Year 1285 (MCCLXXXV) was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.
Peter III of Aragon was King of Aragon, King of Valencia, and Count of Barcelona from 1276 to his death. At the invitation of some rebels, he conquered the Kingdom of Sicily and became King of Sicily in 1282, pressing the claim of his wife, Constance II of Sicily, uniting the kingdom to the crown.
Philip III, called the Bold, was King of France from 1270 until his death in 1285. His father, Louis IX, died in Tunis during the Eighth Crusade. Philip, who was accompanying him, returned to France and was anointed king at Reims in 1271.
Peter IV, called the Ceremonious, was from 1336 until his death the king of Aragon, Sardinia-Corsica, and Valencia, and count of Barcelona. In 1344, he deposed James III of Majorca and made himself King of Majorca.
Frederick II was the regent of the Kingdom of Sicily from 1291 until 1295 and subsequently King of Sicily from 1295 until his death. He was the third son of Peter III of Aragon and served in the War of the Sicilian Vespers on behalf of his father and brothers, Alfonso ΙΙΙ and James ΙΙ. He was confirmed as king by the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302. His reign saw important constitutional reforms: the Constitutiones regales, Capitula alia, and Ordinationes generales.
John I, called by posterity the Hunter or the Lover of Elegance, or the Abandoned in his lifetime, was the King of Aragon from 1387 until his death.
Charles II, also known as Charles the Lame, was King of Naples, Count of Provence and Forcalquier (1285–1309), Prince of Achaea (1285–1289), and Count of Anjou and Maine (1285–1290); he also styled himself King of Albania and claimed the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1285. He was the son of Charles I of Anjou—one of the most powerful European monarchs in the second half of the 13th century—and Beatrice of Provence. His father granted Charles the Principality of Salerno in the Kingdom of Sicily in 1272 and made him regent in Provence and Forcalquier in 1279.
Roussillon is a historical province of France that largely corresponded to the County of Roussillon and part of the County of Cerdagne of the former Principality of Catalonia. It is part of the region of Northern Catalonia or French Catalonia, corresponding roughly to the present-day southern French département of Pyrénées-Orientales in the former region of Languedoc-Roussillon.
The Catalan Company or the Great Catalan Company was a company of mercenaries led by Roger de Flor in the early 14th century and hired by the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos to combat the increasing power of the Anatolian beyliks. It was formed by almogavar veterans of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, who had remained unemployed after the signing in 1302 of the Peace of Caltabellotta between the Crown of Aragon and the French dynasty of the Angevins.
James II, called the Just, was the King of Aragon and Valencia and Count of Barcelona from 1291 to 1327. He was also the King of Sicily from 1285 to 1295 and the King of Majorca from 1291 to 1298. From 1297 he was nominally the King of Sardinia and Corsica, but he only acquired the island of Sardinia by conquest in 1324. His full title for the last three decades of his reign was "James, by the grace of God, king of Aragon, Valencia, Sardinia and Corsica, and count of Barcelona".
The Senyera is a vexillological symbol based on the coat of arms of the Crown of Aragon, which consists of four red stripes on a yellow field. This coat of arms, often called bars of Aragon, or simply "the four bars", historically represented the King of the Crown of Aragon.
Charles of Valois, the fourth son of King Philip III of France and Isabella of Aragon, was a member of the House of Capet and founder of the House of Valois, whose rule over France would start in 1328.
The Crown of Aragon was a composite monarchy ruled by one king, originated by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona and ended as a consequence of the War of the Spanish Succession. At the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon was a thalassocracy controlling a large portion of present-day eastern Spain, parts of what is now southern France, and a Mediterranean empire which included the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Southern Italy and parts of Greece.
Spain in the Middle Ages is a period in the History of Spain that began in the 5th Century following the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and ended with the beginning of the Early modern period in 1492.
The Battle of Malta took place on 8 July 1283 in the entrance to the Grand Harbour, the principal harbour of Malta, as part of the War of the Sicilian Vespers. An Aragonese fleet of galleys, commanded by Roger of Lauria, attacked and defeated a fleet of Angevin galleys commanded by Guillaume Cornut and Bartholomé Bonvin.
Roger of Lauria (c. 1245 – 17 January 1305) was a Calabrian admiral in Aragonese service, who was the commander of the fleet of the Crown of Aragon during the War of the Sicilian Vespers. He was probably the most successful and talented naval tactician of the Middle Ages. He is known as Ruggero or Ruggiero di Lauria in Italian and Roger de Llúria in Catalan.
The Aragonese Crusade (1284–1285), also known as the Crusade of Aragon, was a military venture waged by the Kingdom of France against the Crown of Aragon. Fought as an extension of the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282–1302), the crusade was called by Pope Martin IV in retribution for Peter III of Aragon's intervention in Sicily, which had damaged the political ambitions of the papacy and France.
The Treaty of Tarascon was an accord between Pope Nicholas IV, Philip IV of France, Charles II of Naples, and Alfonso III of Aragón that was intended to end the Aragonese Crusade, an episode in the War of the Sicilian Vespers. The treaty was signed at Tarascon, halfway between papal Avignon and Arles, on 19 February 1291, six years after Philip's brother, Charles of Valois, tried to conquer Aragón from Alfonso's father, Peter III of Aragon, in an event called the Aragonese Crusade because it was sanctioned by Nicholas' predecessor, Pope Martin IV. The intent of the signatories in putting an end to hostilities was to prevent Aragonese domination of Sicily, then ruled by Alfonso's brother, James II.
The War of the Sicilian Vespers, also shortened to the War of the Vespers, was a conflict waged by several medieval European kingdoms over control of Sicily from 1282 to 1302. The war, which started with the revolt of the Sicilian Vespers, was fought over competing dynastic claims to the throne of Sicily, and grew to involve the Kingdom of Aragon, the House of Anjou, France, and the papacy.
John of Procida (1210–1298) was an Italian medieval physician and diplomat.
