Ambivalent Visual Representations of Robert ‘the Wise’ in Occitan Illustrated Texts

Abstract Art historians have long studied the Italian Angevins’ combination of Franciscan devotion and dynastic propaganda. This article examines two Occitan texts that contain unusual images of King Robert ‘the Wise’. The illustrations of both works are genealogical and they reflect the dispute over the competing claims of Robert and his nephew Carobert over the throne of Naples. In both texts, the lineage of Hungary is accorded an important role. It is argued that this is a reflection of the Italian Angevins’ use in Provence of the lineage of Hungary to justify their authority as that of a ‘blessed line’ of kings and saints.

Another, produced in Avignon in the period 1321-24 when Robert's court was in residence there, removes the king's face from a genealogical scheme. Once again, the problem appears to lie with Robert's disputed claim to his own throne. This ambivalent portrayal of Robert appears in L' Abreujamen de las estorias, an Occitan version of a universal chronicle that is variously entitled Notabilium historiarum epithoma (c. 1313), the Compendium historiarum (Venice, Avignon, and Naples, c. 1321-29), and the Satyrica historia (Naples, c. 1331-39). None of the fourteen extant manuscripts name an author of the chronicle, but it is agreed that it is the work of Paolino Veneto (c.1270-1344), a Franciscan friar and prelate whose career from the 1320s to his death was closely connected with the Neapolitan royal court, and especially with Robert himself. 4 As the other articles in this special issue demonstrate, the Italian Angevin court was a major centre for writing in French. Robert's reputation for wisdom was enhanced by the attribution to him of varied works that range from some three hundred sermons to a vernacular translation of an alchemical treatise. 5 The corpus of Occitan-language texts associated with Robert is much smaller. The complancha of 1343 associates him with his Occitan-speaking lands in Provence by asserting that the king had been 'la flor d'aqest lengage' [the flower of this language] (l. 22). 6 He is mourned by the language itself: 'The langue d' oc should sigh over it, and the Provençaux should lament and sorrow. Bitter Death, you have  hurt us deeply; you have deprived Provence of a good lord' (ll. 6-9). 7 The complancha celebrates Robert as 'grounded head and root in learning' (l. 13), and it narrates his death-bed speech (sermon, l. 44), thus underscoring the importance of his and others' preaching for Italian Angevin propaganda. 8 He kisses the Capetian fleur-de-lis (ll. 106-07) and he crowns his nephew's son with the assistance of an angelic vision (ll. 120-33). He announces that this repairs an injustice that has preyed on his mind, because 'my brother was born before me: he should better have ruled the kingdom than me' (ll.139-40). 9 Ambiguous portrayals and deliberate non-portrayals of Robert are clearly not aligned with the agenda of Italian Angevin portraiture, yet both were created under direct or indirect Angevin influence, and they must be viewed within that context. Lucherini interprets the complancha and its illustration as the earliest evidence of Angevin propaganda concerning Robert's disputed claim to his throne. 10 However, L'Abreujamen offers evidence that this issue was being debated twenty years earlier in an Avignonese Franciscan milieu. These curious images affirm as well as challenge Robert's right to rule over the kingdom of Naples and the county of Provence. Moreover, both images appear in texts of Franciscan inspiration, thus drawing attention to the key role that art historians in particular have ascribed to the Order of Saint Francis in the development and dissemination of the dynastic ideology of the Italian Angevins. It is necessary therefore to establish the mixed political, devotional, and artistic backdrop for these texts and their images before assessing their ideological content.
L' Abreujamen and the complancha reflect the Angevins' invocation of the 'blessed lineage' of Hungary (Robert's maternal descent), and the uses to which this was put in the conflict over the succession to the kingdom of Naples between him and his nephew Charles Robert, king of Hungary (hereafter Carobert, 1288-1342, r. 1308-42). Carobert was the son of Robert's elder brother, and therefore deemed to be the rightful heir to the throne of Naples. In the complancha, Robert is watched by his queen and three male figures as he crowns a boy (Figure 1). In the poem, he is guided by an angelic vision to name Carobert's son Andrew of Hungary (1327-45) as his heir. He does so in order to undo his own usurpation of the throne of Naples from his brother Charles Martel (1271-1295). Charles Martel, the first-born son of King Charles II of Anjou, was granted the claim to Hungary by his mother, Maria, who was the sister of King Ladislaus IV (king of Hungary and Croatia from 1272, murdered in 1290). Ladislaus IV was the last ruler of the Árpád dynasty, which had ruled the Christian kingdom of Hungary since the eleventh century. He and Maria were the children of the marriage of King Stephen V (r. 1270-72) to the daughter of the leading ruler of the Cuman-Kipchak tribal union. Instead of uniting a kingdom that had been devastated by the Mongol invasion of 1241, the troubled reign of Ladislaus 'the Cuman' exacerbated divisions. 11 He had a childless marriage with Isabella (another of the offspring of Charles II) who only left Hungary for Naples in 1299 (she died there in 1304). 12 Ladislaus was succeeded by Andrew III 'the Venetian' (r. 1290-1301), whose mother was from the house of Morosini. Andrew's fragile claim to the throne of Hungary was disputed by several pretenders, including Charles II on behalf of Maria of Hungary. Hungary was a papal fief, and Charles was able to obtain the backing of the Pope. 13 Maria continued to style herself 'queen of Sicily, Jerusalem, and Hungary' up to her death in 1323 (the title appears on her tomb). 14 7 Paris, BnF fr. 1049, f. 14v. 'la lengua doc en deura sospirar | e prozensals planhet e gaymentar | amara mort ben nos as fach offensa.
| de bon senhor descaptalat Prozensa' (ll. 6-9, transcription mine Robert owed the throne of Naples not to the death in 1295 of the first-born Charles Martel, but to the Franciscan piety of his second-born brother, Louis, who was next in line. When Louis relinquished the throne in order to pursue his commitment to Franciscan rigorism, Robert became king. 15 Carobert was a young child but he was the son of Charles Martel, and by right of primogeniture he, and not Robert, should have become king of Naples. Maria of Hungary's claim to Hungary had also passed first to Charles Martel, next to Louis, and thence to Robert, but in the light of Robert's accession to the throne of Naples, the claim to Hungary was granted to Carobert. He was sent to Hungary to claim his throne in 1299, at the age of eleven. As was noted above, the king of Hungary at the time was Andrew III. It took Carobert over a decade to affirm his control over the kingdom. 16 He also made repeated attempts to claim the throne of Naples. 17 In 1332-33, after a succession crisis emerged in Naples, Andrew's second-born son (also Andrew) was betrothed to Robert's chosen successor, Joanna. 18 Robert's death revived the question of who would inherit both kingdoms.
It is not clear why these Occitan-language texts foregrounded this dispute. The Occitan version of the Life of St Honorat of Lérins (composed near Arles around 1300) is dedicated to Maria of Hungary, and as has been shown by Huw Grange, it introduces a Hungarian dimension to the vita. 19 Two portolan charts of the 1320s-1330s show that there were active mercantile contacts between the Mediterranean basin and Hungary, but the connection for these texts is more likely to be based on patronage than on trade. 20 The second key factor in Occitan book culture of this region and period is the Angevin Italian patronage of the Franciscan order. In his assessment of the Anjou Bible and the Clement Bible, richly illuminated works that associate Angevin lineage with the sacred, Ronald Musto has stressed 'the essentially apocalyptic -if not Joachite -court culture fostered by Robert and Sancia in letters and sermons, their support of the Spiritual Franciscans' . 21 Research published in the 1990s by Musto as well as by Carl Brandon Strehlke, Caroline Bruzelius, and Adrian Hoch explored the idea that Robert and Sancia's court was a centre for rigorist Franciscans, adherents of strict doctrines concerning apostolic poverty, who are now known as 'Spirituals' . 22  Franciscan texts attributed to Olivi (Assisi, Chiesa Nuova, MS 9), 24 and the Life of Douceline of Digne (d. 1274), which was probably written for the beguines of Marseilles by a daughter of the powerful Porcelet lineage of Arles (Paris, BnF fr. 13503). 25 Samantha Kelly, Vinni Lucherini, and Hoch in her latest work have questioned a strictly 'Spiritual' vision of the Italian Angevin court. 26 While art patronage in this period is strongly defined by Franciscanism, it does not follow that it is aligned with the rigorists. 27 The Italian Angevins combined Franciscan devotion with a secular fixation on dynastic prestige and on maintaining their political authority. This was expressed notably through the canonization in 1317 of Robert's elder brother Louis. This mendicant Capetian saint (whose shrine was in Marseilles) reconciled opposing strands in the Italian Angevin court and the papacy. John XXII remained invested in the new saint's cult because he maintained a cordial relationship with the non-rigorist members of the Order of Saint Francis. 28 The convergence between political and theological interests appears beyond the court in books, monumental art, and in public displays of eloquence. 29 Jean-Paul Boyer and Florian Mazel have suggested that the complancha was composed under the influence of the family of Baux. 30 Bertrand III of Les Baux, seigneur of Berre (1295-1347), count of Andria and of Montescaglioso, was married to Robert of Anjou's sister Beatrice. He took a leading role in diplomatic negotiations between Robert and John XXII. In 1332-33, his mission was to defend two Spiritual friars who were Queen Sancia's confessors, and to present a draft of Robert's written contributions to John's theological controversy concerning the Beatific Vision (the controversy was designed to affirm the pope's theological acumen, but it provoked disastrous accusations of heresy). 31 Bertrand of Les Baux is the dedicatee of a text composed by Graziolo Bambaglioli in response to Robert's treatise on the moral virtues (before 1335). 32 There is no evidence that this magnate acted as patron to Occitan-language poetry.
The complancha asks the people of Aix-en-Provence to pray for the king's soul with the intercession of the Franciscan saints Clare of Assisi (ll. 196-202) and Louis of Anjou, referring specifically to Louis's shrine at Marseilles (ll. 210-16) (Robert was credited with the liturgy composed for his canonized brother). 33   on the Passion was typical of the mendicant influence in lay devotion. It is a further possible indication of a Franciscan milieu for the poem. 35 Sylvie Pollastri has suggested that the Italian Angevins' melding of piety with genealogy arose from their contact with aspirational dynasties such as the Baux. 36 For Mazel, the relationship between Provence's noble families and their Angevin overlords was one of 'spiritual convergence' rather than compliance with propaganda. He suggests that the mendicant orders, and especially the Franciscans, acted as key mediators in this process. 37 Baux and other Provençal heirs accompanied Robert and his brothers as hostages in 1284 and 1295 (a period in which they came under the influence of friars who were close to Olivi). Daughters of these families entered convents that had been founded by the Angevins, and Baux tombs were built in royal mausolea. 38 Heirs of the Puimichel and Sabran lineages had accompanied Charles II's sons as hostages in 1284 and 1295. 39 One of them, Elzéar (or Auzias) of Sabran, seigneur of Ansouis and count of Ariano (1285-1323), was tutor and regent for Robert's son Charles of Calabria. 40 Elzéar and his wife Delphine of Puimichel (d. 1358) were Franciscan rigorists who had a celibate marriage. He was buried in the Franciscan church at Apt (Vaucluse). The first request for the canonization of Elzéar came from Robert's Franciscan protégé François of Meyronnes in 1326, at the height of John XXII's repression of the Spiritual Franciscans. 41 The vitae of the celibate couple were composed in Latin as well as in Occitan verse in Avignon and Apt, where their cult was promoted after 1356. 42 A Franciscan at Apt also produced an Occitan version of the litanies of the saints. 43 Their canonization process shows that Elzéar and Delphine moved often between Provence and Naples. 44 The couple was celebrated in Apt and in Naples, specifically in the Franciscan church of St Clare. The Sabran household (possibly Delphine herself) owned a diptych that has been attributed to artists in Venice, Avignon, and Naples. 45 Strehlke suggests that religious paintings produced in Naples were sent to Provence and vice versa, citing one example of a painting commissioned by either Robert or his queen Sancia that was sent to Aix-en-Provence. According to Strehlke, 'What the artists shared was their involvement in an Angevin-inspired cultural policy' . 46 This cultural policy had as one its drivers the Franciscan Paolino Veneto, who had a remarkably long connection with the entourage of Robert of Anjou. L'Abreujamen de las estorias was produced between 1321 and 1326 in Avignon by artists who had already worked for John XXII before he was elected pope. 47 John XXII and his family were closely allied with Robert, and he had acted as a chancellor at  the Angevin court. 48 Paolino worked as a minor apostolic penitentiary from 1320 to 1324 in Avignon, where Robert's court was based. In 1326, he took up his position as bishop of Pozzuoli (he was elected to it in 1324) and thereby followed Robert's court to Naples. Paolino does not dedicate his chronicles to any patrons, but three of them were associated with Robert. The manuscript of the Satyrica historia now in Cesena was said to have been annotated by Robert in person (Cesena, Bibl. Malatestiana S.IX.5). 49 Boccaccio made notes from a surviving copy of the Compendium that was probably in the royal library in Naples (Paris, BnF lat. 4939). 50 The Bamberg copy of the Satyrica historia provides further evidence of an association with Robert (Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek Msc. 4/1): 51 Four books have been located for sure. This one. Another one is owned by the Commune of Venice. King Robert owned a third one, and with the help of that book, he would tell ambassadors about the conditions of their lands and regions as if he had been there himself, and by this means he earned himself their admiration for his wisdom. Prague Cathedral owns a fourth copy.
Paolino's manuscripts of the Satyrica historia were produced in an elite Neapolitan workshop (Paris, BnF lat. 4939, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, lat. 1960, Cesena, Bibl. Malatestiana S.IX.5, Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek Msc. 4/1). Two fifteenth-century manuscripts now in Prague and Olomouc support the idea that there was a copy of the Satyrica historia in Prague Cathedral (Olomouc, Statní Archiv, CO 200, and Prague, Knihovna Národního Muzea, XVI A 8). The manuscript that was 'in the communal house of Venice' might be the famous codex, now in Venice's Marciana Library, that was owned by Paolino himself and that was also copied in Avignon (Venice, Biblioteca nazionale Marciana cod. Z 399 =1610). 52 However close he may have been to Robert, Paolino Veneto was no friend to the Spiritual Franciscans. The Satyrica historia includes a notorious story that a prominent Spiritual Franciscan had himself crowned anti-pope in Rome. 53 An anonymous annotator commented on his omission of John XXII's persecution of the rigorist branch and his praise for his ally in the Franciscan order, Bertrand de la Tour (Paris, BnF lat. 4939, last folio). It is likely that many moderate Franciscans positioned themselves on a spectrum of opinion from commitment to hostility. 54 Robert's patronage of Paolino Veneto does not cast doubt on his support for the Spiritual Franciscans. Instead, it supports his patronage of the Franciscan order as a whole.
L' Abreujamen is explicitly pro-Angevin towards the end, because although its line of kings and popes goes up to the years 1324-26 (f. 59v), the last folio sets the head of Emperor Henry VII (r. 1312-13) alongside an account of his defeat by the Angevins in 1313 (f. 60v). The narrative links this victory to Charles I of Anjou's defeat of Manfred and Conradin in 1265, when the dynasty was founded: ' And he [Henry] died in the fifth year of his reign as king, and the first year and a month of his reign as emperor, on the twenty-third day, on the feast of St Bartholomew. On that day Conradin was struck 48 on the head with an axe by Charles in the city of Naples' (f. 60v). 55 In the Latin Compendium, produced at the same time as L'Abreujamen, the corresponding note has been emended to state simply that Conradin was defeated. 56 L'Abreujamen contains a gallery of the sons of Charles II of Anjou and Maria of Hungary. St Louis sits in the centre, flanked by his secular brothers (f. 57v, Figure 2).
The visual scheme resembles the design of Maria of Hungary's tomb by Tino di Camaino (built 1325-26 under Robert's direction), where her sons are depicted beneath her in a row of niches, the canonized Louis at the centre, between two crowned brothers, one of whom is Robert (Figure 3). 57 However, where Robert's head should sit in this gallery of siblings, a narrow column descends to the bottom of the page. Overleaf and for another few folios, the column of the 'kings of Sicily and 55 'e aqui mori lo .v. an de son realme e .i. an de son emperi e .i. mes, lo .xxiiii. jorn en la festa de Sant Bertholomeu. lo qual dia Corradi per Karle fo feritz el cap amb una destral en la ciotat de napols' . 56 'In festo sancti Bartolomei conradin q o die coradinus a karolo bello victus est' (f. 86v) (italics mine). 57 Michalsky, pp. 65, 67, and plates ix-x. Jerusalem' remains blank (ff. 57v-59r). Finally, next to the space where the portrait of Robert should sit, there is the head of his nephew Carobert as king of Hungary, with a note that invites the reader to turn back and read about the lineage of Hungary: 'For this Charles see above, where it talks about Andrew, his predecessor' (f. 59r). 58 King Edward II of England is depicted with a note: 'Edward, the son, reigns' (f. 59r) (Figure 4). 59 This final part of the manuscript must therefore have been completed before news of his deposition in January 1327 reached Avignon.
In the Venice Compendium, the gallery of eight brothers (plus four sisters) also has a gap for Robert (f. 85v), whose image sits two folios later in the column of the kings of Sicily (ff. 86v-87r). It seems  clear that the scheme for L'Abreujamen included a separate, prominent image for Robert as the ruling king of Sicily, and that at some point before the year 1327, he was dropped in favour of Carobert. By this simple omission, not only is Robert's iconic face omitted, but his very right to style himself king of Sicily and Jerusalem is put in doubt.
The key to the omission of Robert would seem to be the lineage of Hungary. Hungary is placed next to the line of Jerusalem and Sicily thanks to the inclusion of Maria of Hungary (Figure 2). Botana has established that this king-list was added at a late stage to Paolino's Venice manuscript of the Compendium, and fourteen of the Hungarian kings in L'Abreujamen are also later additions in the illustration campaign. 60 The inclusion of this regnal line from its legendary foundation supports the status of Paolino Veneto as the only known user outside the Hungarian crown of their source, Simon of Kéza's Gesta Hungarorum. 61 In the Compendium, a cursive hand has added a note beneath the head of the first-born Charles, 'called Martel, who was king of Hungary' (f. 85v). 62 The additions to L'Abreujmen are blatant around the head of Maria of Hungary. Her father Stephen V is linked to her image thanks to the additions of her brother Ladislaus IV and of her rival Andrew III, here called 'Morosini' after his Venetian mother (Figure 2). 63 However, L'Abreujamen goes beyond  accuracy and asserts the prior claim of Carobert. Any doubts are in any case dispelled by the fact that Carobert's father Charles Martel in L'Abreujamen originally wore a crown (it has been erased) and is rubricated as 'the son of Maria' . Maria of Hungary plays a pivotal role in this dispute. The Angevins used matrilinear kinship to cement their dynastic claims, as Tanja Michalsky has shown. She suggests that Maria's tomb celebrates her as the transgenerational vehicle of royal status. This was especially important because she was the descendant and the mother of saints. 64 Jean Dunbabin has argued that the marriages of Angevin and Árpád children negotiated by Charles I served his aim of blending the Capetians' sacral royalty (their use of divine unction) with the Árpádian 'blessed lineage' (beata stirps). 65 This can be seen in his campaign for the canonizations of his brother King Louis IX of France, and their Franciscan Tertiary sister, Isabelle. According to Dunbabin, Isabelle's vita was modelled on that of St Elizabeth of Hungary, duchess of Thuringia (1207-31), whose cult was also promoted by Maria of Hungary. 66  In L'Abreujamen, Emeric is depicted with a crown that has been erased and a note beside his head (possibly in Paolino's hand) that states, 'non fuit rex' [he was not a king] (f. 42v) ( Figure 6).
The chapel, according to Hoch, depicts ' Árpádian dynastic sanctity embracing Angevin coalition amidst a Franciscan milieu' . 71 Both Hoch and Norman suggest that the most plausible patron for the Assisi chapel is Maria of Hungary, who died on 25 March 1323. 72 The queen mother also commissioned a cycle of Hungarian royal saints in Santa Maria Donnaregina Vecchia in Naples, dated to between 1320 and 1325, which were probably designed to sit near her tomb (its original location in the conventual complex is unknown). 73 L'Abreujamen, produced in a Franciscan milieu between 1321 and 1326, also seems to privilege Hoch's idea of ' Árpádian dynastic sanctity embracing Angevin coalition amidst a Franciscan milieu' . Could the death of Maria of Hungary in 1323 explain the rushed addition of the Hungarian lineage to the Venice Compendium and L'Abreujamen? It can only be concluded that Carobert's claim to the throne of Naples could be used as a weapon in Provençal circles well into the 1340s, when the complancha was composed.
The Italian Angevins were not free of internal rivalries, and this provides a further possible reason for the omission of Robert's image from L'Abreujamen. Its gallery of brothers includes the lesser, ducal,  siblings John of Gravina-Durazzo (1295-1336) and Philip of Taranto (1278-1332) (see Figure 2). L'Abreujamen rubricates John as the 'prince of Achaea' . Fascinatingly, the manuscript of Paolino's Satyrica historia now in the Vatican library includes a genealogical scheme that depicts the two brothers' rival claims over the principality of Achaea, and it affirms that John is the rightful overlord (BAV lat. 1960, f. 12v). This dispute was resolved when Philip of Taranto died in 1332, for John sold his claim to Philip's son. In 1321, at the time when L'Abreujamen may have been started, John of Gravina married Agnes of Perigord, the daughter of Viscount Elie of Perigord and of Brunissen of Foix. Agnes was the most prominent member of Robert's family to have been raised in an Occitan-speaking milieu. Ibarz and I have argued previously in favour of either Agnes of Perigord or her brother Talleyrand as the original owners of L' Abreujamen. 74 The stress placed on Angevin rivalries points also to Agnes's husband John of Gravina as owner of this Occitan-language manuscript, as well as of the Satyrica historia. 75 Sibling rivalry may look like a banal explanation for the omission of Robert from L'Abreujamen, but the Italian Angevins were a dynasty for whom the personal (in the sense of the familial) was intensely political. The similarities between the religious art that they commissioned in the Italian peninsula and the images in books that were produced in Provence demonstrate their efficient dissemination of royal and sacred ideology across a wide region. These Occitan-language texts and their illustrations reflect a keen understanding by users of the vernacular of how dynastic images could both serve and undermine the authority of Robert 'the Wise' . They remain minor works, but they reached out to a wider audience than the art that was produced for the sole use of the royal family circle. They are significant for understanding the literary and artistic network of the Italian Angevins as a mixture of aristocratic, mendicant, and local agendas that did not always coalesce into a single message.