THE ANGEVINS AND THE SICILIAN VESPERS

1266 - 1282            
1282 – 1372

Palermo

Charles I of Anjou ascended in 1266 supported by the Church (Pope Clement IV). The political centre moved to the continent and Naples became the capital of the Kingdom of Sicily. After four years of terror, in 1270 the Angevin domination in Sicily began. This was characterised by violence and abuses of power which, twelve years later (March 31 1282), led  to the popular uprising of the Sicilian Vespers (or the Ninety Years’ War). The war ended in 1372 with the treaty of Avignon which separated the Kingdom of Naples from the Kingdom of Sicily (until the age of the House of Bourbon). Every city joined the revolt initiated in Palermo which self-proclaimed a “free city” together with Messina. The free cities gathered in a confederation of little towns. The war of Peter III of Aragon supported by the Sicilian people against the Angevins, after a series of alternate events, ended acknowledging the Kingdom of Trinacria in 1296 ruled by Frederick III of Aragon; its capital was Catania and it depended on Naples as much as that of Sicily. Many attempts to stop the War of the Sicilian Vespers were made: in 1347 the Peace of Catania should have solved the conflict between the Houses of Anjou and that of Aragon that caused the Sicilian Vespers, but the Sicilian issue was hastily closed with the acknowledgement of the Kingdom of Trinacria, under the feudal rule of the Kingdom of Sicily and that of the Holy See. The previous agreement, the Peace of Caltabellotta, signed in 1302, was just a temporary break that let the fights and the disputes of any kind continue. In 1356 the so called “checkmate to Catania” (or of Ognina) allowed the gradual liberation of the island as Sicilian and Aragonian galleys prevailed on the Angevin ones (the last stronghold was Lentini). On the 8th November 1372 Frederick IV of Aragon (“the Simple”) came to peace terms, ending the war initiated with the Sicilian Vespers and providing Joanna of Anjou (Joan I of Naples) with 3000 scudos and  military help in case of war.