Roxane Chilà

Le présent volume rassemble les actes du colloque « "Arriver" en ville : les  migrants en milieu urbain au Moyen Âge. Installation, intégration, mise à l’écart », qui se tint à l’École Normale Supérieure de Lyon les 24 et 25 février 2011. Cette rencontre visait à interroger la place jouée par les migrations à destination des villes dans la construction du groupe social urbain et dans sa façon de vivre et de s’approprier la ville et, en retour, comment celle-ci les transforme. Si, quantitativement, l’importance de cette mobilité urbano-centrée est en général avérée dans les phases de roissance urbaine, comment celle-ci s’inscrit-elle dans les trajectoires personnelles, dans les parcours individuels des hommes et des femmes qui franchissent, au Moyen Âge, les portes d’une ville ? C’est seulement, semble-t-il, à cette échelle d’analyse que l’on devrait être capable de distinguer, au-delà des contraintes politiques ou institutionnelles déjà évoquées, les « stratégies » d’implantation en ville et d’accès à la ville de ces nouveaux arrivants et leur insertion dans leur nouvel environnement
social.
Cette réflexion collective souligne combien l’étude des migrations s’avère être un jalon important pour une histoire comparée des villes.

The analysis of Alphonso the Magnanimous’ itinerary in Italy, together with the contribution of the spatial environment to the meaning of the monarchy’s great political celebrations, brings to light a form of specialisation of spaces. This seems to play a role in the organisation of the king’s communication with the various political entities making up his short-lived empire. That communication consists mainly in regulating access for supplicants, courtiers and royal officers, as well as in grand style urban spectacles. In Naples, civil harmony is displayed by the participation of both the city’s political elite and the Church in cavalcades and great triumphs highlighting the urban geography of power. Castelcapuano, residence of the heir to the Kingdom of Naples, is a political pole turned to the urban elites, whereas Castelnuovo, official residence of King Alphonso, polarises, concentrates and organises the flow of people, information and credit coming from all the territories of the Crown of Aragon and the Regno. Hunting, for its part, seems to participate in recreating a form of shared sociability with the feudal lords who, along with the city’s noble families, compose an elite the king has to reckon with. Thus, through various ways of inhabiting and traveling his realm, Alphonso the Magnanimous does alternately honour with his presence the distinct social and national groups in his domains.

The pdf file is also available at this adress : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/UNIV-MONTP3/tel-01144965v1

This PhD dissertation focuses on institutional and social aspects of a 15th century court, the court of Alfonso the Magnanimous, king of Aragon and Naples, between 1416 and 1458. The household of Aragon’s kings regulated by court ordinances, the last ones being promulgated in 1344. Since this date, a change of dynasty and the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples has deeply affected the institutional structure of the court and the government’s practices chosen by King Alfonso. Moreover, there are no longer court ordinances, and consequently, its structure has been neglected by historical research. In order to fill this gap, this dissertation studies the royal household using documentation issued by the royal chancellery, which provides useful data, showing how the Aragonese household is also the beating heart of the royal administration. As Pietro Corrao described it, the Aragonese household is an efficient “household system of government”.
After the conquest of southern Italy, their Italians contemporaries consider the royal officers who came with king Alfonso as a hole (they call them “the Catalans”), but an in-depth study shows that they come from different regions and social background. Their massive arrival in Naples after many years of war for the kingdom caused tensions and xenophobia among the Italians. The royal officers settled down in the harbour neighbourhood, under the royal jurisdiction, whereas the Neapolitan nobility and people lives in the upper city, under the city’s jurisdiction. This social and political gap leave its mark upon the failed process of urban integration of the newcomers. However, Alfonso uses his capital city as his favourite stage in order to show himself as an up to date Renaissance king, and display many ceremonial events. His antiquity-inspired triumph is the most famous example of this practice.
Career analysis applied to Aragonese officials underlines how they had poor futures prospects in the household hierarchy, but also real opportunities to obtain financial reward and above all a very protective legal status. Indeed every member of Alfonso’s household enjoys the legal privilege of being under the seneschal’s jurisdiction only. The king may choose to additionally grand this privilege to anyone, through the titles of “counsellors” and “familiars”, the later title being lesser than the first.
Since the destruction of the medieval archives in Naples during World War II, many of the sources of this work are from Spanish archives that hold Aragonese royal documents, mainly in Barcelona and Valencia. The ancient humanistic historiography about king Alfonso and letters from diplomatic envoys sent in Naples also provided many information, that have been analysed using prosopographical methods. This data supplies many new facts and allows social analysis, which both contribute to deepen our understanding of the history of the Crown of Aragon and the Kingdom of Naples.