FOOTNOTE:

[1] On the 29th of January 1336 Pope Benedict XII. pronounced a long

judgment on this point of doctrine, a judgment which he declared had

been included by John in a bull which death had prevented him from

sealing.

JOHN XXIII. (Baldassare Cossa), pope, or rather antipope from 1410 to

1415, was born of a good Neapolitan family, and began by leading the

life of a corsair before entering the service of the Church under the

pontificate of Boniface IX. His abilities, which were mainly of an

administrative and military order, were soon rewarded by the cardinal's

hat and the legation of Bologna. On the 29th of June 1408 he and seven

of his colleagues broke away from Gregory XII., and together with six

cardinals of the obedience of Avignon, who had in like manner separated

from Benedict XIII., they agreed to aim at the assembling of a general

council, setting aside the two rival pontiffs, an expedient which they

considered would put an end to the great schism of the Western Church,

but which resulted in the election of yet a third pope. This act was

none the less decisive for Baldassare Cossa's future. Alexander V., the

first pope elected at Pisa, was not perhaps, as has been maintained,

merely a man of straw put forward by the ambitious cardinal of Bologna;

but he reigned only ten months, and on his death, which happened rather

suddenly on the 4th of May 1410, Baldassare Cossa succeeded him.

Whether the latter had bought his electors by money and promises, or

owed his success to his dominant position in Bologna, and to the support

of Florence and of Louis II. of Anjou, he seems to have received the

unanimous vote of all the seventeen cardinals gathered together at

Bologna (May 17). He took the name of John XXIII., and France, England,

and part of Italy and Germany recognized him as head of the Catholic

church.

The struggle in which he and Louis II. of Anjou engaged with Ladislaus

of Durazzo, king of Sicily, and Gregory XII.'s chief protector in Italy,

at first went in John's favour. After the brilliant victory of

Roccasecca (May 19, 1411) he had the satisfaction of dragging the

standards of Pope Gregory and King Ladislaus through the streets of

Rome. But the dispersion of Louis of Anjou's troops and his

carelessness, together with the lack of success which attended the

preaching of a crusade in Germany, France and England, finally decided

John XXIII. to abandon the French claimant to the throne of Sicily; he

recognized Ladislaus, his former enemy, as king of Naples, and Ladislaus

did not fail to salute John XXIII. as pope, abandoning Gregory XII.

(June 15, 1412). This was a fatal step: John XXIII. was trusting in a

dishonest and insatiable prince; he would have acted more wisely in

remaining the ally of the weak but loyal Louis of Anjou. However, it

seemed desirable that the reforms announced by the council of Pisa,

which the popes set up by this synod seemed in no hurry to carry into

effect, should be further discussed in the new council which it had been

agreed should be summoned about the spring of 1412. But John was anxious

that this council should be held in Rome, a city where he alone was

master; the few prelates and ambassadors who very slowly gathered there

held only a small number of sessions, in which John again condemned the

writings of Wycliffe. John was attacked by the representatives of the

various nations and reprimanded even for his private conduct, but

endeavoured to extricate himself from this uncomfortable position by

gratifying their desires, if not by reforming abuses. It is, however,

only fair to add that he took various half-measures and gave many

promises which, if they had been put into execution, would have

confirmed or completed the reforms inaugurated at Pisa. But on the 3rd

of March 1413 John adjourned the council of Rome till December, without

even fixing the place where the next session should be held. It was held

at Constance in Germany, and John could only have resigned himself to

accepting such an uncertain meeting-place because he was forced by

distress, isolation and fear to turn towards the head of the empire.

Less than a year after the treaty concluded with Ladislaus of Durazzo,

the latter forced his way into Rome (June 8, 1413), which he sacked,

expelling John, to whom even the Florentines did not dare to throw open

their gates for fear of the king of Sicily. Sigismund, king of the

Romans, not only extorted, it is said, a sum of 50,000 florins from the

pontiff in his extremity, but insisted upon his summoning the council at

Constance (December 9). It was in vain that, on the death of Ladislaus,

which took place unexpectedly (August 6, 1414), John was inspired with

the idea of breaking his compact with Sigismund and returning to Rome,

at the same time appealing to Louis of Anjou. It was too late. The

cardinals forced him towards Germany by the most direct road, without

allowing him to go by way of Avignon as he had projected, in order to

make plans with the princes of France.

On the 5th of November 1414 John opened the council of Constance, where,

on Christmas Day, he received the homage of the head of the empire, but

where his lack of prestige, the defection of his allies, the fury of his

adversaries, and the general sense of the necessity for union soon

showed only too clearly how small was the chance of his retaining the

tiara. He had to take a solemn oath to abdicate if his two rivals would

do the same, and this concession, which was not very sincere, gained him

for the last time the honour of seeing Sigismund prostrate at his feet

(March 2, 1415). But on the night of the 20th-21st of March, having

donned the garments of a layman, with a cross-bow slung at his side, he

succeeded in making his escape from Constance, accompanied only by a

single servant, and took refuge first in the castle of Schaffhausen,

then in that of Laufenburg, then at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, and finally at

Brisach, whence he hoped to reach Alsace, and doubtless ultimately

Avignon, under the protection of an escort sent by the duke of Burgundy.

The news of the pope's escape was received at Constance with an

extraordinary outburst of rage, and led to the subversive decrees of the

4th and 5th sessions, which proclaimed the superiority of the council

over the pope. Duke Frederick of Austria had hitherto sheltered John's

flight; but, laid under the ban of the empire, attacked by powerful

armies, and feeling that he was courting ruin, he preferred to give up

the pontiff who had trusted to him. John was brought back to Freiburg

(April 27), and there in vain attempted to appease the wrath which he

had aroused by more or less vague promises of resignation. His trial,

however, was already beginning. The three cardinals whom he charged with

his defence hastily declined this compromising task. Seventy-four

charges were drawn up, only twenty of which were set aside after the

witnesses had been heard. The accusation of having poisoned Alexander V.

and his doctor at Bologna was not maintained. But enough deeds of

immorality, tyranny, ambition and simony were found proved to justify

the severest judgment. He was suspended from his functions as pope on

the 14th of May 1415, and deposed on the following 29th of May.

However irregular this sentence may have been from the canonical point

of view (for the accusers do not seem to have actually proved the crime

of heresy, which was necessary, according to most scholars of the

period, to justify the deposition of a sovereign pontiff), the condemned

pope was not long in confirming it. Baldassare Cossa, now as humble and

resigned as he had before been energetic and tenacious, on his

transference to the castle of Rudolfzell admitted the wrong which he had

done by his flight, refused to bring forward anything in his defence,

acquiesced entirely in the judgment of the council which he declared to

be infallible, and finally, as an extreme precaution, ratified _motu

proprio_ the sentence of deposition, declaring that he freely and

willingly renounced any rights which he might still have in the papacy.

This fact has subsequently been often quoted against those who have

appealed to the events of 1415 to maintain that a council can depose a

pope who is _scandalizator ecclesiae_.

Cossa kept his word never to appeal against the sentence which stripped

him of the pontificate. He was held prisoner for three years in Germany,

but in the end bought his liberty from the count palatine. He used this

liberty only to go to Florence, in 1419, and throw himself on the mercy

of the legitimate pope. Martin V. appointed him cardinal-bishop of

Tusculum, a dignity which Cossa only enjoyed for a few months. He died

on the 22nd of December 1419, and all visitors to the Baptistery at

Florence may admire, under its high baldacchino, the sombre figure

sculptured by Donatello of the dethroned pontiff, who had at least the

merit of bowing his head under his chastisement, and of contributing by

his passive resignation to the extinction of the series of popes which

sprang from the council of Pisa. (N. V.)

JOHN I. (925-976), surnamed Tzimisces, East Roman emperor, was born of a

distinguished Cappadocian family. After helping his uncle Nicephorus

Phocas (q.v.) to obtain the throne and to restore the empire's eastern

provinces he was deprived of his command by an intrigue, upon which he

retaliated by conspiring with Nicephorus' wife Theophania to assassinate

him. Elected ruler in his stead, John proceeded to justify his

usurpation by the energy with which he repelled the foreign invaders of

the empire. In a series of campaigns against the newly established

Russian power (970-973) he drove the enemy out of Thrace, crossed Mt

Haemus and besieged the fortress of Dorystolon on the Danube. In several

hard-fought battles he broke the strength of the Russians so completely

that they left him master of eastern Bulgaria. He further secured his

northern frontier by transplanting to Thrace some colonies of Paulicians

whom he suspected of sympathising with their Saracen neighbours in the

east. In 974 he turned against the Abassid empire and easily recovered

the inland parts of Syria and the middle reaches of the Euphrates. He

died suddenly in 976 on his return from his second campaign against the

Saracens. John's surname was apparently derived from the Armenian

_tshemshkik_ (red boot).

See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vol. vi.

(ed. Bury, 1896); G. Finlay, _History of Greece_, ii. 334-360 (ed.

1877); G. Schlumberger, _L'Épopée Byzantine_, i. 1-326 (1896).

JOHN II. (1088-1143), surnamed Comnenus and also Kalojoannes (John the

Good), East Roman emperor, was the eldest son of the East Roman emperor

Alexius, whom he succeeded in 1118. On account of his mild and just

reign he has been called the Byzantine Marcus Aurelius. By the personal

purity of his character he effected a notable improvement in the manners

of his age, but he displayed little vigour in internal administration or

in extirpating the long-standing corruptions of the government. Nor did

his various successes against the Hungarians, Servians and Seljuk Turks,

whom he pressed hard in Asia Minor and proposed to expel from Jerusalem,

add much to the stability of his empire. He was accidentally killed

during a wild-boar hunt on Mt Taurus, on the 8th of April 1143.

See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, v. 228 seq.

(ed. Bury, 1896).

JOHN III. (1193-1254), surnamed Vatatzes and also Ducas, East Roman

emperor, earned for himself such distinction as a soldier that in 1222

he was chosen to succeed his father-in-law Theodore I. Lascaris. He

reorganized the remnant of the East Roman empire, and by his

administrative skill made it the strongest and richest principality in

the Levant. Having secured his eastern frontier by an agreement with the

Turks, he set himself to recover the European possessions of his

predecessors. While his fleet harassed the Latins in the Aegean Sea and

extended his realm to Rhodes, his army, reinforced by Frankish

mercenaries, defeated the Latin emperor's forces in the open field.

Though unsuccessful in a siege of Constantinople, which he undertook in

concert with the Bulgarians (1235), he obtained supremacy over the

despotats of Thessalonica and Epirus. The ultimate recovery of

Constantinople by the Rhomaic emperors is chiefly due to his exertions.

See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vi. 431-462

(ed. Bury, 1896); G. Finlay, _History of Greece_, iii. 196-320 (ed.

1877); A. Meliarakes, [Greek: Historia tou Basileiou tês Nikaias kai

tou Despotatou tês Êpeirou], pp. 155-421 (1898).

JOHN IV. (c. 1250-c. 1300), surnamed Lascaris, East Roman emperor, son

of Theodore II. His father dying in 1258, Michael Palaeologus conspired

shortly after to make himself regent, and in 1261 dethroned and blinded

the boy monarch, and imprisoned him in a remote castle, where he died a

long time after.

See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vi. 459-466

(ed. Bury, 1896); A. Meliarakes, [Greek: Historia tou Basileiou tês

Nikaias] (Athens, 1898), pp. 491-528.

JOHN V. or VI. (1332-1391), surnamed Palaeologus, East Roman emperor,

was the son of Andronicus III., whom he succeeded in 1341. At first he

shared his sovereignty with his father's friend John Cantacuzene, and

after a quarrel with the latter was practically superseded by him for a

number of years (1347-1355). His reign was marked by the gradual

dissolution of the imperial power through the rebellion of his son

Andronicus and by the encroachments of the Ottomans, to whom in 1381

John acknowledged himself tributary, after a vain attempt to secure the

help of the popes by submitting to the supremacy of the Roman Church.

See E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vi. 495

seq., vii. 38 seq. (ed. Bury, 1896); E. Pears, _The Destruction of the

Greek Empire_, pp. 70-96 (1903).

JOHN VI. or V. (c. 1292-1383), surnamed Cantacuzene, East Roman emperor,

was born at Constantinople. Connected with the house of Palaeologus on

his mother's side, on the accession of Andronicus III. (1328) he was

entrusted with the supreme administration of affairs. On the death of

the emperor in 1341, Cantacuzene was left regent, and guardian of his

son John Palaeologus, who was but nine years of age. Being suspected by

the empress and opposed by a powerful party at court, he rebelled, and

got himself crowned emperor at Didymoteichos in Thrace, while John

Palaeologus and his supporters maintained themselves at Constantinople.

The civil war which ensued lasted six years, during which the rival

parties called in the aid of the Servians and Turks, and engaged

mercenaries of every description. It was only by the aid of the Turks,

with whom he made a disgraceful bargain, that Cantacuzene brought the

war to a termination favourable to himself. In 1347 he entered

Constantinople in triumph, and forced his opponents to an arrangement by

which he became joint emperor with John Palaeologus and sole

administrator during the minority of his colleague. During this period,

the empire, already broken up and reduced to the narrowest limits, was

assailed on every side. There were wars with the Genoese, who had a

colony at Galata and had money transactions with the court; and with the

Servians, who were at that time establishing an extensive empire on the

north-western frontiers; and there was a hazardous alliance with the

Turks, who made their first permanent settlement in Europe, at

Callipolis in Thrace, towards the end of the reign (1354). Cantacuzene

was far too ready to invoke the aid of foreigners in his European

quarrels; and as he had no money to pay them, this gave them a ready

pretext for seizing upon a European town. The financial burdens imposed

by him had long been displeasing to his subjects, and a strong party had

always favoured John Palaeologus. Hence, when the latter entered

Constantinople at the end of 1354, his success was easy. Cantacuzene

retired to a monastery (where he assumed the name of Joasaph

Christodulus) and occupied himself in literary labours. He died in the

Peloponnese and was buried by his sons at Mysithra in Laconia. His

_History_ in four books deals with the years 1320-1356. Really an

apologia for his own actions, it needs to be read with caution;

fortunately it can be supplemented and corrected by the work of a

contemporary, Nicephorus Gregoras. It possesses the merit of being well

arranged and homogeneous, the incidents being grouped round the chief

actor in the person of the author, but the information is defective on

matters with which he is not directly concerned.

Cantacuzene was also the author of a commentary on the first five

books of Aristotle's _Ethics_, and of several controversial

theological treatises, one of which (_Against Mohammedanism_) is

printed in Migne (_Patrologia Graeca_, cliv.). _History_, ed. pr. by

J. Pontanus (1603); in Bonn, _Corpus scriptorum hist. Byz._, by J.

Schopen (1828-1832) and Migne, cliii., cliv. See also Val Parisot,

_Cantacuzène, homme d'état et historien_ (1845); E. Gibbon, _Decline

and Fall_, ch. lxiii.; and C. Krumbacher, _Geschichte der

byzantinischen Litteratur_ (1897).

JOHN VI. or VII. (1390-1448), surnamed Palaeologus, East Roman emperor,

son of Manuel II., succeeded to the throne in 1425. To secure protection

against the Turks he visited the pope and consented to the union of the

Greek and Roman churches, which was ratified at Florence in 1439. The

union failed of its purpose, but by his prudent conduct towards the

Ottomans he succeeded in holding possession of Constantinople, and in

1432 withstood a siege by Sultan Murad I.

See TURKEY: _History_; and also E. Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of

the Roman Empire_, vi. 97-107 (ed. Bury, 1896); E. Pears, _The

Destruction of the Greek Empire_, pp. 115-130 (1903).

JOHN (1167-1216), king of England, the youngest son of Henry II. by

Eleanor of Aquitaine, was born at Oxford on the 24th of December 1167.

He was given at an early age the nickname of Lackland because, unlike

his elder brothers, he received no apanage in the continental provinces.

But his future was a subject of anxious thought to Henry II. When only

five years old John was betrothed (1173) to the heiress of Maurienne and

Savoy, a principality which, as dominating the chief routes from France

and Burgundy to Italy, enjoyed a consequence out of all proportion to

its area. Later, when this plan had fallen through, he was endowed with

castles, revenues and lands on both sides of the channel; the vacant

earldom of Cornwall was reserved for him (1175); he was betrothed to

Isabella the heiress of the earldom of Gloucester (1176); and he was

granted the lordship of Ireland with the homage of the Anglo-Irish

baronage (1177). Henry II. even provoked a civil war by attempting to

transfer the duchy of Aquitaine from the hands of Richard Coeur de Lion

to those of John (1183). In spite of the incapacity which he displayed

in this war, John was sent a little later to govern Ireland (1185); but

he returned in a few months covered with disgrace, having alienated the

loyal chiefs by his childish insolence and entirely failed to defend the

settlers from the hostile septs. Remaining henceforth at his father's

side he was treated with the utmost indulgence. But he joined with his

brother Richard and the French king Philip Augustus in the great

conspiracy of 1189, and the discovery of his treason broke the heart of

the old king (see HENRY II.).

Richard on his accession confirmed John's existing possessions; married

him to Isabella of Gloucester; and gave him, besides other grants, the

entire revenues of six English shires; but excluded him from any share

in the regency which was appointed to govern England during the third

crusade; and only allowed him to live in the kingdom because urged to

this concession by their mother. Soon after the king's departure for the

Holy Land it became known that he had designated his nephew, the young

Arthur of Brittany, as his successor. John at once began to intrigue

against the regents with the aim of securing England for himself. He

picked a quarrel with the unpopular chancellor William Longchamp (q.v.),

and succeeded, by the help of the barons and the Londoners, in expelling

this minister, whose chief fault was that of fidelity to the absent

Richard. Not being permitted to succeed Longchamp as the head of the

administration, John next turned to Philip Augustus for help. A bargain

was struck; and when Richard was captured by Leopold, duke of Austria

(December 1192), the allies endeavoured to prevent his release, and

planned a partition of his dominions. They were, however, unable to win

either English or Norman support and their schemes collapsed with

Richard's return (March 1194). He magnanimously pardoned his brother,

and they lived on not unfriendly terms for the next five years. On his

deathbed Richard, reversing his former arrangements, caused his barons

to swear fealty to John (1199), although the hereditary claim of Arthur

was by the law of primogeniture undoubtedly superior.

England and Normandy, after some hesitation, recognized John's title;

the attempt of Anjou and Brittany to assert the rights of Arthur ended

disastrously by the capture of the young prince at Mirebeau in Poitou

(1202). But there was no part of his dominions in which John inspired

personal devotion. Originally accepted as a political necessity, he soon

came to be detested by the people as a tyrant and despised by the nobles

for his cowardice and sloth. He inherited great difficulties--the feud

with France, the dissensions of the continental provinces, the growing

indifference of England to foreign conquests, the discontent of all his

subjects with a strict executive and severe taxation. But he cannot be

acquitted of personal responsibility for his misfortunes. Astute in

small matters, he had no breadth of view or foresight; his policy was

continually warped by his passions or caprices; he flaunted vices of the

most sordid kind with a cynical indifference to public opinion, and

shocked an age which was far from tender-hearted by his ferocity to

vanquished enemies. He treated his most respectable supporters with base

ingratitude, reserved his favour for unscrupulous adventurers, and gave

a free rein to the licence of his mercenaries. While possessing

considerable gifts of mind and a latent fund of energy, he seldom acted

or reflected until the favourable moment had passed. Each of his great

humiliations followed as the natural result of crimes or blunders. By

his divorce from Isabella of Gloucester he offended the English baronage

(1200); by his marriage with Isabella of Angoulême, the betrothed of

Hugh of Lusignan, he gave an opportunity to the discontented Poitevins

for invoking French assistance and to Philip Augustus for pronouncing

against him a sentence of forfeiture. The murder of Arthur (1203) ruined

his cause in Normandy and Anjou; the story that the court of the peers

of France condemned him for the murder is a fable, but no legal process

was needed to convince men of his guilt. In the later quarrel with

Innocent III. (1207-1213; see LANGTON, STEPHEN) he prejudiced his case

by proposing a worthless favourite for the primacy and by plundering

those of the clergy who bowed to the pope's sentences. Threatened with

the desertion of his barons he drove all whom he suspected to

desperation by his terrible severity towards the Braose family (1210);

and by his continued misgovernment irrevocably estranged the lower

classes. When submission to Rome had somewhat improved his position he

squandered his last resources in a new and unsuccessful war with France

(1214), and enraged the feudal classes by new claims for military

service and scutages. The barons were consequently able to exact, in

Magna Carta (June 1215), much more than the redress of legitimate

grievances; and the people allowed the crown to be placed under the

control of an oligarchical committee. When once the sovereign power had

been thus divided, the natural consequence was civil war and the

intervention of the French king, who had long watched for some such

opportunity. John's struggle against the barons and Prince Louis (1216),

afterwards King Louis VIII., was the most creditable episode of his

career. But the calamitous situation of England at the moment of his

death, on the 19th of October 1216, was in the main his work; and while

he lived a national reaction in favour of the dynasty was out of the

question.

John's second wife, Isabella of Angoulême (d. 1246), who married her

former lover, Hugh of Lusignan, after the English king's death, bore the

king two sons, Henry III. and Richard, earl of Cornwall; and three

daughters, Joan (1210-1238), wife of Alexander II., king of Scotland,

Isabella (d. 1241), wife of the emperor Frederick II., and Eleanor (d.

1274), wife of William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, and then of Simon de

Montfort, earl of Leicester. John had also two illegitimate sons,

Richard and Oliver, and a daughter, Joan or Joanna, who married Llewelyn

I. ab Iorwerth, prince of North Wales, and who died in 1236 or 1237.

AUTHORITIES.--The chief chronicles for the reign are Gervase of

Canterbury's _Gesta regum_, Ralf of Coggeshall's _Chronicon_, Walter

of Coventry's _Memoriale_, Roger of Wendover's _Flores historiarum_,

the Annals of Burton, Dunstaple and Margan--all these in the Rolls

Series. The French chronicle of the so-called "Anonyme de Béthune"

(Bouquet, _Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France_, vol.

xxiv.), the _Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d'Angleterre_

(ed. F. Michel, Paris, 1840) and the metrical biography of William the

Marshal (_Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal_, ed. Paul Meyer, 3 vols.,

Paris, 1891, &c.) throw valuable light on certain episodes. H. S.

Sweetman's _Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland_, vol. i. (Rolls

Series); W. H. Bliss's _Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers_,

vol. i. (Rolls Series); Potthast's _Regesta pontificum_, vol. i.

(Berlin, 1874); Sir T. D. Hardy's _Rotuli litterarum clausarum_ (Rec.

Commission, 1835) and _Rotuli litterarum patentium_ (Rec. Commission,

1835) and L. Delisle's _Catalogue des actes de Philippe Auguste_

(Paris, 1856) are the most important guides to the documents. Of

modern works W. Stubbs's _Constitutional history_, vol. i. (Oxford,

1897); the same writer's preface to _Walter of Coventry_, vol. ii.

(Rolls Series); Miss K. Norgate's _John Lackland_ (London, 1902); C.

Petit-Dutaillis' _Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII._ (Paris,

1894) and W. S. McKechnie's _Magna Carta_ (Glasgow, 1905) are among

the most useful. (H. W. C. D.)

JOHN I. (1350-1395), king of Aragon, was the son of Peter IV. and his

third wife Eleanor of Sicily. He was born on the 27th of December 1350,

and died by a fall from his horse, like his namesake, cousin and

contemporary of Castile. He was a man of insignificant character, with a

taste for artificial verse.

JOHN II. (1397-1479), king of Aragon, son of Ferdinand I. and of his

wife Eleanor of Albuquerque, born on the 29th of June 1397, was one of

the most stirring and most unscrupulous kings of the 15th century. In

his youth he was one of the _infantes_ (princes) of Aragon who took part

in the dissensions of Castile during the minority and reign of John II.

Till middle life he was also lieutenant-general in Aragon for his

brother and predecessor Alphonso V., whose reign was mainly spent in

Italy. In his old age he was engaged in incessant conflicts with his

Aragonese and Catalan subjects, with Louis XI. of France, and in

preparing the way for the marriage of his son Ferdinand with Isabella of

Castile, which brought about the union of the crowns. His troubles with

his subjects were closely connected with the tragic dissensions in his

own family. John was first married to Blanche of Navarre, of the house

of Evreux. By right of Blanche he became king of Navarre, and on her

death in 1441 he was left in possession of the kingdom for his life. But

a son Charles, called, as heir of Navarre, prince of Viana, had been

born of the marriage. John from the first regarded his son with

jealousy, which after his second marriage with Joan Henriquez, and under

her influence, grew into absolute hatred. He endeavoured to deprive his

son of his constitutional right to act as lieutenant-general of Aragon

during his father's absence. The cause of the son was taken up by the

Aragonese, and the king's attempt to join his second wife in the

lieutenant-generalship was set aside. There followed a long conflict,

with alternations of success and defeat, which was not terminated till

the death of the prince of Viana, perhaps by poison given him by his

stepmother, in 1461. The Catalans, who had adopted the cause of Charles

and who had grievances of their own, called in a succession of foreign

pretenders. In conflict with these the last years of King John were

spent. He was forced to pawn Rousillon, his possession on the north-east

of the Pyrenees, to Louis XI., who refused to part with it. In his old

age he was blinded by cataract, but recovered his eyesight by the

operation of couching. The Catalan revolt was pacified in 1472, but John

had war, in which he was generally unfortunate, with his neighbour the

French king till his death on the 20th of January 1479. He was succeeded

by Ferdinand, his son by his second marriage, who was already associated

with his wife Isabella as joint sovereign of Castile.

For the history, see Rivadeneyra, "Cronicás de los reyes de Castilla,"

_Biblioteca de antares españoles_, vols. lxvi, lxviii (Madrid, 1845,

&c.); G. Zurita, _Anales de Aragon_ (Saragossa, 1610). The reign of

John II. of Aragon is largely dealt with in W. H. Prescott's _History

of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella_ (1854).

JOHN (1296-1346), king of Bohemia, was a son of the emperor Henry VII.

by his wife Margaret, daughter of John I., duke of Brabant, and was a

member of the family of Luxemburg. Born on the 10th of August 1296, he

became count of Luxemburg in 1309, and about the same time was offered

the crown of Bohemia, which, after the death of Wenceslas III., the last

king of the Premyslides dynasty in 1306, had passed to Henry, duke of

Carinthia, under whose weak rule the country was in a very disturbed

condition. The emperor accepted this offer on behalf of his son, who

married Elizabeth (d. 1330), a sister of Wenceslas, and after Henry's

departure for Italy, John was crowned king of Bohemia at Prague in

February 1311. Henry of Carinthia was driven from the land, where a

certain measure of order was restored, and Moravia was again united with

Bohemia. As imperial vicar John represented his father at the diet of

Nuremberg in January 1313, and was leading an army to his assistance in

Italy when he heard of the emperor's death, which took place in August

1313. John was now a candidate for the imperial throne; but, on account

of his youth, his claim was not regarded seriously, and he was persuaded

to give his support to Louis, duke of Upper Bavaria, afterwards the

emperor Louis the Bavarian. At Esslingen and elsewhere he aided Louis in

his struggle with Frederick the Fair, duke of Austria, who also claimed

the Empire; but his time was mainly passed in quelling disturbances in

Bohemia, where his German followers were greatly disliked and where he

himself soon became unpopular, especially among the nobles; or in

Luxemburg, the borders of which county he was constantly and

successfully striving to extend. Restless, adventurous and warlike, John

had soon tired of governing his kingdom, and even discussed exchanging

it with the emperor Louis for the Palatinate; and while Bohemia was

again relapsing into a state of anarchy, her king was winning fame as a

warrior in almost every part of Europe. He fought against the citizens

of Metz and against his kinsman, John III., duke of Brabant; he led the

knights of the Teutonic Order against the heathen in Lithuania and

Pomerania and promised Pope John XXII. to head a crusade; and claiming

to be king of Poland he attacked the Poles and brought Silesia under his

rule. He obtained Tirol by marrying his son, John Henry, to Margaret

Maultasch, the heiress of the county, assisted the emperor to defeat and

capture Frederick the Fair at the battle of Mühldorf in 1322, and was

alternately at peace and at war with the dukes of Austria and with his

former foe, Henry of Carinthia. He was a frequent and welcome visitor to

France, in which country he had a personal and hereditary interest; and

on several occasions his prowess was serviceable to his brother-in-law

King Charles IV., and to Charles's successor Philip VI., whose son John,

afterwards King John II., married a daughter of the Bohemian king. Soon

after the battle of Mühldorf, the relations between John and the emperor

became somewhat strained, partly owing to the king's growing friendship

with the Papacy and with France, and partly owing to territorial

disputes. An agreement, however, was concluded, and John undertook his

invasion of Italy, which was perhaps the most dazzling of his exploits.

Invited by the citizens of Brescia, he crossed the Alps with a meagre

following in 1331, quickly received the homage of many of the cities of

northern Italy, and soon found himself the ruler of a great part of the

peninsula. But his soldiers were few and his enemies were many, and a

second invasion of Italy in 1333 was followed by the dissipation of his

dreams of making himself king of Lombardy and Tuscany, and even of

supplanting Louis on the imperial throne. The fresh trouble between king

and emperor, caused by this enterprise, was intensified by a quarrel

over the lands left by Henry of Carinthia, and still later by the

interference of Louis in Tirol; and with bewildering rapidity John was

allying himself with the kings of Hungary and Poland, fighting against

the emperor and his Austrian allies, defending Bohemia, governing

Luxemburg, visiting France and negotiating with the pope. About 1340 the

king was overtaken by blindness, but he continued to lead an active

life, successfully resisting the attacks of Louis and his allies, and

campaigning in Lithuania. In 1346 he made a decisive move against the

emperor. Acting in union with Pope Clement VI. he secured the formal

deposition of Louis and the election of his own son Charles, margrave of

Moravia, as German king, or king of the Romans, in July 1346. Then

journeying to help Philip of France against the English, he fought at

the battle of Crécy, where his heroic death on the 26th of August 1346

was a fitting conclusion to his adventurous life.

John was a chivalrous and romantic personage, who enjoyed a great

reputation for valour both before and after his death; but as a ruler he

was careless and extravagant, interested only in his kingdom when

seeking relief from his constant pecuniary embarrassments. After the

death of his first wife, who bore him two sons, Charles, afterwards the

emperor Charles IV., and John Henry (d. 1375), and who had been

separated from her husband for some years, the king married Beatrice (d.

1383), daughter of Louis I., duke of Bourbon, by whom he had a son,

Wenceslas (d. 1383). According to Camden the crest or badge of three

ostrich feathers, with the motto _Ich dien_, borne by the prince of

Wales was originally that of John of Bohemia and was first assumed by

Edward the Black Prince after the battle of Crécy. There is no proof,

however, that this badge was ever worn by John--it certainly was not his

crest--and its origin must be sought elsewhere.

See J. Schötter, _Johann, Graf von Luxemburg and König von Böhmen_

(Luxemburg, 1865); F. von Weech, _Kaiser Ludwig der Bayer und König

Johann von Böhmen_ (Munich, 1860), and U. Chevalier, _Répertoire des

sources historiques_, tome v. (Paris, 1905).

JOHN I. (1358-1390), king of Castile, was the son of Henry II., and of

his wife Joan, daughter of John Manuel of Villena, head of a younger

branch of the royal house of Castile. In the beginning of his reign he

had to contend with the hostility of John of Gaunt, who claimed the

crown by right of his wife Constance, daughter of Peter the Cruel. The

king of Castile finally bought off the claim of his English competitor

by arranging a marriage between his son Henry and Catherine, daughter of

John of Gaunt, in 1387. Before this date he had been engaged in

hostilities with Portugal which was in alliance with John of Gaunt. His

first quarrel with Portugal was settled by his marriage, in 1382, with

Beatrix, daughter of the Portuguese king Ferdinand. On the death of his

father-in-law in 1383, John endeavoured to enforce the claims of his

wife, Ferdinand's only child, to the crown of Portugal. He was resisted

by the national sentiment of the people, and was utterly defeated at

the battle of Aljubarrota, on the 14th of August 1385. King John was

killed at Alcalá on the 9th of October 1390 by the fall of his horse,

while he was riding in a _fantasia_ with some of the light horsemen

known as the _farfanes_, who were mounted and equipped in the Arab

style.

JOHN II. (1405-1454), king of Castile, was born on the 6th of March

1405, the son of Henry III. of Castile and of his wife Catherine,

daughter of John of Gaunt. He succeeded his father on the 25th of

December 1406 at the age of a year and ten months. It was one of the

many misfortunes of Castile that the long reign of John II.--forty-nine

years--should have been granted to one of the most incapable of her

kings. John was amiable, weak and dependent on those about him. He had

no taste except for ornament, and no serious interest except in

amusements, verse-making, hunting and tournaments. He was entirely under

the influence of his favourite, Alvaro de Luna, till his second wife,

Isabella of Portugal, obtained control of his feeble will. At her

instigation he threw over his faithful and able favourite, a meanness

which is said to have caused him well-deserved remorse. He died on the

20th of July 1454 at Valladolid. By his second marriage he was the

father of Isabella "the Catholic."

JOHN I. (b. and d. 1316), king of France, son of Louis X. and Clemence,

daughter of Charles Martel, who claimed to be king of Hungary, was born,

after his father's death, on the 15th of November 1316, and only lived

seven days. His uncle, afterwards Philip V. has been accused of having

caused his death, or of having substituted a dead child in his place;

but nothing was ever proved. An impostor calling himself John I.,

appeared in Provence, in the reign of John II., but he was captured and

died in prison.

JOHN II. (1319-1364), surnamed the Good, king of France, son of Philip

VI. and Jeanne of Burgundy, succeeded his father in 1350. At the age of

13 he married Bona of Luxemburg, daughter of John, king of Bohemia. His

early exploits against the English were failures and revealed in the

young prince both avarice and stubborn persistence in projects obviously

ill-advised. It was especially the latter quality which brought about

his ruin. His first act upon becoming king was to order the execution of

the constable, Raoul de Brienne. The reasons for this are unknown, but

from the secrecy with which it was carried out and the readiness with

which the honour was transferred to the king's close friend Charles of

La Cesda, it has been attributed to the influence and ambition of the

latter. John surrounded himself with evil counsellors, Simon de Buci,

Robert de Lorris, Nicolas Braque, men of low origin who robbed the

treasury and oppressed the people, while the king gave himself up to

tournaments and festivities. In imitation of the English order of the

Garter, he established the knightly order of the Star, and celebrated

its festivals with great display. Raids of the Black Prince in Languedoc

led to the states-general of 1355, which readily voted money, but

sanctioned the right of resistance against all kinds of pillage--a

distinct commentary on the incompetence of the king. In September 1356

John gathered the flower of his chivalry and attacked the Black Prince

at Poitiers. The utter defeat of the French was made the more

humiliating by the capture of their king, who had bravely led the third

line of battle. Taken to England to await ransom, John was at first

installed in the Savoy Palace, then at Windsor, Hertford, Somerton, and

at last in the Tower. He was granted royal state with his captive

companions, made a guest at tournaments, and supplied with luxuries

imported by him from France. The treaty of Brétigny (1360), which fixed

his ransom at 3,000,000 crowns, enabled him to return to France, but

although he married his daughter Isabella to Gian Galeazzo Visconti of

Milan, for a gift of 600,000 golden crowns, imposed a heavy feudal "aid"

on merchandise, and various other taxes, John was unable to pay more

than 400,000 crowns to Edward III. His son Louis of Anjou, who had been

left as hostage, escaped from Calais in the summer of 1363, and John,

far in arrears in the payments of the ransom, surrendered himself again

"to maintain his royal honour which his son had sullied." He landed in

England in January 1364 and was received with great honour, lodged again

in the Savoy, and was a frequent guest of Edward at Westminster. He

died on the 8th of April, and the body was sent back to France with

royal honours.

See Froissart's _Chronicles_; Duc d'Aumale, _Notes et documents

relatifs à Jean, roi de France, et à sa captivité_ (1856); A. Coville,

in Lavisse's _Histoire de France_, vol. iv., and authorities cited

there.

JOHN (ZAPOLYA) (1487-1540), king of Hungary, was the son of the palatine

Stephen Zapolya and the princess Hedwig of Teschen, and was born at the

castle of Szepesvár. He began his public career at the famous Rákos diet

of 1505, when, on his motion, the assembly decided that after the death

of the reigning king, Wladislaus II., no foreign prince should be

elected king of Hungary. Henceforth he became the national candidate for

the throne, which his family had long coveted. As far back as 1491 his

mother had proposed to the sick king that his daughter Anne should be

committed to her care in order, subsequently, to be married to her son;

but Wladislaus frustrated this project by contracting a matrimonial

alliance with the Habsburgs. In 1510 Zapolya sued in person for the hand

of the Princess Anne in vain, and his appointment to the voivody of

Transylvania (1511) was with the evident intention of removing him far

from court. In 1513, after a successful raid in Turkish territory, he

hastened to Buda at the head of 1000 horsemen and renewed his suit,

which was again rejected. In 1514 he stamped out the dangerous peasant

rising under Dozsa (q.v.) and the infernal torments by means of which

the rebel leader was slowly done to death were the invention of Zapolya.

With the gentry, whose hideous oppression had moved the peasantry to

revolt, he was now more than ever popular, and, on the death of

Wladislaus II., the second diet of Rákos (1516) appointed him the

governor of the infant king Louis II. He now aimed at the dignity of

palatine also, but the council of state and the court party combined

against him and appointed István Báthory instead (1519). The strife of

factions now burnt more fiercely than ever at the very time when the

pressure of the Turk demanded the combination of all the national forces

against a common danger. It was entirely due to the dilatoriness and

dissensions of Zapolya and Báthory that the great fortress of Belgrade

was captured in 1521, a loss which really sealed the fate of Hungary. In

1522 the diet would have appointed both Zapolya and Báthory

captains-general of the realm, but the court set Zapolya aside and chose

Báthory only. At the diets of Hátvan and Rákos in 1522, Zapolya placed

himself at the head of a confederation to depose the palatine and the

other great officers of state, but the attempt failed. In the following

year, however, the revolutionary Hátvan diet drove out all the members

of the council of state and made István Verböczy, the great jurist, and

a friend of Zapolya, palatine. In the midst of this hopeless anarchy,

Suleiman I., the Magnificent, invaded Hungary with a countless army, and

the young king perished on the field of Mohács in a vain attempt to stay

his progress, the contradictory orders of Louis II. preventing Zapolya

from arriving in time to turn the fortunes of the day. The court party

accused him of deliberate treachery on this occasion; but the charge

must be pronounced groundless. His younger brother George was killed at

Mohács, where he was second commander-in-chief. Zapolya was elected king

of Hungary at the subsequent diet of Tokaj (Oct. 14), the election was

confirmed by the diet of Székesfehérvár (10th of November), and he was

crowned on the following day with the holy crown.

A struggle with the rival candidate, the German king Ferdinand I., at

once ensued (see HUNGARY: _History_) and it was only with the aid of the

Turks that king John was able to exhaust his opponent and compel him to

come to terms. Finally, in 1538, by the compact of Nagyvárad, Ferdinand

recognized John as king of Hungary, but secured the right of succession

on his death. Nevertheless John broke the compact by bequeathing the

kingdom to his infant son John Sigismund under Turkish protection. John

was the last national king of Hungary. His merit, as a statesman, lies

in his stout vindication of the national independence, though without

the assistance of his great minister György Utiesenovich, better known

as "Frater George" (Cardinal Martinuzzi (q.v.)), this would have been

impossible. Indirectly he contributed to the subsequent conquest of

Hungary by admitting the Turk as a friend.

See Vilmos Fraknoi, _Ungarn vor der Schlacht bei Mohács_ (Budapest,

1886); L. Kupelwieser, _Die Kämpfe Ungarns mit den Osmanen bis zur

Schlacht bei Mohács_ (Vienna, 1895); Ignacz Acsády, _History of the

Hungarian Realm_, vol. i. (Hung.) (Budapest, 1902-1904).

JOHN OF BRIENNE (c. 1148-1237), king of Jerusalem and Latin emperor of

Constantinople, was a man of sixty years of age before he began to play

any considerable part in history. Destined originally for the Church, he

had preferred to become a knight, and in forty years of tournaments and

fights he had won himself a considerable reputation, when in 1208 envoys

came from the Holy Land to ask Philip Augustus, king of France, to

select one of his barons as husband to the heiress, and ruler of the

kingdom, of Jerusalem. Philip selected John of Brienne, and promised to

support him in his new dignity. In 1210 John married the heiress Mary

(daughter of Isabella and Conrad of Montferrat), assuming the title of

king in right of his wife. In 1211, after some desultory operations, he

concluded a six years' truce with Malik-el-Adil; in 1212 he lost his

wife, who left him a daughter, Isabella; soon afterwards he married an

Armenian princess. In the fifth crusade (1218-1221) he was a prominent

figure. The legate Pelagius, however, claimed the command; and insisting

on the advance from Damietta, in spite of the warnings of King John, he

refused to accept the favourable terms of the sultan, as the king

advised, until it was too late. After the failure of the crusade, King

John came to the West to obtain help for his kingdom. In 1223 he met

Honorius III. and the emperor Frederick II. at Ferentino, where, in

order that he might be connected more closely with the Holy Land,

Frederick was betrothed to John's daughter Isabella, now heiress of the

kingdom. After the meeting at Ferentino, John went to France and

England, finding little consolation; and thence he travelled to

Compostella, where he married a new wife, Berengaria of Castile. After a

visit to Germany he returned to Rome (1225). Here he received a demand

from Frederick II. (who had now married Isabella) that he should abandon

his title and dignity of king, which--so Frederick claimed--had passed

to himself along with the heiress of the kingdom. John was now a

septuagenarian "king in exile," but he was still vigorous enough to

revenge himself on Frederick, by commanding the papal troops which

attacked southern Italy during the emperor's absence on the sixth

crusade (1228-1229). In 1229 John, now eighty years of age, was invited

by the barons of the Latin empire of Constantinople to become emperor,

on condition that Baldwin of Courtenay should marry his second daughter

and succeed him. For nine years he ruled in Constantinople, and in 1235,

with a few troops, he repelled a great siege of the city by Vataces of

Nicaea and Azen of Bulgaria. After this last feat of arms, which has

perhaps been exaggerated by the Latin chroniclers, who compare him to

Hector and the Maccabees, John died in the habit of a Franciscan friar.

An aged paladin, somewhat uxorious and always penniless, he was a

typical knight errant, whose wanderings led him all over Europe, and

planted him successively on the thrones of Jerusalem and Constantinople.

The story of John's career must be sought partly in histories of the

kingdom of Jerusalem and of the Latin Empire of the East, partly in

monographs. Among these, of which R. Röhricht gives a list

(_Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem_, p. 699, n. 3), see especially

that of E. de Montcarmet, _Un chevalier du temps passé_ (Limoges, 1876

and 1881).

JOHN III. (SOBIESKI) (1624-1696), king of Poland, was the eldest son of

James Sobieski, castellan of Cracow, and Theofila Danillowiczowna,

grand-daughter of the great Hetman Zolkiewski. After being educated at

Cracow, he made the grand tour with his brother Mark and returned to

Poland in 1648. He served against Chmielnicki and the Cossacks and was

present at the battles of Beresteczko (1651) and Batoka (1652), but was

one of the first to desert his unhappy country when invaded by the

Swedes in 1654, and actually assisted them to conquer the Prussian

provinces in 1655. He returned to his lawful allegiance in the

following year and assisted Czarniecki in his difficult task of

expelling Charles X. of Sweden from the central Polish provinces. For

his subsequent services to King John Casimir, especially in the Ukraine

against the Tatars and Cossacks, he received the grand bâton of the

crown, or commandership-in-chief (1668). He had already (1665) succeeded

Czarniecki as acting commander-in-chief. Sobieski had well earned these

distinctions by his extraordinary military capacity, but he was now to

exhibit a less pleasing side of his character. He was in fact a typical

representative of the unscrupulous self-seeking Polish magnates of the

17th century who were always ready to sacrifice everything, their

country included, to their own private ambition. At the election diet of

1669 he accepted large bribes from Louis XIV. to support one of the

French candidates; after the election of Michael Wisniowiecki (June 19,

1669) he openly conspired, again in the French interest, against his

lawful sovereign, and that too at the very time when the Turk was

ravaging the southern frontier of the republic. Michael was the feeblest

monarch the Poles could have placed upon the throne, and Sobieski

deliberately attempted to make government of any kind impossible. He

formed a league with the primate Prazmowski and other traitors to

dethrone the king; when (1670) the plot was discovered and participation

in it repudiated by Louis XIV., the traitors sought the help of the

elector of Brandenburg against their own justly indignant countrymen.

Two years later the same traitors again conspired against the king, at

the very time when the Turks had defeated Sobieski's unsupported

lieutenant, Luzecki, at Czertwertyworska and captured the fortress of

Kamieniec (Kamenetz-Podolskiy), the key of south-eastern Poland, while

Lemberg was only saved by the valour of Elias Lancki. The unhappy king

did the only thing possible in the circumstances. He summoned the

_tuszenia pospolite_, or national armed assembly; but it failed to

assemble in time, whereupon Michael was constrained to sign the

disgraceful peace of Buczacz (Oct. 17, 1672) whereby Poland ceded to the

Porte the whole of the Ukraine with Podolia and Kamieniec. Aroused to

duty by a series of disasters for which he himself was primarily

responsible, Sobieski now hastened to the frontier, and won four

victories in ten days. But he could not recover Kamieniec, and when the

_tuszenia pospolite_ met at Golenba and ordered an inquiry into the

conduct of Sobieski and his accomplices he frustrated all their efforts

by summoning a counter confederation to meet at Szczebrzeszyn. Powerless

to oppose a rebel who was at the same time commander-in-chief, both the

king and the diet had to give way, and a compromise was come to whereby

the peace of Buczacz was repudiated and Sobieski was given a chance of

rehabilitating himself, which he did by his brilliant victory over an

immense Turkish host at Khotin (Nov. 10, 1673). The same day King

Michael died and Sobieski, determined to secure the throne for himself,

hastened to the capital, though Tatar bands were swarming over the

frontier and the whole situation was acutely perilous. Appearing at the

elective diet of 1674 at the head of 6000 veterans he overawed every

other competitor, and despite the persistent opposition of the

Lithuanians was elected king on the 21st of May. By this time, however,

the state of things in the Ukraine was so alarming that the new king had

to hasten to the front. Assisted by French diplomacy at the Porte (Louis

XIV. desiring to employ Poland against Austria), and his own skilful

negotiations with the Tatar khan, John III. now tried to follow the

example of Wladislaus IV. by leaving the guardianship of the Ukraine

entirely in the hands of the Cossacks, while he assembled as many

regulars and militiamen as possible at Lemberg, whence he might hasten

with adequate forces to defend whichever of the provinces of the

Republic might be in most danger. But the appeal of the king was like

the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and not one gentleman in a

hundred hastened to the assistance of the fatherland. Even at the end of

August Sobieski had but 3000 men at his disposal to oppose to 60,000

Turks. Only his superb strategy and the heroic devotion of his

lieutenants--notably the converted Jew, Jan Samuel Chrzanowski, who held

the Ottoman army at bay for eleven days behind the walls of

Trembowla--enabled the king to remove "the pagan yoke from our

shoulders"; and he returned to be crowned at Cracow on the 14th of

February 1676. In October 1676, in his entrenched camp at Zaravno, he

with 13,000 men withstood 80,000 Turks for three weeks, and recovered by

special treaty two-thirds of the Ukraine, but without Kamieniec (treaty

of Zaravno, Oct. 16, 1676).

Having now secured peace abroad Sobieski was desirous of strengthening

Poland at home by establishing absolute monarchy; but Louis XIV. looked

coldly on the project, and from this time forth the old familiar

relations between the republic and the French monarchy were strained to

breaking point, though the final rupture did not come till 1682 on the

arrival of the Austrian minister, Zerowski, at Warsaw. After resisting

every attempt of the French court to draw him into the anti-Habsburg

league, Sobieski signed the famous treaty of alliance with the emperor

Leopold against the Turks (March 31, 1683), which was the prelude to the

most glorious episode of his life, the relief of Vienna and the

liberation of Hungary from the Ottoman yoke. The epoch-making victory of

the 12th of September 1683 was ultimately decided by the charge of the

Polish cavalry led by Sobieski in person. Unfortunately Poland profited

little or nothing by this great triumph, and now that she had broken the

back of the enemy she was left to fight the common enemy in the Ukraine

with whatever assistance she could obtain from the unwilling and unready

Muscovites. The last twelve years of the reign of John III. were a

period of unmitigated humiliation and disaster. He now reaped to the

full the harvest of treason and rebellion which he himself had sown so

abundantly during the first forty years of his life. A treasonable

senate secretly plotting his dethronement, a mutinous diet rejecting the

most necessary reforms for fear of "absolutism," ungrateful allies who

profited exclusively by his victories--these were his inseparable

companions during the remainder of his life. Nay, at last his evil

destiny pursued him to the battlefield and his own home. His last

campaign (in 1690) was an utter failure, and the last years of his life

were embittered by the violence and the intrigues of his dotingly

beloved wife, Marya Kazimiera d'Arquien, by whom he had three sons,

James, Alexander and Constantine. He died on the 17th of June 1696, a

disillusioned and broken-hearted old man.

See Tadeusz Korzon, _Fortunes and Misfortunes of John Sobieski_ (Pol.)

(Cracow, 1898); E. H. R. Tatham, _John Sobieski_ (Oxford, 1881);

Kazimierz Waliszewski, _Archives of French Foreign Affairs_,

1674-1696, v. (Cracow, 1881); Ludwik Piotr Leliwa, _John Sobieski and

His Times_ (Pol.) (Cracow, 1882-1885); Kazimierz Waliszewski,

_Marysienka Queen of Poland_ (London, 1898); Georg Rieder, _Johann

Sobieski_ in Wien (Vienna, 1882). (R. N. B.)

JOHN I. (1357-1433), king of Portugal, the natural son of Pedro I. (_el

Justicieiro_), was born at Lisbon on the 22nd of April 1357, and in 1364

was created grand-master of Aviz. On the death of his lawful brother

Ferdinand I., without male issue, in October 1383, strenuous efforts

were made to secure the succession for Beatrice, the only child of

Ferdinand I., who as heiress-apparent had been married to John I. of

Castile (Spain), but the popular voice declared against an arrangement

by which Portugal would virtually have become a Spanish province, and

John was after violent tumults proclaimed protector and regent in the

following December. In April 1385 he was unanimously chosen king by the

estates of the realm at Coimbra. The king of Castile invaded Portugal,

but his army was compelled by pestilence to withdraw, and subsequently

by the decisive battle of Aljubarrota (Aug. 14, 1385) the stability of

John's throne was permanently secured. Hostilities continued

intermittently until John of Castile died, without leaving issue by

Beatrice, in 1390. Meanwhile the king of Portugal went on consolidating

the power of the crown at home and the influence of the nation abroad.

In 1415 Ceuta was taken from the Moors by his sons who had been born to

him by his wife Philippa, daughter of John, duke of Lancaster; specially

distinguished in the siege was Prince Henry (q.v.) afterwards generally

known as "the Navigator." John I., sometimes surnamed "the Great," and

sometimes "father of his country," died on the 11th of August 1433, in

the forty-eighth year of a reign which had been characterized by great

prudence, ability and success; he was succeeded by his son Edward or

Duarte, so named out of compliment to Edward III. of England.

See J. P. Oliveira Martins, _Os filhos de D. João I._ and _A vida de

Nun' Alvares_ (Lisbon, 2nd ed. 1894).

JOHN II. (1455-1495), the Perfect, king of Portugal, succeeded his

father, Alphonso V., in August 1481. His first business was to curtail

the overgrown power of his aristocracy; noteworthy incidents in the

contest were the execution (1483) of the duke of Braganza for

correspondence with Castile, and the murder, by the king's own hand, of

the youthful duke of Viseu for conspiracy. This reign was signalized by

Bartholomeu Diaz's discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Maritime

rivalry led to disputes between Portugal and Castile until their claims

were adjusted by the famous treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494). John

II. died, without leaving male issue, in October 1495, and was succeeded

by his brother-in-law Emmanuel (Manoel) I.

See J. P. Oliveira Martins, _O principe perfeito_ (Lisbon, 1895).

JOHN III. (1502-1557), king of Portugal, was born at Lisbon, on the 6th

of June 1502, and ascended the throne as successor of his father

Emmanuel I. in December 1521. In 1524 he married Catherine, sister to

the Emperor Charles V., who shortly afterwards married the infanta

Isabella, John's sister. Succeeding to the crown at a time when Portugal

was at the height of its political power, and Lisbon in a position of

commercial importance previously unknown, John III., unfortunately for

his dominions, became subservient to the clerical party among his

subjects, with disastrous consequences to the commercial and social

prosperity of his kingdom. He died of apoplexy on the 6th of June 1557,

and was succeeded by his grandson Sebastian, then a child of only three

years.

JOHN IV. (1603-1656), the Fortunate, king of Portugal, was born at

Villaviciosa in March 1603, succeeded to the dukedom of Braganza in

1630, and married Luisa de Guzman, eldest daughter of the duke of Medina

Sidonia, in 1633. By the unanimous voice of the people he was raised to

the throne of Portugal (of which he was held to be the legitimate heir)

at the revolution effected in December 1640 against the Spanish king,

Philip IV. His accession led to a protracted war with Spain, which only

ended with the recognition of Portuguese independence in a subsequent

reign (1668). He died on the 6th of November 1656, and was succeeded by

his son Alphonso VI.

JOHN V. (1689-1750), king of Portugal, was born at Lisbon on the 22nd of

October 1689, and succeeded his father Pedro II. in December 1706, being

proclaimed on the 1st of January 1707. One of his first acts was to

intimate his adherence to the Grand Alliance, which his father had

joined in 1703. Accordingly his general Das Minas, along with Lord

Galway, advanced into Castile, but sustained the defeat of Almanza

(April 14). In October 1708 he married Maria Anna, daughter of Leopold

I., thus strengthening the alliance with Austria; the series of

unsuccessful campaigns which ensued ultimately terminated in a

favourable peace with France in 1713 and with Spain in 1715. The rest of

his long reign was characterized by royal subservience to the clergy,

the kingdom being administered by ecclesiastical persons and for

ecclesiastical objects to an extent that gave him the best of rights to

the title "Most Faithful King," bestowed upon him and his successors by

a bull of Pope Benedict XIV. in 1748. John V. died on the 31st of July

1750, and was succeeded by his son Joseph.

JOHN VI. (1769-1826), king of Portugal, was born at Lisbon on the 13th

of May 1769, and received the title of prince of Brazil in 1788. In 1792

he assumed the reins of government in name of his mother Queen Mary I.,

who had become insane. He had been brought up in an ecclesiastical

atmosphere, and, being naturally of a somewhat weak and helpless

character, was but ill adapted for the responsibilities he was thus

called on to undertake. In 1799 he assumed the title of regent, which he

retained until his mother's death in 1816. (For the political history of

his regency, see PORTUGAL.) In 1816 he was recognized as king of

Portugal but he continued to reside in Brazil; the consequent spread of

dissatisfaction resulted in the peaceful revolution of 1820, and the

proclamation of a constitutional government, to which he swore fidelity

on his return to Portugal in 1822. In the same year, and again in 1823,

he had to suppress a rebellion led by his son Dom Miguel, whom he

ultimately was compelled to banish in 1824. He died at Lisbon on the

26th of March 1826, and was succeeded by Pedro IV.

JOHN (1801-1873), king of Saxony, son of Prince Maximilian of Saxony and

his wife Caroline of Parma (d. 1804), was born at Dresden on the 12th of

December 1801. As a boy he took a keen interest in literature and art

(also in history, law, and political science), and studied with the

greatest ardour classical and German literature (Herder, Schiller,

Goethe). He soon began to compose poetry himself, and drew great

inspiration from a journey in Italy (1821-1822), the pleasure of which

was however darkened by the death of his brother Clemens. In Pavia the

prince met with Biagioli's edition of Dante, and this gave rise to his

lifelong and fruitful studies of Dante. The first part of his German

translation of Dante was published in 1828, and in 1833 appeared the

complete work, with a valuable commentary, which met with a great

success. Several new editions appeared under his constant supervision,

and he collected a complete library of works on Dante.

On his return from Italy he was betrothed to Princess Amalia of Bavaria,

daughter of King Maximilian Joseph. He thus became the brother-in-law of

Frederick William IV., king of Prussia, with whom he had a deep and

lasting friendship. His wife Amalia died on the 8th of November 1877,

having borne him nine children, two of whom, Albert and George, later

became kings of Saxony.

On his return to Dresden, John was called in 1822 to the privy board of

finance (_Geheimes Finanzkollegium_) and in 1825 became its

vice-president. Under the leadership of the president, Freiherr von

Manteuffel, he acquired a thorough knowledge of administration and of

political economy, and laid the foundations of that conservatism which

he retained throughout life. These new activities did not, however,

interrupt his literary and artistic studies. He came into still closer

relations with politics and government after his entry into the privy

council in 1830. During the revolution in Saxony he helped in the

pacification of the country, became commandant of the new national

guard, the political tendencies of which he tried to check, and took an

exceptionally active part in the organization of the constitution of the

4th of September 1831 and especially in the deliberations of the upper

chamber, where he worked with unflagging energy and great ability.

Following the example of his father, he taught his children in person,

and had a great influence on their education. On the 12th of August

1845, during a stay at Leipzig, the prince was the object of hostile

public demonstrations, the people holding him to be the head of an

alleged ultramontane party at court, and the revolution of 1848

compelled him to interrupt his activities in the upper chamber.

Immediately after the suppression of the revolution he resumed his place

and took part chiefly in the discussion of legal questions. He was also

interested in the amalgamation of the German historical and

archaeological societies. On the death of his brother Frederick Augustus

II., John became, on the 9th of August 1854, king of Saxony. As king he

soon won great popularity owing to his simplicity, graciousness and

increasingly evident knowledge of affairs. In his policy as regards the

German confederation he was entirely on the side of Austria. Though not

opposed to a reform of the federal constitution, he held that its

maintenance under the presidency of Austria was essential. This view he

supported at the assembly of princes at Frankfort in August and

September 1863. He was unable to uphold his views against Prussia, and

in the war of 1866 fought on the side of Austria. It was with difficulty

that, on the conclusion of peace, Austrian diplomacy succeeded in

enabling the king to retain his crown. After 1866 King John gradually

became reconciled to the new state of affairs. He entered the North

German confederation, and in the war of 1870-71 with France his troops

fought with conspicuous courage. He died at Dresden on the 29th of

October 1873.

See J. Petzholdt, "Zur Litteratur des Königs Johann," _Neuer Anzeiger

für Bibliographie_ (1858, 1859, 1871, 1873, 1874); "Aphorismen über

unsern König J.," _Bote von Geising_ (1866-1869); _Das Büchlein vom

König Johann_ (Leipzig, 1867); H. v. Treitschke, _Preussische

Jahrbücher_ 23 (1869); A. Reumont, "Elogio di Giovanni, Rè di

Sassonia," _Dagli Atti della Accademia della Crusca_ (Florence, 1874);

J. P. von Winterstein, _Johann, König von Sachsen_ (Dresden, 1878),

and in _Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie_ (1881); H. Ermisch, _Die

Wettiner und die Landesgeschichte_ (Leipzig, 1902); O. Kaemmel,

_Sächsische Geschichte_ (Leipzig, 1899, Sammlung Göschen). (J. Hn.)

JOHN I. (d. 1294), duke of Brabant and Lorraine, surnamed the

Victorious, one of the most gifted and chivalrous princes of his time,

was the second son of Duke Henry III. and Aleidis of Burgundy. In 1267

his elder brother Henry, being infirm of mind and body, was deposed in

his favour. In 1271 John married Margaret, daughter of Louis IX. of

France, and on her death in childbirth he took as his second wife (1273)

Margaret of Flanders, daughter of Guy de Dampierre. His sister Marie was

espoused in 1275 to Philip III. (the Bold) of France, and during the

reign of Philip and his son Philip IV. there were close relations of

friendship and alliance between Brabant and France. In 1285 John

accompanied Philip III. in his expedition against Peter III., king of

Aragon, but the duchy of Limburg was the scene of his chief activity and

greatest successes. After the death of Waleran IV. in 1279 the

succession to this duchy was disputed. His heiress, Ermengarde, had

married Reinald I. count of Gelderland. She died childless, but her

husband continued to rule in Limburg, although his rights were disputed

by Count Adolph of Berg, nephew to Waleran IV. (see Limburg). Not being

strong enough to eject his rival, Adolph sold his rights to John of

Brabant, and hostilities broke out in 1283. Harassed by desultory

warfare and endless negotiations, and seeing no prospect of holding his

own against the powerful duke of Brabant, Reinald made over his rights

to Henry III. count of Luxemburg, who was a descendant of Waleran III.

of Limburg. Henry III. was sustained by the archbishop of Cologne and

other allies, as well as by Reinald of Gelderland. The duke of Brabant

at once invaded the Rhineland and laid siege to the castle of Woeringen

near Bonn. Here he was attacked by the forces of the confederacy on the

5th of June 1288. After a bloody struggle John of Brabant, though at the

head of far inferior numbers, was completely victorious. Limburg was

henceforth attached to the duchy of Brabant. John consolidated his

conquest by giving his daughter in marriage to Henry of Luxemburg

(1291). John the Victorious was a perfect model of a feudal prince in

the days of chivalry, brave, adventurous, excelling in every form of

active exercise, fond of display, generous in temper. He delighted in

tournaments, and was always eager personally to take part in jousts. On

the 3rd of May 1294, on the occasion of some marriage festivities at

Bar, he was wounded in the arm in an encounter by Pierre de Bausner, and

died from the effects of the hurt.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--H. Barlandus, _Rerum gestarum a Brabantiae ducibus

historia usque in annum 1526_ (Louvain, 1566); G. C. van der Berghe,

_Jean le Victorieux, duc de Brabant_ (1259-1294), (Louvain, 1857); K.

F. Stallaert, _Gesch. v. Jan I. van Braband en zijne tijdvak_

(Brussels, 1861); A. Wauters, _Le Duc Jean I^er et le Brabant sous le

règne de ce prince_ (Brussels, 1859).

JOHN, or HANS (1513-1571), margrave of Brandenburg-Cüstrin, was the

younger son of Joachim I., elector of Brandenburg, and was born at

Tangermünde on the 3rd of August 1513. In spite of the _dispositio

Achillea_ which decreed the indivisibility of the electorate, John

inherited the new mark of Brandenburg on his father's death in July

1535. He had been brought up as a strict Catholic, but soon wavered in

his allegiance, and in 1538 ranged himself definitely on the side of the

Reformers. About the same time he joined the league of Schmalkalden; but

before the war broke out between the league and the emperor Charles V.

the promises of the emperor had won him over to the imperial side. After

the conclusion of the war, the relations between John and Charles became

somewhat strained. The margrave opposed the _Interim_, issued from

Augsburg in May 1548; and he was the leader of the princes who formed a

league for the defence of the Lutheran doctrines in February 1550. The

alliance of these princes, however, with Henry II., king of France, does

not appear to have commended itself to him and after some differences of

opinion with Maurice, elector of Saxony, he returned to the emperor's

side. His remaining years were mainly spent in the new mark, which he

ruled carefully and economically. He added to its extent by the purchase

of Beeskow and Storkow, and fortified the towns of Cüstrin and Peitz. He

died at Cüstrin on the 13th of January 1571. His wife Catherine was a

daughter of Henry II., duke of Brunswick, and as he left no sons the new

mark passed on his death to his nephew John George, elector of

Brandenburg.

See Berg, _Beiträge zur Geschichte des Markgrafen Johann von Küstrin_

(Landsberg, 1903).

JOHN (1371-1419), called the Fearless (_Sans Peur_), duke of Burgundy,

son of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and Margaret of Flanders, was

born at Dijon on the 28th of May 1371. On the death of his maternal

grandfather in 1384 he received the title of count of Nevers, which he

bore until his father's death. Though originally destined to be the

husband of Catherine, sister of Charles VI. of France, he married in

1385 Margaret, daughter of Duke Albert of Bavaria, an alliance which

consolidated his position in the Netherlands. In the spring of 1396 he

took arms for Hungary against the Turks and on the 28th of September was

taken prisoner by the Sultan Bayezid I. at the bloody battle of

Nicopolis, where he earned his surname of "the Fearless." He did not

recover his liberty until 1397, and then only by paying an enormous

ransom. He succeeded his father in 1404, and immediately found himself

in conflict with Louis of Orleans, the young brother of Charles VI. The

history of the following years is filled with the struggles between

these two princes and with their attempts to seize the authority in the

name of the demented king. John endeavoured to strengthen his position

by marrying his daughter Margaret to the dauphin Louis, and by

betrothing his son Philip to a daughter of Charles VI. Like his father,

he looked for support to the popular party, to the tradesmen,

particularly the powerful gild of the butchers, and also to the

university of Paris. In 1405 he opposed in the royal council a scheme of

taxation proposed by the duke of Orleans, which was nevertheless

adopted. Louis retaliated by refusing to sanction the duke of Burgundy's

projected expedition against Calais, whereupon John quitted the court in

chagrin on the pretext of taking up his mother's heritage. He was,

however, called back to the council to find that the duke of Orleans and

the queen had carried off the dauphin. John succeeded in bringing back

the dauphin to Paris, and open war seemed imminent between the two

princes. But an arrangement was effected in October 1405, and in 1406

John was made by royal decree guardian of the dauphin and the king's

children.

The struggle, however, soon revived with increased force. Hostilities

had been resumed with England; the duke of Orleans had squandered the

money raised for John's expedition against Calais; and the two rivals

broke out into open threats. On the 20th of November 1407 their uncle,

the duke of Berry, brought about a solemn reconciliation, but three days

later Louis was assassinated by John's orders in the Rue Barbette,

Paris. John at first sought to conceal his share in the murder, but

ultimately decided to confess to his uncles, and abruptly left Paris.

His vassals, however, showed themselves determined to support him in his

struggle against the avengers of the duke of Orleans. The court decided

to negotiate, and called upon the duke to return. John entered Paris in

triumph, and instructed the Franciscan theologian Jean Petit (d. 1411)

to pronounce an apology for the murder. But he was soon called back to

his estates by a rising of the people of Liége against his

brother-in-law, the bishop of that town. The queen and the Orleans party

took every advantage of his absence and had Petit's discourse solemnly

refuted. John's victory over the Liégeois at Hasbain on the 23rd of

September 1408, enabled him to return to Paris, where he was reinstated

in his ancient privileges. By the peace of Chartres (March 9, 1409) the

king absolved him from the crime, and Valentina Visconti, the widow of

the murdered duke, and her children pledged themselves to a

reconciliation; while an edict of the 27th of December 1409 gave John

the guardianship of the dauphin. Nevertheless, a new league was formed

against the duke of Burgundy in the following year, principally at the

instance of Bernard, count of Armagnac, from whom the party opposed to

the Burgundians took its name. The peace of Bicêtre (Nov. 2, 1410)

prevented the outbreak of hostilities, inasmuch as the parties were

enjoined by its terms to return to their estates; but in 1411, in

consequence of ravages committed by the Armagnacs in the environs of

Paris, the duke of Burgundy was called back to Paris. He relied more

than ever on the support of the popular party, which then obtained the

reforming _Ordonnance Cabochienne_ (so called from Simon Caboche, a

prominent member of the gild of the butchers). But the bloodthirsty

excesses of the populace brought a change. John was forced to withdraw

to Burgundy (August 1413), and the university of Paris and John Gerson

once more censured Petit's propositions, which, but for the lavish

bribes of money and wines offered by John to the prelates, would have

been solemnly condemned at the council of Constance. John's attitude was

undecided; he negotiated with the court and also with the English, who

had just renewed hostilities with France. Although he talked of helping

his sovereign, his troops took no part in the battle of Agincourt

(1415), where, however, two of his brothers, Anthony, duke of Brabant,

and Philip, count of Nevers, fell fighting for France.

In 1417 John made an attack on Paris, which failed through his loitering

at Lagny;[1] but on the 30th of May 1418 a traitor, one Perrinet

Leclerc, opened the gates of Paris to the Burgundian captain, Villiers

de l'Isle Adam. The dauphin, afterwards King Charles VI., fled from the

town, and John betook himself to the king, who promised to forget the

past. John, however, did nothing to prevent the surrender of Rouen,

which had been besieged by the English, and on which the fate of the

kingdom seemed to depend; and the town was taken in 1419. The dauphin

then decided on a reconciliation, and on the 11th of July the two

princes swore peace on the bridge of Pouilly, near Melun. On the ground

that peace was not sufficiently assured by the Pouilly meeting, a fresh

interview was proposed by the dauphin and took place on the 10th of

September 1419 on the bridge of Montereau, when the duke of Burgundy was

felled with an axe by Tanneguy du Chastel, one of the dauphin's

companions, and done to death by the other members of the dauphin's

escort. His body was first buried at Montereau and afterwards removed to

the Chartreuse of Dijon and placed in a magnificent tomb sculptured by

Juan de la Huerta; the tomb was afterwards transferred to the museum in

the _hôtel de ville_.

By his wife, Margaret of Bavaria, he had one son, Philip the Good, who

succeeded him; and seven daughters--Margaret, who married in 1404 Louis,

son of Charles VI., and in 1423 Arthur, earl of Richmond and afterwards

duke of Brittany; Mary, wife of Adolph of Cleves; Catherine, promised in

1410 to a son of Louis of Anjou; Isabella, wife of Olivier de Châtillon,

count of Penthièvre; Joanna, who died young; Anne, who married John,

duke of Bedford, in 1423; and Agnes, who married Charles I., duke of

Bourbon, in 1425.

See A. G. P. Baron de Barante, _Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne_,

(Brussels, 1835-1836); B. Zeller, _Louis de France et Jean sans Peur_

(Paris, 1886); and E. Petit, _Itinéraire de Philippe le Hardi et de

Jean sans Peur_ (Paris, 1888). (R. Po.)