Origins and family
Manfredi III was the illegitimate son of Giovanni II Chiaramonte. Giovanni was married to Eleonora, an illegitimate daughter of King Frederick III of Aragon. Their only legitimate child was a daughter, Margherita. [1]
He was almost certainly born within his father’s Modica domains—around Ragusa and Scicli in the Val di Noto—where the Chiaramonte family’s principal estates lay and where their seat, the Castello dei Conti in Modica, dominated the town, though no specific birthplace is recorded. [1] [2]
When his father died in 1342, leadership of the house passed to his older cousin, Manfredi II Chiaramonte, who was Count of Modica by the 1340s. Because Manfredi III was illegitimate, he did not succeed his father and began his career as a kinsman and captain in the south-east. [1] [2]
Career
Context — Sicilian and Neapolitan rulers in Manfredi's lifetime
Note: After the Sicilian Vespers (1282) Sicily and Naples were ruled by different dynasties.
Sicily (Aragonese line):
Naples (Angevin line):
Aragon (Crown of Aragon; external but decisive):
Background
After the Sicilian Vespers (1282) the old kingdom split: the island (“Sicily/Trinacria”) was ruled by the Aragonese, while Naples stayed under the Angevins. By the mid-14th century, Sicilian politics fell into two loose camps. The "Latin" barons were older local families, often sympathetic to Naples; the "Catalan" barons were nobles close to the Aragonese and strongest in the east. (In practice, loyalties shifted and were not strictly geographic.) [2]
- Typical Latin leaders: the Chiaramonte (Manfredi III), the Ventimiglia; often also the Palizzi and the Rosso families. [7]
- Typical Catalan leaders: the Alagona (Artale I), the Peralta; later the Moncada played a decisive Aragonese role. [2]
Early campaigns (1350–1357)
In late 1350 the people of Palermo rose against the Chiaramonte. Manfredi marched up from the south-east, joined Simone Chiaramonte (his kinsman and son of the family head, Manfredi II), and in January 1351 they fought into the city, rescued Manfredi II and his household, and restored order. [2]
The next years saw on-and-off fighting with the Chiaramonte’s main rivals, the Alagona family. Manfredi held a block of towns in the south-east—especially Lentini, Syracuse, Vizzini and Caltagirone—and tried to keep them; sometimes he attacked Alagona towns, and sometimes the Alagona attacked his. [2]
In 1354 there was a struggle for control in Messina. The rival baronial group there was the Palizzi faction led by Matteo Palizzi. In April the Chiaramonte forced Palizzi to let the teenage King Louis leave the city; in June the king was taken to Taormina, where Manfredi briefly had custody of him, before the king was brought back to Messina a month later. Soon afterwards the city rose against Matteo Palizzi, who was deposed and killed. The king himself survived the crisis but died of natural causes the following year (1355). [2]
A truce was agreed on 18 November 1357 with the Alagona side, covering most of Manfredi’s south-eastern strongholds, but it did not last and the fighting soon resumed. In the later 1350s he led the Latin barons in repeated attempts to take Catania from the Alagona, but by 1360 Artale I d'Alagona had secured the city firmly for the Catalan camp. [2]
Consolidation and reconciliation (1358–1377)
After years of fighting, the balance of power shifted. In the 1360s Manfredi began to move away from constant war with the crown and towards a cautious reconciliation with King Frederick IV. By 1364 he had made peace with the king, and the following year he was rewarded with important royal grants, including the towns of Mistretta, Malta and Mussomeli, and the office of admiral of the kingdom. [2]
By the later 1360s Manfredi shifted his household from the south-east to Palermo and began ruling from the family palace, the Steri (by the end of 1367). The comital title did not pass to him at once: after Manfredi II died (1354) it went first to his son Simone (d. 1357), then—under Manfredi II’s will—to his brother Federico (III); after Federico’s death (1363) the title passed to Matteo Chiaramonte. Only when Matteo died in 1377, without leaving a surviving male heir, did Manfredi III inherit the County of Modica, by then already reconciled with King Frederick IV and serving as admiral of the kingdom. [2]
The Four Vicars (1377–1391)
After King Frederick IV died on 27 July 1377, his daughter Maria inherited as a minor. In 1378 the justiciar Artale I d'Alagona associated three other magnates—Manfredi III Chiaramonte, Guglielmo Peralta and Francesco II Ventimiglia—with himself as a collegiate regency known as the "Four Vicars", who governed in Maria’s name. Each vicar dominated a region (Manfredi chiefly Palermo and the south-east; Alagona the Catania–eastern zone; Peralta the south-west; Ventimiglia the north). In January 1379 Queen Maria was seized and removed from Sicily by Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada—initially with some vicar connivance—an episode that drew in the Aragonese crown and shaped the rest of the regency. [2] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Manfredi systematically gathered more lands under his control. He strengthened ties with other leading houses through marriage (he married Francesco II Ventimiglia's daughter Eufemia) and by arranging high-status matches for his daughters. He also dealt directly with major powers—the papacy and the merchant republics of Genoa, Venice and Pisa—and in 1388 helped cover arrears due from Sicily to the pope, paying the largest single share among the vicars. Taken together, these moves made him the most powerful of the "Latin" barons by the 1380s. [2] [1]
Final years and naval campaign (1388–1391)
In 1388 Manfredi organised a naval expedition against the island of Djerba, off the coast of modern-day Tunisia. At the time it was used as a base by North African pirate fleets (often called "corsairs") that raided Sicily and other Christian lands around the Mediterranean. The pope approved the venture, and Genoese, Pisan and Venetian galleys joined the Chiaramonte ships; the crusading fleet captured the island that summer, though it was lost again soon after. In the same period Manfredi made a major alliance by marrying his twelve-year-old daughter Costanza Chiaramonte to Ladislaus, king of Naples (15 August 1390). [2] [3]
Family life
Manfredi married twice. His first wife was Margherita Passaneto, daughter of Count Ruggero Passaneto. She appears with him in Lentini during the wars of the 1350s, and was besieged there with their children in 1361; she died some years later, before 1367. [2]
He then married Eufemia Ventimiglia, daughter of Francesco II Ventimiglia, Count of Geraci. This second marriage tied him closely to one of the other great baronial families of the island and ended long-standing rivalries between them. [2]
From these marriages he had at least six daughters. The best-known was Costanza, who in 1390, aged about twelve, was married to Ladislaus of Naples and briefly became queen consort of Naples. [3] Other daughters included Isabella (or Elisabetta), Giovanna, Eleonora and Margherita, all from the second marriage. [2]
Death and succession
In September 1390, already in poor health, Manfredi made his will, describing himself with the new title of "dux Gerbarum" (duke of Djerba). [2] He died in Palermo in early 1391; he is last documented alive on 2 March and recorded as dead by 1 April. [2] He was buried in the church of San Nicolò la Kalsa.
The vast Chiaramonte holdings passed to Andrea Chiaramonte [d] , who inherited both the County of Modica and the family’s role as one of the leading barons of Sicily. [2]
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