AUTHOR'S PREFACEThis book is the product of several years of thinking
and writing about the western Mediterranean kingdoms in
the period from the late twelfth century to the end of the
fifteenth. While it seeks to draw together conclusions I have
reached from several projects in the history of Sicily and
southern Italy and of Catalonia-Aragon, it also seeks to work
these results together into a coherent picture of the interac-
tion between the Catalans and Italy, from the middle of the
thirteenth century to the takeover of the Kingdom of Naples
by Ferdinand II of Aragon at the start of the sixteenth cen-
tury. It could be read as a study of the prelude to the Italian
wars of the sixteenth century; or it could be read as a study
of how trade and other business interests helped mould the
policies of the most important Christian kings in the Medi-
terranean world. Since it appears in a series which contains a
good many distinguished biographies, it has seemed a good
idea to give the book a biographical framework, even if the
number of rulers subjected to this treatment is quite large.
The idea of 'parallel lives' goes back at least as far as Plutarch,
and here the concept has been redeployed to show first of
all how separate realms in Spain and Italy became entangled,
at which point the kings of Aragon and of Sicily-Naples have
distinct chapters to themselves; while subsequently, by the
fifteenth century, the interweaving of interest has become
so tight that the rival dynasties have been brought together
in the same chapters. This has also, I hope, avoided unneces-
sary repetition in the last pages. There is no need any longer
to defend the use of analytical biography or the writing of
the history of 'high politics', which were long in disfavour,
particularly among historians of the famous Annales school;
even they have undergone a conversion of sorts in recent
years. It is the contention of this book, and the experience
of its author in observing the world, that events in the realm
of high politics percolate down through society, and that any
attempt to write history without attention to the decisions
made at the top levels of government produces an immobile
or static view of past societies which is indefensible. On the
other hand, a good deal of attention is paid in this volume
to economic developments (particularly trade) and to the
encounter between religions in the Mediterranean, because
these were issues that generated problems for governments
and, in the case of economic factors, even determined what
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