Guy de Montfort
Guy de Montfort or Guido von Montfort (* 1244 ; † 1291 or 1292) was an English military and rebel. He was one of the killers of Henry of Almain , a cousin of the English king.
origin
Guy de Montfort came from the Anglo-French noble family Montfort . He was the fourth son of Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester and his wife Eleanor of England , a daughter of King John of England . His brothers included Henry de Montfort , Simon de Montfort the Younger, and Amaury de Montfort .
Role in the war of the barons in England
Guy de Montfort is first mentioned during the Second War of the Barons when he and his brother Henry commanded a division of the rebel army under their father's command, which defeated the royal army at the Battle of Lewes in May 1264 . After this victory his father gave him the management of the lands in Devon and Cornwall of Richard of Cornwall , the younger brother of King Henry III, who had been captured after the battle . In the Battle of Evesham , in which the royal party under his cousin Lord Eduard was able to decisively defeat the rebels in August 1265, Guy was wounded and captured. Both his father and older brother Henry were killed in that battle. Guy was taken as a prisoner first to Windsor Castle and later to Dover Castle . From there he was able to escape to France in April or May 1266 by bribing his overseers.
In the service of Charles of Anjou in Italy
In 1268 or 1269 Montfort moved to Italy and entered the service of Charles of Anjou . This brother of the French king, with the support of the Pope, had conquered the Kingdom of Sicily from the Hohenstaufen king Manfred . Guy's father had been friends with Karl, and his cousin Philip de Montfort was already in the service of Charles of Anjou as Vicar of Sicily. In August 1268, Montfort fought in Karl's army in the battle of Tagliacozzo , in which the Staufer Konradin was decisively defeated and Karl's rule over Sicily was secured. Subsequently, Montfort supported Karl in securing his rule. Charles of Anjou rewarded him by giving him Nola in Campania as a fief. In March 1270 Charles appointed him vicar general for Tuscany . In August 1270, Montfort married Margherita Aldobrandesca , the daughter and heiress of Count Ildebrandino di Pitigliano , a member of the Aldobrandeschi family and the most powerful nobleman in southern Tuscany.
The murder of Henry of Almain
On March 12, 1271 Montfort came to Viterbo in central Italy with his brother Simon, who had followed him to Italy . There they met their cousin Henry of Almain , who had set out on Prince Edward's crusade , but was now on his way from Sicily to France, where he attended the funeral of the late King Louis IX. of France should attend. Together the brothers murdered the son of Richard of Cornwall on the morning of March 13th in front of the church of San Silvestro (today Chiesa del Gesù), although Henry asked the brothers for mercy. The act was probably a spontaneous act of revenge for Henry switching sides during the War of the Barons in 1263. The murder was all the more shocking for the contemporaries because Henry, who probably did not take part in the Battle of Evesham, was on the way as a mediator to reach an agreement with the Montfort brothers and to meet them with their cousin Lord Eduard, the English heir to the throne to reconcile.
Next life
After this murder, Karl von Anjou took Montfort's fief and removed him from his offices. Montfort sought refuge with his father-in-law near Siena . In April 1273 he was taken over by Pope Gregory IX. excommunicated . In July 1273, Montfort submitted to the Pope, whereupon he was imprisoned in the castle of Lecco on Lake Como . Allegedly he was able to escape from the castle, perhaps with the help of Karl von Anjou, in whose service he was again at the latest in 1281 after negotiations between Karl von Salerno , the heir of Karl von Anjou, and King Edward I about Guy's rehabilitation had failed.
Montfort's resurgence was facilitated by the fact that Martin IV became a French pope in 1281, who worked closely with Charles of Anjou. Before 1283, Montfort led the papal troops in Romagna . When his father-in-law Ildebrandino di Pitigliano died in 1284, Montfort returned to Tuscany to secure his wife's inheritance and then returned to the service of Charles of Anjou. Karl von Anjou died in 1285. He had lost control of the island of Sicily in 1282 through the Sicilian Vespers . The heirs of Charles of Anjou tried several times to recapture Sicily, which had fallen to the Kingdom of Aragon . In one of these attempts, the ship of Montfort was boarded in 1287 by the Aragonese admiral Roger Loria . Montfort was imprisoned in Sicily, and although John de Montfort, the son of his cousin Philip, tried to set him off, Montfort remained imprisoned, perhaps through the influence of Edward I. Montfort died in 1291 or 1292, supposedly by suicide.
progeny
From his marriage to Margherita Aldobrandesca he had two daughters:
- Anastasia ∞ Romano Orsini
- Tomasina ∞ Pietro Vico
Life in literature and music
- Dante banished in his inferno in the XII. Singing Montfort as a murderer in the seventh circle of hell.
- Guy de Montfort is one of the main characters in Giuseppe Verdi's opera Les vêpres siciliennes (The Sicilian Vespers) based on a libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier .
literature
- Frederick M. Powicke : Guy de Montfort, 1265-71. In: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Series 4, Vol. 18, 1935, ISSN 0080-4401 , pp. 1-23 .
Web links
- John Robert Maddicott: Montfort, Guy de (c.1244–1291 / 2). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | De Montfort, Guy |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Guido of Montfort |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English nobleman and rebel |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1244 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1291 or 1292 |