ABSTRACT
Charles I of Anjou’s reputation for acquisitiveness is legendary. He has been accused by Sivery of attempting to get his hands on the western empire, by Runciman of determination to conquer the eastern. Charles’s immediate reaction if asked whether he had created an empire would probably have been one of irritation, if not anger. John Gillingham has provided an alternative and more useful meaning of the term empire within a medieval context. In the event, because only Charles of Salerno outlived his father, the stern measures taken to preserve the impartiality of the empire proved redundant. The del Bauz were merely the most famous of several important families who linked the two cornerstones of Charles’s empire, Provence and the Regno. The part of the Adriatic shore which Charles held very insecurely from 1271 onwards was the dominion where cultural strains were most obvious.
