Richard Filangieri
He was educated as a knight and married Iacoba, daughter of Pietro Cottone, who had been made count of Lettere and castellan of Gragnano in 1198 by Constance, Queen of Sicily.
[1] In April 1227, as part of the Sixth Crusade, Richard left for Acre with 500 knights, mostly Lombards, to augment the 800 already in the Holy Land under the Duke of Limburg, Henry IV.
Filangieri also rode out nightly to meet secretly with envoys from al-Kāmil, which led some fellow Crusaders to write a complaint to Pope Gregory IX over Frederick's "evil" agents.
When the War of the Lombards heated up over the interference of Frederick II in the affairs of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, it was Richard who represented the emperor and commanded the imperial troops.
[9] In June, however, his men were so soundly defeated by an inferior force at the Battle of Agridi in Cyprus that his support on the island evaporated.
In 1233 Filangieri sought the alliance of Bohemond V, Prince of Antioch and Count of Tripoli, and Hethum II of Armenia, but to no avail.
[8] By then only Tyre remained in imperialist control, though Acre was also nominally imperial under Odo of Montbéliard, who had received half of the divided bailiwick from Frederick in 1236.
[12] The Guelphs in Acre meanwhile had sent a request to Frederick to have Richard replaced as bailie by a man of their choosing: Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester.
[13] In 1242 or 1243 Conrad declared his own majority and on 5 June the absentee monarch's regency was granted by the Haute Court to Alice, widow of Hugh I of Cyprus and daughter of Isabella I of Jerusalem.
[1] In his Chronicle, the south Italian Richard of San Germano records that Raymond VII of Toulouse met the emperor at Melfi in September 1242 and intervened on behalf of the defeated Filangieri.
[15] It is possible that Frederick's treatment of Richard and Lothair pushed another brother, Marinus Filangieri, the Archbishop of Bari, out of the imperial and into the Papal camp in the struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines.
Richard and Galvano Lancia, another leading nobleman of Sicily, organised a congress of Sicilian nobles at Anagni that year, where they recognised the Pope as their overlord.
[1] In October 1254 Innocent confirmed Richard in the barony of the Terra di Lavoro, which Frederick had previously conferred on him; in the county of Lettere and the castle of Gragnano, to which he had a claim through his wife; and in the lordships of Calvi, Castellammare, and Scafati.
By his wife Iacoba, who died in 1271, Richard left one daughter, Isabella, who married Giacomo d'Aquino, lord of Arienzo and Galluccio.
