Charles and Sicily, Part 3

We left off with Manfred of Sicily killed during battle (illustration) with the forces of Charles of Anjou in 1265. Charles had been named king of Sicily in Rome, but he had to conquer the Regno in southern Italy and then get to the island itself. Manfred had been regent for Conradin, the son of the last king, before deciding to declare himself king. Conradin was now only 13 years old.

Charles had conquered the part of southern Italy linked to the Kingdom of Sicily, but was not well-liked. He enforced a tax on his subjects that popes had declared illegal, and had promised his Guelph supporters that lands taken from them by Manfred's regime would be returned, which bothered those to whom Manfred had granted lands.

Pope Clement IV criticized Charles for these actions. The pope was also concerned about how much power Charles had in northern Italy, which made him a threat to the Papal States if he chose to become tyrannical. Charles resigned his senatorship in 1267, which would have made the pope happy, but then the pope needed him again.

The Guelphs were supporters of the popes. Their rivals, the Ghibellines, supported the imperial authority more than the papacy. Ghibellines had taken over Tuscany, and Clement asked Charles for military help. Charles drove the Ghibellines from Florence, whereupon Charles was named the ruler of Florence and Lucca for a period of seven years. Clement was getting very nervous about all this power in Charles' hands. He summoned Charles and asked him to promise to give up control of Tuscany in three years.

Clement also persuaded Charles to make agreements with the Latin Emperor Baldwin of Courtenay. Charles would help Baldwin re-take Constantinople from Emperor Michael VIII Paleologos, who had recently taken back the city from Venetian control. With these negotiations complete, Charles went to Tuscany, but it took several months to complete the pope's request.

Meanwhile, men loyal to Manfred had gone to Bavaria to persuade the now-15-year-old Conradin to assert his right to the kingdom of Sicily. Showing more ambition than sense, the teenager agreed. Manfred's former aide went to Sicily to stir up a revolt against Charles.

Henry of Castile had been Charles' friend, but had loaned Charles money that was not repaid. He joined Conradin's cause. Frederick of Castile, a Manfred ally, invaded Sicily from the north. Charles was busy in Tuscany while this was going on. In April 1268 he was able to march to Lucera and deal with the Muslim uprising there. News of Conradin's revolt was spreading, and many looked for a return to the old regime.

Conradin was now out of Bavaria and in Italy, invading Abruzzo. Charles hurried north to meet him. Events were leading to a final conflict.

See you tomorrow.

Charles and Sicily, Part 2

Events were in place for Charles of Anjou, Count of Provence, to take over Sicily. His brother, King Louis IX of France, was behind him, as was Pope Urban IV. Charles' promise to Urban was that he would take over Sicily, but not the rest of the Regno (the combination of Sicily and southern Italy that Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II had ruled).

An illegitimate son of Frederick, Manfred, was acting as regent for Conradin in Sicily (son of Manfred's legitimate brother Conrad IV). Manfred had designs on enlarging his rule. He planned a coup in Rome to deal with papal power, but the Guelphs made Charles a senator to gain his support. This seemed to go against Charles' promise to Urban not to accept any power in Italy itself, and Roman cardinals complained about him to Urban. Urban wouldn't go back on his support of Charles, however, because he needed to rely on Charles' military might.

Urban declared a Crusade against Manfred, and two cardinals went to France to gain support for it. One of the cardinals, Guy Foulquois, became Pope Clement IV in February 1265 after the death of Urban. He convinced Charles to hold Sicily (if he could take it) as a vassal of the pope in exchange for 8,000 ounces of gold annually. Charles agreed to the money, since he'd rule Sicily as he saw fit anyway.

They even promised him the whole of the Regno as the pope's vassal, and on 21 June 1265 Charles was installed as a senator. Clement helped him to borrow more from Italian bankers to finance the conquest of Sicily. To make everything formal, on 5 January 1266 he was crowned by five cardinals as King of Sicily (see illustration). Now all he had to do was take control of the island itself.

Several days later, many thousands of soldiers and cavalry arrived in Rome from France and Provence. By the end of January, he was marching south from Rome with the army to start the conquest of the southern Italy part of the Regno. After crossing the Apennines to get to the town of Benevento, they were attacked by Manfred's army on 26 February. Charles defeated Manfred's army, and Manfred himself was killed.

The rest of the Regno quickly capitulated, including a Muslim colony in Lucera.

Charles sent Philip of Montfort to Sicily, where Manfred's widow and family were captured. The widow, Helena of Epirus, had come with a dowry of the island of Corfu. Charles had his troops seize Corfu within the year.

Conradin was still alive, though, and with a claim to Sicily from his father. He would have to be dealt with.

Let's have a short intermission, however, and talk about the sixth paragraph above: the Muslim community of Lucera.

Teresa Gil de Vidaure

After James I of Aragon's first wife was annulled and second wife died, it seems he did not seek a third marriage. He had been, however, in a long-term relationship with someone else already.

Teresa Gil de Vidaure was the daughter of a Navarre nobleman and considered to be very beautiful. He promised to marry her after the annulment of his first wife, but instead he married Violant of Hungary in 1355. Teresa married Sancho Pérez de Lodosa. Despite these two marriages, the king and Teresa continued their relationship.

Violant died in 1251, by which time Sancho Pérez de Lodosa had died. Rather than try to legitimize a relationship, James ignored the policies of the Roman Catholic Church and treated their relationship as a common law marriage. He gave her gifts: a castle in Valencia called Jérica (an early map of the town is shown here), to go to her descendants upon her death (they had a son, James, who was given Jérica in 1276), and some villages.

Was she his wife? The contracts granting these possessions to her use legal language used for concubinage contracts, but James told Pope Clement IV in 1265 that the two were married and he wanted an annulment because Teresa (he claimed) had leprosy. The truth is that James' eyes were wandering and he started another relationship with his cousin, Berenguela Alfonso. Pope Clement was appalled, especially since this was improper even if it were not incestuous, and refused the annulment.

After Clement's death in 1268, the bishop of Valencia gave James his wish, annulling the "marriage"; Pope Gregory X, however, when he came to the papacy, affirmed Clement's decision. James tried for an annulment again in 1275, claiming that he had sexual relations with Teresa's cousin before the marriage, but Gregory was not moved.

Whether he were officially linked in a relationship to Teresa, he chose not to have her by his side. She was sent to a Cistercian monastery for the rest of her life and buried there when she died on 15 July 1285.

Tomorrow we will conclude the life of James I of Aragon, and then decide where to go after that.

"Pope Joan"

Jean de Mailly was a Dominican chronicler working in Metz in northeast France in the middle of the 13th century. He wrote a history of the Diocese of Metz, in which he mentions a female pope reigning for two years about the year 1100. She was a talented woman who dressed as a man and became a notary to the pontifical Curia, then a cardinal, and finally a pope.

One day, while riding her horse, she gave birth to a son, revealing the deception. (Honestly, if she were pope for two years and at the end of that time had a son, then at least one person in her orbit knew that she was actually a woman.) With the deception revealed, she got tied to the tail of the horse, dragged around the city, then stoned to death and buried on the spot with the inscription placed over her Petre pater patrum papissae prodito partum ("Peter, Father of Fathers, betray the childbearing of the woman Pope").

This idea tickled the imagination of others, and so it became repeated and expanded. Along came Martin of Troppau, a Polish Dominican, who also wrote history. His history of the world first appeared during the pontificate of Clement IV (1265-68), but it wasn't until the third edition in 1277 that he added the story of the female pope.

Martin places the event in the 9th century, just after the death of Pope Leo IV (847-55). She was an "Englishman" named John of Mainz. Originally taken to Athens as a young girl in male clothing, she became educated until no one was her intellectual equal. She went to Rome (still disguised as a man), and earned so much respect that she was eventually made pope. During a procession from St. Peter's to the Lateran, she gave birth to a child. She died (and was buried) on the spot. Martin refers to her as Johanna. Martin himself was a papal chaplain at the Vatican, so his accounts were widely read, and the legend spread. In a later version of his history he changed the story, saying that she was deposed, imprisoned, and then lived for many years doing penance. The child grew up to become bishop of Ostia, who had her body interred at Ostia.

Later writers give her the birth name of Agnes; others said she was Gilberta. One version of the story says she was given a vision and offered eternal punishment or temporal disgrace. She chose the latter, and that is why she died on the spot after giving birth.

By the 15th century, scholars were looking at these stories and noting their improbability. Unfortunately, the 20th century enjoys escapism and conspiracy theories, and the legend of "Pope Joan" has been embellished to the point where entire books have been written to recount her "history." There is no gap in the history of popes where Joan was excised (although I wrote here, coincidentally, that one annal thought there was a gap before Leo IV, not after.) A 10th-century pope, John XII (955-64), supposedly had a concubine named Joan who was given much authority at the papal palace during his pontificate, and some have speculated that this gave rise to the idea of a "Pope Joan."

But let's say she did become pope; what was she called? She would not have taken the name "Pope Joan"! A Dominican named Bartolomeo Platina (1421-81) called her Pope John VIII. This is silly, since he should have known that there was a Pope John VIII in the 9th century, and not an inconsequential one, either. Let's talk about him next time.

Roger Bacon's "Opus Majus"

Roger Bacon was born about 1219 into a wealthy family in England. He attended classes at Oxford University, where he learned a love of science from masters such as Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh. About 1240 he joined the Franciscans, which might have stifled his interests. There was a prohibition on the order against publishing without special permission from the superiors. This was in place because of a work published previously that was considered heretical.

Bacon looked for support and patronage from the papal legate to England, telling him that educational reform was needed. This was one Gui Foucois, although in England he was known as Cardinal Guy de Foulques. The cardinal was not interested in providing financial aid, but was interested in his work and ideas. Unfortunately, without money, Bacon could not afford the writing materials and scientific equipment to produce what he wanted to send.

Then, in 1265, the situation changed. Guy de Foulques was elected Pope Clement IV. Another request to the new pope returned the same result: Clement wanted the information, but would not send money. Bacon could only assemble a shorter work than he wanted to. The result was the Opus Majus or Opus Maius (Latin: "Greater Work"). Its seven sections (which included some of his earlier writings along with new materials) are:

•The Four General Causes of Human Ignorance (believing in an unreliable source,  sticking to custom, ignorance shared by others, pretending to knowledge)
•The Affinity of Philosophy with Theology (concludes that Holy Scripture is the foundation of all sciences)
•On the Usefulness of Grammar (a study of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic)
•The Usefulness of Mathematics in Physics (in this section he proposes changes to fix the Julian calendar)
•On the Science of Perspective (the anatomy of the eye and brain; light, vision, reflection and refraction, etc.)
•On Experimental Knowledge (a review of alchemy, gunpowder, and hypothesizes microscopes, telescopes, eyeglasses, machines that fly, and ships driven be steam)
•A Philosophy of Morality (philosophy and ethics)

It was sent to Clement in late 1267 or early 1268; however, Clement died in 1268. We do not know if he even had opportunity to read what he had requested.

"The Science of Perspective" was about optics. In that section, he discussed the anatomy of the eye, and how light is affected by distance, reflection and refraction. He also goes into mirrors and lenses. Most of this knowledge of optics came from Alhazen's Book of Optics, previously discussed here, and Robert Grosseteste's work on optics based on Al-Kindi, of whom I have never written before; I think there's my next topic.

For more on Bacon, use the search feature in the blog.

Nachmanides

First, let's talk about the name. He was born Moses ben Nachman. He sometimes called himself Ramban, an acronym for Rabbi Moses ben Nachman. Nachmanides is the Greek form of his name, and how he is recognized in western literature. He lived from 1194 - 1270, and lived most of his life  in Catalonia.

He was a scholar, a physician, a philosopher and poet. He began writing commentary on Jewish law at the age of 16. He believed that the rabbis of the Talmud and Mishnah were not to be criticized. He criticized his scholarly predecessor, Maimonides, however. Where Maimonides described any story in the Old Testament where angels appear as a prophetic vision rather than a true angelic visitation on Earth, and tried to explain some of the events in the Bible as naturally occurring, Nachmanides asserted that

no man can share in the Torah of our teacher Moses unless he believes that all our affairs, whether they concern masses or individuals, are miraculously controlled, and that nothing can be attributed to nature or the order of the world.

Previous posts discuss his participation in the Disputation of Barcelona and its outcome. He wrote an account of the debate afterward. Pablo Christiani, his chief opponent in the debate, seized on this account as further proof of blasphemy: he found objectionable passages and went to the head of the Dominicans, Raymond de Penyafort. A charge was brought against Nachmanides, and the complaint was brought before King James. Nachmanides pointed out that his account contained nothing that he had not already said in the presence of the king during the disputation, where the king himself had allowed him to speak freely. His innocence was clear, but the Dominicans wanted results, so Nachmanides was exiled for two years.

An appeal to Pope Clement IV made the exile permanent. Nachmanides, at the age of 70, had to leave his lifelong home. He eventually made his way to Jerusalem, where he reestablished the Jewish community that had been disrupted by the efforts of the First Crusade. He also established a synagogue that is to this day known as the Ramban Synagogue. He died at the age of 76; his burial place is unknown.

This blog has previously discussed Popes Clement I, II, III, V, VI, but never IV, the man who made Ramban's exile permanent. I think I have my topic for tomorrow.