Manfredi III Chiaramonte


Manfredi III Chiaramonte was a Sicilian nobleman of the House of Chiaramonte, Count of Modica, and one of the "Four Vicars" who governed the Kingdom of Sicily during the minority of Queen Maria. A leading figure in late 14th-century Sicilian politics, he operated chiefly from Palermo and across the island’s south-eastern Val di Noto, notably around Lentini and Syracuse.

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.
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.
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.

Career

Note: After the Sicilian Vespers Sicily and Naples were ruled by different dynasties.
Sicily :
Naples :
Aragon :
After the Sicilian Vespers the old kingdom split: the island 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.
  • Typical Latin leaders: the Chiaramonte ; often also the Palizzi and the Rosso.
  • Opponents in this period: the Ventimiglia, frequently aligned with the Catalan houses such as the Alagona and the Peralta; later the Moncada played a decisive Aragonese role.

    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, and in January 1351 they fought into the city, rescued Manfredi II and his household, and restored order.
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.
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.
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.

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.
By the later 1360s Manfredi shifted his household from the south-east to Palermo and began ruling from the family palace, the Steri. The comital title did not pass to him at once: after Manfredi II Chiaramonte died it went first to his son Simone Chiaramonte, then—under Manfredi II’s will—to his brother Federico Chiaramonte ; after Federico’s death 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.

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. 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.
Manfredi systematically gathered more lands under his control. He strengthened ties with other leading houses through marriage 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.

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 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.

Patronage

Manfredi’s name is closely linked to the Chiaramontan Gothic style of architecture in 14th-century Sicily. At the Palazzo Chiaramonte in Palermo, which he made his seat from 1367, he commissioned the painted wooden ceiling of the great hall, created between about 1377 and 1380 and still preserved today. He also rebuilt and fortified the hilltop Castello di Mussomeli, one of the strongest castles in the island. The Chiaramonte style is also visible at the Santissimo Salvatore and Chiesa Matrice churches in Erice. These works show the cultural as well as the political weight of the Chiaramonte in late medieval Sicily.

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.
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.
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. Other daughters included Isabella, Giovanna, Eleonora and Margherita, all from the second marriage.

Death and succession

In September 1390, already in poor health, Manfredi made his will, describing himself with the new title of "dux Gerbarum". He died in Palermo in early 1391; he is last documented alive on 2 March and recorded as dead by 1 April. He was buried in the church of San Nicolò la Kalsa.
At his death the Chiaramonte fiefs — including the County of Malta — passed to Andrea Chiaramonte, but Malta was reassigned by the crown to Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada on 4 April 1392.