Principi-baroni nel Regno aragonese di Napoli: il caso di Federico d’Aragona, principe di Squillace e di Taranto (1482-1487)

Abstract

The relationship between monarchy and barons represented, since the XVI century, a fundamental theme for the interpretation of the complex political and institutional dynamics concerning the Aragonese Kingdom in Naples. This relationship was especially seen as antithetical, because of the repeated armed conflicts between the Crown and the rebellious barons, but it deserves, according to a renewed historiography, to be still investigated from unedited observation posts. This article focuses on the neapolitan royal princes, occupied in very important institutional roles and at the same time titulars of feuds: Aragonese princes-barons, therefore, through which (and particularly Frederick of Aragon, prince of Taranto and Squillace, whose paradigmatic case is analyzed more widely) the Crown experiments an overcoming of the antithesis, extending its own political praxis and its own ideology of the power in the provincial territories, as well as spreading and defending its own ideal model of a Neapolitan baron.