Kraljica Beatrica Aragonska i ugarsko-hrvatsko-napuljski odnosi u posljednjoj četvrtini 15. stoljeća

Abstract

Based on published sources and relevant secondary literature, this paper attempts to present a comprehensive overview of the historical role of, and actions connected to, the Hungarian and Croatian Queen Beatrice of Aragon (she was queen in the last quarter of the fifteenth century). The bulk of the analysis focuses on her role in the external political affairs of the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom at the time. The other part covers her role and activities in connection to the medieval Croatian lands. Until now, historiography focused primarily on her role in the spread and development of Renaissance culture in the Hungarian court and its various manifestations throughout the kingdom. One might conclude that the main reason for the queen’s complete marginalization at the beginning of the sixteenth century, as well as her ultimate return to her native Italy, was first of all her inability to produce a legitimate heir to the throne, both for King Matthias Corvinus and for King Wladyslaw II. The second major reason was the shift in King Wladyslaw’s foreign policy priorities at the turn of the sixteenth century. It would be important for Croatian historiography to further research various modes and forms of contact between the members of the Croatian social elite and Naples through Queen Beatrice’s mediation. In this respect, the leading Croatian magnates, namely the Frankapani, played a special role. Thanks to the queen, the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom of that time in many occasions found itself involved, volens-nolens, in the troubled, mutable and often contradictory mutual relations between the main Italian centres of power, as willing or coerced allies of the queen’s Neapolitan relatives. However, such an external political orientation of the kingdom was completely abandoned after 1500. It then became clear that, in the meantime, the Adriatic had definitively turned into the Golfo di Venezia and that Naples did not have the necessary forces to alter that situation in alliance with Hungary and Croatia. King Wladyslaw realized that continued reliance on the Aragonese was a losing prospect, while at the same time Ottoman pressure on the kingdom’s south-eastern frontiers mounted and rivalry with the Habsburgs in Central Europe intensified. Therefore, the king ruthlessly expelled Beatrice back to her native Italy, with significant papal support. All of this stands in sharp contrast to the stereotypical popular image of King Wladyslaw as an indolent and indifferent ruler.