ABSTRACT
Paris-educated himself, Charles I of Anjou brought a new aristocracy to the Regno, to mix with the survivors of and the exiles from the old regime. His court attracted missions from all over Italy, most regularly from Florence and the papacy. Messengers sped through Tuscany and Lombardy to draw together the Regno, Provence and Anjou. The Regno’s commercial links were much stronger with Marseilles and Nice than with the north. The local vernacular was closer to Occitan than to French. Furthermore troubadour poetry was already popular in the Regno; the Hohenstaufen rulers had encouraged it, both in the local vernacular and to a small degree in Occitan. Charles’s advent might have brought new life to an already existing poetic tradition, that of the ‘Sicilian school’. The connection between the poets and Peter of Aragon probably explains why, in the dangerous years between 1265 and 1268, Charles chose to repress troubadour songs.
