THE WESTERN MEDITERRAJ'\EAN Kll'\CDOMS 1200-1500of delivering sermons to the captive audience of his courtiers;
he drew his texts for the sermons from biblical passages which
could not but arrest the attention of a warrior king: 'My
soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace. I am for
peace: but when I speak, they are for war' (Psalms, 120.6-7).
He was a passionate amateur theologian, as befitted the
brother of a saint.n
King Robert's attempts to present himself as a sincere
advocate of peace and justice impressed many north Italian
citizens. The Venetians, it is true, received from him little
but rough justice; but the veneration of the citizens of Prato
for their seigneur the Neapolitan king was expressed with
more devotion than literary skill in a lengthy verse celebra-
tion of Robert's justice and wisdom. Of the three surviving
manuscripts of the Prato eulogy one, now in the British
Library, shows King Robert in a majestic profile, against a
back-cloth of fleur-de-lys: perhaps a reliable portrait, with its
long Angevin nose and face.:^1 K The message is clear: Robert
did in his own lifetime impress and win the loyalty of those
whose support he sought. Charles I had been an intruder
in Italian politics, a strong man who could provide much-
needed help to the Guelfs; Robert for his part showed great
political adroitness and a highly developed sense of how to
care for his subjects' interests. He could indeed pursue his
policies obstinately, as his wars to recover Sicily indicate; but
the more grandiose dreams of his ancestor were abandoned
for more limited, more practical objectives within Italy itself.
CONCLUSION
The reign of Robert the Wise has been unjustly ignored by
historians seeking to explain the series of political crises that
wracked northern and central Italy in the early fourteenth
century. Starting his reign as a close ally of the papacy, which
was based at Avignon in the Angevin county of Provence,
Robert soon found himself at odds with the first German- Robert d'Anjou, La vision bienheureuse.
- British Library MS Royal 6.E.IX, f. lOv; A. Martindale, The rise of the
artist in the Middle Ages and earzy Renaissance (London, 1972), p. 60,
plate 38.