mummy's boy
Or, the human embodiment of the word "yikes" that is King Ferrante of Naples.
Hello friends!
A couple bits of business before we get into it.
Firstly: a week from tomorrow, Dirtbags Through the Ages will be coming at you LIVE! On Wednesday 12/7 at 7pm CT, I’m doing a YouTube livestream with the lovely and hilarious Edie Cay of Paper Lantern Writers, in which we’ll spend an hour judging historical figures on their sheer audacity and reading them for filth. It’s free, it’s live, it’s a fun time. Join us if you’re around, or watch it after if you aren’t.
Secondly, and thanks for your patience in advance: I’ll be taking the month of December off from the newsletter. I had November deadlines for two separate books and my brain is in shambles. I’ll do a mid-month update to share the live link with you all, and then I’ll be back in January with the high-quality artisanal garbage you’ve come to expect from this publication.
Thirdly, since this is coming out on Giving Tuesday in the US, a quick invitation to give a couple bucks to the nonprofit of your choice today. Two recent favorites of mine: Transanta, a mutual aid campaign that lets you gift anonymously to queer and trans youth in need; and 826CHI, a nonprofit creative writing and tutoring center for underserved Chicago-area youth.
All right, enough business. This week’s newsletter was brought to you by the letter P and the dirtbag…
King Ferrante of Naples, An Extremely Weird and Incredibly Fucked-Up Individual!
I first learned about Ferrante from that most reputable source of historical information: the criminally underrated Showtime series The Borgias. If you haven’t watched this show, kindly put this newsletter away and watch all 30 episodes posthaste. There are so many cardinals and they are all the messiest of messy bitches. I love it so much.
Ferrante was born in Spain in 1423 as Ferdinando Trastámara d’Aragona, a truly unparalleled combination of syllables. Though illegitimate, he was the only son of King Alfonso I of Naples, so the king raised Ferrante as his official heir and formalized it in front of the kingdom when Ferrante was 20. When the king died 15 years later, Ferrante thought the whole “get legitimized in front of the entire population of Naples” thing would be enough to ward off anyone trying to take his throne.
He was wrong, of course! Because this was 15th-century Italy: land of eight million warring kingdoms and even more goddamn audacity.
One of the more audacious characters in this story is Pope Callixtus III, whose opinion of Ferrante’s claim was essentially “that man is not my nephew and therefore he shouldn’t be king of Naples.” So when the pope attempted to seize control of the throne of Naples, Ferrante sent grumpy ambassadors to Rome to yell at the pope.
Shortly after, Pope Callixtus III—say it with me, friends—dropped dead under mysterious circumstances!!
Historians don’t seem to suspect Ferrante of poisoning the pope, but I maintain this is because historians aren’t looking at Renaissance Italy like the newest installment of the Knives Out franchise, which is the correct way to think about history.
Mumble Mumble Angevins Etc.
Anyway, now that the pope was dead, Ferrante could get formally crowned King of Naples, which he did in 1459. From there, he got right to business doing his favorite thing: waging war against people who still thought (rightly, I might add) that he was a shit choice for King of Naples.
First fight was with the Angevins, a people who lived…also in Naples? I don’t know, babes. There are two historical European dynasties called the Angevins and therefore I refuse to learn anything more about them out of annoyance and spite. Anyway, the Angevins accused Ferrante of having incestuous relations with his sister, and they stabbed each other for four years. You know, standard Renaissance shit.
There are only three important things for readers of this newsletter to know about the Angevin-Aragonese War of 1460–1464, and they are these:
One of Ferrante’s enemies tried to stab him with a poisoned knife in a church, immediately making him a badass and my favorite.
Ferrante’s wife dressed up as a monk and snuck out of Naples to avoid her husband, and good for her.
The new pope also died under mysterious circumstances!!
Ferrante was King of Naples from 1459 to 1494 and in that time five popes died. I feel like that’s gotta be a statistically significant number of dead popes. The fact that Ferrante is not known as “Murderer of Roughly One to Five Popes” is shocking.
Anyway, Ferrante poisoned all the Angevins and won the war. Whatever.
Spooky Saint Shit
Now, I am by no means an expert in the history of Renaissance Italy. But one thing I do love about it is that all the players involved are Catholic as shit, which means that occasionally we get weird-ass side trips like the one that happened to Ferrante sometime after the war.
Specifically, Ferrante summoned the famous Saint Francesco of Paola to the court of Naples, because when you’re stabbing people and poisoning popes it never hurts to have a saint on your side.
Ferrante tried to bribe the saint to bless the kingdom with a big old plate full of gold, for reasons I’m sure made sense at the time. In response, Saint Francesco touched the gold, which apparently split in half and sent a river of blood flowing across the piazza.
This probably freaked Ferrante out a little, and Saint Francesco was quickly asked to leave for France. This is the one and only point in this story where Ferrante and I are on the same page.
In Which the Defenestration Isn’t the Worst Part
Ferrante continued to rule as King of Naples for the next several decades, despite the loud protests of basically everybody. Why was Naples so against this guy, you ask?
Well, I’ll tell you: because he was the worst.
When he caught one of the mercenary captains hired to fight against him, he didn’t do the traditional thing and take the man prisoner. No, My Brilliant Dirtbag Ferrante threw him out a window.
Which is bad, right? I mean, it’s not great.
The accusations go on. Maybe he fed his enemies to crocodiles. Maybe he captured enemy barons, tied them up in sacks, and threw them in the river. But none of these are the punishment Ferrante’s most famous for.
No, that honor goes to the MUMMY MUSEUM.
I’m Sorry. Did You Say “The Mummy Museum”?
Yes, that’s why I’ve gathered us all here today. Obviously.
You see, it wasn’t enough for Ferrante to murder the people who were trying to take his throne away from him. No, whatever else you can say about my guy, you can’t deny that he had panache. So after he murdered his enemies, he embalmed them, dressed them in their fanciest clothes, and arranged them in a dungeon like the most fucked-up possible version of the Christmas village your grandma sets up in the entry hall every year.
Some sources say he set up the bodies to resemble the layout of the Last Supper. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this story since the day I heard it. There’s standard dirtbag, then there’s unhinged monarch, then there’s whatever the Kraft Macaroni and Fuck is going on here.
Is it true? The King Ferrante apologists who wrote his weirdly horny and unnecessarily long Wikipedia page would have you think it’s all lies. But, once again, let me remind you of the settled law of this newsletter:
In other words, Viva La Mummy Museum.
Coda: Dramatic Irony
Ferrante died in 1494 of what his horny Wikipedia page calls “a great phlegm” and what I assume was heart failure after all those exhausting pope murders. Delightfully, his body was mummified and stored in the cellars of his palace, where it was exhumed in 2006 along with a suspicious number of other mummies.
At least the man died doing what he loved: creeping people out by doing weird shit with a dead body.
Thanks for joining me this week and every week, Dirtbag Nation. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you being here. I hope some of you will join us for the livestream on the 7th. Like I always say, I do this for fun, but it’s more fun when you’re there.
Until then, be well, and do not—I cannot emphasize this enough—murder a Renaissance pope before I get back in January, because I will not be held criminally liable if you do,
-Allison
gonna go check out the wikipedia page right after reading this
Laughing out loud throughout this one ❤️ Thank you.