The Angevin rule, as might have been anticipated from its origin, was especially intolerant of the Orthodox faith. Charles owed his crown to the Pope, and was anxious to repay the obligation by propagating Catholicism among his Orthodox subjects. The Venetians, as we saw, had enjoined the tolerance of the Greek church during their brief period of domination, so that now for the first time the islanders learnt what religious persecution meant. The Metropolitan of Corfù, whose office had been so greatly exalted by the Despots of Epeiros, was deposed, and in his room a less dignified ecclesiastic, called “chief priest” (μέγας πρωτοπαπᾶς), was substituted. The title of “Archbishop of Corfù” was now usurped by a Latin priest, and the principal churches were seized by the Catholic clergy[210]. In the time of the Angevins too the Jews, who still flourish there almost alone in Greece, made their first appearance in any numbers in Corfù, and first found protectors there; but the injunctions of successive sovereigns, bidding the people treat them well, would seem to show that this protection was seldom efficacious[211]. The government of the island was also reorganised. An official was appointed to act as viceroy with the title of captain, and the country was divided into four bailiwicks. Many new fiefs were assigned, while some that already existed were transferred to Italians and Provençals. The Sicilian Vespers, which drove the house of Anjou from Sicily and handed that kingdom over to the rival house of Aragon, indirectly affected the fortunes of Corfù. The Corfiotes did not, indeed, imitate the Sicilians and massacre the French; but their connexion with the Angevins now exposed them to attack from the Aragonese fleets. Thus the famous Roger de Lluria burnt the royal castle and levied blackmail upon the inhabitants. Another Roger, the terrible Catalan leader, De Flor, ravaged the fertile island in one of his expeditions; yet, in spite of these incursions, we find the condition of Corfù half a century later to have been far superior to that of the neighbouring lands. The fact that the diligent research of the local historians has brought to light so little information about the Angevin period in itself proves that, in that generally troubled time, Corfù enjoyed tranquillity. Beyond the names of its sovereigns, Charles II of Naples, Philip I, Robert, and Philip II of Taranto, Catherine of Valois and Marie de Bourbon, we know little about the island from the time when Charles II, reserving to himself the overlordship, transferred it as a fief in 1294 to his fourth son, the first of those princes, down to the death of Philip II in 1373. It then experienced the evils of a disputed succession, and, as it espoused the cause of Queen Joanna I of Naples, it was attacked by the Navarrese mercenaries, who were in the pay of the rival candidate, Jacques de Baux, and who afterwards played so important a part in the Morea.