Editing Ferdinand I of Naples (section)

==== The war of the census  ====
On 19 August 1464 Pius II also died, depriving Ferrante of his most faithful ally. The successor, [[Pope Paul II]], recognizing that his predecessor had neglected the collection of the income due to the papacy, began to urge Ferrante to pay all the taxes he owed to the Holy See, which had not been paid for several years. Ferrante, aggravated by the excessive expenses for the last war, had run out of money and therefore not only apologized for not being able to pay them, but asked the Pontiff to subscribe to the payment. A discord was generated from this claim that stopped when the Pope asked for help from Ferrante to lower the power of the sons of the counts of Anguillara, who sent him troops.

Once the undertaking was over, the Pope renewed his request for censuses obtained with greater diligence than before. The King then demanded from the Pope to release the censuses for the expenses he had recently made to help him and also demanded for the future that the prior papal income from his kingdom, eight thousand [[Oncia|oncie]] a year, should be reduced. He claimed that payment was excessive even for the Kingdom encompassing both Naples and Sicily, and that since Sicily was ruled by his uncle, King John of Aragon, Ferrante, and Naples should not pay the entire amount. The Pope on the other hand emphasized the help that Ferrante had received from his predecessor.

Ferrante added another claim: the restitution of Papal lands within the borders of the kingdom, consisting of Terracina in Terra di Lavoro, [[Cittaducale|Cività Ducale]] and [[Leonessa]] in [[Abruzzo]]; and this in force of the agreement made in 1443 by [[Pope Eugene IV]] with his father King [[Alfonso V of Aragon|Alfonso V]]. Ferrante also demanded the restitution of Benevento, which he had granted to his ally Pope Pius, but now demanded its returned. The Pope, seeing how soured the mood of the King was, and not being able to resist him with the army or with other ways, immediately sent to Naples Cardinal [[Bartolomeo Roverella|Roverella]] to try to appease Ferrante, who then angrily ordered Alfonso his son to remove the [[Duchy of Sora]] to the Church. The Cardinal carried out the task so well that from then on there was no more talk of expired censuses, nor of the restitution of those lands. Other disputes arose between them for the defense of the Lords of [[Tolfa]], given that the Pope was pretending that the city was his and laying siege to it, but the army of the King arrived and the army of the Pope, seeing that of Ferrante, fled immediately, leaving the siege. The disputes that the Kings of Naples had with the [[Pope|Roman Pontiffs]] were always bitter and continuous not only in Tolfa, but also in the territory of [[Pozzuoli]] and [[Agnano]] that the Pontiffs claimed belonged to them.<ref name="Le vite de Re di Napoli" /><ref>{{harvnb|Biancardi|1737|p= 341}}.</ref>

The death of Pope Paul on July 26, 1471, and the succession of Pope Sixtus IV, former Cardinal Francesco della Rovere, ended all discords. In 1475, Pope Sixtus in a Bull exempted Ferrante from having pay the census, save for the investiture to send him a well-trimmed white horse every year; thus the use of the [[chinea]] was introduced to [[St. Peter's Basilica|Saint Peter]]. Ferrante, recognizing the virtues of this Pontiff, wanted to pay homage to him by giving the Duchy of Sora (which he had taken from Giovanni Paolo Cantelmo) to Leonardo della Rovere, with whom he then married one of his daughters.<ref name="Le vite de Re di Napoli" /><ref>{{harvnb|Biancardi|1737|p= 342}}.</ref>