The war continued, and with the Peace of Caltabellotta (1302) Robert and the Angevin dynasty lost Sicily forever, their rule limited to the south of peninsular Italy.

With his second wife Sancha of Majorca, Robert established the kingdom of Naples as a center of early Renaissance culture and of religious dissent, supporting the Joachimite prophesies of the Spiritual Franciscans.

In his last will and testament Robert explicitly excluded the claims of Andrew of Hungary, clearly mandated that he become prince of Salerno and specified that Joanna alone assume the crown in her own right, to be succeeded by her legitimate offspring.

This propaganda, the Hungarian assault on Joanna following the murder of Andrew, and the invasion of the Regno by Louis I of Hungary eventually led to the end of Anjou-Naples rule in Naples.

[2] There was virtually no middle class in the South to balance the local interests and centripetal power of the entrenched aristocracy, who retained the feudal independence that had been their bargain with the Angevins' Norman predecessors.

Unusually, Robert preached sermons throughout his reign, at universities, religious houses, and on other ceremonial occasions, making use of an authoritative form of oratory ordinarily reserved for clerics.

Records of hundreds of these sermons survive in extant manuscripts, providing an important case study in the history of medieval lay preaching.