A Book of the Riviera

by S. Baring-Gould

Joanna I. of Naples was born in 1327, and was the daughter of Charles, Duke of Calabria, and of Marie de Valois, his second wife. Charles was the only son of Robert the Good, King of Naples, who was the grandson of Charles of Anjou, brother of S. Louis, to whom had been given the Crown of Naples by Pope Urban IV., determined at any cost to destroy the Hohenstauffen dynasty.

Charles, Duke of Calabria, died before his father, and Joanna succeeded to the throne at the age of sixteen.

She had been badly brought up. Philippine Cabane, a washerwoman, wife of a fisherman, had been nurse to Charles, and she became later the nurse and confidante of Joanna. She was a very beautiful and a thoroughly unprincipled woman. On the death of her husband she married a young Saracen slave in the service of Raymond de Cabane, maître d’hôtel to the King. Raymond fell under the influence of this Saracen, and he introduced him to King Robert, who created him Grand Seneschal, to the indignation of the Sicilian nobility, and himself armed the Saracen knight.[9] Soon after marrying this man, we find “la Cabanaise,” as she was called, installed as lady of honour to Catherine of Austria, first wife of Charles of Calabria. Soon she induced Raymond to adopt her husband, and to give him his title and bequeath his fortune to him. Catherine of Austria died, and then Charles married Marie de Valois; and when Jeanne or Joanna was born, Charles entrusted his child to this infamous woman.

King Robert had been younger brother of Charles Martel, King of Hungary, and the Crown of Naples was liable to be disputed between the branches. It was therefore deemed advisable to marry Joanna to Andrew, son of Caroly I., and grandson of Charles Martel, King of Hungary.

Joanna and Andrew were married when mere children—she, in fact, was only seven when affianced to him. She and Andrew never liked each other, and when they occupied one throne, dislike ripened into aversion; two factions rent the Court with their rivalries, one favoured by the King, the other by the Queen. At last Philippine Cabane induced Joanna to acquiesce in a plot to murder Andrew. One evening in September, 1345, when the Court was at Averso, the chamberlain of the King entered the bedroom, where were Andrew and Joanna, and announced to him that he had despatches of importance to communicate. Andrew rose from bed and went into the adjoining apartment, where he was set upon, and hung from the bars of the window with a rope into which gold thread had been twisted by the hands of Joanna, for as Andrew was a king, “Let him be strangled royally,” she had said.

The body of Andrew was left hanging from the window for two days. Joanna at the time was aged eighteen, but she was utterly corrupt in mind. At quite an early age she had had a liaison with the son of la Cabanaise. Pope Clement VI. deemed it incumbent on him as suzerain to order the murderers to be punished; but only accessories suffered. Philippine was tortured and died under torture. Her son, Robert de Cabane, was also made to suffer in like manner; but a wad was put in his mouth to prevent him from betraying the part the Queen had in the murder, and those publicly executed were also so gagged that they might not reveal her complicity in the crime.

In less than two years after, on August 20th, 1347, Joanna married Louis of Tarentum, her cousin, who had been one of the prime investigators of the murder. But Louis, King of Hungary, was determined to avenge the death of his brother, and he marched an army against Naples, under a black flag, on which was embroidered a representation of the murder of Andrew.

Louis of Tarentum headed an army of Neapolitans against the invader, but it dispersed of itself, and Joanna fled with him to Provence in January, 1348, leaving behind her, in heartless indifference, her son, the child of the murdered Andrew.

On reaching Provence she found the barons there by no means disposed to receive her with cordiality. The atrocity of the crime revolted them, and for a whole year they held her in prison. She was arraigned before the world as an adulteress and a murderess.

At length, thanks to the intervention of Pope Clement VI., she was allowed to take refuge in Avignon, where she arranged terms with Clement, that he should declare her innocent and sanction her marriage with her cousin, in exchange for which favour she was to make over to him, for a nominal sum, the city of Avignon without the Venaissin previously acquired. The stipulated sum was 80,000 gold florins, amounting to about £128,000 in modern money. The sale was in direct contravention to the terms of the will of King Robert, who constituted her heiress with the proviso that she was not to dissipate the Crown lands and rights in the Two Sicilies and in Provence. It was further a breach of a solemn oath she had taken to the barons “that she would never alienate or wrong her royal and loyal estates of Provence.” But Joanna was in need of money to prosecute the war against Louis of Hungary. For this purpose she sold rights and domains wherever she could find a purchaser. She disposed of the forests of the Montagnes des Maures to the town of Hyères, and the fishing in the lake of Hyères as well. The rights of the Crown to the harvest of the kermes or cochineal insect that lived on the oaks, were also sold. Parts of the Estérel were alienated. Marseilles and other towns bought of her valuable privileges.