Blanka of Castile
Blanka von Kastilien , ( Spanish: Blanca de Castilla , French: Blanche de Castille ) (* 1188 before March 4 in Palencia , † November 27, 1252 in Paris ) was a queen and temporary regent of France .
She was the third daughter of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and his wife Eleonore Plantagenet . On her father's side she belonged to the Burgundy-Ivrea family , on her mother's side she was a granddaughter of King Henry II of England . Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine , her uncles were Kings Richard the Lionheart and Johann Ohneland .
marriage
According to the provisions of the Le Goulet treaty between Johann Ohneland and Philip II August , negotiated in the spring of 1200 , the French Crown Prince Louis (VIII) was to be married to a niece of Johann. This was supposed to seal a peace between the French crown and the Plantagenet family after almost a decade of war between Philip II August and Richard the Lionheart. The bride was chosen by the then twelve-year-old Blanka, about whose childhood at the Castilian royal court in fact nothing is known. Allegedly, her older sister Urraca was planned as the bride first, but her parents decided in favor of Blanka because they believed that the name Urracas was ineffable for the French, while Blanca would simply become Blanche.
Blanka was led by her grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine over the Pyrenees with Bordeaux as an intermediate stop to Fontevrault . The grandmother stayed there while the Archbishop of Bordeaux took over the journey to Normandy . There the contract was signed on May 22nd, 1200, the wedding with the groom, who was only a few months older, took place the next day, May 23rd, in Pont-Audemer . The location of the wedding was an embarrassing solution, since the entire royal domain of France was occupied with the ecclesiastical interdict because of Philip II's bigamy . As a dowry Blanka had received from her uncle the feudal lordship over Issoudun and Graçay in Berry and the Norman Évreux , from her husband she received Hesdin , Bapaume and Lens as personal items .
The first few years at the court of Paris were marked by further education and training for the young couple. Her youth companions included the Plantagenet Arthur of Bretagne and his sister Eleonore as well as the two Flemish heirlooms Johanna and Margarete . This society also included Count Theobald IV of Champagne (called "the singer"), who was several years younger than him and who expressed his lifelong admiration for Blanka in poetic poems and chants.
Crown Princess
The contract and the marriage had not brought the hoped-for peace between Philip II. August and Johann Ohneland, after the latter married himself immediately after the wedding celebrations. His bride was Isabella de Angoulême , who, however, had already been betrothed to another baron. This breach of law was followed by a feudal process that ended with a default judgment against Johann Ohneland, by which all possessions on the mainland were withdrawn from him. By 1204, Philip II of August conquered all of the land north of the Loire (Normandy, Anjou, Touraine and Maine). In September 1209, Blanka gave birth to her first living child, having previously had a stillbirth. Thanks to their son Philipp, the Capetians continued to exist for another generation.
In 1213 Philip II August organized the conquest of England in order to win his throne for Louis VIII, after Johann Ohneland had been excommunicated by the Pope and declared deposed. The right of inheritance of Blanka, who as the daughter of Johann's older sister, would be closest to the English throne, was also used as the legal basis for Ludwig's kingship. However, the company had to end on May 13, 1213, when Johann submitted to a papal legate, took England as a fiefdom of the Holy See and was thus exempt from church. In April 1214, Blanka gave birth to her second son, Louis IX, in Poissy . , her husband won on July 2nd at Roche-aux-Moines over Johann Ohneland and on July 27th her father-in-law won the battle of Bouvines over the allied Emperor Otto IV.
Blanka first showed her great political abilities when Ludwig was offered the crown of England by the barons rebelling against Johann in 1216. On June 2nd, 1216 Ludwig moved into London and then conquered large parts of England, only Dover , Windsor and Lincoln still offered resistance. Blanka supported him from Calais with the recruitment of new troops under the command of Robert von Courtenay , which were to be led across the channel by the pirate Eustache le Moine . The situation changed on October 19, 1216 with the death of Johann Ohneland and the uprising of his son Heinrich III. to the king, who was immediately taken under papal protection, several followers of Ludwig then changed sides again. On May 20, 1217 he suffered a heavy defeat in the Battle of Lincoln against Guillaume le Maréchal and left London. Blanche sent a fleet of 80 ships with reinforcement troops to England, but this fleet was wiped out on August 24 in the sea battle at Sandwich . Ludwig had to give up his ambitions and contractually renounce his rights in England in return for a high compensation payment, on September 28, 1217 he left England for good. A year later, their eldest son, Philipp, died, bringing the second-born Ludwig up to the throne.
Queen of France
On July 14, 1223 King Philip II died and on August 6, Louis VIII and Blanka were crowned and anointed by Archbishop Guillaume de Joinville in the Cathedral of Reims . Their common kingship ended with the early death of their husband after only three years, in which, however, a number of successes against the Plantagenets and thus a further strengthening of the power of the crown were achieved. In 1224, Louis led a campaign to conquer the Poitou and the Saintonge , which was successfully ended on June 3rd with the conquest of La Rochelle . The day before, Blanka, Queen Ingeborg and Berengaria of León had led a procession of the people of Notre Dame to the Abbey of Saint-Antoine in Paris .
In 1226, Louis VIII led a successful crusade against the Albigensians , which led to the subjection of large parts of southern France. The king died on November 8, 1226 in Montpensier . A few months later, Blanka gave birth to her last child, Karl von Anjou .
Regent of France
In his will written down on the death bed on November 3rd, Louis VIII had failed to lay down clear rules on the reign for his still underage son, Louis IX. to hit what led the kingship in a critical situation. Immediately after her husband's burial on November 15, Blanka took over the protection and mood (guardianship) of her son, which her husband allegedly gave her, which she did through letters from Archbishop Gautier von Sens and the Bishops of Chartres and Beauvais announced in the country. Then she organized the coronation and anointing of her son on November 29th in Reims .
It remains unclear whether the written declaration of the three prelates was a repudiation of the actual last will of Louis VIII, or whether Blanka had used an expedient lie to legitimize her reign. Nevertheless, her takeover of power was not undisputed from the start. Even during the siege of Avignon, several powerful barons had separated from the retinue of Louis VIII, who then went to the coronation of Louis IX. stayed away. These were above all Peter Mauclerc , Hugo X. von Lusignan , his wife Isabella von Angoulême and Theobald IV. Von Champagne. The latter wanted to attend the coronation, but Blanka had refused her admirer access to Reims because of his previous breach of loyalty to her husband. These three now formed the head of a baronial opposition to their rule, in which they hoped to strengthen their feudal independence, which they had increasingly forfeited in recent years. They were supported by the English side in the person of Richard of Cornwall . Blanka first made allies by making her brother-in-law Philipp Hurepel quiet by donations and on February 6, 1227 released the Count Ferrand of Flanders , who had been imprisoned for more than ten years and who was now loyal to the crown.
At the end of January 1227, Blanka and her son led an army into the Touraine , where they camped in Chinon in close proximity to the forces of their opponents. Before the fight started, she managed to split the ranks of the barons in nearby Curçay through clever negotiations. Theobald von Champagne, who together with Count Heinrich II von Bar , was the barons' negotiator, made himself suspicious of his comrades-in-arms through his personal admiration for her. For fear of these, he and the Count of Bar changed sides and submitted to Louis IX in Loudun . and Blanka. This weakened the opposition considerably, so that Mauclerc and Lusignan were also forced to submit to contractually on March 16, 1227 in Vendôme . Her ally Richard of Cornwall, in turn, signed an armistice and withdrew to England.
The fight was to continue, however, after Peter Mauclerc tried immediately after the events in Vendôme to seize the person of the king at Corbeil . Louis IX but was able to flee with his small entourage in time to the strong castle Montlhéry and inform his mother in Paris. With the mobilization of the communal militia of Paris and some knights of the Île-de-France, Blanka moved against Montlhéry, whereupon Mauclerc withdrew without a fight. However, he again refused to appear at the royal court in Melun on December 31, 1227 , instead strengthening his following with Philipp Hurepel and Enguerrand III. de Coucy . Blanka was now attacked propagandistically by her opponents, mainly through verbal and written pamphlets, in which she was exposed to the traditional accusation of immoral conduct. She is said to have been the mistress of the papal legate Romano Bonaventura as well as the Count of Champagne, and she would postpone the king's marriage in order to better control him. According to the later stories of the anonymous Ménestrel of Reims , Blanka undressed one day in front of the assembled court in order to prove that she was not pregnant, thereby simultaneously accusing her of being impregnated by the papal legate by the Bishop of Beauvais, to invalidate. This story is more of a topos that was mostly applied to nuns and abbesses.
In 1228, the fighting focused primarily on Count Theobald IV of Champagne, who was now the mainstay of the kingdom. Together with the count, Ludwig IX. in January 1228 for the first time as a general and stormed Mauclerc's strong castle Bellême , furthermore Philipp Hurepel was kept in check by the Count of Flanders. The scales now tipped in Blanka's favor when Mauclerc faced King Henry III in October 1229. from England paid homage to Brittany so that Felonie began, and invited him to land in France with an army. But this brought his closest followers against him, so Hugo X. von Lusignan switched to Blanka in January 1230 and conquered the Breton Clisson together with the king . After further conquests in Brittany, the English king withdrew to England without a fight in October 1230, while Peter Mauclerc and Enguerrand de Coucy finally gave up the fight in early 1231.
End of the Albigensian Crusade
Parallel to her struggle against the barons, Blanka was able to record a great diplomatic success for the French monarchy by bringing the crusade against the Albigensians started by her husband in 1226 to a contractual end. The most dangerous opponent of the crown in the south, Count Raimund VII of Toulouse , who was also Blanka's cousin, was forced to give up the struggle that had shaped everyday life in the south for almost 20 years after the years of devastation of his country by the northern French crusaders. With the mediation of the papal legate Romano Bonaventura, he signaled his willingness to negotiate with Blanka. The peace talks were held in Sens , but were then moved to Meaux , where Count Theobald IV of Champagne could act as an arbitrator between the parties. On April 11, 1229, the general peace was sworn in Meaux. The Count of Toulouse was able to keep most of his possessions as a vassal of the French king, but had to hand over the northern Albigeois with the city of Albi and seven important castles to the crown. Furthermore he committed himself to support the fight against the Cathars and to found a university in Toulouse. Above all, however, the count had to betroth his heir daughter to Blanka's younger son Alfons of Poitiers , which initiated the inheritance of the largest feudal territory in southern France to the crown.
Count Raimund VII was officially reconciled with the church on April 13, 1229 in Paris with a penance in Notre Dame and swore the Ligic feudal oath on the crown. Although it remained a factor of unrest in the future, the Treaty of Meaux-Paris not only meant the end of the Albigensian Crusade, but also the subjection of the South ( Languedoc ), which had been virtually independent since the end of the Carolingian three hundred years earlier, to the French Crown violence.
Government of Louis IX.
After the victory over the barons, Blanka released the power of government into the hands of her son in the following years; as early as 1230, this power of own sovereignty issued his first ordonance. In it, Ludwig confirmed to the students of Paris the privileges they had acquired in previous years and thus ushered in the end of a student strike that had troubled Paris since 1229 and in which Blanka had not worked successfully due to her tough attitude towards the students. After his marriage to Margarete von der Provence on May 27, 1234 at the latest , Ludwig came of age and assumed sole rule, but Blanka remained one of her son's most important advisors. According to Joinville , Blanka is said to have had a rather tense relationship with her daughter-in-law .
At the request of her rebellious cousin, Raymond VII of Toulouse, in 1233, she successfully interceded with her son. In 1235 she supported her son in founding the Royaumont Abbey , and on June 26, 1244 she herself consecrated the Cistercian Abbey of Maubuisson . On November 30, 1245 Blanka took part in the meeting of her son with Pope Innocent IV in the Abbey of Cluny .
Second reign
Blanka was opposed to her son's crusade vow from 1244. The Bishop of Paris, Wilhelm von Auvergne, tried in vain to urge that vows be declared invalid, since Louis IX. abandoned it during illness and not in full possession of its mental faculties. However, the latter reaffirmed his oath and will a second time after his illness had been overcome. So Blanka again took over the reign in France when Ludwig withdrew from Paris on June 12, 1248 with his crusader lord. Not only her eldest son, but also the three younger ones, Robert von Artois , Alfons von Poitiers and Karl von Anjou , moved with them. Alfons' departure was delayed for several months because of the soon to expire armistice with England and because of the default of his father-in-law, Raymond VII of Toulouse. With the English negotiator, Simon de Montfort , Blanka negotiated on December 27, 1248 an extension of the armistice until the end of the crusade and after the Count of Toulouse died in 1249 she took possession of his lands for her son, as Alfons did not start his crusade wanted to put off longer.
On February 8, 1250, Robert von Artois fell in the battle of al-Mansura and their three surviving sons fell a little later into the captivity of the Mamluks . Although they were released from captivity only a month later, the crusade had failed catastrophically, but Ludwig intended to stay in the holy land in order to regulate the conditions of the Christian states there. In response to the news of his defeat, however, the so-called Shepherd's Crusade of the (Pastorellen / Pastoureaux) broke out in France in 1251 , which quickly expanded into an uprising against the prevailing conditions in the country. Led by a certain “master from Hungary”, who is said to have triggered the children's crusade in Germany, the pastoral gangs pretended to want to come to the aid of their king in the holy land, but then directed their violence against church institutions and against Jewish communities . The gangs were eventually forcibly evicted and broken up by royal sergeants.
In 1250 Emperor Friedrich II died and the Pope preached the crusade against his son, King Conrad IV . Blanka prevented the participation of the French knighthood in this crusade directed against a Christian ruler with the threat of deprivation of all property. At the same time her sons Alfons and Karl returned to France, to whom she gradually handed over the government. In the Flemish War of Succession she supported the Dampierre family and in February 1252 accepted the feudal oath of Count Guido of Flanders .
death
In November 1252 Blanka fell seriously ill in Melun . She was taken to Paris, where she lived a few days, but died on November 27th. She was buried in the Maubuisson Cistercian monastery that she founded .
Blanka of Castile is one of the most outstanding female figures in the medieval history of France. As the de facto first female regent of the country and mother of a saint, she received lasting veneration, even though she was not always undisputed during her lifetime. In his vita for Ludwig IX. Geoffroy de Beaulieu added an eulogy for Blanka, in which he praised her as the "mother of Josiah " . Matthew Paris described her as a new Semiramis : "Woman by gender, but male in character ..., a blessing for the century" . When her son was canonized in 1297, Blanka was praised by Pope Boniface VIII as "the strong woman of the gospel" . Her enemies compared her to the "Dame Hersent", a she-wolf from the Roman de Renart .
progeny
- Philipp (9 September 1209, † 1218 before July)
- Twins (born January 26, 1213; † died young)
- Louis IX Saint Louis (* April 25, 1214, † August 25, 1270), successor as King of France
- Robert von Artois (* September 1216, † died February 8, 1250 in Al-Mansura ), Count of Artois since 1237 , ancestor of the House of Artois
- Johann (* unknown, † 1232)
- Alfonso of Poitiers (born November 11, 1220, † August 21, 1271), Count of Poitou since 1241 and Toulouse since 1249
- Philipp Dagobert (* 20/21 February 1222, † 1232)
- Isabella the saint (March 3 / April 14, 1224, † February 23, 1270), founder of the Poor Clare Abbey of Longchamp
- Stephan (* after June 1225, † unknown), perhaps identical to Karl
- Charles of Anjou (* unknown, perhaps posthumously 1227, † January 7, 1285), Count of Anjou since 1246 and King of Sicily-Naples since 1266 , ancestor of the older Anjou family
literature
- Philippe Delorme: Blanche de Castille. Épouse de Louis VIII, mère de Saint Louis. Pygmalion, Paris 2015, ISBN 978-2-7564-1632-8 .
- Lindy Grant: Blanche of Castile. Queen of France. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2016, ISBN 978-0-300-21926-5 .
- Jacques Le Goff : Louis the saint. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-608-91834-5 .
- Régine Pernoud : ruler in turbulent times. Blanca of Castile, Queen of France. 3. Edition. dtv, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-423-30359-X .
- Ekkart Sauser : Blanca of Castile. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 17, Bautz, Herzberg 2000, ISBN 3-88309-080-8 , Sp. 127-128.
- Ludwig Vones : Blanca of Castile . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 2, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-7608-8902-6 , Sp. 258 f.
Web links
| predecessor | Office | Successor |
|---|---|---|
| Agnes-Maria of Andechs-Meranien |
Queen of France 1226–1252 |
Margaret of Provence |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Blanka of Castile |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | by marriage Queen of France |
| DATE OF BIRTH | before March 4, 1188 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Palencia |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 27, 1252 |
| Place of death | Paris |