«Basis et firmamentum totius Regni»: royal castellans in Calabria under Alfonso the Magnanimous and Ferrante of Aragon (1442-1494)

Abstract

Despite the importance of the castles in the Aragonese kingdom of Naples, there are no specific studies about the office of castellan, as well as about the men who defended and directed those structures. First of all, this paper will reconstruct the functioning and the prospects of the castellanie within the royal domain, and then it will focus on the identities and careers of the castellans under Alfonso and Ferrante of Aragon, ending with some observations about the monarchical policy of territorial control and the role of the provincial society. The research, on this occasion, is limited to Calabria in the second half of the 15th century.