THE vv'ESTERN MEDITERRANEA:\ KI!\GDOMS 1200-1.~00the Angevin court in Provence and the popes' absence from
Italy elevated Robert to the status of prime defender of Guelf
interests in Rome, Tuscany and Lombardy. Robert could
confer with the pope on his frequent visits to Provence.^1
Equally, the papacy had to take care not to allow the Angevins
to consolidate their hold over the whole of Italy. Thus there
were tensions pulling several ways: towards the policies of
the French or Angevin courts; towards a possible mediator
who could create a non-Angevin peace in Italy. The papacy
never ceased to hope that the Angevins would lead a cru-
sade, and the priority given to the recovery of Jerusalem
naturally attracted them still more to the self-styled 'Kings
of Jerusalem and Sicily'.^2 But at the time of the accession of
Robert the Wise the temptation to place trust in a new peace-
maker briefly triumphed. Pope Clement V welcomed the
election of Henry VII in Germany and agreed to instruct his
cardinals to confer the imperial crown upon him in Rome,
the traditional place of coronation as Holy Roman Emperor.
This was an especially brave political act since Clement had
not felt able to take up residence in turbulent Italy, and was
residing in Provence in the shadow of the French king's
influence: Philip IV's defeat of Pope Boniface VIII resulted
in the seventy-year long transfer of the papacy away from
Rome to Avignon in the Angevin county of Provence, on
the very edge of France proper. :^1
The reason for the pope's decision to go ahead with the
coronation of the first full emperor (rather than mere King
of the Romans, i.e. king of Germany) since Frederick II was
that Clement rapidly came to conceive of Henry as a balance
to Robert of Anjou. Maybe a new era in papal-imperial rela-
tions was about to dawn, now that well over half a century
had elapsed since the papal deposition of Frederick; maybe
Henry would counterbalance also the influence of the French
monarchy over the papacy. But the pope also had import-
ant reservations, aroused by Henry's insistence on entering
- David Abulafia, 'Venice and the Kingdom of Naples in the last years
of King Robert the Wise', Papers of the British School at Rome,^48 (1980),
pp. 187-8. - N. Housley, The Avignon papacy and the Crusades, 1305-1378 (Oxford,
1986), pp. 20, 26, 28, etc. - G. Mollat, LesPapesd'Avignon, 1305-1378, lOth ed. (Paris, 1965); English
translation of earlier edition as The Popes at Avignon (London, 1963).