Stephen III (died 832) was the

duke of Naples The Dukes of Naples were the military commanders of the ''ducatus Neapolitanus'', a Byzantine outpost in Italy, one of the few remaining after the conquest of the Lombards. In 661, Emperor Constans II, highly interested in south Italian affairs (h ...

during an important transitional period in its history, from 821 to his death. By the end of his reign, Naples was completely independent. The duchy was not yet hereditary in 818, when the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

patrician Patrician may refer to: * Patrician (ancient Rome), the original aristocratic families of ancient Rome, and a synonym for "aristocratic" in modern English usage * Patrician (post-Roman Europe), the governing elites of cities in parts of medieval ...

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

appointed a duke without imperial approval. He repeated this in 821, but this latter duke was chased from the city in favour of the elected Stephen III. Stephen was the first to begin striking monies with his own initials on them and not those of the

Byzantine Emperor This is a list of the Byzantine emperors from the foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD, which marks the conventional start of the Eastern Roman Empire, to its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD. Only the emperors who were recognized as le ...

. He was not attached to the empire in any way: neither by appointment nor by any other ties except heritage of his dukedom.

Sources

*Chalandon, Ferdinand. ''Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicilie''.

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, 1907.
Naples in the Dark Ages
by David Taylor and Jeff Matthews. 832 deaths 9th-century dukes of Naples Year of birth unknown {{Italy-noble-stub