The terms of the Caltabellota treaty made it clear that the Angevins had not renounced claims to Sicily. The Spaniards and French went at it again in 1312, but it was always half-hearted. With neither side particularly committed, its inconclusiveness sapped enthusiasm. The Sicilian barons didn’t care too much since they thrived on war and were disinterested for Sicilian independence for the sake of indepedence. They’re concern was with their pockets and they’d side with whoever bolstered their short-term interests. Some of the baronial families were: the Ventimiglia, mainly around Trapani; the Chiaramonte, around Palermo; the Moncada; and the Peralta.
Frederick III died in 1337, succeeded by Peter II, who died in 1342. There was a Louis in there too… blah-diddy-blah blah.
The Black Death arrived in 1347, and although we don’t have figures for Sicily in particular, about 1/3rd of the population was lost in Europe, and we can reasonably assume it was somewhere in that neighborhood in Sicily too.
Frederick IV (the Simple… not a nickname I would have been particularly in love with either) became King and inherited a hopelessly chaotic realm. The barons had split into two main factions: the Latins, led by the Chiaramonte, and the Catalans, represented by the Ventimiglia. In 1371, Fred the Simple went to Naples to see if he could resolve this, which he did, on condition that he pay an annual tribute to Naples. When Frederick died in 1377, he left no heir, so the Island was divided into four ‘Vicarates’ to be administered by the four principal baronial families: the Alagona fam would govern the east from Catania; Peralta from Sciacca in the south; Ventimiglia for most of the North, minus Palermo; and Chiaramonte in Palermo.
The only daughter of Frederick, Maria, now become a major pawn among the princes of Europe. Hard to figure out why anyone would have been all that psyched about Sicily by this point, but they were. Lots of European royal families were busy marketing their sons to get married to Maria and grab on to Sicily. I don’t know if she was a looker or not, but I’m pretty sure the artist who did this painting of her should have been killed for his efforts. Anyway, while that drama was in mid-season, one of the baronial families, the Moncada, were pissed about being left out of a ‘vicarate’, and kidnapped Maria. They shipped her to Barcelona where she was promptly taken off the market and married to Martin I, the “Younger”, of Aragon. Martin decided then that Sicily was to be subject to him and invaded in 1392. Some baronial families welcomed him, presumably those that thought they could profit from his reign, while others resisted. He eventually grabbed enough control of the important areas, but large swaths of the island remained outside that control.
Martin revived the parliaments, but they were never, uh, what we would call “democratic”. They were basically just assemblies for the parliamentarians to listen to what was being dictated to them from on high. Martin died in 1409 before having children, so his Father succeeded him, but lived only a year longer. Yeah, it’s unusual to have a father succeed a son, but hey, it happened this time.
In 1412, Ferdinand was chosen as King of Spain, and claimed Sicily for himself. The Sicilians didn’t object, were probably too tired to care, and figured the new guy would probably never set foot on their island anyway. But Ferdinand died in 1416 and in 1421, Alfonso V was named ruler of Sicily, while living in Naples. Anybody else feel there’s just a constant cycle of names here? Yeah, me too.
The 1400s were a time of constant money problems. Too much of Sicily was enfeoffed (weird word meaning ‘given as a fief’ or feudal land) to the barons. Alfonso, nicknamed the “ Magnanimous”, but probably NOT by the Sicilians…) stopped at nothing to squeeze as much out of the Sicilians as possible. In 1458, Alfonso died and his brother John II was given Sicily. Sicily seemed ok with the new guy, and only once, in 1478, when he tried to squeeze them for more money continue his war against the Turks, did the Sicilians stand up to him, because they had a healthy trade with the Turks and the Sicilians needed that healthy trade to not be interrupted.
His son Ferdinand, who ascended the throne in 1479, was of huge historical importance. He was the same guy who married Isabella, and commissioned a rather insignificant event in world history: the expedition of Columbus to America. But just a touch before that, his pious Catholic sense commissioned another event. In 1487, the Spanish Inquisition arrived, which ordered Muslims and Jews to either convert, or leave the island. Muslims were already mostly gone, but Jews represented a large, and important, minority. Sicily’s economy suffered big-time as a consequence of this declaration.
Meanwhile, through corruption or neglect, many Sicilian lands that were technically Spanish crown territories, had become baronial estates. But Ferdinand wanted them back. A viceroy named Ugo Moncada was appointed to reclaim these lands. When Ferdinand died in 1516, a mob chased Moncada out. But while the Sicilians would occasionally rise and revolt, they lacked cohesion, as well as any positive or constructive ideas for what they wanted to build in place of what they tore down.
When Charles V of Habsburg arrived in 1517, he was still a Dutchman through and through, which did not make a good first impression. But he was sagacious and shrewd. He did his best, but managing his own countrymen turned out to be difficult. Probably by now, the Sicilians were getting sick and tired of foreigners getting all the good government positions depending, the nationalities of which depended on the revolving door of nationalities making the decisions about their island
However, it was another event that began to turn the page on the Mediterranean: The discovery of the Americas, and… the route to India around the African horn. The Mediterranean had been THE conduit of trade from East to West. But now, new richer markets had opened up in the new world, and the new route to even the old trade partners in the East, meant the Mediterranean could be bypassed altogether. The Middle sea had become something of a backwater, and Sicily, as always, was the loser.