The Early Stages of a Parliamentary Monarchy in Aragonese Sicily: Curia generalis and Rex Trinacriae during the Reign of Frederick III (1296–1321)

This article is intended to link the institutional processes completed in Sicily between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with important international political events in which Sicilians were involved during the first part of the reign of Frederick III (1296–1321). At the end of this long period of conflict, the Sicilians managed to end the War of the Vespers, which began in 1282, and to establish a hereditary ‘national’ monarchy (Status Siciliae), independent of the hegemonic aims of the papacy and of the Anjous and characterized by constitutional cooperation between crown and parliament. Frederick had taken the crown by the Sicilian representatives swearing loyalty to the fundamental laws (1296) and he was able to choose his successor, Peter of Aragon, to the throne, only after he too had taken the same oath (1321). The Peace of Caltabellotta (1302) occurred between these two events. This peace gave only a partial and very unstable recognition of the Sicilian intentions, but the 1312 treaty with Emperor Henry VII finally legitimized, by a higher civil authority, this first attempt to establish a ‘national’ and ‘constitutional’ Sicilian kingdom