Alfons V of Aragon

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Manuscript detail of Alfonso V of Aragon

Alfons V of Aragon (also Alfons I of Naples) (1396 – June 27, 1458), surnamed the Magnanimous, was the King of Aragon and Naples and count of Barcelona from 1416 to 1458. He was a son of Ferdinand I of Aragon (also called Ferdinand of Antequera), and is one of the most conspicuous figures of the early Renaissance.

He represented the old line of the counts of Barcelona only through women, and was on his father's side descended from the House of Trastamara, a noble family of Castile. By hereditary right he was king of Sicily. He disputed the island of Sardinia with Genoa and conquered the kingdom of Naples. He fought and triumphed amid the exuberant development of individuality which accompanied the revival of learning and the birth of the modern world.

When he was a prisoner in the hands of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, in 1435, Alfonso persuaded his ferocious and crafty captor to let him go by making it plain that it was not in Milan's interest to prevent the victory of the Aragonese party in Naples.

Like a true prince of the Renaissance he favoured men of letters whom he trusted to preserve his reputation to posterity. His devotion to the classics was exceptional even for the time. For example, Alfonso halted his army in pious respect before the birthplace of a Latin writer, carried Livy or Caesar on his campaigns with him, and his panegyrist Panormita did not think it an incredible lie to say that the king was cured of an illness when a few pages of Quintus Curtius Rufus' history of Alexander the Great were read to him. However, the classics had not refined his taste, for he was amused by setting itinerant scholars, who swarmed to his court, to abuse one another in the indescribably filthy Latin scolding matches which were then the fashion.

Alfons founded nothing, and, after his conquest of Naples in 1441, ruled by his mercenary soldiers and no less mercenary men of letters. His Spanish possessions were ruled for him by his brother John. He left his conquest of Naples to his bastard son Ferdinand; his inherited lands, Sicily and Sardinia, going to his brother John, who survived him.

Alfons was the object of diplomatic contacts from the empire of Ethiopia. In 1428, he received a letter from Yeshaq I of Ethiopia, borne by two dignitaries, which proposed an alliance against the Muslims and would be sealed by a dual marriage that would require the Infante Don Pedro to bring a group of artisans to Ethiopia where he would marry Yeshaq's daughter. In return, Alfons sent a party of 13 craftsmen, all of whom perished on the way to EthiopiaGirma Beshah and Merid Wolde Aregay, The Question of the Union of the Churches in Luso-Ethiopian Relations (1500-1632) (Lisbon:Junta de Investigações do Ultramar and Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1964), pp.13-4.. He later sent a letter to Yeshaq's successor Zara Yaqob in 1450, in which he wrote that he would be happy to send artisans to Ethiopia if their safe arrival could be guaranteed, but it probably never reached the Emperor.Girma Beshah and Merid Wolde Aregay, The Question of the Union of the Churches, pp.14. O. G. S. Crawford (editor), Ethiopian Itineraries, circa 1400 - 1524 (Cambridge: the Hakluyt Society, 1958), pp. 12f.

He was betrothed to María de Castilla (1401–1458; sister of Juan II of Castile) in Valladolid in 1408; the marriage was celebrated in Valencia during 1415. They failed to produce children. Alfonso had been in love with a woman of noble family named Lucrezia d'Alagno, who served as a de facto queen at the Neapolitan court as well as an inspiring muse.

See list of Monarchs of Naples and Sicily.

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