AMEDEO VI

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 Amedeo VI was born in 1334 in Chambery of Aimone of Savoy and Jolanda of Monferrato.

He was given the nickname of Green Count from the colour he chose in 1353 in order to test himself in a tournament. Since then, Green has become the symbolic colour of the count who used it for his clothes, for his furniture and for his armour.

Amedeo VI would take the pain to invigorate the Savoy dominions succeeding also in imposing a real Savoy power on the different territories that till then were instead more than anything else controlled by Secular or Clerical authority. In order to pursue his policy, on the 25th of October 1349, he met Giovanni of Monferrato in Ivrea’s municipal palace , he gave him the town keys , following the agreement which had taken place a month before, by intercession of Milan’s Archbishop Giovanni Visconti; with this, they established Ivrea’s partition between the Monferratos and the Savoys, excluding the Acaias. Owing to that, in 1356, Giacomo of Acaia tried to get back possession of Ivrea and occupied it on the 1st September of the same year.

But Amedeo VI succeeded in defeating Giacomo of Acaia who asked him for a sign of complete subjection. In this dispute, Giacomo of Monferrato was defeated by the Green Count, who remained the only, uncontested master of Ivrea, obtaining also the town bishop’s and all his vassals’ subjection. In 1357, in order of the to reinforce the power of the Savoy in town , Amedeo began the building of the castle.

In 1364 the Green Count took part into the crusade against the Turks, summoned by Pope Urbano IV and in 1365 he was named imperial Vicar of Savoy and, among others in the dioceses of Sion, Lausanne , Geneva, Aosta, Turin; this post gave him the right to intervene in the different wars in the name of the Emperor.

Amedeo VI increased his power and his authority more and more, and he was often called to settle Italian quarrels . In 1382 he took part into an expedition in order to settle a succession problem in the kingdom of Naples, but was affected by the plague and died on the 1st March 1383, aged 49.