ABSTRACT
When in November 1459 Jean, son of Rene of Anjou, raised his standard on Neapolitan soil he trod in the steps of forebears who had striven unsuccessfully for three generations to make good their claim to the throne of Naples. Ultimately that claim derived from rights of conquest and papal grant secured by the French prince Charles, brother of St Louis, duke of Anjou and Provence, who in 1265 had answered a papal summons to wrest the kingdom of Sicily from the excommunicated Hohenstaufen.l It was reinforced in the 1370s by the eruption of simultaneous, interlocked contests for the papal and Neapolitan thrones. Charles' last direct descendant, the dissolute and childless Joanna I, chose in 1378 to recognise the anti-pope Clement VII despite the popularity which his rival, the Neapolitan Urban VI, enjoyed among her subjects.2 Urban retaliated by calling on Charles of Durazzo, the nearest male survivor of the Angevin line in Naples, to depose her.J Against that onslaught Joanna turned
for aid to her French Valois relative Louis, duke of Anjou, whom she adopted in 1380 as heir to her throne.4
