Ladislas of Naples

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Coat of Arms of Ladislas, as titular King of Hungary, titular King of Jerusalem, and King of Naples.

Ladislas the Magnanimous (also spelled Ladislaus; 11 February 1377 – 6 August 1414), was King of Naples and titular King of Jerusalem and Sicily, titular Count of Provence and Forcalquier (1386 – 1414), and titular King of Hungary (1390 – 1414). He was the last male of the senior Angevin line.

[edit] Biography

He was born in Naples, the son of Charles III and Margherita of Durazzo.

He became the King of Naples from the age of nine (1386) under his mother's regency. Through the 1390s he was constantly opposed by Antipope John XXIII as well as by Louis II of Anjou, then head of the junior Angevin line, who contested the throne. Louis successfully seized Naples from him in 1390, but was expelled again in 1399.

He endeavored to consolidate the royal power in Naples at the expense of the baronial, and brought about the murder of several members of the Sanseverino family for frustrating his ends.

He became a skilled political and military leader, protector and controller of the Papacy of Innocent VII. He profited from disorder throughout Italy to greatly expand his kingdom and his power, appropriating much of the Papal States to his own use.

From 1390 he was also claimant to the throne of Hungary and Dalmatia. His claim to the kingdom of Hungary was opposed by Sigismund of Luxemburg, while he sold his rights to the kingdom of Dalmatia to the Venetian Republic for 100,000 Ducats in 1409.

He was also the prince of Taranto from 1406, having taken the Dowager Princess Mary of Enghien (1367–May 9, 1446), Countess of Lecce etc, as his third wife and barred her son from the principality. King Ladislas first attempted to subjugate those fiefs by a war and besieging the lady, but did not succeed in capturing her castle. Therefore, he changed tactics, began negotiations, and succeeded in compelling her to marry him.

He seized the city of Florence in 1414 and planned to take over, except the plague took over the city and decimated his army and forced them out. This further pushed the Renaissance building campaign in Florence, especially with the continuation of the construction of Brunelleschi's dome on the Duomo.

He was widely reputed to have been poisoned and died in Naples on August 6, 1414. He was succeeded by his sister Joan II of Naples, the last member of the senior Angevin line in Italy.

Significantly, when Antipope John XXIII preached the crusade against Ladislas, Jan Hus opposed the sale of indulgences to finance it in Bohemia, which led to Hus's death and subsequently the Hussite movement.

[edit] Marriages and children

Ladislas married three times:

• First to Costanza of Clermont in 1390. She was a daughter of Manfredo of Clermont, Count of Motica. They were divorced in 1392.
• Second to Marie of Lusignan on 12 February 1403. She was a daughter of James I of Cyprus. She died on 4 September 1404.
• Third to Mary of Enghien in 1406. She survived him by thirty-two years.

There were no children from either of his marriages. However Ladislas had at least two illegitimate children:

• Rinaldo of Durazzo, "Prince of Capua". Had children of his own.
• Maria of Durazzo. Considered to have died young.

[edit] External links

• A listing of descendants of Charles I of Sicily