SICILY AND SOUTHERN ITALY IN AN AGE OF DISORDERNeapolitans still had interests on the ground, and a positive
result of the war against Milan was the recovery of several
territories in Piedmont occupied by the Visconti; James IV
of Majorca was involved in these campaigns until1375, when
he died of fever, to be succeeded in the queen's bed by Otto
of Brunswick, a soldier who knew the Regno from past con-
flicts, and who was explicitly barred from taking the crown.'~
Changes within Italy precipitated further crises in the
Regno. Increasing hostility on the part of Florence towards
a papal restoration in Italy reached the point where Pope
Gregory XI hurled an interdict at the papacy's ancient ally
(1377). At the same time definitive plans for a permanent
return of the Holy See to Italy culminated in the arrival of
the pope in Rome, where he died a few months later (March
1378). The turbulent conclaye that followed elected the
disagreeable Pope Urban VI, formerly archbishop of Bari in
the Regno, whose high-handed actions prompted the cardinals
to attempt his removal and replacement by Clement VII,
from Geneva. Although at first sympathetic to Urban's claims,
Joanna carefully sounded out expert opinion, and concluded,
like the French king, that Clement VII was worthy of her
support. Her approval went so far that she remitted to him
64,000 florins due from the census imposed on the Regno, an
obligation she could easily have avoided; she also welcomed
him into her domains. Her new problem was that opinion
in Naples resolutely supported Urban, if only because he
was a regnicolo himself; under threat of an uprising, Joanna
capitulated, but Urban was not satisfied with her retraction,
citing her for heresy and schism (1379).^1 ~ Of course he could
see that her power was now exceedingly frail. The question
was who might replace her, and the obvious candidate was
Charles, duke of Durazzo, who had also benefited from the
patronage of Louis of Hungary, another supporter of Pope
Urban. Against him, Joanna was inclined to favour Clement
VII's adherent Louis I, duke of Anjou, a very distant relation
whose line harked back to Charles II of Naples's renuncia-
tion of Anjou in favour of Charles of Valois. Already active
- Leonard, Angioni, pp. 545, 549, 567-8.
- W. Ullmann, The origins of the Great Schism (London, 1948); Y.
Renouard. The Avignon papacy, 1305-1403, trans!. D. Bethell (Lon-
don, 1970), pp. 68-73.