The Mercenary Mediterranean_ Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon - Hussein Fancy

a sovereign crisis 47

as bodyguards, a fact that drew more than passing notice from visitors.^60

That Pere also called upon Conrad Lancia, the grandson of Frederick,

to recruit his own Muslim guard reveals the clear path of influence from

Sicily to Aragon. Collectively, these courtly and administrative reforms

aimed at imagining, performing, and ultimately realizing a vision of im-

perial authority modeled upon the Hohenstaufens’ lofty conception of

empire.

Given all these Sicilian echoes, it is not surprising that from 1279 , if

not earlier, Pere directed his foreign policy toward the goal of retaking

that kingdom from the Angevins.^61 An aggressive maritime strategy along

the North African littoral was part and parcel of a desire to control the

central Mediterranean, an effort to envelope the island of Sicily. In 1282 ,

while the Aragonese navy — captained by the Hohenstaufen exiles, Roger

de Lauria and Conrad Lancia — was fumbling a putsch to impose a pup-

pet ruler on the throne of Tunis, a rebellion erupted in Angevin Sicily,

perhaps kindled by Aragonese agents.^62 Samuel Abenmenassé was one of

many Aragonese representatives to travel to Sicily just before the upris-

ing. Upon receiving news of the rebellion, the ships of Roger de Lauria

temporarily abandoned the North African coast and succeeded in cap-

turing the island kingdom from Charles of Anjou, returning Sicily to the

heirs of the Hohenstaufens.

Having accomplished his singular ambition, however, Pere ironically

unleashed the greatest threat to his sovereignty, a French invasion and one

of the worst wars suffered by the lands of the Crown of Aragon.^63 Enraged

by the conquest of Sicily, the French pope, Martin IV, excommunicated

King Pere, undercutting the Crown’s claim to divinely sanctioned authority.

Martin offered the Crown of Aragon to the Capetians. When the French

ruler accepted in 1284 , a crusade against Pere was launched. Meanwhile,

the situation within the Crown of Aragon deteriorated dramatically. Pere’s

uncle, Jaume of Mallorca, threw his lot in with the Papacy. The powerful

nobleman Juan Nuñez de Lara declared Albarracín, a region in Aragon,

an independent lordship in support of the French. Half of Pere’s other vas-

sals declared themselves unwilling to defend him, rising up in rebellion.

In their first forays across the Pyrenees, the French committed horrible

excesses, killing men, women, children, and nuns. Panicked villagers fled

the lands north of Barcelona. Whole cities were abandoned.

Pere thus faced a major crisis in 1284. With his navy in Sicily and

Calabria, many of the Aragonese and Catalan noblemen in open revolt,

and the threat of a massive French invasion gaining support from his own