ALFONSO THE MAGNANIMOUS AND THE FALL OF ANJOUcrown.^33 Some of these are features that are arguably visible
much earlier; in 1443 the viceroy of Gaeta found himself
reissuing emergency powers against robbers that had first
been introduced under Charles I of Anjou. It was not always
a question of new methods, but of effective ones. Particularly
important, however, was a novel way of dealing with the
nobility. Alfonso's fundamental problem was that he had to
persuade the barons and bureaucrats who had been loyal
to Rene of Anjou-of whom there were a great many-to
accept the new order, and here he was strikingly successful.
Giorgio d'Alemagna, count of Buccino, had been loyal to
Rene to the end; but, if anything, loyalty was a virtue, and
Alfonso cleverly found a place for him in the royal council as
early as 1444. Barons who were prepared to accept him were
confirmed in their lands, even if this meant confirming grants
made in the bad days of Joanna I and Joanna II, when royal
estates had been handed out right and left. Several barons
had obtained jurisdiction over capital crimes, something that
under the Normans and Frederick II had, at least technic-
ally, been reserved to the crown. There was thus a serious
danger of the erosion of royal rights, and to hold this in
check Alfonso appointed a conservator of the royal patri-
mony in Naples, whose job was the preservation of those royal
rights that remained. (Similar officers already existed in Spain
and Sicily.) And then, working within the established polit-
ical traditions of Catalonia-Aragon, Alfonso sought to raise
money through votes of funds in the Neapolitan parliaments.
In 1455, for instance, he was able to obtain funds for the
building of a flotilla of galleys which at least notionally were
to serve on crusade; to achieve this, his parliament agreed to
a one-fifth levy on provisions and salaries. Such bargaining
was completed largely behind the scenes; but the nobles
knew well enough that they could transfer much or all of the
tax burden to those who lay under their authority. Alfonso
thus seemed to be appeasing the barons at a time when they
had become the effective rulers of the south Italian prov-
inces; he saw no future in a challenge to those who had in
the past supported his Angevin rivals precisely because the
- A. Ryder, The Kingdom of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous (Ox-
ford, 1975).