Guy de Montfort, Count of Nola (1244–1291) was the son of
Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester and
Eleanor of England
Eleanor of England ( es, Leonor; – 31 October 1214), was Queen of Castile and Toledo as wife of Alfonso VIII of Castile. She was the sixth child and second daughter of Henry II, King of England, and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Early life and fa ...
.
Biography
He participated in the
Battle of Evesham
The Battle of Evesham (4 August 1265) was one of the two main battles of 13th century England's Second Barons' War. It marked the defeat of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and the rebellious barons by the future King Edward I, who led the ...
against the royalist forces of his uncle, King
Henry III of England, and his cousin,
Prince Edward. Both his father and elder brother were traumatically killed during the disastrous battle. Guy de Montfort was seriously wounded and captured.
He was held at
Windsor Castle until spring 1266, when he bribed his captors and escaped to France to rejoin his exiled family. Guy and his brother,
Simon the Younger, wandered across Europe for several years, eventually making their way to Italy.
Guy took service with
Charles of Anjou, serving as his
Vicar-General in Tuscany.
He distinguished himself at the
Battle of Tagliacozzo and was given
Nola by
Charles of Anjou.
In 1271, Guy and Simon discovered that their cousin
Henry of Almain (son of
Richard, Earl of Cornwall) was in
Viterbo at the church of San Silvestro. In revenge for the deaths of their father and brother at Evesham, on 13 March 1271, Guy and Simon murdered Henry while he clutched the altar, begging for mercy. "''You had no mercy for my father and brothers''", was Guy's reply. This murder was carried out in the presence of the Cardinals (who were conducting a papal Election), of King Philip III of France, and of King Charles of Sicily. For this crime the Montfort brothers were
excommunicated, and
Dante banished Guy to the river of boiling blood in the seventh circle of his
''Inferno'' (''Canto'' XII).
The news reached England, and King Henry III dispatched a clerk of the royal household to inform the northern counties and Scotland about the excommunication.
Pope Gregory X wrote a letter (29 November 1273) to King Edward from Lyons, where he was preparing for an ecumenical council, that Cardinal Riccardo Annibaldi and Cardinal Giovanni Orsini were still in Rome and had been ordered to find a secure place of imprisonment in the territories of the Church for Guy de Montfort.
Simon died later that year at
Siena, "''cursed by God, a wanderer and a fugitive''".
Guy was stripped of his titles and took service with Charles of Anjou again, but was captured off the coast of Sicily in 1287 by the Aragonese at the
Battle of the Counts
The naval Battle of the Counts took place on 23 June 1287 at Naples, Italy, when an Aragonese- Sicilian galley fleet commanded by Roger of Lauria defeated a large combined Angevin (Kingdom of Naples) galley fleet commanded respectively by Reyn ...
.
He died in a Sicilian prison.
Family
In Tuscany, he married an Italian noblewoman,
Margherita Aldobrandesca
Margherita is an Italian feminine given name. It also is a surname. As a word, in Italian it means " daisy".
Given name
As a name, it may refer to:
*Margherita Aldobrandini (1588–1646), Duchess consort of Parma
*Margherita de' Medici (1612â ...
, the Lady of
Sovana.
With her he had two daughters:
Anastasia, who married
Romano Orsini
Romano may refer to:
Food
* Pecorino Romano, a hard, salty Italian cheese
* Romano cheese, an American English and Canadian English term for a class of cheeses
Places Italy Municipalities in the Metropolitan City of Rome, Latium
* Arcinazzo Rom ...
,
[Napoleone Cardinal Orsini succeeded Benedetto Caetani as her mother's guardian, married her to his brother Orsello and arranged this marriage, which brought Sovana and the Aldobrandeschi inheritance to the Orsini.] and Tomasina, who married Pietro di Vico.
Notes
Sources
*
*Maddicott, J.R. ''Simon de Montfort'', 1996
{{DEFAULTSORT:Montfort, Guy De, Count Of Nola
1244 births
1288 deaths
Guy
People excommunicated by the Catholic Church
13th-century English people
Escapees from England and Wales detention
English escapees
English people who died in prison custody
English people imprisoned abroad
Younger sons of earls
Prisoners who died in Aragonese detention