Manfredi I Chiaramonte


Manfredi I Chiaramonte, also known as il Vecchio, was a Sicilian nobleman of the Chiaramonte family. A supporter of Frederick III of Aragon during the War of the Sicilian Vespers, he was invested in 1296 with the County of Modica, which became the basis of his family's power.

Origins and family

Manfredi I Chiaramonte was the son of Federico Chiaramonte and Marchisia Profoglio, probably the eldest. He was born in Sicily shortly after the mid-13th century, into a family already established on the island through Profoglio inheritances around Girgenti ; by 1300 Marchisia is recorded founding and endowing a Cistercian house there.
Claims that the Chiaramonte descended from the French Clermonts remain unproven; modern reference works treat the connection as possible but uncertain.
Manfredi I had at least two brothers, Giovanni I Chiaramonte and Federico. By the early 1300s a partition of the family estates is attested: Giovanni held Favara, Comiso and Mussaro ; Federico held Racalmuto and Siculiana; while Manfredi had received Caccamo from his mother Marchisia and later added the County of Modica with Ragusa and Scicli.

Career

Note: After the Sicilian Vespers Sicily and Naples were ruled by rival dynasties.
Sicily :
Naples :
Aragon :
The Sicilian Vespers revolt of 1282 expelled Angevin forces from the island and brought in the Aragonese dynasty. The old kingdom split: the island was ruled by the Aragonese, while the mainland remained Angevin.

Career

In this divided political landscape, Manfredi first appears in the record in the 1290s. Though from a Latin family, he aligned himself with the Aragonese claimant Frederick III. His support was rewarded on 25 March 1296, when Frederick invested him with the vast County of Modica, confiscated from Angevin partisans. The county, centred on Ragusa and Scicli, became a semi-autonomous jurisdiction, later summarised in the formula sicut ego in regno meo, tu in comitatu tuo.
Through his marriage to Isabella Mosca, daughter of Count Federico Mosca, Manfredi also secured claims to Ragusa and Scicli. The consolidation of these territories gave him a power base in southeastern Sicily, while his inheritance of Caccamo from his mother Marchisia anchored him in the north.
Manfredi was active in royal service. He is recorded as grand seneschal of the kingdom, and played a prominent role in Frederick III’s court. By the time of his death, he had established the Chiaramonte among the four leading baronial houses of Sicily, remembered collectively as the "four kings in the kingdom".

Patronage

In 1310 the bishop of Girgenti granted Manfredi adjoining houses in the city for an annual census; on this site he “laid the foundations” of a fortified palazzo, traces of which survive within the present episcopal seminary.
Contemporary and later notices also credit him with enlargement works at the Castello di Caccamo around 1300, part of his patrimony from his mother Marchisia Profoglio.
Although the celebrated Monastero di Santo Spirito at Agrigento is often cited as an early exemplar of Chiaramontan Gothic architecture, the foundation itself belongs to Manfredi’s mother, Marchisia Profoglio, rather than to Manfredi personally.

Family life

The date of Manfredi's marriage to Isabella Mosca is not recorded, but the match was in place by 1296, when Manfredi was invested with the county following the Mosca forfeiture. From this marriage were born two children: Giovanni II Chiaramonte and Costanza, who married Francesco I Ventimiglia, count of Geraci.
Although his endowment lay chiefly in the south-east, the family’s roots and a principal residence remained at Girgenti. The great Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri in Palermo is attributed by sources to his brother Giovanni’s initiative in 1307.

Death and succession

Manfredi I Chiaramonte died c. 1321. He was succeeded in the County of Modica by his son, Giovanni II Chiaramonte, then still a minor, under the guardianship of his uncle Giovanni I Chiaramonte "il Vecchio".
Manfredi’s testament provided that, should Giovanni II die without a male heir, the succession should pass to the line of his brother Giovanni I. This arrangement came into effect in 1342, when Giovanni II died childless in the male line, and the county passed to Giovanni I’s son, Manfredi II Chiaramonte.