Chivalric romances and narratives in the reign of Queen Giovanna I

Ronald G. Musto

Chivalric Romances and Narratives in the Reign of Giovanna I of Naples

This paper is part of my current research project: a study of the historiography of the Mezzogiorno 1

during the trecento tentatively titled, Writing Southern Italy Before the Renaissance (Scrivere il Mezzogiorno

alle soglie del Rinascimento). Here, today, I will be distilling chapter 4 of this book that discusses the shared

cultural milieu of vernacular romance and historical writing by the Villani, Domenico da Gravina, 2 3

Petrarch, Boccaccio and others. This chapter will demonstrate how historians of the trecento drew on a 4 5

variety of romance conventions to help “fill in the gaps” where hagiography and royal biography failed to

provide explanations for historical events, character and motivations. It builds on the work of Alessandra

Perriccioli Saggese, Marino Zabbia, Fulvio Delle Donne, Chiara De Caprio, Hayden White, Gabrielle 6 7 8 9 10

Presented at the international conference, Scrivere la Storia tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna: Autorialità e 1

Progettualità del Testo Storico, Naples 9-10 December 2014. I would like to thank the Università degli Studi di Naples Federico II and the meeting’s organizers — Giancarlo Abbamonte, Chiara De Caprio, Andrea Mazzucchi, Francesco Montuori and Francesco Senatore — for the invitation to present my initial research findings and for their generous remarks and hospitality. A revised and far more detailed version will appear as a chapter in my forthcoming book.

For a recent, general introduction to the Villani and their work see Paula Clarke, “The Villani Chronicles,” in 2

Chronicling History: Chroniclers and Historians in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Sharon Dale, Alison Williams Lewin and Duane J. Osheim (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 113–43.

Domenico da Gravina, Chronicon de rebus in Apulia gestis ab anno MCCCXXXIII usque ad annum MCCCL. in 3

Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vols. 12–15, ed. Ludovico Antonio Muratori (Milan: Societas Palatina, 1727–29), 12:546–711. Fulvio Delle Donne is currently working on a new critical edition of the text with annotation and Italian translation.

For a recent scholarly introduction see Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi, eds., Petrarch: A Critical Guide to 4

the Complete Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

See Victoria Kirkham, Michael Sherberg and Janet Levarie Smarr, eds., Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the 5

Complete Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Especially I romanzi cavallereschi miniati a Napoli (Naples: Società Editrice Napoletana, 1979).6

Notai-Cronisti nel Mezzogiorno svevo-angioino: Il Chronicon di Domenico da Gravina (Salerno: Laveglia Editore, 7

1997).

Politica e letteratura nel Mezzogiorno medievale: La cronachistica dei secoli XII–XV. (Salerno: Carlone, 2001).8

Scrivere la storia a Napoli tra medioevo e prima età moderna, Studi e Saggi 51 (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2012).9

See especially Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation 10

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); the essays in idem, The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, 1957–2007, ed. Robert Doran (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).

Musto: Chivalric Romances, ! of !1 14

Spiegel, among others. 11

Here today I will quickly survey La Manekine, Belle Hélène de Constantinople, the Roman de la

Comtesse d’Anjou, Melusine and Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris to focus on what Nancy Black has

termed “medieval narratives of accused queens.” Their authors used the rich psychological genre of the 12

romance to deploy dramatizations of female inheritance and male privilege, internal dynastic conflict, and

female character that were readily recognizable to their audiences. Following Paul Strohm’s lead, I will 13

discuss not the “discreet elements” of such narratives but their “larger interpretive structures.” As an

historical example of the accused queen I will use the biography of Giovanna I of Naples. To demonstrate

this borrowing in the opposite direction — to reflect how Angevin rulers inserted themselves into chivalric

romance and sacred history to bolster political claims — today I will briefly survey manuscript production in

Naples. I will discuss the visual uses of Meliadus de Leonnois (London, BL Add 12228), the Anjou Bible

(Leuven, Maurits Sabbe 1), and the Statutes of the Order of the Holy Spirit or the Knot (Paris, BnF fr. 4274).

Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: Johns 11

Hopkins University Press, 1997); and idem, Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writing after the Linguistic Turn (New York: Routledge, 2005).

Nancy B. Black, Medieval Narratives of Accused Queens (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003). The 12

literature on the subject is large. See, for example, János M. Bak, “Queens as Scapegoats in Medieval Hungary,” in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe: Proceedings of a Conference Held at King’s College London, April 1995, ed. Anne J. Duggan (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1997), 223–33; Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); idem, ed., Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Steven Swann Jones, “The Innocent Persecuted Heroine Genre: An Analysis of Its Structure and Themes,” Western Folklore 52 (1993): 13–41; and Peggy McCracken, The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).

Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton: Princeton 13

University Press, 1992), 34–51. See also Monika Otter, “Functions of Fiction in Historical Writing,” in Nancy Partner, Writing Medieval History (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 109–30 at 116–17.


Giovanna I: The Falsely Accused Queen Time today will not allow us to repeat the events of Giovanna’s reign from 1343 to 1382. We should, 14

however, emphasize certain important details: her designation as Robert of Anjou’s heir — a female

inheritance unprecedented among the Capetians and Valois; the rivalry for the throne from Giovanna’s

cousins in Hungary and from the houses of Taranto and Durazzo, and their incestuous proposals of marriage;

Giovanna’s infamia for Prince Andrew’s murder and false rumors of her sexual misconduct; the brutal

treatment of her court; Lewis of Hungary’s invasion; Giovanna’s farewell speech to the Neapolitans and her

flight by ship; and her wandering and imprisonment in Provence. Sources then trace her exoneration at the

papal court, her marriage to her cousin Louis of Taranto and return to Naples, new conflict over her right to

rule, and a new cycle of infamia that would adhere to her reputation into the twenty-first century. 15

Romance Models: The Empress of Rome, Constance, La Manekine There are many lacunae to the historical portrait of Giovanna I. Could trecento historians like the Villani,

For a brief summary with bibliography see Ronald G. Musto, Medieval Naples: A Documentary History, 400–14

1400 (New York: Italica Press, 2013), 234–59. For others reliable accounts, see Emile G. Léonard, Histoire de Jeanne I, reine de Naples, comtesse de Provence (1343–1382): Mémoires et documents historiques, 3 vols. (Monaco: Imprimerie de Monaco, 1932–37); idem, Les Angevins de Naples (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954); Mario Gaglione, Donne e potere a Napoli: Le sovrane angioine. Consorti, vicarie e regnanti (1266–1442) (Catanzaro: Rubbertino Editore for l’Alto Patrocinio dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, 2009), 175–292; and Elizabeth Casteen, “Sex and Politics in Naples: The Regnant Queenship of Johanna I of Naples, 1343–1382,” Journal of the Historical Society 11 (June 2011): 183–210; based on her dissertation “The Making of a Neapolitan She-Wolf: Gender, Sexuality, and Sovereignty and the Reputation of Johanna I of Naples” (Northwestern University, 2009). Nancy Goldstone, The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I (New York: Walker & Company, 2009) relies on the long-distorted historiography.

A few examples must suffice. See remarks by Antonio Muratori in his edition of Domenico da Gravina in Rerum 15

Italicarum Scriptores 12 (1728), 547–48; Alexandre Dumas, Jeanne de Naples (1843); Marjorie Bowen, The Sword Decides: A Chronicle of a Queen in the Dark Ages, Founded on the Story of Giovanna of Naples (New York: The McClure Co., 1908); Vittorio and Lydia Gleijeses, Gli amori della regina Giovanna (Florence: Sansoni, 1973); idem, Giovanna I d’Angiò, regina di Napoli (Naples: Società Editrice Napoletana, 1978); Benedetto Croce, Storia del Regno di Napoli (Bari: G. Laterza, 1925); English trans. History of the Kingdom of Naples, ed. H. Stuart Hughes, trans. Frances Frenaye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 225; Carlo Da Frede, “Da Carlo I d’Angiò a Giovanni I (1263–1382),” Storia di Napoli, ed. Ernesto Pontieri, 6 vols. (Naples: Società Editrice Storia di Napoli, 1967–74) 3:1–334, at 225; Ferdinando Bologna, pittori alla corte angioina di Napoli, 1266–1414, e un riesame dell’arte nell’età fridericiana. Saggi e studi di storia dell’arte 2 (Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 1969), 271–74; Giuseppe Galasso, Storia d’Italia. Il Regno di Napoli: Il Mezzogiorno angioino e aragonese, 1266–1494 (Turin: UTET, 1992) at 165; and David Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms 1200–1500: The Struggle for Dominion (Harlow: Longman, 1997), 162–70.


Gravina and others have therefore used literary motifs to fill them? These narratives of accused queens 16

present four common elements: first of incestuous marriage; second of false charges leveled against the 17

heroines — often from within their own family; third, their fall from power and grace, expulsion or flight

into exile — usually by ship — and their humiliation and sufferings; and fourth their miraculous restoration

by the Virgin Mary through the agency of a powerful male cleric, often the pope himself. They then repeat

the cycle of accusation, exile and restoration, making the female ruler an almost perpetual sacrificial offering

to the rhythms of decay and renewal within the family or the larger body politic. If the king’s body could die

and be reborn, it seems that the queen’s body must be repeatedly scarred, dismembered and then returned to

face yet another round of trial and exoneration at the hands of her accusers and judges. 18

Black has grouped these accused-queen narratives into two major types. The first type is the “Empress

See here Otter, “Functions of Fiction.”16

See Black, 8–12, who includes the queen’s restoration under the third.17

On the king’s body as political symbol see Sergio Bertelli, The King’s Body: Sacred Rituals of Power in Medieval 18

and Early Modern Europe, trans. R. Burr Litchfield (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001); on the queen’s body, John Carmi Parsons, “Violence, The Queen’s Body, and the Medieval Body Politic,” in “A Great Effusion of Blood”? Interpreting Medieval Violence, ed. Mark D. Meyerson, Daniel Thiery and Oren Falk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 241–67. The place of the medieval queen in real political life has been examined by many scholars including Marion F. Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship: Capetian France 987–1237,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 6 (1968): 1–48; Pauline Stafford, “Emma: The Powers of the Queen in the Eleventh Century,” in Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983), 3–26; and idem, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh–Century England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997). Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, “Introduction: A New Economy of Power Relations: Female Agency in the Middle Ages,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 1–16, offer a good review of the master narratives of medieval women’s history. For the most recent research see Amalie Fössel, “The Political Traditions of Female Rulership in Medieval Europe,” in Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 68–83. On Mediterranean queenship see now Elena Woodacre, Queenship in the Mediterranean: Negotiating the Role of the Queen in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).


of Rome,” Belle Hélène de Constantinople or “Constance” tale. In some versions a rebuffed lover — 19 20

often a male relative with incestuous desires — murders the queen’s consort and blames her for the murder.

The second type, of incest and mutilation, is known in folklore as the “handless queen” and appears in

Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine (of c.1300). As in the Empress or Constance, a powerful woman is falsely 21

accused and then flees by sea to find justice and restoration. I will use examples of both types in my book.

La Comtesse d’Anjou My first example is the Roman de la Comtesse d’Anjou written in 1316 by Jean Maillart, a secretary to 22

the French royal court, soon after the harsh punishment of Queen Giovanna’s Capetian cousins Margaret,

Blanche and Jeanne of Burgundy in the sexual scandal of the Tour de Nesle affair. Maillart’s roman of a 23

falsely accused countess fleeing her father’s incestuous desire strips out almost all myth, magic and folklore

to concentrate on the political and social impact of such accusations.

This has been edited by M. Claude Roussel, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople: Chanson de geste du XIVe siècle, 19

Textes Littéraires Français 454 (Geneva: Droz, 1995); and idem, Conter de geste au XIVe siècle: Inspiration folklorique et écriture épique dans La belle Hélène de Constantinople (Geneva: Droz, 1998). See also Nancy B. Black, “La Belle Hélène de Constantinople and Crusade Propaganda at the Court of Philip the Good,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 26 (2000): 42–51; and idem, Medieval Narratives, 167–85.

See Black, Medieval Narratives, 20–36, 68–72.20

Black, Medieval Narratives, 37–65. For an English edition of La Manequine see Barbara Nelson Sargent-Baur, ed. 21

and trans., Philippe de Remi Beaumanoir, Manekine, John and Blonde, and “Foolish Generosity” (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010). For analysis see M. Shepherd, Tradition and Re-Creation in Thirteenth Century Romance: “La Manekine” and “Jean et Blonde” by Philippe de Rémi (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990). For a more recent discussion, see Linda Marie Rouillard’s review of “Jean Wauquelin, La Manequine, Maria Colombo Timelli, ed. Textes Littéraires du Moyen Âge 13; Séries Mises en Prose 1 (Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2010),” Speculum 87.1 (January 2012): 288–89. The story has folklore archetypes in Aarne-Thompson type 510B, unnatural love. It was also illustrated by Gustave Doré (1862) and filmed (1970) as Peau d’Âne (Donkey Skin) by Jacques Demy, with Catherine Deneuve as the princess and Jean Marais as her royal father. See also Ruth Bottigheimer, “Before Contes du temps passe (1697): Charles Perrault’s Griselidis, Souhaits and Peau,” The Romantic Review 99.3 (2008): 175–89.

Jean Maillart, Le roman du comte d’Anjou, ed. Francine Mora-Lebrun (Paris: Gallimard, 1998).22

See Black, Medieval Narratives, 68–83; McCracken, Romance of Adultery, 171–78; and Elizabeth A.R. Brown, 23

“The King’s Conundrum: Endowing Queens and Loyal Servants, Ensuring Salvation, and Protecting the Patrimony in Fourteenth-Century France,” in Medieval Futures: Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages, ed. J.A. Burrow and Ian P. Wei (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2000), 115–65.


Melusine My second example, of the fairy princess Melusine of Lusignan, was written by Jean D’Arras for Jean 24

Duc de Berry in 1393 and illustrates the cultural ambience of the Francophone elites of the trecento. Its

central issues — dynastic foundation and legitimacy, the role of the queen, violence and rivalry within a 25

ruling family, the denial of the woman ruler’s agency and the vilification of her body as serpentine —

bracket the period under discussion here and remained central to the concerns of its historians.

Meliadus In the third example, Meliadus de Leonnois, we have evidence of the direct impact of romance at the 26

court of Naples. Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese has identified several illuminated manuscripts of this

work completed in Naples either in the form of Guiron le Courtois or of Meliadus, ranging from the late

The French text was edited by Louis Stouff in Jean D’Arras, Melusine: Roman du XIVe siècle publié pour le 24

première fois après le manuscrit de la Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal avec les variantes de la Bibliothèque nationale (Dijon: Publications de l’Université de Dijon, 1932). There is a modern French edition with ample annotation by Jean-Jacques Vincensini, Melusine: Ou, La Noble histoire de Lusignan, roman de XIVe siècle (Paris: Libraire Générale Française, 2003). For a good English version see Jean D’Arras, Melusine: Or the Noble History of Lusignan, trans. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012). For the most comprehensive critical interpretations see the essays in Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds., Melusine of Lusignan: Founding Fiction in Late Medieval France (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996).

The variations of inheritance through marriage to a female heir include: marriage to a king’s daughter, Hermine, 25

and refusal to remain only a consort to a ruling queen (Urian in Cyprus, Jean D’Arras, Melusine, 97–99); marriage to woman as sole heir, Florie, who assumes she is ruler but is put aside (Guyon in Armenia, ibid., 110–12); attempt to capture a ruling woman and to rule by force (king of Alsace against heiress Crestienne of Luxembourg, ibid., 113–15); male assumes the crown from the sole female heiress, Aiglentine (Renaud in Bohemia, ibid., 131–46): “governance of a women is of little value…. you must marry a man fully capable of taking care of you and your land” (ibid.,142–43); female heirs disqualified (Geoffrey in Northumberland, ibid., 186–87).

On Meliadus and the courtly romances in Naples see further Edmund G. Gardner, Arthurian Legend in Italian 26

Literature (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1930), 44–63; Perriccioli Saggese, Romanzi cavallereschi; Roger Lathuillère, Guiron le Courtois: Etude de la tradition manuscrite et analyse critique, Publications Romans et Françaises 86 (Geneva: Droz, 1966); Barbara Wahlen, L’écriture à rebours: Le roman de Meliadus du XIIIe au XVIIIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 2010). A new edition is now available: Venceslas Bubenicek, ed. Guiron le courtois: Roman arthurien en prose du xiiie siècle. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 363 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014). I have not yet been able to see Anne Elizabeth Nevile, “‘A Tapestry Woven by Poets’: Narrative in Text and Illustration in the Meliadus de Leonnois, British Library MS. Add. 12228” (Ph.D. diss., University of Melbourne, School of Culture and Communication, 2013).


duecento to the mid-trecento. One manuscript with direct bearing to our study, now British Library, 27

Additional 12228, dates from after May 1352 and the marriage and coronation of Giovanna I and her 28

cousin, Prince Louis of Taranto.

The manuscript takes up 352 double-columned folios of Old French. It ends incomplete at fol. 352v.

A close Italian translation, Gli Egregi Fatti del Gran Re Meliadus by Federico Torregiani, uses 1224 print

pages in the two-volume Aldine edition of 1559/60 to tell the complete tale. The work falls into two 29

major parts. The first describes the various adventures of knights associated with King Arthur’s Round

Table. One of these, Meliadus, the father of Tristan, emerges as the chief champion and best knight of his

time. This half reveals an externalized rhetoric of masculinity that casts the female as temptress, betrayer

or passive victim and that promotes kingship as a matter of personal glory and mastery of arms. The

second part of Meliadus, beginning with the bas-de-page image of the elaborate royal procession and

joust on folios 212v–213r (Fig. 1), recounts Meliadus’s illicit love for the queen of Scotland and the tragic

war that ensues, compared explicitly to the Trojan War.

The manuscript’s visual program reveals a consistent and emphatic projection of Louis of Taranto’s

claims to rule and his appropriation of Angevin royal arms: the fleur-de-lis field capped by a red bar —

often impaled with the Jerusalem Cross — used from Charles II to Queen Giovanna I (Fig. 2a), and placed

by her over the portals of her church of Sta. Maria Incoronata (Fig. 2b–c), for example. On folio 4r of 30

Meliadus (Fig. 3a) the bas-de-page presents Louis enthroned with the full regalia of crown, scepter and orb.

Behind him (Fig. 3b) a tapestry bears the Angevin arms. Above him is the elaborate emblem of his new

Order of the Knot or of the Holy Spirit. On the left, stands a group of supplicant women, children and

elders. On the right, Oriental peoples, flanked by camels and lions, offer open coffers of tribute monies.

These have been cataloged and illustrated with folios from the manuscripts by Perriccioli Saggese in her I romanzi 27

cavallereschi. See her catalog nos. 12 (Venice, BNM, MS IX 227), 14 (Paris, BNF Ms. fr. 1463), 19 (Vatican, BVA Ms. Reg,. Lat. 1501), 24 (Venice, BNM, Ns. fr. XV (228).

The manuscript of Meliadus (BL, MS Add. 12228) is available online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/28

Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_12228.

2 vols. (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1559–60). This was based on the French printed editions of Galliot du Pré 29

(1528) and Denis Janot (1532). See Gardner, Arthurian Legend, 48 n.1.

See for example, Ronald G. Musto, Medieval Naples, image galleries: Sta. Maria Incoronata, image 06, https://30

www.flickr.com/photos/80499896@N05/7389187718/in/set-72157630165725336.


https://www.flickr.com/photos/80499896@N05/7389187718/in/set-72157630165725336

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_12228

Louis of Taranto exploits two key themes here: first, Angevin mastery not only of Italy but also of the

Holy Land and its peoples; and second the Angevins’ role as papal champions against the Roman

emperors. Louis assumes the role of Arthur in Meliadus: the king who has led his country against the

threat of Roman imperial aggression. Like Arthur, Louis also leads an order of chivalry. The conflation of

Louis’s own Order of the Knot with the Knights of the Round Table is clear throughout the text.

Meliadus also reveals the anxieties of rulers in the later trecento in a turbulent world where

boundaries and the political loyalties they contained were increasingly permeable. Unlike the civic 31

themes of the Comtesse d’Anjou or Melusine, for example — where the trials of the female protagonists

lead to better understandings of social justice and the need to address the concerns of the poor and

marginalized — Meliadus projects the male ruler’s need to tighten the ties among the chief male barons of

the realm.

Louis’s identification with Meliadus is also clear: his arms — which appear frequently through the

manuscript — are those of the royal Angevins (Fig. 4). The consistency of the iconography runs across 32

changes of illuminator, visual style, costume and detail from mid-trecento to mid-quattrocento and points

to a clearly determined visual program for the manuscript. Perriccioli Saggese has argued that Cristoforo

Orimina and workshop completed the illuminations up to folio 259 and that Orimina reserved for himself

the bas-de-page illustrating the procession of the queen of Scotland (fol. 212v, Fig. 5). For this he 33

probably used as his model actual historical events in the triumphant processions of Queen Giovanna’s

and Louis of Taranto’s return to Naples in 1348 or of their wedding in Naples on Pentecost Sunday (May

23) 1352. These same rich details of ornament and dress are also described verbally by Matteo Villani in 34

his Cronica (III.8). The placement of the procession at the center of the codex and its assignment to

See Ronald G. Musto, Apocalypse in Rome: Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age (Berkeley: University 31

of California Press, 2003), 92–93, 202–3; Giorgio Falco, “I comuni della Campagna e della Marittima nel medio evo 3: Il declinare delle autonomie comunali (sec. xiv),” Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 49 (1926): 127–302; and Peter Partner, The Lands of St. Peter: The Papal State in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (London: Methuen, 1972), 60 n.2, 131, 236 n.2, 295, 310, 386 et passim.

Fully recognizable from folio 68v onward.32

“Cristophoro Orimina: An Illustrator at the Angevin Court of Naples,” in The Anjou Bible: A Royal Manuscript 33

Revealed: Naples 1340, ed. Lieve Watteeuw and Jan Van der Stock (Paris: Peeters, 2010), 113–25, at 122.

See Perriccioli Saggese, “Cristophoro Orimina,” 122.34


Orimina’s own hand point to both the importance of the historical event and of the fictive episode.

Ultimately, Louis sought to inject his career into this fictional account for two reasons: the first,

reflecting the first part of the tale, was to mythologize his gradual rise to prominence among the high

nobility of the Angevin court, to prove his worthiness to rule through martial valor. The second used the

second part of the tale — the falsely accused queen of Scotland as fictionalized Giovanna and the slanders

surrounding her and Louis’s relationship from Prince Andrew’s murder in 1345 to Giovanna’s official

marriage to Louis in 1352. As in Meliadus, Louis claimed to save both the queen’s life and her reputation.

Other Angevin Manuscripts Other manuscript examples can be adduced to document this social and political use of illumination at

the Neapolitan court. My book will examine two others in this regard. The first, the well-known Anjou 35

Bible, was commissioned in the late 1330s by King Robert and lavishly completed by 1340 by two of the 36

court’s artists, the scribe Iannucius de Matrice and again by the illuminator Cristoforo Orimina. Its portraits

of the Angevins are well known to this audience and include the frontispiece portrait of King Robert (fol. 3v)

and the famed Angevin pictorial genealogy (4r). Giovanna’s legitimate inheritance form one of the

manuscript’s major themes. On folio 309r (Fig. 6), for example, she sits crowned, beside Robert in front the

royal Angevin arms. She is shown reading in clear imitation of her grandfather’s well-known wisdom.

Quite different are the intentions of the second manuscript: Louis of Taranto’s Statutes of the Order of

See, for example, the astute analysis of Queen Giovanna I’s Book of Hours (Vienna, Österreichische 35

Nationalbibliothek, Ms. Cod. 1921) in Michelle M. Duran, “The Politics of Art: Imaging Sovereignty in the Anjou Bible,” The Anjou Bible, 73–93 at 87–91. Duran calls attention to the prominent place of the Empress Helen as a model for Giovanna’s right to rule. The Hours were also produced in Orimina’s workshop. On the creation of textual communities — whether religious, secular cultural or political — around such visual objects, see the essays in Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse, and Kathryn A. Smith, eds., The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013).

Leuven, Maurits Sabbe Library, MS 1. See Watteeuw and Van der Stock, The Anjou Bible. This had been available 36

freely online at: http://www.anjoubible.be/thebibleonline, but access is now limited.


http://www.anjoubible.be/thebibleonline

the Holy Spirit of 1352. These were written in French, in the same Italian Gothic hand as Meliadus, again 37

illuminated by Orimina. The Statutes attempt to recreate in fact the fictive chivalric world of Meliadus as

Louis attempts to project himself as another Arthur and to plant this chivalric world firmly on Naples’ soil.

On folio 5r (Fig. 7a–b), for example, Louis’s knights assemble at Castel dell’Ovo which takes on the identity

of another Camelot.

As in Meliadus, the statutes are replete with the royal presence projected into fictive scenarios and

adventures. Boccaccio gives vivid testimony to the risible elements of these cross-overs between fact and

fiction, explicitly comparing the fictive “fatti” of the knights of the Holy Spirit to those of the knights of the

Round Table. Boccaccio’s notes that Niccolò Acciaiuoli composed the statutes in French in the same style as

other Arthurian romances he had commissioned for the royal court. 38

Nowhere in the Statutes is the presence of women felt, with one exception. This is the famous double

portrait (fol. 2v, Fig. 8a) of Louis and Giovanna kneeling at the foot of the crucified Christ upheld by God

the Father. Behind Louis kneels an attendant bearing a standard upon which rises Louis’s helmet, like that of

Meliadus, crowned and adorned with high wings, bearing the Angevin royal arms (Fig. 8b, c). Giovanna’s

presence is important: it both legitimizes the new Order and acknowledges that in 1352 the queen still ruled

Naples. On folio 3r (Fig. 9a–b), however, Louis sits alone, enthroned, the Holy Spirit descending upon

Paris, BNF, MS 4274. This is available online at: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8551130g/f1.item.r=4274. 37

For analyses, see Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese, “Gli Statuti dell’Ordine dello Spirito Santo o del Nodo: Immagine e ideologia del potere regio a Napoli alla metà del Trecento,” in Medioevo: Immagini e ideologie. Centro Studi Medievali, Università degli Studi di Parma, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan: Electa, 2005), 519–24; idem, “Cristophoro Orimina,” 113–25; and Giuliana Vitale, “Monarchia e ordini cavallereschi nel regno di Napoli in età angioina,” in Linguaggi e pratiche del potere: Genova e il regno di Napoli tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Giovanna Petti Balbi and Giovanni Vitolo (Salerno: Laveglia Editore, 2007), 269–346. Vitale, 327–39, presents a complete diplomatic edition of the Old French text and an Italian translation. I thank Prof. Vitale for kindly providing me with this article.

In his letter 8 to Francesco Nelli. See Perriccioli Saggese, “Gli Statuti,” 122; and quoted and analyzed in Vitale, 38

“Monarchia,” 313–14. See Vitale, “Monarchia,” 309; Andreas Bräm, “Zeremoniell und Ideologie im Neapel der Anjou: Die Statuten vom Orden des Heiligen Geistes des Ludwig von Tarent, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 4274,” Römisches Jahrbuch Der Bibliotheca Hertziana 36 (2005): 45–92; and D’Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton, The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe, 1325–1520, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2000).


http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8551130g/f1.item.r=4274

him. Behind him hang the Angevin arms and Jerusalem Cross in the same setting as his image in the 39

Meliadus manuscript (Fig. 10a–b). In both he wears the royal red with golden bands.

The comparison to Meliadus is apt, as that manuscript also begins with a carpet page containing the

symbol of the same Order of the Holy Spirit or Knot. For Louis, fiction and fact blended seamlessly in both,

and both manuscripts emphasize the knots that bind a male king to his vassals-in-chief. Louis modeled his

image of kingship not on his dependent relationship to his wife or dynasty but on literature: a conflation

of Arthurian romance and crusading gestes. In this he sought to create his own base of power and 40

loyalty. He had already secured the alliance of Niccolò Acciaiuoli and the financial and diplomatic power

that this Florentine embodied, but above all he needed to appear — and to become — the chief male of

the realm.

Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris All these strands come together in Giovanni Boccaccio’s “Life of Giovanna I,” the last of his 106

biographies in De mulieribus claris. In imitation of Petrarch’s De viris illustribus, Boccaccio used classical, 41

biblical, patristic, medieval chronicle, royal biography and other details. But, as the work’s most recent

Anglophone editor, Virginia Brown, asked, “are these additional details the product of his own imagination or

did he have recourse to another source as yet unidentified?” This source, I will argue, was the genre of the 42

Vitale, “Monarchia,” 319–23, cites scholarship supporting the plausibility of the influence of the Spiritual 39

Franciscans in this devotion to the Holy Spirit. For the general climate at the Angevin court see Ronald G. Musto, “Franciscan Joachimism at the Court of Naples, 1305–1345: A New Appraisal,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 90.3–4 (1997): 1–86.

Vitale, “Monarchia,” 293–303 et passim, has also stressed the impact of previous chivalric orders on Louis’s 40

ideas. Prominent among these was the Order of the Star created in November 1351 by John II the Good of France.

Completed between 1362 and 1375. For recent analysis see Constance Jordan, “Boccaccio’s In–Famous Women: 41

Gender and Civic Virtue in the De mulieribus claris,” In Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. C. Levin and J. Watson (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 25–47; Letizia Panizza, “Rhetoric and Invective in Love’s Labyrinth (Il Corbaccio),” in: Kirkham, Sherberg and Smarr, Boccaccio, 183–93, which balances this rhetorical invective against the De mulieribus claris; and Deanna Shemek, “Doing and Undoing: Boccaccio’s Feminism (De mulieribus claris),” in Kirkham, Sherberg and Smarr, Boccaccio, 195–204.

Virginia Brown, ed. and trans., Famous Women, I Tatti Renaissance Library 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University 42

Press, 2001), xviii.


falsely accused queen. Boccaccio, we recall, knew the Arthurian cycles and was the author of the patient 43

Griselda, also the final story of the Decameron (X.10). In paragraphs 10 and 11 of his life of Giovanna he

praises her with a precise recapitulation of the accused-queen narrative.

Moreover, she is so prudent that she can be deceived more easily by treachery than through shrewdness. She is so steadfast and constant that she will not be easily swayed in her just purposes without reason. This has already been shown clearly enough not long ago by the blows of Fortune which have often struck and buffeted her from every direction. For she has endured the internal struggles of petty fellow-princes and foreign wars which at time were waged within her kingdom. Through the fault of others, she has had to endure flight, exile, the grim ways of her husbands, the envy of noblemen, undeserved ill-repute, the threats of popes, and other things, all of which she has borne bravely. Finally, her indomitable soul has conquered everything; this would have been a great deed for a strong, powerful king, and not only for a women. 44

Naples as Leonnois I would now like to return briefly to the last third of the Meliadus manuscript and to one of its more

important motifs: the probable insertion of Naples as the stand-in for Leonnois (Liones). Here, across 16

folios (259v–275v, Fig. 11a-b) the scene remains unchanged. To the left, on the versos, a cityscape fills

the bas-de-page and continues up along the left margin and between the text columns. On the facing

rectos a field of battle is flanked to the right by camp pavilions. Close examination of the urban

topography across these folios reveals a consistent rendering of walls, towers, gates, church buildings and

castles. The scene is far more accurate than one of the earliest renderings of Naples in the cassone

painting from c.1382 (Fig. 12), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicting Charles of Durazzo’s

As the essays by David Wallace, Elissa Weaver and Michael Sherberg in Kirkham, Sherberg and Small, 43

Boccaccio, make clear. See also Gardner, Arthurian Legend, 228–38.

Est insuper oculata femina tantum, ut fraude potius quam ingenio illam decipere queas. Est et magnifica, regio 44

potius quam femineo more; sic et grata memorque obsequiorum; longanimis est et constans, ut sacrum propositum eius non leviter flectas in vacuum: quod satis monstravere iamdudum in eam fortune sevientis insultus, quibus persepe acri concussa motu et agitata est atque turbine circunducta vario. Nam perpessa est intestina regulorum fratrum discordia et extera bella, non nunquam intra regni gremium debachata, sic et alieno crimine fugam exiliumque et coniugum austeros mores, livores nobilium, sinistram nec meritam famam, pontificum minas et alia, que omnia forti pertulit pectore; et tandem erecto invictoque omnia superavit animo: edepol grandia, nedum mulieri, sed robusto ac prevalido regi! Translated by Brown, Famous Women, 470–72.


conquest of Naples in 1381 and recently analyzed by Luciana Mocciola. 45

Like the Metropolitan cassone, the scene in the BL manuscript focuses on the Campus Neapolitanus

east of the city (Fig. 13a-b). In the center is the field of battle. To the viewer’s right (recto) stands King

Arthur's camp. To the left, on the facing versos, appears the characteristic combination of the Ponte della

Maddelena (Guizzardo) crossing over the Sebeto, and the Porta Maddelena or Carmine. The Porta

Maddelena is marked throughout by the same high-arched, crenellated and shallow rectangular form

represented in the Metropolitan cassone. Behind them (Fig. 14a) consistently in the BL MS rises the

church of the Sant’Agostino alla Zecca with its three-tiered tower, turret with its orb and cross, and bifore.

In the center Castel Capuano looms topped by crenellation and pennant as citizens of Leonnois view the

battle from a loggia on the castle’s southeast corner. To the right rises the campanile of S. Pietro ad 46

Aram. Here the three buildings bear the same topographical relationship as they have in the Tavola Strozzi

of 1472/73 (Fig. 14b). The field of encounter would have been a natural vantage point for the artist: the 47

ancient Campus Neapolitanus was the historic mustering point for armies and the most open terrain

Rogers Fund, 1906. Accession 07.120.1. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/45

437001?rpp=30&pg=1&ft=07.120.1&pos=1 . See Mocciola, “La presa di Napoli di Carlo III di Durazzo nel pannello del Metropolitan Museum: Nuove ipotesi,” in Giancarlo Abbamonte et al., ed., La battaglia nel Rinascimento meridionale: Moduli narrativi tra parole e immagini (Rome: Viella, 2011), 57–67.

There exist few views of Castel Capuano for the period under discussion here. The Tavola Strozzi’s view is 46

abstract and lacks detail; but there does exist a modern view of the castle in which the remnants of just such a loggia are clearly visible on the upper story of the castle’s southeast corner: two bays are still open, a third has been closed by a rectangular Renaissance window frame. See the print, from 1858, in Antonio Cirillo, Castel Capuano (Naples: Fausto Fiorentino, 1994), 141, reproduced by Musto, Naples Images Galleries at https://www.flickr.com/photos/80499896@N05/7670910916/in/set-72157630808244632. This feature appears in the city maps by Stopendaal of 1653, by Pesche and Bulifon of 1685, Petrini of 1690, Caronelli of 1700 and others including Petrini of 1748. See Cirillo, 170–73. It was suggested during the convegno that this might be the Temple of the Dioscuri, an iconographic building for Renaissance Neapolitans, with its obvious Greek pediment and statuary. See Musto, Naples Image Galleries, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/80499896@N05/sets/72157630150918068. The temple’s iconography is consistent from the early sixteenth century, showing fluted Corinthian columns supporting a pediment with frieze incorporating and topped by statuary. Yet the view here is clearly that of human figures set inside a gallery with rounded arches, a view also similar to that of the sea-facing Loggia Grande to the left side of Castel Nuovo in the Tavola Strozzi. See Giulio Pane, La Tavola Strozzi tra Napoli e Firenze: Un immagine della città nel Quattrocento (Naples: Grimaldi, 2009), figs. 21–23, for example, and the existing loggia at http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2826/11621946965_f5266bffa6.jpg.

For this view see Cesare De Seta, Napoli: Fra Rinascimento e Illuminismo (Naples: Electa, 1997), 43; and Pane, 47

Tavola Strozzi, figs. 28, 39, For the prominent place of Sant’Agostino, see Caroline Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266–1343 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 25–27.


http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/437001?rpp=30&pg=1&ft=07.120.1&pos=1

https://www.flickr.com/photos/80499896@N05/7670910916/in/set-72157630808244632

https://www.flickr.com/photos/80499896@N05/sets/72157630150918068

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2826/11621946965_f5266bffa6.jpg

around the city. Francesco Montuori has recently offered verbal and visual evidence to demonstrate that

this perspective was part of the cultural “imprinting” of Neapolitans toward their city. 48

We recognize that the BL drawings were probably done in the later quattrocento, most likely by a

Provençal or Catalan hand. However, given the consistency of the original text hand, mis-en-page and 49

decoration and the similarity of the city design to the image of Troy in Orimina’s 1335 Histoire ancienne

jusqu’à César (fol. 117v, Fig. 15b) — also commissioned by Acciaiuoli — one could argue that the 50

cityscapes in the BL manuscript were carried out according to the Orimina’s original visual program,

albeit with significant design modifications in their rendering and placement. We know from his 51

rendering of Castel dell’Ovo in the Statutes that Orimina was capable of great topographical accuracy. 52

Conclusions In conclusion, a series of literary conventions involving plot lines, characterizations, virtues and vices

helped fill in the gaps where the conventions of hagiography and royal biography failed to provide the

necessary motivating factors for human actions and historical events. Thus writers like Gravina, Petrarch,

the Villani and Boccaccio could draw on romance literature in the same way that they used the available

Latin classics.

I hypothesize that one of the earliest sets of images of the city of Naples that we possess — like the

other manuscript illuminations discussed — helped ground these fictions in the solid reality of an urban

topography familiar to all its readers. They reinforce these literary borrowings through visualizations of the

chivalric characters, architecture and the urban topography of Naples.

Thank you.

Francesco Montuori, “Immagini di Napoli fra trecento e quattrocento,” in Il viaggio a Napoli tra letteratura e arti, 48

ed. Pasquale Sabbatino (Naples: Edizioni Scientifici Italiane, 2012), 13–37, at 25–30. Common elements include the viewpoint from the east, the prominent place of the walls and towers and their close proximity to the sea.

Perriccioli Saggese, Romanzi cavallareschi, 59–61.49

BL, MS Royal 20.D.1. The manuscript, with complete cataloging information and bibliography, is available 50

online at: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_20_D_I. See also Perriccioli Saggese, Romanzi cavallereschi, 105–8, tav. xlii–xlix.

An issue that Perriccioli Saggese questioned and left for further research: Romanzi cavallereschi, 61.51

See figures 7a–b and Vitale, “Monarchia,” 324–26.52


http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_20_D_I

Fig. 1. Meliadus de Leonnois (BL Add 12228), fol. 212v–213r.

Fig. 2. Arms of Queen Giovanna I. a: Anjou Bible (Leuven, Maurits Sabbe 1), fol. 309r. b–c: S.M. Incoronata, main portal.

ba c

Fig. 3. Meliadus de Leonnois (BL Add 12228), fol. 4r. a: Louis of Taranto enthroned. b: detail.

Fig. 4. Meliadus de Leonnois (BL Add 12228), fol. 68v: Meliadus/Louis of Taranto.

Fig. 5. Meliadus de Leonnois, fol. 212v, detail: Procession of Queen of Scotland (Giovanna I).

Fig. 6. Giovanna I and Robert of Anjou. Anjou Bible, fol. 309r.

Fig. 7. a: Statutes of the Order of the Holy Spirit (Paris, BnF MS fr. 4274), fol. 5r. b: detail of Castel dell’Ovo.

Fig. 8. a: Statutes of the Order of the Holy Spirit, fol. 2v. b: detail. c: Meliadus, fol. 68v, detail.

a

b

c

Fig. 9. Statutes of the Order of the Holy Spirit. a: fol. 3r; b: detail.

Fig. 10. Louis of Taranto enthroned. a: Meliadus, fol. 4r. b: Statutes, fol. 3r, detail.

Fig. 11. Naples as Leonnois. Meliadus (BL Add 12228), a: fol. 262v; b: 263r.

Fig. 12. Charles III Conquers Naples. MMA Cassone, 1382. Rogers Fund. Accession 07.120.1.

Fig. 13. Naples. a: Meliadus (BL Add 12228), fol. 262v. b: MMA Cassone, detail.

Porta Maddelena

Porta Maddelena

Fig. 14. Naples: Sant’Agostino alla Zecca, Castel Capuano, S. Pietro ad Aram. a: Meliadus (BL Add 12228), fol. 262v. b: Tavola Strozzi, detail.

Sant’Agostino

Castel CapuanoSant’Agostino

Castel Capuano

a b

San Pietro ad Aram

San Pietro ad Aram

Fig. 15. Orimina mis-en-page. a: Leonnois, from Meliadus (BL Add 12228), fol. 262v. b: Troy, from Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César (BL Royal 20.D.1), fol. 117v.

Chivalric romances and narratives in the reign of Queen Giovanna I

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