Alix de Montmorency

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Alix de Montmorency († February 25, 1221 ) was a French noblewoman of the high Middle Ages and the wife of the leader of the Albigensian Crusade , Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester .

Life

Alix was a daughter of the lord of the castle Bouchard IV. De Montmorency , who died on the Third Crusade in 1189 , and the Laurette of Hainaut. Through her paternal grandmother, she descended from the Anglo-Norman ruling dynasty . Her family belonged to the leading castle nobility of the Île-de-France and had a great influence at the royal court. Probably around 1190 she was married to Simon de Montfort, although she is first mentioned in a donation to the leprosy hospital of Grand-Beaulieu near Chartres from February 1199. Their marriage had at least six, maybe eight children:

  1. Amaury VII. De Montfort (* around 1199, † 1241).
  2. Guy de Montfort (* around 1199, † April 4, 1220): iure uxoris Count of Bigorre .
  3. Amicia de Montfort († February 20, 1252): ∞ with Gaucher de Joigny († before 1237), Sire of Châteaurenard.
  4. Simon de Montfort (* around 1208, † August 4, 1265): Earl of Leicester and Lord High Steward of England.
  5. NN (* February 1211, †?): Daughter, became a nun in the Cistercian monastery of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs near Paris. Probably identical to Pétronille.
  6. Robert de Montfort (* / †?).
  7. Pétronille de Montfort (* / †?): Named in 1237 as the sister of her brother Simon.
  8. Laure de Montfort (filiation disputed; † after 1227): ∞ with Gerard II. De Picquigny, Vidame von Amiens .

Alix met her husband in Pézenas in March 1210 , who in August 1209 was made leader of the Albigensian Crusade and Vice Count of Béziers and Carcassonne . In addition to her oldest children, she immediately led a reinforcement force to the crusade army. In the further course of the campaign to conquer the county of Toulouse , she gave birth to at least one child, probably in Montréal in February 1211, who was baptized by the preacher brother Dominikus de Guzmán . Shortly afterwards she took the young Aragonese Infante Jakob I into her familia , who had been betrothed to her daughter Amicia de Montfort in the course of a compromise between her husband and King Peter II and who was now to be brought up according to custom in the bride's house. In the spring she traveled to northern France to recruit mercenaries and in July 1212 led her husband to a reinforcement force in Penne-d'Agenais . Their entourage included the abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay , Guy and his nephew Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay , who became the unofficial chronicler of the Albigensian Crusade.

On June 24, 1213, Alix's eldest son Amaury was given the sword in a religious ceremony in Castelnaudary and was ordained "Knight of Christ". A little later, on September 12th, her husband was victorious in the Battle of Muret , in which King Peter II fell. In April of the following year she had to release the Infante Jakob from her house and his engagement with her daughter was terminated. After her husband moved into Toulouse in July 1215 , Alix was able to move into her residence as a countess at Château Narbonnais. At the fourth Lateran Council in November 1215, the House of Montfort was confirmed in possession of the County of Toulouse and in April 1216 her husband was able to receive the official enfeoffment from King Philip II August . The resistance of the Occitan population against the Montfort'sche rule continued and when Simon was absent for the fight in Provence , the old Count Raimund VI took advantage of this . to enter Toulouse on September 13, 1217 without a fight, the population of which rose up immediately against the French occupation. Alix was able to defend her family at Château Narbonnais with some supporters, but left the count's castle shortly before it was completely cut off from the outside world. After sending an express message to her husband, she went herself directly to northern France to recruit new troops. At the beginning of May 1218 she returned with auxiliary troops to Toulouse, which was meanwhile besieged by her husband. On June 25, however, he was killed by a catapult projectile. In the same month, with the consent of her four sons, Alix made a donation in memory of her husband to the Cistercian Abbey of Notre-Dame du Val .

Alix is last mentioned in a document in October 1219 when she and her two oldest sons regulations for the maintenance of her husband's grave in the cathedral of Saint-Nazaire of Carcassonne met. She died on February 25, 1221 and was buried in the Abbey of Hautes-Bruyères .

Alix was praised by the crusade writer Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay for her piety and wisdom and praised for her strict adherence to Christian marriage morality, which he regarded as a counter-example to the Raimund VI. approached from Toulouse.

literature

  • Monique Zerner: L'épouse de Simon de Montfort et la croisade albigeoise , edited by Georges Duby in: Femmes, mariages, lignages - XIIe-XIVe siècles: Mélanges offerts à Georges Duby (1992).
  • Michel Roquebert: The History of the Cathars, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Languedoc. German translation by Ursula Blank-Sangmeister, Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co. KG, Stuttgart 2012. (French first edition, Histoire des Cathares. Hérésie, Croisade, Inquisition du XIe au XIVe siècle. Éditions Perrin, Paris 1999).

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c Cartulaire de l'Abbaye de Notre-Dame des Vaux de Cernay. Vol. 1, ed. by Lucien Victor C. Merlet and Auguste Moutié (1857), p. 71, note 1 = Catalog des actes de Simon et d'Amaury de Montfort , ed. by August Molinier in, Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes , Vol. 34 (1873), No. 5. Alix is ​​still incorrectly called "Eva" in this document. At the same time, her two oldest sons are documented here for the first time.
  2. ↑ a b c Catalog des actes de Simon et d'Amaury de Montfort , ed. by August Molinier, in: Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes , Vol. 34 (1873), No. 160.
  3. ↑ a b Gerard de Fracheto, Vitae fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum necnon Cronica ordinis from anno MCCIII usque ad MCCLIV , ed. by Benedictus Maria Reichert, in: Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica , Vol. 1 (1846), p. 322.
  4. ↑ Roquebert, 2012, p. 168.
  5. ↑ Alberich von Trois-Fontaines , Chronica , ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz , in: Monumenta Germaniae Historica SS 23 (1874), p. 941.
  6. ↑ MF-I. Darsy, Picquigny et ses seigneurs, Vidames d'Amiens (1860), p. 35. The will of Laure de Montfort from 1227 is deposited in the register of documents of the Abbey of Le Gard .
  7. ↑ Catalog des actes de Simon et d'Amaury de Montfort , ed. by August Molinier in, Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes , Vol. 34 (1873), No. 176.
  8. ↑ The date of death is recorded in the necrology of the Abbey of Port Royal des Champs . See Recueil des Historiens des la France, Obituaires de la Province de Sens , vol. 1, part 2 (1902), p. 637. The place of burial is recorded in the necrology of the Abbey of Hautes-Bruyères. See Recueil des Historiens des la France, Obituaires de la Province de Sens , Vol. 2 (1906), p. 224.
  9. ↑ Petri, Vallium Sarnaii Monachi, Historia Albigensium et sacri belli in eos suscepti , in: Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France , Vol. 19 (1880), p. 22.
personal data
SURNAME Alix de Montmorency
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Wife of Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester
DATE OF BIRTH 12th Century
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1221