pleased his master so well that he 
 gave him his own names in baptism, and set him 
 free, and when he resigned the seneschalship recom- 
 mended Robert to take the Moor in his place. 
 Raymond the Moor soon became as great a favour- 
 ite with the King as Philippa was with Violante, and 
 when the Catanese's first husband died they arranged 
 a second marriage for Philippa with the new senes- 
 chal, now raised to the rank of a knight. 
 
 Before Violante died she begged Robert to be 
 good to Philippa, and when he married Sancha, 
 another Aragon princess, he gave Philippa to her as 
 one of her ladies of the bed-chamber, and Sancha 
 grew equally fond of her. When the Duke 
 of Calabria, her foster-son, married Catherine of 
 Austria, Philippa was made first lady of the bed- 
 chamber to her ; and when his second wife, Maria 
 of Valois, went with him to Florence, the Catanese 
 accompanied her in the same office. 
 
 The Angevine princes were celebrated for their 
 fidelity in rewarding the attachment of their subjects, 
 
Joanna's Childhood 19 
 
 in no matter how low a station, by bestowing upon 
 them high posts in their household, which may 
 account for the affection and gratitude of so many 
 of the Neapolitan royal family to Philippa. Her 
 contemporaries, with the credulity of their age, how- 
 ever, attributed it to magic potions, in which the 
 Sicilian women were said to be very clever. Boccaccio 
 made a much shrewder guess at the source of her 
 influence, attributing it to her skill in making 
 cosmetics and confectionery. 
 
 She succeeded in winning Joanna's affection also, 
 and is believed to have lavished a mother's care upon 
 her ; and when the young Queen came to the throne 
 she was the first lady in her court, and was treated 
 with the greatest respect. 
 
 It is impossible that Philippa could have risen to 
 so high a position, from so lowly an origin, unless 
 she had had great talent as well as personal gifts to 
 recommend her, for she was a trusted servant of 
 Robert for forty-five years, and the devout Queen 
 Sancha had such regard for her that it was due to 
 her influence that Joanna was placed under her 
 charge. 
 
 Both Robert and Sancha must have had solid 
 reasons for this choice, for we read in Carracciola's 
 Life of Joanna how particular they were in choosing 
 the little Princess's attendants. The King took 
 special care that nothing should be said or done in 
 the child's presence from which she could learn evil, 
 
20 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 and to that end he confided her to chaste matrons ; 
 moreover, he took some nuns out of their convents, 
 with the permission of the Pope, to instruct her in 
 all Christian duties and in the religious ceremonies 
 at which she would have to assist, and to train her 
 in industrious habits. Indeed, so strictly did Robert 
 and Sancha bring their little grandchild up that they 
 would not allow any one to be seen in her company 
 who wore rouge or paint or the hair of any dead 
 person. 
 
 It was a custom in the fourteenth century, when 
 gross ignorance was the rule in all ranks of life, to 
 entrust the education of royal princes and princesses 
 to the religious orders, whose members were gene- 
 rally more cultivated, and for this purpose, as in the 
 case of Joanna, nuns were permitted by dispensa- 
 tion from the Pope to leave their enclosure and 
 live in the palace where their services were required. 
 Thus it was quite in accordance with the spirit 
 of the age for Robert to send for two nuns to 
 come to court, and try to form the character of the 
 future Queen on religious principles, and it was 
 particularly acceptable to Sancha. 
 
 This unworldly Queen desired to leave the world 
 and join the Poor Clares, the strictest order of the 
 Church, for whom she had built a convent in Naples ; 
 and she was only deterred from taking this step by 
 Pope John XXII., who very wisely told her she 
 would be neglecting her duty as a wife if she did 
 
Joanna's Childhood 21 
 
 so, and thereby rendering herself displeasing to 
 Almighty" God, instead of her proposed sacrifice 
 being acceptable to Him. The pious Queen there- 
 fore remained in the world until the death of her 
 husband. 
 
 As Joanna grew older, still more elaborate rules 
 were laid down by her grandfather with regard to 
 her bringing up. None of those who dressed her 
 were to be of low birth, or unpolished manners ; 
 her court was to be presided over by a man of the 
 highest prudence and authority, whom the nobles 
 and their sons who frequented it would obey. He 
 who gave the future Queen water for her hands at 
 table, as was then the custom, must be a knight or 
 greater than a knight, and so must those who bore 
 the dishes to her, and who tasted them to see that 
 they were not poisoned before they were handed to 
 her. The cupbearer must do his duty with the 
 greatest fidelity, lest any harm, designed or inad- 
 vertent, should come to the young Princess. The 
 major-domo was to observe at supper that she did 
 not eat anything greedily or ask for it arrogantly, 
 and if he detected her in this he was to advise her 
 secretly, not publicly, as that would be indecorous 
 and exceedingly disagreeable to the King, and he 
 was not to do it a second time if she amended at 
 the first reproof. 
 
 The King also ordered that the most illustrious 
 doctors should assist at supper and dinner always, 
 
22 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 lest any unwholesome food should be offered the 
 child, and to see that she only took as much as 
 was necessary for health. It seems quite clear 
 from all these minute directions that there could 
 have been nothing objectionable in Philippa the 
 Catanese, except her lowly origin, or Robert, who 
 took such elaborate pains to shield his grandchild 
 from moral and physical evil, would never have 
 selected her as the governess and confidante, and 
 we may say foster-mother, of the Princess. 
 
 We have dwelt at some length upon these 
 details, because some historians laid all Joanna's 
 faults, real and imaginary, at Philippa's door. 
 
 Her education included Latin and French, both 
 of which languages she read and wrote as well 
 as her own ; and besides the study of theology 
 and philosophy, she was taught to sew and to 
 cook, and used to exult girlishly over her cousins, 
 the young princesses of Taranto and Durazzo, who 
 were brought up with her and her sister Maria, 
 when she excelled in any of these things. 
 
 In the year 1331 Robert caused the oaths of 
 allegiance to be taken to Joanna, with the re- 
 version to Maria in the event of the death of the 
 elder child. This was necessary to secure, in those 
 turbulent times, the peaceable succession to the 
 throne on his death. The following year the Prince 
 of Taranto died without male issue, and he left 
 the principality of Taranto to Joanna ; by preferring 
 
Joanna's Childhood 23 
 
 her to the prince of the house of Durazzo, he made 
 her claim to the throne of Naples and Sicily much 
 more secure. As the heiress of all the rights and 
 estates of her father, she was now styled the Duchess 
 of Calabria and the Countess of Provence. 
 
 As soon as Robert had decided to make Joanna 
 his heiress, he took care to let her, child as she was, 
 receive the principal men of the State, that she 
 might hear them speak and learn how to answer 
 them ; and she so pleased the King by her manners 
 that he frequently presented the Ambassadors of 
 foreign courts, who came to Naples to see him, 
 to her, and let them know she was his heiress. As 
 she grew older her cultivated mind and her remark- 
 able talents and great charm of manner, as well as 
 her extraordinary beauty, which increased daily, made 
 the death of her father less grievous to the King, who 
 saw his granddaughter promised to make a good 
 queen, and be a worthy successor to his throne. 
 
 Unfortunately Robert's anxiety on Joanna's ac- 
 count did not stop here. To make her succession 
 still more secure, as he thought, he arranged a 
 marriage for her when she was only five years 
 old, with Andrew, Prince of Hungary, the third 
 son of Canrobert, King of Hungary. In this matter 
 Robert is said to have acted on the advice of Pope 
 John XXII., who desired thus to unite the opposing 
 claims of the two elder branches of the Angevine 
 family to the crown of Naples. 
 
24 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 As we saw in the last chapter, the eldest and 
 Hungarian branch of the Anjou line had never liked 
 the disposition of Charles the Lame, in leaving the 
 throne of the Two Sicilies to his second son, Robert ; 
 and the Pope hoped a marriage with Canrobert's 
 third son, Andrew, with the heiress to the Neapolitan 
 throne would prevent Canrobert and his heirs from 
 attempting to wrest the crown from the reigning 
 branch. 
 
 Accordingly Robert arranged this unfortunate 
 marriage between Andrew, then a little boy of seven, 
 and Joanna, a child of five. These child-marriages 
 among royal families were not uncommon. A dis- 
 pensation had to be obtained from the Pope, and 
 sometimes, as in the case of Joanna's contemporaries, 
 Magnus II. of Sweden and Blanche of Dampierre, 
 the marriage was celebrated by proxy. It is true 
 Magnus was eighteen at the time of his marriage, 
 but the little Belgian Princess Blanche was only 
 ten. The great Queen Margaret of Sweden, the 
 Semiramis of the North, as she was called, was only 
 ten when in 1363 she married Haquin and was 
 brought to the Swedish court to be educated. 
 Another of these child-marriages was that of Prince 
 John of Bohemia — he was like Andrew of Hungary, 
 of feeble intellect — who when only nine years 
 old was married in 1330, just three years before 
 Joanna, to Margaret, daughter of Prince Henry, 
 Count and ruler of Tyrol. Margaret, who is known 
 
Joanna's Childhood 25 
 
 to history as " Mucklemouthed Meg," was a few 
 years older than her husband, and her marriage 
 turned out more disastrous, if less tragic, than that 
 of Andrew and Joanna. 
 
 Robert, however, determined that Andrew should 
 come to Naples, and, after the wedding of these two 
 children had been celebrated there with all possible 
 pomp, decided that the young prince should remain 
 at the Neapolitan court, and be educated there and 
 subjected to the influence of its culture, for the 
 Hungarians were at this time a semi-barbarian nation, 
 rude and uneducated. By his attempt to conciliate 
 the Hungarian branch of the Angevins with this 
 alliance, Robert disappointed the elder princes of 
 Taranto and Durazzo, both brave, talented youths, 
 who hoped their uncle would bestow the hand of 
 the heiress of the Two Sicilies upon one of them, 
 or on one of their younger brothers, all of whom 
 were well known to Joanna, and constant frequenters 
 of the Neapolitan court. 
 
 It was unfortunate for every one concerned that 
 Robert's choice fell upon Andrew, whom he had 
 not seen, instead of on one of the other attractive 
 cousins of Joanna. The boy was so young, when he 
 arrived in Naples to celebrate his marriage, that the 
 King could not possibly tell what time and education 
 might do for him, or how his character would develop ; 
 but he seems to have been almost, if not quite, imbecile. 
 It was, however, too late to retract now, and Robert 
 
26 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 received the child-bridegroom and his father, Can- 
 robert, the King of Hungary, with every sign of joy. 
 
 Canrobert was attended by a number of Hungarian 
 barons, who were as astonished at the magnificence, 
 culture, and refinement of the Neapolitan court as 
 the Neapolitan princes and nobles were at the bar- 
 barian appearance and rude, uncultivated manners 
 of the Hungarians. 
 
 This marriage, which was destined to turn out 
 so disastrously, was celebrated with the utmost 
 pomp and splendour. The subsidiary courts of 
 Taranto and Durazzo, with their princes, were all 
 present as well as the Hungarians. Ambassadors 
 from all the other states and principalities of Italy 
 were there, and among these the most numerous 
 and the most gorgeously attired were the Florentines, 
 whose staff bore the arms and wore the liveries of 
 the Duke of Calabria, as though he were still 
 their ruler. This was considered the most delicate 
 compliment they could possibly have paid to his 
 memory. 
 
 The Neapolitan nobility vied with the princes 
 and members of the royal family in the splendour 
 of their costumes in an age when extravagance in 
 dress was carried to an extent never since surpassed 
 either in costliness of material, brilliancy of colour, 
 or absurdity in fashion. In all these particulars 
 the men equalled, if they did not surpass, the 
 women. Among other ridiculous fashions affected 
 
Joanna's Childhood 27 
 
 by the younger men were their parti-coloured 
 clothing, one leg being clad in blue velvet and 
 the other in pink knee-breeches and silk stockings, 
 or else one in green and the other in red brocaded 
 damask, or cloth-of-gold, while their shoes had 
 long points turned up at the toe and fastened to 
 the knee with a gold or silver chain. Men of 
 fashion all wore long hair hanging in ringlets over 
 their shoulders. The old men had long beards and 
 long, flowing robes like Orientals. 
 
 For a long time after this great function Floren- 
 tine, Roman, Venetian, Sienese, and other Italian 
 ladies endeavoured to follow at their weddings, 
 on a mitigated scale, the fashions set at Joanna's, 
 which seems to have been the subject of court- 
 gossip all over Europe. 
 
 The infant-bride was resplendent in gold and 
 pearls and other jewels ; and little did Robert think, 
 as the two children — who, we are told, were delighted 
 with all this fuss and splendour — knelt before him 
 for his blessing, that they were both doomed to be 
 the subjects of violent and tragical deaths. 
 
 At the end of October in this same year Can- 
 robert went back to Hungary, leaving behind him 
 a suite of Hungarians, with one Nicholas at their 
 head as the governor of Andrew — who, by the way, 
 was a mere nonentity — and one Friar Robert, in 
 whom was vested all authority over the young prince, 
 as his tutor. 
 
28 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 This is another instance of a member of a religious 
 order being chosen as tutor to a prince. Unfor- 
 tunately Friar Robert, upon whom Italian historians 
 heap every kind of abuse — and even Petrarch can 
 hardly speak of him without animosity — was not 
 only unsuitable for the office, but by his ambition 
 was, to a large extent, responsible for the tragedy 
 that followed. He was a Franciscan friar, and 
 was evidently highly obnoxious to the Neapolitans, 
 but whether he was really such a sink of iniquity 
 as he is described by his contemporaries to have 
 been may be doubted. 
 
 He lived in an age when neglect of bodily cleanli- 
 ness was considered a great mark of holiness, as 
 it certainly is the greatest of all the bodily morti- 
 fications practised by the saints, and there is no 
 doubt Friar Robert, from all accounts, gave con- 
 vincing proofs of one meaning, and that not the 
 highest, attached to the " odour of sanctity." This 
 is" attributed to him as hypocrisy, and Petrarch calls 
 him "worse than a serpent," who is said to have 
 concealed under his dirty habit vice and cruelty ; 
 he is also accused of having wilfully brought up 
 Andrew in ignorance, in order to gain a pernicious 
 influence over his mind. This may or may not 
 be true. Andrew was apparendy so stupid, if 
 not actually imbecile, that Friar Robert may have 
 found it impossible to impart any knowledge to 
 him. 
 
Joanna's Childhood 29 
 
 He certainly hated the Neapolitans as much as 
 they hated him, and he tried all he could to exalt 
 his pupil at the expense of Joanna, and the 
 Hungarians at the cost of the Neapolitans, but he 
 did not appear in his true character until after the 
 death of King Robert. 
 
 About a month after Joanna's marriage the city 
 of Florence was nearly destroyed by a most dis- 
 astrous flood, which Villani, the historian, and some 
 of the Florentines themselves, looked upon as a 
 judgment from Heaven for their sins. King 
 Robert shared this opinion, and in a long Latin 
 letter, which he as chief of the Guelphs wrote to 
 the citizens on this occasion, he exhorts them to 
 repentance. 
 
 The view that it was a chastisement was 
 strengthened by a vision seen on the night of the 
 deluge by a hermit who lived above the monastery 
 of Vallombrosa. He heard a terrific noise as he was 
 praying, and, going to the door of his hermitage, 
 saw a troop of armed horsemen, all black and 
 terrible in aspect, ride furiously past, who, in 
 answer to his question as to where they were 
 going, said they were going, please God, to drown 
 the city of Florence for its wickedness. 
 
 Florence was at this time a very licentious city, 
 and the scene of frequent bloodshed caused by 
 encounters between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, 
 the former of whom espoused the part of the Pope, 
 
30 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 the latter the part of the Emperor ; they were also 
 called the Neri and Bianchi, as the followers of the 
 Pope's party and the King of Italy's are to this day 
 in Rome. 
 
 During this century all the Italian republics and 
 cities were divided between rival factions. In Rome 
 the constant battles between the adherents of the 
 Colonnas and the Orsini, and the absence of the 
 controlling power of a residential Pope, made the 
 Eternal City a prey to murder, assassination, and 
 rapine, and unsafe to live in, for even the churches 
 were in ruins. 
 
 No incident of importance happened in Joanna's 
 life for five or six years after her early marriage. 
 The child made such progress in her studies, and 
 had such excellent abilities, that by the time she 
 was twelve years old Costanzo and other writers 
 say of her " that she already surpassed in under- 
 standing not only every child of her age, but many 
 women of mature years." Moreover, by her 
 generous and affectionate disposition and charming 
 manners, she endeared herself to all around her. 
 She was most obedient to Robert, whose heart was 
 torn with remorse when he saw his beautiful grand- 
 child growing daily more accomplished and more 
 fit to fill the high dignity in store for her, while, 
 on the other hand, her semi-idiotic consort learned 
 nothing from his Hungarian teachers except their 
 unpolished manners and the hatred they felt for the 
 
Joanna's Childhood 31 
 
 Neapolitans, with which Friar Robert endeavoured 
 to inspire him. 
 
 As the children grew up, the contrast became 
 more striking between the beautiful Joanna and 
 the unfortunate and boorish Andrew, who, 
 Petrarch says, was " from all eternity ugly and 
 contemptible." 
 
 Joanna, as she entered her girlhood, is said to have 
 been saddened at the terrible prospect of spending her 
 life yoked to so uncongenial a companion, especially 
 when she saw herself surrounded by many handsome, 
 brave, and attractive princes, her constant com- 
 panions, who paid her homage, worshipped at her 
 shrine, and would gladly have died for her, who 
 was one of the richest heiresses of her time, and 
 endowed with extraordinary beauty as well as with 
 such exceptional talents. 
 
 Robert dimly foresaw some of the temptations 
 to which his own want of discretion would expose 
 his grandchild, and when Pope John XXII. died, 
 and was succeeded in 1334 by Benedict XII., he 
 might have obtained a dispensation from the new 
 Pope to annul this infantine marriage, on the ground 
 of Andrew's unfitness ; but, instead of doing this, 
 he contented himself with calling a general assembly 
 of the nation, at which he caused the oaths of 
 allegiance to be taken to Joanna alone. This step 
 excluded Andrew, or rather his ambitious and 
 barbarian followers, from any share in the govern- 
 
3 2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 ment of the kingdom, and all Robert's Italian 
 subjects joyfully took the oath of exclusive allegiance 
 to the popular Joanna. 
 
 Apart from all national jealousy, the Neapolitans 
 hated the Hungarians on account of their drunken- 
 ness and other low, coarse vices, and insolent, 
 barbarian manners. The Neapolitans were them- 
 selves by no means immaculate- — and indeed in the 
 matter of licentiousness there was not much to 
 choose between them and the Hungarians. But the 
 Neapolitans were sober and polished and refined in 
 manner, and of the careless, happy, joyous disposi- 
 tion which still characterises them ; while the Hun- 
 garians, in spite of their boorish inferiority, were 
 haughty and ambitious, and impudently aimed at gain- 
 ing the ascendency in the kingdom for themselves. 
 
 By this oath the political union between Andrew 
 and Joanna was dissolved, but their marriage con- 
 tract was still unfortunately religiously and civilly 
 binding, in spite of their youth when it was made. 
 
 King Robert, however, was to a great extent 
 absorbed in his books, for he remained a scholar to 
 the end of his days, and during the last year or two of 
 his life was much taken up with Petrarch, whom he 
 succeeded in getting crowned with laurels at Rome, 
 and induced to pay his first visit to the court of Naples, 
 the year before Robert died — to see, as the poet said, 
 " the only King who could judge of anything more 
 important than a ragout or a flight of birds." 
 
CHAPTER HI 
 Petrarch's First Visit to Naples 
 
 ONE of Joanna's many claims to fame is, she 
 was the friend of Petrarch and Boccaccio, the 
 two greatest geniuses of her time, both of whom 
 have eulogised her in enthusiastic terms in their 
 immortal writings. She was only thirteen when 
 Petrarch paid his first visit to the court of Naples, 
 in 1 341, to submit his writings to the learned 
 King Robert for examination before he accepted 
 the crown of laurel, although he was already so 
 famous that this examination was unnecessary. 
 
 Francis Petrarch was now thirty-seven, and so 
 strikingly handsome and of so fine a presence that 
 wherever he went he attracted attention, and he 
 was an ornament to any court. He was tall and 
 very manly in appearance, with fine features and 
 eyes full of fire ; he had a clear, ruddy complexion 
 and a countenance that betrayed the genius and 
 imaginative power which distinguished his writings. 
 A highly accomplished scholar, he was a philosopher 
 
 33 3 
 
34 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 and a theologian as well as a poet of the first water ; 
 but he was more and higher than all this, as the 
 following words of his will show. 
 
 " I love truth," he says, " and not sects. I am 
 something of a Peripatetic, a Stoic, or an Academician, 
 and often none of them, but always a Christian. 
 To philosophise is to love wisdom : and the true 
 wisdom is Jesus Christ. Let us read the historians, 
 the poets, and the philosophers, but let us have 
 in our hearts the gospel of Jesus Christ, in which 
 alone is perfect wisdom and perfect happiness." 
 
 He was the intimate friend of Cardinal James 
 Colonna, who was one of his greatest patrons, and 
 introduced him to his family, the noblest and most 
 prominent in Rome. After leaving the university 
 of Bologna, Petrarch had spent a year in Avignon, 
 and amid all the beauties of the magnificent and 
 brilliant court there had remained heart-whole : in 
 his own words, he was " free and wild as an untamed 
 stag," though of a most passionate nature. But 
 before he left Avignon he was destined to meet his 
 fate. 
 
 On Palm Sunday, 1327, he went to Mass in the 
 monastery of St. Clare, and for the first time saw 
 Laura, dressed in a green robe embroidered with 
 violets. Her wondrous beauty, as we learn from 
 the Sonnets of Petrarch, at once captured the poet's 
 heart, and she became the idol of his adoration 
 and the inspiration of his verse. But alas ! she 
 
From a print by Raffadle Morghen, after a picture by Tofanellu 
 
 PETRARCH. 
 P- 34] 
 
Petrarch's First Visit to Naples 35 
 
 was already the wife of another. Possessed of a 
 handsome dowry, her mother had married her when 
 very young to one Hugh de Sades, who held a 
 high position in Avignon, Laura's native city. 
 
 She was an honourable woman, a faithful wife, 
 and neither an allegorical myth nor the mistress 
 of Petrarch, as some romancers have said in an 
 age when calumny was rife. Equally false was 
 another report, that Urban V. had granted Petrarch, 
 who was in holy orders, a dispensation to marry 
 Laura and that Petrarch had refused it, saying 
 " the conjugal tie would sully his affection." 
 Urban V. did not come to the throne till after the 
 death of Laura. 
 
 Laura, on discovering the poet's passion for her, 
 treated him with chaste severity, avoiding him if 
 they met by accident, and when forced to meet 
 him in any public place or social gathering she 
 wore a veil, against the use of which he laments 
 in one of his sonnets. She also terrified him by 
 the austerity of her expression. 
 
 When he went to Naples Petrarch was still under 
 the spell of Laura's fascinations, and indeed he 
 desired the honour of the laurel crown more for 
 her sake than his own. The custom of crowning 
 a genius with a laurel crown in Rome had been 
 abandoned for a thousand years, and there was 
 now a question as to whether Petrarch should 
 receive this honour in Rome or in Paris ; but he 
 
3 6 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 ultimately decided to go to Rome, if Robert, King 
 of Naples, pronounced him worthy of such an 
 honour. 
 
 The King entertained the poet by showing him 
 the wonders of his beautiful capital, and especially 
 by taking him to visit the supposed tomb of Virgil 
 at the entrance to the Grotto of Posilipo, which 
 was then darker and narrower even than it is now ; 
 but it was held so sacred, Virgil having been supposed 
 to have made it so by incantations, that no robbers 
 dared to infest it. 
 
 Then Robert held a public examination of the 
 poet, which lasted for five days, during which the 
 king questioned Petrarch on all kinds of subjects, 
 scientific and philosophic ; Petrarch lectured on 
 poetry and history, astonished the King by his 
 wisdom and learning, and almost converted him to 
 become in his old age a lover of poetry, which he 
 had hitherto scorned. At the close of this exami- 
 nation the King in the presence of the Queen, 
 Joanna, and all the princes and princesses of the 
 court, pronounced a sort of panegyric on the genius 
 of the poet, and declared him worthy of the laurel 
 crown. 
 
 Robert desired that the ceremony of coronation 
 should take place at Naples, but Petrarch preferred 
 to be crowned in Rome, where, as he explained to 
 the King, Virgil, Horace, and so many other poets 
 had received this honour. Accordingly Petrarch 
 
Petrarch's First Visit to Naples 37 
 
 left Naples in the beginning of April for Rome ; but 
 before he left, Robert took off the robe he was 
 wearing, and, giving it to him, begged him to wear 
 it at his coronation. 
 
 During his stay in Naples Petrarch read his 
 "Africa," an epic poem which he was then writing, 
 to King Robert, who was so pleased with it that 
 he begged it might be dedicated to him. Petrarch 
 promised that it should be, and fulfilled this promise 
 after the King's death. He was crowned in Rome 
 on April 8th, 1341, wearing the King's robe of 
 state, and accompanied by twelve young Roman 
 men clad in scarlet robes and wearing crowns of 
 flowers on their heads. The ceremony was per- 
 formed in the Capitol by the Senator of Rome. 
 
 Among the learned men Petrarch met at the 
 court of Naples were John Barrili and Barbatus 
 Sulmone, whom he compared to Homer and Virgil ; 
 another celebrated man was the King's librarian, 
 Paul of Perugia, a friend of our Richard de Bury, 
 Bishop of Durham, said to have been the wisest 
 man in England, and the author of a charming little 
 essay on the " Love of Books." Petrarch had met 
 de Bury at the court of Avignon, and was on 
 friendly terms with him. He is said to have 
 possessed the largest library in Europe. Boccaccio, 
 with whom Petrarch was destined to become very 
 intimate on a later visit to Naples, had not yet 
 written the Decameron, nor won the fame he after- 
 
38 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 wards enjoyed, and was at this time living in 
 obscurity in that city, and through the favour of 
 Paul of Perugia coming to the palace to visit the 
 King's library. Here he met the beautiful Maria of 
 Sicily, Robert's natural daughter, who became to 
 Boccaccio what Beatrice and Laura were to Dante 
 and Petrarch. 
 
 Maria, who was witty and accomplished as well as 
 beautiful, had married a Neapolitan nobleman named 
 d' Aquino, but she was the constant companion of 
 her father, whether he was at Castel Nuovo or at 
 one or other of his summer residences, either in the 
 Bay of Baiae, or Sorrento, or Amain, or some other 
 lovely spot in that land of beauty. 
 
 Three days after Petrarch left Naples Boccaccio 
 met Maria for the first time, and under precisely 
 similar circumstances to those under which Petrarch, 
 who probably told him the story, first met Laura, 
 namely, in church — and, oddly enough, in the church 
 of St. Clare in Naples instead of St. Clare's at 
 Avignon — and meeting, he straightway fell in love 
 with her. Through Maria he became acquainted 
 with Joanna, then nearly fourteen, " whose culti- 
 vated mind," says Guinezelli, " appreciated all his 
 merit." 
 
 It was the fashion at that time for every married 
 woman of rank to have some celebrated military or 
 literary man in her train as her lover, and he was 
 considered as indispensable an appendage as her 
 
Petrarch's First Visit to Naples 39 
 
 coronet : if a soldier, he fought for her and wore 
 her favour on his shield ; if a poet, he dedicated his 
 poems to her exclusively. How far this devotion 
 went depended upon the character of the woman ; 
 in Maria of Sicily's case it is believed to have gone 
 very far, for in those days Boccaccio had the reputa- 
 tion of being somewhat lax in his morals. But we 
 must never forget that calumny was one of the 
 besetting sins of the age, and all stories of intrigues 
 require to be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. 
 Giovanni Boccaccio, who was the natural son of 
 a Florentine merchant, was born in 1313, and is 
 believed to have written his first works, " The 
 Rime," " The Filocolo," a very prolix effusion, 
 " The Fiammette," etc., under the direct inspira- 
 tion of Maria, who also suggested the " Decameron," 
 on which his claim to immortality rests, for in this 
 he appears as the maker of Italian prose. 
 
 One more most celebrated figure among King 
 Robert's courtiers we must not omit to mention, 
 for he is accused by some writers of playing the 
 assassin's part in the murder of Andrew of Hungary, 
 that ghastly tragedy which left a stain never yet 
 effaced on the most brilliant court of the fourteenth 
 century. 
 
 This was Nicholas Acciajuoli, whom Petrarch 
 called his second Maecenas. He was the son of 
 one of the very richest merchants of Florence, and 
 originally came to Naples to negotiate a loan between 
 
4o The Beautiful Queen 
 
 his father and the King. He was very good- 
 looking, highly accomplished, and endowed with 
 such charming manners that the Princess of Taranto 
 made him the tutor and governor of her son, Louis 
 of Taranto, Joanna's second husband, and his 
 younger brother Philip. Acciajuoli was not only 
 a conspicuous figure in Robert's court, but also one 
 of the most important personages in Joanna's reign, 
 for his influence over Louis was supreme, and the 
 friendship which grew up between them most 
 intimate. 
 
 In the beginning of January, 1343, Robert felt his 
 strength was fast failing, and, judging death to be 
 near, he made his will, dictating it in the presence 
 of his counsellors. He made Joanna his universal 
 heiress, not only of the kingdom of Naples, but also 
 of the counties of Provence and Piedmont. If 
 Joanna died without issue, her sister Maria was 
 to succeed, and she was bequeathed a marriage dowry 
 of 30,000 ounces of gold, with some lands for which 
 she had to do homage to Joanna. To Andrew, 
 in case he survived Joanna, he left the principality 
 of Salerno, for which he was to do homage to the 
 then reigning King and Queen. According to an 
 agreement he had made with his nephew Canrobert, 
 King of Hungary, he left Maria's hand in marriage 
 to the eldest brother of Andrew, Canrobert's eldest 
 son Louis, who had just ascended the throne of 
 Hungary. 
 
Petrarch's First Visit to Naples 41 
 
 This marriage, if it ever came off, could only 
 increase the difficulty of Joanna's succession, because 
 the elder member of the Neapolitan family was 
 already married to the younger son of the King 
 of Hungary, and his elder son was by this will 
 to be united to the younger sister of Joanna. Robert 
 the Wise did not display his wisdom in the dis- 
 position of his two grandchildren. Not content 
 with marrying Joanna to an idiot, he now proposed 
 to marry Maria to a semi-barbarian king, who was 
 destined to become her sister Joanna's deadliest 
 enemy. 
 
 Robert would fain have made his Queen, Sancha, 
 Regent of the kingdom during the minority of the 
 young King and Queen, but she refused to accept 
 the charge, being bent on entering a convent at her 
 husband's death. He therefore appointed a council 
 of regency with Sancha at the head of it ; the other 
 members were Philip of Cabassole, Bishop of 
 Cavaillon and Chancellor of the Kingdom of Naples, 
 Philip of Sanguineto, Seneschal of Provence, Geoffrey, 
 Count of Squilazzo, High Admiral, and Charles 
 Artus, Grand Chamberlain of the kingdom. Joanna 
 and Andrew, and also Maria, were not to attain 
 their majority till they reached the age of twenty- 
 five, and until that time all their edicts, gifts, and 
 sales were to be considered null and void without 
 the consent of the Council. 
 
 Finally Robert recommended the Queen, his 
 
4 2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 grandchildren, and his dominions to the protection 
 of the Pope and the College of Cardinals. The 
 Pope at this time was Clement VI., who was a good 
 friend to Joanna after Robert's death. He was a 
 great Pope, clement by nature as well as by name, 
 and one of the most profound scholars of his age, 
 to whom Italian historians have not done justice, 
 because of his preference for Avignon, where his 
 court was celebrated for its luxury and magnificence. 
 As soon as his will was duly sealed and attested, 
 Robert called Joanna and Andrew to his bedside 
 and endeavoured to impress upon them the solemn 
 responsibilities of their position, warning them of 
 the dangers with which they were surrounded on 
 all sides, and apparently frightening them, for we 
 are told they wept so bitterly that he gently re- 
 proved them for their grief. Three days before his 
 death, though very weak, he had himself carried to 
 the church of St. Clare, which he had founded, and 
 there was invested with the habit of the Third 
 Order of St. Francis, in which humble garb he died. 
 He was only sixty-four at the time of his death. 
 Petrarch says of him : " He died as he had lived, 
 speaking and acting in the same manner. If Heaven 
 had positively decreed that he should not prevent 
 the misfortunes which were to follow his death, it 
 was the greatest happiness that could have happened 
 to him, and I believe no man ever died at a more 
 fortunate moment for himself." 
 
Petrarch's First Visit to Naples 43 
 
 With a poet's prescience of coming evil, and with 
 a keen sense of his own prophetic powers, which the 
 sequel justified, he wrote to his friend Barbatus 
 Sulmone, on hearing of the death of Robert, as 
 follows : 
 
 "What I have so much dreaded has happened, 
 our great King has left us ! What an affliction 
 for me, my dear Barbatus ! I fear to see his death 
 followed by the calamities I have predicted. My 
 mind is but too good a prophet when it announces 
 sinister events. The youth of the Queen and her 
 husband, the age of the Queen Dowager, her pro- 
 jects, the dispositions and manners of the courtiers, 
 make me fear everything. God grant that I may 
 be deceived in my sad forebodings ! But I see two 
 lambs in the midst of wolves, a monarchy without 
 a monarch — for can we thus term a child in tute- 
 lage ? " The lambs alluded to were Joanna and 
 Maria, the wolves Friar Robert and the Hungarians. 
 
 Joanna, who was now in her sixteenth year, was 
 " fair and goodly to look upon," says Boccaccio, who 
 enlarges at great length on her intellectual gifts and 
 her generous and fine disposition. Brantome, the 
 celebrated French chronicler who accompanied Mary 
 Queen of Scots to Holyrood, says that Joanna's 
 beauty far exceeded that of Petrarch's Laura. 
 " Her portrait, which is still to be seen," he writes, 
 " shows that she was more angelic than human. I 
 saw it at Naples in a number of places where it is 
 
44 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 treasured with the greatest care. I have seen it 
 also in France, in the cabinet of our kings and 
 queens and of many of our noble ladies. Certainly 
 this was a beautiful princess, whose countenance 
 displayed great sweetness with a beautiful majesty. 
 She is painted in a magnificent robe of crimson 
 velvet, loaded with gold and silver lace and em- 
 broidery. On her head she wears a bonnet on a 
 cushion. In brief, this fine portrait of this lady 
 represents her as all beauty, sweetness, and true 
 majesty so well that one becomes enamoured of 
 her mere image." 
 
 This portrait was taken when the terrible tragedy 
 of her life had added majesty to the beauty of 
 youth, the beaute du diable with which at the time 
 of Robert's death Joanna was sparkling ; but we 
 find all her admirers speaking of the sweetness and 
 majesty of her beauty, which was evidently of a 
 very high type, though unfortunately none of the 
 portraits of her which have come down to our time 
 do justice to her. 
 
 One of the most beautiful pictures in the world 
 is said to be a painting of Joanna by Leonardo da 
 Vinci copied from an old portrait, now in the Doria 
 Gallery at Rome. From it she would appear to 
 have been of the fair Italian type, for her eyes 
 and hair are brown, her hair pale enough to be 
 called golden : her face is a perfect oval, her fore- 
 head high, her chin beautifully rounded, her lips 
 
9 ? / 
 
 t I. 
 
Petrarch's First Visit to Naples 45 
 
 full with a sweet smile playing round them, her 
 nose slightly aquiline with delicately formed nostrils, 
 and her eyes large, soft, and full. Joanna's beauty 
 and intellectual gifts only made her boy husband's 
 deficiencies the more striking, and it is no wonder 
 that one of Robert's dying regrets was having 
 made such a sacrifice of the future Queen's happi- 
 ness to political expediency. 
 
 He saw the two children grow up under his 
 eyes, Joanna taking part in all the amusements of 
 the court, and delighting him with her intelligence, 
 entering into his love of learning, and developing 
 her natural gifts of wit and eloquence, for which 
 she was afterwards so famed ; while Andrew re- 
 mained ignorant and loutish, interesting himself in 
 nothing except eating and drinking, in which he 
 took too much pleasure. 
 
 The principal amusements of the Neapolitan Court 
 in the fourteenth century were music and singing, 
 and telling thrilling tales of love and adventure, in 
 which art both men and women excelled. Cards 
 were not introduced until the end of the century, 
 when they were invented in Paris. Chess and 
 backgammon were much played. 
 
 The dancing was slow and stately, and the so- 
 called ballade was the favourite Italian dance ; this 
 was a dance accompanied by a chant, the dance 
 illustrating the subject of the words sung. At 
 great festivals, not only the King and Queen engaged 
 
46 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 in these solemn dances, but likewise legates, prelates, 
 and even cardinals. 
 
 The fashionable drive round the Mole of Naples, 
 in which Joanna and the other young princes and 
 princesses daily took part, to the delight of the 
 people, was also very slow and impressive, though 
 the cavalcade of horses and chariots, princes and 
 princesses, knights, courtiers, and ladies-in-waiting 
 was magnificent. 
 
 The troubadours were a conspicuous feature at 
 Robert's court, for the Counts of Provence and 
 Toulouse had always been the chief patrons of 
 these Provencal court-poets, and singers of war 
 and love and adventure ; they were one of the 
 typical romantic figures of French and Spanish 
 and Italian courts, from the beginning of the twelfth 
 to the end of the fourteenth century. 
 
 Entertainment was also provided by the court- 
 jugglers and tumblers, who came into the banquet- 
 ing-hall between the courses, at the entremets, to per- 
 form various feats of jugglery. At public banquets, 
 pageants, mock-battles, and various other scenes were 
 represented during these interludes, for the amuse- 
 ment of the guests, and perhaps also to give them 
 time to get up an appetite for the next course. 
 
 These banquets lasted an interminable time, and 
 the tables groaned under the weight of the dishes, 
 which consisted among other things of peacocks, 
 cranes, venison, sturgeon, herons, seal, porpoises, 
 
Petrarch's First Visit to Naples 47 
 
 and roast swan, besides various kinds of meat, cut 
 up into small pieces before brought to table, which 
 in England were called gobbets, and were conveyed 
 to the mouth by the fingers as a rule, although 
 spoons were then in use, but forks did not 
 become general until the middle of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 An amusing incident is recorded of the introduc- 
 tion of forks into Europe. The first of these now 
 indispensable table-appointments is said to have 
 been a golden prong brought by a Byzantine 
 princess to Venice, when she came there as a bride 
 in the eleventh century. St. Peter Damien, then 
 Bishop of Ostia, hearing of what he deemed such 
 extravagant luxury, preached a sermon in which 
 he denounced her for her wicked extravagance in 
 conveying her food to her mouth with a golden 
 prong, instead of using her fingers, which Almighty 
 God had given her for that very purpose ! " Autres 
 temps, autres mceurs." The preacher who inveighs 
 to-day against the wicked speed of motor-cars and the 
 presumption of airships will probably strike our 
 descendants as quite as fanatical and uncivilised as 
 St. Peter Damien appears to us of the twentieth 
 century. 
 
 In the outdoor sports of hawking, fishing, and 
 hunting, in which men then delighted, Italian ladies 
 took no part, and in tournaments they were only 
 spectators of the achievements of the knights. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 The Lamb among Wolves 
 
 JOANNA and Andrew were proclaimed Queen 
 and King as soon as King Robert's funeral 
 was over. The Neapolitans received Joanna with 
 the greatest joy, and ambassadors from all the Italian 
 courts visited her, to condole with her on her 
 grandfather's death and to congratulate her on her 
 accession, and she received them all with grace and 
 befitting dignity. 
 
 For a brief period only the Council of Regency 
 was permitted to govern, and during this time 
 Joanna possessed influence over them, and astonished 
 them by her wisdom and prudence. She and the 
 Dowager Queen Sancha took the first opportunity 
 of promoting their favourite, Philippa the Catanese, 
 and her family to higher dignities than they enjoyed 
 in the reign of the late King. 
 
 Philippa was still Joanna's governess ; she was now 
 
 made Countess of Montoni. Her granddaughter 
 
 4 8 
 
The Lamb among Wolves 49 
 
 Sancha, the Dowager Queen's godchild, was married 
 to the Count of Murzano ; Philippa's son, the Count 
 of Evoli, was made seneschal of the kingdom, a rank, 
 inferior only to that of the Sovereign : by virtue 
 of this appointment he became one of the seven 
 great officers of the Crown. Philippa was now at 
 the zenith of her prosperity, little irking of the 
 terrible fate in store for her. But let us not antici- 
 pate evils, where an armed band of troubles was 
 close at hand. 
 
 That " serpent," as Petrarch calls him, Friar 
 Robert, began immediately to appear in his true 
 character. He prompted his pupil Andrew to 
 declare the crown of Naples was not Joanna's dowry, 
 but his by right, and no sooner was the proclamation 
 of the new King and Queen pronounced than he 
 demanded admission to the Council of Regency 
 for himself and for Nicholas the Hungarian, the 
 governor of Andrew. Unfortunately the Council, 
 after some hesitation, made the fatal mistake of 
 admitting them, thereby compassing the very evil 
 the late King had endeavoured to ward off" from the 
 kingdom, to which end all his measures for many 
 years had been directed. Not content with this 
 first successful move, Friar Robert went on to obtain 
 places of trust and influence for the Hungarians, 
 intending ultimately to seize the reins of government 
 for himself. 
 
 Pope Clement VI. then interfered, partially can- 
 
 4 
 
5° The Beautiful Queen 
 
 celling the Regency appointed by King Robert, and 
 nominating a legate to govern in its place ; whereupon 
 the most ambitious among the Neapolitan nobles 
 seized the opportunity to promote their own ends, 
 and refused to obey either the legate or the Regency, 
 playing off one against the other. Meanwhile Friar 
 Robert's hypocrisy imposed upon the people, who, 
 judging his external poverty, as shown in his dirty 
 habit and slovenly appearance, to be a sign of 
 supernatural sanctity, were ready to obey and support 
 him. He won the more mercenary nobles over by 
 promises of promotion, and soon found himself at 
 the head of a party powerful enough to defy the 
 Pope himself. 
 
 He treated both Joanna and the Queen Dowager 
 with the greatest insolence, and claimed everything 
 in the right of Andrew alone, making Joanna 
 practically a State prisoner, while the Hungarians 
 pressed themselves everywhere, to the exclusion of 
 the Neapolitan princes and nobles. 
 
 The princes of the blood, banished from court 
 by the haughtiness of the Hungarians, retired to 
 their own castles, leaving Joanna to the mercy of 
 these barbarians — the lamb among wolves, as Petrarch 
 so aptly called her. The lamb, however, was not 
 altogether unprotected. Philippa was with her, and, 
 for the first year after King Robert's death, the 
 Dowager Queen remained at Castel Nuovo, where 
 Joanna and Maria resided with her. 
 
The Lamb among Wolves 51 
 
 The Princess of Taranto also continued to live in 
 Naples with her daughters, whilst her eldest son 
 Robert was absent fighting for her real or supposed 
 rights as the titular Empress of Constantinople. 
 This princess, seeing that Andrew was a mere tool 
 in Friar Robert's hands, and utterly incapable of 
 appreciating either Joanna's beauty or her talents, or 
 of doing anything except eat and drink, began, it is 
 said, to plan a marriage with Joanna and her second 
 son, Louis, trusting, if she succeeded in winning 
 Joanna's affection for Louis, to persuade the Pope to 
 annul her marriage with Andrew. 
 
 There seems no doubt that the Princess of 
 Taranto did try to divert the young Queen's 
 affections from her boorish, idiotic husband to her 
 own handsome, learned, brave, and attractive son, 
 and in all probability it is equally true that Philippa 
 the Catanese aided and abetted her in this to the 
 best of her power ; but that Nicholas Acciajuoli 
 joined in this vile conspiracy to tempt Joanna to be 
 unfaithful to her first husband, as some historians 
 assert, is believed by Costanzo, whom we are 
 following, to be a libel on so upright and honourable 
 a man. Acciajuoli owed everything to Robert, and 
 common gratitude to the late King would prevent 
 him from joining in a plot to compromise Joanna's 
 honour, in days when the marriage-tie was not so 
 easily broken as now. 
 
 Louis, as the sequel will show, was by no means 
 
5 2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 so blind to his cousin's charms as was her husband 
 Andrew, but there is not a scrap of evidence to 
 show that the young Queen at this time had 
 any but a cousinly affection for Louis ; on the 
 contrary, she was so watched and guarded by the 
 Hungarians, that had she shown any preference for 
 Louis, Friar Robert and his creatures would have 
 been only too glad to seize upon any pretext to get 
 rid of her and secure the throne for Andrew alone. 
 Joanna was too fond of her grandfather, to whose 
 commands and wishes, both before and after his 
 death, she showed implicit obedience, and too 
 innocent, to think of such a thing as abandoning 
 her lawful husband for another more attractive 
 one. 
 
 In the October following Robert's death Petrarch 
 again visited Naples for two purposes. He was 
 deputed by the Pope to assert his right to ad- 
 minister the government of the kingdom during 
 the minority of the King and Queen, and further 
 charged by his friend and protector, Cardinal 
 Colonna, to obtain the release from perpetual im- 
 prisonment of the Pipini brothers, the Counts of 
 Minervino, Lucera, and Potenza. They had been 
 sentenced to life-long imprisonment in the castle of 
 Capua by King Robert, for besieging Count Marra in 
 his casde of that name. The Pipini were friends of 
 the Colonna family, whom they assisted in their 
 quarrels with the Orsini, their hereditary enemies, 
 
The Lamb among Wolves 53 
 
 and the municipal authorities of Rome. Soon after 
 his arrival in Naples, Petrarch wrote to Cardinal 
 Colonna, and in his letter gives such a graphic 
 description of Naples that we cannot do better than 
 quote parts of it, for Petrarch was a very effusive 
 correspondent, and his epistle is too long to be 
 quoted in full. 
 
 He says : " Immediately on my arrival in Naples 
 I visited the two Queens, and went to treat with 
 the council on the subject of my coming. But oh 
 infamy of the world, what a monster ! May Heaven 
 rid the soil of Italy of such a pest. ... I mourn 
 for thee, Naples, my beloved ! that thou art 
 rendered like to one of these Saracens — no pity, 
 no truth, no faith, a horrible animal, with bald head 
 and bare feet, short in stature, swoln in person, with 
 worn-out rags torn studiously to show his naked 
 skin, who not only despises the supplications of 
 thy citizens, but from the vantage ground of his 
 feigned sanctity treats with scorn the embassy of 
 the Pope. Yet this is not marvellous, because his 
 pride is founded upon the treasures he accumulates, 
 for from what is reported it appears that his caskets 
 full of gold do not accord with the rags he wears. 
 Perhaps you would know his name : he is called 
 Robert, succeeding, in this place, to that Robert 
 lately dead who was as much the honour of our 
 age as this is its eternal infamy." 
 
 Having enlarged on this theme, he continues 
 
54 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 further on : " He wears nor crown nor brocade nor 
 silk, but with a squalid mantle, filthy and torn, which 
 covers but half his swollen body, and with a crouch- 
 ing gait, bent not by age, but by hypocrisy, he rules 
 with unutterable arrogance and tyranny the courts 
 of both Queens, oppresses the weak, treads justice 
 under foot, confounds all things human and divine, 
 and like a new Palinurus or Tiphys * sits at the head 
 of this great vessel, which from what I can discern 
 will quickly go to the bottom, as all the mariners 
 are like himself, except the Bishop of Cavaillon, who 
 as much as he can takes the side of justice, abandoned 
 by all the others." 
 
 He goes on to tell the Cardinal to relate these 
 things to the Pope, and to add that the Apostolic 
 embassy would have been received with more 
 reverence by the Saracens than it was in Naples. 
 He also says he has been three or four times 
 to visit the Capuan prisoners, who place all their 
 hope of release in the Cardinal. The old Queen 
 has great pity on them, but can do nothing to help 
 them, as Friar Robert was determined to keep them 
 in prison ; Joanna and Andrew might have mercy 
 on them, if Friar Robert and Nicholas, the governor 
 of the King, would permit them. 
 
 If Friar Robert had never done anything worse 
 than refuse to release these turbulent Pipini, we 
 should not have much to say against him, for they 
 1 Palinurus and Tiphys were pilots 
 
The Lamb among Wolves 55 
 
 were not worthy of the interest Cardinal Colonna 
 took in them ; and their subsequent release, which 
 Petrarch persuaded Andrew to grant, only hastened 
 the catastrophe which was impending on this un- 
 happy King. 
 
 Petrarch had many opportunities of conversing 
 with Joanna during this visit, and was struck 
 with her talents and learning. She would fain 
 have attached him to her court ; but as at that 
 time she was a Queen in name only, without 
 power to do good to any one, as she pathetically 
 said of herself, this was impossible ; but she was 
 able to appoint him her domestic chaplain and 
 almoner, an office only bestowed upon people of 
 distinction. 
 
 Shortly before coming to Naples for the second 
 time, Petrarch had received further preferment from 
 Pope Clement VI., who made him Archdeacon of 
 Parma, and at the end of 1342 conferred upon him 
 the Priory of St. Nicholas, Pisa. 
 
 The deed by which Joanna appointed the poet 
 her domestic chaplain was signed on the day of 
 a most terrific tempest, which occurred while 
 Petrarch was in Naples, and is described by him 
 with his usual eloquence. This storm was caused 
 by a violent sirocco, and was felt on all the shores 
 of the Mediterranean, but spent its worst fury 
 on Naples. It was predicted a few days before 
 by the bishop of one of the neighbouring islands, 
 
5 6 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 as a scourge from God ; he also prophesied that 
 the city would be destroyed by an earthquake on 
 November 25th, when the storm actually happened. 
 
 Happily this second part of the prophesy was 
 not fulfilled, but it spread such terror through 
 the city that the inhabitants prepared for death, 
 leaving their business unattended to, and when 
 the first signs of the storm broke women rushed 
 half-clothed, with their babies in their arms, to the 
 churches, where they prostrated themselves on 
 the floor praying for mercy. 
 
 Petrarch, who confesses he was frightened by 
 the general consternation, went to spend the night 
 in the monastery of St. Laurence, where he went 
 to bed shortly before midnight, the monks having 
 retired at their usual hour. 
 
 " Scarce had I closed my eyes," he says in a 
 letter he wrote the day after the earthquake, " when 
 I was awakened by the loud rattling of my chamber- 
 windows. I felt the walls of the convent violently 
 shaken from their foundations. The lamp which 
 I always keep lighted through the night was ex- 
 tinguished. The fear of death had fast hold of me. 
 
 "The whole city was in commotion, and you 
 heard nothing but lamentations and confused ex- 
 hortations to make ready for the dreadful event. 
 The monks, who had risen for Matins, terrified 
 by the movements of the earth, ran into my chamber 
 armed with crosses and relics, imploring the mercy 
 
The Lamb among Wolves 57 
 
 of Heaven. A prior whose name was David, and 
 who was considered a saint, was at their head. We 
 proceeded to the church, which was already crowded, 
 and here we remained during the rest of the night, 
 expecting every moment the completion of the 
 prophesy. 
 
 "We all threw ourselves on the ground, and 
 implored aloud the mercy of Heaven, expecting 
 from time to time that the church would fall 
 upon us. 
 
 " It is impossible to describe the horrors of 
 that infernal night. The elements were let loose. 
 The noise of the thunder, the winds, and the 
 rain, the roarings of the enraged sea, the con- 
 vulsions of the heaving earth, and the distracted 
 cries of those who felt themselves staggering on 
 the brink of death, were dreadful beyond imagina- 
 tion. Never was there such a night. As soon 
 as we apprehended that day was at hand, the altars 
 were prepared, and the priests vested themselves 
 for Mass. Trembling we lifted up our eyes to 
 Heaven, and then fell prostrate upon the earth. 
 
 " The day at length appeared. But what a day ! 
 Its horrors were worse than those of the night. 
 No sooner were the higher parts of the city a 
 little more calm, than we were struck with the 
 outcries which we heard from the sea. Anxious 
 to discover what was passing there, and still ex- 
 pecting nothing but death, we became desperate, 
 
5 8 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 and instantly mounting our horses we rode down 
 to the shore. 
 
 " Heaven ! What a sight ! Vessels wrecked 
 in the harbour ; the strand covered with bodies, 
 which had been dashed against the rocks, and 
 appeared like so many eggs which had been 
 broken in pieces. Nor were the shrieks of the 
 men and women who inhabited the falling houses 
 close to the sea less terrible than the roaring of 
 the sea itself. Where the day before we had gone 
 to and fro on the dusty path was now a sea more 
 dangerous than the Straits of Messina. You could 
 not pass in the streets without the risk of being 
 drowned. 
 
 tf More than a thousand Neapolitan knights came 
 from all sides to the spot where we were, as if to 
 assist in the funeral obsequies of their country. 
 This splendid troop gave me a little courage. 'If 
 I die,' I said to myself, c I shall still be in good 
 company.' 
 
 " Scarce had I made this reflection whan I heard 
 a dreadful clamour everywhere around me. The 
 sea had sapped the foundations of the place where 
 we were standing, and it was at this instant giving 
 way. We fled therefore immediately to more 
 elevated ground. Here we beheld a most tre- 
 mendous sight. The sea between Naples and 
 Capri was covered with moving mountains ; they 
 were neither green as in the ordinary state of 
 
The Lamb among Wolves 59 
 
 the ocean, nor black as in common storms, but 
 white. 
 
 " The young Queen rushed out of the palace 
 barefooted, her hair dishevelled, and her dress in 
 the greatest disorder. She was followed by a train 
 of females, whose dress was as loose and disorderly 
 as her own. They went to throw themselves at 
 the feet of the Blessed Virgin, crying aloud, ' Mercy ! 
 Mercy ! ' and visited in turn all the churches of the 
 Mother of God in the city. 
 
 " Towards the close of the day the storm abated, 
 the sea was calm and the sky serene. Those who 
 were upon land suffered now only the pains of fear, 
 but it was otherwise with those upon the water. 
 Some galleys from Marseilles and Cyprus were sunk 
 before our eyes, nor could we give them the least 
 assistance. Larger vessels from other nations met 
 with the same fate, in the midst of the harbour. 
 Not a soul was saved except one galley of four 
 hundred criminals, under sentence of death, who 
 had been reserved as a forlorn hope, to be exposed 
 in the first expedition against Sicily. They were a 
 hardy set of men, and struggled with the storm, 
 and when the ship began to sink ran aloft and clung 
 to the rigging. At this moment the tempest was 
 appeased, and these poor convicts were the only 
 ones whose lives were saved in the port of Naples. 
 Lucan says, 'Fortune preserves the guilty.'" x 
 
 1 "Life of Petrarch," by Mrs. Dodson (London, 1805). 
 
60 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 This graphic description of the terrible scene, we 
 may take it, does not in any way underestimate the 
 horrors of this historical storm and earthquake, for 
 Petrarch's style was picturesque ; and at any rate both 
 he and Joanna recovered sufficiently from their terror 
 to sign the document making him her chaplain the 
 same day, for it bears the date of November 25 th, 
 1343. Petrarch concludes his letter by vowing 
 that nothing shall ever make him risk his life on the 
 sea after witnessing the destruction of that storm. 
 " I will leave the air to the birds, and the sea to the 
 fish, for I am a land animal, and to the land will I 
 confine myself. I know very well the divines insist 
 there is as much danger by land as by sea. It may 
 be so. But I beseech you to permit me there to 
 give up my life where I first received it. I like that 
 saying of one of the ancients, ' He who is ship- 
 wrecked a second time cannot lay the fault upon 
 Neptune.' " x 
 
 The state of Rome at this time was in the 
 utmost disorder, for the quarrels of the! barons 
 and the insurrections of the populace made the 
 Eternal City a constant scene of bloodshed. Naples, 
 according to Petrarch, was not much better ; for in 
 another letter which he wrote on this visit he says 
 the streets at night "are filled by young men of rank 
 who are armed and attack all who pass, without 
 distinction — they must fight or die. This evil is 
 " Life of Petrarch," by Mrs. Dodson (London, 1805). 
 
The Lamb among Wolves 61 
 
 without remedy ; neither the authority of parents, 
 the severity of the magistrates, nor the power of 
 kings has been able to suppress it. But it is not 
 surprising that such actions are committed by night, 
 when they kill each other for diversion in open day." 
 
 Here Petrarch is alluding to combats resembling 
 those of gladiators, which were at this time the 
 favourite amusement of both sexes and all ranks 
 in Naples. They took place in a part called the 
 Carbonaria, amid the most brilliant and magnificent 
 assemblage of nobility in Europe. Petrarch was 
 induced to go to one of these entertainments, at 
 which the young King and Queen were present ; 
 but he left in disgust after seeing a young nobleman 
 expire at his feet, whereupon he put spurs to his 
 horse and fled. 
 
 He used all his eloquence to try to disgust the 
 Neapolitan nobles with these barbarous tournaments, 
 but in vain ; they would not be persuaded to give 
 them up. 
 
 It was during this visit of Petrarch to Naples 
 that Joanna, for her own amusement and that of her 
 courtiers, established her " Court of Love," or 
 " Parliament of Love," as these courts were called. 
 They settled difficult questions on subjects connected 
 with love and marriage, composed by their arbitration 
 the quarrels of lovers, and awarded prizes to poets 
 and other writers. 
 
 Joanna was chosen as President of the Court of 
 
62 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Love, which was organised this year for her birthday- 
 feast, and a story is told in connection with it which 
 throws a light on the relations of Andrew and 
 Joanna. It seems that when Joanna took her seat 
 under the canopy erected for her, there was another 
 empty seat a little below hers, and Andrew tried to 
 take it, but the young Queen waved him away from 
 it, saying : 
 
 " Fair sir ! I reign here alone ; you cannot share 
 my authority." 
 
 Andrew retired in a fury, and Petrarch unrebuked 
 took the seat. 
 
 During the banquet it was the custom for 
 presents to be brought in, and Joanna gave them 
 to whom she pleased. These gifts were of various 
 kinds — armour, hounds, falcons, jewellery, etc. 
 On this occasion Joanna gave Louis of Taranto 
 a steel mask for his face, and sent a falcon to 
 Andrew, who angrily refused it. 
 
 " Take the bird to your mistress, and let her give 
 it to whom she likes. I accept no constrained 
 courtesy," he said. 
 
 Joanna, who saw Andrew's action if she did not 
 actually hear his rude words — which in justice to him 
 must be allowed to have had some provocation — was 
 as angry as Andrew had been when she waved him 
 away from the seat by her side, but said nothing. 
 
 Presently seeing her displeasure, Nicholas the 
 Hungarian, Andrew's tutor, made some excuse for 
 
The Lamb among Wolves 63 
 
 the young King, but Joanna angrily and haughtily 
 told him that it was his evil counsels which had 
 prompted Andrew's insult. 
 
 This glimpse at this Court of Love gives a 
 better idea of the relations which existed between 
 Joanna and her boorish husband than could be 
 conveyed by pages which might be written upon the 
 subject. The little scene is so natural : first Joanna 
 smilingly waving the young King, who was seldom 
 sober, away from the seat of honour to which he 
 aspired ; his subsequent sulky refusal of her gift 
 given according to custom, and her girlish anger 
 and pique at his rudeness ; finally her royal rebuke 
 of the Hungarian tutor, who was the cause of much 
 of the friction between the young King and Queen. 
 
 Petrarch remained in Naples until the end of 
 December, and before he left, Andrew went himself 
 to the Castle of Capua, and by his own authority 
 set free the Pipini brothers. This is the only act 
 of vigour he ever performed, but he was probably 
 prompted to it by Friar Robert, who wanted to 
 attach these dangerous men to his party. Andrew 
 acted apparently in this instance from compassion, 
 and then took a great fancy to the three liberated 
 prisoners, whom he could not bear out of his sight, 
 and made great friends of them. The Pipini soon 
 began to presume on his favour, and grew more 
 violent and overbearing than before their imprison- 
 ment, and only increased the hatred which the 
 
64 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Neapolitans were beginning to feel for Andrew per- 
 sonally, dreading as they did the encroachments of 
 the Hungarians ; moreover, they now feared that the 
 weakness of his mind would make him the tool of 
 any one to whom he took a fancy. 
 
 While on the one hand the Neapolitans were 
 dreading the ascendency of the Hungarians and 
 their party, Friar Robert, who knew that his rule 
 could only last during the extreme youth of Joanna, 
 now eighteen, began to fear her great popularity 
 with the people and the best of the nobility, the 
 favour which she enjoyed of the Pope, and her 
 superior abilities. To counteract all this, the wily 
 friar wrote to Louis of Hungary, Andrew's eldest 
 brother, begging him to come to Naples and marry 
 the Queen's sister Maria, according to the testament 
 of Robert, and to seize on the kingdom itself in his 
 own right, as the heir of his grandfather, Charles 
 Martel. Louis of Hungary was only too ready to 
 fall in with these plans, but they were met by a 
 counter-plot of the house of Durazzo, as we shall 
 see directly. 
 
 The Dowager Queen Sancha remained only a year 
 in the world after her husband's death, and about 
 the first anniversary of it entered the convent of 
 Poor Clares in Naples, which she had herself founded 
 some years before. Sancha had always, as we have 
 said before, hankered after the religious life, and 
 now seized the first opportunity of retiring from a 
 
The Lamb among Wolves 65 
 
 world she despised, to join the strictest Order in 
 the Catholic Church and exchange the luxury of the 
 most refined court in Europe for the coarse habit, 
 and inclined board as a bed, of the Poor Clares. 
 It turned out fortunate for her that she did so, 
 before the impending tragedy which involved the 
 ruin of so many. 
 
 Petrarch's epitaph on King Robert may fitly close 
 this chapter. " Here lies the body of King Robert. 
 His soul is in heaven. He was the glory of 
 kings, the honour of his age, the chief of warriors, 
 and the best of men. Skilful in the art of war, he 
 loved peace. . . . His genius equalled his valour, 
 he unravelled the holy mysteries, he read the events 
 of Heaven. The Muses and the Arts mourn their 
 protector. All the virtues lie buried in his tomb. 
 No one can praise him as he deserves, but Fame 
 shall make him immortal." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 Plots and Counterplots 
 
 ' I "HE Durazzos, it will be remembered, were the 
 -*■ youngest branch of the Angevine family. King 
 Robert's youngest brother, the Duke of Durazzo, 
 had married Maria of Perigord, the sister of Cardinal 
 Talleyrand — a name that became celebrated through 
 the distinguished diplomatist who lived four hundred 
 years later. 
 
 The Duchess of Durazzo was a widow at the 
 time of King Robert's death. She was living in 
 Naples with her three sons, Charles, Louis, and 
 Robert, and her daughters, all of whom were well- 
 known members of the Neapolitan Court. Charles 
 was a handsome man and a brave soldier, but un- 
 scrupulous and ambitious, and report said was very 
 fond of his cousin Joanna, and certainly quite alive 
 to the advantages of a marriage with her sister, 
 Maria of Sicily, whom King Robert had assigned by 
 his will to Louis of Hungary. 
 
 As soon as Maria was of marriageable age, the 
 
 66 
 
Plots and Counter-plots 67 
 
 Duchess of Durazzo set to work to win her affections 
 for her son Charles, just as the widowed Princess of 
 Taranto was endeavouring to estrange Joanna's 
 affections from her husband Andrew in favour of 
 her son Louis, but with this difference — that Maria 
 was only betrothed to Louis of Hungary, while 
 Joanna was actually the wife of Andrew. 
 
 The Duchess persuaded her brother, Cardinal 
 Talleyrand, to induce Pope Clement VI. to grant 
 Maria a dispensation to enable her to marry the 
 Duke of Durazzo, who was her first cousin, once 
 removed. Clement, who was always only too ready 
 to oblige his friends, consented without in this case 
 considering what the consequences would be of this 
 marriage of the heir-apparent to the Neapolitan 
 throne. Had he given it more thought, he would 
 have seen that it not only threatened Joanna's in- 
 terests, but might also prove dangerous to her crown. 
 
 Maria was living at Castel Nuovo with the Queen 
 Regnant, and the Dowager Queen Sancha, who had 
 not yet entered the monastery of Poor Clares ; and 
 the Duchess visited her constantly, and, having 
 succeeded in setting Maria against the Hungarians, 
 was soon able to persuade her to give up Louis of 
 Hungary, whom she had not seen, for the Duke 
 of Durazzo, whom she knew well. She then made 
 all the necessary arrangements for the marriage : 
 she seems to have had a genius for intrigue, and 
 to have planned everything very cleverly, for she 
 
68 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 managed to get Maria out of the palace and 
 married to Charles before the child (for she was 
 only fifteen) was missed. 
 
 When it was discovered one fine day that the 
 heir-apparent to the throne had been abducted and 
 married to the Duke of Durazzo, thereby setting 
 her grandfather's will at defiance, there was great 
 consternation in the palace. The two Queens, 
 Joanna and Sancha, were furiously angry, for Joanna, 
 though so young, was old enough and wise enough 
 to see what dangerous consequences might result to 
 herself from it ; for Louis of Hungary was not likely 
 to submit quietly to being thus cheated of his bride, 
 and would probably revenge himself by invading 
 Joanna's kingdom. Moreover, the fact that the 
 Duke of Durazzo's grandmother was a princess of 
 Hungary increased the danger to Joanna's throne, 
 as the Hungarians were only too ready to dispute 
 her right to it; and from their point of view, this 
 gave the Duke some claim to it himself, and was 
 what he was aiming at secretly. 
 
 It was immediately after this elopement that the 
 Queen Sancha retired to her convent, leaving Joanna 
 under the care of Philippa the Catanese. She took 
 the habit, and died before she had been more than 
 a year in the monastery, being probably too old to 
 stand the austerity of the rule : she was thus happily 
 spared the knowledge of the terrible tragedy which 
 was impending and its consequences. 
 
Plots and Counterplots 69 
 
 Angry as Joanna was with Maria and Durazzo, 
 she soon forgave them both, and was reconciled 
 to them, perhaps feeling the need of her sister's 
 society and sympathy in the midst of her own 
 difficulties and troubles, surrounded as she was by 
 Friar Robert's boorish and ambitious Hungarians. 
 
 Meanwhile the Princess of Taranto and Philippa 
 seem to have been pursuing their infamous design 
 of trying to undermine Joanna's loyalty to her 
 young husband, trusting that as the Pope had been 
 so accommodating in Maria's case as to give her the 
 necessary dispensation to marry Durazzo, he would 
 be equally obliging in Joanna's, and pronounce her 
 marriage null and void. Whether Joanna was aware 
 of these designs we cannot tell at this distance of 
 time and among so many conflicting reports. She 
 must have known of the daily increasing unpopu- 
 larity of the Hungarians, and probably shared in 
 the desire to get rid of the odious Friar Robert, 
 but there is no evidence to show that she wished 
 to be separated from Andrew. 
 
 In the course of 1344 Clement VI. appointed 
 Cardinal Americus as his legate, to govern the 
 kingdom during Joanna's minority ; and on August 
 28th the beautiful young Queen received the in- 
 vestiture of the crown from his hands, and took 
 the oaths according to the customary ceremonies, and 
 on the same conditions as her predecessors, Andrew 
 being only a spectator. It was the Cardinal's in- 
 
7° The Beautiful Queen 
 
 fluence which achieved this stroke of policy, and he 
 afterwards did his best to control the authority of 
 Friar Robert, but he did not succeed very well, for 
 he was a stranger in Naples, and therefore ignorant 
 of the most important affairs of State, and all those 
 who were opposed to his appointment withheld the 
 necessary information from him. 
 
 Friar Robert was, as we have seen, popular among 
 the lower orders, who believed in his reputed sanctity. 
 Joanna, seeing everything going to ruin, now wrote 
 to the Pope and begged him to allow her to govern 
 for herself, without the interference of either legates 
 or guardians. Clement, on account of her youth — 
 for she was not yet seventeen — refused this request ; 
 and she then wrote another letter to him, begging 
 him to recall Cardinal Americus, and appoint in 
 his place Philip de Cabassole, the Bishop of Cavaillon, 
 whom King Robert had in his will placed at the 
 head of the Council of Regency with Queen Sancha, 
 and with his last breath had committed the care of his 
 kingdom and the charge of his grandchildren to him. 
 
 This good bishop, who was afterwards made a 
 Cardinal and Patriarch of Jerusalem, was also a 
 friend of Petrarch, who says of him "that he was 
 a great man with a little bishopric," Cavaillon being 
 only a small town near Avignon and also near 
 Vaucluse, where Petrarch frequently retired when 
 he wished to live in seclusion. Philip was of noble 
 birth, and had been made a canon at the age of 
 
Plots and Counterplots 71 
 
 twelve, according to a mediaeval custom of conferring 
 these nominal preferments upon boys and youths, long 
 before they were old enough to be ordained. The 
 Cabassoles had always been attached to the Angevine 
 family, who, with their usual generosity to their 
 dependents and friends, had loaded them with 
 benefits. The Bishop had remained at Naples after 
 Robert's death, and had showed his anxiety to do 
 all he could for the late King's family. 
 
 Clement VI. knew this, and, recognising the 
 reasonableness and wisdom of Joanna's request, 
 gave his consent immediately, and the result was 
 some mitigation of the miseries of the people and 
 of the indignities to which the royal family had 
 been subjected by the Hungarians. 
 
 The tyranny and rapaciousness of these barbarians, 
 whose object was to wrest the kingdom from Joanna 
 in favour of the Hungarian family, had so roused 
 the great barons and the princes of Taranto and 
 Durazzo that they now determined not to consent 
 to the coronation of Andrew on any terms. Louis 
 of Hungary had already tried to obtain a Bull from 
 Avignon for his coronation in right of his grand- 
 father, Charles Martel, but the Neapolitans had 
 refused to take the oaths of allegiance to him, 
 except as the consort of Joanna, and now they 
 refused to acknowledge him as king, dreading, as 
 they had good cause to dread, the increase of any 
 Hungarian influence. 
 
7 2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 The Duke of Durazzo, as the husband of Maria 
 of Sicily, was peculiarly interested in this question, 
 and no sooner was he married to Maria than he 
 began to intrigue not only against Andrew, but 
 against Joanna also. Through his uncle, Cardinal 
 Talleyrand, he secretly represented to the Pope at 
 Avignon the danger which would ensue for Naples 
 if Andrew were crowned, in which case the Nea- 
 politans feared their kingdom would become merely 
 a province of Hungary. Clement considered their 
 representations, and delayed to grant the Bull for 
 the coronation for two years after Robert's death ; 
 then the court of Hungary is said to have sent 
 the Pope's council a bribe of 100,000 florins, after 
 Which Clement issued a Bull for the coronation of 
 Andrew and Joanna, but of Andrew only as the 
 Queen's consort, without giving him any personal 
 claim to the crown. The date for the coronation 
 was fixed for September 20th, 1345. 
 
 Before coming to the events that occurred on the 
 eve of this long-delayed coronation, it will be as well 
 to take a glimpse at the condition of Europe at this 
 time, and then briefly to recapitulate the conflicting 
 interests in the Neapolitan court, so as to bring 
 before our readers the principal dramatis persona 
 in what came perilously like an Adelphi drama. 
 
 Pierre Roger, who took the title of Clement VI. 
 when he ascended the Papal throne in the year 
 King Robert died, 1342, was, as his name implies, 
 
Plots and Counterplots 73 
 
 a Frenchman, and the fourth of the Avignon Popes. 
 He loved magnificence and pomp, and the notori- 
 ously luxurious court of Avignon was never more 
 luxurious than under his rule. He was fond of 
 the society of ladies, and allowed them to frequent 
 his court ; he became a great friend of Joanna's, 
 as will appear. He had many great qualities. He 
 was frank, noble, and generous to a fault, and 
 dispensed his favours with both liberality and grace. 
 His failing, of which his detractors have made 
 the most, was a love of luxury. On the other 
 hand, his benevolence was equally great, and at 
 the time of the plague, when in 1348 it visited 
 Avignon, he not only gave most lavishly to the 
 hospitals and sufferers, but enacted very wise laws 
 for its suppression. Naturally highly gifted, he spent 
 much of his time in study, and had such an excellent 
 memory that Petrarch says he never forgot anything 
 that he read : indeed if he had wished to do so he 
 could not. 
 
 He admired Petrarch, and offered him the post 
 of apostolic secretary ; but nothing could induce 
 the poet to accept it — probably because he dis- 
 approved of the luxury of the Avignon court and 
 the licentiousness of the city, for it was never in 
 a worse state than during the reign of this gentle 
 and refined pontiff. 
 
 The struggle between the Empire and the Papacy 
 was still going on when he came to the throne, 
 
74 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 though Louis the Bavarian, who for the last thirty 
 years had troubled the peace of the Popes, had now 
 pretended to submit. In 1344, however, he had 
 the impudence to convoke a diet at Frankfort, which 
 he induced to protest against, what they described 
 as, the ambition and violence of the Pope. 
 
 Clement VI. thus provoked determined on 
 the deposition of Louis in favour of Charles of 
 Luxembourg, who was elected in 1346, and ascended 
 the throne the following year under the title of 
 Charles IV., when Louis died. Thus ended the long 
 contests between the Papacy and the Empire. 
 
 Clement published two Bulls for the protection 
 of the Jews from the persecutions to which they 
 had been subjected under his predecessors, and he 
 extended the Jubilee, which then only occurred every 
 hundred years, to every fifty years. This was 
 a very popular action with the Romans, for the 
 year of the Jubilee brings an enormous number 
 of pilgrims and other visitors to Rome, and the 
 citizens made a good harvest out of it and also in 
 the sale of pious articles, rosaries, medals, and other 
 objects of devotion. 
 
 The year after Clement came to the throne, Cola 
 de Rienzi, the great Roman patriot, came to Avignon 
 at the head of a deputation of the Romans to urge 
 the Pope to return to Rome ; but they were un- 
 successful, as Clement refused to leave Avignon 
 for Rome, the scene of constant struggles between 
 
Plots and Counter *plots 75 
 
 the rival barons and the people. On Rienzi's return 
 to Rome he incited the citizens to rise against the 
 nobles, his hatred of them having been excited by 
 the assassination of his younger brother some years 
 previously. 
 
 Rienzi's romantic career is so well known that 
 we need only refer to it here, remembering that he 
 was afterwards sent back to Avignon as prisoner 
 and confined by Clement VI., and released by his 
 successor Innocent VI., who sent him back to Rome 
 to crush the nobles again. His tragic fate was due 
 to his haughtiness, which disgusted the people who 
 had formerly idolised him. 
 
 War between England and France was still going 
 on when Clement came to the throne. Benedict XII., 
 who for the time being had settled the quarrel 
 between the Papacy and Louis of Bavaria, had also 
 succeeded in getting a truce proclaimed between 
 Edward III. of England and Philip VI. of Valois, 
 but it only lasted for a year. Edward was disputing 
 the throne of France with Philip on the ground 
 that being a nephew of the deceased King Charles IV., 
 through his mother Isabella, Charles's sister, he was 
 therefore a degree nearer to the throne than Philip, 
 who was only cousin-german to Charles. The 
 Salic law, however, which excluded women from the 
 succession, prevailed in France, so there was no real 
 ground for Edward's pretensions. Friction between 
 the two monarchs had further arisen, first by Edward 
 
76 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 having received Robert of Artois, who had been 
 banished from France, and then Philip had returned 
 the compliment by receiving David Bruce, who had 
 been dethroned from Scodand by Edward Balliol, 
 whom Edward III. supported. 
 
 Louis of Bavaria sided with the English, and 
 had also declared war against Philip, while Edward 
 was now expected to invade France. His first 
 attempt at invasion through Flanders had failed ; 
 but all Europe was disturbed and suffering from 
 this war between its two mightiest monarchs, 
 and Clement did his best to make peace, but only 
 succeeded so far as to get another truce proclaimed, 
 but it was not long observed. 
 
 The robber bands of mercenaries which followed 
 in the wake of both armies were a terror to all 
 Italy, as well as to France, where they penetrated 
 as far as Avignon, so that even a French Pope was 
 annoyed by the depredations of the French King's 
 forces. 
 
 If the state of France and Italy was such as to 
 give great anxiety to the Holy Father, when he 
 turned his eyes to Spain things were not much 
 better there. A struggle was going on there which 
 all Europe was watching with interest, between the 
 Moors who had overrun the country and the 
 Christians. Besides this religious strife, civil war 
 was disturbing the Peninsula, between the nobles 
 and priests on the one hand, and on the other the 
 
Plots and Counterplots 77 
 
 members and representatives of a confederacy of 
 towns which had joined together for mutual defence 
 and had developed into a sort of Cortes. 
 
 It was really a struggle between the aristocracy 
 and the democracy, and in 1350, when Pedro the 
 Cruel came to the throne, the struggle was further 
 complicated by England taking the side of Pedro 
 and the people, and France that of the nobles under 
 Henry of Trastevera, an illegitimate son of the late 
 King Alphonso XL, and half-brdther of Pedro. 
 
 In Italy, Florence was at the head of all the other 
 cities in art and civilisation, but it was the scene 
 of constant combats between the Guelphs and the 
 Ghibellines. Naples, as we have said before, possessed 
 the most refined and cultivated court in Europe. 
 Rome was a prey to broils and insurrections, to 
 robbers and assassins, which while they rendered 
 expedient in some ways the exile of the Pope, were, 
 at the same time increased by his absence. 
 
 Venice was governed by a council of ten, with the 
 Doge at their head, possessing terrible powers over 
 the rest of the State ; and here and in Siena and all 
 the Italian cities, which were all independent States, 
 a constant struggle was going on, not only between 
 rival nobles, but also between nobles and people, 
 while the entire peninsula was to a large extent at 
 the mercy of all those marauding bands of mercenaries 
 which infested it, such as the White Company. 
 
 A celebrated contemporary of Joanna at Naples 
 
78 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 was Marina Faliero, a distinguished military hero, 
 who, after being at war for years with the Hungarians, 
 finally defeated them in 1346, and some years later 
 was made Doge of Venice. He had a beautiful 
 young wife, whose romantic story and the subsequent 
 tragic ending of the Doge's life have been the subject 
 of Byron's drama " Marino Faliero," and of Swin- 
 burne's tragedy. 
 
 In Scandinavia, where the people were slowly 
 emerging from the dark night of paganism into the 
 glorious light of Christianity, there had arisen a 
 celebrated prophetess and politician, a Swedish prin- 
 cess, afterwards a canonised saint of the Church — 
 St. Bridget of Sweden, wife of Ulf, Prince of Nericia, 
 who left her a widow in 1345. She afterwards 
 became a friend of Joanna, whose court she visited 
 several times, once under very romantic circum- 
 stances, as we shall presently see. St. Bridget played 
 a great part in trying to induce Clement VI. to 
 leave Avignon and return to Rome, but she did 
 not succeed : it was left to the daughter of the 
 dyer at Siena, St. Catherine, to accomplish finally 
 the work of bringing back the Popes to the Eternal 
 City. 
 
 But to return to Naples, where the beautiful 
 young Queen and her boorish husband were 
 surrounded by conflicting influences. On the one 
 hand were Friar Robert in his dirty, ragged habit, 
 and his insolent and semi-barbarian Hungarians, 
 
Plots and Counter 'plots 79 
 
 hated by all the Neapolitans, with an old nurse of 
 Andrew's in the background ; on the other side 
 were Philippa the Catanese, still a very handsome 
 woman, and her granddaughter Sancha, Charles, 
 Duke of Durazzo, and his child-wife Maria, the 
 Queen's sister, his mother, the Dowager Duchess of 
 Taranto, the widowed Empress of Constantinople, 
 Catherine of Valois, widow of Philip, Prince of 
 Taranto, and her three sons, the Bishop of Cavaillon, 
 the Queen's aunt, the Princess Maria of Sicily and 
 her satellite and lover, Boccaccio, a frequent visitor 
 at this brilliant court, and Nicholas Acciajuoli, the 
 handsome Florentine, afterwards promoted by the 
 Queen to be Grand Seneschal of the kingdom, for 
 whom the Empress of Constantinople is said to have 
 had more than a Platonic friendship. Indeed, it was 
 her indifferent reputation and her intimacy with 
 Nicholas which led to his being accused of being the 
 actual murderer of Andrew. 
 
 Two other conspicuous personages at the Nea- 
 politan court at this time were Charles Artus, Grand 
 Chancellor of Naples, and a member of the Council 
 of Regency, appointed by the late King Robert and 
 his son, both of whom were also great friends of 
 the Empress of Constantinople. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Murder of Andrew 
 
 TT was the custom of the Angevine Kings and 
 
 *■ Queens of Naples to leave the city during the 
 
 summer, when the heat became intolerable, and take 
 
 up their abode in one of their delightful summer 
 
 residences, or more often in one of the monasteries 
 
 which they had founded, in the neighbourhood of 
 
 Naples, where the beautiful gardens and spacious 
 
 apartments formed a pleasant retreat from the cares 
 
 of State and the noise and sultriness of the city. 
 
 In 1345 Joanna had special reasons for desiring 
 
 to get away from Naples, for she was expecting to 
 
 become a mother at the end of the year; and in 
 
 the month of August she and Andrew removed 
 
 to the castle of Aversa, to enjoy the cool retreat 
 
 of the gardens in the Celestine monastery close by, 
 
 and to escape the preparations for their coronation 
 
 in Naples next month. Aversa is situated about 
 
 80 
 
The Murder of Andrew 81 
 
 twelve miles north of Naples, in the enchanting 
 scenery of the district known as " the happy Cam- 
 pania." In this fatal year, 1345, Aversa consisted 
 of little more than its grand old castle, which be- 
 longed to the Crown, and a fine old Celestine 
 monastery with lovely grounds, the town not having 
 recovered from its demolition by Charles of Anjou, 
 who destroyed it to punish the inhabitants for having 
 sided with some barons who were averse to his 
 policy. Hence its name, Aversa. 
 
 The castle was surrounded then by olive-woods, 
 and orange-gardens, and dark forests of cedars and 
 other trees; and in this delightful retreat, relieved 
 from the presence of the odious Friar Robert, who 
 remained behind to govern the kingdom, the young 
 Queen enjoyed her villeggiatura, looking forward 
 openly to her approaching coronation, and secretly 
 dreaming of the fulfilment of her hopes of maternity 
 at the close of the year. 
 
 But while Joanna, in her youthful innocence, 
 dreamt of the splendour and pomp of her coronation, 
 in which she took a girlish and natural pride and 
 delight, and meditated upon the still more sacred 
 and purer joys of motherhood, which the poorest of 
 her subjects were also privileged to enjoy, these 
 coming events were casting a shadow over the pages 
 of history which time will never efface. 
 
 These two circumstances, the coronation and the 
 birth of an heir to the throne, were the immediate 
 
 6 
 
82 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 causes of the murder of the young king ; for the 
 Neapolitans feared that when once Andrew was 
 crowned, Friar Robert, who ruled him, would rule 
 them, and tyrannise more than ever over the king- 
 dom ; and in the next place, they anticipated that the 
 birth of an heir to the throne would endear Andrew 
 to the Queen, and give him fresh claims upon the 
 affection and loyalty of the people. 
 
 So while the young sovereigns were enjoying the 
 combined pleasures of court and country life, of 
 music and dancing, of the tales of the poet and 
 the songs of the troubadour, of the outdoor sports 
 of falconry and tournaments, a vile plot was being 
 hatched among the courtiers for the assassination of 
 Andrew. 
 
 Although Friar Robert was left in Naples, some 
 of the Hungarian suite had accompanied Andrew 
 to Aversa, and it is particularly noted that his old 
 nurse, Isolda, who was passionately attached to him, 
 was staying in the castle. At this distance of time 
 it is impossible to fix the guilt of this odious murder 
 of the young King upon anyone ; but it is possible, 
 judging from the known character of some who were 
 accused of it, and in the knowledge of subsequent 
 events, to acquit at least two of them of complicity 
 in it. 
 
 We may dismiss at once as altogether improbable, 
 if not impossible, the theory that Joanna had any 
 part in it, and equally unlikely is it that a man of so 
 
The Murder of Andrew 83 
 
 fine a nature as Nicholas Acciajuoli was the actual 
 murderer, as is stated by de Sade in his Life of 
 Petrarch ; and many other writers have copied him, 
 without questioning what a little more knowledge 
 of the man would have shown was at least highly 
 improbable. 
 
 Acciajuoli's intimacy with the Empress of Con- 
 stantinople seems to have been the cause of his being 
 accused, for the probability seems to be in favour of 
 the opinion that this princess, whose moral character 
 would not bear investigation, was one of the 
 principal conspirators against Andrew, her well- 
 known desire being to see her son Louis in his 
 place. 
 
 Philippa the Catanese is believed by some writers 
 to have known of and sympathised with the plot, 
 her motive being to deliver Joanna, whom she 
 idolised, from her boorish husband, who appears 
 to have been totally blind to her charms. But first 
 and foremost of all the conspirators was undoubtedly 
 the ambitious and unscrupulous Charles, Duke of 
 Durazzo, who is frequently accused of being one of 
 the actual assassins. 
 
 For six weeks the young Queen and her husband 
 led a happy and gay life at Aversa, whose pro- 
 pinquity to Naples permitted the daily coming and 
 going of all those courtiers who were not living 
 at the Castle. 
 
 September 20th had been fixed as the date of the 
 
84 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 coronation of Joanna as Queen and of Andrew as 
 King-consort, and on the eve of that day a great 
 banquet was given at the Castle to celebrate the 
 great occasion fitly. 
 
 The sovereigns appear to have retired early to 
 rest in view of the fatigue of the coronation on the 
 following day ; the Hungarian courtiers and atten- 
 dants had as usual taken more than was good for 
 them, and were sunk in too deep a sleep to hear the 
 subsequent disturbance, but the conspirators Were 
 wide awake, bent on executing their fell purpose. 
 
 In the adjoining monastery the black-robed monks 
 who had risen at midnight for matins, had gone 
 to bed again, and all there was quiet when in the 
 dead of the night, between one and two o'clock, one 
 of the Queen's ladies of the bedchamber, Mabrice, 
 sister of Andrew's chamberlain, Jacobo de Pace, 
 entered the royal bed-chamber in haste, and told 
 the King that a courier from Friar Robert had just 
 arrived with dispatches of great importance, and 
 desired to see him upon State business. 
 
 The poor, unsuspecting young King rose at once, 
 and dressing hurriedly left the sleeping Queen, to 
 proceed to another apartment at the end of a long 
 gallery where,- instead of the supposed courier being 
 in attendance, the conspirators were assembled. 
 These are believed to have been Charles Artus and 
 his son, Jacobo de Pace, Michael de Mirazzano, 
 Andrew's chamberlain, Philippa's son the Count of 
 
The Murder of Andrew 85 
 
 Evoli, and her son-in-law the Count de Trelice, and 
 Raymond of Catania, the Grand Seneschal. 
 
 Directly the King left the bed-chamber, some of 
 the conspirators locked the door, either to prevent 
 the Queen from coming out and raising an alarm, 
 or to hinder Andrew from returning. When the 
 unfortunate young man, who was not yet twenty, 
 had reached the middle of the corridor, he was 
 surrounded and seized by some of the conspirators. 
 To muffle his cries one thrust an iron gauntlet into 
 his mouth, another threw a rope round his neck to 
 strangle him, others knelt upon his chest; and. then 
 they dragged him to the balcony and hanged him 
 over it, while their accomplices in the garden below 
 seized his feet and strangled him by pulling them. 
 Not content with thus brutally murdering him, 
 according to some accounts, they actually dis- 
 embowelled him, and were about to bury his remains 
 in a ditch in the garden, intending to say that 
 he had left Italy for Hungary, when they were 
 interrupted. 
 
 It appears that his faithful nurse, Isolda, slept in 
 a room under the balcony, and was awakened by the 
 sound of his falling body when they cut the cords 
 which held it suspended. Whether she guessed who 
 the victim was, or whether she saw it was the King, 
 we do not know, but she managed to run to the 
 monastery close by and awaken the monks, who 
 hastened to the garden, where their arrival dispersed 
 
86 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 the murderers, who were now about to bury the 
 body. 
 
 The tears and lamentations of Isolda were probably 
 the most sincere that honoured the mangled corpse 
 of the unfortunate victim of this foul murder, for, 
 in spite of his unattractiveness, as to which all writers 
 are agreed, his old nurse loved him passionately — 
 perhaps because of those very weaknesses — and her 
 faithful heart was torn with grief and horror at the 
 marks of violence on his corpse as she prepared it 
 for burial. 
 
 The monks carried the remains into the church 
 of the convent, and watched it and prayed for the 
 repose of his soul, until three days later he was 
 taken to Naples to be buried. 
 
 There are many versions of the account of this 
 murder, no two of which agree in detail with each 
 other ; but the above is taken from Costanzo, the 
 most reliable of the biographers of Joanna. Some 
 later Italian writers have given their imaginations 
 play and concocted scenes which probably never 
 occurred. For instance one, Rastrelli, says that the 
 Hungarian Isolda, on entering the Queen's apart- 
 ments in the morning according to her usual custom, 
 found Joanna sitting up by the bedside, and when 
 she asked where the King was the Queen, laughing, 
 replied that she did not know. The nurse then 
 went out, and, following a miraculous light, found 
 Andrew's body lying on the ground below the 
 
The IVIurcler of Andrew 87 
 
 balcony. Thinking that he was asleep, she returned 
 to Joanna and said, " Your Majesty, the King sleeps 
 in the garden"; to which the Queen answered, "Let 
 him sleep there." Isolda, still unsatisfied, went down 
 again to the garden, where her appearance put the 
 murderers to flight and she discovered the truth. 
 
 Those who, like Muratori, suspected Joanna of 
 complicity in this atrocious crime represent the 
 Hungarian nurse as rushing into the Queen's room, 
 after she had discovered the murder, and informing 
 Joanna of it, and state that when others, drawn by 
 her cries to the room, confirmed the report, " the 
 Queen was so conscience-stricken, and so great was 
 her confusion, that she could not even rise from 
 the spot, but lay there until the morning was far 
 advanced, and knew not how to raise her tearless 
 eyes, or to look up at any one." 
 
 Thus does the malignant spirit of calumny 
 interpret the poor young Queen's most natural 
 behaviour upon hearing of such a terrible catastrophe 
 as that which had just happened. Her tearlessness 
 was no proof of guilt ; on the contrary, it is often 
 a sign of the deepest feeling — of grief too deep for 
 words, too bitter for tears. She was evidently 
 paralysed with horror ; tears would have been a 
 blessed boon, but they were denied her, and the 
 child was yet unborn who might have brought them 
 "like a summer tempest." Nor could they praise 
 the unfortunate victim, either " soft and low " or 
 
88 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 hard and high, for there seems to have been little 
 to praise and much to blame in the late King. If 
 Joanna's calumniators had nothing more incriminating 
 to go upon than her behaviour on the morning 
 following the murder, there would not be the slightest 
 foundation for their accusations ; on the contrary, 
 her conduct was exactly what might have been 
 expected from any young wife on such an occasion. 
 
 She says of herself, in a most touching letter 
 which she wrote to Andrew's brother the King of 
 Hungary : " Stunned by grief I had well-nigh died 
 of the same wounds " ; and there is not the slightest 
 reason for doubting that this was the very truth. 
 
 Another historian says of her : " The Queen, who 
 was only eighteen years old, trembled so that she 
 did not know what to do with herself." 
 
 Later in the morning Joanna rose, and in a terrible 
 state of agitation and fear left Aversa, and returned 
 to Naples ; and calling all her best friends around 
 her, asked their advice in the horrible calamity 
 which had befallen the royal house. 
 
 The first thing to be done was to send letters 
 to inform the Pope and the King of Hungary, and 
 messengers were at once dispatched with the ghastly 
 news to Rome and Hungary, In the above- 
 mentioned letter from the young widowed Queen 
 to Louis of Hungary, Joanna implored the King's 
 protection for herself and her unborn child. How 
 Louis responded to this appeal will presently appear. 
 
The Murder of Andrew 89 
 
 Another ridiculous charge brought against Joanna 
 is that she left the body of Andrew unburied for 
 three days, and that then it was brought to Naples 
 and buried by the canons of the cathedral at their 
 own expense. The facts were that the body was 
 left in the charge of the Celestine monks in their 
 church at Aversa until the necessary arrangements 
 could be made in Naples for the funeral ; and these 
 for a king could not be completed sooner, for the 
 funeral rites and ceremonies due to Andrew's rank 
 were elaborate, and if he had been hurriedly buried 
 the scandalmongers would have seen in this 
 precipitation fresh proof of guilt and a desire of 
 concealment. 
 
 At the end of the three days the body was brought 
 to Naples, and laid in the chapel of St. Louis in the 
 cathedral with many tears and lamentations. It is 
 said that the Neapolitans showed the greatest horror 
 of the crime, and Andrew's undeserved sufferings 
 moved the hardest hearts to sympathy ; this circum- 
 stance is recorded unanimously by all historians. 
 Indeed, the murder of Andrew sent a thrill of horror 
 all over Europe ; there was not a court that was not 
 horrified and scandalised by it. 
 
 The reproach brought against Joanna that she 
 allowed the canons of the cathedral to pay for the 
 funeral is absurd : it was their duty to perform 
 the ceremony, for the Neapolitan sovereigns were 
 always buried in the cathedral, and it was probably 
 
90 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 the custom for these canons tp bear some of the 
 expenses, just as the canons of St. Peter's at Rome 
 had to pay for the greater part of the Popes' funeral 
 expenses. 
 
 The faults of Andrew have probably been 
 exaggerated by his contemporaries, for it was the 
 policy of Joanna's friends and enemies alike to 
 paint him as black as possible : her friends did so 
 to excuse her if she were guilty of connivance in his 
 assassination, her enemies to find a motive for the 
 personal repulsion they supposed her to feel to 
 such an extent as to make her an accomplice in 
 his murder. 
 
 He is described as a ferocious boor, a glutton, 
 a drunkard, and a semi-idiot, with low propensities 
 and gross habits. On the other hand, Petrarch, who 
 knew him personally, writing when the shock of 
 his murder was fresh in his mind, to his friend 
 Barbatus of Sulmone, calls him " the most gentle 
 and inoffensive of men, a youth of a rare disposition, 
 a prince of great hopes." The poet also says that 
 he foresaw that some dreadful calamities threatened 
 this unhappy kingdom, but that he did not imagine 
 that a young and innocent prince would be the first 
 victim sacrificed to barbarity. 
 
 Petrarch's praise must be discounted by, the fact 
 that Andrew's release of the Pipini had won his 
 regard and gratitude, and also by the consideration 
 that the poet's eloquence often led him to exaggerate. 
 
The Murder of Andrew 91 
 
 The just measure of Andrew's character is perhaps 
 somewhere between Petrarch's praise and the blame 
 of Italian historians. 
 
 Possibly Andrew, had he lived, might have de- 
 veloped later in such a way as to justify the hopes 
 of which Petrarch speaks ; but his culpable indolence 
 and consequent gross ignorance made him a mere 
 tool in the hands of Friar Robert and his tutor, 
 Nicholas of Hungary, whose ambition and tyranny, 
 by rousing the hatred of the Neapolitans against 
 the Hungarians, had contributed to the deplorable 
 calamity. 
 
 Another cause of the assassination was undoubtedly 
 connected with the Pipini. When King Robert had 
 imprisoned these counts, he enriched certain of the 
 Neapolitan nobles with their spoils : when Andrew 
 released them from their captivity, and took them 
 into such great favour, these nobles feared they 
 would fall into the hands of the Pipini, and be 
 deprived by them of their fortunes and probably 
 of their lives also. 
 
 Among them were the son and sons-in-law of 
 Philippa the Catanese, and they were peculiarly 
 obnoxious to Robert, and the probability is that 
 they, being greatly interested in getting rid of 
 Andrew, were among the conspirators. Philippa 
 has been universally condemned as being implicated 
 in the guilt of the Count of Evoli, her son, and 
 her sons-in-law, but in her favour it must be said 
 
92 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 that neither she nor her grand-daughter Sancha 
 was in the gallery or near the royal bed-chamber 
 at the time of the murder. 
 
 The Duke of Durazzo may or may not have 
 devised the plot against Andrew ; but if we give 
 him the benefit of the doubt in this case, it is 
 certain that he cannot be acquitted of almost as 
 cruel a crime in trying to destroy Joanna by openly 
 accusing her of the murder of her husband, in order 
 to rise himself on her ruin. He held her up to 
 universal execration ; and if he did not murder the 
 King, he murdered the fair name and reputation 
 of the young Queen. 
 
 Charles Artus and his son, whether innocent or 
 not, behaved as if they were guilty, for they fled 
 precipitately immediately after the murder had 
 taken place, and took refuge with the Empress 
 of Constantinople, who has in consequence been 
 accused, with great presumption of truth, of being 
 one of the conspirators. But if the letters which 
 the King of Hungary afterwards alleged that the 
 Duke of Durazzo wrote to Charles Artus were 
 genuine, Durazzo was certainly one of the con- 
 spirators, for in this letter the murder was planned 
 and arranged. In spite of his vile assertions 
 against Joanna, not a particle of circumstantial 
 evidence was ever forthcoming against her, or 
 against Louis of Taranto, in all the inquiries which 
 followed, and the only evidence against Nicholas 
 
The Murder of Andrew 93 
 
 Acciajuoli was his intimacy with the Empress of 
 Constantinople. 
 
 Much has been made by Joanna's enemies of 
 the fact of the court going to Aversa. They allege 
 that she inveigled Andrew there in order to get rid 
 of him more easily, but we have already explained 
 the reasons for this customary villeggiatura. We 
 must now note that the only historians of any 
 repute, contemporary with Joanna, who have accused 
 her of complicity in the murder were the two 
 Villanis, both very credulous men, and Matthew 
 Villani was an intimate friend of Nicholas the 
 Hungarian, the tutor of Andrew. It was, of course, 
 to this man's interest to calumniate Joanna, for the 
 only hope the Hungarians had of regaining their 
 ascendency in the kingdom was by destroying 
 Joanna's influence and reputation. 
 
 After the King of Hungary received the Queen's 
 touching letter, containing the terrible news of 
 Andrew's assassination, he issued a manifesto to 
 all the sovereigns of Europe announcing the death 
 of his brother ; and it is very remarkable, in view 
 of his subsequent conduct, that he makes no 
 accusation against the Queen in this first document ; 
 later on, when he found that it might be practicable 
 to seize her kingdom, he inculpated her. Then 
 it was that Pope Clement VI., who was in a 
 better position to know the truth than any one 
 else in Europe, wrote a letter to Louis, in which 
 
94 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 lie said, "As to the murder of Prince Andrew, 
 Joanna can neither be convicted nor suspected of 
 it, and still less has she confessed it." 
 
 Petrarch was convinced of her innocence, and, 
 although he was not at Naples at the time of the 
 murder, he obtained all his information from his 
 intimate friend, the Bishop of Cavaillon, who was 
 on the spot. 
 
 Boccaccio was also at the court when the tragedy 
 occurred ; and he and two of the most celebrated 
 lawyers of the day, Angelo and Baldus of Perugia, 
 not only believed in Joanna's innocence, but also in 
 her incapability of such a crime, Angelo calling her 
 " a most holy Queen, the honour of the world and 
 the light of Italy." And here we may mention 
 that Joanna is known to this day among Neapolitans 
 as " the good Queen Jane " ; and as the boatmen 
 row past the grim castle of Muro, in which she 
 was eventually imprisoned and murdered, they raise 
 their caps in honour of " the good Queen." 
 
 But the most conclusive piece of negative evidence 
 in favour of Joanna is the fact that her great and 
 cruel enemy, Pope Urban VI., himself a Neapolitan, 
 once Archbishop of Bari, when he fulminated his 
 Bull of excommunication and deposition against 
 Joanna, never breathed a word of reproach or accu- 
 sation of her having consented to the murder of 
 her first husband. Lastly, all the best Neapolitan 
 and Provencal historians, and all the most enlightened 
 
The Murder of Andrew 95 
 
 of her contemporaries, have entirely exonerated her 
 in this matter. 
 
 One of Villani's assertions against Joanna, prompted 
 no doubt by Nicholas the Hungarian, is that she 
 showed little or no concern at the death of her 
 husband ; but this is flatly contradicted by the 
 repeated declarations of Pope Clement VI., that she 
 always expressed the greatest horror at the murder 
 of Andrew, and deplored his tragical fate with the 
 deepest grief. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 What followed the Murder 
 
 "NTOWHERE did the assassination of Andrew 
 *■ ^ rouse more interest and cause more sensa- 
 tion than at Avignon, whose magnificent Papal 
 palace stood in Joanna's dominions, for as heiress 
 and Countess of Provence she owned the whole 
 of that province, through the Angevine line. The 
 people of Provence never wavered in their allegiance 
 to Joanna, whom they called " la bonne Reine 
 Jeanne," and so long as Provence remained distinct 
 from the French monarchy her memory was idolised 
 there. 
 
 Immediately Clement VI. received the Queen's 
 letter announcing the tragedy which had befallen 
 her, he ordered Philip de Cabassole, who had been 
 created a Cardinal with the title of St. Mark, to hold 
 an inquiry into the crime and to punish the mur- 
 derers : the Pope did this because he had assumed 
 the government of Naples during Joanna's minority. 
 
 96 
 
What followed the Murder 97 
 
 The Cardinal was ordered to keep the evidence 
 secret if it implicated the Queen or any of the 
 royal family, but he was unable to arrive at any 
 definite conclusion. 
 
 Some of those who were suspected of being 
 conspirators fled to their own castles and fortified 
 themselves there ; some, it is said, were put to death 
 secretly ; others, who were arrested on suspicion, 
 were taken out of prison at night by those who 
 dreaded that they might confess and incriminate 
 them, and to prevent this they cut out their 
 tongues. 
 
 The rumour that Joanna was a participator in 
 the crime was at first only whispered, but it was 
 fostered no doubt by Friar Robert and the Hun- 
 garians, till it grew louder and louder, and the 
 poor young Queen found herself surrounded by 
 treason. 
 
 Naples was in such a state of anarchy that the streets 
 were unsafe. The young noblemen and officers 
 went about armed, challenging the passers-by to 
 open combat, which frequently ended in loss of life ; 
 while the great barons in their castles openly defied 
 what government there was, and highwaymen infested 
 the roads, robbing and murdering any travellers 
 they happened to meet. Two or three months 
 thus elapsed without any of the conspirators being 
 brought to justice. Joanna is blamed most unjustly 
 by her detractors for this delay, but it was clearly 
 
 7 
 
9 8 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 no fault of hers. The Pope having placed the reins 
 of government in his legate's hands, she was power- 
 less to exercise any legal authority. If she had 
 interfered with the Cardinal's efforts, her enemies 
 would have said that she wanted to turn aside the 
 course of justice, and that her guilty conscience 
 prompted her- to intervene. Moreover, if she had 
 possessed the legal power to act, her delicate state of 
 health would have incapacitated her from exercising 
 it, as the birth of her child was daily drawing nearer. 
 
 Shortly before Christmas the Bishop of Cavaillon, 
 who was far too meek and gentle to cope with a 
 situation so distasteful to him, obtained the Pope's 
 consent to his resignation of his appointment as 
 head of the Council of Regency, and to his return 
 to his bishopric in Provence ; and on December 23rd 
 he embarked from Naples for Marseilles, but a 
 violent storm drove him ashore on the coast of 
 Herculaneum, where he landed with difficulty. In 
 the meanwhile a great commotion was going on at 
 Castle Nuovo : the Queen was taken ill, doctors 
 and ministers of State were summoned to the 
 palace to await the interesting event, and while 
 the storm was still raging Joanna gave birth to a 
 son and heir. 
 
 The Pope had already promised to stand god- 
 father to her child, and the Cardinal Bishop was 
 required to represent His Holiness. Baptisms in 
 Italy are celebrated within twenty-four hours of 
 
What followed the Murder 99 
 
 birth, so messengers were at once dispatched to 
 Herculaneum to bring back the shipwrecked Cardinal 
 to stand proxy for the Pope. 
 
 It was the custom to name the Neapolitan princes 
 after the paternal grandfather, and Joanna scrupu- 
 lously observed this etiquette, and named her son 
 after Andrew's father, Canrobert, the late King of 
 Hungary. There were great rejoicings in Naples 
 at the birth of an heir to the throne, and these were 
 a great consolation to Joanna, who looked upon 
 them as proofs of the affection and loyalty of the 
 greater part of the nation. 
 
 The day after the baptism the Bishop of Cavaillon 
 re-embarked for Marseilles, but he was caught in 
 a more terrific storm than before ; and as he himself 
 relates in his autobiography, which he wrote shortly 
 afterwards, he was saved this time miraculously by 
 St. Mary Magdalene, the patron saint of Marseilles, 
 whom he invoked. Petrarch was in Provence at 
 this time ; and when the Cardinal arrived at Avignon 
 in January, the two friends met, and having heard 
 de Cabassole's account of the assassination of 
 Andrew and all he had done to discover the con- 
 spirators, Petrarch wrote the letter from which we 
 have quoted, to his friend Barbatus of Sulmone. 
 Surely if there had been the slightest truth in the 
 scandalous rumours about Joanna, the Cardinal 
 would have told his intimate friend, who always 
 believed in the Queen's innocence. 
 
loo The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Immediately after the Cardinal left Naples the 
 Pope sent two bishops to the Neapolitan court 
 to take charge of the young prince, for Joanna 
 being a minor was not allowed to bring up her 
 own child. Perhaps Clement may have feared that 
 there might be some foul play, as he knew the 
 Queen was surrounded by traitors, and the murder 
 of the King had made the Neapolitans a byword 
 all over Europe ; at any rate the Bishops of Padua 
 and Monte Casino arrived at Castel Nuovo before 
 the baby was a month old. 
 
 Joanna was now eighteen, and as soon as she 
 had recovered from the birth of the child she sent 
 for the most trusted friends of the late King Robert, 
 and took counsel with them as to the best means to 
 be pursued to bring the murderers of her husband 
 to justice. She did not wait to ask the Pope's 
 sanction, knowing he would refuse it on account of 
 her youth; but she acted on her own initiative, and 
 displayed that good sense and wise policy for which 
 she was afterwards so famed. 
 
 A deputation from the nobility of Naples waited 
 upon the Queen, and begged her to take the ad- 
 ministration of affairs into her own hands now that 
 the Cardinal legate, who had signally failed in his 
 mission to discover the conspirators, had retired. 
 The members of this deputation with remarkable 
 frankness told the Queen of the rumours which 
 were afloat about her complicity in the murder, 
 
What followed the Murder 101 
 
 saying that some boldly accused her of it, and adding 
 that the disaffection was growing daily. 
 
 Her next move was to cause to be affixed to her 
 palace-walls and to other public buildings a severe 
 edict against the conspirators. She then signed; a 
 commission empowering one of the Neapolitan 
 barons, named Hugh de Baux, to execute justice 
 on all who were found guilty, without respect of 
 persons. This edict was signed in February, 1846 
 (old style) — that is, five months after the assassina- 
 tion, but the reasons for the delay have, we hope, 
 been made sufficiently clear to exonerate the Queen. 
 
 Joanna now wrote a second letter to Louis of 
 Hungary, from which we shall quote the most 
 salient passages. She says : 
 
 " I hear that many wonder that I have suffered 
 the parricides [sic] who have slain my husband and 
 your brother to go so long unpunished. What is 
 this, then ? Why do the people accuse me of this 
 great iniquity, when I have always dearly loved King 
 Andrew, my excellent husband, and he as long as 
 his life lasted always lived in peace with me ? But 
 whatever the rest of men may suspect, I earnestly 
 desire that you should believe that it has not been 
 possible for me to avenge this great injury done to 
 me, from my ignorance of the assassins, and from 
 the difficulties of the times, and that I have suffered 
 so much anguish of mind from the murder of my 
 beloved husband that, stunned by grief, I had well- 
 
102 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 nigh died of the same wounds." The last sentence 
 has been quoted before in this book, but it is as well 
 to repeat it with the context in which it so naturally 
 occurs and seems to give such unconscious evidence 
 of her innocence. For if she had found Andrew a 
 peaceable, excellent husband whom she loved tenderly, 
 why should she have consented to his murder ? 
 
 Hugh de Baux's methods of getting at the truth, 
 or attempting to do so, were barbarous in the ex- 
 treme, but they were the constant practice of the 
 age in which he lived. He seized some of Andrew's 
 chamberlains and proceeded to torture them, to 
 extract so-called confessions, in which no sort of 
 confidence could be placed, for the victims would 
 say anything when on the rack. 
 
 The Duke of Durazzo opposed the original plan 
 of holding these ghastly inquisitions in the halls of 
 the public courts of justice, where all the people 
 would have heard them, and instead examined the 
 prisoners in his own palace. This on the face of 
 it looks very suspicious, and as if the Duke had 
 only too good reason to fear that he might be 
 accused himself ; whereas if the examination was held 
 under his roof, the victims would say anything and 
 accuse any one but the Duke, in the hope of cutting 
 short their sufferings. 
 
 The chamberlains, Nicholas di Mirazzano and 
 Jacobo de Pace, made many accusations. Among 
 others they accused Charles Artus and his son — no 
 
What followed the Murder 103 
 
 doubt justly ; and then it was that these two fled 
 to the Empress of Constantinople. Others who 
 were accused of being in the plot fortified them- 
 selves in their castles, while Philippa and her son 
 the Count d'Evoli, her son-in-law, her grand- 
 daughter Sancha and her husband, who were also 
 denounced, were all living either in the Castel 
 Nuovo or in Naples, and daily frequenting the 
 court. 
 
 Now it is very remarkable that none of those 
 who were tortured, either now or later, ever accused 
 Joanna of being in any way connected with the 
 crime, and apparently she had never for one moment 
 suspected Philippa — her father's foster-mother, the 
 old tried friend of her grandfather and Queen 
 Sancha, and her own faithful nurse and governess 
 and friend, who had been all but a mother to her 
 — of having had any part in the conspiracy. 
 
 Philippa and her granddaughter Sancha had con- 
 tinued to live at Castel Nuovo with Joanna, and 
 we can fancy Philippa, who had nursed Joanna and 
 her father, now idolising the infant prince. She had 
 evidently been with the young Queen all through 
 the terrible trials which had befallen her, and there 
 is no doubt that Joanna was greatly attached to her ; 
 and therefore it can be imagined how great was her 
 horror when the messengers of Hugh de Baux, 
 to whom she had given such absolute power over 
 the murderers when he had discovered them, arrived 
 
104 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 at the palace to arrest Philippa and Sancha. They 
 are said to have been sitting with the Queen, either 
 at their spinning-wheels or embroidery-frames, when 
 the guards entered the room and dragged them 
 forcibly from Joanna's presence, in spite of her pro- 
 testations, which were in vain. Philippa, who must 
 have been nearer seventy than sixty at this time, is 
 described by some writers as a decrepit old woman, 
 while others say she was still handsome, though it is 
 true that Sicilian and Neapolitan women age much 
 sooner than their Northern sisters, so it is possible 
 the Catanese may have been old in appearance as 
 well as in years. 
 
 Sancha was only about twenty, a young wife 
 in the prime of her beauty ; but neither her youth 
 nor Philippa's age availed them anything. They 
 were dragged down to the sea-shore, and there, 
 in the presence of crowds of people, were tortured 
 in a manner too horrible to describe. The mob 
 was not allowed to come near enough to hear what 
 the sufferers said under torture, but they were able 
 to witness the horrible proceedings. 
 
 A place was prepared for the execution of these 
 two unfortunate women, who, whether guilty or 
 not, evoke our sympathy for the brutal manner in 
 which this so-called justice was administered. To 
 the scaffold they were dragged on a sledge, but, 
 happily for her, Philippa died on the way thither, 
 exhausted by the torments to which she had been 
 
What followed the Murder 105 
 
 submitted ; while Sancha, whose tortures were even 
 more horrible than her grandmother's, was burnt 
 alive. Philippa was disembowelled, and her head 
 affixed to one of the gates of the city. Her son, 
 the Count d'Evoli, and her son-in-law, the Count of 
 Trelice, were not executed until August 2nd, and a 
 few days later some of the other barons who were 
 arrested were put to death. The mob was so 
 demoralised that after these executions they mangled 
 the bodies of the executed conspirators with their 
 teeth and nails out of sheer vicious ferocity. It 
 is said that the Count d'Evoli was much favoured 
 by Joanna in the beginning of her reign, but she 
 was as powerless to save him from execution as 
 she had been in the case of Philippa and Sancha. 
 
 Joanna's whole life was, to some extent, saddened 
 by these events, for she was tenderly and deeply 
 attached to Philippa, and Sancha had been the 
 companion of her childhood and youth, for they 
 had been brought up together ; while Philippa had 
 never been separated from her for a single day 
 ever since her birth until the day she was dragged 
 from her to torture and death. 
 
 From that day the young Queen, taught by this 
 most bitter experience, never wholly trusted any one 
 again ; from henceforth she bore alone the cares 
 of royalty, and the solitude of those whose high 
 rank places them above their fellow men. 
 
 Before these trials befell the young Queen she 
 
io6 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 is said to have been of a most joyous disposition, 
 full of mirth and high spirits, loving gaiety and 
 all the pleasures of the court ; but from henceforth 
 dignity and majesty are the first characteristics 
 mentioned in every description of her. In private 
 life she was from this time kind and affable rather 
 than gay and lively, while in public life she was 
 noted for her masculine energy and firmness. 
 
 Boccaccio says of her that " from the time that 
 she began to govern not in name only, but in fact, 
 she conducted herself with so much prudence that 
 she daily transacted the affairs of State with barons, 
 warriors, counsellors, and other ministers, with 
 such unblemished fame that neither the eyes nor 
 ears of envy ever perceived anything with which 
 to calumniate her. She was modest in her manner 
 of living, and the very character of her beauty 
 was rather that of majesty than ot softness or 
 voluptuousness." Yet she ever retained a charm 
 of manner, which together with her beauty made 
 her the centre of admiration of her brilliant court 
 and the idol of the fcourtiers who surrounded her, 
 while the fame of her majestic, or, as some writers 
 say, angelic loveliness was a theme of conver- 
 sation in all the courts of Europe. 
 
 It is not certain what became of Charles Artus 
 and his son. It is said by some authors that they 
 were imprisoned at Benevento, and put to death 
 privately there, out of respect to King Robert, of 
 
From an engraving after the painting by Titian. 
 
 GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. 
 p. ro6] 
 
What followed the Murder 107 
 
 whom Charles Artus the elder is believed to have 
 been the natural son. Other writers deny this, 
 and say that he was the husband of Robert's natural 
 daughter, the Princess Maria of Sicily. 
 
 The Empress of Constantinople, who had sheltered 
 them, died in the October following the execution of 
 Philippa and Sancha. Her death took place at Naples. 
 She was the last of the Queen's relatives of the elder 
 generation, except Maria of Sicily ; and as now the 
 Duke of Durazzo had rebelled against her, she was 
 deprived of the society of her sister, and, the friends 
 of her youth having fallen on the scaffold, she was 
 more than ever alone. 
 
 The Princess of Taranto died without living to see 
 the marriage of Joanna and her second son Louis 
 accomplished, for which she had certainly planned 
 and plotted — if she had not actually, as many believe, 
 arranged the assassination of Andrew to make way 
 for Louis. 
 
 The next trial that befell Joanna was civil war, 
 brought about by the rebellion of the Duke of 
 Durazzo, who now openly accused the Queen of the 
 murder of her husband, and hoisted his standard 
 against her. He was joined by his own brothers and 
 by his cousin Philip, the youngest of the sons of the 
 Empress of Constantinople, whose youth made him 
 a prey to the flattery of Durazzo. 
 
 Robert, the eldest of the Princes of Taranto, had 
 just returned from Greece, and he and his second 
 
108 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 brother Louis took Joanna's part, and commanded 
 her troops and went out to meet the Duke of 
 Durazzo's forces. But while these princes were 
 fighting against each other, both were dreading that 
 the King of Hungary would invade the kingdom 
 to avenge his brother's death. 
 
 Joanna, foreseeing this event, had sent an embassy, 
 with the Bishop of Tropea at its head, to Louis 
 of Hungary, after the birth of her son, to deliver 
 the letter we quoted above, and the Bishop did not 
 return until early in the following year, 1347 (old 
 style). 
 
 Friar Robert and Nicholas the Hungarian had 
 already gone back to Hungary, fearing the power 
 of their adversaries after the death of Andrew ; and 
 they had of course given their version of what had 
 happened to their master, and had succeeded in so 
 misrepresenting Joanna that they had convinced 
 him of her guilt, and Louis, burning with rage 
 and the desire of revenge, was now making alliances 
 with other powers, and preparing a large army to 
 invade Joanna's dominions. 
 
 The Bishop of Tropea reported all these things 
 to Joanna on his return, and the threatening letter 
 he brought with him from the King of Hungary 
 to Joanna fully confirmed his observations. 
 
 Louis, King of Hungary, surnamed the Great, 
 who had succeeded his father Canrobert, or Charobert, 
 in 1342, was one of the most powerful European 
 
What followed the Murder 109 
 
 monarchs of his time. His father had left the 
 kingdom to him after it had acquired under his 
 government a high degree of splendour, for it 
 embraced Bosnia, Servia, Croatia, Wallachia, Mol- 
 davia, Dalmatia, and Transylvania, besides Hungary- 
 proper. Louis was most warlike and ambitious : 
 he fought successfully the Transylvanians, the 
 Croatians, Wallachians, and Venetians, and, as we 
 shall see, twice during Joanna's reign he invaded 
 Naples and made himself a terror to the in- 
 habitants. 
 
 His father, we know, had considered he had a 
 claim on the kingdom ; and when Joanna's sister, 
 Maria of Sicily, whom Friar Robert had advised 
 Louis to marry, eloped with Charles of Durazzo, 
 Louis was intensely annoyed, for this, as the wily 
 friar foresaw, would have been a stepping-stone to 
 the coveted crown of Naples, which probably Louis 
 would in any case have endeavoured to wrest from 
 Joanna. The murder of Andrew gave him some 
 pretext for attempting this, and when it was 
 announced to him his wrath and desire of revenge 
 as well as of conquest knew no bounds, and are 
 apparent in the following letter to Joanna. 
 
 " Joanna ! your former irregular life, your con- 
 tinuing to retain the power of the kingdom, your 
 neglected vengeance, and your subsequent excuses 
 prove you to have been a participator in the death 
 of your husband. Remember, that none may escape 
 
no The Beautiful Queen 
 
 the Divine and human vengeance due to such 
 enormous iniquity." 
 
 This threatening and historic letter is supposed 
 to contain the strongest arguments against Joanna 
 that can be urged ; but happily the four so-called 
 proofs of her guilt can be refuted. The first 
 accusation of leading an irregular life is an absolute 
 calumny for which there is no evidence, and is 
 dismissed by de Sade as insupportable. As Hallam 
 points out, " The name of Joanna of Naples has 
 suffered by the lax repetition of calumnies." He 
 adds that " the charge of dissolute manners so 
 frequently made is not warranted by any specific 
 proof or contemporary testimony." 
 
 The second accusation that she continued to 
 retain the power of her kingdom only shows what 
 Louis was aiming at. What else should the Queen 
 have done ? It was her kingdom, and Andrew's 
 death in no way detracted from her claims. While 
 her husband was alive the poor young Queen had 
 no power in her own kingdom, as we have seen, 
 for Friar Robert and his Hungarian followers had 
 supplanted her and her interests. 
 
 The third accusation, of " neglecting vengeance," 
 we have been endeavouring to show was unavoidable 
 under the circumstances in which Joanna was placed. 
 
 The fourth, of her " subsequent excuses," is more 
 difficult to refute, if we endorse the French proverb 
 " qui s'excuse s'accuse " ; but if Joanna had taken 
 
What followed the Murder m 
 
 the more dignified course of behaving as if she were 
 like Caesar's wife, " above suspicion," and had 
 scorned to defend herself, they would have said 
 that her silence gave consent to the assertions of her 
 guilt. 
 
 The poor young Queen found herself in most 
 difficult circumstances. It was most perplexing 
 to know how to act, surrounded as she was on all 
 sides by treason and treachery, her every action 
 cruelly criticised, and the worst interpretation put 
 upon all her deeds : she did the best she could, and 
 if venomous tongues aspersed her fair fame it was 
 no fault of hers. Directly she received Louis's cruel 
 letter she called together her councillors and laid it 
 before them, who recommended immediate prepara- 
 tions for defending the kingdom from the impending 
 invasion which it was clear Louis was bent upon 
 attempting, and, as a most necessary preliminary step, 
 they counselled their sovereign to marry again. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 Joanna Marries a Second Time 
 
 THE consort chosen by the councillors for the 
 Queen was Louis of Taranto, the prince who 
 is accused by Joanna's enemies of having been 
 her paramour. The very fact that her ministers 
 suggested him as the most suitable husband for 
 her should be the answer to this calumnious report ; 
 for unless they desired that all future historians 
 should write them down asses, would they have 
 been so sublimely foolish as to choose for her pro- 
 tector and the partner of her throne her supposed 
 lover ? They must have known that there was not 
 a particle of truth in this scandal or they would 
 never have dared to set all Europe talking by 
 marrying Joanna to the man her enemies and 
 detractors said was criminally intimate with her. 
 
 Louis was at this time twenty-five ; he is described 
 as both handsome and charming, renowned for his 
 valour and also for his talents. He was proposed 
 
Joanna Marries a Second Time 113 
 
 to the Council as a suitable husband for the Queen 
 by his eldest brother, Robert of Taranto, who had 
 lately married a daughter of the Duke of Bourbon. 
 The other councillors, feeling the necessity of con- 
 ciliating the princes of Taranto, lest if this offer 
 were rejected they should join their younger 
 brother Philip and the Duke of Durazzo, immedi- 
 ately agreed to the proposal. They were hampered 
 in their choice, which was confined to the Neapolitan 
 princes, for it would not have done at this juncture 
 to propose a foreign prince ; neither the royal family 
 nor the great barons would have agreed to that. 
 
 There was no difficulty with either of the parties 
 most interested in the marriage. Louis was known 
 to be madly in love with his beautiful cousin and 
 Queen, and Joanna is believed to have favoured 
 his suit : she had known him from childhood, and he 
 was from all accounts a very attractive man. Never- 
 theless it was some months before the marriage was 
 arranged. Louis, although a brave man in war, was 
 very diffident in love, and finally it was his friend and 
 tutor, Nicholas Acciajuoli, who did his wooing for 
 him and made all the preliminary arrangements. 
 
 The Duke of Durazzo opposed the marriage 
 vehemently, for it was a death-blow to his hopes 
 of securing the throne for his wife, Maria, which 
 he and the Durazzos were labouring to do by 
 calumniating Joanna, so as if possible to deprive 
 her of the allegiance of her people. 
 
 8 
 
ii4 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 The marriage took place on August 20th, 1347 
 (old style), two years after the murder of Andrew ; 
 but in spite of this fact Joanna's detractors have 
 accused her of marrying before the year of her 
 widowhood had expired, whereas two years all 
 but a month had elapsed since Andrew's death. 
 According to many writers, this second marriage 
 was disapproved of by the other European courts, 
 who had apparently heard the scandalous reports 
 of the intimacy between Joanna and Louis and 
 were only too ready to put the worst interpretation 
 upon them. Of course it is quite possible that if 
 Joanna had been consulted about her first marriage, 
 she might have preferred the handsome, talented 
 Louis of Taranto to the half-imbecile, boorish 
 Hungarian prince to whom from motives of policy 
 the late King Robert had wedded her. But even 
 if this were so, it does not follow that there was 
 anything wrong in her relations with Louis, although 
 vicious tongues asserted that there was. 
 
 As Louis was her cousin, a Papal dispensation 
 was necessary to enable them to marry, and there 
 is a difference of opinion among historians as to 
 whether Joanna waited till this arrived, many 
 asserting that she did not do so ; but Villani says 
 that the Pope granted the dispensation, and at the 
 same time made Louis Regent of the kingdom, 
 but that the marriage caused " scandal to all zealous 
 Christians " — whose zeal, we venture ^o think, would 
 
Joanna Marries a Second Time 115 
 
 have been much better employed in saving their 
 own souls than in criticising Joanna's conduct, 
 which in no way concerned them. 
 
 While the preparations were going on for the 
 marriage Louis of Hungary sent ambassadors to 
 the Papal court at Avignon, to demand the investi- 
 ture of the kingdom of Naples for himself, thus 
 excluding not only the reigning Queen, but also 
 her little son Canrobert, or Charobert, for the name 
 is spelt in both ways. Clement VI., however, 
 refused to receive his ambassadors because he was 
 an ally of the excommunicated Emperor Louis of 
 Bavaria, who had brought this punishment upon 
 himself, in the time of Pope Benedict XII., for 
 denying the Papal authority in Germany. 
 
 The Pope sent a message to the King of Hungary 
 to say that nothing criminal had been proved against 
 Joanna, and that even had she forfeited her throne 
 the claims of Andrew's son could not be set aside. 
 This was a great blow to Louis of Hungary, who 
 had believed that the Pope would favour his cause 
 at the expense of Joanna. 
 
 His next move made about the same time was 
 to lodge an accusation against Joanna and all the 
 Neapolitan princes of the murder of his brother 
 Andrew, at the court of Rienzi, now Tribune of 
 Rome. He had a twofold object in appealing to 
 Rienzi — first to enlist his sympathy and secure if 
 possible his help, and secondly to justify himself for 
 
1 16 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 the attack upon the Queen of Naples and her allies 
 by casting a public slur upon their characters. 
 
 The royal family of Naples did not disdain to send 
 advocates to Rome to plead their cause and clear 
 themselves from the odious stigma this accusation 
 had cast upon them, and Rienzi listened to them, 
 seated upon his throne in great pomp ; but he put 
 off from day to day passing any judgment in the 
 matter, and left it undecided. His own downfall, 
 precipitated by the Count of Minervino, who ac- 
 companied the Hungarian ambassadors to Rome, 
 followed soon after, and the great Tribune was sent 
 a prisoner to the Pope at Avignon, where he was 
 cast into a dungeon. 
 
 In the month of May preceding the marriage of 
 Joanna and Louis, Nicholas the Hungarian, the for- 
 mer tutor of Andrew, had returned to Aquila, near 
 Naples, with large sums of money in his possession, 
 with which he proceeded to bribe the Neapolitans 
 whom he had won to his side on his previous 
 residence in the kingdom, to forsake the cause of 
 their lawful Queen and join that of the usurping 
 King of Hungary, and unfortunately he succeeded 
 in corrupting many of Joanna's subjects. He was 
 joined by a rebel baron who had previously estab- 
 lished himself at Aquila. 
 
 It was these traitors within the camp which made 
 the cause of Joanna and Louis of Taranto so des- 
 perate : if all their subjects had been faithful, it 
 
Joanna Marries a Second Time 117 
 
 is believed that, notwithstanding the large army 
 the Hungarian King was bringing against the 
 Neapolitans, they would have been able to repel the 
 invasion. 
 
 The Duke of Durazzo joined the Queen's party 
 for a short time, because he had discovered that he 
 himself was a greater object of vengeance to Louis 
 of Hungary — who imputed Andrew's murder to 
 his hand — than even Joanna herself. He never- 
 theless contrived to injure her cause by his malice, 
 even when nominally fighting for her, and soon after 
 her marriage he raised the siege of Aquila and 
 retired to his own dominions. 
 
 The first division of the Hungarian army which 
 entered Naples in October was commanded by the 
 Bishop of the Five Churches, a natural brother of 
 the Hungarian King : he is described by Villani as 
 a wise and good soldier. It was the custom in the 
 Middle Ages for bishops to go to battle, and even 
 for popes to do so : our English Pope Adrian IV. 
 led his troops against his arch-enemy, Frederick 
 Barbarossa, so there was nothing unusual in this 
 proceeding. 
 
 Such was the disaffection in the country, and so 
 great was the terror Louis's threats of vengeance 
 had kindled among the people, that many castles 
 and towns surrendered to the Hungarian troops 
 without resistance, and some of the nobles went 
 over to the side of the enemy. One of the causes 
 
1 18 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of this treachery against Joanna was the unpopu- 
 larity of the princes. The people themselves were 
 indifferent to the royal cause partly because of 
 the rumours that the Queen was concerned in 
 the assassination of the late King, partly because of 
 the ambition and haughty demeanour of the royal 
 princes. Louis of Taranto, in spite of all these 
 discouragements, collected an army at Capua large 
 enough to stop the force of Louis of Hungary 
 when he entered the kingdom in December. 
 
 On reaching the frontier the King of Hungary 
 was met by the Papal legate, who commanded him 
 to retire in the name of the Pope, to whom the 
 suzerainty of Naples belonged. Furthermore, the 
 legate bade him cease from attempting any further 
 vengeance against the innocent Queen, saying that 
 two persons alone had been guilty of the murder, and 
 those two had already been executed. It is most 
 tantalising that the legate should not have mentioned 
 the names of these two guilty people, and thus 
 have solved the mystery of the murder of Andrew, 
 which must remain now undisclosed until the day 
 of judgment. 
 
 Louis had the insolence to reply to this remon- 
 strance by saying that he had come to take possession 
 of a kingdom which by right belonged to him 
 through his father Charles Martel (who, by the way, 
 must not be confused with his illustrious namesake, 
 the King of France who lived in the seventh century). 
 
Joanna Marries a Second Time 119 
 
 The haughty Louis went on to say that he should 
 not trouble himself about his excommunication, 
 which he considered undeserved ; and as for the 
 murderers of his brother, a dozen rather than 
 two had been guilty of that crime. Having thus 
 disrespectfully delivered his soul, his army continued 
 to march to Naples via. Benevento, an ancient city 
 standing upon a hill and surrounded by mediaeval 
 walls, with a celebrated gate upon the north side 
 erected in the year a.d. 114, in memory of the 
 Roman Emperor Trajan, and called the Golden 
 Gate. 
 
 There were no standing armies in those days : the 
 cavalry were the mounted nobles and knights, whose 
 men-at-arms, bound under the feudal system to 
 fight for their feudal lord, were the infantry. The 
 mounted soldiers wore plate-armour and chain-mail, 
 but gunpowder was now coming into use, and with it 
 the wearing of armour decreased. We doubt very 
 much whether the Hungarians and Neapolitans used 
 gunpowder in this war, though the English did at 
 Crecy in the previous year for the first time. More 
 likely the half-civilised Hungarians were armed with 
 cross-bows, swords, pikes, javelins, battle-axes, and 
 sabres, while the foot soldiers were furnished with 
 any weapon which came handy — very often with 
 their flails ; but in spite of the indifferent equipment 
 they fought with the greatest ferocity, and the 
 Hungarians were more noted than the more civilised 
 
120 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Neapolitans for their fierce, barbarous methods of 
 war. 
 
 The Duke of Durazzo now basely betrayed Joanna 
 to the Hungarians. Though he was still fighting 
 nominally upon the Queen's side, he kept up a 
 secret correspondence with the Hungarian camp, 
 hoping ultimately to establish his wife, Maria, upon 
 her sister's throne. Durazzo knew that even if the 
 Hungarians should be victorious, which was still 
 doubtful, the Neapolitans would never submit for 
 long to their yoke. So he was playing a double 
 game ; and sad to say many of the Neapolitan 
 nobles followed his bad example, and courted the 
 favour of the Hungarian King. 
 
 Louis, desiring to strike terror into the Neapolitan 
 people, had had a banner made of black silk or 
 velvet, upon which was painted in most realistic 
 style and colours a sensational picture of the assassina- 
 tion of Andrew. This ghastly standard was borne 
 by a band of mourners robed in black to heighten 
 its effect. 
 
 Finding herself deserted by so many of her sub- 
 jects, and believing her cause to be hopeless, Joanna, 
 disheartened by the vile reports current about her, 
 determined to leave Naples and retire to Provence, 
 where she as Countess of that country was idolised 
 and certain of a welcome. Accordingly she called a 
 general council of all the principal and wisest men 
 of her kingdom, and with that eloquence for which 
 
Joanna Marries a Second Time 121 
 
 she was so famed made a speech in which she 
 declared to them the resolution at which she had 
 arrived. She began by telling her audience of the 
 danger which threatened the capital from the 
 approach of the King of Hungary, who was now 
 close at its gates, and of her powerlessness to 
 resist him because of the calumnies which had 
 been spread abroad by her enemies, who without 
 any crime of hers had accused her of the most 
 atrocious iniquity, insensible of the pity which they 
 should have felt for their Queen, who in the 
 earliest bloom of youth had been the victim of 
 misfortune. 
 
 She then went on to say that in order to make 
 known her innocence to the Vicar of Christ on earth, 
 as it was known to God in heaven, and to force the 
 whole world to acknowledge it also, she intended to 
 go to Avignon and plead her cause before the Holy 
 Father, whose absolution she would beg. 
 
 She continued : " Only against me is the anger of 
 the King of Hungary directed, me whom he holds as 
 the murderess of his brother Andrew. You I know 
 will take my part ; you will not refuse to defend me 
 and my rights — if not for my own merits, at least 
 for the love you bore my grandfather, the late King 
 Robert. I know this ; but innocent blood shall not 
 flow in a fruitless struggle. I yield my rights for 
 the public good. I absolve you all, both nobles 
 and people, from your oath of allegiance to me. I 
 
i22 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 command you to make no resistance to the King of 
 Hungary. Submit yourselves to him and disarm 
 his anger by obedience. Deliver to him the keys of 
 all the towns and castles in my kingdom, without 
 waiting for the summons of herald or trumpet. 
 
 "I leave you behind me my most precious pledge, 
 my little son Charobert. May his innocent smile be 
 your advocate, and soften the angry monarch. To 
 me, the persecuted Queen, shall distant France give 
 a place of refuge until the solemn judgment of 
 God's viceregent on earth shall absolve me from this 
 shameful reproach, and then full of honour I will 
 return to my country as Queen, which I now leave 
 with a broken heart, but a pure conscience." 
 
 This touching speech, delivered with all the grace 
 not only of the most ilovely woman of her day, but 
 also of one of the most accomplished orators, moved 
 the assembly to tears. But the majestic young Queen 
 had sufficient self-control to command her own 
 emotion, and sat there sad but dignified while both 
 burghers and warriors were weeping at her feet ; 
 and the solemn silence with which they had at first 
 listened was now broken by cheers and exclamations, 
 imploring her to remain and dare every risk, the 
 nobles vowing to lay down their lives for her and 
 her children. 
 
 The age in which Joanna lived was the age of 
 chivalry, so it is not surprising that this speech of 
 one of the most fascinating woman that the world 
 
Joanna Marries a Second Time 123 
 
 has seen should have won the hearts of her hearers, 
 for devotion to beauty at this time of day wasjcarried 
 to a degree of enthusiasm bordering on madness. 
 
 It was not only the younger barons and knights 
 and citizens who were moved by Joanna's beauty 
 and eloquence ; the old sage councillors were also 
 touched. They not only applauded her resolution 
 and approved of her plans, but they too vowed not 
 to rest until she was able to return, and they placed 
 their lives and fortunes at her service. 
 
 The journey from Naples to Avignon, in days 
 before the use of steam had been discovered, was 
 slow and by no means sure, for as the greater part of 
 the way was a sea-voyage the travellers were at the 
 mercy of wind and waves. 
 
 On January 15th, 1347 (old style), the Queen em- 
 barked for Provence, taking with her her household, 
 a few most faithful friends, among them Nicholas 
 Acciajuoli, and the Princess of Taranto, her sister- 
 in-law, wife of Robert, Prince of Taranto, Louis's 
 elder brother, and her celebrated diamonds and other 
 jewels. 
 
 Three galleys were the means of transport. A 
 galley was usually a three-masted vessel with one 
 deck, supplied with oars, the number of which varied ; 
 a Venetian galley had sixty-four, and probably 
 Joanna's had not less. They were rowed generally 
 by criminals : hence the expression, " sent to the 
 galleys." When Joanna reached the sea it is said 
 
124 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 that every man and woman in the city was at 
 the harbour, to catch a glimpse of the young 
 Queen. As many as could get near enough to do 
 so kissed her hand before she embarked, and both 
 men and women wept bitterly as she left the shore, 
 and stood on the beach watching as long as there 
 was a sign of the disappearing galleys. 
 
 The voyage, owing to the ignorance of nautical 
 science of the times, was a dangerous one, and as 
 it was performed in mid-winter the Mediterranean 
 was quite capable of giving them a very rough time ; 
 and as soon as the vessels were out of sight the 
 crowd besieged the churches, and, kneeling round the 
 altars, invoked every saint — especially Our Lady and 
 St. Januarius, the patron saint of Naples — to protect 
 their beloved sovereign and grant her a safe voyage 
 and a speedy return to her country. 
 
 As Joanna sailed past the isolated rock in the 
 bay, crowned with the gloomy Castel del Ovo, her 
 mother's heart must have been pierced with grief 
 and fear, for there she had left her little son 
 Charobert — now at the interesting age of two, just 
 beginning to prattle — with his guardians chosen by 
 the Pope, who had selected this casdc as the safest 
 place for the heir to the crown. The poor young 
 mother was destined never to see her child again ; 
 but she could not know this when she left him, 
 although she must under the circumstances have felt 
 very anxious. 
 
Joanna Marries a Second Time 125 
 
 Her husband, Louis of Taranto, was with her 
 for three days, and on the 18th he landed on the 
 Italian shore, which was neutral ground. 
 
 The Princess of Taranto, whom her husband had 
 sent to her father, the Duke of Bourbon, as Naples 
 was in such a disturbed state, also landed here with 
 Nicholas Acciajuoli, who, bent himself on an 
 important mission to Florence, was to escort the 
 Princess thither ; and now Joanna was left almost 
 alone to proceed to Nice, where she landed two days 
 later, intending to travel the rest of the way to 
 Avignon by land. But on reaching Achisi she met 
 Raymond de Baux, Prince of Orange, who was her 
 second cousin, the Count de Soult, and some other 
 Provencal barons, who were evidently on the look- 
 out for her, having heard from the Hungarians that 
 she was coming to Avignon. To her amazement, 
 they seized her suite and sent them all back as 
 prisoners to Nice, and led Joanna herself, with great 
 respect and courtesy, but as a State prisoner, to Aix, 
 the capital of Provence, where they lodged her in 
 the now deserted palace of her ancestors, the ancient 
 counts of Aix. 
 
 Orange, we must explain, was a tiny principality, 
 the chief town of which was about thirteen miles 
 north of Avignon, and called Orange ; it was at this 
 time an independent State, and remained so until 
 the sixteenth century. The Barons de Baux had 
 been the reigning princes of Orange since the 
 
I2 6 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 eleventh century ; they were constantly lighting for 
 the titles of Count of Provence and King of Aries. 
 
 The reason for this extraordinary reception of 
 Joanna from these Provencal barons, who were so 
 loyal to the Angevine family, and supposed to idolise 
 their beautiful Countess, the Queen of the Two 
 Sicilies, was the reports spread by her enemy, the 
 King of Hungary, to the effect that she intended 
 to dispose of her Provencal dominions in order to 
 obtain the means to carry on the war against 
 Louis of Hungary. 
 
 For this purpose, the emissaries of Louis had 
 declared, she was travelling to Avignon in order to 
 meet there her cousin John, Duke of Normandy, 
 who in 1358 succeeded his father, Philip de Valois, 
 as John I. of France, and sell her Provencal posses- 
 sions to him. The Provencals, who were a proud 
 race and, as we have said, devoted to the Angevine 
 line, were determined to stop this sale at all costs, 
 and so seized Joanna and confined her as a state 
 prisoner at Aix, whither they conducted her with 
 all courtesy and respect. 
 
 She was treated as a Queen in this gloomy, 
 fortress-like castle, but she was not allowed to see 
 any one unless her attendants were present. This 
 was in order to prevent her from making any 
 attempt to negotiate the sale of Provence. In this 
 desolate building, formerly the scene of revelry and 
 magnificence, whose now silent walls once rang with 
 
Joanna Marries a Second Time 127 
 
 the songs of the Troubadours, we must now leave 
 the unfortunate Queen while we relate what happened 
 in her absence from Naples. 
 
 Little did Joanna think when she set out for 
 Provence, where she as Countess was so revered and 
 loved, that this would be the reception she would 
 meet with on stepping on to Provencal soil. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 The King of Hungary's Vengeance 
 
 TDEFORE leaving her kingdom Joanna had cora- 
 *-* manded that the same governors should 
 continue to hold their offices in all the towns and 
 fortresses during her absence, so that on her return 
 she might find her country in no worse state than 
 when she left it. She had confidence in those to 
 whom she had entrusted the government to safe- 
 guard her interests, and she trusted that by ordering 
 the gates of every town to be thrown open to the 
 King of Hungary, and no resistance offered to his 
 army, his anger would be pacified, and that he would 
 not carry his threats of vengeance any further into 
 execution. 
 
 Aversa was the place to which the special vengeance 
 of Louis was directed, and thither his troops were 
 advancing with threatening steps. Fear went before ; 
 all trembled at the report of his approach. One 
 
 town, Sulmone, in the north of the kingdom, refused 
 
 128 
 
The King of Hungary's Vengeance 129 
 
 to obey Joanna's command to surrender, and opposed 
 him, but he took it and sacked it, and continued his 
 march. 
 
 The Neapolitan princes of the blood, hearing of 
 the resistance of Sulmone, sent an embassy to Louis 
 begging him to grant them a safe-conduct, and a 
 written declaration that he considered them innocent 
 of the murder of Andrew. The Hungarian King 
 granted both these requests, and the princes, trusting 
 in his honour and chivalry, advanced in a body to 
 meet him at Aversa, that scene of one tragedy 
 destined to be the scene of another scarcely less 
 terrible drama. 
 
 Louis had assumed the title of King of Jerusalem 
 and Sicily already, though both belonged to Joanna ; 
 but the princes, to appease his wrath, recognised 
 these titles by performing their homage according 
 to the etiquette of the times, by kissing him on the 
 mouth, and then they all sat down to a meal. By 
 virtue of these two acts, either of which was con- 
 sidered sufficient to ensure their safety, they had 
 declared themselves his vassals, and he had virtually 
 pledged himself to protect them ; and by all the 
 laws of chivalry, then held in the most sacred 
 esteem, their lives and persons were inviolable. 
 
 The King of Hungary received them apparently 
 as friends, but after the banquet he and the other 
 Hungarians all armed themselves, while the Nea- 
 politans were defenceless. In the courtyard of the 
 
 9 
 
i3° The Beautiful Queen 
 
 castle where they were all assembled, both Neapolitans 
 and Hungarians mounted their horses, and Louis 
 announced his intention of proceeding with them 
 to Naples ; but as they started, with the Duke of 
 Durazzo riding by the side of the Hungarian 
 monarch, the latter turned to Charles and said in 
 an ominous tone, which struck terror into Durazzo's 
 heart : 
 
 " Lead us to where my brother Andrew was 
 killed." 
 
 Durazzo, noting the ferocity which shone in the 
 King's eyes, answered : 
 
 " Don't trouble yourself about that. I was not 
 there." 
 
 The accounts of what followed vary. One says 
 that Louis, on reaching Aversa, at once took 
 prisoners the Duke of Durazzo and all the princes 
 who had remained in Naples, including the little 
 Charobert, whom this writer says the Neapolitans 
 had brought with them in his cradle — which, seeing 
 he was two years old, seems improbable. Carraccioli, 
 the author in question, says that Louis then ordered 
 the Duke of Durazzo to be beheaded on the same 
 spot on which Andrew was murdered, and then kept 
 the others whom he had arrested chained in irons 
 most strictly until he could send them to Hungary. 
 
 We prefer to follow Villani's version, which tells 
 us that Louis, persisting in his demand to be shown 
 the spot where Andrew was murdered, was led to 
 
The King of Hungary's Vengeance 131 
 
 the Celestine monastery, where they all dismounted 
 and proceeded to the castle, going up to the gallery 
 in which Andrew was first seized, and then on to the 
 balcony from which he was hanged and thrown over 
 into the garden. 
 
 When they reached this spot the fury of the King 
 knew no bounds. He turned to Durazzo in a 
 transport of rage, and said : 
 
 " You have been a false traitor, and compassed 
 the death of your lord my brother, and intrigued in 
 the Papal court together with your uncle, the 
 Cardinal of Perigord, who, at your request, delayed 
 and endeavoured to prevent his coronation, which 
 should, as was becoming, have been performed by 
 the sanction of the Pope, and this delay was the 
 cause of his death. 
 
 " With fraud and deceit you obtained a dis- 
 pensation from the Pope to take your cousin, his 
 sister-in law, to wife, in order that, by the death of 
 him and the Queen Joanna, his wife, you might 
 become King in their stead. 
 
 " Moreover, you have been in arms with that 
 traitor Louis, Prince of Taranto, our rebel, who has 
 done as you have done, and with fraud and sacrilege 
 has married that iniquitous and adulterous woman, 
 traitorous to her King and husband, who was 
 Andrew, our brother, and therefore it is fitting 
 that you should die where you caused him to die." 
 
 Durazzo vehemently protested his innocence, and 
 
*3 2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 implored the King's mercy, but in vain. Louis now 
 produced the letters to Charles Artus, written in 
 Durazzo's name and sealed with his seal, concocting 
 the assassination of Andrew, and then demanded 
 how he could excuse himself. 
 
 Without giving the unhappy Durazzo time to 
 examine the documents in question, which are con- 
 sidered to be of very doubtful authenticity — for 
 Charles Artus was not yet taken, so it is not easy 
 to see how they could have come into Louis's 
 possession, and Durazzo's seal was easily imitated, 
 as it was well known all over Europe — the angry 
 King called forward one of his suite, who stabbed 
 the unarmed Duke in the breast, while another 
 Hungarian seized him by the hair. A second stab 
 in the throat, which partially severed his head from 
 his body, killed him. 
 
 Nothing can justify the conduct and treachery of 
 Louis in this murder. It was a gross breach of 
 faith and trust, it was a dastardly action, cowardly 
 in the extreme ; and whether Durazzo was guilty 
 of Andrew's death or not it was unjust, because 
 he was murdered without any trial or examination, 
 or witness against him except these very doubtful 
 letters. 
 
 Under pretence of zeal to punish his brother's 
 murderers, Louis was bent on obtaining the crown 
 of the Two Sicilies for himself ; and as Durazzo was 
 certainly aiming at the same object, he was a special 
 
The King of Hungary's Vengeance 133 
 
 object of hatred to Louis, who had not forgiven him 
 for stealing his bride, Maria of Sicily, from him. 
 But, fortunately for Joanna, his zeal outran his 
 discretion, for this foul murder, coupled with his 
 treachery, revolted the feelings of all classes, rich and 
 poor, against him, and a reaction set in in favour 
 of the Queen. 
 
 Not content with murdering Durazzo, he threw 
 the body over the fatal balcony and forbade any one 
 to bury it till he gave permission, thus denying his 
 victim, whom he had already deprived of the last 
 Sacraments, Christian burial. 
 
 He seized all the other princes who had been his 
 guests an hour before, and threw them into the 
 Castle of Aversa as prisoners for the present, until 
 he could make other arrangements for taking them 
 to Hungary. He then set out for Naples, but he 
 was met at Melita, which is half-way between the 
 city and Aversa, by a deputation of the citizens, who 
 saluted him with the greatest reverence — of which 
 he scorned to take the least notice, but rode into 
 Naples as a conqueror, his terrible banner carried 
 before him, his helmet on his head, refusing to pass 
 under the canopy which the chief nobility brought 
 out to hold over him. 
 
 He also declined to meet the governors of the 
 city and the representatives of the nobility, but 
 demanded the keys of the city to be given up to 
 him, and sent them to Hungary in token of con- 
 
i34 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 quest. He then let loose his soldiers with orders 
 to destroy all the palaces of the royal family, and 
 the terrified Neapolitans feared he was going to 
 pillage the whole city ; but this he forbade his soldiers 
 to do, his chief wrath being directed against all the 
 royal princes. 
 
 Louis then held another inquiry — or rather in- 
 quisition, for torture was the means employed to 
 get evidence — into Andrew's death, and many nobles 
 were executed as the result of these mock trials ; 
 the real object of which was to obtain incriminating 
 evidence against Joanna, and to remove all the 
 barons who were opposed to the Hungarian cause. 
 The first object was completely defeated, for neither 
 death nor torture could extort a word of evidence 
 against the Queen ; another proof of her innocence. 
 
 Louis now took possession of little Canrobert, 
 Joanna's child, whom he loaded with caresses and 
 then sent him to Hungary with the other princes. 
 The child did not live very long after reaching 
 Hungary, and it was far better for Joanna that he 
 died there ; for had his death taken place in Naples, 
 her slanderers would have said that he had been 
 murdered to make room for the children of her 
 second marriage. The other royal princes were 
 sent, chained, to the Castle of Wisgrade, which is 
 described as a roomy prison, but " where there 
 was little to have and less to spend." 
 
 In the meanwhile Maria of Sicily, the young 
 
The King of Hungary's Vengeance 135 
 
 Duchess of Durazzo, was waiting in the Castel 
 Nuovo to meet the Hungarian King, whom she 
 expected to return with her husband, who had gone 
 to meet him. Her two children were with her 
 when a messenger arrived to inform her of the 
 King of Hungary's treachery, and the horrible 
 murder of the husband of her youth, whom she 
 loved passionately, and who had saved her from 
 marrying Louis of Hungary, whom she hated. On 
 hearing the ghastly news, and knowing Louis was 
 now on his way from Aversa — that place so fatal to 
 her and her sister Joanna — to her place of retreat, 
 where she dreaded he would tear her children from 
 her arms and send them prisoners to Hungary, 
 while what form his vengeance might take against 
 her who had jilted him she did not know, she 
 immediately left the Castel Nuovo and took refuge 
 for the rest of the day in some neighbouring 
 buildings. 
 
 Here she assumed the disguise of a beggar, 
 laying aside all signs of her riches and high rank, 
 and as soon as it was dark she issued forth with 
 her two babies, and fled for protection to the 
 neighbouring monastery of Santa Croce. We can 
 well imagine the sensation her arrival must have 
 caused among the monks, when the young Duchess 
 of Durazzo, who was second in rank only to the 
 Queen, knocked at their postern-gate disguised as 
 a poor beggar, carrying two babies in her arms, the 
 
136 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 elder of whom could not speak, while it was plainly 
 visible that a third child would soon be added to 
 her family. The monks could not have denied 
 shelter even to the beggar she was counterfeiting nor 
 did they hesitate to take in the Duchess ; though 
 her presence was a source of the greatest danger to 
 them, for if Louis had discovered it he would 
 undoubtedly have sacked the monastery. 
 
 The monks kept her for a few days while Louis 
 was making a strict search for her, and had she 
 fallen into his hands would no doubt have im- 
 prisoned her, though for the sake of the unborn 
 child he might have spared her life, at any rate 
 until that was born. During these few days a plan 
 was made for her escape by a few friends and the 
 monks, who decided that an attempt must be made 
 to send her to her sister in Provence. Apparently 
 the news of the Queen's imprisonment had not 
 reached the monastery or Naples. Maria was to 
 learn on her arrival in Avignon, if she ever got 
 there, of Joanna's captivity. 
 
 The disguise of a beggar was not considered 
 sufficient for one so well known as the Duchess 
 of Durazzo, so she put on the habit of one of the 
 monks, and with a few faithful friends managed, 
 after undergoing many hardships and dangers by 
 sea and by land, to reach Aix, where we left Joanna 
 confined. 
 
 The reason of Joanna's captivity at Aix was 
 
The King of Hungary's Vengeance 137 
 
 partly due to the affection of her Provencal subjects, 
 partly to the false reports which the Hungarians 
 had circulated about her among the nobility of 
 Provence, to the effect that she was going to 
 Avignon to endeavour to sell her Provencal 
 dominions in order to get money to continue the 
 war against the King of Hungary. To prevent 
 this sale, which neither their pride nor their affection 
 for the ancient Angevine rulers could brook, they 
 subjected Joanna to a captivity which they had the 
 grace to make as pleasant as possible under the 
 circumstances, and in which she was treated with 
 all the respect due to her as Queen and Countess 
 of Provence, and we are told also with the utmost 
 courtesy. 
 
 Maria, the widowed Duchess of Durazzo, was 
 only eighteen when with her two little baby girls, 
 Joanna and Agnes, she reached her sister, the 
 captive Queen, who was separated from her own 
 little son. The meeting between the two sisters 
 was no doubt very touching, when after so many 
 perils Maria at last found herself in a place of safety, 
 although that place was a prison. 
 
 Both these young widows had lost their husbands 
 by a violent death, and, strange to say, Andrew 
 and Charles of Durazzo had been murdered on 
 the same spot, and the same cruel enemy was 
 pursuing them. Joanna, generously forgetting that 
 Charles of Durazzo had been a traitor to her, took 
 
138 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 upon herself the care and education of his children, 
 and when the third child was born adopted her as 
 her daughter. No doubt the two little babies of 
 Maria were a source of amusement and consolation 
 to both sisters in their captivity, and to some extent 
 atoned to Joanna for the loss of her boy, of whose 
 fate she was so uncertain. 
 
 We must now see what had become of Joanna's 
 husband and Nicholas Acciajuoli, who, when they 
 left Joanna, had intended to proceed by different 
 ways to Florence, where Angelo Acciajuoli, the 
 brother of Nicholas, was bishop, in order to enlist 
 his services on Joanna's behalf, for he was a man 
 of great influence in the Papal Court. 
 
 The fate of Louis and Joanna was, it may be said, 
 in the Pope's hands. If he judged them guilty of 
 the murder of Andrew, he had the power to send 
 them not only to prison, but to the scaffold ; while, 
 on the other hand, if he pronounced them innocent, 
 and took them under his fatherly protection, Joanna 
 might recover her fair fame and her kingdom. 
 
 It was therefore of vital importance to both 
 Joanna and Louis to leave no stone unturned to 
 procure a favourable verdict at the Court of Avignon, 
 and they were most fortunate in being able to 
 approach such a powerful advocate as the Bishop 
 of Florence with such an influential friend as his 
 brother Nicholas to plead for them. 
 
 Angelo Acciajuoli once proposed to pay Petrarch 
 
The King of Hungary's Vengeance 139 
 
 a visit in his hermitage at Vaucluse, to see him and 
 the celebrated fountain, said never to have been 
 fathomed, which is the source of the River Sorgia, 
 and rises in the midst of a gloomy cavern at the 
 foot of a huge rock. Petrarch, highly delighted at 
 the prospect of receiving so honourable a guest, 
 scoured the neighbourhood to obtain delicacies to 
 set before him when he should arrive. 
 
 The Bishop, who was on his way from Avignon 
 to Florence, was expected to the midday dejeuner 
 at twelve o'clock. Everything was ready at the 
 appointed time ; twelve o'clock struck, but no 
 Bishop appeared, and the poet, who wanted his 
 luncheon, grew impatient, and while waiting wrote 
 some lines to the Prior of the neighbouring 
 monastery to the following effect : 
 
 " There is no more faith in the world. We can 
 depend on no one ; the more I see the more I feel 
 this. Even your Bishop, upon whom I thought I 
 could rely, he deceives me. He promised to dine 
 with me to-day. I have done for him what I never 
 did for any one. I have upset my house to treat 
 him well. He fears, no doubt, that he will meet 
 with the repast of a poet, and deigns not to visit 
 the place where the great King Robert, where 
 cardinals and princes have been : some to see the 
 fountain, others to visit me. But if I am unworthy 
 to receive such a guest, it seems to me that he is 
 still more unworthy for breaking his word." 
 
i4° The Beautiful Queen 
 
 By the time these lines were written a great 
 commotion was heard outside the hermitage, and 
 the good Bishop arrived, having been delayed on 
 the way. 
 
 But to return to Louis of Taranto and his tutor. 
 When they reached the Florentine frontier they 
 were met by an embassy from the chief magistrates, 
 forbidding them to enter Florence, lest by so doing 
 the inhabitants should suffer from the vengeance of 
 Louis of Hungary. The Guelph party in Florence 
 took no part in this protest, and were highly 
 indignant at it, for they owed much both to the 
 relations of Joanna and to the uncle and brother 
 of Louis, who had laid down their lives for them 
 in battle. 
 
 But though the Florentines had received so many 
 favours from Joanna's father and King Robert, as 
 well as from Louis's relations, the chief citizens 
 decided it would not do to run the risk of incurring 
 the anger of the Hungarian King, so Louis was 
 obliged to take refuge for ten days in the Castle 
 of Valdepeso, which belonged to a chief of the 
 Acciajuoli family. 
 
 This was all the more galling to the Guelphs 
 because a month before, when Philip Gonzago of 
 Mantua, who had been fighting on the side of the 
 Hungarians, passed through Florence on his way 
 from Naples he was received with the honours they 
 wished to show to Prince Louis of Taranto. 
 
The King of Hungary's Vengeance 141 
 
 Nicholas Acciajuoli was, however, too faithful and 
 too clever a friend to his pupil, Louis, and to his 
 sovereign, Joanna, not to find a way to help her ; 
 so he chartered two armed galleys from Genoa, and 
 on board them he and Louis sailed for Provence. 
 But on nearing the shore they found they could not 
 land with safety either at Marseilles or Nice, and 
 they heard the bad news that Joanna was in 
 captivity, the Barons in open rebellion, and Louis's 
 Hungarian agents very busy doing all the mis- 
 chief they could. Neither Louis of Taranto nor 
 Acciajuoli were men to be easily baffled ; they were 
 determined to reach Avignon by hook or by crook, 
 so they sailed past the Provencal shore to Aigues 
 Morte, which is on French soil, and landed there, 
 and, following the course of the Rh6ne, arrived at 
 Villeneuve, on the opposite bank of the river to 
 Avignon. Arrived here, all they had to do was 
 to cross the celebrated Bridge of St. Benezet at 
 Avignon. Louis, however, thought it more prudent 
 to remain at Villeneuve until he knew what kind of 
 a reception he would meet with at the Papal court, 
 while Acciajuoli and his brother, the Bishop of 
 Florence, ^who had joined them at Valdepeso, went 
 to see Clement VI. and consult with him as to 
 what was to be done to reinstate Joanna on her 
 throne. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Joanna Pleads before the Pope and Cardinals 
 
 THE city of Avignon has many claims to 
 celebrity. The fact that it was the chosen 
 place of residence of the seven French Popes, from 
 1309 to 1378, would in itself be sufficient to invest 
 it with an interest second only to Rome itself, but 
 it has other claims to fame. It was, as we have 
 already said, the home of Petrarch's Laura, and in 
 one of its churches he first met her. Its streets and 
 gardens were traversed by the poet and his beloved 
 lady, and in another of its churches is her tomb. 
 During the residence of the Popes it was visited by 
 most of the various European sovereigns, by their 
 ambassadors, and, especially during the reign of 
 Clement VI., it was resorted to by the most learned 
 men in Europe. 
 
 In the seventeenth century the celebrated Crillon 
 died there and was buried there. He was one of 
 
 the most renowned soldiers of the sixteenth cen- 
 
 142 
 
Joanna Pleads before the Pope 143 
 
 tury, and distinguished himself during the reigns 
 of five French kings, and was the first officer to 
 receive the title of Colonel-General of the French 
 infantry. Henry IV. of France always spoke of 
 him as " le brave Crillon," and after the battle of 
 Arques wrote on the battlefield this pregnant dis- 
 patch to him : 
 
 " Hang thyself, brave Crillon. We have fought 
 at Arques and thou wast not there." 
 
 Another very celebrated man was a native of 
 Avignon, the Chevalier Folard, who was born there 
 in 1669, and died there in 1752. He was one of 
 the greatest tacticians the world has seen. He took 
 part in all the wars at the end of the reign of Louis 
 XIV., and supplied the generals under whom he 
 served with plans of defence ; he wrote several 
 works on war-tactics and defence, all of course now 
 hopelessly obsolete, but most valuable at the time 
 they were published. 
 
 At the close of his life he joined a Jansenist 
 sect of fanatics known in France as the " Convul- 
 sionnaires," whose vagaries gave rise to a celebrated 
 witty couplet. They used to visit the tomb of the 
 deacon Francois de Paris, one of their members, 
 who had died in the odour of sanctity, and there 
 they fell into all sorts of convulsions, and pretended 
 that miracles took place in this churchyard of St. 
 Medard. At last they became such a nuisance that 
 the authorities were obliged to order the cemetery 
 
1 44 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 to be closed. Whereupon some wag wrote upon 
 the gate : 
 
 "De par le Roi defense a Dieu, 
 De faire miracle en ce lieu." 
 
 Another of these sects which sprang up some 
 years later, about 1373, was the Dancers ; they were 
 the offspring of the Flagellants, and originated in 
 Aix-la-Chapelle. They spread throughout Liege, 
 Hainault, and Flanders. These fanatics fell sud- 
 denly into fits of dancing. Men and women joined 
 hands, and danced violently till they were almost 
 suffocated, when they fell to the ground and then 
 said they were favoured with visions. The priests 
 declared they were possessed, and exorcised them. 1 
 
 In the year 1226 the town of Avignon was 
 nearly destroyed by order of the Papal legate, sent 
 there to oppose the Count of Toulouse, who had 
 favoured the cause of the Albigeois, and at the time 
 of Joanna's visit it had not recovered from the 
 punishment inflicted upon it, so that like Rome it 
 presented a striking mixture of great luxury side 
 by side with the direst poverty. Among the low, 
 ill-built houses of the natives stood the magnificent 
 palaces of the Cardinals, and perched upon a grand 
 rock above the glorious river Rh6ne was the 
 fortress-like but most splendid of all these mansions, 
 the majestic palace of the Popes, which still survives, 
 though now used as a prison. 
 
 1 Mosheim, vol. i. 
 
Joanna Pleads before the Pope 145 
 
 Petrarch, who was most indignant at the luxury 
 of the Papal Court, thus comments upon these 
 buildings. " What a shame to see these people 
 raising magnificent palaces, resplendent with gold 
 and superb towers which threaten the skies in this 
 new Babylon, whilst the capital of the world lies 
 in ruins ! " 
 
 The poet as an Italian could not tolerate with 
 patience the removal of the Holy See from Rome 
 to Avignon, and with his usual exaggerated but 
 picturesque language he inveighs against it. 
 
 In one of his letters called the " Mysteries " he 
 thus describes the licentiousness of Avignon : " All 
 that they say of Assyrian and Egyptian Babylon, 
 of the four Labyrinths, of the Avernean and Tar- 
 tarean Lakes is nothing in comparison with this 
 hell. We have here a Nimrod powerful on the 
 earth, and a mighty hunter before the Lord, who 
 attempts to scale heaven with raising his superb 
 towers. A Semiramis with her quiver, a Cambyses 
 more extravagant than the Cambyses of old. All 
 that is vile and execrable is assembled in this 
 place. There is no clue to lead you out of this 
 labyrinth, neither that of Dedalus nor Ariadne ; 
 the only means of escaping is by the influence 
 of gold. 
 
 " In this place reign the successors of poor fisher- 
 men, who have forgotten their origin. They march 
 covered with gold and purple, proud of the spoils 
 
 10 
 
J46 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of princes and of the people. Instead of those 
 little boats in which they gained their living on the 
 Lake of Gennesareth, they inhabit superb palaces. 
 To the most simple repasts have succeeded the 
 most sumptuous feasts ; and where the apostles went 
 on foot covered only with sandals are now seen 
 insolent satraps mounted on horses ornamented 
 with gold, and champing golden bits. Poor old 
 fishermen ! For whom have you laboured ? O 
 times ! O manners ! " 
 
 It was under the pontificate of Clement VI., to 
 whom he alluded as " Nimrod," that Petrarch wrote 
 this, and that the luxury and licentiousness of 
 Avignon reached their highest point ; for Clement 
 VI. was a man of most gentle temper, very 
 easily led, most generous, and very fond, it must 
 be confessed, of luxury. He liked the society of 
 ladies, and they were admitted to his palace and 
 formed a court there, at the head of which was 
 Cicely, Duchess of Turenne — Petrarch's " Semiramis 
 with her quiver." She married the son of Alphonsus 
 IV., King of Aragon, and became Duchess of 
 Turenne in her own right by the death of her 
 brother, the Viscount, in 1340. 
 
 This woman was excessively proud and imperious, 
 and very cunning also, and managed to obtain a 
 very strong influence over the Pope, and amassed 
 great riches from all hands. She was the special 
 object of Petrarch's hatred. She lived in the 
 
Joanna Pleads before the Pope 147 
 
 greatest splendour, and completely dominated 
 the Court of Avignon, and disposed of a 
 great deal of the patronage attached to the Papal 
 Court by virtue of her friendship with Clement, 
 who allowed himself to be influenced by her; 
 but there is not the slightest ground for the 
 suggestions of some unscrupulous writers, who 
 have calumniated the Holy Father by suggesting 
 there was more than friendship existing between 
 them. 
 
 The scenery round Avignon is most varied ; the 
 deep blue waters of the Rh6ne rush past the lordly 
 palaces, and receive the Durance, which winds 
 about on the other side of the city. Just below 
 it wide avenues of elms surround the town. The 
 land is very rich : vines crown the hills, olive-trees 
 cover the meadows, while islands in the great river, 
 magnificent trees, and rich fields all combine to 
 make a fairylike prospect. 
 
 The walls round the city were built in 1358, 
 but they are more ornamental than suitable for pur- 
 poses of defence, and are flanked with square towers. 
 The mystic number seven regulated everything in 
 Avignon : there were seven gates in these walls, 
 seven churches, seven monasteries, seven nunneries, 
 seven colleges, seven parishes, seven hospitals, 
 and seven Popes lived there in succession — though 
 this last was by accident or coincidence, not by 
 design. We must not forget to mention the cele- 
 
H8 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 brated Bridge of St Ben6zet * which spans the 
 Rhone at Avignon, on the opposite side of which 
 stands the town of Villeneuve, where on their 
 arrival Louis of Taranto remained, while Nicholas 
 Acciajuoli and his brother, the Bishop of Florence, 
 went to Avignon to obtain an audience of the 
 Pope. Clement is said to have received them with 
 his usual courtesy and affability, and no doubt 
 entertained them at one of his regal banquets, for 
 he was famed for the delicacy of his table as well 
 as for the sumptuousness of his furniture and table 
 appointments. 
 
 His first step upon hearing their errand, and 
 learning of the imprisonment of Joanna, was to 
 send for the Duke of Normandy and prevail upon 
 him to leave Provence, and return immediately to 
 his own dominions, to show the Provencals that 
 Joanna was not about to sell Provence to him ; this 
 quieted their fears, and paved the way for Joanna's 
 release. 
 
 There was living at Avignon at this time a 
 relation of Joanna's, namely, the Due de Berri, 
 who on hearing of her captivity also exerted him- 
 self to obtain her release, working most zealously 
 on her behalf. He went round to all the principal 
 
 1 St. Benezet was originally a shepherd living in the second half 
 of the twelfth century. He built this bridge, and was the founder 
 of an order called " les Freres Pontifes," or the Makers of Bridges ; 
 he was also the patron saint of engineers, and of the city of Avignon. 
 He died in 1184. 
 
Joanna Pleads before the Pope 149 
 
 nobles in turn, and assured them on his word as a 
 prince that there was no truth in the report spread 
 by the Hungarians, that Joanna was about to sell 
 her Provencal dominions. 
 
 These measures prevailed. The Barons, at last 
 convinced that they had been deceived by the 
 malice of the Hungarian emissaries of Louis of 
 Hungary, went to Aix and assured the captive 
 Queen of their fidelity, removed all the restrictions 
 under which she had been placed, and renewed 
 their oaths of allegiance to her. Joanna then 
 selected a new court from the nobles of Provence, 
 and prepared to leave Aix for Avignon to plead 
 there her cause before the Pope. She knew no 
 rest until this object had been fulfilled and her 
 character cleared in the eyes of all Christendom 
 from the odious charges brought against her. 
 
 Her captivity had lasted nearly two months : she 
 was taken prisoner on January 20th, and on the 1 5th 
 of the following March she made her triumphant 
 and most magnificent entry into Avignon, the streets 
 of which were hung with silk and cloth-of-gold 
 and of silver, and decorated with garlands of flowers 
 for the occasion. The balconies of the splendid 
 palaces and houses of the rich were filled with 
 ladies dressed in ceremonial robes of such costli- 
 ness that they were handed down from generation 
 to generation. 
 
 Here we may mention a sumptuary law in exist- 
 
150 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 ence in Provence and France at this time, by which 
 it was prohibited to all women below a certain fixed 
 rank to wear silk, gold, furs, pearls, or other precious 
 jewels, and in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
 not even the relations of Popes, or the wives and 
 daughters of marshals and barons were exempt from 
 it. These laws were made to repress the luxury and 
 extravagance of the age, especially among the lower 
 classes primarily : but they afterwards, in England 
 and Scotland, became protective in character. 
 Edward III. in 1336 passed a most arbitrary 
 sumptuary law in England, limiting the number of 
 courses his subjects might take at one meal ; but 
 this law was never enforced from the very be- 
 ginning, and yet it remained on the Statute Book 
 until 1856. 
 
 Laura's nobility is said to be proved, if proof 
 were needed, by the fact that she possessed some 
 silk gloves embroidered in gold — one of which she 
 once dropped and Petrarch picked it up, but was 
 not permitted to retain it even for a minute. Unless 
 Laura had been of the requisite high rank, she 
 would not have been allowed to possess these gloves, 
 nor to have worn the other magnificent clothing for 
 which she was famed. 
 
 Of course the Queen of the Two Sicilies and 
 Countess of Provence was exempt from all sumptuary 
 laws, and entered Avignon with all the pomp and 
 insignia of royalty. It must be confessed that 
 
Joanna Pleads before the Pope 151 
 
 Joanna was very fond of purple and fine clothing ; 
 and if it be considered a fault in a woman of 
 her exalted rank to be clad in magnificent robes 
 on grand State occasions, then Joanna was guilty 
 of that fault, of which much has been made by her 
 adverse critics. 
 
 She entered Avignon, seated on a milk-white 
 palfrey caparisoned with purple and gold, wearing 
 a robe of crimson velvet, and over it a mantle 
 of purple velvet, embroidered all over with the 
 fleur-de-lis in gold thread, and bordered with the 
 regal ermine ; on her shoulders glittered the crosses 
 of the kingdom of Jerusalem — one of her titles being, 
 it will be remembered, Empress of Jerusalem — and 
 in her hands she bore her orb and sceptre. Over 
 her head was carried the canopy of State, orna- 
 mented with gold fringes, and its four gilt poles 
 borne in turns by the highest noblemen in her 
 kingdom. These canopy-bearers wore coronets upon 
 their heads and splendid attire. 
 
 The Queen, who was the admiration of all 
 beholders, her beauty calling forth shouts of 
 delight, was accompanied by her husband, Louis 
 of Taranto, who must have felt intensely proud 
 of his young wife and sovereign, and also 
 by Nicholas Acciajuoli and his brother the 
 Bishop of Florence, and by a large escort of 
 her Ultramontane knights, with their ladies all 
 dressed in great splendour. Some of these ladies 
 
15 2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 were carried in litters ; others sat on side-saddles 
 made in the shape of a chair, which could not 
 have had a very equestrian appearance. Joanna 
 was an excellent horsewoman, and may have dis- 
 pensed with this arrangement ; her palfrey was led 
 by two knights of princely birth. 
 
 As the procession passed along the narrow crooked 
 streets it was delayed by the most cosmopolitan of 
 crowds which thronged the city, attracted thither 
 from all parts of Christendom by the presence of 
 the Pope, and it is not likely that in those days 
 crowds were regulated as they are in twentieth- 
 century London. 
 
 The convent of the Ursulines had long been the 
 usual place of residence of the sovereigns of Naples 
 when they visited Avignon, and here they stopped 
 for the Queen to alight to take the customary re- 
 freshment of wine and confectionery, and also to 
 give the Cardinals time to meet in the Consistory 
 Court at the Papal palace, before which she was now 
 about to appear and plead her cause. 
 
 This court was held in one of the magnificently 
 proportioned halls in the Pope's palace. It was 
 arranged with a throne of crimson and gold for the 
 Pope, raised above all the other seats, at one end, 
 and round this, arranged in a semicircle, were seated 
 the Cardinals, on a lower level ; they were all 
 vested in their robes of scarlet silk, with their gold 
 crosses upon their breasts and their jewelled 
 
Joanna Pleads before the Pope 153 
 
 episcopal rings on their right| hands. The Pope 
 is said by one author, from whom we are now 
 quoting, to have worn the triple tiara. This is a 
 mistake. The Papal tiara at this time was only a 
 double crown ; the third crown was not added until 
 the pontificate of Urban V. 
 
 The same writer says Clement was attired in 
 dazzling white robes of silver tissue. This may 
 have been the case ; but white was not adopted 
 by the Popes as the colour of their robes until 
 the time of the Dominican Pope St. Pius V., who 
 introduced it because it was then the custom for 
 a Pope to wear robes of the same colour as his 
 habit if he had been a member of a religious order 
 before his election, and Pius V. was a Dominican, 
 whose habit is white. Clement VI. was not a 
 member of any religious order, so he was at liberty 
 to wear what coloured robes he chose. He was 
 of high rank, belonging to the ancient family of 
 Roger, and loved refinement and splendour, and 
 is described as having more of the chivalry of the 
 knight than the austerity of the priest about him. 
 He was very fond of hunting, and his stud was 
 celebrated all over Europe, while his stables were 
 most luxurious. 
 
 Popes at that time wore white linen slippers, with 
 a cross embroidered in gold upon them, which it 
 has ever, until the present pontificate, been the 
 custom of the faithful to kiss on being presented 
 
154 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 to the Pope. In mediaeval days the cross was 
 often used in dress to procure marks of homage, 
 which would have been denied without it. 
 
 A story is told of one of the Doges of Venice 
 in this connection. In 1363 the father of the 
 reigning Doge chose to go bareheaded rather than 
 uncover his head to his son, whereupon the Doge 
 had a cross placed in front of his hat, and his father 
 then took to his headgear again, and when he met 
 his son took it off saying, " It is not him I salute, 
 but the cross." 
 
 The same idea, only more forcibly expressed, is 
 present in an anecdote relating to the late Tsar of 
 Russia. It is the custom on Easter Day in Russia 
 for all the congregation to kiss the hand of the 
 priest on leaving the church after Mass. On one 
 occasion the Tsar was staying at one of his country 
 palaces at Easter, and went to Mass in a small 
 village church. The priest, who was a peasant, was 
 terrified when the Tsar was about to kiss his hand 
 as he left the church, and drew back, saying he 
 was unworthy of such an honour. The Tsar gave 
 him a most scathing rebuke, saying, as he insisted 
 upon obeying the ritual of his Church, " It is not 
 you I kiss, but Jesus Christ." 
 
 Joanna was led into this consistory between two 
 cardinals, and followed by a crowd of friends and 
 vassals, all anxious to hear the verdict of the Papal 
 Court upon their Queen. 
 
CLEMENT THE SIXTH. 
 
 P- 1541 
 
Joanna Pleads before the Pope 155 
 
 As the Queen in her splendid robes entered 
 the doors of the Consistory Hall she knelt for 
 the first time, then in the middle of it she 
 genuflected a second time on both knees, and 
 finally, when she reached the foot of the throne 
 covered with crimson and gold, upon which the 
 Pope sat, she knelt the third time, and stooping 
 her head kissed his foot and then his hand — a 
 privilege granted to her on account of her high 
 rank. The Pope raised her and kissed her on 
 the lips, and after a few words had passed between 
 them he placed her on a seat prepared for her 
 on his right, rather lower than his own, with a 
 crimson and gold cushion for her feet. 
 
 The hall in which the Consistory was held was 
 filled from end to end with prelates of high rank, 
 princes, nobles, and ambassadors from every court 
 in Europe. 
 
 Conspicuous among them were two ambassadors 
 from Louis of Hungary, who had only just arrived 
 at Avignon from Naples to represent their King, to 
 accuse Joanna of the murder of Andrew, to justify 
 and defend the invasion by Louis of her kingdom, 
 and to demand not only the throne but the life of 
 Queen Joanna, the cynosure of all eyes as she sat 
 there in all the pride of her youth and beauty. 
 
 The Hungarians felt confident of winning their 
 cause, for their King was on very good terms with 
 Clement VI., and it was believed that the Pope would 
 
156 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 favour Hungary, for there were reports that he had 
 a personal dislike of the Queen concerning whom 
 such sinister reports had reached him. The fact 
 that Joanna was an exile, driven out of her country 
 by the avenger of her murdered first husband, might 
 also militate against her, though on the other hand 
 it might evoke pity for her tragic fate. 
 
 Immediately following upon Joanna was her 
 second husband, Louis of Taranto, who likewise 
 made his obeisance to the Pope, and was allowed 
 the privilege of kissing Clement's hand and lips 
 because of his rank as the consort of the Queen ; 
 then Nicholas Acciajuoli and a few of the most 
 distinguished barons in her suite were duly presented 
 to the Holy Father, while she sat by his side medi- 
 tating upon what she would say to defend herself. 
 Not only her throne, but her life also depended 
 upon the verdict of the Consistory. She well knew 
 the power the Pope had over her crown and her 
 person ; she knew it was popularly believed that 
 he had been prejudiced against her, and was on 
 very friendly terms with her arch-enemy, that he 
 had been shocked and horrified at the murder of 
 Andrew, and probably believed some of the tales 
 that were afloat about her. 
 
 She must have trembled as she waited till these 
 presentations were over, when she rose and, leaving 
 her seat, began to address the Pope and Cardinals 
 sitting in judgment upon her. Fortunately for 
 
Joanna Pleads before the Pope 157 
 
 Joanna, eloquence was one of her gifts ; still more 
 fortunate perhaps, that greatest of all feminine gifts 
 was hers in abundance — beauty ; most fortunate of 
 all, her judges were men, to whom her youth, beauty, 
 and terrible misfortunes would appeal strongly. We 
 can well imagine that every eye was turned upon 
 her, from the Pope's to the youngest knight's in 
 the hall. 
 
 We read that " her figure was tall and nobly 
 formed, her air composed and majestic, her carriage 
 altogether royal, her features of exquisite beauty, 
 and, with a character of grandeur, had a certain air 
 of natural goodness that softened their expression 
 and won the love whilst she commanded the respect 
 of those who beheld her." 
 
 What would the verdict be ? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 Joanna's Acquittal and its Results 
 
 LATIN is the language of the Consistory Court 
 of Rome, and, as no mention is made of any 
 interpreter, we may safely conclude that Joanna 
 pleaded her cause in that tongue, which she wrote 
 with ease ; for as her audience was so cosmopolitan 
 and the effect of her eloquence was so immediate, 
 she must have spoken a language understood by 
 all or most of her hearers. Had she addressed 
 them in either the Provencal or Italian language, 
 both of which she spoke with great fluency, only 
 part of her hearers would have understood. On 
 one occasion when Sancho, Prince of Castile, who 
 had to have an interpreter, was present at a Roman 
 Consistory he heard loud applause, and asked his 
 interpreter what was the meaning of it. 
 
 " They have just proclaimed your Highness King 
 of Egypt," said the interpreter. 
 
 " Indeed ! Well, it does not become us to be 
 
 i S 8 
 
Joanna's jAcquittal and its Results 159 
 
 wanting in gratitude ; rise up and proclaim his 
 Holiness Caliph of Bagdad," said the Prince. 
 
 Joanna's defence of herself is said to have been 
 the most masterly piece of feminine oratory ever 
 heard. She first of all stated the points in her 
 defence so logically, clearly, forcibly, and briefly, 
 that long before she had finished speaking her 
 judges were convinced of her innocence. She 
 then went on to express the greatest horror of 
 the foul murder of Andrew, and deplored his sad 
 fate, cut off in the very flower of his youth, with 
 deep pathos, and then spoke of her own great 
 grief and horror at his untimely end, weeping so 
 touchingly that her fierce accusers, the Hungarian 
 ambassadors, were confounded, and attempted no 
 reply when the Queen had finished speaking. But 
 before she concluded she defended herself for the 
 delay in bringing the guilty to judgment, of which 
 she had been accused, and impressed upon her 
 audience that no tortures had been able to force 
 one of the conspirators to accuse her of having 
 had any part in the plot against Andrew. 
 
 The result of her eloquence was that the court 
 declared her not only innocent, but above the sus- 
 picion of guilt. The most ample acquittal which 
 she and her subjects could demand to reinstate her 
 in the good opinion of all men was unanimously 
 pronounced, and a decree passed confirming this 
 verdict. The Pope then publicly absolved her, 
 
160 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 for hers was a case reserved to the Holy See ; and 
 as Joanna was a devout Catholic, she had earnestly 
 desired this grace to wash away all traces of any 
 sin her soul might have incurred during the terrible 
 trials she had been passing through, and she now 
 left the Consistory Hall at peace with God and 
 with man. 
 
 When, with the tears of joy upon her face, 
 she rose from her knees at the Pope's feet after 
 receiving absolution, he conducted her through the 
 Hall of Consistory and the ante-chamber, which 
 was as far as etiquette permitted him to go, and 
 then parted with her, and Louis of Taranto led 
 his innocent wife and Queen to the apartments 
 prepared for her in the Ursuline Convent. Clement 
 VI. was prevented by another rule of etiquette from 
 visiting her there more than once, but he duly 
 paid this visit ; and so long as she remained in 
 Avignon his palace was open to her and her 
 husband, upon both of whom he bestowed every 
 mark of honour. 
 
 Among the favours Joanna received from the 
 hands of the Sovereign Pontiff during her residence 
 in Avignon was the Golden Rose, which Clement 
 had intended giving to the King of Majorca, then 
 in Avignon. This Rose is an ornament made of 
 gold in the shape of a rose, which is blessed by 
 the Pope on the fourth Sunday in Lent, and then 
 bestowed by him upon some sovereign or monastery. 
 
Joanna's Acquittal and its Results 161 
 
 It was not an annual custom until the reign of 
 St. Urban V., who came to the throne in 1363, and it 
 is now generally given to a sovereign. It was a rarer 
 favour in Joanna's day, and very highly valued. It 
 was bestowed upon her on March 27th, and that 
 same day the Queen and Louis of Taranto were led 
 in procession all round the walls of the city of 
 Avignon, as Count and Countess of Provence, and 
 afterwards received the homage of the Provencal 
 barons assembled for that purpose. 
 
 The allegiance of this proud race was not lightly 
 given nor lightly valued ; but as they had always 
 been faithful to the Angevine line, so were they 
 always tenderly attached and absolutely loyal to 
 Joanna, whom they loved to call "la bonne Reine 
 Jeanne." 
 
 Joanna would have had a far happier life if she 
 could have remained in Provence where she was loved 
 and revered by her subjects, instead of having to return 
 to Naples where so many misfortunes awaited her, 
 but during her visit to Avignon the city was visited 
 by one of the most terrible calamities that ever 
 befell suffering humanity. The festivities at the 
 Papal Court were all suspended by the Great Plague, 
 which, having already swept away millions in other 
 parts of Europe, now broke out in Provence. 
 
 It was during this visitation that Clement VI. 
 showed his charity and wisdom in so marked a 
 manner, thus rendering the fell disease less disastrous 
 
 1 1 
 
1 62 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 in its consequences at Avignon than it was in other 
 places. To prevent the spread of the infection, he 
 established a special body of police ; he bought a field 
 outside the city as a burial-ground for the dead, and 
 spent large sums of money on the transport thither 
 of the infected corpses, besides paying doctors to 
 attend the poor and providing winding-sheets for 
 them. Avignon was at the time the plague broke 
 out full of visitors, many having come from the 
 country to pay homage to Joanna, which may 
 perhaps account for the enormous numbers — which 
 were estimated in Avignon at one hundred and 
 twenty thousand — who are said to have perished of 
 this terrible scourge. 
 
 The disease was at its height during Lent, and 
 during the three last days of Holy Week fourteen 
 hundred people are said to have died of it in the 
 city. The fact that it was worst during those days 
 when the Lenten fast was most strict shows that 
 to live well was one of the best means of warding 
 off an attack ; but at that time the Lenten fast was 
 very much stricter than it is now, and dispensations 
 not so easily granted. The greatest number of 
 victims were among the women and children of the 
 poorest classes. 
 
 The rich, however, were by no means exempt, 
 and one of the Avignon victims was Laura, the 
 beloved of Petrarch, who died on April 6th after 
 three days' illness. She had a presentiment that she 
 
Joanna's Acquittal and its Results 163 
 
 would not live beyond three days after the fever set 
 in, so she made her will and sent for a priest and 
 received the Last Sacraments, and died with great 
 resignation, surrounded by friends and relations, 
 whom not even the fear of the plague could keep 
 away from one they so loved and admired. She died 
 about six o'clock in the morning of April 6th, and 
 was buried that same day after vespers, in the 
 chapel attached to the monastery of the Franciscan 
 Friars Minor. 
 
 Petrarch, who was still madly in love with her, 
 was at Verona at the time of her death, anxiously 
 expecting news of her ; but the plague had stopped 
 all communication with Avignon, as the couriers 
 who carried the letters could not pass. He did not 
 get the news of her death until May 9th, when he 
 was at Parma, and his grief, as may be imagined, was 
 intense. He passed several days without eating or 
 drinking, rendering himself, we should think, ex- 
 ceedingly liable to an attack of the dread disease. 
 
 He said of himself that " he dared not think of 
 his condition, much less could he speak of it, and 
 that the loss convinced him that there was no longer 
 anything worth living for; and since the strongest 
 cord of his life was now broken, he should renounce 
 the world, where his cares had been deceitful and 
 his hopes vain and perishing." 
 
 Before Petrarch had ceased to weep for Laura his 
 friend Cardinal Colonna also died of the plague at 
 
164 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Avignon, where his loss was greatly felt ; for his 
 court was a brilliant one, attended by literary men 
 and men of genius from all parts of Europe. But 
 the Italians who visited him could not bear Provence 
 after their Maecenas, as they called him, was dead, and 
 most of them left the city of Avignon and returned 
 to Italy. 
 
 Villani, the historian, was another victim to this 
 terrible pestilence, which had been predicted by 
 astrologers. But he left an account of the beginning 
 of it, and among other things he tells us that the 
 mortality was greater in Pistoja and Prato than in 
 Florence, and greater in Bologna and Avignon and 
 Provence and the whole kingdom of France, but 
 greatest in those countries beyond the sea among 
 the Tartars. 
 
 The Mendicant Friars came out splendidly during 
 this calamity. They attended the plague-stricken, and 
 administered to their spiritual needs, when other 
 priests neglected, and feared to go near them ; 
 they preached, heard the confessions of the dying, 
 and buried the dead. But the fact that many of the 
 dead had left their estates to them out of gratitude 
 roused the jealousy of the secular clergy, who 
 petitioned Clement VI. to suppress them. This 
 petition was presented to the Pope in the same 
 Consistory Court before which Joanna had pleaded, 
 and was supported by some cardinals and bishops. 
 The Pope refused to grant their request, and rebuked 
 
Joanna's Acquittal and its Results 165 
 
 them in the following strong terms for their envious 
 conduct : 
 
 " The Mendicants have exposed their lives by 
 attending dying persons, and administering the 
 sacraments to them, whilst you, consulting your own 
 safety, fled from the danger and abandoned your 
 flocks. You have therefore no reason to complain 
 of what they have got, as they have got it by 
 performing the duty which you have neglected, 
 though incumbent upon you. They employ the 
 little they have gained in building or repairing 
 their churches, but you would perhaps have applied 
 it to very different uses. They preach nothing but 
 what they show by their example to be practicable, 
 whereas many among you preach one thing and 
 practise the contrary." 
 
 The credulity of the age led to a persecution of 
 the Jews, who were accused of having caused the 
 plague by poisoning the fountains. But Clement VI. 
 with his usual clemency defended them in two Bulls 
 which he published, forbidding them to be forcibly 
 baptised, under the severest penalties, as such was 
 the alternative given to the Hebrews if they wished 
 to escape death. 
 
 Another outcome of the fear and panic which 
 the plague roused was the revival of the fanatics 
 known as the Flagellants, who first appeared in 
 the eleventh century, and during the feuds of the 
 Guelphs and Ghibellines they spread throughout 
 
1 66 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 France, Bohemia, Austria, Italy, Russia, Poland, 
 and Hungary, but they did not appear in England 
 until this second outburst of their fanaticism in 1348. 
 
 They were penitents who went in procession 
 through the various towns and cities to which they 
 penetrated, naked to the waist, and armed with 
 scourges, with which they lashed themselves until 
 the blood flowed, and marked their progress on 
 the ground. Clement suppressed them in the 
 following year, but they have frequently made their 
 appearance since. 
 
 It is computed that 100,000 victims perished of 
 the plague in Venice, 60,000 in Florence, 1,200,000 
 in Germany, and it is said that more than 200,000 
 villages and small towns were left without any 
 inhabitants. While of the good Friars who worked 
 so nobly to help the sick and dying, no less than 
 124,434 died of this terrible disease. 
 
 The cardinals and rich barons at Avignon shut 
 themselves up in their palaces, and burnt huge 
 fires to keep away the infection ; and Clement VI., 
 who refused to go away from Avignon while it was 
 raging, also took this precaution of burning large 
 fires and remaining indoors. 
 
 The Great Pestilence, or the Black Death as it was 
 also called, did not appear in England until August 
 of this fatal year, 1348, and before it was extermin- 
 ated it carried off" 5,000,000 victims during the year 
 it lasted. 
 
Joanna's Acquittal and its Results 167 
 
 Boccaccio, who had left Naples when the King of 
 Hungary invaded it, went to Florence and there 
 wrote his description of the ravages of this ghastly 
 scourge, which first of all began in the Far East. 
 He tells us that in his native city " no human 
 wisdom, no precautions, availed to avert the calamity. 
 In vain by the orders of the magistrates were the 
 streets cleared of every impurity ; in vain were 
 the gates of the city closed against all infected 
 persons, and the counsels of the most prudent put 
 in practice for the preservation of health. And 
 equally unavailing were the humble supplications, 
 not once but often made to God by devout persons, 
 in solemn processions and other forms." 
 
 His account is much too long to quote in full, 
 but he describes some of the attendant horrors with 
 great pathos, as when he says that in the panic 
 " brother abandoned brother, the uncle his nephew, 
 the sister her brother, the wife her husband, and, 
 what is more surprising still and scarcely credible, 
 fathers and mothers deserted their children as if 
 they were children (sic) and feared to visit or serve 
 them." Another horror he mentions was the sick being 
 thus deserted by neighbours, by friends, by relatives, 
 so that no woman, however delicate or beautiful 
 or noble, made any scruple to be served by a man, 
 let him be who he might, old or young, from which 
 cause many who survived lost much of the modesty 
 of their manners. 
 
*68 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 The plague had one good effect as far as Joanna 
 was concerned : it frightened Louis of Hungary out 
 of Naples, although it was not so bad there as in 
 other parts of Italy, or as at Avignon and Provence. 
 He, however, thought it better to remove the great 
 body of his men to Apulia, to avoid the infection 
 in Naples, where its ravages were sufficiently serious. 
 His retreat paved the way for Joanna's return, 
 and about this time the news of her acquittal by 
 the Roman Consistory reached Naples, and a revul- 
 sion of feeling towards their exiled Queen set in 
 amongst the Neapolitans. 
 
 With the exception of a few important men, who 
 had gone too far in encouraging the Hungarians 
 to hope for forgiveness from Joanna, all classes 
 now united in earnestly desiring her return and 
 restoration to the throne of her grandfather. The 
 nobility, who hated the haughty Hungarians and 
 their insupportable yoke, resolved to throw it off; 
 but knowing this would be impossible without the 
 help and support of their Queen, they sent secret 
 messengers to Avignon, begging her to return 
 and take up the reins of government again, and 
 promising if she would supply them with a few 
 men and some money they would fight for her 
 and do all in their power to reinstate her in her 
 kingdom. 
 
 At first Joanna was not inclined to agree to this 
 proposal, knowing that it would be no easy task to 
 
Joanna's Acquittal ' and its Results 169 
 
 get rid of the Hungarians ; but she laid the letters 
 brought by the Neapolitan ambassadors before the 
 Pope and the Cardinals, who were only more certain 
 of her innocence when they read them than they 
 had been before. They counselled her to grant the 
 petition of her subjects as quickly as possible, and 
 Clement, anxious if possible to prevent more blood- 
 shed, tried to restore her to her throne by diplomatic 
 measures. To which end he sent an apostolic legate 
 to Louis, Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, who was a relation 
 of the Queen of Hungary, and was remarkable for 
 his gentle manners and persuasive powers of speech, 
 by which the Pope hoped the King of Hungary might 
 be persuaded to retire and leave the throne to Joanna. 
 
 While the Cardinal was treating with Louis of 
 Hungary in Naples, Joanna's staunch friend Nicholas 
 Acciajuoli was engaged in trying to raise men and 
 money in order to wrest the kingdom from the 
 invader by force, if diplomacy failed to accomplish 
 the reinstatement of Joanna. The States of Provence 
 and Piedmont vied with each other in contributing 
 to the expedition, but their combined efforts fell far 
 short of the required sum, and the Queen was re- 
 duced not only to selling her famous diamonds, but 
 all her other jewels, and finally to offering the city of 
 Avignon with the surrounding country to the Pope. 
 
 Louis of Hungary, feeling sure that possession was 
 nine points of law, refused to listen to any of the 
 proposals of the Cardinal of Boulogne for a peaceful 
 
i7° The Beautiful Queen 
 
 settlement, so there was nothing for it, if Joanna was 
 to recover her kingdom, but to resort to arms. 
 
 The sum the Queen asked for Avignon was 
 80,000 golden florins. A gold florin was at that 
 time worth about a fifth of an ounce of gold, so that 
 the price for which she sold it was equal to about 
 60,000 pounds sterling of our money. The Pope 
 immediately paid this sum, which was used to defray 
 the cost of ten galleys fully equipped, and armed 
 with the men Acciajuoli had enlisted to relieve Naples 
 from the Hungarian yoke. 
 
 It is said that the Queen had succeeded in 
 winning the friendship of Clement so completely that 
 he would now do anything for her, and willingly 
 agreed to pay the sum she demanded for Avignon. 
 He knew that Joanna earnestly desired the coronation 
 of her husband, Louis of Taranto, as King of Naples, 
 and that she wished for this almost as much as she 
 wished for the restoration of her kingdom ; and 
 when he gave her and Louis his parting blessing 
 he bestowed the coveted title upon him. 
 
 In consequence of this sale the Emperor 
 Charles IV. yielded to the Pope all the rights which 
 he possessed over the town of Avignon, in the 
 month of November, 1348, at Gorpiet. The Latin 
 contract, still in existence, states among other things 
 that Joanna sold Avignon with the consent of her 
 husband, Louis of Taranto. By this sale she 
 sacrificed the lesser possessions of Avignon to regain 
 
Joanna's Acquittal and its Results 171 
 
 the throne of the Two Sicilies. The contract of sale 
 was signed on June 19th, 1348, in the house at 
 which Joanna was residing in Avignon at the time. 
 
 Joanna remained about three weeks longer in 
 the plague-stricken city of Avignon after the sign- 
 ing of the contract for its sale, and then, all their 
 preparations being complete, she and Louis went to 
 Marseilles and embarked there for Naples, full of 
 hope and elated with the knowledge that at any rate 
 the campaign would not be crippled for want of 
 means. 
 
 They were returning under very different circum- 
 stances from those under which they had left Naples. 
 Then Joanna was suspected and openly accused of 
 the murder of her first husband ; now she was 
 returning with her character not only cleared, but 
 with the assurance of the Pope and Cardinals that she 
 was above suspicion, and was now under the special 
 favour and protection of the Holy See — a valued 
 friend of Clement VI., the idol of the gallant 
 Provencal barons. Moreover, she was going back 
 at the earnest invitation of her Neapolitan subjects, 
 who were now only too ready to lay down their lives, 
 if need be, to restore her to her throne. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 Peace is Proclaimed 
 
 ALL the Neapolitan castles were occupied by the 
 Hungarians, so it was not possible for Joanna 
 to land in the harbour. Accordingly, when her gal- 
 leys reached Naples, they stopped short at the little 
 river of Sebeto, on the Vesuvian side of the city, 
 by the Ponte della Maddalena, to which the in- 
 habitants flocked in crowds to welcome them with 
 every demonstration of joy, so that the whole 
 of that part of the city rang with the shouts 
 with which the people acclaimed their returning 
 Queen. 
 
 Foremost among the barons who hastened to 
 ofFer their congratulations and allegiance were the 
 Count of Minervino and his brothers, who had 
 originally been on the Hungarian side, and now 
 hurried to proffer all the help they could to expel 
 the enemy. 
 
 One of the former enemies of Joanna did not 
 
 return to his allegiance. This was Francis de Baux, 
 
 172 
 
Peace is Proclaimed 173 
 
 Count of Montecagiuso, a nephew of the late King 
 Robert, whose mother Beatrice was a nun, but was 
 taken out of her convent to marry Francis's father, 
 Bertrand de Baux. This was sometimes allowed in 
 the Middle Ages, from reasons of State or policy, 
 when a dispensation was obtained from the religious 
 vows to enable the person to marry. 
 
 During the absence of Louis of Taranto this 
 Francis de Baux had married one of Louis's sisters, 
 without first getting his or Joanna's consent. The 
 poor young Princess of Taranto had found herself 
 alone and unprotected in Naples on the day when 
 the Hungarians had pillaged and destroyed the 
 palaces of the Neapolitan royal family, on that 
 occasion when Joanna's sister Maria had fled in 
 disguise. Francis de Baux had taken pity on the 
 Princess, who was his cousin ; and she, knowing her 
 brothers were, with the exception of Louis, all in 
 captivity, consented to marry Francis without waiting 
 to obtain the sanction of her family. The young 
 couple, not knowing what kind of reception they 
 might meet with from Joanna and Louis, were 
 afraid to appear before them ; but the Queen, 
 well aware that the de Baux were some of the 
 richest and most powerful of her subjects, with her 
 usual prudence and tact resolved to conciliate them 
 and overlook the breach of royal etiquette of which 
 they had been guilty. 
 
 Accordingly she sent the Count letters-patent 
 
174 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 conferring upon him the Dukedom of Andria, an 
 honour which none but a prince of the royal line 
 had hitherto enjoyed. Upon receiving this signal 
 mark of royal favour, de Baux and his bride went 
 to court and throwing themselves at Joanna's feet, 
 he vowed allegiance and devotion to her cause, and 
 from that time became one of her most zealous 
 supporters. 
 
 Nicholas Acciajuoli was now made Grand Seneschal 
 of the kingdom, in reward for all his services in 
 Provence, for to some extent Joanna owed the 
 successful issue of her cause in the Papal Court to 
 his exertions and those of his brother the Bishop 
 of Florence. Joanna also rewarded with presents 
 of land and money, and with various honours and 
 privileges, all those who had been faithful to her, 
 and all the young knights who had fought for her. 
 Joanna's cause had been recommended to all the 
 knights of Europe, by the Papal Court, as one which 
 in those days of chivalry they were peculiarly bound 
 to defend, and they were not slow to become the 
 champions of the beautiful young Queen. As soon 
 as Joanna returned to Naples she gave a series of 
 entertainments to signalise her return, and these 
 festivities and rejoicings greatly increased her popu- 
 larity, and made her court a striking contrast to 
 that of the barbarian Hungarian invader, whose 
 courtiers treated the Neapolitans with haughty disdain, 
 which they naturally resented deeply. 
 
Peace is Proclaimed 175 
 
 Louis of Taranto was of great help to Joanna 
 in winning popularity, for he was said to be " as 
 beautiful as the day," being gifted, like his royal 
 spouse, with extraordinary personal beauty ; he also 
 possessed the charming manners for which all the 
 Angevine family were famed. He was a fine soldier, 
 and highly distinguished in all the accomplishments 
 of a mediaeval knight, such as jousts, tournaments, 
 and field-sports. In fact, he had all the qualities 
 calculated to win the hearts of the pleasure-loving 
 Neapolitans, but he did not possess the more solid 
 virtues of a faithful husband, at any rate in his 
 later years. 
 
 Joanna is greatly blamed by her enemies for 
 the gaiety of her court, the lavish entertainments 
 in which she indulged, the luxury of her table, the 
 brilliancy of her attire, and the constant round of 
 balls, banquets, pageants, tournaments, and other 
 festivities on which she spent so much money ; but 
 she was eminendy a wise woman, and probably she 
 knew that this was the best way to retain her 
 husband's affections, which she succeeded in doing 
 during the first years of her married life. Later, as 
 we shall see, Louis led so wild and profligate a 
 life that he shortened his days by his excesses. 
 
 So long as he was engaged in fighting Joanna's 
 battles for her Louis was a good husband. The 
 excitement of war kept him out of mischief, and 
 satisfied his energetic temperament and craving for 
 
176 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 excitement, without which he could not live even 
 in the fourteenth century. What he would have 
 done in the twentieth century, when the craze for 
 something new possesses old and young, rich and 
 poor, all classes of men and women, we do not 
 know. On first returning to Naples, with the 
 Hungarians still in occupation, Louis had plenty 
 of scope for his martial energy : he at once under- 
 took an expedition against the Count of Apici — 
 a powerful baron who obstinately adhered to the 
 Hungarian cause, but was soon reduced to obedience 
 and heavily fined for his rebellion. 
 
 One of the most audacious of the captains of 
 mercenaries, after our own Hawkwood, in these 
 days was a German who went by the name of 
 Duke Warner. This ruffian went about with the 
 following legend embroidered in silver letters on 
 his surcoat : "I am Duke Warner, the Chief of 
 the Great Company, the Enemy of God, of Pity, 
 and of Mercy." 
 
 This blasphemous creature, who spread terror 
 wherever he went with his band of pillaging, 
 murdering, merciless adherents, was serving under 
 the Hungarian King's lieutenant, Conrad Wolf, 
 when Louis defeated the Count of Apici. As he 
 had three thousand horsemen under him, it was 
 very important to enlist his services in Joanna's 
 interest if possible, and Louis took the money 
 exacted from the Apici as a fine to buy Warner 
 
Peace is Proclaimed 177 
 
 over to the Queen's side. Louis now gained a 
 succession of small victories. With Warner's help 
 he captured some of the castles and garrisoned 
 towns which were in the Hungarians' hands, but 
 he was not strong enough to risk a great battle, 
 into which Wolf tried to draw him. " Duke 
 Warner " counselled him to avoid this, though 
 the Hungarians passed close to the Neapolitan 
 trenches, taunting and insulting the nobles and 
 endeavouring to induce them to accept their 
 challenges. 
 
 Foiled in these tactics, Wolf now encamped himself 
 in Foggia, whose inhabitants he induced, under con- 
 ditions which he violated immediately, to yield their 
 city to him, hoping that Louis would try to relieve 
 Foggia. Again foiled — for Louis resisted this 
 temptation, and has been severely blamed for so 
 doing — Wolf now advanced upon Naples, and en- 
 deavoured to persuade Warner to rejoin him. Warner 
 played into his hand by encamping without sentinels 
 and suffering himself to be taken, and then asked 
 Louis to ransom him and pay thirty thousand florins 
 to the Hungarians. Louis very wisely refused to do 
 anything of the kind, and Warner attached himself 
 to Wolf, who was further reinforced by troops from 
 Hungary and another band of mercenaries com- 
 manded by the Count of Lando. 
 
 The Neapolitans of all classes now put forth 
 their whole strength to repel their cruel foes. The 
 
 12 
 
178 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 peasants thronged into Naples armed with reaping 
 hooks, scythes, spades — anything they could lay 
 hands on for want of proper arms — to try to 
 deliver their country from the hated Hungarians. 
 The nobles, including the Count of Minervino, who 
 had originally been on the Hungarian side, now 
 collected all the armed men they could muster, and 
 poured them into the city ; but unfortunately Wolf 
 cut off the supplies of provisions from the Terra 
 di Lavoro, so that the city was reduced to what 
 it could obtain by sea from Calabria and other 
 places. 
 
 The Neapolitans, impatient at having their rations 
 reduced, and quite against the advice of Louis, who 
 knew they were not strong enough to give battle to 
 the Hungarians, allowed themselves to be tricked 
 into an engagement, in which many perished, for 
 they were surrounded on all sides by the enemy. 
 The mercenaries whom the Hungarians had engaged 
 now became dissatisfied with their wretched payment, 
 and threatened to leave their employers in the lurch, 
 so the Transylvanian General, Prince Stephen, de- 
 livered into their hands in the place of money all 
 the prisoners of war whom they had taken. The 
 unfortunate prisoners were subjected to the most 
 horrible tortures by these cruel bands, who were 
 guilty of rapine, murder, and every vice. The 
 prisoners paid large sums of money to ransom 
 themselves ; but the mercenaries, when they found 
 
Peace is Proclaimed 179 
 
 they could not extort sufficient to satisfy their 
 greed, resolved to take Stephen himself prisoner and 
 torture him in the hope of getting a larger sum of 
 money. Fortunately the Transylvanian prince was 
 warned of these intentions, and one night managed 
 to effect his escape with some of his officers. 
 
 Duke Warner had formerly been employed in 
 the service of the Church, so he was known to the 
 Cardinal Legate Ceccano, as were also other of the 
 German officers ; and on his offering them 1 20,000 
 florins, they agreed to deliver up the two towns 
 of Aversa and Capua, and to go back to Germany. 
 Louis of Taranto then fortified these two towns 
 very strongly, so that the following year Aversa 
 was able to resist when besieged by the Hungarian 
 King. 
 
 Another celebrated character fighting on the side 
 of the Hungarians was Fra Moriale, a knight of 
 Jerusalem, whose real name was Montreal D'Albano. 
 He was a Provencal by birth, and had formerly been 
 in the service of Joanna's brother-in-law, the Duke 
 of Durazzo. He now retired to Apulia with 
 Conrad Wolf, and sent word to Louis of Hungary 
 that the Germans had forsaken him and gone back 
 to their own country. 
 
 Fra Moriale's end was a tragic one, though it 
 is rather anticipating events to mention it. After 
 the Hungarians had left Naples, Fra Moriale re- 
 mained behind ; and collecting together a large band 
 
180 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of adventurers, he ravaged Italy, finally making 
 war against the Viscontis. He was taken prisoner 
 in Rome, and, being brought before the tribunal of 
 Rienzi, then in power, he was sentenced to death, 
 and beheaded in 1354. 
 
 On hearing that the Germans had left Naples, 
 Louis of Hungary soon after entered Apulia with 
 a large force of 10,000 horsemen, besides a number 
 of foot-soldiers. No sooner was Louis of Taranto 
 aware that his enemy was so near, than he sent him 
 a challenge to decide the matter by single combat 
 with him, and gave him the choice of Naples, 
 Avignon, Paris, or Perugia, as the scene of the 
 encounter. 
 
 Louis of Hungary agreed to accept the challenge, 
 but objected to all the places named, as being too 
 favourably inclined to his adversary, and suggested 
 that the duel should be fought in the presence 
 of the Bishop of Aquila, or of the Emperor of 
 Germany, or else in that of their common friend, 
 the King of England, or in that of their respective 
 armies, in which latter case there is every reason to 
 suppose the Hungarians would have been guilty 
 of some treachery. 
 
 For some reason or other this duel never came 
 off, and soon after the King of Hungary, while 
 besieging the city of Canoza in Apulia, was danger- 
 ously wounded and picked up apparently dead 
 before the walls, and carried back to his own camp, 
 
Peace is Proclaimed 181 
 
 where he recovered and soon after captured Salerno. 
 The citadel of Lucera was given up treacherously 
 to him by the governor, and he then advanced to 
 Aversa, thinking to take that easily. 
 
 He was, however, mistaken, and the siege of Aversa 
 lasted three months before Pignatello, the governor, 
 was forced by starvation to capitulate on honourable 
 terms. 
 
 It was while the Hungarians were still invading 
 her kingdom that Joanna heard of the death of her 
 little son by Andrew, Canrobert, the heir to her 
 throne, who it will be remembered had been sent 
 to Hungary by Louis of Hungary soon after he 
 first came to Naples. Some few months after Joanna 
 returned to Naples from Avignon she gave birth 
 to a daughter, who was baptized Francesca. The 
 child was idolised by both her parents, and before she 
 was three years old a marriage had been arranged 
 for her with the heir of the kingdom of Aragon. 
 
 A year after the birth of the Princess Francesca 
 Joanna gave birth to another daughter, who was 
 named Catherine. She, however, died in infancy, 
 and thenceforth all Joanna's hopes were concentrated 
 upon Francesca, her only son having perished in 
 a foreign land. 
 
 After the capitulation of Aversa the Queen and 
 her husband and child, with some faithful friends, 
 went to Gaeta by sea, fearing that Louis of Hungary, 
 now on his way to Naples, might take them prisoners, 
 
1 82 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 and hoping in case of necessity to be able to retreat 
 to Provence, in ten galleys which were in waiting 
 for them at Gaeta. 
 
 These ten galleys were not considered sufficient, 
 so the High Admiral of the kingdom, Rinaldo de 
 Baux, was ordered to bring eight more from Naples. 
 Once more was Joanna threatened with treason ; for 
 while she was waiting at Gaeta for the reinforce- 
 ments her Admiral was commanded to bring, there 
 arrived one day a messenger who desired a secret 
 audience of the Queen, in the course of which he 
 informed her that de Baux, who was supposed to 
 be laying in provisions before he left Naples, had 
 concluded a bargain with Louis of Hungary by 
 which he pledged himself to deliver Joanna and 
 her husband and the little Princess Francesca, to- 
 gether with Joanna's sister, Maria of Sicily, the 
 Duchess of Durazzo, and her children, into the hands 
 of the King of Hungary. The reward he asked 
 for this act of treachery was the hand of Maria's 
 eldest daughter, the heiress of the principality ot 
 Durazzo, for his son. 
 
 As soon as the Admiral and his fleet reached 
 Gaeta, Joanna sent a message to him to come at 
 once to the palace to see her, De Baux refused on 
 various pretexts, and even declined to enter the 
 harbour ; and as, so long as he remained outside with 
 his fleet, the flight of the Queen to Provence, if 
 it should become necessary was prevented, Louis 
 
Peace is Proclaimed 183 
 
 of Taranto decided upon very summary measures. 
 He took three or four faithful friends with him, and 
 embarking on board a small boat managed to get 
 on board the Admiral's ship before he was aware of 
 his approach ; and making his way into the traitor's 
 presence, Louis attacked him and slew him there and 
 then with his sword. It was a bold move, quite 
 in keeping with the rough times and with the 
 character of Louis, and perhaps justified by the 
 circumstances. Indeed, it seemed the quickest way 
 out of the dilemma in which de Baux's treachery 
 had placed the Queen, who was fated so often in 
 the course of her adventurous life to suffer from 
 treason. 
 
 While these things were happening at Gaeta 
 Louis of Hungary had entered Naples with his 
 ragged, half-starved army, and had encamped on 
 the spot where now stands the Church of the 
 Incoronata, afterwards built by Joanna. 
 
 Naples was then divided into twelve sections 
 called Piazze, and from each of these twelve 
 divisions a proclamation was issued in which Louis 
 of Hungary offered to save the city from destruction 
 on condition of the people contributing a heavy fine, 
 to compensate his soldiers for the plunder they would 
 gain if he allowed them to pillage it. 
 
 He called a meeting of the nobility and principal 
 citizens at Castel Nuovo, and made the same 
 proposal to them, and rebuked them for the 
 
184 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 affection they had shown their Queen and all they 
 had done for her. The sight of the miserable 
 horses and soldiers of the Hungarian army, however, 
 excited the ridicule of the Neapolitans, who collected 
 together from every quarter of the city, and 
 threatened to give battle to their enemies if they 
 attempted the least violence, and absolutely refused 
 to give a penny to buy them off. 
 
 Louis, thinking that his enfeebled troops would 
 not have much chance against the Neapolitans, who 
 were determined to strain every nerve to save 
 their beautiful city, thought it prudent to retire 
 to Apulia, and if possible join his forces to those 
 of Conrad Wolf there. 
 
 The Pope, hearing of this move, thought a favour- 
 able time had arrived for him to try to conclude 
 peace, as both sides were getting exhausted ; and, 
 according to one account, he commanded Louis, 
 under pain of excommunication, to leave Naples — 
 or rather Joanna's dominions — at once, and allow 
 Joanna and her husband to take possession of her 
 kingdom. 
 
 Louis proposed a truce for a year, and demanded 
 another trial before the Pope and Cardinals of 
 Joanna, promising, if she were declared innocent 
 again, to give up her kingdom to her, and Joanna 
 promised to resign it if she were pronounced guilty. 
 
 Of course Joanna was pronounced innocent a 
 second time — no one ever had any misgivings on 
 
Peace is Proclaimed 185 
 
 that score ; and the Pope then drew up a treaty 
 with the Hungarian ambassadors, in which it 
 was stipulated that Louis of Taranto should not 
 bear the title of King, and that if Joanna had no 
 children to survive her, her rights were to pass to 
 Louis of Hungary or his successors, to the exclusion 
 of her sister, the widowed Duchess of Durazzo. 
 
 The Hungarians signed this treaty, but when 
 it was put before Joanna she refused absolutely to 
 exclude her husband from the throne, or to sign 
 away her sister's right of succession, or to submit 
 her people to the danger of the hated Hungarian 
 yoke. As Joanna was firm, and it was evident 
 that she would never yield, and would refuse to 
 sign any treaty except one of whose terms she 
 approved, the Pope gave way to her eloquence, and 
 drew up another treaty, in which the title of King 
 was granted to Louis of Taranto, and all the con- 
 ditions as to the succession contained in the will 
 of the late King Robert were agreed to ; the Pope 
 stipulating that Joanna should pay Louis a sum of 
 300,000 florins for delivering up all the castles and 
 fortresses he had captured in Naples. 
 
 At this juncture Louis's haughtiness stood Joanna 
 in good stead, for with the pride of his race he 
 refused to accept the money. 
 
 " No ! " he cried : " not for the sake of lands and 
 gold, but only out of revenge of the murder of 
 my brother have I fought. My work is finished. 
 
1 86 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 The angry shadows are reconciled. I desire nothing 
 more." 
 
 Would not this conduct be sufficient to prove 
 the innocence of Joanna if more proof were wanting ? 
 for if she had been guilty of the murder of Andrew, 
 Louis of Hungary had received no satisfaction 
 for it. 
 
 The Pope and the Cardinals were much pleased 
 at this magnanimity on the part of the Hungarian 
 King, and thanked him cordially for it ; and 
 Joanna, as soon as the treaty was signed, sent an 
 embassy to Clement to thank him on her part 
 for all the trouble he had taken on her behalf, 
 and at the same time to beg him to issue a Bull 
 for her own coronation and for that of her husband. 
 The Pope granted her request, issued the desired 
 Bull, and sent the Bishop of Braganca to perform 
 the ceremony of coronation on Whit-Sunday, which 
 that year fell on May 25 th. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 The Coronation of Joanna 
 
 ONE of the conditions of the treaty of peace 
 between Joanna and Louis of Hungary 
 was the liberation of all the princes of the blood 
 royal, who had been sent to Hungary after the 
 murder of the Duke of Durazzo, and had been 
 imprisoned now for four years in the castle of 
 Visgrade. Their imprisonment had been for 
 Joanna the soul of good in the evil of the invasion 
 of her kingdom, for if they had been at liberty, 
 their quarrels with each other and their ambition 
 would have weakened her cause by creating divisions 
 in her realm, and it would have been better for 
 Joanna if they had never been liberated, as it turned 
 out, for they were a turbulent set. 
 
 Preparations were now made for the coronation, 
 and people began to flock into Naples from all 
 parts of the kingdom to witness what promised 
 
 to be a magnificent spectacle, for it was well known 
 
 187 
 
1 88 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 that Joanna loved pomp and grand functions. 
 But not even Joanna's coronation was allowed to 
 take place peacefully ; a serious disturbance took 
 place just before it came off, and a great sorrow 
 befell her immediately after it was over. 
 
 One of those mercenary bands which were one 
 of the terrors of the Middle Ages, commanded by 
 a German named Beltram della Molta, waylaid a 
 number of the barons and their wives, who were 
 proceeding to the coronation, near Aversa, and 
 robbed them of the splendid dresses they were 
 about to wear at it, and of all the jewels and other 
 valuables which they had brought with them. This 
 band of robbers was a thousand strong, all mounted 
 men, and the barons were powerless against them ; 
 but Louis of Taranto, hearing of the outrage, went 
 in pursuit with five hundred knights, and succeeded 
 in dispersing all the band, except Beltram and 
 twenty of his followers, who alone escaped, for those 
 who were not slain by the swords of Louis and his 
 knights were killed by the peasants. 
 
 The coronation took place on the Feast of Pente- 
 cost in the chapel of the old Palais de Justice, which 
 was afterwards included in the Church of the In- 
 coronata, which Joanna built in 1352 to commemorate 
 her coronation and her marriage with Louis of 
 Taranto. Pentecost was ever a favourite feast with 
 the Angevine family. 
 
 After the High Mass, which was celebrated with 
 
The Coronation of Joanna 189 
 
 all the grand ritual of the Catholic Church, the 
 beautiful and majestic young Queen and her hand- 
 some husband, clad in violet velvet robes (violet 
 being the colour of the Neapolitan royal family), 
 knelt before the Bishop of Braganca to receive the 
 crown from his hands, Louis being crowned as 
 King-consort. The splendid robes of the King 
 and Queen and their courtiers and the handsome 
 vestments of the Bishop and clergy made a 
 magnificent blaze of colour in the chapel on this 
 day, which is said to have been the happiest of 
 Joanna's life, although it was destined to end in 
 sorrow. 
 
 After the ceremony was over Joanna and Louis 
 went in procession round the city, to give the 
 populace an opportunity of seeing them : they rode 
 on horseback, with their crowns on their heads, their 
 horses led by two noblemen. Just as they passed 
 the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, after coming 
 through the Porta Nolana, where the hospital of 
 San Giovanni now stands, some ladies threw some 
 flowers from a balcony to greet them. Unfortunately 
 this so startled the King's horse that it reared 
 and broke the bridle-reins held by two barons, and 
 Louis threw himself off its back ; he escaped 
 unhurt, but his crown fell from his head and broke 
 in three pieces. 
 
 The attendants and bystanders all cried out with 
 the vehemence of their nationality that this was a 
 
190 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 dreadful sign portending all sorts of evil ; but the 
 King only laughed and called for another horse, and, 
 fastening the broken crown together as well as he 
 could, set it on his head again and continued his 
 progress round the city. It was late in the evening 
 when Joanna and her royal consort returned to the 
 Castel Nuovo, to find these unhappy prognostica- 
 tions realised sufficiently to justify the superstition 
 of their subjects, at least in their opinion. 
 
 The little Princess had been left in charge of her 
 attendants in the Castel Nuovo, which was that day 
 deserted by every one else, as all had gone to see 
 the coronation and the procession, and during her 
 mother's absence she had been taken ill, probably 
 with convulsions, as she died before Joanna returned, 
 and this was the sad news which greeted her parents 
 when they got home from the grand ceremonies in 
 which they had been engaged. Joanna was now 
 dashed from the happiness she had that day enjoyed 
 in such fulness, and was plunged into the grief 
 which only a mother's heart can know. This was 
 the third child she had lost within a year or two, 
 and it was the idol of her and Louis, on whom all 
 their hopes were fixed. Her little son had recently 
 died in a foreign land, after being taken from her 
 when only a baby, then the infant daughter of Louis 
 had died, and now the little Princess Francesca was 
 cut off. 
 
 So far as the child was concerned, it was a 
 
The Coronation of Joanna 19 1 
 
 merciful dispensation of Providence, for had she 
 lived she would probably have fallen a victim to 
 some of her mother's enemies in that age of violence, 
 but it is not to be imagined that her mother saw 
 it in that light. Joanna never had another child 
 of her own ; she adopted one of her sister Maria's 
 little girls, and later on she adopted Charles of 
 Durazzo as her heir, and nourished a viper in her 
 bosom when she did so. 
 
 That same year, not long after peace had been 
 proclaimed, another sorrow met Joanna in the death 
 of her friend Pope Clement VI., who had been a 
 second father to her, in not only pronouncing her 
 innocent of the crime of which her enemies had. 
 accused her, but in also restoring her to her throne. 
 The memory of this Pope, who was one of the most 
 profound scholars of the age, and a most mild and 
 benevolent sovereign, has suffered much at the hands 
 of Italian historians, because of his persistence in 
 residing at Avignon instead of at Rome. On the 
 other hand, the French historian de Sade says he 
 was one of the greatest men who ever filled the 
 Chair of Peter, and that if he had some faults, they 
 were atoned for by great virtues and amiable qualities, 
 and that he accomplished a great undertaking in 
 which his predecessors had failed — namely, he 
 deposed the troublesome Louis of Bavaria and 
 elected Charles of Luxembourg in his place. This 
 Louis of Bavaria was the great enemy of the 
 
i<? 2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Pope John XXII., and had presumed to set up 
 an antipope in his place after the Pope had ex- 
 communicated him, and the Prince Colonna had 
 the courage to affix the sentence to the walls of 
 the Vatican. By the deposition of this Emperor 
 the great struggle, which had troubled the Church 
 so long, between the Papacy and the Empire was 
 ended. 
 
 Petrarch says of Clement VI. that none merited 
 better the name of Clement, which was well deserved 
 by his actions. An example of his clemency is 
 given by his biographers which well illustrates this 
 trait in his character. A person who had grievously 
 offended him once ventured to ask a favour of 
 him ; the Pope was tempted to seize the opportunity 
 of revenging himself by refusing to listen to his 
 request, but he resisted the temptation and granted 
 the favour. 
 
 He was very eloquent, and spoke with great 
 fluency and dignity. He succeeded in the difficult 
 task of reconciling Joanna and the King of Hungary, 
 and in obtaining a truce between the Kings of 
 France and England, whose wars disturbed his 
 reign. He just failed to reconcile the Greek and 
 Latin Churches, for which he laboured with great 
 wisdom and prudence. His conduct during the 
 Great Plague, when his charity and generosity were 
 so conspicuous, may well atone for faults of worldli- 
 ness and love of luxury, which made him refuse to 
 
The Coronation of Joanna 193 
 
 transfer the Papal See back to Rome, even at the 
 bidding of the great Swedish saint and mystic, 
 St. Bridget, Princess of Nericia. 
 
 Another of Clement's good actions was that he 
 ordered Casimir, King of Poland, who was leading a 
 most immoral life, to send away his mistresses and to 
 be faithful to his wife. The King refused at first to 
 do this, but he afterwards submitted, and performed 
 the penance the Pope imposed upon him. Petrarch 
 never liked Clement, and often satirised him because 
 his luxurious life was so unlike that of the Apostles, 
 so his remark quoted above about his clemency is 
 the more valuable. 
 
 Upon the death of Clement, the Cardinals, seeing 
 the need for reform in the Church, and thinking 
 that the new Pope should be a man of austere life, 
 turned their eyes upon a very holy Carthusian monk 
 named John Birel, who was at that time General 
 of his Order, the strictest in the Church. He was 
 a native of Limousin, and was famed for his sanctity 
 of life, and his zeal in preaching repentance, and his 
 courage in exhorting kings and princes with the 
 utmost frankness and severity. 
 
 One of the Cardinals, named Talleyrand, an 
 ancestor of the diplomatist, took alarm at the 
 prospect of so strict a successor to Clement, and 
 said to the other Cardinals : 
 
 " What are you going to do ? Don't you see 
 that this monk, accustomed to govern anchorites, 
 
 J 3 
 
19 6 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 frequently declined. Nearly the whole of the poetry 
 of Zanobi has been lost ; all that remains of his works 
 are some prose translations of the works of Gregory 
 the Great. Not long after his appointment as 
 Apostolical Secretary he died of the plague at 
 Avignon, to which court his post attached him. 
 The Florentines held him in such high estimation 
 that they proposed in 1396 to erect monuments 
 worthy of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Zanobi de 
 Strada. 
 
 The island of Sicily : had revolted from the 
 Angevine rule in the latter part of the thirteenth 
 century, the first outbreak taking place at the 
 Sicilian Vespers, when the French were murdered 
 at Palermo, the signal being the bell for Vespers. 
 The islanders then placed themselves under the 
 government of the Aragonese dynasty ; but at 
 the time of Joanna's coronation, the King Frederick 
 being a minor, the Sicilians were governed by a 
 regency, who so oppressed the people that a party 
 arose in rebellion against it, headed by Simon, 
 Count of Chiaramonte, who was in fact, though not 
 in name, the ruler of the whole of the most fertile 
 part of the island. This party, three years after 
 the coronation of Joanna and Louis, appealed to 
 them to send them provisions to ward off an 
 impending famine, and troops to help them to 
 resist their oppressors. 
 
 Naples being now prosperous, the Queen sent 
 
The Coronation of Joanna 197 
 
 them an abundance of provisions, but as the 
 rivalry of the Princes of Taranto and Durazzo 
 constantly led to fighting between them, Joanna 
 could only send them a hundred men-at-arms under 
 Nicholas Acciajuoli, and four hundred horsemen 
 under Raymond de Baux, while Louis remained 
 at home to defend his rights there. 
 
 The following year, Naples being quieter, Louis 
 was able to take a small army into Sicily, and there 
 he fought so valiantly that he soon made himself 
 master of nearly all the island, except Catania and 
 its neighbourhood. Frederick, the young King, 
 was in Catania, and for three months the Neapolitans 
 besieged the city under Raymond de Baux, whom 
 both Joanna and Louis loved as a father. 
 
 In the meanwhile Joanna, on Christmas Eve, 1356, 
 came across from Naples and made a solemn entry 
 into Messina with Louis. Here they were crowned 
 King and Queen of Sicily, and afterwards received 
 the allegiance of the Messinese and of the chief 
 barons of the island. 
 
 Here we will make a brief digression to tell the 
 romantic story of a lady of Messina, who was one 
 of the Illustrious Women of Boccaccio and lived 
 in Joanna's time, though she was many years older 
 than the Queen. Her name was Camiola Turinga, 
 she was very rich and was as good as she was 
 beautiful, and when she was young and unmarried, 
 a young and handsome Prince of Aragon, named 
 
198 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Orlando, excited her compassion. During the 
 reign of his brother Peter, King of Sicily, Orlando 
 had, against his brother's express command, given 
 battle to the Neapolitan fleet, and had lost all his 
 own ships and was taken prisoner and cast into 
 a Neapolitan dungeon in one of their castles, from 
 which Peter refused to ransom him, and, but for 
 the compassion of Camiola, he would probably have 
 been doomed to pass his life in this durance vile. 
 She, wishing to procure his liberty, sent a messenger 
 to his prison in Naples to offer to pay his ransom 
 if, in return, he would promise to marry her on 
 his release. 
 
 Orlando, delighted at the prospect of regaining 
 his freedom, willingly signed a contract of marriage, 
 and Camiola paid his ransom ; but no sooner was 
 the prince set free than he absolutely refused to 
 marry her, and treated her with scorn and haughty 
 contempt. 
 
 Camiola now appealed to the King Peter, who 
 decided that Orlando belonged to Camiola, as by 
 the law of the land he was now her slave, whom 
 she had bought with her money, and a day was 
 fixed for the marriage to take place. Orlando 
 arrived on the day fixed with a splendid, princely 
 retinue, and went to Camiola's house, where he 
 found her dressed as a bride in magnificent attire, 
 and wearing costly jewels ; but instead of, receiving 
 him with signs of affection, she told him she would 
 
The Coronation of Joanna 199 
 
 scorn to ally herself with a man who had broken 
 his knightly word and disgraced his royal birth 
 and violated the sacred laws of chivalry, and that 
 all that she could do for him was to make him a 
 present of the ransom she had already paid, seeing 
 that all he cared for was money ; she would hence- 
 forth dedicate herself and her fortune to Heaven 
 and enter a convent. 
 
 Orlando pleaded for forgiveness, but she refused 
 to listen or to change her mind, and the prince, 
 who was shunned by all honourable men, his equals, 
 fell into a state of depression and died not long 
 after, friendless and forlorn. 
 
 But to return to Messina in 1356. When Joanna 
 arrived at the Castle she found the two sisters 
 of the King of Sicily, the Princesses Bianca and 
 Violante, were imprisoned there : she at once had 
 them liberated and treated them as her own sisters. 
 The King Frederick was very delicate, and in case 
 of his death Bianca was the heiress of Sicily. The 
 Count de Chiramonte asked for her hand in 
 marriage as soon as she was liberated, as a reward 
 for his services ; but Joanna and Louis dared not 
 consent to this, in case the young King should die, 
 so they refused their consent, but offered Chiramonte 
 the Duchess of Durazzo instead. This would have 
 been a splendid match for the Count ; but he died 
 a few days after the Queen's refusal to his proposal 
 for the Princess Bianca, which he had deeply 
 
200 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 resented. His family also were so angry at his 
 rejection that they all went back to their allegiance 
 to the house of Aragon, and left Joanna in the 
 lurch. 
 
 At the end of three months de Baux was obliged 
 to raise the siege of Catania, as he had not sufficient 
 means to pay the Sicilian troops who had joined him, 
 and after some fighting, in which he was at first 
 victorious, he was eventually defeated and taken 
 prisoner by the Catanians, who were superior in 
 numbers. Acciajuoli escaped by the skin of his 
 teeth, but de Baux was confined in the Castle of 
 Francavilla. The Queen had not sufficient money to 
 ransom her faithful servant, so she sold her jewels 
 and offered the proceeds, which were a large sum 
 of money, for his release. The Regency, however, 
 refused to accept the money, and asked instead that 
 the two Princesses Bianca and Violante, who were 
 very happy with Joanna, should be exchanged for 
 de Baux. 
 
 This exchange was agreed to by the Queen, and 
 the two Princesses were set at liberty ; but the 
 governor of the castle in which the High Admiral 
 was confined declined to release him, notwithstand- 
 ing the orders of the Regency, and demanded an 
 additional ransom of two thousand ducats, which 
 the Queen paid. 
 
 Unfortunately, during the absence of the Queen and 
 Louis war had broken out between Louis of Durazzo 
 

 From an early woodcut portrait, by kind permission of Mr. St. Clair Baddeley. 
 JOANNA THE FIRST, QUEEN OF NAPLES. 
 
 p. 200] 
 
The Coronation of Joanna 201 
 
 on one side, and Louis's eldest brother, the Prince 
 of Taranto, on the other. The Count of Minervino 
 (who, it will be remembered, had been released from 
 the perpetual imprisonment to which he had been 
 condemned in the reign of King Robert) now joined 
 Louis of Durazzo ; and as this civil war was ravaging 
 the kingdom, Joanna and Louis of Taranto were 
 obliged to leave the conquest of Sicily, which they 
 would otherwise have completed, and return to 
 Naples to restore peace there. 
 
 On their arrival they summoned the Prince of 
 Taranto, Louis of Durazzo, and the Count of 
 Minervino to appear before them. The Prince 
 of Taranto at once obeyed, and submitted to the 
 Queen's authority ; but Louis of Durazzo absolutely 
 refused to come into the presence of either the King 
 or the Queen, or to yield them any obedience. The 
 Count of Minervino appeared at court, but behaved 
 in so haughty a manner and made such unreason- 
 able demands that the sovereigns had no choice but 
 to oppose him on the battlefield. He was very 
 rich, for he and his brothers, the other Pipini, had 
 acquired great wealth by their former ravages, and 
 they were assisted by the barbarian mercenaries they 
 hired. 
 
 The throne was now in great danger, and a civil 
 war ensued which disturbed the country ; but in the 
 end the Queen's forces were happily victorious, and 
 the Pipini destroyed root and branch. The Count 
 
202 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of Minervino was taken prisoner, and condemned 
 to the ignominious death of hanging. One of his 
 brothers was thrown down from a high tower by 
 one of his own soldiers, and the third of the Pipini 
 managed to escape from Naples, but was never 
 afterwards heard of, and is believed to have perished. 
 Thus this family, which had given so much trouble 
 to the late King as well as to Joanna, was at last 
 exterminated. 
 
 The Queen, with her usual generosity, granted 
 Louis of Durazzo a free pardon, on account of his 
 royal birth and relationship to her. A great banquet 
 was given in the Bishop's Palace by Louis and 
 Joanna to celebrate the reconciliation. All the 
 members of the royal family were invited to be 
 present, and after the banquet the whole of the 
 Neapolitan nobility attended the King in a royal 
 progress round the city. 
 
 For several days tournaments and jousts were held 
 to amuse the people, and in the evenings what were 
 called " solemn balls " were given at court, at which 
 the majestic Queen was the most striking figure and 
 the object of universal admiration. This took place 
 in 1359. 
 
 In the following year the haughty Louis of 
 Durazzo died, and Joanna undertook the education 
 of his eldest son, Charles, whom she afterwards 
 unfortunately adopted as her heir, for he turned 
 out a traitor and the worst of her enemies, in spite 
 
The Coronation of Joanna 203 
 
 of all the affection she lavished upon him. He was 
 a child of twelve at the time of his father's death. 
 
 About this time Joanna adopted her sister Maria's 
 youngest daughter, Margaret, whom Charles of 
 Durazzo afterwards married, and brought her up as 
 her own daughter. Maria resigned her to Joanna 
 the more readily because, soon after the peace 
 celebrations were concluded, she married a second 
 time, her second husband being Philip of Taranto, 
 the younger brother of Joanna's husband Louis. 
 Thus the two sisters were now married to two 
 brothers. The little Princess Margaret was only a 
 few months younger than the child Joanna had lost 
 on the day of her coronation, and no doubt helped 
 to console her for that loss. The unhappy Queen 
 needed consolation, for Louis of Taranto, now 
 there was no more fighting to be done, seems to 
 have grown tired of Joanna, and to have been un- 
 faithful to her, and given himself up to intemperance 
 and other vices while Acciajuoli was continuing the 
 war in Sicily. 
 
 It was at this time that the Neapolitan court 
 was at its gayest. Pageants, balls, tournaments and 
 banquets, and all kinds of gaiety were the order 
 of the day, into all of which Louis entered with such 
 extravagance that he ruined his constitution, and, 
 about three years after the defeat of the Pipini, he 
 died at Castel Nuovo of a fever in May, 1362, and 
 Joanna was left a widow for the second time. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 Joanna's Second Widowhood 
 
 T OUIS of Taranto had the misfortune to live too 
 ■*— ' long for his reputation, but he has also suffered 
 at the hands of the historian Villani, who has ex- 
 aggerated his vices. For the first years of his 
 married life he was a good husband. Twice by his 
 gallant fighting he saved Joanna's crown for her, 
 and he had shared her troubles with her at the 
 beginning of their joint reign, but prosperity did not 
 suit him. He fell into the hands of dissolute com- 
 panions and shared in their vicious lives, ruined his 
 constitution by his excesses, and died at the early 
 age of forty-two. 
 
 A royal widow in the Middle Ages was almost as 
 much to be pitied as a Hindoo widow is now. She 
 was condemned to lie on a bed covered with white 
 linen for a certain number of days, which varied in 
 different countries. In France the Queen was not 
 supposed to leave her room for a whole year after 
 
 the death of the "King, but Joanna certainly did not 
 
 204 
 
Joanna's Second Widowhood 205 
 
 follow this example. She had to wear mourning for 
 a year, but white, not black, was the colour worn by 
 Queens for widow's mourning then. She was for- 
 bidden by the fashion then prevalent to wear any 
 jewels, gloves (at that time a great luxury), rings, 
 ribbons, or costly furs, and her apartments certainly 
 during the first three months of widowhood were 
 hung with deepest black — and horribly depressing 
 they must have been. Her dress had to be 
 made in fashion like that of a nun, her glorious 
 hair was hidden under a hood and veil, her face 
 shrouded in a white linen binder. Some of the 
 restrictions imposed upon her were removed at the 
 expiration of each three months during the year of 
 mourning, but all that time she was condemned 
 to live in the greatest seclusion. 
 
 It is believed that Joanna was deeply attached to 
 this her second husband, who had shared so many 
 troubles with her, and his handsome presence and 
 bravery and skill in all active sports were calculated 
 to win her affections. One of his good acts was the 
 founding of the first Order of knighthood in Italy, 
 on the first anniversary of his coronation. This was 
 the Order of the Knot, and was dedicated to the 
 Holy Spirit. The members wore a blue mantle 
 embroidered with golden fleur-de-lis, and jewelled 
 and fastened on the breast with a knot of gold and 
 silver. When a knight performed any feat of arms, 
 or achieved any knightly success, a fresh knot was 
 
206 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 added to his mantle, and this was repeated at every 
 fresh victory. The two mottoes of the Order were 
 " Si Dieu plait " and " Au droit desir." 
 
 The same day that Louis instituted his Order of 
 the Knot, Joanna laid the foundation-stone of the 
 Incoronata Church and the hospital attached to it. 
 This was built on the site of the court in which the 
 Duke of Calabria sat when he administered the justice 
 for which he was so famed. During her second 
 widowhood she also enlarged and decorated the then 
 unfinished monastery of San Martino, which her 
 father had begun, and she also richly endowed the 
 monastery of the Poor Clares, in whose church 
 the late King and Queen, Robert and Sancha, 
 and Joanna's father, the Duke of Calabria, were 
 buried. 
 
 Joanna was most generous and charitable, and 
 during her reign she founded and endowed many 
 other churches and institutions, among others the 
 church and hospital of St. Anthony of Padua ; so that 
 one of her biographers says, " The various monu- 
 ments we have of her show how great must have 
 been her piety and religion." 
 
 There is an unfinished building in the Piazza 
 Mergellina, called to this day by the Neapolitans 
 " the palace of Queen Joanna," which is now a 
 beautiful ruin ; this she also began to build. She 
 enriched the city with many secular buildings 
 notable for their magnificence and good art. There 
 
Joanna's Second Widowhood 207 
 
 were at least five first-rate Italian architects in the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. To begin with 
 there were Giovanni and Nicholas of Pisa, Brunel- 
 leschi, and the two Masuccios, the second of whom 
 designed the monastery belfry at St. Clare. 
 
 Giotto di Bondone, who painted the frescoes in the 
 Church of St. Clare — begun, as we have just said, by 
 the late King Robert— died when Joanna was about 
 eleven years old, but his glorious art had been epoch- 
 making, and there were many of his disciples whom 
 she could employ to beautify the churches she built. 
 A rather amusing story is told of Giotto, who, as all 
 the world knows, was taken by Cimabue from tend- 
 ing his father's sheep into his own house, and trained 
 by him because he in passing had seen the boy's 
 talent displayed in drawings of his sheep with a 
 piece of chalk. 
 
 Giotto is said to have been remarkably ugly, and 
 very small, and on one occasion he was riding near 
 Florence with a friend, who was equally ugly, and as 
 celebrated as a doctor-of-law as Giotto was as an 
 artist, when they were overtaken by a thunderstorm 
 and were obliged to take shelter in a peasant's 
 cottage ; and as they were wet to the skin, they had 
 to borrow clothing of their host. Giotto looked so 
 sublimely ridiculous in his borrowed garments, which 
 were much too big for his little body, that his friend 
 burst out laughing and said, " Who to see you, 
 Giotto, would ever think you were the greatest 
 
208 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 painter in the world ? " " And who to see you, 
 could ever think you knew your alphabet ? " replied 
 the artist. 
 
 Giotto's frescoes in the Church of St. Clare at 
 Naples were destroyed later by a Spanish viceroy, 
 who had them whitewashed to make the church 
 lighter — the "dim religious light" and Giotto's 
 delightful art not appealing to this Philistine. 
 
 Giotto was succeeded by Simon Martini, who is 
 mentioned by Boccaccio; but though Giotto's influence 
 was undoubtedly felt at Naples, there has never been 
 a great Neapolitan school of art, either in painting 
 or architecture. The two Masuccios are usually 
 regarded as the founders of Neapolitan sculpture, 
 but little that is reliable is known of them. 
 
 It was during this second widowhood that Joanna 
 showed her capabilities as a ruler. Her character 
 had now developed, and she began with both 
 prudence and vigour to try to restore tranquillity 
 to her kingdom, which was torn asunder by so many 
 broils and dissensions. She endeavoured to suppress 
 the brigands who were such a pest, and to bring 
 to justice the malefactors who infested the country ; 
 and she succeeded in accomplishing this great and 
 glorious task, which would have taxed the powers ot 
 her illustrious predecessor — the wise King Robert. 
 
 She showed great clemency and even munificence 
 to those who had rebelled against her, or who had 
 been partisans of her enemies, and forgave injuries 
 
Joanna's Second Widowhood 209 
 
 freely ; so that Caracciola says that no prince before 
 her had ever acted so generously and benignly 
 towards the Neapolitans, that she forgot injuries 
 and remembered benefits, and most richly rewarded 
 all those who followed her adverse fortunes. He 
 also says that " if there exist other rulers who 
 have enriched individuals more richly, there are 
 none who equalled her in the multiplicity of her 
 benefits." 
 
 " Never," says this same writer, " shall we see 
 this city more populous than under this same Queen ; 
 never was the arrival of mercantile ships more 
 frequent than under her government and protection. 
 This was all due to the love she had for her people, 
 and the care she lavished upon them. The people 
 increased so fast that they almost turned the churches 
 into houses for them to live in. Everywhere there 
 was abundance of food and plenty of commerce, and 
 the nation enjoyed great ease and security." 
 
 This was perhaps the most prosperous part of 
 Joanna's reign, but the period of peace did not last 
 long. Her calumniators attributed every misfortune, 
 including the death of Louis, to the vengeance of 
 Heaven for the murder of her first husband, 
 Andrew ; and fearing that as a widow she might on 
 account of her great beauty be exposed to slander 
 and evil report, at the conclusion of the term of her 
 mourning for Louis, she was advised by her friends 
 to marry again in order to have a protector. More- 
 
210 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 over, the nation earnestly desired that she should 
 have a son to inherit her crown, otherwise it was 
 to be feared that civil war would break out again 
 among the turbulent Neapolitan princes. 
 
 Soon after the death of Louis of Taranto the 
 Pope Innocent VI. died — indeed, one of his last 
 public acts was to celebrate Mass for the repose of 
 the soul of the late King of Naples. In the conclave 
 which followed his death the Cardinals were almost 
 as puzzled whom to choose for his successor as they 
 had been when his predecessor died. Their first 
 choice fell upon Cardinal Hugh Roger, the brother 
 of Clement VI., but he refused to accept the honour. 
 The result of the next ballot, which is piously 
 believed to have been the work of the Holy Spirit, 
 was the election of the Abb6 William de Grimoard, 
 a most holy man, then Abbot of the Monastery of 
 St. Victor, Marseilles, who was celebrated for his 
 great wisdom and virtue. 
 
 Although a Frenchman, he sympathised with the 
 claims of Rome as the seat of the Papacy, and 
 considered Avignon as a temporary place of residence 
 only, and desired to move the Chair of Peter back 
 to the Eternal City. At the time of his election 
 de Grimoard was at Naples, where he had been 
 sent by the Avignon Court, ostensibly to convey 
 messages of condolence on the death of Louis to 
 Joanna, but in reality to watch her conduct and 
 to report upon it. For five months he resided at 
 
Joanna's Second Widowhood 211 
 
 the Neapolitan Court as the Abbot of St. Victor, 
 and during that time formed so high an opinion 
 of the Queen that he became one of her great 
 friends, and after he was raised to the Papal throne 
 he treated her with even greater respect and honour 
 that Clement VI. had done, and, as will appear, 
 bestowed honours upon her such as have never before 
 or since been conferred upon a woman. 
 
 Joanna's appearance when the future Pope was 
 residing at her court must have been very striking. 
 Her majestic figure was robed in pure white, and 
 the absence of all ornaments and artificial aids to 
 beauty must have given a kind of angelic severity 
 to her classic features. Her devotion and charity 
 made a great impression upon the holy Abbot, and 
 completely won his esteem and affection. The fact 
 that when he was called to the highest dignity upon 
 earth he found himself in a very difficult position — 
 as he soon saw many reforms were necessary — must 
 have been another link between him and the 
 widowed Queen, who was beset with difficulties on 
 all sides. 
 
 One of Joanna's first actions when she took up 
 the reins of government after Louis's death was to 
 send her trusty servant Acciajuoli to Messina to 
 conclude the war there by making a truce with 
 Frederick, after which he was counselled to return 
 to Naples with as many troops as he could muster 
 to oppose Louis's eldest brother, the Prince of 
 
212 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Taranto, who was intriguing to obtain her throne 
 for himself. He hoped that he could persuade 
 Joanna to allow him to administer her government 
 for her ; but she was much too wise to do this, 
 foreseeing clearly enough that if she did so she 
 would be a Queen in name only, while her ambi- 
 tious brother-in-law would be to all intents and 
 purposes the ruling monarch ; so she promptly deter- 
 mined to nip this project in the bud. 
 
 She called together a council of all her wisest 
 men, and absolutely refused to allow the Prince of 
 Taranto to have anything whatever to do with the 
 government of her kingdom, and the Prince, find- 
 ing his efforts were useless, retired in high dudgeon 
 to his own estates. This and other similar cir- 
 cumstances made it imperative that Joanna should 
 marry a third time, and there was no lack of suitors. 
 The King of France was very anxious that she 
 should choose his son Philip, the Duke of Tours, 
 for whom such a marriage would have been most 
 advantageous ; but he was ten or twelve years 
 younger than Joanna, and she very wisely considered 
 that a barrier which could not have been got over 
 had there been no other objections to such a match. 
 John, the French King, endeavoured to get the 
 new Pope Urban V. to support this proposal; but 
 Joanna, dreading the difficulties and quarrels in 
 which the inexperience and youth of the boyish 
 Duke of Tours and the haughtiness of his courtiers 
 
Joanna's Second Widowhood 213 
 
 would probably involve her, most wisely declined 
 the offer. 
 
 One of the handsomest princes at this time 
 about the Neapolitan Court was James III. of 
 Majorca, a king without a kingdom. Majorca, the 
 largest of the Balearic Isles, had been taken from 
 the Saracens about the year 1230 by James I., King 
 of Aragon, and by him erected into a kingdom ; 
 the other Balearic Isles, together with the two 
 counties of Roussillon and Moritpellier being de- 
 pendent upon it. 
 
 James II. of Aragon in 1295 married an 
 Angevine princess, the daughter of Charles II. of 
 Anjou, by whom he had two sons, Pedro and 
 James. The elder succeeded him as King of 
 Aragon under the title of Pedro III., and the 
 younger as King of Aragon under the title of 
 James I. of Majorca ; they were always at war with 
 each other, and left the quarrel as an inheritance 
 to their sons, Pedro IV. of Aragon and James II. 
 of Majorca. 
 
 In 1349 Pedro IV., surnamed the Ceremonious, 
 succeeded in despoiling his brother of the kingdom 
 of Majorca, in a battle in which James II., as some 
 assert, was killed, and his son James III. was taken 
 prisoner. He was in captivity for many years, but 
 at last succeeded in effecting his escape, and went 
 to Naples, where he was one of the most attractive 
 members of that gay court. It was upon him that 
 
214 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 the choice of Joanna and her council fell as the most 
 suitable candidate for her hand. 
 
 The conditions imposed upon the nominal King 
 of Majorca were that he should possess of Joanna's 
 dominions the Dukedom of Calabria only, and that 
 he was not to expect to have any share in the govern- 
 ment, nor to assume the title of King, but to wait 
 the Queen's pleasure to bestow either of these 
 privileges upon him, in case their marriage should 
 be blessed with children or even one child to in- 
 herit the throne. The fact that Montpellier and 
 Roussillon were adjacent to Joanna's Provencal 
 possessions made James more acceptable to the 
 Queen's advisers, as they were valuable adjuncts 
 to her French dominions. 
 
 James raised no objections to the conditions — 
 indeed, notwithstanding them, Joanna was the most 
 brilliant match he could have found in all Europe — 
 and the marriage was duly celebrated with all 
 the pomp and magnificence which had graced the 
 Queen's former weddings. 
 
 Some writers say that James's father was not 
 slain on the battlefield, but was kept a prisoner 
 by Pedro, and that three months after his marriage 
 James heard his father had been treacherously 
 murdered in prison, and that he at once left Naples 
 for Spain with all the troops he could muster to 
 avenge his father's death. 
 
 However this may be, whether the King was 
 
Joanna's Second Widowhood 215 
 
 slain in battle or in prison, it is certain that James 
 III. set out very shortly after his marriage with 
 Joanna to try to recover his kingdom. Joanna 
 was not able to render him much assistance in this 
 expedition, for she was obliged to send a force to 
 defend her Provencal dominions from the inroads 
 of the Dukes of Milan and Savoy, who were in 
 league together to deprive her of them. The 
 prompt measures which Joanna took, and the fidelity 
 of her Provencal subjects, soon succeeded in de- 
 feating the two Dukes, but her husband was less 
 successful in his campaign against the King of 
 Aragon. 
 
 After three months' wedded happiness Joanna 
 was, to all intents and purposes, again a widow, 
 at least a grass widow, for her husband was absent 
 almost the whole of their married life, and frequently 
 she did not know whether he was alive or dead. 
 The means of communication were slow and by no 
 means sure, and the life of James was fraught 
 with so many adventures on the battlefield and 
 in captivity that it was exceedingly difficult for the 
 Queen to obtain reliable information as to his 
 movements. 
 
 There is a long account of James III. and his 
 exploits in Froissart's Chronicles, but his account 
 of Joanna has been proved to be so inaccurate that 
 it will not do to place too much reliance upon 
 his tales of the adventures of her third husband. 
 
216 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Of certain facts, however, there seems to be little 
 doubt — at any rate, most historians repeat them as 
 true. 
 
 He appears to have fought for three or four 
 years against the King of Aragon quite unsuccess- 
 fully, and then to have fled to Bordeaux, where 
 the Prince of Wales was then residing, and to 
 have joined him. According to Froissart, this was 
 in 1367, and he says that while James was 
 with the Black Prince in Bordeaux the Princess 
 of Wales gave birth to a son, who afterwards 
 succeeded to the English throne as Richard II. 
 The little Prince was baptized in the church of 
 St. Andrew, in Bordeaux, and the King of Majorca 
 was one of his god-fathers. Froissart says the 
 Prince of Wales received James well and treated 
 him handsomely, " for he was a stranger, and far 
 from his own country, and his finances were low." 
 Edward then joined Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, 
 in an expedition in Spain, and he promised to restore 
 James to his kingdom if he would accompany him 
 on this campaign, which turned out to be a brilliant 
 success. In this splendid expedition, in which the 
 Black Prince won such great honour, James of 
 Majorca fought side by side with him. 
 
 At the end of the campaign the Prince of Wales 
 went to Valladolid, or, as Froissart calls it, the 
 Vale of Olives, translating the Spanish word ; and 
 there the heat was so great that they were all more 
 
Joanna's Second Widowhood 217 
 
 or less affected by it, and James was so ill that 
 when the Prince of Wales moved on he was con- 
 fined to his bed, and had to be left behind. The 
 Black Prince sent some of his English knights to 
 the King of Majorca to tell him his troops were 
 suffering so much from the heat that he was obliged 
 to leave Spain, and to ask if he wished to go with 
 them. 
 
 James replied that he was so ill that he could 
 not lift his foot to the stirrup ; and on being asked 
 if he would like some men-at-arms left behind as 
 a guard, he declined, saying it was uncertain how 
 long he might be forced to remain there. Peter 
 the Cruel turned out a perfidious ally, failing to 
 keep all his engagements, and proving himself a 
 most ungrateful friend ; for as soon as the English 
 army had left all the towns they had reconquered, 
 he went back to his brother, Henry of Transtamare, 
 who marched to Valladolid, where he heard the 
 King of Majorca, his bitter enemy, was lying con- 
 fined to his bed, to take advantage of his weakness 
 and make him a prisoner. James at once asked 
 whether Henry would make him his own prisoner 
 or whether he intended to send him to the King 
 of Aragon, as he would rather die than fall into 
 his hands. 
 
 Henry replied that on no account would he act 
 so disloyally as to send him to his greatest enemy, 
 but would retain him as his own prisoner until 
 
2i 8 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 he was either ransomed or it pleased him to set 
 him at liberty. James now found means of com- 
 municating his plight to Joanna, who, as soon as 
 she heard of it, set about raising the money for 
 his ransom and finding trusty messengers to nego- 
 tiate the business. She succeeded in procuring his 
 ransom at an immense cost, which, Froissart says, 
 was paid so graciously that the King of Castile 
 thanked her for it. 
 
 Directly he was released from his captivity James 
 returned to Naples, but he was so bent on revenge 
 against the King of Aragon that he only remained 
 with Joanna long enough to collect men and arms 
 and money sufficient to carry out another campaign, 
 which he set out upon much against Joanna's wish — 
 if we are to credit Froissart, who says Joanna wished 
 and counselled her husband to join his forces with 
 her cousin, the King of France, instead of with the 
 English under the Prince of Wales. He resisted 
 all her arguments and entreaties to remain with her 
 in Naples and abandon the hope of recovering his 
 own very small kingdom ; but James was obstinate, 
 and would not be persuaded, so the Queen yielded 
 to his wishes, and gave orders that as he passed 
 through Provence the highest honours should be 
 paid him, and a sum of 10,000 golden florins given 
 him for his expenses, which, seeing that he was 
 disregarding her wishes, seems very handsome 
 treatment. 
 
Joanna's Second Widowhood 219 
 
 Before we record the end of his somewhat 
 mythical, or at least very uncertain, fortunes, we 
 must make mention of a characteristically mediaeval 
 incident which occurred to Joanna about this time. 
 At a large and, as it was called, " solemn ball," 
 which Joanna held at Gaeta, at which she was the 
 admired of all eyes, there was present Galeazzo 
 of Mantua, one of the most accomplished Italian 
 princes of the time, and Joanna chose him as her 
 partner in one of the dances. 
 
 Joanna was a beautiful dancer, and Galeazzo also 
 excelled in this art ; and at the conclusion of the 
 dance he knelt before the majestic Joanna, who 
 was now about forty and a magnificent creature, 
 and thanked her humbly for the honour she had 
 so graciously bestowed upon him in allowing him 
 to be her partner, and then and there he made a 
 solemn vow that he would not rest until he had 
 found and challenged and defeated two valiant 
 knights, to give to her as a present. 
 
 Joanna replied, "that in good time, and by the 
 grace of God, he should accomplish his vow, since 
 such was his pleasure and the custom of knighthood." 
 
 Galeazzo then travelled half over Europe, going 
 to France, Spain, Germany, Hungary, and other 
 countries where the flower of knighthood was to 
 be met — we do not hear that he went to Eng- 
 land — and having found two knights worthy of 
 his prowess, he challenged, fought, and defeated 
 
220 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 them, and brought them captive to Naples at the 
 end of the year following the solemn ball at Gaeta. 
 
 Arrived at Naples he sought an audience, and 
 genuflecting before the Queen, he presented the 
 two captive knights to her. Joanna thanked him 
 cordially, congratulating him upon having accom- 
 plished his vow so gallantly, and then thus ad- 
 dressed the knights : 
 
 "Sirs, you are, as you see, my prisoners. By 
 the laws of chivalry, I may cause such as are in 
 your captive condition to serve me in any ignoble 
 office I may best please ; but I think you will judge 
 by my countenance that cruelty does not dwell in 
 my heart, to dispose of the unfortunate in such a 
 manner. Of my clemency then, and humanity, I 
 give you from this hour entire liberty and franchise 
 to act as you please, whether to return free to your 
 own country, or, before you depart, to solace your- 
 selves in my kingdom, and view the curiosities of 
 it, which are sufficiently admirable. After having 
 visited them return to me, and when you choose to 
 depart I shall be well pleased to commend you to God." 
 
 We of the twentieth century, whose ideas are so 
 different, can hardly imagine such a scene as this 
 ever taking place ; but in mediaeval days redeemed 
 slaves and prisoners and the vanquished became so 
 much the property of their purchasers and con- 
 querors that they were frequently disposed of by 
 will. A few years later Joanna redeemed a Tartar 
 
Joanna's Second Widowhood 221 
 
 princess from slavery, and sent her as a present to 
 her friend, St. Bridget of Sweden, the widowed 
 Princess of Nericia, who was then dying in Rome. 
 This extraordinary present arrived just after the 
 death of the saint had taken place ; but the captive 
 was adopted by Bridget's daughter, St. Catherine, 
 who took her to Sweden, where she became a nun in 
 the convent of Wadstena, in the Order founded by 
 St. Bridget, and died herself in the odour of sanctity. 
 
 Many of these captives and conquered knights 
 were less fortunate, and did not meet with such 
 clemency as Joanna showed her two prisoners. 
 Brantdme records the fate of a vanquished knight, 
 whom his conqueror bestowed upon the canons of 
 St. Peter's Church in Rome, with his arms, his 
 horse, his armour and trappings ; and says that 
 they kept the unfortunate man a prisoner in the 
 church for the remainder of his life, which he spent 
 in walking to and fro, his recreation being to stand 
 at the open door, whose threshold he never passed, 
 and watch the traffic outside. The laws of chivalry 
 were so binding on the honour of all knights that 
 this one could not break his parole, but was obliged 
 to submit to his sad fate. 
 
 Prisoners of war were treated more or less as 
 the personal property of their conquerors, even in 
 Christian Europe, until the institution of standing 
 armies, when they passed under the care of the 
 State to which they belonged. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Death of Acciajuoli 
 
 r T~ , HE shadows in Joanna's life were beginning 
 -*■ to deepen again ; the prolonged absence of 
 the man she had married to guard her fair name 
 and be a helpmeet to her was a source of grave 
 anxiety and trouble, for she did not know whether 
 he was alive or dead, in prison or at large. 
 
 About this time — that is, in the summer of 1367 
 — there arrived in Naples the celebrated prophetess 
 and mystic, the afterwards canonised Saint Bridget 
 of Sweden, with her beautiful young daughter 
 Catherine, also a widow, her friend Nicholas Orsini, 
 and a small band of Swedish pilgrims in her train. 
 The Neapolitan nobility vied with each other in 
 their eagerness to show hospitality to the Swedish 
 Princess, the fame of whose sanctity and of her 
 visions and her prophesies and revelations had 
 already reached them, for they were the talk of 
 Europe. 
 
 The honour of entertaining so distinguished a 
 
The Death of Acciajuoli 223 
 
 visitor fell upon Jacqueline nee Acciajuoli, sister to 
 Nicholas Acciajuoli, the Grand Seneschal of Naples, 
 and wife to the Count Buondelmonte. The 
 Countess was a very devout woman, and the simple 
 austerity of her menage, together with her high rank 
 and the important place she occupied at the 
 Neapolitan Court, made her house peculiarly 
 agreeable to the Princess of Nericia. From the 
 Countess the saint learnt the story of Joanna's life, 
 the murder of Andrew and its consequences, her 
 second marriage with Louis of Taranto, and her third 
 nuptials with the handsome King of Majorca ; she 
 heard too of the brilliancy of Joanna's court, of the 
 splendour of her banquets, " solemn balls," " Court 
 of Love," tournaments, and other entertainments, 
 renowned all over Europe for their magnificence ; 
 she heard of the envies and jealousies, of the 
 quarrels and constant warfare of the royal princes 
 of the houses of Durazzo and Taranto, of the 
 feuds between the nobles : and, as she had already 
 admonished and threatened with divine vengeance 
 Magnus II., King of Sweden, and his Queen 
 Blanche, of whose gay court she had once 
 been Grand Mistress, she now determined to 
 try to reform Joanna's court, and preach repent- 
 ance to the Queen herself and to all her gay 
 courtiers. 
 
 St. Bridget was a great reformer, not only of 
 monasteries and convents, of monks and nuns, of 
 
224 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 bishops and clergy, but she had not scrupled to 
 remonstrate with the Popes for their residence at 
 Avignon, and was at this moment on the verge 
 of inducing Urban V. by her counsels to return to 
 Rome. 
 
 Joanna, who if she liked gaiety was nevertheless 
 a devout and faithful Catholic, was anxious to see 
 the mystic, of whom she had heard so much, and 
 with whom she had corresponded. The Queen 
 had probably read some of St. Bridget's Revelations, 
 and soon after the arrival of the Swedish pilgrims 
 an audience was arranged. 
 
 The saint, who was of very small stature, and was 
 clad in a nunlike costume of coarse serge, with a 
 black veil on her head, which hid her still glorious 
 golden hair — which is said to have clothed her like 
 a mantle when unbound — was presented by the 
 Countess Buondelmonte to the majestic Neapolitan 
 Queen, who was dressed in her usual magnificent 
 style, and was surrounded by a group of admiring 
 courtiers equally magnificently attired, many of 
 whom were in love with her and all were ready to 
 die in her cause. 
 
 St. Bridget then presented her daughter Catherine, 
 clad also in the nunlike widow's dress of the period, 
 who was herself so beautiful that several Roman 
 noblemen had attempted to carry her off by force 
 in Rome. But Catherine and Joanna never seem to 
 have liked each other, whereas in spite of St. Bridget's 
 
The Death of Acciajuoli 225 
 
 most severe admonishments, Joanna became greatly 
 attached to her, and promised the saint to reform 
 her court, and to lead a much stricter life in future. 
 A sort of religious revival in Naples seems to have 
 been the outcome of this visit of the Swedish saint 
 to that city. She became the rage : the Neapolitan 
 nobles willingly left their palaces to stand with the 
 poor and infirm who besieged the Buondelmonte 
 mansion, to wait their turn for an interview with the 
 prophetess. They and their wives and daughters 
 took to visiting the poor and the hospitals and 
 tending the sick as Bridget and Catherine were wont 
 to do in Rome ; the reported miracles wrought by 
 St. Bridget in healing the sick created a great 
 sensation ; the churches were crowded. In short, 
 Naples went from one extreme to the other, from 
 the extreme of gaiety to the opposite pole of 
 devotion, and, as might have been expected, after 
 the departure of the saint relapsed into its former 
 normal condition. 
 
 But before the Swedish pilgrims quitted Naples 
 St. Bridget established her claims to the gift of 
 prophecy in a remarkable manner. 
 
 She was sitting with Jacqueline Acciajuoli one day, 
 when she suddenly told her that the days of her 
 brother Nicholas, the Grand Seneschal of the king- 
 dom, were already numbered, and his death imminent. 
 Greatly shocked, Jacqueline, who was devoted to her 
 brother, at once went in search of him, and found 
 
 15 
 
226 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 him with the Queen, treating with her concerning 
 the ransom of her husband the King of Majorca, 
 then in captivity in Spain. Nicholas was apparently 
 in excellent health ; he was only about fifty-six, and 
 a strong man, but that very night he was taken 
 suddenly and seriously ill. St. Bridget was sent for, 
 and watched and prayed at his bedside, where she 
 fell into one of her ecstasies, and received one of the 
 revelations for which she was so famous, which 
 she afterwards wrote down and gave to her confessor 
 to translate into Latin. 
 
 The Grand Seneschal died in her presence after 
 receiving the Last Sacraments, her exhortations and 
 prayers having moved him to deep repentance for 
 the sins of his past life. His death took place on 
 October 25th, 1367, a few days after St. Bridget 
 had prophesied that it was imminent. 
 
 He was buried in the magnificent Carthusian 
 monastery near Florence, which he had built, and 
 to which he had already sent a library of very 
 valuable manuscripts, having hoped soon to retire 
 from office and end his days in peace and retirement 
 there. The cause of his death is described as the 
 bursting of an abscess in his head, but the vague 
 and scanty medical knowledge of the times cannot 
 be relied upon for a right diagnosis of his somewhat 
 mysterious end. Perhaps it was an attack of menin- 
 gitis. His death was a most serious loss to the 
 Queen, for he was one of her most faithful coun- 
 
From an engraving by B. Holl, after an original painting. 
 JOANNA THE FIRST, 
 
 Queen of Naples. 
 
 p. 2261 
 
The Death of Acciajuoli 227 
 
 sellors and servants, and one of the most distinguished 
 men living during her reign. He was also a very 
 devout man, most charitable and generous to the 
 Church. 
 
 On one occasion he quarrelled with John Barrili, 
 also a very able man, a poet and a great favourite 
 of the late King Robert, who chose him as his 
 proxy on the occasion of the crowning of Petrarch 
 with laurel in the Capitol. Petrarch heard of this 
 quarrel from the Bishop of Florence, on the occasion 
 already mentioned on which he dined with the poet. 
 " I am grieved at this quarrel ; you are the friend of 
 both, and should make it up between them," said 
 the Bishop. 
 
 Petrarch undertook the task of reconciliation, and 
 set about it in a somewhat elaborate fashion, though 
 one that was highly characteristic of him. He wrote 
 three long letters — a private one for each of the 
 offended friends, and one to both united to be 
 opened only by the two together and read. All 
 three letters urged the strongest reasons for their 
 reconciliation, and he ended the private epistles by 
 hoping that they would give a whole day to the 
 reading of the third letter. This happened many 
 years before the Grand Seneschal's death, for they 
 were dated May 24th, 1352. The Bishop undertook 
 to deliver the letters, and some months afterwards he 
 wrote to Petrarch to tell him his letters had had the 
 desired effect, and a reconciliation had taken place. 
 
228 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Acciajuoli left four sons by his wife Margareta, 
 besides two adopted children. 
 
 Soon after Acciajuoli's death King John of France, 
 having failed to secure Joanna's hand for his son, 
 made an attempt to take Provence from her by 
 force ; but her wisdom and tact again stood her in 
 good stead, and the Pope supported her so zealously 
 and her Provencal subjects showed such fidelity to 
 her, that the Duke of Anjou, who had based his 
 claims on some rights which he supposed had 
 accrued to him through the ancient Kings of Aries, 
 was defeated at the end of six months, although 
 during this time he had offered the largest bribes 
 to the Provencal barons to tempt them and corrupt 
 their allegiance to Joanna. One of these barons, 
 Rainier of Grimaldis, Prince of Morguez, behaved 
 with great loyalty to Joanna ; she had given him 
 a present of 4,000 florins for recapturing Tarascon 
 for her. The Duke of Anjou offered to give 
 Grimaldis the same sum annually if he would go 
 over to the French side, but he refused with scorn 
 to consider such treachery to his Queen. 
 
 Even at Avignon the influence of the Anglo- 
 French war was felt, and the policy of John of 
 France was galling to the French Pope. Urban V. 
 now made a league with the King of Hungary, 
 Joanna, and others against the Viscontis, who had 
 for years been in rebellion against the Holy See. 
 Barnabas Visconti, who was renowned for his cruelty 
 
The Death of Acciajuoli 229 
 
 and the exorbitant demands he made upon the Pope, 
 when he heard of this league, said, "They are all 
 children ; I will have them all whipped." 
 
 Ambrose Visconti this same year entered Naples 
 with what was then considered an enormous force 
 of 1,200 lancers, each of whom had a number of 
 followers who were not counted in estimating the 
 size of Visconti's army. They seized on a portion 
 of the Abruzzi, and robbed and plundered the in- 
 habitants without mercy. 
 
 Joanna sent only a small force at first against 
 Ambrose (who was called the Bastard of Milan), 
 under Giovanni Malateca ; but finding this was 
 insufficient, she summoned all the veterans who 
 had formerly served under her late husband, Louis 
 of Taranto, and riding out to meet them addressed 
 an eloquent speech to them, exhorting them to do 
 their utmost to deliver their country as speedily as 
 possible from these cruel barbarians who were killing 
 their countrymen and ruining the land by their 
 rapine. 
 
 She then wrote to the chief barons in her kingdom 
 to the same effect, and so successfully that in a 
 few months the Milanese army was cut up, only 
 between two and three thousand of Visconti's men 
 escaping from the country ; while Ambrose Visconti 
 himself was taken prisoner, and confined in one of 
 the Neapolitan castles, Castel Nuovo, for ten years. 
 Some writers have blamed Joanna for treating this 
 
230 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 enemy with too great severity, but he was such a 
 dangerous, turbulent man that he was better in cap- 
 tivity than free. 
 
 Urban V. now issued a Bull of Excommunication 
 against the Visconti, and sent two legates with it 
 to Galeazzo Visconti ; but he not only paid no atten- 
 tion to this sentence, but forced the two legates to 
 eat in his presence the parchment on which the 
 Bull was written, and also the seals, which are said 
 to have been leaden, and the cords. 
 
 It seems that about this same year, 1367, Joanna 
 heard of the death of her husband, James of Majorca; 
 but according to Mr. Baddeley, who has written 
 a most scholarly essay on the Life and Times of 
 Joanna, 1 his death occurred much later than this. 
 This writer says that James's death took place at 
 Soria, in a Franciscan monastery there, in the year 
 
 1375- 
 
 Caraccioli puts his death at 1368, and Froissart 
 
 says it took place at sea on his voyage home from 
 
 Spain to Naples about 1376. Whether alive or 
 
 dead he was dead to Joanna from the time he left 
 
 her after she had ransomed him, and for many 
 
 years she was unaware of his fate, which was a 
 
 cause of great anxiety to her. From 1367 reports 
 
 were coming constandy to Naples that he was dead, 
 
 and they did Joanna much harm in many ways. 
 
 1 " Queen Joanna I., An Essay on her Times," by St. Clair 
 Baddeley. London, 1893. 
 
The Death of Acciajuoli 231 
 
 Those pests the freebooters no sooner heard that 
 she was again a widow than some of their com- 
 panies, of which Ambrose Visconti's was one, laid 
 plans for the invasion of Naples ; but after he was 
 taken prisoner Joanna enjoyed a period of com- 
 parative rest and peace, during a reign which has 
 been described as one long effort to keep her 
 throne. 
 
 Her wisdom and prudence, however, succeeded 
 in suppressing brigandage and robbery till the caves 
 of Calabria were as safe, we are told, as her own 
 palace. To accomplish this she had to exercise 
 severity, and a royal edict was passed ordering that 
 when a band of brigands or marauders was taken, 
 who had been strong enough to fortify themselves 
 in any castle, they were to be publicly executed 
 as criminals, and this had a salutary effect, which 
 Boccaccio thus describes : 
 
 " The rich man as well as the poor could traverse 
 by night or day with perfect security not only towns 
 and villages, but also the wildest forests, mountains, 
 or caverns, and this the predecessors of Joanna were 
 either not willing or not able to accomplish. And 
 what is not less salutary, by the modesty of her own 
 manners she has reformed the licentiousness of her 
 nobility, and so curbed their pride that those who 
 formerly paid little regard to their kings, to-day 
 dread the frown of an offended woman." 
 
 Robbery was the most prominent vice of Europe 
 
232 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 at this time, and it existed in greater excess in many 
 parts of Italy than elsewhere ; even in the time of 
 the good King Robert, Naples was notorious for 
 its thieves. So little was then thought of it that 
 what was called " living by the saddle " was quite 
 a gentlemanly profession in most European countries. 
 Joanna did completely away with this reproach as 
 far as Naples was concerned, and did all she could 
 to help and civilise (her people by encouraging 
 commerce. To this end she built four streets to 
 accommodate the inhabitants of the four nations 
 who traded most with the capital, namely, the Pro- 
 vencals, the Spaniards, the Venetians,, and the 
 Genoese. 
 
 Naples under Joanna's rule became the favourite 
 port of traders, partly for the security of the roads, 
 partly for the exemption from all taxation and from 
 any forced loans, which in no emergencies would 
 she ever suffer to be levied. The city was supplied 
 not only with all the necessaries of life, but also 
 with luxuries from foreign countries, for Joanna 
 was a liberal patroness of every kind of art. In 
 a catalogue of the furniture, etcetera, of Fonthill 
 Abbey there is mentioned a magnificent Oriental 
 china vase, the earliest specimen of its kind known 
 in Europe, which once belonged to Joanna, whose 
 arms are engraved upon it. 
 
 She took pride in making her court as celebrated 
 as King Robert's had been for learned and scientific 
 
The Death of Acciajuoli 233 
 
 men, whom she freely admitted to her society in 
 private life as well as at court. Boccaccio, who 
 after Petrarch was the most celebrated of her con- 
 temporaries in literature, says, " She was so gracious, 
 gentle, compassionate, and kind that she seemed 
 rather the companion than the Queen of those 
 around her." 
 
 In those days theology ranked first of all studies, 
 but after that law was the most esteemed in Joanna's 
 court, for her first care was to protect the poor 
 against the rich, the weak against the strong ; and 
 for this purpose she consulted the most eminent 
 barristers and lawyers the University of Naples 
 could supply. There were three most famous juris- 
 consults whom Joanna commanded in an edict, 
 using the language of her period, should be revered 
 in her dominions " as a human Trinity when in- 
 terpreting the laws." These three were Luke of 
 Penna, Andrew of Isernia, and Nicholas of Naples, 
 all very famous men. After the death of Andrew 
 of Isernia, Joanna in all difficult questions used to 
 apply to the most celebrated foreign legal authori- 
 ties for advice. Baldus of Perugia and Angelus of 
 the same city, on whom the most extravagant terms 
 of praise were lavished, were two of these, and 
 both were enthusiastic admirers of the Queen of 
 Sicily, not only as a wise sovereign and legislatrix, 
 but also as a beautiful woman and a most charming 
 companion. 
 
234 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Astrology was in the Middle Ages studied with 
 astronomy, and at Naples there was a chair of 
 astrology at the University, as well as for other 
 sciences. Much faith was placed in casting of 
 horoscopes and the observation of the stars, which 
 were supposed to foretell the destinies of men and 
 women. Diseases were also believed to be in- 
 fluenced by the celestial bodies, and in consequence 
 physicians were generally astrologers, but the mass 
 of the medical profession in those days were what 
 we a century ago should have called quacks. 
 Petrarch had very little faith in the prescriptions 
 of the doctors of his time. He says, "The 
 moment I see a physician I know beforehand what 
 he will say to me, ' Eat young poultry, drink warm 
 water, use the remedy the stork has taught us.' " 
 
 They might and did give worse advice than to 
 eat young poultry and to drink warm water, but 
 what the cryptic allusion to the teaching of the 
 stork may mean we do not know, and perhaps we 
 had better not inquire. Two lessons taught by 
 the stork certainly might be followed with advan- 
 tage — to be good mothers, and to take care of our 
 parents in their old age. Fruit was a prohibited 
 article of diet in sickness in the Middle Ages, but 
 Petrarch struck at this medical advice, and laments 
 that physicians seemed to regard it as equally 
 poisonous with henbane and aconite. 
 
 Watches and clocks were in use at this period, 
 
The Death of Acciajuoli 235 
 
 but the pendulum was not invented until the time 
 of Galileo ; until then it was the dial which revolved. 
 Spectacles were also in common use. One of the 
 most celebrated inventions of Joanna's reign is said 
 to have been the mariner's compass ; the first that 
 was constructed in Europe was made by Gioja 
 Flavio, a mathematician of Amain, near Naples ; 
 but the idea is believed to have been brought from 
 China by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, 
 and the Chinese had probably understood the use 
 of it for two thousand years before. Flavio's com- 
 pass had eight points only, and the arms of the 
 district in which he was born bear a compass with 
 eight points in memory of him. 
 
 The most celebrated theologian in Joanna's king- 
 dom was Paris of Pozzuoli, who has left a most 
 enthusiastic panegyric upon Joanna behind him ; 
 but perhaps if the Queen of Naples had been con- 
 sulted she would have desired no higher compli- 
 ment than to be called, as she so emphatically is, 
 " the friend of Petrarch and Boccaccio," and equally 
 the friend of two Popes, Clement VI. and Urban V. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 Urban V- returns to Rome 
 
 WE now come to the most important con- 
 temporary event of Joanna's reign, for it 
 affected all Christendom — the return of the Pope to 
 Rome. Urban V. had always regarded his residence 
 at Avignon as only a temporary measure ; the 
 interests of the Church, the exhortations of St. 
 Bridget, the terrible state of Rome during the 
 absence of the Supreme Pontiff, the prayers 
 and wishes of all his Italian subjects, all com- 
 bined to induce him to make up his mind in the 
 beginning of the year 1367 to leave Avignon for 
 Rome. 
 
 He was vehemently opposed in this way by all 
 the French Cardinals, who formed the majority of 
 the Sacred College, for they were unwilling to leave 
 their magnificent residences on the banks of the 
 Rhone, and the luxurious and brilliant life at the 
 
 236 
 
Urban V. returns to Rome 237 
 
 It is said that Urban's mother, who lived with 
 him at Avignon was so concerned at his deter- 
 mination to depart from thence that she threw 
 herself on the ground at his feet, and declared 
 that he should not leave the Papal palace unless 
 he trod over her body. But Urban, when once 
 he felt it his duty to return to Rome, suffered no 
 obstacle to stand in his way, not even his mother's 
 dramatic opposition ; and quoting the text, "he shall 
 tread on the asp and the basilisk," he passed on, 
 leaving the asp or the basilisk to rise from her lowly 
 attitude. 
 
 The first stage of his journey was Marseilles. Here 
 the galleys which he had commanded Joanna, and 
 the Genoese, and the Venetians to provide for him 
 met him ; and the French Cardinals are said to have 
 vented their grief at leaving France in loud cries 
 and lamentations, and their anger in opprobrious 
 language to the venerable Pontiff, who paid no 
 attention, but calmly ordered the sailors to set sail 
 for Genoa, where they met with a splendid reception 
 from all the princes and ambassadors, who were 
 assembled on the shore and knelt to receive the 
 Papal benediction. 
 
 Here under the blue Italian sky, on an improvised 
 altar, Urban celebrated his first Mass in Italy, in the 
 presence of an enormous crowd of people. At its 
 Papal Court at Avignon, for the unhealthy palace 
 in the squalid and disorderly streets of Rome. 
 
238 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 conclusion he proceeded on his journey to Rome, 
 and, after some opposition at Viterbo, he reached the 
 Eternal City on October 16th. 
 
 At his entry into Rome, more than two thousand 
 bishops, abbots, and priors accompanied him ; his 
 white courser was led by Italian princes, while 
 eleven French cardinals followed, resigned and 
 melancholy, in his train. The bells of the city rang 
 joyously, the great doors of St. Peter's were thrown 
 open, cries of " Evviva il Papa ! " rent the air, and 
 then the Holy Father gave the blessing " Urbi 
 et Orbi " from the balcony over the Golden Door. 
 
 For over a year Urban resided in Rome, the 
 object of the greatest veneration in his spiritual 
 capacity, for which his personal sanctity so well 
 fitted him ; but in his temporal office as Sovereign of 
 the city of Rome and of the Papal States he met 
 with obstinate and insolent disobedience. During 
 his residence in Rome, at the beginning of Lent, 
 1368, Joanna went to Rome to visit the Pope. 
 She went partly from a pious desire to pay her 
 homage to the Holy Father in his capital, partly 
 to confer with him as her best friend and most 
 competent adviser, on the subject of her successor. 
 Her sister Maria, who, although now the wife of 
 Philip of Taranto, retained, as she was entitled to 
 do, her higher title of Duchess of Durazzo, died 
 about this time ; and, as Joanna had no children, 
 Maria, according to the will of their grandfather, 
 
Urban V. returns to Rome 239 
 
 the late King Robert, was the heiress to her sister's 
 throne. It is true that the Duchess of Durazzo 
 had three daughters ; but by the custom and law 
 of the age, they had no right to a throne which 
 their mother had never actually possessed. 
 
 There now remained no descendants in the main 
 line of Charles of Anjou except Louis of Hungary 
 and Charles of Durazzo, son of Louis, Count of 
 Gravina, of whose education, as we have said before, 
 Joanna had taken charge. She had been a mother 
 to this young Prince, who turned out so ungrateful, 
 and as soon as he attained his majority he accepted 
 an invitation from Joanna's greatest enemy, Louis, 
 King of Hungary, to fight with him against the 
 Venetians, with whom he was now at war. Joanna 
 disapproved of this most strongly ; but Charles 
 disregarded her wishes, and this fact made her 
 hesitate to adopt him as her heir, for she knew 
 Louis hated her, and would probably poison her 
 nephew's mind against her. 
 
 We can imagine how deeply this conduct of 
 Charles must have wounded Joanna, for there are 
 few things more galling than when those we have 
 believed to be our friends become intimate with our 
 enemies ; and Joanna had been far more than a 
 friend to Charles of Durazzo. She had been his 
 benefactress and a foster-mother to him who now 
 behaved in this mean and ungrateful way to her — 
 which, indeed, was but a prelude to the lower 
 
240 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 depths of treachery and baseness to which he 
 afterwards sank. 
 
 Joanna made the journey as far as Ostia by sea, 
 and the remainder of the way by land, sometimes 
 riding on horseback, sometimes being carried in a 
 litter, but with great pomp and attended by a mag- 
 nificent train of knights and followers. This visit, 
 which brought her so much honour, was perhaps 
 the happiest period of her life ; she had left her 
 kingdom at peace and in a prosperous condition, 
 owing to her wise government, so she had no 
 anxiety about that in the background to mar her 
 delight in the spiritual and artistic treasures of 
 Rome. 
 
 Peter of Lusignan, King of Cyprus, met her at 
 a little distance from the gates of the city, and 
 conducted her under a rich canopy of state to the 
 Porta S. Pietro. Here she was met by the 
 cardinals, clergy, and principal nobles of Rome, who 
 were waiting to receive her and attend her to the 
 steps of St. Peter's Church. Urban V. in full 
 pontificals was waiting here, and as she approached, 
 he, wishing to confer a very great mark of honour 
 upon her, descended some of the steps to meet this 
 majestic Queen and woman. 
 
 Joanna dismounted from her horse, and made the 
 three customary genuflections to the Holy Father, 
 who raised her from her knees and led her into 
 the church, up the nave to the tombs of the holy 
 
Urban V. returns to Rome 241 
 
 apostles Peter and Paul, to pay her devotions at 
 their shrine. An enormous crowd had been assem- 
 bled outside the church in the Piazza to watch 
 her arrival, and some of the people followed the 
 procession into the church on this unique occasion. 
 
 Urban V. was a greater friend to Joanna than 
 his predecessor Clement VI. had been ; and since 
 he became a canonised saint of the church, and 
 during his lifetime was noted for his holiness, this 
 friendship and respect, this affection and esteem of 
 the Sovereign Pontiff, should have silenced the lips 
 of all her detractors ; for we may be sure that had 
 there been truth in their vile reports, Urban V. 
 would never have countenanced her, far less would 
 he have demonstrated his regard for her in the 
 public way he did. During her stay in Rome he 
 showed her every public mark of honour it was in 
 his power to bestow. 
 
 For the second time in her life Joanna, on Letare 
 Sunday, received the Golden Rose — this time from 
 Urban V. after he had blessed it and worn it during 
 Mass. To the surprise of all present, the Pope, 
 at the conclusion of High Mass, turned to the 
 Queen of Naples, who was near him, and presented 
 her with this coveted honour. It is said that the 
 Cardinals afterwards remonstrated with him because 
 he had preferred Joanna to the King of Cyprus, 
 who was also present, and objected that she was the 
 first woman who had ever received this favour. 
 
 16 
 
242 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Urban is reported to have replied in a severe 
 tone, which did not encourage any more remon- 
 strance on the part of the Cardinals : " There were 
 exceptions to all rules, and who had ever before 
 heard of a poor Abbot of St. Victor at Marseilles 
 being Pope ? " 
 
 On Easter Sunday Urban lavished yet a greater 
 favour upon Joanna. He presented her with the 
 blessed hat and sword, but she, with her customary 
 tact and grace, noticing the deep mortification of 
 the King of Cyprus, asked the Pope to bestow the 
 sword upon him, and Urban consenting, she gave 
 it to Peter of Lusignan with her own fair hands, 
 thus enhancing the gift, and retained for herself the 
 pearl-embroidered hat. 
 
 Joanna remained in Rome until after the Easter 
 ceremonies were over, and in the meantime, in the 
 course of her interviews with Urban, had come to 
 the decision that the best way out of the difficult 
 question of the succession to her throne would be 
 to arrange a marriage between her adopted daughter 
 Margaret, her sister Maria's youngest child, and 
 Charles Durazzo, and then, if she found on his 
 return from Louis of Hungary that he was still 
 loyal to her, to leave the crown to him and 
 Margaret. 
 
 The two elder daughters of Maria were already 
 married — Joanna, the Duchess of Durazzo, to 
 Robert of Artois, and Agnes to Can della Scala, 
 
Urban V. returns to Rome 243 
 
 Prince of Verona ; and the Queen knew that to leave 
 her crown to either of them so long as Charles 
 Durazzo lived would be to leave them and her 
 kingdom an inheritance of civil war, so she asked 
 Urban for a dispensation to enable her adopted 
 daughter, Margaret, to marry her cousin, Charles 
 Durazzo. 
 
 On leaving Rome she did not return to Naples 
 at once, but went to Provence and worked there 
 on reforming the laws of that country and Piedmont, 
 and as soon as this was accomplished went back 
 to her capital and celebrated with befitting pomp 
 the marriage of her adopted daughter and Charles 
 Durazzo. Joanna was strongly attached to her 
 nephew, who was, externally at least, a very attractive 
 man, with winning manners which effectually con- 
 cealed his falseness and cruelty. He was a fine 
 soldier, brave to rashness, and though of small 
 stature he had defeated in single combat soon after 
 he went to Hungary a gigantic Hungarian knight 
 whom no other man had dared to challenge, and 
 from that time he bore the head of an elephant 
 as his crest, because that had formerly belonged 
 to his vanquished foe. 
 
 Charles was very generous, especially to men of 
 letters whom he patronised, and his conduct at 
 this time was so irreproachable that Joanna un- 
 fortunately was deceived by it ; and after his 
 marriage with Margaret she issued a proclamation 
 
244 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of her intention of bequeathing her crown to the 
 newly married Prince and Princess, and to their 
 issue. What must have been her feelings when 
 very soon after this Charles returned to the service 
 of the King of Hungary, on whose support he 
 calculated should Joanna change her intentions with 
 regard to her heirs ? 
 
 Meanwhile Urban V. was finding the turbulent 
 state of Rome and the deleterious effect of the 
 unhealthy climate upon his health so unbearable 
 that he resolved to return to Avignon, a measure 
 which the Italian Cardinals opposed as strongly as 
 the French had objected to his leaving it. The 
 Pope again applied to the Queen of Naples to 
 furnish him with galleys for the voyage, which 
 she willingly supplied. 
 
 St. Bridget of Sweden, hearing of the Pope's 
 intention of returning to France, demanded an 
 audience, and informed the venerable Pontiff that 
 it had been revealed to her by Our Lady that if 
 he returned to Avignon he would die very shortly 
 after. 
 
 Urban paid no attention to this prophecy ; 
 having made up his mind that he was acting for 
 the best in removing the Papal Court back to 
 Avignon, he was not to be deterred from carrying 
 out his intention by what he considered might 
 possibly be a delusion on the Swedish mystic's 
 part. However that may be, it is certain that 
 
URBAN THE FIFTH. 
 
 p. 244] 
 
Urban V. returns to Rome 245 
 
 he lived only a few months after his return to 
 France. 
 
 When he felt his end approaching he ordered the 
 doors of his palace to be thrown open that all might 
 see him die as he lay, in his Benedictine habit which 
 he always wore, stretched on a wretched low bed 
 with his crucifix in his feeble hands, making acts 
 of humble contrition for all the sins of his past life. 
 His death took place on December 19th, 1370. 
 He was very infirm when St. Bridget uttered her 
 prophecy, but he died of some unknown malady. 
 He was deeply regretted by the Italians as well 
 as by the French. 
 
 No less than eight hundred princes and nobles 
 attended the Requiem sung at Bologna for his soul, 
 and he was invoked as a saint immediately after it 
 was celebrated, before his cause of canonisation began. 
 
 All the sovereigns of Europe, from Magnus II. 
 of Sweden and Waldemar of Denmark in the north 
 to Joanna in the south, demanded his canonisation, 
 and his cause was greatly helped by the numerous 
 miracles attributed to him, in an age when more 
 faith was placed in miracles than in our sceptical 
 time, and by his great sanctity, for he is said even 
 by Protestant historians to have been a model of 
 virtue. He made several greatly needed reforms 
 in the Church, among them a very wise and im- 
 portant one forbidding the Cardinals to use their 
 houses as sanctuaries for criminals. 
 
246 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 By the death of Urban Joanna lost her best and 
 most powerful friend, although the consequences to 
 her of this irreparable loss were not felt immediately. 
 The conclave to elect his successor was held at 
 Avignon, and the choice fell upon Pierre Roger de 
 Beaufort, the last of the French Popes, a nephew 
 of Clement VI. He took the title of Gregory XI. 
 
 Shortly after his accession Joanna succeeded in 
 putting an end to the strife which had disturbed 
 the Two Sicilies ever since the fatal day of the 
 massacre known as the Sicilian Vespers. A treaty 
 was entered into between her confessor the Bishop 
 of Gravina on the one hand, and the first chaplain 
 of Frederick of Aragon, then King of Sicily, on the 
 other side, by which the latter consented to acknow- 
 ledge Joanna as Queen of the Two Sicilies, and to 
 pay her a yearly tribute of three thousand ounces of 
 gold, on condition that she left him in peaceable 
 possession of the island. Frederick was also bound 
 to furnish Joanna whenever she required them with 
 ten galleys and a hundred men-at-arms. He was 
 also required to resign the title of King of Sicily, 
 and to take that of King of Trinacria instead. A 
 marriage was also arranged between him and Maria, 
 daughter of the Duke of Andria and of Joanna's 
 sister-in-law, Margaret of Taranto. 
 
 Thus ended the long struggle for independence of 
 the Island of Sicily, which now again acknowledged 
 an Angevine sovereign, Queen Joanna. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 Joanna and Charles of Sweden 
 
 JOANNA had now reached the summit of her 
 greatness ; from henceforth her history grows 
 more and more sad and troubled, culminating in 
 the final tragedy at Mora. But before we treat of 
 a romantic episode which intervened before these 
 shadows deepened, it may be as well to pause here 
 to relate some incidents in the lives of Petrarch and 
 Boccaccio, who were such conspicuous members of 
 her court, and such enthusiastic admirers and 
 champions of the " Jewel of Italy " as to fall 
 naturally into the tale of her life. Boccaccio's re- 
 lations with Joanna's aunt, the Princess Maria of 
 Sicily, have already been mentioned. To her in- 
 fluence the world owes the immortal work, " The 
 Decameron." It was at her command that he wrote 
 the hundred short novels or tales it contains. For the 
 most part they are most licentious ; and the strongest 
 
 evidence of the kind of intimacy which existed 
 
 247 
 
24 8 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 between the author and this beautiful princess is 
 afforded by the loose and immoral character of 
 a book of which Boccaccio was himself in later 
 years so ashamed that he wrote to a friend to 
 beg him not to permit his wife and daughter to 
 read it. 
 
 He began to write this masterpiece of Italian 
 prose at Naples, and finished it at Florence during 
 the visitation of the Great Plague in 1348. Its 
 publication was an epoch-making era in the history 
 of Italian prose, whose standard it fixed from that 
 day to this. The French critic Guinguene (1748- 
 18 16) says that "The Decameron," though less 
 serious than the " Divina Commedia " of Dante, and 
 less polished than the verses of Petrarch, has done 
 much more to fix the Italian language. The writers 
 of the sixteenth century speak of it with an en- 
 thusiasm which is almost religious. It is also a 
 mirror of the manners and customs of the author's 
 age. It opens with a most vivid description of 
 the Plague, and the plan adopted is a hundred 
 tales related by seven ladies and three gentlemen 
 who make a villeggiatura from Florence to escape 
 that dread scourge. 
 
 It is thought that the author owed, in a great 
 measure, the beauty of his style to his association 
 with Joanna for so many years, for her eloquence 
 and the ease with which she spoke both Italian and 
 the Provencal language were a liberal education, 
 
Joanna and Charles of Sweden 249 
 
 and the Princess Maria was also famed for her 
 manners and conversation as well as for her wit. 
 
 In 1 36 1, when Boccaccio was living at Florence, 
 he was visited one day by a Carthusian friar, who 
 asked to see him in private, and then told him he 
 had a message for him from a member of his 
 Order lately dead in the odour of sanctity, named 
 Father Petroni, who had died in May, 1361, in 
 a rapture. The name of Boccaccio's visitor was 
 Father Joachim Ciani, and he informed him that 
 Father Petroni had begged him on his deathbed to 
 seek the author of "The Decameron," and warn him 
 that unless he reformed his life and his licentious 
 writings, of which he ought to be ashamed, he 
 would die very shortly, and suffer eternal punish- 
 ment for his sins. 
 
 Father Petroni also made several prophecies con- 
 cerning other persons, among whom was Petrarch. 
 Boccaccio asked Ciani how Father Petroni, who had 
 never seen him or Petrarch, could know anything 
 about them, and Ciani replied that not long before 
 his death he had had a vision, in which many things 
 had been revealed to him ; and to prove the truth 
 of what he said, he communicated to Boccaccio some- 
 thing concerning himself, a secret which he believed 
 no one knew but himself. This made such an 
 impression upon Boccaccio, who was terrified 
 by the prospect of an early death and a life of 
 eternal misery, that he was converted there and 
 
250 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 then, resolved to reform his manner of life, to 
 renounce love and poetry, and even to part with 
 his library, which at that time contained little but 
 profane literature — which expression then meant 
 the classic Greek and Latin writers. Not content 
 with this change of life, which he faithfully carried 
 out, he gave himself up to the study of theology, 
 and was ordained priest after receiving the minor 
 orders. 
 
 He then wrote to Petrarch and told him of the 
 visit he had received, and of his resolutions, and 
 asked him to accept his library in discharge of some 
 debts he owed the poet. Petrarch was not so 
 persuaded of the truth of Father Petroni's warnings 
 as Boccaccio had been, and endeavoured to dissuade 
 his friend from abandoning literature and parting 
 with his library, and concluded by offering Boccaccio 
 a home in exchange for his books, which he declared 
 he would not except on any other terms. 
 
 Petrarch also urged that to deprive a man of 
 Boccaccio's age of his books entirely, when he had 
 cultivated letters so successfully hitherto, was to 
 deprive him of what would be a great solace in his 
 old age, and he asked him how St. Jerome would 
 have been able to combat heresy as he did if he had 
 had no books to help him. 
 
 Boccaccio declined Petrarch's offer to live with 
 him, but he kept his books, and added the study of 
 theology to his other knowledge, and soon became a 
 
Joanna and Charles of Sweden 251 
 
 noted priest, and was entrusted with an important 
 mission by the Bishop of Florence. 
 
 Soon after he became a priest, Nicholas Acciajuoli 
 invited him to Naples, and for a time they lived 
 together in a palace at Amain ; but they did not get 
 on very well, as Acciajuoli now ranked among the 
 highest princes, and apparently gave himself airs 
 to one who had been his own familiar friend. He 
 also after a while treated Boccaccio shamefully, in 
 the hope of getting rid of him, and put him into a 
 mean lodging, badly furnished, and sent his menials, 
 his cooks, lackeys, and even his mule-drivers and 
 scullions to take their meals at the same table. 
 Boccaccio soon had enough of this kind of thing, 
 and left Amain and went to the north of Italy, to 
 stay with Petrarch in Padua for three months. 
 
 He then went to Certaldo, which was the birth- 
 place of his father, and after spending some time 
 there returned to Naples, where he met with such 
 a warm reception from Joanna that her courtiers all 
 vied with each other in doing him honour. But 
 though the Queen made him the most liberal offers 
 to remain attached to her court at Naples for the 
 rest of his life, he decided to return after a time 
 to Certaldo, where he was seized with the first 
 dangerous illness he had ever known, which ruined 
 his strong constitution, and he never wholly re- 
 covered from the effects of it. 
 
 In October 1373, he began a course of lectures 
 
252 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 in the Church of St. Lawrence at Certaldo, on the 
 "Divina Commedia." The commentary he then wrote 
 on the first seven cantos makes two thick volumes, 
 and his enemies said he tried to display his own 
 knowledge rather than to explain Dante's immortal 
 poem. 
 
 In July, 1374, Petrarch died at Arqua, of a 
 fit of apoplexy, and Boccaccio thus lost his greatest 
 and best friend, whom he only survived for eighteen 
 months. His lectures and the labour they involved 
 proved too much for his enfeebled strength, and 
 on December 21st, 1375, he died at Certaldo. By 
 their deaths Joanna lost the two greatest ornaments 
 of her court, and two of her staunchest friends and 
 admirers, both of whom, as has appeared above, have 
 left their tribute of praise to the unfortunate and 
 beautiful Queen of the Two Sicilies. 
 
 About a year after the accession of Pope 
 Gregory XI. there occurred one of the most romantic 
 and dramatic incidents in Joanna's life — which was 
 certainly not wanting in either of these elements. 
 It was connected with the second visit of St. Bridget 
 of Sweden to the Neapolitan court, which she made 
 in 1 37 1, on her way to the Holy Land, whither 
 she, with her daughter Catherine and her two eldest 
 sons, Charles, Prince of Nericia, and Birger, two 
 young men of very different disposition and char- 
 acter. 
 
 Charles was a fine, handsome man, a brave soldier, 
 
Joanna and Charles of Sweden 253 
 
 but of passionate, even violent nature, and yet he 
 had great charm of manner, and was very much 
 liked and admired. His father, who had been very 
 proud of his eldest son and his achievements in the 
 hunting-field as well as on the field of battle, had 
 spoiled him, and he had given his mother a great 
 deal of anxiety all through his life. She had great 
 influence over him, and could to some extent curb 
 his impetuous temper and love of the world, and 
 by her early training had fostered the religious side 
 of his character — which was by no means a negligible 
 quantity, for if he had strong passions, he had also 
 very strong faith in all the doctrines of the Catholic 
 religion, 
 
 Birger, on the other hand, had never given his 
 mother a moment's anxiety in his life : he was a 
 very pious, devout man, of a studious disposition, 
 very retiring, caring nothing for worldly pleasures ; 
 he had neither Charles's personal beauty, nor his 
 power of attracting affection and admiration, and 
 led a lonely life, occupying himself with works of 
 charity and study. 
 
 These two brothers arrived in Rome in the 
 autumn of 137 1, in order to accompany their 
 mother on her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, on 
 which she was about to start. As the boat which 
 was to convey the pilgrims to Naples left the 
 harbour, St. Bridget turned to Father Peter of 
 Alvastra, her confessor, and said, as she looked at 
 
254 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 the party, " We shall all return safely except the 
 one I love best" — a prophecy destined to be ful- 
 filled. 
 
 Joanna had just returned from Avignon, where 
 she had had a most cordial reception from the new 
 Pope Gregory XI., when St. Bridget and the other 
 Scandinavian pilgrims reached Naples. The Nea- 
 politan nobility again hastened to offer their princely 
 hospitality to the Swedish mystic and her companions ; 
 but this time St. Bridget preferred a quieter residence, 
 seeing that she was a pilgrim, so they went to the 
 Hospice of Santa Maria dell' Avvocata, which ad- 
 joined the monastery of the Brothers Hospitaliers 
 of St. John. 
 
 One of St. Bridget's first acts after her arrival in 
 Naples was to ask for an audience of the Queen, her 
 friend, and Joanna graciously accorded her one 
 immediately. 
 
 She was apparently at the time staying in the 
 Castel del Ovo, as it was there that the dramatic 
 scene we are about to describe took place. She 
 received the Swedish pilgrims at a solemn audience, 
 with all the honours due to the high rank of the 
 Princess of Nericia and her sons. 
 
 Joanna was now about forty-three, and her majestic 
 beauty was by no means impaired, but had rather 
 gained in dignity, by all the sorrows she had ex- 
 perienced. It was seen to the very best advantage, 
 as she was magnificently attired; her golden hair 
 
Joanna and Charles of Sweden 255 
 
 was worn brushed back, showing her fine fore- 
 head, which was one of her best features, and was 
 crowned on this occasion with a diadem of pearls 
 on black velvet, which seems to have been especially 
 becoming. There was a tender look in her great 
 dark eyes, and the sweetest of smiles, for which 
 she was famous, played round her lips, as she 
 stood to receive her distinguished guests, towering 
 over all her ladies-in-waiting, many of whom 
 were remarkable also for their beauty, and sur- 
 rounded by her courtiers and knights, among 
 whom the chief gentleman-in-waiting was one Lan- 
 dolpho Crispano ; some of the royal princes were 
 also present. 
 
 St. Bridget advanced first to kiss the Queen's 
 hand, and then turned to present her two sons. 
 Birger knelt at the Queen's feet, according to the 
 etiquette of the court ; but Charles was so enchanted 
 by the vision of grace Joanna presented to his 
 gaze, that he forget everything except Joanna's 
 beauty, and pressing impulsively forward he seized 
 the Queen in his arms and kissed her on the lips. 
 
 The hot blood of the Neapolitan princes and 
 gentlemen-in-waiting was raised to boiling point at 
 this unseemly conduct to their mistress, and instinc- 
 tively their hands went to their swords, and but 
 for the restraining hand of Joanna on Crispano's 
 shoulder Charles's days would have come to an 
 abrupt conclusion. The Queen was not at all 
 
256 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 offended at this Scandinavian expression of admira- 
 tion, and behaved most graciously to the impetuous 
 young Swede. 
 
 St. Bridget was terribly distressed at this incident, 
 for Charles had a wife in Sweden, with whom he 
 was not on the best of terms ; her piety did not suit 
 his worldly taste and love of society, and it was said 
 he would gladly be rid of her, and his subsequent 
 conduct showed there was truth in this report. 
 St. Bridget went back to the Hospice deeply 
 mortified and grieved at what she foresaw would 
 be a great trial, for the Queen was again a widow 
 and had seemed to be by no means displeased by 
 Charles's sudden passion for her. The saint threw 
 herself on her knees and then prostrated herself 
 before the altar in the chapel of the Brothers 
 Hospitallers on her return, and for the rest of her 
 stay in Naples spent the greater part of her time 
 there. Here the sick were brought to her to heal, 
 and here she poured out her heart in prayer for 
 her son. 
 
 Meanwhile Charles seemed to have abandoned 
 the idea of continuing his pilgrimage to the Holy 
 Land, and to have made up his mind to remain in 
 Naples, where he spent his days in following the 
 Queen, and dancing attendance upon her ; and Joanna 
 encouraged her Swedish lover, and it was said 
 seriously contemplated asking Charles to marry her. 
 St. Bridget, on hearing this gossip, went to the 
 
Joanna and Charles of Sweden 257 
 
 Queen and told her that Charles already had a wife 
 and children in Sweden. Whether Joanna did 
 seriously think of asking the Pope to dispense 
 Charles from his marriage vows, which seems in- 
 credible, or whether she was unaware of his marriage 
 till St. Bridget apprised her of it, or whether she 
 merely intended to employ Charles to fight her battles 
 for her (for the incursions of Ambrose Visconti into 
 her dominions and the quarrels of the Neapolitan 
 princes made her councillors desire her to marry a 
 fourth time, so as to have some one to help her 
 to defend her kingdom) we do not know. However 
 this may be, she continued her friendship with the 
 handsome young Scandinavian warrior, and, to the 
 great distress of his mother, they met frequently, 
 and not all St. Bridget's entreaties could induce 
 Charles to leave Naples, whose Queen heaped 
 presents upon him. 
 
 Joanna now issued invitations to one of the 
 grand or solemn balls for which her court was 
 celebrated, but when the evening arrived Charles 
 did not appear. The Queen sent a messenger 
 with a command for him to come, as she was 
 expecting him ; but on reaching the Hospice at 
 which he was staying the messenger found he 
 was seriously ill with a sudden attack of fever, 
 and too weak to leave his bed or to speak above 
 a whisper. His illness, which was fatal, lasted a 
 fortnight, during which time St. Bridget scarcely 
 
 *7 
 
258 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 left his bedside, watching and praying for his 
 repentance, which, if tardy, seems to have been 
 sincere. 
 
 When the news of his death was communicated 
 to the Queen, Joanna commanded that Charles's 
 funeral should be celebrated with the pomp befitting 
 one who was of high rank and on terms of intimate 
 friendship with her. The Archbishop of Naples 
 sung the Requiem in the cathedral, and a very 
 grand procession followed the remains of the hand- 
 some young Swede to the Franciscan monastery of 
 Santa Croce, where he was buried. His death was 
 one of the greatest sorrows of St. Bridget's life ; 
 she was seventy when it occurred, but she was 
 present at his funeral, and almost immediately after 
 left Naples, with the other pilgrims in her train, 
 for the Holy Land. 
 
 The Swedish saint paid one more visit to Naples, 
 about two years later, on her way home from 
 Jerusalem to Rome, where she was living, and 
 where she died soon after. On her arrival this 
 time at Naples she found the city sufFering from 
 the Plague, and Joanna, the Archbishop of Naples, 
 and the citizens were all assembled at the harbour 
 to greet her when her galley was sighted. They 
 implored her to deliver their beautiful city from 
 this terrible scourge ; for her reputation was so great 
 that the Queen, as well as the people, believed she 
 had the power to drive it away by her prayers, for 
 
Joanna and Charles of Sweden 259 
 
 in those days this dread disease was considered a 
 punishment from Almighty God. 
 
 St. Bridget was not slow to take advantage of 
 this belief, and answered that " penitence alone 
 could turn away the divine anger from kings and 
 peoples, and that she would pray for guidance, 
 and tell them what Almighty God revealed to her 
 on the subject." 
 
 The result of the saint's prayers was that she 
 wrote a severe letter to her friend the Queen, 
 in the course of which she admonished her as 
 follows : 
 
 " Confess your faults with sincerity, and firmly 
 resolve to amend them. Think on the manner in 
 which you have fulfilled the duties of wife and 
 Queen. Restore any wealth unjustly acquired. 
 Be just before you are generous. Free your 
 subjects from as many taxes as you can. Surround 
 yourself with frank, wise, and disinterested counsellors. 
 Do not paint your beautiful face, lest by so doing 
 souls should be lost. Be humble. Love and solace 
 the poor. Meditate upon the Passion of Christ, 
 and fear the Lord, for you have led a life of ease 
 rather than that of a Queen. You will never have 
 any more children, therefore so rule the affairs of 
 your kingdom that peace may reign after your 
 death. There only remain a few years for you to 
 live ; employ them in the service of God and in 
 penitence : if not, at the last judgment you will 
 
260 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 be treated as an ungrateful person, odious to the 
 Lord, to angels, and to men." 
 
 This remarkable but sensible letter was, it must 
 be remembered, written by an ascetic who was 
 herself leading a life of rigorous penance, treating 
 her body with the greatest severity, to whom, 
 therefore, Joanna's liking for society and gaiety 
 appeared as grievous sins ; moreover, St. Bridget 
 had been greatly scandalised by her son Charles's 
 sudden fit of passion for Joanna, and the way in 
 which the Queen had received it. 
 
 One of the Swedish pilgrims, Magnus d'Eka by 
 name, was entrusted to deliver this letter to the 
 Queen, who received it with great sweetness, and 
 did not in the least resent St. Bridget's warnings 
 and counsels. She granted her old friend several 
 private audiences during the two months that the 
 saint spent in Naples. 
 
 Not content with admonishing the Queen, St. 
 Bridget wrote several letters to the Archbishop of 
 Naples, in which she commented most severely on 
 the vice of the Neapolitans, and especially upon 
 the treatment of their slaves. The Archbishop is 
 said to have received her letters with respect, and 
 to have had portions of them read from the pulpit 
 in the cathedral, and also some of her revelations^ 
 which, as the saint believed, were made to her 
 during her stay there. 
 
 The fact that the plague was raging in Naples 
 
From a woodcut in " Revelationes Sancta Birgitta, 1500." 
 ST. BRIDGET ON HORSEBACK, 
 p. 260] 
 
Joanna and Charles of Sweden 261 
 
 no doubt rendered the Archbishop and clergy more 
 disposed ta listen to the teaching of the Swedish 
 prophetess, who was already revered as a saint ; but 
 although conversions were made among the upper 
 classes, the populace paid but little heed to the 
 counsels and warnings given from the cathedral 
 pulpit. 
 
 Before St. Bridget left Naples, Joanna, hearing 
 that she was in want of money to continue her 
 journey to Rome, with her customary generosity 
 sent her a handsome present of money, which 
 the saint, after some hesitation, gratefully ac- 
 cepted, and then, at Joanna's invitation, went to 
 spend a few days with the Queen at Aversa, where 
 she was then in residence, taking her daughter 
 Catherine with her, intending to start from thence 
 for Rome. St. Catherine did not like Joanna, and 
 was anxious to leave as soon as possible, while 
 St. Bridget, who was much attached to the Queen, 
 whom she looked upon as her spiritual daughter, 
 and saw with how many temptations the beautiful 
 widowed Queen was beset, would fain have lingered 
 longer with her, in the hope of persuading her to 
 lead a stricter life. But St. Bridget was in very 
 feeble health, and no doubt St. Catherine was anxious 
 to get her safely back to Rome ; and after a short 
 stay at Aversa, the wind and weather being favour- 
 able, the pilgrims sailed for Rome, where St. Bridget 
 died on July 23rd of that same year. 
 
262 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 By her death Joanna lost another real friend, to 
 whom she seems to have been sincerely attached, 
 since she loved her well enough to receive her 
 reproofs and warnings with her customary sweetness. 
 
 The very fact of St. Bridget's friendship for 
 Joanna, in spite of the great contrast in their 
 manner of life, speaks volumes in favour of the 
 much maligned Queen, for we cannot suppose that 
 if Joanna had been half as bad as some of her 
 detractors would have us believe, that so strict and 
 holy a woman as St. Bridget would have accepted 
 money from her, as well as hospitality, or have 
 visited her on three separate occasions. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 Joanna's Fourth Marriage 
 
 THE next event which disturbed Joanna's troubled 
 reign was the rebellion of the Duke of Andria, 
 which was coincident with the visit of St. Bridget 
 to Naples, and resulted ultimately in the loss of 
 Piedmont. This ambitious man had married Mar- 
 garet of Taranto, by whom he had two children, a 
 son and a daughter. The son was now, by the 
 will of his late uncle, Philip, who made him his 
 heir, Prince of Taranto, and he and his father 
 now combined together to seize the lands of the 
 barons surrounding their own dominions, with which 
 they were not content. The first place they took 
 was the town of Matera, which belonged to the 
 Sanseverini, the most powerful family in the kingdom, 
 who at once appealed to the Queen. Joanna sent a 
 well-trusted officer to remonstrate privately with the 
 Duke of Andria on his conduct, and to offer in her 
 name to arbitrate for him. 
 
 63 
 
264 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 The Duke treated her ambassador with great 
 insolence, and refused to consent to any arbitration 
 or to give up Matera. Joanna, unwilling to resort 
 to extremes, assembled the Andria family, and 
 sent them in turn to remonstrate with him, 
 but all in vain. She then commanded him to 
 appear before her in person, but this Andria re- 
 fused to do. 
 
 Joanna, finding that her clemency was lost upon 
 her contumacious subject, now called a meeting of 
 her council, and, seated upon her throne, passed 
 sentence upon the Duke, commanding the Sanseverini 
 to occupy not only the lands of which the Duke 
 had deprived them, but also his possessions in Apulia, 
 which were held by him in fief to the crown, and 
 now belonged to it in forfeit of his disobedience and 
 rebellion. 
 
 The Duke had assembled all his forces in the 
 neighbourhood of Naples, intending to invade the 
 capital, to force the Queen to yield to his wishes. 
 However, the Sanseverini were strong enough to 
 defeat him and drive him back from Naples, and 
 to lay siege to the two adjacent towns of Tiani and 
 Sessa, which he had strongly fortified. 
 
 The Neapolitans suffered severely during the siege 
 of Tiani, from want of provisions, and Joanna went 
 about the city from piazza to piazza in her armour, 
 soothing the people and exhorting them to endure 
 privations bravely for a time, as it would be to their 
 
Joanna's Fourth Marriage 265 
 
 future advantage. The siege lasted five months, 
 and then the Duke of Andria, seeing his cause was 
 hopeless, fled in the night, ordering the citizens to 
 capitulate if the enemy would set at liberty the 
 Duchess, whom he had left behind him. 
 
 Joanna, however, insisted upon an unconditional 
 surrender, and at the end of a fortnight the garrison 
 yielded, and the Duchess was immediately taken to 
 Naples. To defray the expenses of the war, Joanna 
 sold both Tiani and Sessa, and gave the proceeds 
 to two of the barons who had fought for her. She 
 also gave away the forfeited duchy of Andria to one 
 of them, but she very wisely kept Taranto for her- 
 self, as it was such an important part of her 
 dominions. The Duke of Andria now sought the 
 protection of the Pope at Avignon, who gave him 
 large sums of money, with which he was able to 
 raise a large army of thirteen thousand men, and 
 had advanced as far as Capua, when Joanna sum- 
 moned a council of war, and with the help of all 
 her barons provided for the defence of Naples itself ; 
 but Andria advanced to Aversa, and there waited to 
 visit his uncle, Raymond de Baux. 
 
 De Baux was a man of great weight in the kingdom, 
 and occupied the post of Grand Chamberlain ; he 
 received his rebellious nephew with great severity, 
 and sternly reproved him for his conduct, and told 
 him his only course now was to throw himself at the 
 feet of the Queen and implore her mercy, and get 
 
266 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 the Pope to intercede for him with Joanna, who 
 was noted for her clemency. 
 
 The Duke was frightened at this attitude of his 
 uncle, and fled secretly to Provence, where he re- 
 covered his courage, and began again to plot against 
 Joanna, and introduced some mercenaries into her 
 kingdom, who caused such alarm and suffering to 
 her people that to get rid of them she agreed to pay 
 them a large sum of money if they would leave. 
 
 At the same time a large part of her dominions in 
 Piedmont fell into the hands of the Duke of Savoy, 
 and she was too much hampered by the Duke of 
 Andria's rebellion to be able to oppose him ; con- 
 sequently she lost for ever this principality, for 
 Gregory XI. did not exert himself on her behalf 
 as his predecessors had done. Close upon this 
 misfortune came the death of one of her most 
 cherished and able advisers, Raymond de Baux, 
 whom she deplored deeply. 
 
 Of course the natural person to take upon himself 
 the defence of her cause was Charles Durazzo, her 
 adopted son and heir ; but he was still fighting in the 
 service of her enemy, the King of Hungary, and 
 nothing would induce him to come to Naples and 
 defend his own inheritance. Seeing herself thus 
 lonely and unprotected from the many dangers 
 and enemies, open and secret, which surrounded 
 her, the only thing for her to do as it seemed to her 
 and her advisers was to marry a fourth time. 
 
Joanna's Fourth Marriage 267 
 
 There was then living in Naples, a frequenter of 
 the Neapolitan Court, Otho, Prince of Brunswick, 
 who had won a great reputation by his bravery and 
 military exploits in Italy, where he was formerly Vicar- 
 General of the Emperor Charles IV. of Bohemia. 
 He was the younger son of the reigning Duke of 
 Brunswick, and, seeing no chance of ever inheriting 
 the duchy, he left his native land and went to Italy 
 to try to earn distinction for himself as a con- 
 dottiero or captain of one of the various companies 
 of mercenaries, whom the Italian States employed to 
 fight their battles for them in the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries. The condottieri had certain 
 rules, which they observed faithfully ; for instance, 
 they spared each other, they demanded enormous 
 sums for their services, but they always sent their 
 prisoners back without a ransom. 
 
 Otho was about the same age as Joanna ; he 
 was very popular in Italy and was handsome as 
 well as brave and good, and upon him Joanna's 
 choice fell. And it was fortunate for her that it did, 
 for he was the best of all her husbands, though 
 unable to save her from the final tragedy which 
 closed her life. He was generous and faithful to all 
 his engagements, he was neither greedy nor am- 
 bitious, and agreed to the condition which Joanna 
 imposed. This was that he should not bear the title 
 of King, which she feared would excite the envy of 
 Charles Durazzo, but every other honour that it was 
 
268 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 in her power to grant him she bestowed upon him. 
 She gave him the principality of Taranto, which had 
 been forfeited, and it is thought that one of her great 
 reasons in marrying him was that he might under- 
 take the government of this part of her dominions, 
 which it would have hardly been safe to entrust to 
 any one who was not thus closely allied to her. 
 
 She was forty-six when she married Otho, but 
 she was so well preserved that she was still extra- 
 ordinarily youngr-looking. In character Otho is said 
 to have resembled her so much that the greatest 
 harmony and affection existed between them ; and at 
 last, after three ventures which can none of them 
 be described as ideal marriages, Joanna made ex- 
 perience of conjugal happiness, though it came late 
 in life, and was destined not to be of very long 
 duration. Still it is gratifying to know that she 
 secured at least a lustre of real happiness from that 
 strange mixture of joy and sorrow which we call life. 
 
 Strange to say, on the same day that Joanna and 
 Otho were married Ambrose Visconti, who had 
 been a State prisoner in the Castel del Ovo since his 
 rebellion against the Queen, made his escape from 
 prison. Whether there was some relaxation in the 
 watch kept over him on this august occasion, or 
 whether Joanna, so celebrated for her mercy to 
 those who had offended her, had given orders that 
 an opportunity for escape should be given him, we 
 do not know. 
 
Joanna's Fourth Marriage 269 
 
 There was a celebrated astrologer living in Pro- 
 vence when Joanna was born, named Anselmo, who 
 when consulted as to whether the royal infant 
 Princess would marry answered, " Joanna maritaberis 
 cum Alio." The superstitious Neapolitans now 
 declared that the interpretation of this hitherto cryp- 
 tic utterance was that Alio represented the initial 
 letters of the names of her four husbands, Andrew, 
 Louis, James, and Otho, which seems rather far- 
 fetched. 
 
 If Joanna married a fourth time to please her- 
 self, she did not please her adopted son Charles 
 Durazzo, nor his wife Margaret, her adopted 
 daughter and niece, who were both very angry, 
 fearing that if there were any issue from the Queen's 
 marriage they would lose the crown, although 
 Joanna took every opportunity of asserting her 
 intention of leaving it to Charles Durazzo, her most 
 ungrateful heir. This fourth marriage took place in 
 1374, according to Costanzo ; other writers, who 
 appear to have copied each other, put the date 
 at 1376. 
 
 At the time of Joanna's fourth marriage, and 
 for a few years after, Naples was the only part of 
 Italy that was at peace, for the Florentines and the 
 Viscontis had invaded the Papal States, and the 
 principal cities belonging to the Papacy, Bologna, 
 Perugia, and Pavia, took this opportunity to de- 
 clare their independence. 
 
270 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 The Pope at first tried to bring back the Floren- 
 tines and the revolted cities to their allegiance by 
 fatherly persuasion; but as they disregarded all his 
 overtures and promises of pardon if they submitted, 
 he summoned the Florentine magistrates to appear 
 before him at Avignon. But instead of obeying his 
 orders, they ill-treated his messengers, and Gregory, 
 now driven to exercise his authority if he wished 
 for peace, issued a Bull of Excommunication against 
 the Florentines, dated April 30th, 1376. This was 
 a most severe punishment, for it absolved all their 
 subjects from their allegiance, and by it they forfeited 
 all their rights and privileges as citizens, and their 
 estates in every part of the world became the pro- 
 perty of any one who could seize them. Foreign 
 princes were forbidden to receive them into their 
 kingdoms, except as slaves, and their children to the 
 third generation were proclaimed incapable of hold- 
 ing any office, either ecclesiastical or civil. 
 
 This terrible punishment destroyed the trade of 
 Florence completely, and the citizens soon tried to 
 make their peace with the Pope, for besides all these 
 temporal deprivations, they were also deprived of 
 the Sacraments, except in the case of the dying. In 
 their distress the Florentines now appealed to the 
 dyer's daughter afterwards known as St. Catherine 
 of Siena, whose reputation for sanctity was even 
 greater than that which her contemporary St. Bridget 
 of Sweden enjoyed, and the Commune of Florence 
 
Joanna's Fourth Marriage 271 
 
 entreated her to go to Siena and intercede with 
 Gregory for them. 
 
 St. Catherine was received with great honour at 
 Avignon, and the Pope had such confidence in her 
 judgment that he entrusted her with full power to 
 make peace with the Florentines, knowing well that 
 she would not do so at the expense of the Church. 
 On her return to Siena the people rose against her 
 and even threatened to kill her, but she escaped 
 from them, and the Florentines then begged for the 
 mediation of the neutral States of Italy. 
 
 Joanna and Otho exerted all their influence at 
 Avignon and Florence, and were aided by the 
 Genoese, and at length succeeded in procuring a 
 truce. During this temporary peace the Florentines 
 prevailed upon St. Catherine of Siena to go a 
 second time to Avignon, and urge the Pope to 
 return to Rome, promising to submit to the Holy 
 See if he would remove it back to the Eternal City, 
 but hinting plainly that if he -did not they would 
 again begin hostilities. Gregory, yielding at last 
 against his own judgment to the remonstrances of 
 St. Catherine, who like St. Bridget told him of the 
 visions and revelations she had had concerning him, 
 decided to go back to Rome, fearing that if he dis- 
 regarded the letters St. Bridget had written to him, 
 and the solemn warnings of St. Catherine and Peter 
 of Aragon — who also claimed to have had a revelation 
 from Heaven, commanding the Pope to return — he 
 
272 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 might be disobeying the will of Almighty God ; so 
 he set sail for Rome, whither he did not arrive until 
 January 17th, 1377. 
 
 In the meanwhile St. Catherine of Sweden, the 
 daughter of St. Bridget, had gone back to Rome 
 from Wadstena (where she was now Abbess in the 
 first convent of the Brigittines) to labour for the 
 canonisation of St. Bridget. In 1376 Catherine 
 arrived at Naples, bent on the same errand, namely, 
 to collect a list of the miracles said to have been 
 performed by St. Bridget during her visits to Naples, 
 and to get the attestations of the Archbishop and 
 bishops, and other witnesses of the truth of these 
 reputed miracles. 
 
 There Catherine, who had no liking for the 
 Queen, did not see Joanna at all, though she 
 stayed two months at least in the city. Pro- 
 bably St. ' Catherine disapproved very strongly of 
 Joanna's many marriages, for she herself was not 
 only a "widow indeed," but she had never been a 
 wife except in name, having persuaded her husband 
 to let her live as his sister. 
 
 Perhaps there may have been some jealousy 
 between these two women, both remarkable for their 
 beauty. At any rate, there was no friendship 
 between them such as had existed between Joanna 
 and Catherine's mother. 
 
 One of St. Catherine's Neapolitan friends was the 
 wife of Jamotti, the Seneschal of Salerno ; and during 
 
GREGORY THE ELEVENTH. 
 
 p. 272] 
 
Joanna's Fourth Marriage 273 
 
 the Abbess's stay in Naples, Alfarina, as she was 
 called, confided to her that her husband's love for 
 her had turned to hatred, because she had borne him 
 no less than seven stillborn infants, and he believed, 
 with the superstition then so common among all 
 ranks, that she was accursed. Alfarina was again 
 about to become a mother, and she dreaded that 
 again her hopes might be disappointed, and another 
 little coffin be required to take the place of the 
 cradle she had prepared. Catherine comforted her 
 and encouraged her to have hope, and gave her 
 some relics of her mother so soon to be canonised ; 
 and not long after the joyful sound of the wail of a 
 new-born infant was heard in the palace, which 
 afterwards received the name of Bridget, and is 
 said to have been the first child in Italy so called. 
 
 Gregory XI. received as enthusiastic a welcome 
 on his entry into his capital as his predecessor 
 St. Urban V. had done. The reins of his white 
 courser were held by Robert Orsini, one of the greatest 
 Roman barons, and he was acclaimed with loud, 
 joyful shouts of "Evviva il Papa!" These demon- 
 strations were as hollow as a drum : he was beset 
 from within by the insolence of the Roman nobility, 
 and from without by war and rebellion ; and at the 
 end of a year he decided to return to Avignon, but 
 before he could carry out this intention he died on 
 March 27th, 1378. 
 
 On his deathbed he is said by some writers, 
 
 18 
 
274 "The Beautiful Queeri 
 
 though others question it, to have warned his hearers 
 to place no faith in visions and revelations, and to 
 have regretted that he had been led by them to 
 return to Rome. At the same time it must be 
 remembered that he was on the point of adding 
 St. Bridget's name to the Calendar of the Saints 
 when his death occurred, and it was left to his 
 successor to continue her cause ; but the canonisation 
 did not take place until 1391, when Boniface IX. 
 at last rewarded all Catherine's efforts on her mother's 
 behalf. 
 
 Although Gregory XI. had never been a great 
 friend to Joanna, it was an unhappy day for her 
 when he died, for his successor became her greatest 
 enemy. Just before his death, foreseeing that there 
 would be great difficulties in the election of the new 
 Pope, Gregory published a Bull providing that instead 
 of the usual number of two-thirds of the votes being 
 necessary to secure the election of the Supreme 
 Pontiff, when the Conclave should meet for that 
 purpose, a majority of votes should suffice. 
 
 The Sacred College consisted at that time of only 
 twenty-three Cardinals, eighteen of whom were 
 French, four Italian, and one a Spaniard. There 
 was a strong feeling among the Italians, and especially 
 among the Romans, to force the Conclave to elect an 
 Italian Pope instead of a French one this time, 
 as the late Pope had foreseen. The city of Rome 
 was now governed by a supreme magistrate called 
 
Joanna's Fourth Marriage 275 
 
 the Senator, assisted by twelve Bannerets ; and during 
 the time which elapsed between the death of Gregory 
 and the meeting of the Conclave, these Bannerets 
 met, and waited in a body on the Cardinals and 
 warned them that the people of Rome were deter- 
 mined to have an Italian Pope, and in the event 
 of any one of another nationality being chosen they 
 would not undertake to protect the Cardinals from 
 the violence of the populace. 
 
 The mode of election of a new Pope and all 
 the arrangements for the Cardinals who form the 
 Conclave differ very little in the twentieth century 
 from those which prevailed in the fourteenth. Rome 
 changes very slightly in these matters — she is "semper 
 eadem " •; but the circumstances attending the Con- 
 clave which followed the death of Gregory XI. were 
 so unusual, and the result was of such vital con- 
 sequence to Joanna especially, as well as to the 
 whole of Christendom, that we must devote a little 
 space to describing it, even though it be an oft-told 
 tale. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 The Beginning of the Great Schism 
 
 THE prophetic fears of Pope Gregory XI. were 
 destined to be only too well fulfilled, and 
 when the Conclave met to elect his successors this 
 became apparent. Before the Cardinals assembled, 
 deputations of Roman citizens approached many 
 of them, to beg them to elect a Roman or at least 
 an Italian to the Chair of Peter. They began 
 the interview with entreaties, and ended with 
 threats. 
 
 Later in the proceedings the Romans obtained 
 the office of guarding the Cardinals, and proceeded 
 to do this very thoroughly ; for they took possession 
 of the sails and rudders of all the boats on the 
 Tiber, to prevent any of them from escaping that 
 way until they had elected an Italian Pope. When 
 the Conclave was sitting the noise of the mob, who 
 blew on trumpets and played upon tambourines, and 
 
 shouted and yelled, and hissed and cheered, deafened 
 
 276 
 
The Beginning of the Great Schism 277 
 
 them ; but had they felt their lives were in danger, 
 they could easily have hired some mercenaries to 
 defend them, and the fact that they did not do so 
 points to the validity of the election which followed, 
 and shows that they were not intimidated into making 
 choice of an Italian Pope, as was afterwards maintained 
 by the adherents of the antipope. 
 
 On April 6th a terrific thunderstorm broke over 
 the city, and a thunderbolt fell upon the cell of the 
 Spanish Cardinal, Pierre de Luna, of Aragon, and 
 a rumour spread that he had been elected ; and so 
 much damage was done by the storm to the Vatican 
 that it was difficult to instal the Cardinals, and 
 the Conclave had to be postponed for twenty-four 
 hours. 
 
 On the 7th, when the Conclave met again at 
 four in the afternoon, the piazza of St. Peter's was 
 covered with a crowd of ao,ooo people, who shouted 
 at the Cardinals as they entered, " We will have 
 an Italian Pope ! Give us an Italian Pope or we 
 shall know what to do ! " 
 
 Of the four Italian Cardinals in the Conclave, 
 Cardinal Orsini was too young to be elected — he 
 was then only twenty-four — and Piero, Cardinal of 
 St. Peter's, was too old, and suffered from gout so 
 badly that he had to be carried across the square 
 into the palace. On the night of the 7th the mob 
 broke into the Vatican and found access to the Papal 
 cellars, and got tipsy on Canary and Chianti, and 
 
278 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 threatened the lives of the Cardinals, demanding 
 a Roman Pope ; but the Cardinals would not be 
 intimidated, and Orsini told them that if they were 
 to elect any one through fear of them, the election 
 would be ipso facto null and void. 
 
 Now there was an outsider, Nicholas Prignano, 
 a Neapolitan, the Archbishop of Bari, who had 
 been consulted by the Cardinals before they entered 
 into the Conclave, and who had also taken part in the 
 deliberations of the Bannerets on the same subject, 
 and before the Conclave a good many of the Cardinals 
 were prepared to vote for Prignano, and eventually 
 did so on April 8 th, and he, being elected by fifteen 
 votes, took the title of Urban VI. 
 
 The new Pope belonged to a noble Neapolitan 
 family, and was not only a very eloquent, capable, 
 wise man, but at the time of his election he was 
 also very good and pious, humble and mortified, and 
 was held in high esteem by his countrymen, and 
 especially by his Queen, Joanna, who had a very 
 great regard for him. 
 
 While the Conclave was sitting Thomas d'Acerno, 
 Joanna's attorney, who was in Rome, wrote to one 
 of her chamberlains to say that the Archbishop of 
 Bari stood a very good chance of being elected ; 
 and when the news of his exaltation to the highest 
 earthly dignity actually came to Naples, the Queen 
 and her people were all delighted at the honour 
 conferred upon their countryman. 
 
The Beginning of the Great Schism 279 
 
 Joanna with her usual royal generosity immedi- 
 ately sent the new Pope a present of 40,000 crowns, 
 a ship-load of provisions, and all kinds of things 
 which she thought would be useful to him, and 
 at the same time she wrote to tell him that all 
 her kingdom had to offer was at his disposal. Later, 
 when the Cardinals rebelled against him, Joanna sent 
 him 200 cavalry and a large body of foot-soldiers to 
 guard him. 
 
 We shall never know all Urban's reasons for 
 acting as he now did ; for while he accepted Joanna's 
 presents and the service of her troops, he was 
 plotting her downfall with her brother-in-law, 1 
 the Duke of Andria, who was in rebellion against 
 her. 
 
 Joanna had now four great enemies to contend 
 with : her life-long enemy, Louis of Hungary, was 
 still upon the warpath ; the Duke of Andria was 
 in rebellion against her ; her nephew and heir, 
 Charles of Durazzo, was in the service of the 
 King of Hungary, and plotting to dethrone her ; 
 and, as she was soon to discover, the new Pope 
 was the most powerful of all her foes. 
 
 The shadows were darkening round her. The 
 accession of Urban VI. was the first step in the 
 downfall of the beautiful Sicilian Queen. Had 
 she opposed Prignano's election from the first, it 
 
 1 Her sister-in-law, Margaret of Taranto, was married to the Duke 
 of Andria. 
 
280 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 would have been easy to understand Urban's conduct 
 towards her ; but, as we have just seen, she did 
 not do so — on the contrary she treated him with 
 generous loyalty until the crash came. 
 
 Urban's enemies attributed his behaviour to 
 Joanna to his nepotism, a grave fault in a Pope, 
 of which he cannot be excused ; for it is said he 
 desired the greater part of Joanna's kingdom for 
 his nephew, Francisco or Butillo Prignano, a most 
 unworthy man of licentious life, and Urban deter- 
 mined to invest Charles Durazzo with Joanna's 
 crown on condition that he would give up half 
 the kingdom to his nephew, Francisco Prignano. 
 
 While the Pope and the Duke of Andria were 
 sending secret messengers to Durazzo, to try to 
 negotiate this business, Cardinal Orsini went to 
 the Neapolitan Court, and in an interview with the 
 Queen tried to induce her to refuse to acknowledge 
 Urban, and to get the Ultramontane Cardinals to 
 elect him as Pope in his stead. 
 
 Joanna, with her usual wisdom, refused to do 
 anything of the kind ; and so far from favouring 
 Cardinal Orsini's proposal, she sent a splendid 
 embassy — with her husband, Prince Otho of Bruns- 
 wick, at its head, accompanied by her Chancellor, 
 Nicholas Spinelli — to Rome to endeavour to smooth 
 matters there, and to make peace between the Pope 
 and the now offended Cardinals, and if possible 
 to ward off the threatened schism. 
 
The Beginning of the Great Schism 281 
 
 This act of Joanna's should not be forgotten, 
 as it too often is by her detractors, who, because 
 she afterwards was unhappily led to espouse the 
 cause of the antipope, Clement VII., and to play 
 a prominent part in the Great Schism, heap all 
 manner of abuse upon her, remembering all her 
 bad acts and forgetting all her good ones, forgetting 
 also the very great provocation she received to 
 revolt from Urban, although nothing could excuse 
 her from doing so. His election, though disputed, 
 was legal, and it was the duty of all good Catholics, 
 of whom Joanna was one, to be loyal to him in 
 spite of his faults, which were great. 
 
 To begin with, Urban had a violent temper, and 
 after his exaltation he became so haughty, and 
 treated the Cardinals who had elected him with such 
 scorn and contempt, and instituted such vigorous 
 if necessary reforms, that they revolted against him, 
 and thirteen out of the fifteen who had voted for 
 him were so disgusted at the treatment they received 
 at his hands that they withdrew from Rome and 
 went to Anagni first, and afterwards, at the request 
 of Onerato Cajetano, Lord of Fondi, to Fondi, where 
 they ultimately elected the antipope Robert, Bishop 
 of Geneva, who took the title of Clement VII. 
 
 Onerato Cajetano was a most powerful Neapolitan 
 baron, and had lent the late Pope 20,000 florins, 
 and when Urban came to the throne he wrote and 
 asked him to discharge his predecessor's debt. Urban 
 
282 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 was furious, and deprived Cajetano of his title and 
 fief, and gave them to Sanseverini, Prince Otho's 
 Chancellor. Cajetano's.- daughter was engaged to be 
 married to Otho's brother, Balthazar of Brunswick. 
 
 Unfortunately Joanna's mission to Rome was 
 twofold. First and foremost it was to try to make 
 peace between the Pope and Cardinals ; but secondly 
 it was to ask Urban's consent to the marriage of 
 Maria, daughter and heiress of Frederick the Simple 
 of Sicily, to Prince Otho's nephew, the Marquis of 
 Montferrat. 
 
 Urban, however, desired to unite the rich Sicilian 
 heiress with his own nephew, Francis Prignano, and 
 he was so angry at the proposal made to him on 
 Montferrat' s behalf that he could not command his 
 temper sufficiently to answer the ambassadors civilly. 
 Nicholas Spinelli, Joanna's Chancellor, and Urban 
 had been intimate friends before Joanna's favour had 
 raised them both to the high position they after- 
 wards occupied in her kingdom ; but now Urban 
 would not listen to his old friend, who was almost 
 as anxious to serve him as he was to please Joanna ; 
 and when the Chancellor tried to point out that 
 the marriage he had come to propose would be 
 most advantageous to the Papacy, since it would 
 unite both the Sicilies in its interests, the Pope flew 
 into a violent passion, and said he " would soon 
 send the Queen of Naples to spin in the monastery 
 of St. Clare." 
 
The Beginning of the Great Schism 283 
 
 From this time matters between the Neapolitan 
 embassy and the Pope went from bad to worse. 
 Prince Otho and the Chancellor, Nicholas Spinelli, 
 were naturally highly indignant at this insult to 
 Joanna, and Urban continued to add fuel to the 
 flame he had kindled by a succession of slights 
 which he put upon Joanna's husband and minister. 
 
 One day, at a public banquet in Rome, Spinelli 
 seated himself next to Otho (which indeed was his 
 proper place as Chancellor of the kingdom he 
 represented), whereupon the Pope ordered him to 
 get up instantly, and not presume to occupy a place 
 which did not belong to him, but to go lower down. 
 The Neapolitan pride of Spinelli could little brook 
 this insult, and it is said that he never forgave it. 
 
 Urban, not content with insulting Joanna's 
 Chancellor and his own old friend, treated the 
 Neapolitan Queen's husband also with marked 
 contempt, and also with great ingratitude, for Otho 
 had done all in his power to support the Pope 
 and uphold his authority. 
 
 On one occasion when the Prince of Brunswick, 
 according to custom, held a basin of water and a 
 towel for the Holy Father to wash his hands before 
 dinner, Urban turned away and, pretending not to 
 see the Prince kneeling at his side, entered into 
 conversation with some one else, till one of his 
 friends, horrified at this behaviour to one of such 
 high rank as Prince Otho, the Consort of the Queen 
 
284 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of Naples, exclaimed : " Your Holiness must needs 
 wash ; Holy Father, it is high time you did so." 
 
 Otho's secretary says that Otho then repeated 
 the remark made of an earlier Pope Urban, that 
 he feared the Holy Father should rather be called 
 a disturber than urbane, making a Latin pun lost 
 in translation. 1 
 
 It does not require much imagination to picture 
 Joanna's just anger when Otho and her Chancellor 
 returned to Naples and related this incident and 
 various other insults which they had received at 
 the hands of the Pope, whom she had originally 
 been so anxious to help, and had treated with such 
 generosity. Petty annoyances and slights of this 
 kind are apt to stir up and engender more strife 
 and bitterness than more aggressive actions. The 
 scenes between Urban and Joanna's embassy took 
 place at Tivoli, whither Urban had retired when 
 the other Cardinals went to Anagni, from whence 
 they issued encyclical letters to, all the European 
 courts, declaring the election of Urban null and 
 void. 
 
 As a cbunterblast to this, Urban proceeded to 
 create twenty-nine new Cardinals, and at the same 
 time he offered to have his election examined by a 
 General Council of the Church, which he proposed 
 to call ; but the Cardinals refused to consent to this, 
 
 1 " Pro certo pater noster non Urbanus sed potius, timeo Turbanus 
 dicetur." 
 
The Beginning of the Great Schism 285 
 
 and the election in September of the Bishop of 
 Geneva by the Cardinals at Fondi, which was in the 
 kingdom of Naples, was the beginning of the Great 
 Schism, which disturbed the Church and the whole 
 of Europe for forty years, from 1378 to 141 8. 
 
 Robert of Geneva, the antipope, was a most blood- 
 thirsty man ; he had personally led into Italy the 
 Breton Company, the most inhuman of all the 
 marauding bands of adventurers which molested Italy, 
 and he had instigated them to commit atrocities. 
 They were commanded now by Francesco de Vico, 
 Prefect of Viterbo. 
 
 Robert of Geneva, after his election by the French 
 Cardinals, was crowned in the Castle of Fondi, in 
 the presence of Prince Otho and other Neapolitan 
 nobles. Of the four Italian Cardinals who had 
 voted for Urban, only two remained faithful, the 
 old Cardinal Piero of St. Peter's died, and Cardinal 
 Orsini now joined Joanna and recognised Clement 
 VII. as Pope. When Urban returned to Rome from 
 Tivoli he found himself deserted by the Sacred 
 College ; and it was by the advice of St. Catherine 
 of Siena that he created the new Cardinals. She 
 admonished him never to resign his high office, and 
 by her admirable counsels encouraged him to perse- 
 vere in his difficult career. 
 
 Very soon all Christendom was divided between 
 the rival Popes, some countries remaining true to 
 Urban, others joining the Clementines. The Emperor 
 
286 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of Germany, the Kings of England, Sweden, 
 Denmark, Hungary, Bohemia, and most of the 
 Italian States and Flanders were loyal to Urban ; 
 whereas France and Scotland (which at that time 
 invariably sided with France against England), Spain, 
 Naples, Austria, Cyprus, Savoy, and some of the 
 Italian and German States joined Clement's party. 
 
 The Papal war now began in earnest. Rival armies, 
 each bearing the banner and Keys of St. Peter, met 
 on the plains of the Romagna, and at first the 
 advantage was on the side of the Clementines. 
 Meanwhile Urban and Clement fulminated ana- 
 themas against each other, and each excommuni- 
 cated the adherents of the rival Pope, so that all 
 Europe was disturbed and unsettled by the quarrels 
 of the Urbanists and the Clementines. 
 
 St. Catherine of Siena now proposed to Urban 
 that she should go to Naples with St. Catherine of 
 Sweden, St. Bridget's daughter (who was in Rome, 
 working for her mother's canonisation, which was 
 delayed by the schism), and endeavour to win Joanna 
 over to his cause. But there were two obstacles to 
 this plan. In the first place, Catherine of Sweden, who 
 we know did not like Joanna, positively refused to 
 go and see her; and in the second place the confessor 
 of St. Catherine of Siena, Raymond of Capua, dissuaded 
 her from going, and Urban reluctantly yielded to 
 his representations, for which the saint was very 
 indignant. 
 
From a woodcut in " Revelatwnes Sanclat Birgilta;, 1500." 
 ST. BRIDGET DELIVERING HER RULE TO THE MONKS AND NUNS. 
 p. 286] 
 
The Beginning of the Great Schism 287 
 
 St. Catherine of Siena, who had a high respect for 
 the Neapolitan Queen, now wrote letters to Joanna 
 and to some of the ladies in her court, and sent them 
 to Naples by her devoted friend, Neri di Landuccio, 
 entreating the Queen to be loyal to the lawful Pope. 
 But by this time Joanna was unfortunately too 
 closely involved in the fortunes of the antipope to 
 draw back ; moreover, she knew Urban was deter- 
 mined to depose her in favour of Charles Durazzo, 
 to whom he had again offered the crown of Naples, 
 through Joanna's enemy, the Duke of Andria, whom 
 he sent to Charles to persuade him to accept it. 
 
 Charles, who was not so black as he has been painted, 
 seems to have had scruples at first at treating his 
 foster-mother in so ungrateful a way, but Andria 
 overcame them by rousing his jealousy against 
 Prince Otho and Robert, Count of Artois, who had 
 married the Queen's eldest niece, Joanna, Duchess 
 of Durazzo, daughter of Maria of Sicily, and the 
 Duke suggested that Joanna intended to leave her 
 crown to either one or the other of them. Joanna, 
 however, had made different plans, and had decided 
 to adopt Louis of Anjou as her heir. 
 
 Charles of Durazzo hesitated to obey the Pope's 
 injunctions for another reason : his wife Margaret, 
 the Queen's adopted daughter, and his two children 
 lived in the palace with Joanna, and until they were 
 removed he could not with due regard for their 
 safety take active measures to obtain the throne. 
 
288 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Meanwhile Urban VI. created several Neapolitan 
 Cardinals, and bestowed benefices upon some member 
 of all the most important families of the kingdom, 
 by which stroke of diplomacy he won over to his 
 cause many of the most influential subjects of Joanna, 
 who was now unfortunately irrevocably pledged to 
 the antipope. 
 
 The battle of Marino between the two rival Papal 
 armies proved victorious for Urban, thanks to the 
 services of Sir John Hawkwood and his mercenaries, 
 whom he had hired to fight for him ; and Clement, 
 feeling no longer safe at Fondi, determined to retire 
 to Naples, and begged Joanna to send an escort to 
 convey him thither. 
 
 Joanna, knowing that many of her subjects were 
 loyal to Urban, was afraid that the antipope might 
 meet with a hostile reception if he went to Castel 
 Nuovo, where her court usually resided when she 
 was in Naples ; so she had the island Castel del Ovo 
 fitted up magnificently for his reception, and went 
 to the expense of having a temporary bridge thrown 
 across from the rock on which the grim old castle 
 stood to the mainland. 
 
 Clement and the Cardinals of his creation passed 
 over this bridge in procession, making a grand 
 display, and when they reached the great gateway 
 of the castle met with a magnificent reception. 
 There were assembled the brilliant Neapolitan court 
 of barons and knights and other nobles, with their 
 
The Beginning of the Great Schism 289 
 
 wives and daughters in attendance on the royal 
 princes and princesses, all attired in full court 
 dress. 
 
 Under the great gateway, the centre of this 
 brilliant throng of "fair women and brave men," 
 and the fairest among them all, stood Joanna, in 
 the royal purple velvet robes always worn by the 
 Neapolitan sovereign, with magnificent jewels upon 
 her head and neck and arms ; a vision of majestic 
 beauty, although no longer young. By her side 
 stood Prince Otho, a handsome and imposing figure, 
 and close by the three daughters of Joanna's dead 
 sister Maria : Joanna, Duchess of Durazzo, wife of 
 Robert of Artois ; Agnes, widow of the Prince of 
 Verona ; and Margaret, wife of Charles Durazzo, 
 the Queen's adopted daughter. 
 
 As Clement dismounted Joanna genuflected twice, 
 and then knelt to kiss his foot and receive his bless- 
 ing, and the royal princes and princesses did the 
 same, and when this ceremony was over the anti- 
 pope went into the castle to partake of a magnificent 
 feast prepared for him and his Cardinals. 
 
 The festivities and entertainments which Joanna's 
 superfluous generosity had prepared to welcome the 
 disturber of the peace of Christendom lasted several 
 days, and caused supreme discontent and disaffection 
 in Naples, because, from the remoteness of the scene, 
 the citizens were unable to see anything of them — 
 and pageants are very dear to the Neapolitan heart. 
 
 l 9 
 
290 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Joanna's usual wisdom had deserted her, in the 
 first place, when, goaded by Urban's discourtesy and 
 plots against her, she had chosen to support Clement, 
 and, in the second place, when through fear lest the 
 antipope should meet with any hostile demonstration 
 she had installed him in the Castel del Ovo, and by 
 so doing had disappointed her people of the festivities 
 and pageants in which they revelled. From a reli- 
 gious and from a political point of view, the usually 
 wise Joanna committed a fatal mistake, one of the 
 remoter consequences of which has been the obloquy 
 which has ever since attached to her name, preju- 
 dicing as it has done so many loyal Catholic writers 
 against her, so that they were unable to judge her 
 fairly. 
 
 Nothing can excuse her conduct altogether in 
 this matter, but at least nearly half Europe sinned 
 with her, and no one had greater reason or stronger 
 temptation to join Clement's party than she had. 
 The Neapolitan people, who were too ignorant to 
 enter into the merits and demerits of the contro- 
 versy, and dared not rebel against Urban, interpreted 
 Joanna's action in hiding the antipope in the Castel 
 del Ovo as a sign of temerity on her part, and were 
 in a state of ferment, when they were roused to 
 open rebellion by an incident which occurred soon 
 after Clement arrived. 
 
 A working-man in the Piazza of Sadlers one 
 day spoke disrespectfully of the Queen to a group 
 
The Beginning of the Great Schism 291 
 
 of listeners in the hearing of a gentleman named 
 Ravignano, who was riding past, and who stopped to 
 reprove him. The man repeated his remarks, and 
 his insolence provoked the rider to ride his horse 
 at him with the intention of knocking him down ; 
 but in the scuffle which ensued the sadler lost his 
 eye. His nephew raised the cry of Urban VI., 
 and the infuriated crowd flew to arms and pro- 
 ceeded to pillage the houses of foreigners in the 
 lower part of the city. 
 
 The Abbot Barruto, whom Urban had recently 
 created Archbishop of Naples, headed this mob, 
 and then took possession of the cathedral, driving 
 the family of the Clementine Archbishop out of 
 the archiepiscopal palace. This tumult was soon 
 quelled, and reprisals followed, in the course of 
 which the houses occupied by the Archbishop 
 Barruto and his suite were pulled down. 
 
 These disturbances caused Clement to be seized 
 with a fit of panic, in which he left Castel del 
 Ovo and fled to Gaeta, and refused all Joanna's 
 invitations and entreaties to return to Naples. 
 From Gaeta he went to Avignon, which became 
 the place of residence of the antipopes and their 
 court. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 Joanna is Excommunicated 
 
 LOUIS of Anjou, whom Joanna had decided 
 to adopt as her heir in the place of Charles 
 of Durazzo, was the eldest brother of Charles V., 
 King of France, and, after the King, the most 
 powerful person in that kingdom ; so it seemed 
 to be an advantageous move on the Queen's part, 
 particularly as the University of Paris had recently 
 declared in favour of the antipope, Clement VII. 
 Joanna hoped, by making the King's brother her 
 heir, to enlist the services of France to defend her 
 crown against the Pope and Charles of Durazzo. 
 Charles had been for some time engaged in fighting 
 for the King of Hungary, Joanna's old enemy, in 
 the wars between the Venetians and the Genoese 
 for maritime supremacy ; and Urban now thought 
 the time had come for him to send for his wife 
 and children, who were living with Joanna, so he 
 commanded him to do so prior to advancing with 
 his Hungarian troops into Naples. 
 
 292 
 
Joanna is Excommunicated 293 
 
 Charles obeyed the Pope, and wrote to the Queen 
 asking that his wife and children should be sent 
 to him ; and Joanna, who must have felt this 
 stroke acutely, with her usual generosity granted 
 his request, although it was clearly against her own 
 interest to do so, and sent her adopted daughter 
 Margaret, with her little son Ladislaus, afterwards 
 King of Naples, and his sister with a safe escort 
 to Friuli, where Charles was then quartered. The 
 Queen was destined never again to see Margaret of 
 Durazzo, whom she had loved and cherished as 
 her own daughter — a contingency she probably 
 foresaw when with a heavy heart she parted from 
 her. 
 
 Meanwhile Urban's unpopularity was so great 
 in Rome that the mob had attacked the Vatican 
 with sticks and stones ; but, nothing daunted, the 
 Pope, who with all his faults knew no fear, vested 
 himself in his full pontificals and boldly showed 
 himself to the people, trusting that the sight ot 
 him, whom they regarded as the Vicar of Christ, 
 would strike terror into their hearts and terrify 
 them into submission — as it did, and the tumult 
 subsided. 
 
 This was in January, 1380, and in the following 
 April St. Catherine of Siena died, and by her 
 death the Pope lost his earthly guardian angel, 
 who alone of all his subjects knew how to control 
 his violent temper, and who had always urged him 
 
294 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 to be patient and merciful with Joanna and his 
 other enemies, while at the same time she 
 had encouraged him to defend his throne against 
 them. 
 
 Joanna's conduct in taking so prominent a part 
 in the election and recognition of Robert of Geneva 
 as the antipope had naturally incensed Urban more 
 and more with her, and a week after St. Catherine's 
 death he issued a Bull of Excommunication against 
 her. 
 
 In it he denounced " Joanna, formerly Queen of 
 the Two Sicilies for her iniquities, wickedness, and 
 enormous excesses, committed against Us and the 
 Roman Church, and We declare her to be a schis- 
 matical, heretical, and blasphemous conspirator against 
 Us and guilty of the crime of ' lese-majeste,' and We 
 deprive her of and depose her from all her dignities, 
 honours, kingdoms, and lands, which We confiscate 
 all and each, and We absolve from their fidelity and 
 obedience to her all who have sworn allegiance to 
 her, and none shall be held bound to obey her or 
 to pay any debts due to her. And We inhibit 
 under pain of excommunication all individual 
 princes, dukes, barons, and nobles, and under 
 pain of an interdict all communities and Univer- 
 sities, from obedience to her. Given at St. Peter's, 
 Rome, April 29th, in the third year of Our 
 pontificate." 
 
 At the same time Urban fulminated a sentence 
 
Joanna is Excommunicated 295 
 
 of deposition against Bernard of Rhodes, the 
 Clementine usurper of the Archbishopric of Naples, 
 and confirmed the Abbot Barruto in the office in 
 his place, and he excommunicated Onerato Cajetano 
 and Rinaldo Orsini, Count of Nola, and his brother 
 Giovanni. 
 
 The Pope now proceeded to preach a crusade 
 against Joanna ; but as this produced but little money 
 and he was at this time nearly bankrupt, he seized 
 the gold and silver images in the churches of Rome, 
 and the jewels which adorned the shrines, and a 
 great deal of the altar plate as well, and sold them 
 or had them melted down. 
 
 About this time Charles Durazzo entered Italy 
 at the head of 8,000 Hungarian soldiers, besides 
 a large body of German and Italian infantry, who 
 pillaged and destroyed the defenceless towns and 
 villages they passed through, and would have be- 
 sieged Florence if Sir John Hawkwood and his 
 companies had not intervened and made a com- 
 promise by which the English knight and his 
 followers entered Durazzo's service, and the Flor- 
 entines agreed to lend Durazzo 40,000 florins — 
 which he had never the smallest intention of re- 
 funding — and promised not to assist Joanna. 
 
 In the month of May Charles arrived in Rome, 
 and was afFectionately received by the Pope, but 
 forced to agree to the conditions upon which Urban 
 offered him the crown of Naples, which as we know 
 
296 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 were that the greater part of the kingdom should 
 belong to his nephew, Butillo Prignano. Urban 
 then proceeded formally to invest Durazzo with the 
 Two Sicilies on the above conditions, to which 
 Charles agreed, inwardly resolving that he would 
 never fulfil them. In return Urban bestowed upon 
 him all the treasure he had realised by the spoliation 
 of the Roman churches, and, fortified with these 
 sinews of war, Charles now advanced on Naples. 
 
 While Charles is thus spreading terror throughout 
 Italy, by the excesses of his barbarian Hungarians 
 and lawless freebooters, let us turn and see what 
 steps the unhappy, excommunicated Queen and 
 her husband were taking to defend her throne and 
 life. 
 
 In a document dated July 29th, 1380, signed 
 at Castel del Ovo, Joanna declared that she deprived 
 Charles Durazzo of all pretensions to the inheritance 
 of her kingdom, and that in his place she had adopted 
 Louis, Duke of Anjou and Turenne, Count of 
 Mans, and Lord of Montpellier, brother to Charles 
 V., King of France, as heir to all her dominions in 
 Naples, Provence, and Piedmont for himself and 
 all his descendants. 
 
 This action displeased many of her Neapolitan 
 subjects, who had known Charles from his cradle, 
 and were proud of his military exploits, and in spite 
 of his faults were attached to him, whereas Louis of 
 Anjou was a stranger to them. From this time 
 
Joanna is Excommunicated 297 
 
 Joanna's kingdom was torn with dissensions, political 
 as well as religious — between not only the two 
 parties of the Urbanists and Clementines, but the 
 adherents of Charles of Durazzo and their opponents, 
 the followers of Joanna and Louis of Anjou, also. 
 
 Among those who now deserted Joanna were 
 the two Orsini, the Counts of Nola. In the midst 
 of all this trouble, confusion was rendered " worse 
 confounded" by a tumult in the piazzas of the city, 
 between the nobles. Those of Capuana and Nido 
 pretended that they had the right conceded to them 
 by the late King Robert to precede all the other 
 barons ; whereas the barons of Portanova, Porto, 
 and S. Arcangelo maintained, on the contrary, that 
 they had the precedence of the most ancient nobles. 
 This controversy led to battles in the streets and 
 to much bloodshed, and on August 7th the whole 
 city was in a state of alarm ; but Prince Otho, at the 
 risk of his own life, accompanied by some other 
 barons, joined in the fray, and succeeded in quelling 
 the disturbance. 
 
 Joanna pardoned the principal offenders, who had 
 by their foolish ambition to precede each other 
 placed the throne in danger ; but the Queen was 
 ever clement and merciful to a fault. 
 
 Unfortunately for Joanna, the death of the French 
 King, Charles V., took place on September 16th 
 in the same year, and this delayed the advent of 
 Louis of Anjou, who was declared Regent of France, 
 
298 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 and was obliged to remain in Paris for some time ; 
 so he was unable to come at once to her aid, although 
 it was now in his own interest to do so. 
 
 The antipope Clement confirmed Joanna's adop- 
 tion of Louis, and had the insolence to bestow upon 
 him the Papal States, which were in the possession 
 of the true Pope, Urban VI. 
 
 As time drew on Charles approached nearer to 
 Naples, and his forces were daily increased by 
 deserters from Joanna's party, many of whom were 
 terrified by the sentence of excommunication pro- 
 nounced against her by Urban, and, fearing for their 
 spiritual welfare, declared for him and Charles of 
 Durazzo. 
 
 Nothing daunted by her falling fortunes and the 
 perils which threatened her throne and life, Joanna 
 took her courage in both hands, like the brave 
 woman she was, and determined to make a bold 
 fight for it. She placed great confidence in the 
 valour of her husband Otho, although his adherents 
 were few compared to those of Charles, and she 
 trusted also in the false promises of her Neapolitan 
 barons, many of whom ultimately deserted her. But 
 her greatest hope was in her Provencal fleet, which 
 she had summoned to her aid ; but this took a long 
 time in days when there were no telegraph-wires 
 to communicate her wishes to them, and only the 
 wind and their oars to bring them when summoned. 
 When matters became more desperate, and 
 
URBAN THE SIXTH. 
 
 p. 298] 
 
Joanna is Excommunicated 299 
 
 Durazzo was fast approaching Naples, she sent 
 the Count of Caserta to France, to entreat her 
 new heir, Louis of Anjou, to hasten to her aid 
 as quickly as possible, and he did his best to respond 
 to her appeal. He set about collecting a large 
 army; but the long distance from Naples and the 
 difficulty of finding provision to feed his men, 
 when there was no such thing as a commissariat, 
 delayed his arrival and gave rise to the Neapolitan 
 proverb, " The lilies of France will not take root a 
 second time in Italy." 
 
 The key to the kingdom of Naples was San 
 Germano, and here Otho, who was considered 
 one of the first captains of his day, prepared to 
 dispute Charles's advance. But many of the 
 Neapolitan barons who had promised to join him 
 there failed to keep their promises, and he was 
 obliged to retire and leave the mountain passes 
 open and fall back on Naples, where a body of 
 mercenaries in Joanna's pay reinforced him. 
 
 Durazzo followed him so quickly that on July 1 7th, 
 1 38 1, the two armies encamped at five in the even- 
 ing under the walls of the city, so close together 
 that the knights in the rival forces could recognise 
 each other. 
 
 Charles had with him the traitor, the Duke of 
 Andria, the Papal legate, Gentilis de Sangro, and 
 Urban's nephew Francis or Butillo Prignano, now 
 endowed with the empty tide of Prince of Capua, 
 
3°° The Beautiful Queen 
 
 for the title was all he ever enjoyed from that 
 principality. Durazzo had also with him many of 
 the prominent Neapolitan barons, a whole band 
 of adventurers and malefactors, and some of the 
 principal municipal officers of Naples. Otho had 
 fewer barons in his army, as Joanna had kept most 
 of those whom she believed to be faithful to her 
 cause in the city to quell disturbances there if any 
 should arise. 
 
 For three hours the two armies remained in sight 
 of each other without attempting to fight. Charles 
 was afraid to give battle to Otho, though his army 
 was much the greater, lest the Neapolitans should 
 fall on his rear while the Prince of Brunswick was 
 engaging him in front. Otho had succeeded in 
 getting Charles between him and the city ; but this 
 manoeuvre was afterwards frustrated by the treachery 
 of some citizens belonging to Urban's party, who 
 managed to climb over the walls and told Durazzo 
 the citizens were divided into two parties — one for 
 Urban and him, and the other for Joanna and 
 Clement ; and they offered to conduct a few of his 
 followers across the sands to the Porta del Conceria, 
 an unguarded gate which was supposed to be 
 sufficiently protected by the sea. 
 
 Durazzo selected a few of his soldiers who could 
 swim, and sent them to this gate, which they reached 
 by swimming — some accounts say by wading through 
 the waves — and, finding it unlocked as well as 
 
Joanna is Excommunicated 301 
 
 unguarded, they passed through and made straight 
 for the market-place. Here they raised the cry 
 of " Viva il Re Carlo e il Papa Urbano ! " and were 
 immediately joined by some of Charles's old friends 
 who were also Urbanists, and together they made 
 their way, fighting, to the Porta del Mercato, before 
 which Durazzo was encamped, and, before Joanna's 
 adherents could defend it, they opened it, and 
 Charles and a large body of his troops entered 
 the city. 
 
 No sooner were the Hungarian soldiers under 
 Charles inside Naples than they strongly fortified 
 the gate by which they had entered, and marched 
 to the Porta Capuana and placed another guard 
 there, and then proceeded to Porta Reale, which 
 was opposite to Otho's army, and guarded it against 
 their entrance. 
 
 Otho soon saw what was going on, and immediately 
 attempted to cut up the rearguard of the enemy ; but 
 he was only in time to destroy the band of Neapoli- 
 tans under Cola Mostone — who had deserted Joanna 
 — which he annihilated. The city was now in the 
 greatest confusion. Joanna's party were vainly 
 fighting against Charles's army and the Neapolitan 
 people, and those of the minor nobility and gentry 
 who could effect their escape fled to the surrounding 
 country. 
 
 Here we must pause to tell what had become 
 of Joanna during this siege. She who had on 
 
3°2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 former occasions put on her armour, mounted her 
 horse, and commanded her own troops — where was 
 she now ? And where was Louis of Anjou, and where 
 was the Provencal fleet on which her chief hopes 
 were based (for by them if necessary she might 
 escape to Provence), and her ever faithful and loyal 
 Provencal subjects — where were all these ? 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 Joanna is Besieged 
 
 THE Castel Nuovo, in which the Queen usually 
 resided when in her metropolis, had been 
 newly fortified and strengthened in the case of 
 eventualities, and here Joanna and her ladies-in- 
 waiting retired when the siege of the city began, 
 with sufficient provisions laid in to last them seven 
 months. 
 
 With Joanna were her two nieces — her eldest niece, 
 also named Joanna, who by virtue of her primogeni- 
 ture enjoyed the title of Duchess of Durazzo, which 
 she inherited from her mother, and her sister Agnes, 
 the widow of Can della Scala, Prince of Verona. The 
 Duchess of Durazzo was very rich, partly by inherit- 
 ing a handsome patrimony, partly through the wealth 
 she had accumulated by her parsimony and miserly 
 habits. 
 
 Before the siege began the Queen had asked the 
 Duchess to lend her some of her money, to cover 
 part of the expenses of the war, and to provide for 
 
 3°3 
 
304 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 their defence, her own exchequer being low, and she 
 consequently in great need of money ; but the 
 younger Joanna refused, although her own safety 
 was at stake: her love of money was so great, that 
 she preferred to face the danger which threatened 
 her rather than part with it. 
 
 When the news of Charles's entrance into Naples 
 was brought to the Queen she was besieged at the 
 same time with appeals for help and protection from a 
 number of noble ladies and their children, who, with 
 many of the Clementine clergy and some of the 
 worthiest of the old barons of her kingdom, implored 
 her to admit them inside the castle with her and her 
 suite. 
 
 Joanna knew that if she granted this appeal her 
 provisions would only last one month instead of 
 seven, but she also knew that if she refused the 
 request of these helpless women and children and 
 old barons, and sent them away, she would be sending 
 them not only to death, but to endure horrors far 
 worse than death, at the hands of Charles's barbarian 
 Hungarians and lawless adventurers, and from the 
 ferocity of the mob and the infuriated populace. 
 
 She could not steel her heart to abandon these 
 delicate women and helpless children to save her 
 own life, so, with her characteristic but in this case 
 fatal generosity, she admitted them all to share her 
 last refuge. 
 
 We are not told what the other less generous 
 
Joanna is Besieged 3°5 
 
 Joanna, the Duchess of Durazzo, said to this action ; 
 but, judging from her character, she was, we should 
 say, unlikely to approve it, and may have remon- 
 strated with her royal aunt. But if so she was 
 overruled, and all the petitioners were admitted 
 to the castle. 
 
 Joanna's one great and only hope now was in the 
 arrival of her Provencal fleet before her supplies 
 were exhausted, and at the beginning of the siege 
 this hope was very strong and well-founded. She 
 expected it every day to arrive and bear her away to 
 Avignon and the protection of the antipope, Clement, 
 until her newly adopted heir, Louis of Anjou, should 
 come with his army from France and expel Charles 
 of Durazzo. 
 
 But day after day passed and no fleet arrived, day 
 after day the besieged inhabitants of the castle scanned 
 the horizon from its towers in the hope of detecting 
 the sails of the belated galleys, on which all their 
 hopes were based, but all in vain : the days length- 
 ened into weeks and no sign of them rewarded the 
 anxious watchers. 
 
 And daily the rations grew smaller and smaller, 
 and the Queen and her nieces, the court and the 
 garrison, and all the women and children, priests and 
 barons she had admitted to share her fortune were 
 beginning to feel the pangs of hunger. Presently 
 they were reduced to feed on carrion, and were in 
 consequence assailed with sickness, and still no sign 
 
 20 
 
306 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of the Provencal fleet gladdened their aching eyes, 
 and anxiety gave place to despair among the weaker- 
 hearted ; but Joanna was courageous as ever, and 
 endured all these privations bravely. 
 
 Then one day her niece, Joanna, Duchess of 
 Durazzo, when they were reduced to extreme hunger, 
 put all her gold and jewels into a large vase, and 
 carried it into the Queen's presence and laid it at 
 her feet. Joanna looked mournfully at the treasure, 
 which, had it been offered to her when she asked 
 for the loan of it in her necessity, might have saved 
 all their lives, but was useless now, since there was 
 no possibility of exchanging it for food of any kind, 
 and putting the useless offering aside, said sadly : 
 " A sack of wheat would be more precious to 
 me now, my niece, than all this treasure. Let 
 that thief Charles, whom you have served so well, 
 have it." 
 
 Meanwhile Prince Otho, who was at his wits' end 
 to know what to do for the best to help his besieged 
 Queen, endeavoured to entice Charles Durazzo out 
 of Naples, to which end he returned to the walls, 
 and destroyed the aqueduct which supplied the city 
 with water, in the hope that Durazzo would be 
 forced, through want of the first necessity of life, to 
 come out and give him battle. Durazzo, however, 
 Was too wise to do anything of the kind. More- 
 over, the Neapolitans who had joined him showed 
 him many springs of fresh water which were in the 
 
Joanna is Besieged 3°7 
 
 city, and from them he learnt that most of the 
 houses were empty, the inhabitants having made 
 good their escape by flight. They further counselled 
 him not to be so rash as to make a sortie, and per- 
 haps lose all he had already gained in one day, when 
 it was certain that the Queen and her garrison could 
 not hold out much longer, and must soon be forced 
 by the pangs of hunger to surrender. 
 
 Charles took this advice and remained in the city, 
 but he was not idle. He knew Castel Nuovo was far 
 too strong for him to take it by storm, so he did 
 not waste the strength of his soldiers by any 
 vain attempts, but contented himself with address- 
 ing the people and exhorting them to submit to 
 him and acknowledge him, whom they had known 
 so long as the heir to the throne, as Joanna's suc- 
 cessor ; and little by little the Neapolitans, or the 
 greater number of them, joined his party. 
 
 The fact that Charles was supported by the true 
 Pope, Urban, and that the Queen had been excom- 
 municated by him and had joined the cause of the 
 antipope, Clement, had much to do with this defec- 
 tion of her subjects. 
 
 Prince Otho, finding that his attempt to draw 
 Charles had failed, and that he was for the present 
 powerless to help Joanna, retired with his forces to 
 Aversa. 
 
 Joanna, who was now on the verge of starvation, 
 still hoped against hope for the arrival of the long- 
 
308 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 looked-for galleys, which failed to come and rescue 
 her; and seeing that her ladies and the women 
 and children, and the garrison, were suffering all the 
 horrors of a siege when the provisions are all but 
 exhausted, began to think of surrender. She could 
 not see all these her dependents perish, even if she 
 were willing to die of starvation herself ; so she de- 
 cided to send her pronotary, Ugo de Sanseverino 
 to Charles to try to come to some terms or arrange 
 a truce. 
 
 This she did ; and Durazzo, who was nearly related 
 to Sanseverino, and knew him to be one of the most 
 powerful barons in the kingdom, received him well. 
 But the utmost concession he would grant the Queen 
 was five more days, at the close of which, if she were 
 not relieved, she was to surrender ; but he promised 
 that in this case she should not be removed from Castel 
 Nuovo, but should be served there by her usual suite. 
 
 Durazzo's game now was to get Joanna to surrender 
 willingly, and to acknowledge him once more as her 
 heir ; and with this object in view he sent a deputa- 
 tion of nobles to her to reassure her of his filial 
 affection and submissive reverence for her. And to 
 emphasise these assurances — in which he could hardly 
 expect his adopted mother to place much faith, see- 
 ing he had so long been plotting to seize her throne — 
 he sent her every day fruit and poultry for her table, 
 and gave orders that she was to be supplied abun- 
 dantly with all she required for her own use. 
 
Joanna is Besieged 3°9 
 
 If the besieged inhabitants of the castle had 
 watched anxiously for the expected ships from 
 Marseilles before, they now spent every hour of the 
 five days of truce in looking anxiously from every 
 available window and tower for some sign of their 
 approach — but in vain. 
 
 Joanna, whose faith had always been very strong, 
 was now a very devout woman, and spent much of 
 her time in prayer before the altar in her private 
 chapel in the castle. But neither did prayer seem to 
 avail her, as far as the hoped-for fleet was concerned, 
 for it did not make its appearance, and when the 
 fifth day of the truce dawned there was still no sign 
 of it. 
 
 During the truce Joanna had managed to send to 
 Aversa to conjure her husband to make one more 
 effort to rescue her; and on this fifth day Otho led 
 his forces through the road of Piedigrotta, past the 
 island of Ischia, till he reached the barriers Durazzo 
 had erected before the Castel Nuovo, and tried to 
 throw provisions into the castle. 
 
 This led to a pitched battle between him and 
 Charles's soldiers, both sides fighting with such 
 desperate valour that for a long time the result was 
 very doubtful. The combatants were so close to 
 the castle that the Queen was able to watch the 
 fight from the windows. Perhaps Otho may have 
 caught sight of her majestic figure — at any rate, 
 her proximity and the knowledge of her captivity 
 
3 ro The Beautiful Queen 
 
 and sufferings so maddened him that he made a 
 desperate attempt to seize the standard of Charles, 
 which was surrounded by the bravest and most 
 accomplished knights, who had fought with Durazzo 
 in the wars of Hungary and Venice. 
 
 Otho's men, many of whom were recently re- 
 cruited, were unable to cope with these well-seasoned 
 soldiers, and he soon found himself alone in the 
 thickest of the fight, where he received several 
 wounds ; but he still fought bravely on. The 
 thought of his beautiful Queen and the threatened 
 loss of her throne stimulated him, who was known 
 as one of the bravest soldiers of his time ; but 
 fate was against him. His horse accidentally fell, 
 and the brave and wounded Prince was thrown to 
 the ground and taken prisoner in sight of Joanna, 
 who is believed to have witnessed this last blow 
 to her hopes. 
 
 With Otho were Baldassero of Brunswick, his 
 brother ; Robert, Count of Artois, the husband of 
 the Duchess of Durazzo, who now enjoyed the 
 title of Duke of Durazzo ; the Count of Ariano, and 
 Jacimo Zurlo, the head of the Neapolitan gentry. 
 When Otho was taken prisoner his troops were 
 seized with such a panic that all the efforts of 
 Baldassero of Brunswick and Robert of Artois failed 
 to rally them, and they ignominiously fled in all 
 directions. Many of them dismounted and left 
 their horses loose, and climbed up the sides of the 
 
Joanna is Besieged 3 11 
 
 mountain upon which the Castel St. Elmo stands, 
 to take refuge within its thick walls. 
 
 At the time a gale was blowing and a very heavy 
 rain was falling, which prevented Durazzo's soldiers 
 from following them ; but the horses they had left 
 behind were seized by the Neapolitan people, who 
 spent hours in catching them. 
 
 The battle was now completely lost. Otho's 
 principal captains, Baldassero of Brunswick, Robert 
 of Artois, the Count of Ariano, and Zurlo succeeded 
 in escaping, but a good many of the nobles who had 
 relations inside the city joined them, on receiving 
 assurances of safety, and went over to the enemy's 
 side, as Joanna's cause was now considered hopeless. 
 
 This contest, so disastrous to Joanna, took place 
 on August 25th ; and on the next morning she sent 
 her surrender to Charles, as there was still no sign 
 of the ships from Marseilles, and the time of the 
 truce had expired. 
 
 When Charles reached the castle on the morning 
 of the 26th he found the Queen, who — torn with 
 anxiety for her wounded husband, now a prisoner 
 in her enemy's hands — had passed a terrible night, 
 walking in the garden, wishing perhaps to enjoy a 
 little fresh air before she herself was made a prisoner. 
 
 Her majestic dignity was not without its effect 
 on her ungrateful conqueror ; and partly from long 
 habit, pardy perhaps from a sense of shame, he fell 
 on his knees at the feet of his adopted mother, as 
 
3 12 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 though she were still his sovereign instead of his 
 prisoner. Joanna looked sadly down on her former 
 heir, whom it is said she now hated, and said : 
 
 " Charles, I will not enumerate all the benefits 
 I have bestowed upon you, for it would ill become 
 a captive to humiliate her conqueror. Heaven and 
 earth behold us and will judge between us. Re- 
 member only my regal dignity, if anything sacred 
 can still find a place in your memory, and treat 
 my husband with the respect due to a prince of 
 his rank." 
 
 Charles rose from his knees, and made fervent 
 protestations of reverence and love for Joanna, 
 assuring her that he would never have attempted 
 to snatch her kingdom from her if he had not 
 been persuaded that Otho intended to dispute it 
 with him in case of her death. 
 
 Joanna, who was the same age as Otho, and of 
 a very good constitution, knew what value to 
 attach to this false excuse for conduct which was 
 inexcusable. She commanded her anger, and, with 
 her usual royal dignity, eloquently begged him to 
 treat Prince Otho honourably, as befitted his rank ; 
 and implored him to have mercy on all the captives 
 in the castle, and especially on the Clementine 
 clergy, who feared the punishment their schismatical 
 conduct would draw on them from Urban, whose 
 violent temper was well known, and who could not 
 be expected to show them much mercy. 
 
From an early woodcut portrait, by kind permission of Mr. St. Clair Baddeley. 
 
 CHARLES THE THIRD OF NAPLES. 
 p. 312] 
 
Joanna is Besieged 313 
 
 Charles, though now he had acquired the kingdom 
 of Naples by force, was not content with this, but 
 wanted also the rich inheritance of Provence, and, 
 knowing that more was to be obtained of Joanna 
 by kindness and consideration than by threats or 
 attempts at frightening her into submission, trusted 
 that he might still be able to delude her into making 
 him once more her heir. 
 
 With this object in view he gave orders that, 
 although his prisoner, she was to be treated with 
 regal honours, and approached with all the customary 
 forms, and attended by her usual officers and ladies- 
 in-waiting. 
 
 On the fourth day after her surrender the long- 
 looked-for Provencal fleet appeared, too late to be 
 of any use, only adding, as it must have done, 
 fresh bitterness to the anguish of the unhappy 
 Queen when she saw its masts on the horizon. It 
 was composed of twelve armed galleys, commanded 
 by Angeluccio di Rosarno and Ludovico Antonio, 
 Count of Caserta. Charles, as soon as he was 
 notified of their arrival, went up to the castle to 
 have another interview with Joanna, and endeavour, 
 by fawning upon her, to persuade her to make 
 him her heir. 
 
 He addressed Joanna as his Queen and beloved 
 mother, renewed all his professions of loyalty, and 
 saying she must now be convinced of his sincerity, 
 he humbly begged her to nominate him heir of all 
 
3H The Beautiful Queen 
 
 her dominions in Provence, and to put all the 
 foreign troops, which had at last so tardily arrived, 
 under his command. 
 
 Joanna, who had no longer the least faith in the 
 professions of Charles, and knew that the result 
 of any document she might sign would be to lead 
 her either to the scaffold or to lifelong captivity, 
 could not be induced by promises or persuasions 
 to grant this request. She knew too that her only 
 hope — and that a very faint one — was in Louis of 
 Anjou, whom she had already nominated her heir, 
 and to offend him by making Charles her successor 
 would be to cut off her only hope of release from 
 captivity and restoration to her throne. 
 
 She inwardly resolved that she would be faithful 
 to Louis of Anjou, and not risk alienating him 
 for ever from her cause, but, pretending to believe 
 Charles, she said to him : 
 
 " Give my captains a safe pass, that they may land 
 and come to me and take my orders." 
 
 Charles, deceived by her composure, and thinking 
 that he had at last prevailed upon her to acknow- 
 ledge him again as her heir, acceded to her request, 
 and granted a safe-conduct to the Count of Caserta 
 and the chosen deputies from the Provencal galleys, 
 and consented that they should have an audience 
 of Joanna in his absence. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 The Captive Queen 
 
 JOANNA was celebrated for her oratory ; we 
 have seen her pleading her own cause before 
 Pope Clement VI. and his Cardinals in the Con- 
 sistory-court at Avignon with consummate skill, and 
 on other occasions we have heard her haranguing 
 her councillors, but never perhaps was she more 
 eloquent than now, when the Count of Caserta and 
 the Provencal barons were admitted to her presence. 
 Neither Charles nor any of his followers were present : 
 only Joanna and her court were in the room when 
 the French deputies were introduced. 
 
 Traces of the terrible privations and anxiety she 
 had gone through were visible on the Queen's beauti- 
 ful face, on which both mental and physical suffering 
 had left their marks ; but her customary majestic 
 grace and dignity had not deserted her, and with 
 them she greeted the Provencal subjects who had 
 come too late to save her throne. If they expected 
 
 315 
 
316 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 reproach for their fatal delay they were not dis- 
 appointed, for they were received with it. 
 
 " Why, my friends, why have you so long delayed 
 to succour me ? I have suffered what no woman 
 and hardly any man can bear. By your negligence 
 I have been forced to eat the vilest food, the putrid 
 flesh of the lowest animals, and have been forced 
 to surrender myself into the hands of a cruel enemy 
 and become a slave. It is now too late, too late 
 to help, but it is not too late for revenge. If you 
 have not forgotten the good deeds of my house, 
 and my true love for you, and the many benefits 
 you have received from me ; if you have any 
 remembrance of your oath of fidelity to me, then 
 I conjure you by that solemn allegiance, never in 
 any manner or at any distance of time acknowledge 
 as your lord that ungrateful robber who from a 
 Queen has made me a captive slave. 
 
 " Give not yourselves up to that traitor who has 
 pushed me from my throne. If ever it shall be 
 told you that I have made him my heir, believe 
 it not. If any writings are shown you to that 
 effect, they are either false or forced from me 
 without my consent. 
 
 " My will is that you own for your lord and 
 master Louis of Anjou, my son and my heir, on 
 whom I have bestowed the inheritance, not only 
 of Provence and my Ultramontane States, but of 
 this kingdom of Naples also. Him I have chosen 
 
The Captive Queen 317 
 
 to revenge this treason and violence against the 
 person of his unhappy mother. Hasten to him, 
 obey him truly and constantly. I do not beg 
 this of you. I command it earnestly and solemnly, 
 for I can still do it, since I am still your Princess, 
 placed by God over you to rule you. Go then to 
 Louis, Duke of Anjou, and render your obedience 
 to him. Take no more thought for me but to 
 perform my funeral rites and to pray for my soul." 
 
 Deeply moved by these words of their fallen 
 sovereign, the Provencal barons, with the tears 
 streaming down their weather-beaten cheeks, excused 
 their apparent negligence in not having arrived 
 sooner, testified to their intense grief at her cap- 
 tivity, and vowing solemnly to obey her commands, 
 they took their leave, and hastened back to their 
 ships, to set sail at once for France to bring Louis 
 of Anjou to avenge his adopted mother's wrongs. 
 The Count of Caserta, who had ever been faithful 
 to Joanna, went with them, protesting his willingness 
 to die for her cause. 
 
 Durazzo returned to the Queen on the departure 
 of the French barons, to hear the result of the 
 conference, which was very different from what he 
 had anticipated, and he learnt from Joanna's own 
 lips that she had performed her last act of 
 sovereignty and, as her honour demanded, urged 
 her Provencal subjects to be true and loyal to 
 Louis of Anjou, her present heir. 
 
3 l8 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Louis of Anjou was the most accomplished of 
 the three splendid sons of John the Good, King of 
 France. The late King Charles V. was the eldest 
 of these three brothers, Louis, Duke of Anjou, the 
 second, Philip was the third. They were all three 
 highly cultivated men, fond of splendour and great 
 possessions, and of art, of which they were liberal 
 patrons ; but Louis was the most celebrated for his 
 valour, and also for his magnificent collections of 
 pictures, china, plate, jewels, books, and valuable 
 MSS. He took great delight in all these, but he 
 parted with many of his treasures to raise money 
 for his expedition to Naples to secure his Sicilian 
 throne. 
 
 Charles's wrath at finding Joanna had outwitted 
 him, and defeated the object he had had in view 
 when he granted her an interview with the French 
 deputies, was very great ; and when he saw the 
 masts of the French galleys disappear below the 
 horizon, as they were hastening to help his rival, 
 he was furious, and determined to try the effect of 
 harsh treatment upon his victim. With this end 
 in view, he first of all had the Queen removed to 
 the Castel del Ovo under a strong guard, as a 
 prisoner, but he allowed some of her ladies-in- 
 waiting to go with her. 
 
 Her niece Agnes, widow of the Prince of Verona, 
 who with her elder sister, Joanna, Duchess of 
 Durazzo, were taken prisoners with the Queen, 
 
The Captive Queen 319 
 
 was now married to the son of the Duke of Andria 
 by Charles, who, to promote his own interests, 
 bestowed her upon one of the Queen's greatest 
 enemies like a captive slave, without consulting 
 her. 
 
 Later on, when Charles had offended Urban, 
 and it was rumoured that the Pope thought of 
 deposing him in favour of this son of the Duke 
 of Andria, who by this marriage had a double 
 claim to the succession to the throne, Charles 
 caused Agnes and her two innocent children, and 
 Joanna of Durazzo, to be thrown into a dungeon, 
 where they all died of starvation and misery, some 
 say of poison. 
 
 The Queen had surrendered at the end of August, 
 and on November nth, St. Martin's day, Charles 
 and his wife Margaret were solemnly crowned in 
 the Cathedral of Naples, after taking the oaths of 
 allegiance to Urban as the true Pope. When 
 Charles was led in procession round the city after 
 his coronation, under a canopy of state, the Duke 
 of Andria, who had not yet deserted him, held his 
 bridle on one side, and the Count of Conversano 
 on the other. Before six months had passed, both 
 these noblemen had gone back to Joanna's cause. 
 
 Great efforts were made to restore cheerfulness 
 to Naples after the coronation by means of banquets 
 and pageants, and all the shows in which the 
 Neapolitans were known to delight ; but so many 
 
320 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 families were in mourning for their relatives who 
 had perished in the war, and so many houses were 
 empty, as their owners had fled the city, that all the 
 rejoicings did little to dispel the general gloom. 
 
 Very soon Charles found that it was very difficult 
 for a usurper to satisfy the claims of his partisans, 
 and impossible to content the ambition of his sup- 
 porters, and the fickle Neapolitans soon began to 
 return to their old allegiance. 
 
 The Counts of Ariano, Fondi, and Aversa had 
 remained in arms for Joanna, and they were now 
 joined by that rebel, the Duke of Andria, the San- 
 severini family, and the Counts of Conversano, 
 Lece, and Montenovo. The Sanseverini and the 
 Duke of Andria were deadly foes, nevertheless 
 they now acted in concert, Charles having estranged 
 Andria because he was unable to give back all his 
 former possessions of which Joanna had deprived 
 him, and the Sanseverini were jealous and disgusted 
 with Charles for giving Agnes of Verona as wife 
 to the son of the Duke of Andria. 
 
 But where, it may well be asked, was Louis of 
 Anjou all this time ? For his delay in coming to 
 Joanna's aid was partly the cause of the final 
 tragedy. That delay was in the first instance un- 
 avoidable, as his post of Regent, to which he was 
 appointed on the death of Charles V., rendered 
 his presence in Paris as necessary as it was un- 
 doubtedly agreeable to him. In June, 1 3 8 1 , Louis, 
 
The Captive Queen 321 
 
 who seems to have been enjoying himself very 
 much at the time in his new position, received, 
 through the Count of Caserta, Joanna's desperate 
 appeal for help in her extremity, and, having called 
 a Council together, he decided to leave France im- 
 mediately for Naples and claim his inheritance. 
 Then came the news of Charles's successes, and 
 Louis realised that he had a kingdom to reconquer, 
 as well as a frontier to defend, before he could 
 take possession of his Sicilian inheritance. Under 
 these difficulties his zeal to go to help Joanna seems 
 to have cooled considerably, and after vacillating a 
 great deal, as fresh news from Naples reached him, 
 France decided to abandon Joanna to her fate. 
 
 This was in October, and after a while Louis, 
 tired of doing nothing, and regretting that he had 
 let his Sicilian crown slip through his fingers, entered 
 into correspondence with the Neapolitan ambassador, 
 and went to Avignon to consult with the antipope, 
 Clement VII., and to try to get the Provencals to 
 acknowledge him as their prince, and help him to 
 win the Sicilian throne. 
 
 He stayed four months in Avignon, and received 
 the encouragement of Clement to proceed to Italy, 
 and on March 1st Clement invested him with the 
 title of Duke of Calabria, reserved for the heir- 
 presumptive to the throne of Naples. 
 
 He spent another three months collecting troops 
 in Provence, and having been joined by the Duke 
 
 21 
 
322 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 of Savoy, at last, after all these maddening delays, 
 he set sail for Naples at the head of a large army, 
 amid the shouts of the Provencals of " Vive Pape 
 Clement VII., Vive Madame la Reine Jeanne I., 
 Vive le due de Calabrie ! " 
 
 While he is leaving Marseilles with his splendid 
 troops we must return to Naples to see what was 
 going on there, and in so doing we must not forget 
 that the Neapolitan revolution was a double re- 
 volution — it was religious as well as political. In 
 acknowledging the usurper Charles III., so wrongly 
 named "of Peace," the Neapolitans acknowledged 
 the authority of the true Pope, Urban VI., and in 
 deposing and deserting Joanna they condemned 
 Clement VII. as antipope, and threw off their allegi- 
 ance to both their temporal and spiritual sovereign, 
 though the latter was a usurper. 
 
 There had entered into Naples with Charles, the 
 Papal legate, Gentile de Sangro, who, if the 
 Urbanists in Naples had suffered under Joanna, 
 now immediately began to rule the Clementine 
 clergy with a rod of iron. In one day, according 
 to Urban's secretary, de Niem, he dismissed no 
 fewer than thirty-two Clementine abbots, bishops, 
 and archbishops ; and not content with depriving 
 them of their benefices, he cast them into prison, 
 and those who refused to acknowledge Urban were 
 sent to the scaffold. Among these last was the 
 Archbishop of Salerno. 
 
The Captive Queen 323 
 
 A remarkable scene took place in the Church 
 of St. Clare in Naples. The two Clementine 
 cardinals who were taken prisoners with Joanna 
 were led into this church among a vast crowd of 
 people, and one of them, Cardinal de GifFone, in- 
 timidated by the presence of Charles of Durazzo 
 and the Legate, di Sangro, denied the antipope, 
 Clement, and burnt his hat, while the robes and 
 hat of his companion, Cardinal d'ltro, were con- 
 sumed in the same flames. After being thus 
 publicly degraded, together with some other Clemen- 
 tine prelates, they were cast into prison, where 
 Cardinal d'ltro died. 
 
 To strengthen his position in Naples, Urban now 
 created a large number of Neapolitan cardinals, 
 some of whom, later on, when Durazzo had in- 
 curred Urban's displeasure — their patience with the 
 Pope's conduct being exhausted — conspired against 
 Urban, with the idea of putting him under restraint 
 as mad, or of delivering him into Durazzo's hands. 
 In reprisal for this, Urban on discovering it put 
 six of them into irons in the cells at Nocera, and 
 then subjected them to torture. 
 
 Gentile de Sangro, who had himself tortured the 
 Clementine clergy, was one of these six victims 
 of Urban's cruelty, and, being an enormously stout 
 man, fainted when the executioners lifted him from 
 the ground with cords on to the rack, on which 
 he was thrice stretched. 
 
3 2 4 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 The old Cardinal of Venice each time that he was 
 tortured exclaimed, " Christ suffered for us." The 
 same authority, de Niem, says that the man chosen 
 to apply these tortures was a Genoese pirate well 
 known for his hatred of clerics. 
 
 Historians differ as to the date on which Durazzo 
 caused Joanna to be removed from Castel del Ovo, 
 for fear that her presence in Naples should cause 
 a rebellion in her favour ; but it seems most probable 
 that it took place about March 28, 1382, and not, 
 as Giannone says, a few days after her surrender, 
 when, as we have said, she was taken to the Castel 
 del Ovo. 
 
 The Castle of Muro 1 was a great, gloomy fortress, 
 situated in Durazzo's own territory, inherited from 
 his father, in the province of the Basilicata, to the 
 south-east of Naples, and on this account it was from 
 his point of view a much safer place of detention 
 for the captive Queen. It stood in a wild, barren, 
 mountainous district in an isolated situation, not 
 easy of access, and as Joanna approached its gloomy 
 towers her heart must have sunk within her. 
 
 She had been treated fairly well on the whole at 
 Castel del Ovo, during her six or seven months' 
 imprisonment there ; but now her guard was made 
 much more strict, and composed in part of the 
 Hungarian soldiers, who hated her. Her nieces had 
 
 1 The author of " Rulers of the South " says he knows no castle 
 which gives so good an idea of baronial life in the fourteenth 
 century as this fortress of Muro. 
 
The Captive Queen 325 
 
 been separated from her in Naples, but now she 
 was deprived of her ladies-in-waiting also ; and she 
 especially felt the loss of Clemence di Collennucci, 
 a young and pretty daughter of one of the Neapolitan 
 barons, to whom she was much attached, and who 
 was one of her maids-of-honour. Before Joanna was 
 taken away from Castel del Ovo, Clemence was torn, 
 weeping bitterly, from the unhappy Queen, and no 
 entreaties would induce Charles to permit her to 
 accompany her beloved mistress to her new prison. 
 
 It is said, however, that love found out a way 
 to circumvent Charles ; and a few days after Joanna 
 had been removed from Naples, Clemence, with 
 cropped hair, disguised as a Carthusian novice, and 
 Francis de Baux, Duke of Andria, who had now 
 returned to his allegiance to Joanna — clad in the 
 habit of a professed monk of the same Order — set 
 forth on foot to make a pilgrimage to Muro, and 
 endeavour to obtain admission in this guise to the 
 presence of the Queen, on pretence of offering 
 her spiritual consolation. 
 
 This romantic tale does not seem to be well 
 authenticated, and we doubt if it ever really hap- 
 pened ; but as the Italians say, " Si non e vero e 
 ben trovato " ; and we can but hope that Joanna's 
 last days were soothed by the presence of her 
 favourite attendant, whose high spirit and devotion 
 to her royal mistress may have given her courage to 
 run the grave risk she did if she made this attempt. 
 
326 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 It is possible, even probable, that the Duke of 
 Andria may have earnestly desired an interview 
 with Joanna unknown to Durazzo, to endeavour 
 to persuade her to nominate his son (now married 
 to her niece Agnes of Verona), as her heir, and it is 
 quite likely he might have taken this step to attain 
 it. He may, too, have felt remorse for his former 
 rebellion against Joanna, which had been instru- 
 mental in bringing her to her present sad condition ; 
 he may have desired to ask her forgiveness, and 
 consult with her as to some way of attempting her 
 rescue ; and the only way to accomplish this was 
 to assume some disguise — and in those days that of 
 a monk was the safest, and the most likely to obtain 
 admission to the royal prisoner. 
 
 In this gloomy castle Joanna was kept in close 
 imprisonment for two months, and denied the 
 honours due to her high rank, before the final 
 tragedy took place. 
 
 At the same time that she was removed from 
 Naples, Charles caused her husband, Prince Otho 
 of Brunswick, his prisoner-of-war, to be taken to 
 the Castle of Altamura, on the extreme west of the 
 Basilicata. Joanna asked one favour of her con- 
 queror on reaching Castel del Muro, and that was 
 not for herself, but the release of her husband, Otho 
 of Brunswick ; and this request Durazzo ultimately 
 granted after Joanna's death, the account of which 
 we must reserve for another chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 The Final Tragedy 
 
 T^OR two months Joanna dragged on a miserable 
 A existence in her gloomy prison, cut off from all 
 her friends and from holding any communication 
 with them, deprived of all the state and splendour 
 to which her high rank had accustomed- her, and 
 equally deprived of the occupations the duties of 
 her regal office afforded, and of the amusements 
 for which her brilliant court had so long been 
 famous. 
 
 Added to all these negative trials was the positive 
 one of anxiety as to the fate of her husband, Otho of 
 Brunswick, to whom she was deeply attached. Life 
 had now little to offer her, for she knew her 
 captivity was intended by her captor to be life- 
 long. 
 
 Her time was largely spent in the chapel, praying 
 before the altar. She had always been famous for 
 her love of devotional exercises and her strict 
 
 327 
 
328 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 observance of ecclesiastical feasts and ceremonies, 
 but now she gave herself up almost entirely to 
 prayer. 
 
 Meanwhile the final catastrophe was hastened 
 to its ghastly consummation by the appearance of 
 part of Louis of Anjou's fleet in the Bay of Naples. 
 This arrived in the middle of May from Provence, 
 where Louis had collected an army of 35,000 
 knights to drive out the usurper and seize upon 
 the throne. 
 
 Urban VI. had by this time decided to depose 
 Charles Durazzo, who had offended him, and 
 daily the Neapolitan nobility were forsaking him 
 for Joanna, to whom in her distress they now 
 turned, and the universal desire among her sub- 
 jects for her restoration became more and more 
 evident. 
 
 The last straw which decided Charles to take 
 her life was an embassy from her old enemy, Louis 
 of Hungary, Charles's uncle, to congratulate him 
 upon his success, and to demand the death of the 
 Queen. Louis asked this as the price of his support 
 of Charles's cause and as a reward for his past 
 help. 
 
 Historians differ very much as to the details 
 of Joanna's assassination, some even going as far 
 as to excuse Charles from conniving at it ; but there 
 can be no doubt that he sent the four Hungarian 
 soldiers who actually accomplished the foul deed 
 
The Final Tragedy 329 
 
 to Muro for the purpose of murdering his aunt and 
 foster-mother, from whom he had received so many 
 favours and benefits. He dared not trust its per- 
 formance to any Neapolitan — he could not easily 
 have found one so base as to attempt it — and so he 
 chose four of his rude Hungarian soldiers, whose 
 hatred of Joanna and of all Neapolitans was intense, 
 and to whom the barbarous crime was a most 
 congenial task, while their master, Louis of Hungary, 
 who had always obstinately believed that Joanna 
 had been an accomplice in the murder of his brother, 
 Andrew of Hungary, looked upon it as a tardy act 
 of just retribution. 
 
 " Let Joanna die the same death which Andrew 
 suffered through her," he wrote to Charles. 
 
 Some accounts of the manner of Joanna's murder 
 say that she was smothered in bed with pillows, 
 others — and these are the most frequent — that she was 
 strangled. The version we are about to give, which 
 seems the most reliable, is taken from the works 
 of Urban's secretary, Theodoric de Niem, who was 
 at Naples during the time her remains were exposed 
 to public view, and no doubt had ample opportunities 
 for learning the truth. 
 
 It seems that on the morning of May 22nd, the 
 captive Queen, who was now treated like a common 
 prisoner, went to the chapel for her devotions, as 
 was her habit at this time, when the four Hungarian 
 soldiers secretly entered, and while two guarded the 
 
33° The Beautiful Queen 
 
 door the other two crept up to the kneeling Queen, 
 and throwing a silken cord round her neck, strangled 
 her instantly. 
 
 The only redeeming feature in this ghastly, cruel 
 murder is that it was done quickly before the poor, 
 helpless Queen had time to realise their intention; 
 possibly before she even saw her murderers they had 
 done their work. 
 
 Probably Joanna had during these seven or eight 
 weeks at Muro prepared herself for death ; her 
 prayers had doubtless obtained her the pardon she 
 sought for her past transgressions, and at the 
 moment of death she was in the act of prayer. 
 There can be little doubt she was well prepared to 
 meet that great and most just Judge who alone 
 knows the secrets of all hearts. 
 
 When the news of her death was brought to 
 Charles, he ordered that her body should be taken 
 to the Church of St. Clare in Naples, and placed 
 in the choir there and exposed to the view of all 
 her people, that they might see her for themselves 
 that she was truly dead, and by that sad sight be 
 convinced that any further efforts to restore her to 
 her throne were in vain. 
 
 At the expiration of the eight days during which 
 she lay in state, she was interred in this same church 
 between the sacristy and the tomb of her late father, 
 the Duke of Calabria. Round it is sculptured a 
 Latin inscription to this effect : 
 
From an engraving by J . Tt\ Cook. 
 
 THE TOMB OF JOANNA OF NAPLES. 
 In the Church of St. Clair at Naples. 
 P- 33°] 
 
The Final Tragedy 331 
 
 " Here lies Joanna I., the illustrious Queen of Naples, 
 
 Happy at first, afterwards exceedingly to be pitied. 
 
 To Charles a daughter, tortured by another Charles, 
 
 She suffered death before her husband." 
 
 1832. May XXVII. 1 
 
 She was in the fifty-sixth year of her age, and the 
 thirty-ninth of her reign, when she was thus done to 
 death by her implacable enemy, Louis of Hungary, 
 and her ungrateful adopted son, Charles III., whose 
 name was execrated all over Europe as a matricide 
 when the news of Joanna's murder transpired. The 
 sad spectacle of her dead body in the Church of 
 St. Clare had quite the contrary effect to that which 
 Charles had hoped and intended to create. Even 
 those who had before been indifferent to her fate 
 were moved to compassion for her sufferings by the 
 sight of her corpse, and so indignant at Charles's 
 cruelty and ingratitude that they refused to submit 
 any longer to . his rule ; while those who had ever 
 been faithful to Joanna were now so exasperated 
 against Charles that they swore vengeance against 
 him, and joined the forces of Louis of Anjou. 
 
 Thus perished Joanna of Naples, one of the most 
 beautiful and most maligned of women, whose 
 praises, as we have seen, have been sung by the most 
 
 1 Inclyta Parthenones, jacet hie Regina Joanna 
 
 Prima, prius felix, mox miseranda nimis : 
 
 Quam Carlo genitam mulctavit Carolus alter, 
 
 Qua morte ilia virum sustulit ante suum. 
 
 MCCCLXXXII. XII. Maij V. Indict. 
 
 Camera. Giovanna I e Carlo III. Salerno, 1889. 
 
33 2 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 celebrated men of her time, by Petrarch and Boccaccio, 
 and who is known to this day to the Neapolitan boat- 
 men, and has always been spoken of by Provencal 
 historians, as " the Good Queen Jeanne I." 
 
 There will always be a difference of opinion 
 among historians as to her merits, and the death of 
 Andrew of Hungary will ever remain one of the 
 unsolved mysteries of history ; the only thing that 
 seems certain about it being that Joanna had no part 
 in it, as not only her acquittal at the court of 
 Clement VI., but also her great grief at the time, 
 and her great clemency to all conclusively show. 
 
 Her beauty, her majestic presence, her moving 
 eloquence, her fascinating personality are now 
 things of the past, as dead to us as last year's 
 roses ; but the spell which she cast in her lifetime 
 over all who came in contact with her is immortal and 
 still clings to her name, and, as we have endeavoured 
 to show, makes her one of the most interesting 
 characters in history. 
 
 It is not our purpose to describe the subsequent 
 struggle between Charles Durazzo and Louis of 
 Anjou, or the scarcely less bitter contest between 
 the Pope, Urban VI., and his former protege. We 
 shall merely content ourselves with saying briefly 
 what became of the principal persons who have 
 figured in this historical tragedy, of which the 
 central figure was the great 'Sicilian Queen. 
 
 Her husband, Otho of Brunswick, was liberated 
 
The Final Tragedy 333 
 
 by Charles two years after her death, and in reward 
 for some advice which he had given Durazzo, 
 Charles conferred upon him the principality of 
 Taranto. Some years later, when Louis II. of Anjou 
 grew up, Otho, with the aid of the Sanseverini, 
 succeeded in placing him upon the Neapolitan throne ; 
 and when Louis refused to live in Naples, the Prince 
 of Brunswick was offered the title and office of 
 Viceroy, but he yielded it to Sanseverini. He died 
 in Foggia in 1398, having survived Joanna fifteen 
 years. 
 
 Joanna's lifelong enemy, Louis, King of Hungary, 
 survived her only four months ; he was surnamed 
 the Great, and was deeply mourned by the Hun- 
 garians, who lost in him a good, brave, and wise 
 king, as celebrated for his victories in the field of 
 battle as for his private virtues, which together 
 earned him this title. In his dealings with Joanna 
 he allowed his natural affections for his brother 
 Andrew to overpower his sense of justice. 
 
 In the year following the assassination of Joanna, 
 Louis of Anjou, having in vain endeavoured to 
 provoke Charles Durazzo to an engagement outside 
 the walls of Barletto, withdrew with his army to 
 Bari, where a fever of a pestilential character broke 
 out in his camp, to which he succumbed on Septem- 
 ber the 2 1 st, in his forty-seventh year. He left two 
 sons, the elder of whom, Louis II., succeeded him, 
 and for a short time occupied the Neapolitan throne. 
 
334 The Beautiful Queen 
 
 Charles Durazzo was lying dangerously ill of fever 
 at the time of Louis's death, but he recovered, and 
 as soon as he had settled affairs in Naples, which 
 Louis's death facilitated, he went to Hungary in 
 answer to an invitation from some of the Hungarians 
 to assume the crown. Here, after much plotting 
 and scheming on his side and counterplotting on the 
 part of the Dowager Queen Elizabeth and Maria, 
 who had been proclaimed " King " of Hungary on 
 the death of her father, whose only child she was, he 
 was foully murdered on February 7th, 1386. 
 
 A soldier in the pay of the Dowager Queen 
 Elizabeth struck him with a sword as he was in 
 the act of reading a letter, half severing his head 
 from his body. He lingered in great pain for two 
 days, and was finally smothered, as he showed signs 
 of recovering. 
 
 Thus retributive justice was dealt to the murderer 
 of Joanna in the prime of his life, for he was just 
 forty-one when the avenging angel overtook him. 
 As his quarrel with Pope Urban VI. had led to his 
 excommunication, he was denied Christian burial. 
 
 Charles III. was a little man, with fair hair and a 
 ruddy and smiling countenance ; he was affable and 
 very popular ; he was very generous to his partisans, 
 and a great patron of men of letters. He had many 
 good qualities ; he was a very brave and most 
 accomplished soldier. But his cruel ingratitude to 
 his foster-mother, against whom, no doubt, his uncle, 
 
The Final Tragedy 
 
 335 
 
 Louis of Hungary, greatly prejudiced him, has 
 made a blot on his fair name which can never be 
 eradicated. 
 
 And here we take leave of this great but unhappy 
 Queen, who has so often and so aptly been called 
 the Neapolitan Mary Queen of Scots, whom she 
 resembled so much in some respects, notably in 
 her beauty and her misfortunes and in the mystery 
 which surrounds the assassination of Andrew of 
 Hungary and of Darnley. A parallel might also 
 be drawn between the conduct of Charles Durazzo 
 and the Earl of Murray. 
 
 Both these unhappy Queens will ever have their 
 admirers and their detractors, for their beauty 
 and their charm aroused envy among their con- 
 temporaries as well as admiration, and brought them 
 both cruel enemies as well as enthusiastic friends. 
 
 May we venture to hope that our readers, as far 
 as Joanna of Sicily is concerned, will rank among 
 the latter ? 
 
(Benealoai? of tbe Hnaevine jfamtrg. 
 
 CHARLES I. OF ANJOU m.f BEATRICE, COUNTESS OF PROVENCE. 
 d. 1285. ! 
 
 Charles II. m. = Maria of Hungary. 
 d. 1309. 
 
 Hungarian Link. 
 (1) 
 
 (=) 
 
 Neapolitan 
 
 Line. 
 
 (3) 
 
 House of Taranto, 
 (4) 
 
 House of Durazzo. 
 (5) 
 
 Charles Martel m. = Beatrice of Hapsburg. St. Louis, Robert the Wise m. =f 1. Violante of Aragon. 
 
 Bishop of 1278-1342. I 2. Sancha of Aragon, d. 1344. 
 
 Toulouse, i 
 
 (') (2) 1273-1296. (i)_ I 
 
 Canrobert m. v Elizabeth of Poland, dementia. 
 (1) I (a) (3) 
 
 Charles, Duke of Calabria m. =f t. Catherine of Austria. 
 d. 1329. I 2. Maria of Valois. 
 
 (I) ' I 
 
 (*) 
 
 Louis the Great, Stephen. Andrew m. 
 King of Hungary, b. 1326; 
 
 1320-1382. d. 1345. 
 
 JOANNA. JOANNA I. , Queen of Naples m. = i, Andrew of Hungary. Maria m. = 1, Charles, Duke 
 
 CO 
 Canrobert, d. in infanc}'. 
 
 w 
 
 1 
 
 Canrobert, d. in infancy. 
 
 1326-1345- 
 
 6. 1329. 
 
 (1) 
 
 (2) 
 
 I I 
 
 I*ran~esca, */. in infancy. Catherine, d. in infancy. 
 
 (3) 
 
 2. Louis of Taranto, 1325-1362. 
 
 3. (1364) James, King of Majorca, 
 
 d. 1366. 
 4- (i374) Otho, Prince of Bruns- 
 wick, d. 1393. 
 
 (4) 
 
 of Durazzo. 
 2. Philip of Ta- 
 ranto. 
 
 (*) 
 
 Philip of Taranto m. = Margaret of Coartenai. 
 
 (2) ! , (3) 
 
 (4) 
 
 Charles I., Duke of Durazzo m, == Agnes of Perigord. 
 
 (1) (2) ! (3) 
 
 Robert m. Marie, Louis m. = JOANNA I. Ijhilip m. Maria of Sicily, Margaret Charles II. m. 
 
 dau. of Duke of King of 
 Bourbon. Naples 
 
 1325-1362. 
 
 (0 
 
 in 1347 Joanna's sister, widow of in. Duke 
 
 Queen of C[harles,Duke of Durazzo. of Andria. 
 
 Naples. 
 
 (2) 
 
 Francesca, Catherine, 
 
 both d. in infancy. 
 
 (0 
 
 (2) 
 
 (3) 
 
 (4) 
 
 Maria of Loui3 ;;/. 
 Sicily. 
 
 (1) 
 
 Margaret Robert, 
 of Sanse- killed in 
 verini. battle. 
 
 LorJia. d. in Joanna, Duchess Agnes m, Margaret m. — Charles 111. T f Margaret, 
 
 infancy. of Durazzo, m. 1. Can della Scala. Queen of 1344-1386 j Joanna's niece and 
 
 Robert of Artois. 2. John of Andria. Naples. Kingof Naples. 1 adopted child. 
 
 (*> 
 
 Ladislas, King of Naples, d. 1414. 
 
 Louis, d. in irfancy. Joanna, Duchess of Durazzo, Agnes, in. 1. Can della Scala, Duke of Austria. Margaret, Joanna's adopted daughter, 
 
 m. Robert of Artois ; d. in prison. 2. John I. of Andria ; d. in prison. m. Charles III. 
 
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SOURCES OF INFORMATION AND BOOKS 
 CONSULTED IN WRITING THIS BIOGRAPHY 
 
 " Historical Life of Joanna of Sicily." Anonymous. London, 
 
 1824. 2 vols. 
 " Scenes in the Life of Joanna of Naples." Mrs. E. F. Ellet. 
 
 Boston, 1840. 
 " La France et le Grand Schisme d'Occident." Valois. Vols. 
 
 i. and ii. Paris, 1896. 
 "Giovanna la Regina di Napoli." Matteo Camera. 
 
 Salerno, 1889. 
 "Joanna die Erste." Carl von Rotteck. Stuttgart, 1829. 
 " Crimes Celebres." Dumas. Vol. ii. 
 " Storia del Regno di Napoli." Gravina. 1769. 
 "Vita Nicolai Acciajuoli, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores." 
 
 Muratori. 
 ' ' Delia Prima e Delia Secunda Giovanna." D. Crivelli. 1832. 
 " Vita di Giovanna, Regina di Napoli." Caraccioli. 
 Quarterly Review for 1824. 
 " Life of Petrarch." Mrs. Dodson. 1805. 
 " Revue des Questions Historiques." 1896. xlviii. and xxii. 
 "Queen Joanna I." An Essay on her Times. St. Clair 
 
 Baddeley. London, 1893. 
 ''Histoires des Reines Jeanne I. et II." Alex. T. Guyot. 
 
 Paris, 1700. 
 " La Vie de Ste. Brigitte de Suede." La Comtesse de Flavigny. 
 Froissart's " Chronicles." 
 " Dictionnaire Critique." Bayle. Vol. iii. 
 
 337 22 
 
33 8 Sources of Information 
 
 " Histoire des Papes." L'Abb6 Darras. 
 
 " Avignon, ses Histoires, ses Papes," etc. Joudon. London, 
 
 1842. 
 " Dictionnaire Historique." Bouillet. 1845. 
 " Ecclesiastical History." Mosheim. 
 " Harmsworth Encyclopaedia." 
 " Encyclopaedia Britannica." 
 " Middle Ages." Hallam. 
 " Papal Monarchy." William Barry. 
 " Mediaeval Rome." Miller. 
 " Histoire de l'Eglise." Lavisse et Rambaud. 
 " Essai sur les Mceurs." Voltaire, iv. 
 " Old Provence." Cook. 
 "European History." Lodge. 
 
 " Les Papes." Marin de Boylesve, SJ. Tours. 1893. 
 " Rulers of the South." Marion Crawford. 
 " Italian Republics." J. C. L. de Sismondi 
 " Clemens VI." Baluzio. Vol. ii. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Acciajuoli, Angelo, Bp. of Flor- 
 ence, 138 et sqq., 148, 151 
 
 Acciajuoli, Nicholas, 123, 125, 
 138, 151, 197, 223, 228 ; his 
 birth and position, 39, 40 ; 
 and Joanna and Andrew, 51 ; 
 his promotion to be Grand 
 Seneschal, 79 ; and Andrew's 
 murder, 83, 93 ; and Joanna's 
 captivity at Aix, 141 ; has 
 audience with Clement VI., 
 148, 156 ; and the invasion 
 of Louis of Hungary, 169 ; 
 and Petrarch, 195 ; and the 
 war in Sicily, 200, 203 ; and 
 the truce with King Frederick, 
 211 ; his death foretold by 
 St. Bridget, 225 ; his death, 
 226-7 ; an( i Boccaccio, 251 
 
 Adrian IV., Pope, 117 
 
 Agnes of Durazzo (Princess of 
 Verona), 135 et sqq., 242-3, 
 289, 303, 318-19 
 
 Alferino of Salerno, 272-3 
 
 Americus, Cardinal, 69-70 
 
 Andrew of Hungary (Joanna's 
 first husband), 4, 67 ; his 
 murder, 3, 79, 84 et sqq., 100- 
 i, 109, no, 184, 186, 209, 
 223, 329 ; his early marriage, 
 23 et sqq. ; his imbecility, 24- 
 5, 28, 31, 64 ; and King 
 Robert's will, 40 et sqq. ; his 
 coarseness, 45, 51, 78, 90; as- 
 cends the throne with Joanna, 
 48 ; and Friar Robert's plot- 
 ting, 49 et sqq. ; and the Court 
 of Love, 62-3 ; and the 
 Pipini brothers, 63 ; and 
 
 Joanna's coronation, 69 ; stays 
 at Aversa, 80 et sqq. ; his 
 burial in Naples Cathedral, 
 89 ; his death avenged by 
 Louis, 130 et sqq. 
 
 Andrew of Isernia, 233 
 
 Andria, Francis de Baux, Duke 
 of : his marriage to Louis of 
 Taranto's sister, 173-4, 2 4^ '< 
 his rebellion against Joanna, 
 263 et sqq., 279, 280 ; and 
 Charles of Durazzo, 287, 299 ; 
 returns to Joanna's cause, 
 319, 320, 325-6 
 
 Angelo of Perugia, 94, 233 
 
 Anselmo, 269 
 
 Ariano, Count of, 310-n, 320 
 
 Artus, Charles, 41, 79, 84, 92, 
 106-7, J 3 2 
 
 Austria, Duke of, 5 
 
 Aversa, Castle of, 80-1, 133, 261 
 
 Aversa, Count of, 321 
 
 Avignon, Petrarch at, 34 et sqq. ; 
 Papal Court at, 72 et sqq., 138 
 et sqq., 210, 224, 236, 244, 291 ; 
 the plague at, 161 et sqq. 
 
 Baddeley, Mr., 230 
 
 Baldassero of Brunswick, 310-11 
 
 Baldus of Perugia, 94, 233 
 
 Balliol, Edward, 76 
 
 Barbatus of Sulmone, 37, 43, 99 
 
 Barrili, John, 37, 227 
 
 Barruto, Abbot (Archbp. of 
 
 Naples), 291, 295 
 Baux, Hugh de, 101, 103 
 Baux, Raimond de, 125, 197, 
 
 200, 265-6 
 Baux, Rinaldo de, 182 
 
 339 
 
34° 
 
 Index 
 
 Benedict XII., Pope, 75, 115 
 
 Beni, Due de, 148 
 
 Bernard of Rhodes, 295 
 
 Bianca of Sicily, Princess, 199, 
 200 
 
 Bianchi, the, 30 
 
 Birel, John, 193 
 
 Birger of Sweden, Prince, 252 
 et sqq. 
 
 Blanche of Dampierre, Princess, 
 24 
 
 Blanche, Queen of Sweden, 223 
 
 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 2, 4, 19, 
 37. 43. 79, 196, 208, 235, 332 ; 
 meets Maria of Sicily, 38 ; 
 his birth, 39 ; his works, 39 ; 
 his account of Joanna, 106, 
 233 ; his account of the 
 plague in Florence, 167 ; and 
 the brigands, 231 ; his "De- 
 cameron, " 247 et sqq. ; warned 
 by Father Ciani, 249 ; be- 
 comes a priest, 250-1 ; and 
 Nicholas Acciajuoli's treat- 
 ment of, 251 ; his death, 252 ; 
 his commentary on the 
 " Divina Commedia," 252 
 
 Bondone, Giotto de, 207-8 
 
 Boniface IX., Pope, 274 
 
 Braganza, Bp. of, 189 
 
 Brantdme, 221 ; his account of 
 Joanna's beauty, 43-4 
 
 Bridget of Sweden, St., 78, 193, 
 236, 271-2 ; her piety, 223-4, 
 270 ; works miracles, 225 ; 
 and Nicholas Acciajuoli's 
 death, 225-6 ; and Pope 
 Urban's return to Avignon, 
 244-5 ; her second visit to 
 Naples, 252 ; and her two 
 sons, 253-4 > received by the 
 Queen, 254-5 ; and Prince 
 Charles's infatuation for Jo- 
 anna, 255 et sqq. ; and her 
 son's death, 258 ; goes to the 
 Holy Land, 258 ; and the 
 Plague at Naples, 258-9 ; her 
 letter to the Queen, 259, 260 ; 
 receives a present of money 
 from Joanna, 261 ; her death 
 at Rome, 261-2 ; her canonis- 
 ation, 274-86 
 
 Brunelleschi, 207 
 
 Buondelmonte, Countess, 223 
 
 Bury, Richard de (Bp. of Dur- 
 ham), 37 
 Byron, Lord, 78 
 
 Cabassole, Bp. of Cavaillon, 
 Philip de, 41, 71-1, 79, 96 et 
 sqq. 
 
 Cajetano Onerato, 281-2, 295 
 
 Canrobert, King of Hungary, 6, 
 23 et sqq., 40-1, 108 
 
 Canrobert, Prince (son of Jo- 
 anna), 98 et sqq., 122, 124, 
 130, 134, 181 
 
 Caraccioli, his Life of Joanna, 
 
 19. 130 
 
 Casimir, King of Poland, 193 
 
 Catania, Raymond of, 85 
 
 Catherine of Austria (first wife 
 of Charles, Duke of Calabria), 
 18 
 
 Catherine of Siena, St., 78, 221- 
 2, 224-5, 252, 270 et sqq., 
 285 et sqq., 293-4 
 
 Chabannes, Raimond de, 18 
 
 Charles I. of Anjou, 5 
 
 Charles, Duke of Calabria (father 
 of Joanna), 17, 331 ; his 
 justice, 8, 9, 206 ; his journey 
 to Florence, 10, n ; his 
 death, 14 
 
 Charles, Duke of Durazzo 
 (nephew of King Robert of 
 Naples), 74, 179 ; his marriage 
 to Maria of Sicily, 66 et sqq., 
 7 and Andrew's murder, 
 83, 92, 102, 117; rebels 
 against Joanna, 107, 120 ; 
 and Joanna's second mar- 
 riage, 113 ; murdered by 
 Louis of Hungary, 129 et sqq., 
 
 137. 187 
 Charles, Duke of Durazzo (son 
 of Prince Louis), 267 ; adopted 
 by Joanna, 202-3, 2 39 '• his 
 marriage to Margaret of Du- 
 razzo, 203, 242 et sqq. ; joins 
 Louis of Hungary, 239, 266, 
 279, 292 ; and Joanna's 
 second marriage, 269 ; his 
 attempts to depose Joanna, 
 287, 293, 295-6, 298 et sqq. ; 
 his entry into Naples, 301, 
 
Index 
 
 34i 
 
 304 et sqq. ; and Prince Otho's 
 strategy, 306-7 ; his assur- 
 ances to Joanna, 308, 312 et 
 sqq. ; enters Castel Nuovo, 
 311 ; and Joanna's appointed 
 successor, 317-18 ; crowned 
 King of Naples, 319 ; his 
 difficulties, 320 ; his treat- 
 ment of Joanna, 324 et sqq, ; 
 and the murder of Joanna, 
 328 et sqq. ; liberates Otho, 
 333 ; his murder, 334 ; his 
 excommunication, 334 ; his 
 appearance, 334 
 
 Charles V. of France, 292, 296-7, 
 318, 320 
 
 Charles IV. of Germany, 74-5, 
 195 
 
 Charles Martel (son of Charles 
 II.), 6-7, 64, 71, 119 
 
 Charles II. of Naples, 213, 239 
 
 Charles of Sweden, Prince, 252 
 et sqq. 
 
 Ciani, Father Joachim, 249 
 
 Cicely, Duchess of Turenne, 
 146-7 
 
 Clare, St., Church of (Avignon), 
 
 34 
 Clare, St., Church and Monas- 
 tery of (Naples), 15, 20, 38, 
 42, 64, 65, 67, 206 et sqq., 282, 
 
 323. 330-1 
 
 Clement IV., 5 
 
 Clement VI., Pope, 131, 211, 
 235, 241, 246 ; his belief in 
 Joanna's innocence, 4, 42, 
 9$etsqq., 115, 169, 171; and 
 Maria's marriage, 67 ; and 
 Joanna's coronation, 69, 72 ; 
 and Joanna's wish to govern, 
 70, 71 ; his love of pomp, 73 ; 
 and the Jews, 74 ; his court 
 at Avignon, 142, 145 et sqq. ; 
 his attire, 153 ; Joanna pleads 
 her cause to, 155 et sqq., 315 ; 
 and the Mendicant Friars, 
 164-5 ; and the Flagellants, 
 166 ; and Louis of Taranto's 
 coronation, 170 ; and Louis of 
 Hungary, 184-5 ; and the 
 Neapolitan succession, 185 ; 
 his death, 191 ; his character, 
 
 192-3 
 Clement VII., the anti-Pope, I 
 
 315, 322 ; Joanna's partisan- 
 ship for, 3, 281, 285, 290, 307 ; 
 at war with Pope Urban VI., 
 286, 288 ; goes to Castel del 
 Ovo, 288 et sqq. ; his recep- 
 tion by Joanna, 289 ; flees 
 to Gaeta, 291 ; and Louis of 
 Anjou, 298 ; Durazzo con- 
 sults with, 321 
 
 Collennucci, Clemence di, 325 
 
 Colonna, Cardinal, 34, 52-3, 
 163-4 
 
 Conradine, 5 
 
 Constantinople, Empress of. 
 See Princess of Taranto 
 
 Convulsionnaires, the; 143 
 
 Costanzo, 30, 51, 86, 269 
 
 Crillon, 142-3 
 
 Crispano, Landolpho, 255 
 
 Dancers, the, 144 
 Dante, 8, 38, 196, 248 
 Damley, Lord, 335 
 David II. of Scotland, 76 
 Durazzo, Duke of (son of 
 
 Charles II. of Naples), 6, 10, 
 
 66. 
 
 Edward III. of England, 75-6, 
 
 150 
 Edward, Prince of Wales, 216 
 
 et sqq. 
 Evoli, Count d', 49, 84-5, 91, 
 
 i°3 
 
 Faliero Marino, 78 
 Flagellants, the, 165 
 Flavio, Gioja, 235 
 Folard, Chevalier, 143 
 Fondi, Count of, 320 
 Francesca, Princess, 181-2, 190 
 Frederick Barbarossa, 117 
 Frederick of Sicily, 196 et sqq., 
 
 211, 246 
 Frederick II. of Swabia, 5 
 Froissart, 215 et sqq., 230 
 
342 
 
 Index 
 
 Galeazzo of Mantua, 219 
 Ghibellines, the, 29, 77, 165 
 Giannone, 4, 324 
 Gifione, Cardinal de, 323 
 Giovanni of Pisa, 207 
 Gravina, Bp. of, 246 
 Gregory XI., Pope, 246, 252, 
 254, 265-6, 270-1, 273 et sqq. 
 Guelphs, The, 29, 77, 140, 165 
 Guinguene, 248 
 
 H 
 
 Hawkwood, Sir John, 295 
 Henry IV. of France, 143 
 Henry of Transtamare, 217 
 
 Innocent VI., Pope, 194-5, 210 
 
 Innocent VII., Pope, 75 
 
 Isolda (Andrew's nurse), 82, 85 
 
 et sqq. 
 Itro, Cardinal d', 323 
 
 James I. of Aragon, 213 
 James II. of Aragon, 213 
 James I. of Majorca, 213 
 James II. of Majorca, 213-14 
 James III. of Majorca, 226 ; his 
 descent, 213 ; his marriage to 
 Joanna, 215, 223 ; his military 
 exploits, 215 et sqq.; his death, 
 230 
 Jerome, St., 250 
 Joanna, Duchess of Durazzo, 
 135 et sqq., 287, 289, 303, 
 305-6, 318-19 
 Joanna, Queen of Naples : 
 her biographers, 1, 3, 4 
 her beauty, 1, 2, 30-1, 43 et 
 sqq., 106, 122 et sqq., 233, 
 
 332 
 her birth, 12 et sqq. 
 her attendants, 17 et sqq. 
 her early years, 19 et sqq. 
 her education, 22, 30 
 oaths of allegiance to, 22, 31-2 
 her marriage with Andrew of 
 
 Hungary, 23 et sqq. 
 
 Joanna, Queen of Naples (cont.) : 
 and King Robert's will, 40 et 
 
 sqq. 
 and King Robert's death, 42 
 her supposed portrait, 44-5 
 proclaimed Queen, 48 
 and Friar Robert's plotting, 
 
 49, 5° 
 and Louis of Taranto, 51-2 
 her talent and learning, 55 
 and the great tempest, 59 
 her " Court of Love," 61 et sqq. 
 and Andrew's boorishness, 
 
 62-3, 78 
 and Maria's marriage, 69 
 her wish to govern, 70-1 
 her coronation, 72, 84 
 stays at Aversa, 80 et sqq. 
 and Andrew's murder, 86 et 
 
 sqq., 100-1, 103, 109 et sqq., 
 
 184, 186, 209 
 her letters to King Louis, 88, 
 
 93. IQI 
 gives birth to a son, and the 
 
 execution of Philippa, 104 et 
 
 sqq. 
 her queenly bearing, 106, 211, 
 
 333 
 and the civil war, 107 
 her second marriage, to Louis 
 
 of Taranto, 114- 15 
 calls a council, 120-1 
 her speech, 121-2 
 taken prisoner to Aix, 125 et 
 
 sqq., 148-9 
 and her governors, 128 
 receives Maria and her chil- 
 dren, 137-8 
 and the Papal Court, 138, 141 
 her release, 148 
 her triumphant entry into 
 
 Avignon, 149 et sqq. 
 her reception by the Pope, 
 
 155 et sqq. 
 her gift of oratory, 159, 315 
 her defence, 159 
 her acquittal, 159, 160 
 receives the Golden Rose, 
 
 160-1, 241 
 her subjects invite her to 
 
 return to Naples, 168 et sqq. 
 her reception at Naples, 172 
 and her sister-in-law's mar* 
 
 riage. 173-4 
 
mueA 
 
 343 
 
 Joanna, Queen of Naples {cont.) : 
 rewards Nicholas Acciajuoli, 
 
 174 
 
 her gay court, 175, 203 
 
 birth of her daughters, 181 
 
 and de Baux, 182-3 
 
 her second trial, 184 
 
 and the succession, 185, 238-9, 
 243-4, 292 
 
 her coronation, 186 et sqq., 196 
 
 death of her little daughter, 
 190 
 
 and death of Clement VI., 197 
 
 crowned Queen of Sicily at 
 Messina, 197 
 
 and the King of Sicily's sisters, 
 199, 200 
 
 and the civil war, 200-1 
 
 pardons Louis of Durazzo, 202 
 
 adopts Charles of Durazzo as 
 her heir, 202 
 
 adopts Maria's daughter. Prin- 
 cess Margaret, 203 
 
 and Louis' death, 203 
 
 her widowhood, 204 et sqq. 
 
 builds churches and institu- 
 tions, 206-7 
 
 her piety, 206, 309, 327 et sqq. 
 
 as a ruler, 208, 232 
 
 and Philip of Taranto, 211-12 
 
 her suitors, 212 
 
 her third marriage to James 
 of Majorca, 214 
 
 her husband's absence, 215 et 
 sqq. 
 
 and Galeazzo's admiration for, 
 219 
 
 and Galeazzo's knights, 220 
 
 receives St. Bridget of Sweden, 
 224 
 
 her piety, 224 
 
 sends out an army against 
 Ambrose Visconti, 229 et sqq. 
 
 and the death of her husband, 
 230 
 
 suppresses brigandage, 231 
 
 her advisers, 233 
 
 celebrities of her reign, 235 
 
 visits Pope Urban V. at Rome, 
 238 et sqq. 
 
 and Charles of Durazzo's in- 
 gratitude, 239, 266, 287 
 
 favoured by the Pope, 240 et 
 sqq. 
 
 Joanna, Queen of Naples (cont.) : 
 
 and Peter of Lusignan, 242 
 
 her affection for Charles of 
 Durazzo, 243 
 
 and the independence of 
 Sicily, 246 
 
 and Prince Charles of Swe- 
 den's admiration for, 252 et 
 sqq. 
 
 and Prince Charles's funeral, 
 258 
 
 St. Bridget's letter to, 259, 260 
 
 her present of money to St. 
 Bridget, 261 
 
 and St. Bridget's death, 262 
 
 and Duke of Andria's rebel- 
 lion, 263 et sqq. 
 
 her fourth marriage to Prince 
 Otho of Brunswick, 267 et 
 sqq. 
 
 and St. Catherine, 272, 286-7 
 
 her regard for Urban VI., 
 278-9 
 
 and Cardinal Orsini, 280 
 
 supports the anti-pope, Clem- 
 ent VII., 281, 288, 294 
 
 Urban VI. 's enmity to, 280, 
 282 
 
 her mission to Rome, 282 
 
 her anger at Urban's insults, 
 284 
 
 receives Clement VII. at 
 Castel del Ovo, 28S et sqq. 
 
 excommunicated by Urban 
 VI., 294 
 
 elects Louis of Anjou as her 
 successor, in place of Charles 
 of Durazzo, 296, 298 
 
 and Charles Durazzo's ad- 
 vance on Naples, 295 et sqq. 
 
 retires to Castel del Nuovo, 
 303 et sqq. 
 
 her privations, 304 et sqq. 
 
 and Joanna of Durazzo's 
 offering, 306 
 
 her surrender to Charles, 311 
 et sqq., 319 
 
 her speech to Charles, 312 
 
 her speech to the Provencal 
 barons, 315 et sqq. 
 
 removed to Castel del Ovo, 
 
 taken to Castel del Muro, 324 
 and her maid of honour, 325 
 
344 
 
 Index 
 
 Joanna, Queen of Naples (cont.) : 
 
 her affection for her husband, 
 326-7 
 
 her murder, 329 et sqq. 
 
 her lying-in-state, 330-1 
 
 her epitaph, 331 
 
 compared with Mary, Queen 
 of Scots, 335 
 John of Bohemia, Prince, 24 
 John I. of France, 126, 194, 212, 
 
 228 
 John XXII., Pope, 7, 20, 23, 31, 
 
 192 
 
 Landuccio, Neri di, 287 
 Laura. See Laura de Sades 
 Louis of Anjou, adopted by 
 Joanna as her heir, 287, 292, 
 296, 305, 314, 316 ; declared 
 Regent of France, 297, 320-1 ; 
 Joanna seeks his aid, 299 ; 
 his valour and costly collec- 
 tions, 318 ; his fleet in the 
 Bay of Naples, 328, 331 ; his 
 struggles with Charles of 
 Durazzo, 332 et sqq. 
 Louis, Prince of Durazzo, 200 
 
 et sqq. 
 Louis XIV. of France, 143 
 Louis IV. of Germany, 74 et sqq., 
 
 115. I9i 
 Louis, King of Hungary, 149, 
 228, 239, 242, 244, 266, 279 ; 
 his proposed marriage to 
 Princess Maria, 40, 64, 66 et 
 sqq., 109 ; and his brother 
 Andrew's murder, 88, 92 et 
 sqq., 130 et sqq., 185-6, 329, 
 332 ; Joanna's letters to, 88, 
 101-2 ; invades Joanna's do- 
 minions, 108, 116 et sqq., 128 ; 
 his letters to Joanna, 109, 
 in ; demands Naples, 115 ; 
 accuses Joanna, 115 ; his 
 treachery, 129 ; murders the 
 Duke of Durazzo, 132-3, 135 ; 
 abducts Prince Canrobert, 
 134 ; his ambassadors at 
 Avignon, 155 ; retreats from 
 Naples, 168 ; enters Apulia, 
 180 ; challenged by Louis of 
 Taranto, 180; and the siege of 
 Aversa, 181 ; enters Naples, 
 
 183 ; and the Pope's com- 
 mands, 184 ; and the Treaty 
 of Peace, 185 et sqq. ; and 
 Joanna's death, 328-9, 331 ; 
 his death, 333 
 
 Louis, Prince of Taranto (Jo- 
 anna's second husband), 3, 40, 
 52, 62, 83, 107, 125, 131, 148, 
 160, 195, 229 ; his personal 
 appearance, 51, 112, 175 ; and 
 Andrew's murder, 92 ; his 
 love for Joanna, 113 ; his 
 marriage, 114 et sqq., 223; 
 fights against Louis of Hun- 
 gary, 118 et sqq. ; forbidden 
 to enter Florence, 140 ; sails 
 for Provence, 141 ; enters 
 Avignon in state, 151, 161 ; 
 received by the Pope, 156 ; 
 his coronation, 171, 186 et sqq. 
 returns to Naples with Jo- 
 anna, 171 ; his popularity, 
 175 ; his profligacy, 175 ; and 
 Warner and Wolf, 176 et sqq. ; 
 kills Rinaldo de Baux, 183 ; 
 and the succession, 185 ; 
 thrown from his horse, 189, 
 190 ; crowned King of Sicily, 
 197 ; returns to Naples, 201 ; 
 his vices, 203-4 ; his death, 
 203, 209 et sqq. 
 
 Louis, St. (Bp. of Toulouse), 6, 7 
 
 Ludovico, Antonio, Count of 
 Caserta, 313 et sqq., 317, 321 
 
 Luke of Isemia, 233 
 
 M 
 Magnus II. of Sweden, 24, 223, 
 
 245 
 Malateca, Giovanni, 229 
 Manfred, 5 
 Margaret of Durazzo, Princess, 
 
 203, 243, 269, 289, 293 
 Margaret, Queen of Sweden, 24 
 Margaret of Taranto, Princess, 
 
 246, 263, 279 
 Maria, Duchess of Calabria 
 
 (mother of Joanna), 10 et sqq. ; 
 
 her apartments, 12 et sqq. ; 
 
 birth of a second daughter, 15; 
 
 her death, 16 
 Maria, Duchess of Durazzo 
 
 (Joanna's sister), 43, 173, 182, 
 
index 
 
 345 
 
 242, 287 ; her birth, 15 ; 
 and the succession, 22, 40 ; 
 her proposed marriage to the 
 King of Hungary, 40-1, 64, 
 133 ; her marriage to the 
 Duke of Durazzo, 67 et sqq., 
 72, 79, 109 ; and the throne 
 of Naples, 113, 120 ; informed 
 of her husband's murder, 135 ; 
 flees to Santa Croce, 135-6 ; 
 goes to Joanna, 136 et sqq. ; 
 marries Prince Philip of Tar- 
 anto, 203 ; her death, 238 
 
 Maria of Hungary (wife of 
 Charles II. of Naples), 6 
 
 Maria of Sicily (daughter of 
 King Frederick), 282 
 
 Maria of Sicily (King Robert's 
 natural daughter), 38 
 
 Martini, Simon, 208 
 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, 1, 43, 335 
 
 Masuccios, the Two, 207-8 
 
 Milan, Duke of, 215 
 
 Minervino Count de, 116, 172, 
 178, 201-2 
 
 Mirazzano, Michael de, 84, 102 
 
 Molta, Bertram della, 188 
 
 Montferrat, Marquis of, 282 
 
 Montoni, Countess of. See Phil- 
 lipa the Catanese 
 
 Moriale, Fra (Montreal d'Al- 
 bano), 179, 180 
 
 Muratori, 87 
 
 Muro, Castle of, 94, 324 et sqq. 
 
 Murray, Earl of, 335 
 
 N 
 
 Neri, the, 30 
 
 Nericia, Princess of. See St. 
 
 Bridget of Sweden 
 Nicholas of Hungary (governor 
 
 of Andrew), 27, 49, 62, 91, 
 
 108, 116 
 Nicholas of Naples, 233 
 Nicholas of Pisa, 207 
 Niem, Theodoric de, 329 
 Nuovo Castel, 288 ; the siege 
 
 at, 303 et sqq. 
 
 O 
 
 Orlando, Prince of Aragon, 
 198-9 
 
 Orsini, Cardinal, 277, 279, 285 
 
 Orsini, Giovanni, 295, 297 
 
 Orsini, Rinaldo, 295, 297 
 
 Orsini, Robert, 273 
 
 Orsini, the, 30, 52 
 
 Otho of Brunswick, Prince (Jo- 
 anna's fourth husband), 271, 
 297, 312 ; meets Joanna, 267 ; 
 his marriage, 268 ; and Pope 
 Urban VI., 280, 283-4 ; his 
 bravery, 298 ; fights against 
 Charles of Durazzo, 298 et 
 sqq. ; and the besieged Queen 
 306 et sqq. ; taken prisoner by 
 Charles of Durazzo, 326 ; 
 liberated by Charles, 333 ; 
 his death, 333 
 
 Ovo, Castel del, 124, 254, 268j 
 288 et sqq., 296, 318 
 
 Pace, Jacobo de, 84, 92, 102 
 Paris of Pozzuoli, 235 
 Paul of Perugia, 7, 37-8 
 Pedro III. of Aragon, 213 
 Pedro IV. of Aragon, 213 
 Pedro I. of Spain (the Cruel), 
 
 77, 195, 216 et sqq. 
 Peter Damien, St., 47 
 Peter of Lusignan, King of 
 
 Cyprus, 240-42 
 Petrarch, 2, 4, 28, 31, 50, 83, 
 150, 196, 235, 332 ; his 
 writings, 33 et sqq. ; his ap- 
 pearance and accomplish- 
 ments, 33-4 ; his love for 
 Laura, ^etsqq., 162-3; hi s 
 great learning, 36 ; wins the 
 laurel crown, 36 ; his 
 " Africa," 37 ; and King 
 Robert's death, 42-3 ; his 
 description of Naples, 53-4 ; 
 his preferment, 55 ; and the 
 great tempest, 55 et sqq. ; and 
 the gladiatorial combats, 60- 
 1 ; and the Court of Love, 62 ; 
 his epitaph on King Robert, 
 65 ; and Clement VI., 73 ; 
 and Andrew, 90 ; and Jo- 
 anna's innocence, 94, 99 ; 
 visited by the Bp. of Flor- 
 ence, 138 et sqq. ; and the 
 Papal Court, 145, 193 ; and 
 
346 
 
 Index 
 
 Pope Innocent VI., 194 ; and 
 Zanobi's laurel crown, 195 ; 
 and the quarrel between Ac- 
 ciajuoli and Barrili, 227 ; his 
 admiration for Joanna, 247 ; 
 and Boccaccio's library, 250 ; 
 his death, 252 
 Petroni, Father, 249, 250 
 Philip de Valois (King of France), 
 
 16, 75, 126 
 Philippa the Catanese, 3, 50, 68 ; 
 her origin, 17, 19, 22 ; takes 
 charge of Joanna, 17 et sqq. ; 
 her second marriage, 18 ; pro- 
 moted by Joanna, 48 ; and 
 the Princess of Taranto, 51, 
 69 ; and the murder of An- 
 drew, 83, 91, 103 ; her execu- 
 tion, 104-5 
 Philip of Taranto (Louis of 
 Taranto's younger brother), 
 203, 263 
 Philip, Duke of Tours, 212, 228 
 Piero, Cardinal, 277, 285 
 Pierre de Luna, Cardinal, 277 
 Pipini, the, 52, 63, 90, 201-2 
 Pius V., Pope, 153 
 Prignano, Francisco, 280, 282, 
 296, 299 
 
 R 
 
 Raimond of Capua, 286 
 
 Raimond the Moor (second 
 husband of Philippa the Ca- 
 tanese), 18 
 
 Rastrelli, 86 
 
 Ravignano, 291 
 
 Richard II. of England, 216 
 
 Rienzi, Cola de, 74-5, 115-16 
 
 Robert of Artois (afterwards 
 Duke of Durazzo), 76, 287, 
 310-11 
 
 Robert, Friar, 31, 69, 70, 78, 81, 
 84, 91 ; his characteristics, 
 27-8, 43, 50 ; plots against 
 Joanna, 49 ; and the Pipini 
 brothers, 63 ; his power, 82, 
 no ; returns to Hungary, 108 
 
 Robert, Prince of Taranto, 107, 
 113, 123 
 
 Robert the Wise (King of 
 Naples), 6, 12, 14 et sqq., 79, 
 91, 100, 107, 121, 139, 185, 
 
 208, 232 ; his ascent to the 
 throne, 7 ; his' learning, 7, 
 32 ; and the Duke of Cala- 
 bria's death, 14 ; and the 
 church of St. Clare, 15, 206-7 ; 
 and Philippa the Catanese, 
 1 7 et sqq. ; and Joanna's early- 
 training, 19 et sqq. ; arranges 
 a marriage for Joanna, 23 et 
 sqq. ; and the oath of alle- 
 giance, 22, 31-2 ; and Pe- 
 trarch, 36-7 ; his will, 40 et 
 sqq., 70 ; his death, 42 ; 
 Petrarch's epitaph on, 65 
 Rosarno, Angeluccio di, 313 
 
 Sades, Laura de, 34-5, 38, 43, 
 
 142, 162 
 Sancha (King Robert of Naples's 
 second w&e), 16 et sqq., 41, 
 48, 50, 64, 67-8, 70, 103, 206 
 Sancha (Philippa's grand- 
 daughter), 3, 79, 92, 103 et sqq. 
 Sangro, GentUis de, 299, 322 
 Sanguineto, Philip of, 41 
 Sanseverino, Ugo de, 308 
 Savoy, Duke of, 215, 266, 322 
 Simon, Count of Chiaramonte, 
 
 196, 199 
 Soult, Count de, 125 
 Spinelli, Nicholas, 280, 282-3 
 Squilazzo, Geoffrey, Count of, 41 
 Stephen, Prince, 178-9 
 Strada, Zanobi de, 195 
 Swinburne, Algernon C., 78 
 
 Talleyrand, Cardinal, 66-7, 193- 
 
 4 
 Taranto, Prince of (Louis' elder 
 
 brother), 201, 211-12 
 Taranto, Prince of, 10, 22 
 Taranto, Princess of (mother 
 
 of Louis), 40, 51, 67, 79, 83, 
 
 93. i°7 
 Taranto, Princess of (wife of 
 
 Robert), 123, 125, 246 
 Trastevera, Henry of, 77 
 Trelice, Count de, 85, 105 
 Tropea, Bp. of, 108 
 Turinga, Camiola, 197 et sqq. 
 
maex 
 
 347 
 
 u 
 
 Urban V., Pope, 153, 161, 235, 
 273 ; and Petrarch's mar- 
 riage, 35 ; his friendliness 
 towards Joanna, 211 ; and 
 Joanna's third marriage, 212 ; 
 and St. Bridget, 224 ; and 
 the Viscontis, 228-9 ; decides 
 to return to Avignon, 244 ; 
 his death, 245-6 
 
 Urban VI., Pope, 322, 329 ; his 
 enmity towards Joanna, 4, 
 94, 279, 250, 295 ; his char- 
 acter, 278 ; his haughtiness, 
 281 ; his treatment of the 
 Cardinals, 281 ; and Joanna's 
 embassy, 282-3 ; insults 
 Prince Otho, 283-4 ; creates 
 twenty-nine new cardinals, 
 284-5 ; and Clement VII., 
 the anti-pope, 286 et sqq. ; his 
 unpopularity, 293 ; excom- 
 municates Joanna, 294, 298 ; 
 supports Charles of Durazzo, 
 295-6, 307, 319 ; tortures the 
 rebellious Cardinals, 323-4 ; 
 
 now opposes Charles of Du- 
 razzo, 328, 334 
 
 Verona, Princess of. See Agnes 
 
 of Durazzo 
 Vico, Francesca de, 285 
 Villani, Matthew, 29, 93, 95, 114, 
 
 117, 164 
 Vinci, Leonardo da, 44 
 Violante (wife of King Robert 
 
 of Naples), 8, 17-18 
 Violante of Sicily, Princess, 199, 
 
 200 
 Virgil, 36 
 Visconti, Ambrose, 228 et sqq., 
 
 257, 268 
 Visconti, Barnabas, 228 el sqq. 
 
 W 
 
 Warner, Duke, 17S et sqq. 
 Wolf, Conrad, 176 et sqq., 184 
 
 Zurlo, Jacimo, 310-n 
 
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