SICILY AND SOUTHERN ITALY IN AN AGE OF DISORDERMasters of themselves, the Chiaramonti and their rivals,
known by the factional labels 'Latin' and 'Catalan', allowed
private disputes to mushroom into civil wars; the former
built ties to the Angevin court in the confidence that the
island kingdom could not withstand the force of a large-
scale invasion. In the mid-fourteenth century, at a time when
Sicily was first of all places in western Europe to be afflicted
by bubonic plague, conflict carried on regardless. The barons
took several decades to understand that there were no win-
ners in a conflict that undermined their own power through
devastation and unlimited expenditure on war. Seventy years
after the Treaty of Caltabellotta the young Frederick IV made
peace with the papacy and the Angevins on terms which were
barely different from those agreed by Frederick III. But it was
not a peace that could be usefully enjoyed: baronial power
had not been challenged; Frederick IV himself remarked
bitterly in a letter of 1363 to Francesco Ventimiglia:
What use is the barons' peace to us, if we lack our royal justice
and dignity, if our great cities and towns are usurped, if our
name is invoked but others enjoy the demesne's fruits, and we
live in need and are ashamed of our majesty? This seems a hard
life to us, all the more so now we are adult and know how
things stand: yet, if everyone knew his limits, he would render
to Caesar that which is Caesar's and be content with his baron-
ies and benefices.:'Finally, the death of Frederick IV without a male heir, in
1377, reopened internal rivalries. Artale d'Aragona, in charge
of the 'Catalan' faction, took charge in his power base of
Catania of Frederick's daughter Maria, in the hope of ar-
ranging a Milanese marriage, as much to serve his interests
as to solve the island's problems; he and his rivals-Manfredi
Chiaramonte of Modica, Guglielmo Peralta around Sciacca,
and Francesco Ventimiglia in the area of Geraci - carved
Sicily into four vicariates where they exercised virtually sov-
ereign authority, perpetuating officially the broad divisions
that had been achieved unofficially by the 1360s.^4- Cited by Epstein, An island for itself, p. 320.
- There is some worthwhile literature on the Sicilian nobility and on
other social groups, in addition to the key works by Corrao, Epstein
and Brese cited in this and other chapters: V. d'Alessandro, Politica e