CIMON AND IPHEGENIA. (DEC. V, 1)
From a miniature in the French version of the "Decameron," made in 1414 by Laurent le Premierfait. MS. late XV century. (Brit. Mus. Rothschild Bequest. MS. XIII)
King Robert had not been dead many months when the Hungarians, sure of Andrew's protection, began to flock to Naples. They angered those who surrounded the Queen and even the Queen herself by their insolence, and thus the court was divided into two parties, or rather there were two courts in one palace.
In the autumn of 1343 Petrarch was once more in Naples. In a letter to Barbato di Sulmona he pays an eloquent tribute to King Robert, and at the same time states his reasons for anxiety as to the condition of the Kingdom. "I fear as much from the youthfulness of the Queen and her consort as from the age and ideas of the Queen Dowager; but I am especially afraid of the administration and manners of the court. Perhaps I am a bad prophet: I hope so. But I seem to see two lambs in the care of a pack of wolves...." Touching on the administration, Petrarch gives the following account of Fra Roberto, the Franciscan confessor of Andrew. "I encountered a deformed creature, barefooted, hoodless, vainglorious in his poverty, degenerate through his sensuality; in fact, a homunculus, bald and rubicund, with bloated limbs.... Would you hear his revered name? He is called 'Robert.' Yes, in the place of the noblest of kings, till lately the glory of our age, has arisen this Robert who, on the contrary, will disgrace it. Nor will I henceforth hold it a fable they relate of a serpent able to be generated from a buried corpse, since from the royal sepulchre has issued this reptile." And indeed of all the court he has a good word for Philip de Cabassoles only: "he who alone stands up on the side of justice."
So much for the administration; nor were the manners he found there any better, in his judgment. The whole city was divided against itself, and life was altogether insecure. The council is "compelled to end its sittings at sunset, for the turbulent young nobles make the streets quite unsafe after dark. And what wonder if they are unruly and society corrupt, when the public authorities actually countenance all the horrors of gladiatorial games? These disgusting exhibitions take place in open day before the court and populace in this city of Italy with more than barbaric ferocity."[327]
The vicious life of this and the following years in Naples is usually attributed to the example and influence of Queen Giovanna. In fact nothing can be further from the truth. In King Robert's time the court life was, as we have seen, very far from being exemplary, but Giovanna herself was not weak and abandoned. Already Hungary was pressing the claims of Andrew to equal if not superior power to hers. She never flinched for a moment; from the hour she perceived the way things were drifting she determined to win.
At first things seemed altogether against her. In June, 1344, she wrote to Charles of Durazzo, her sister's husband, telling him that Cardinal Aimeric, the Papal Legate, had entered her kingdom without her leave, and that therefore she and Andrew were gone to Aversa to meet him. There she made peace, acknowledged the Cardinal as Regent, and admitted her crown to be held from the Holy See. Andrew signed her proclamation as a mere witness.[328] But this intrusion of the Papacy by no means improved chances of peace.
The coming of Andrew, with his Hungarian pretensions and those crowds of needy foreign place-hunters, angered the Neapolitan people it is true, but it infuriated the long-established group of domestic functionaries in Castel Nuovo, who in some sort had been confirmed in their offices by the Will of King Robert. The head of this court party, as whole-heartedly against Andrew as it was against the Pope, was Filippa la Catanese, now quite an old woman. Among her family were Raimondo the seneschal, Sancia de Cabannis, Contessa di Morcone, her granddaughter, wife of Carlo di Gambatesa, Roberto de Cabannis, grand seneschal of the Kingdom, and his wife. This group sided with Giovanna, and in its own interest pushed her claims against those of Aimeric and Andrew. They were supported more or less in secret by Catherine of Taranto and her sons Robert and Louis.
A storm was obviously brewing, and it must have been about this time that Boccaccio returned to Naples, perhaps on the invitation of Niccolò Acciaiuoli, secretary and protégé of Catherine of Taranto. No doubt he hoped to see Fiammetta—no doubt he did see her, though what came of it we shall never know; but he found no more peace in Naples than in Florence.
In February, 1345, the Pope removed Aimeric, who he declared had succeeded in governing pacifice et quiete.[329] The Cardinal returned to Avignon, and moved in the Consistory that Andrew be crowned king. He was supported by Durazzo. Giovanna appealed. The Pope listened, but ordered that Filippa la Catanese, Sancia, Margherita, and others should be dismissed. From that moment the Catanesi plotted to murder Andrew.
It was the custom of the court (then, as it happened, in mourning for the Dowager Queen Sancia, who died July 28, 1345) to spend the summer at one of the royal palaces outside Naples. In July Giovanna, then with child, had gone with the court to Castellamare; in September she moved to Aversa. On the night of the 18th, the anniversary of Andrew's arrival in Naples, the Queen had retired early, and Andrew too had gone early to his room, when Tommaso, son of Mambriccio di Tropea, summoned him from his chamber into a passage leading toward the garden, on the pretence, as it is said, that messengers had arrived from Naples with important despatches. In that passageway he was seized, gagged, and strangled, and his body thrown into the garden, where it was discovered by his Hungarian nurse.[330]