opposed him, and some, including Cola di Rienzo, were
actively supportive. (Cola, however, fell before the Hun-
garian triumph, his defeat having been partly engineered
by Joanna’s supporters.) Joanna, seeking allies, married
one cousin, Louis of Taranto, secretly and without papal
sanction (she and Louis were related closely enough to
require a dispensation in order to marry); and appointed
another cousin, Charles of Durazzo (d. 1348), guardian
of her son, though Charles played an equivocal role in
the invasion. As the Hungarians approached, Joanna
and Louis fl ed to their overlord, Pope Clement VI, at
Avignon. To recover his support after their marriage and
the murder of Andrew and to obtain money with which
to renew the fi ght against Hungary, Joanna sold Avignon
to Clement for 80,000 fl orins, considerably less than its
worth. Meanwhile, the black death broke out, and the
Hungarians, much reduced in number, returned home,
taking as hostage Joanna’s son (who died in Hungary)
but leaving Joanna and Louis of Taranto in possession
of the Regno. The Hungarians returned later, but never
successfully. By 1352, Louis of Taranto, with help from
the papacy, was recognized in Naples and had also estab-
lished his rights against his wife’s claims to sovereignty.
Organized by the grand seneschal, Niccolò Acciaiuoli,
the Regno experienced a brief period of recovery before
war was renewed. The war was undertaken again partly
in an unsuccessful attempt to reunite Sicily (which had
been under Aragonese rule since 1285) with the Regno,
and pardy because of renewed rebellion by the Durazzo
branch of the Angevins, who resented the dominance
of Louis of Taranto.
Louis died in 1362. Joanna’s third husband, James
of Majorca, was given no authority in government.
James—who had recently escaped from fourteen years’
imprisonment in an iron cage by his uncle, Peter IV of
Aragon—was half mad and periodically violent. He
soon returned to Spain, and from 1362 to 1375 Joanna
ruled alone. Despite minor rebellions initiated by her
sister Maria, who was the widow of Charles of Durazzo,
and by Maria’s sons, the realm achieved a measure of
peace. In 1368—1370, Urban V briefl y returned to Italy
from Avignon, with Joanna’s protection.
In 1378, Urban VI, formerly archbishop of Bari and
Joanna’s subject, became pope and quickly indicated his
intention to revive and support the Hungarian claim to
Naples. Accordingly, when a rival pope, Clement VII,
was elected, Joanna took Clement’s part; and her next
husband, Otto of Brunswick, proved entirely willing to
persecute Urban’s followers. Urban reacted by excom-
municating Joanna and conceding her throne to Louis of
Hungary. Charles III of Durazzo (nephew of Maria and
the late elder Charles) encouraged Louis, so, although
Charles III was her nearest relative, Joanna excluded
him from the succession. Instead, with Clement VII’s
approval, she bequeathed all her rights to Louis of An-
jou, eldest brother of Charles V of France (in January
1380). In 1381, Urban, despairing of the Hungarians,
crowned Charles III of Durazzo king of Naples. In the
ensuing civil war, Charles was successful: in August
Otto was taken prisoner and Joanna surrendered. She
died in prison, probably stifl ed to death on Charles’s
orders, in July 1382, while her adopted heir, Louis of
Anjou, was coming over the Alps to her rescue.
Joanna’s lament “I regret only one thing, that the Al-
mighty did not make me a man” has some justifi cation.
Urban VI’s main complaint against her was apparently
that he disliked queens regnant. She had some devotees,
notably Giovanni Boccaccio, but she was more usually
scorned as immoral and incompetent. Still, she did her
best work when she ruled alone: although her reign was
a disaster, the problems were not all of her making.
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Charles V the WiseFurther Reading
Editions
Caracciolo, Tristan. Vita Joannae primae Neapolis regina, ed.
Giuseppe Paladino. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 22. Bologna:
Zanichelli, 1933, pp. 1–18.
Dominicus de Gravina. Cronicon de rebus in Apulia gestis,
1333–1350, ed. Albano Sorbelli. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores,- Città di Castello: Tipi dell’Editore S. Lapi, 1903.
Villani, Mattreo. Cronica, 5 vols., ed. Ignazio Moutier. Florence:
Magheri, 1926.
Studies
De Feo, Italo. Giovanna d’Angiò, regina di Napoli. Naples: F.
Fiorentino, 1968.
Léonard, Émile G. Histoire de Jeanne Ire, reine de Naples,
comtesse de Provence (1343–1382), 3 vols. Paris: Picard,
1932–1936.
——. Les Angevins de Naples. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1954.
Louis the Great, King of Hungary and Poland, ed. S. B. Vardy,
Geza Grosschmid, and Leslie. S. Domonkos. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986.
Carola M. Small
JOÃO I, KING OF PORTUGAL
(1357?–1433)
João, the illegitimate son of Pedro I and Teresa Lou-
renço, was born probably in Lisbon on 14 August 1357
and died there on 14 August 1433. In 1363, when he
was still a child, he became the master of the Order of
Avis.
In normal circumstances, he would never have ac-
ceded to the throne, but the situation created in the latter
years of Fernando I’s reign (1367–1383) opened a crisis
of succession. By his marriage to Leonor Teles in 1372,
Fernando had a daughter, Beatriz (1372–ca. 1409), who
married Juan I of Castile in 1383. Under Fernando, Por-
tugal had three wars with Castile, and this marriage wasJOÃO I, KING OF PORTUGAL