THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE AGE OF JAMES II OF ARAGONCONCLUSION
The disentanglement of the Angevins and the Aragonese
was a slow and difficult process; when King James of Sicily
inherited the throne of Aragon, and indicated his willing-
ness to renounce Sicily, he did not appear to take into
account the wishes of the Sicilians themselves, who elected
his younger brother and lieutenant, Frederick, as their king
in right of his mother Constance of Hohenstaufen. That
James suspected this would happen is not unlikely; his sup-
port for papal and Guelf interests after 1296 was spasmodic,
and yet by clever diplomacy he was able to win from Pope
Boniface VIII, a man difficult to please, the promise of the
crown of Sardinia and Corsica in return for the abandonment
of Sicily. James's claim to Sardinia was only turned into
reality in 1323-24, when a Catalan-Aragonese army invaded
the island, with a keen eye of its food and silver resources.
Meanwhile, Sicily was not surrendered: Frederick's ability
to hold out against his enemies finally brought him wider
recognition in the face of continuing papal mistrust; bm
even after peace was agreed at Caltabellotta in 1302, the
Neapolitans continued to harbour plans for the recovery
of the island of Sicily, concentrating for the moment on
diplomacy and on the hope that the island would revert to
Naples on the death of King Frederick III of Sicily. Mean-
while there was plenty of reconstruction work to be done, in
Sicily (of which more in a later chapter) and on the main-
land, where Charles II expressed his gratitude to God for
his release from prison by unleashing persecution first of
the Jews and then, in 1300, of the last remaining Muslims
based at Lucera. Charles II was not merely leader of the
Guelfs in Italy, but he was also a Christian king who sought
to rule in accordance with Christian principles, relying in
addition on the teaching of the Roman lawyers at his court.
Men such as Bartolomeo da Capua and Andrea da Isernia
boosted the standing of the crown by emphasising that the
king was a Roman-style princeps or ruler, and it will be seen
shortly how important such concepts became when once
again a German emperor came to Italy and challenged the
overweening power of the house of Anjou, which by 1309