Note 105 — IX. TO PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO

Queen Joanna (the granddaughter and successor of King Robert, who died January 19, 1343) had been espoused while still a child to her cousin Andrew. The latter’s manners were rough and uncouth and “more worthy of his native country, than of that polished court wherein he had been bred.” After being tolerated for some time, he was one night seized, strangled, and thrown out of a window of the Castle of Aversa (September 18, 1345). Queen Joanna was at once accused of having been privy to the crime, although there was no actual proof to that effect. To avenge Andrew’s death, his brother, Louis I the Great, king of Hungary and Poland, successfully invaded the kingdom of Naples in the end of 1347. The Black Death obliged him to return to his own country the following year, whereupon Queen Joanna returned, and carried on a desultory warfare with the Hungarian party in Naples. In 1350 King Louis made a second expedition against Naples, but he soon found it more difficult to retain the kingdom than it had been to conquer it. And since affairs at home required his presence, he agreed to a treaty in 1351 and left Naples. The city was soon recovered by Queen Joanna (in 1352) whose reign continued for many years, undisturbed by any attack of a foreign enemy (Hallam, Vol. I, pp. 347, 348, and Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages, pp. 152, 153). The period of suspense mentioned by Petrarch must, therefore, have been from the assassination of King Andrew (1345) to the treaty agreed upon in 1351, which accords fully with the date 1349 assigned to this letter by Fracassetti (Vol. 5, p. 182).