Manfredi Chiaramonte

Manfredi III Chiaramonte (c. 1330 who governed the Kingdom of Sicily during the minority of Queen Maria. A leading figure in late 14th-century Sicilian politics, he operated chiefly from Palermo and across the island’s south-eastern Val di Noto, notably around Lentini and Syracuse.

Origins and family Manfredi III was the illegitimate son of Giovanni II Chiaramonte. Giovanni was married to Eleonora, an illegitimate daughter of King Frederick III of Aragon. Their only legitimate child was a daughter, Margherita. Opponents in this period: the Ventimiglia (traditional adversaries of Chiaramonte–Palizzi), frequently aligned with the Catalan houses such as the Alagona (Artale I) and the Peralta; later the Moncada played a decisive Aragonese role. , Queen Maria was seized and removed from her home at the Ursino Castle in Catania by Guglielmo Raimondo III —initially with some vicar connivance—an episode that drew in the Aragonese crown and shaped the rest of the regency.

Manfredi systematically gathered more lands under his control. He strengthened ties with other leading houses through marriage (he married Francesco II Ventimiglia's daughter Eufemia) and by arranging high-status matches for his daughters. He also dealt directly with major powers—the papacy and the merchant republics of Genoa, Venice and Pisa—and in 1388 helped cover arrears due from Sicily to the pope, paying the largest single share among the vicars. Taken together, these moves made him the most powerful of the "Latin" barons by the 1380s. These works show the cultural as well as the political weight of the Chiaramonte in late medieval Sicily.