THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEA!\ KINGDOMS 1~00-1!100documented; there, north Italian businessmen congregated
in sizeable numbers, and, although few southerners could
compete with them in scale of business (except for Francesco
Coppola, future count of Sarno), the fair provided a base for
over two hundred south Italian merchants, and was a centre
of exchange for cloths from Majorca, Languedoc, Florence
and elsewhere. Even though Ferrante's hopes of reviving
manufactures within the Regno proved difficult to achieve,
some significant progress was made, and in economic terms
this reign does not deserve the bad press it has traditionally
received.^11 > Royal initiatives alone do not explain the grow-
ing prosperity of southern Italy in the late fifteenth century:
population growth after a century of demographic depression
stimulated local cloth industries, the exploitation of min-
erals and metals and the further expansion of the mena delle
pecore. Similar trends are visible on the island of Sicily, where
fairs, established under royal and baronial licence, offered
a framework for the exchange of locally produced agrarian
and industrial goods, so that the island may have become
less dependent on foreign imports of textiles than has some-
times been assumed.^17
Ferrante's economic adviser Diomede Carafa was one
of a group of distinguished men of letters who gathered
at the king's court. Alfonso the Magnanimous had already
established a lively court in Naples, and under Ferrante the
emphasis shifted slightly; Ferrante himself had been trained
to a high pitch in law, and there was a shift towards what
might be called more practical learning and away from the
patronage of lyric poetry and the fine arts. But this was a
movement of degree only; Naples continued to attract artists
of the stature of the painter Antonello da Messina and the
- David Abulafia, 'The Crown and the economy under Ferrante I of
Naples (1458-1494)', in T. Dean, C. Wickham, eds, City and Country-
side in late medieval and RenaissancP Italy. Essays jnesented to Philip jones
(London, 1990), pp. 125-46; E. Sakellariou, The Kingdom ofNaples
under Aragonese and Spanish rule', PhD dissertation, Cambridge
University, 1996. - S.R. Epstein, An island j(Jr itself Economic development and social change
in late medieval Sicily (Cambridg_e, 1992) should be taken against H.
Brese, Un monde mediterraneen. Economie et societe en Sicile, 1300-1450,
2 vols (Rome/Palermo, 1986); the years around^1450 may perhaps be
seen as the period of transition towards greater economic autonomy
within Sicily.