Adelheid of Anjou

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Adelheid von Anjou ( French Adélaïde-Blanche d'Anjou ; * around 950; † 29 May 1026 perhaps in Avignon ) was a French noblewoman from the house of the Counts of Anjou . Because of her origins, and above all because of her four marriages, she was related to many of the most powerful aristocratic families in France. Among other things, she was the third wife of the future French King Ludwig V. However, the couple did not feel comfortable in the wedding arranged by relatives, and so Adelheid left her royal husband only a short time before he ascended the French throne for the count To marry Wilhelm I. Since her marriage to Ludwig V had not been annulled by the Pope before the new wedding , Adelheid's new connection caused a corresponding uproar in Rome. For the underage children of their marriages - only the connection with Louis V was childless - she exercised the reign until they came of age , which made her one of the most powerful women in the south of France, who over the territories of the counties Toulouse and Gévaudan as well command of Provence .

Until the 20th century, the third wife of Ludwig V was known exclusively as Blanche, because authors such as Rodulfus Glaber , Ivo von Chartres , Ademar von Chabannes or Hugo von Fleury always used this name in their works. Only the Historiae des Richer von Reims , a contemporary of Adelheid, found in the Bamberg State Library in the 19th century , called it Adélaïde . For a long time, the opinion prevailed in research that Richer was wrong about the name, and it was only in the past 30 years or so that historians took hold of the view that this name is also correct.

family

Adelheid was born as the daughter of Count Fulko II of Anjou and his wife Gerberga. It came from the influential house of the Counts of Anjou. She was a sister of Gottfried I of Anjou , under whose tutelage she grew up after the death of her father in 958. Her mother's origin is still unclear. Some historians, including Christian Lauranson-Rosaz, see her as a daughter of Count Gottfried I of Gâtinais and thus a member of the family of the Counts of Gâtinais . Another hypothesis, supported by Bernard S. Bachrach , for example , assumes that Gerberga was related to the Counts of Vienne .

Between 960 and 965, Adelheid married Étienne de Brioude , Count of Gévaudan, one of the most powerful rulers in eastern Aquitaine, between the ages of 12 and 15 . She had four children with him:

  • Pons I. († between January 21, 1016 and 1018), from 1011 Count of Gévaudan and Forez
  • Bertrand
  • Étienne, Bishop of Puy from 996 to 998
  • Humberga (also called Ermengarde), ⚭ Wilhelm von Clermont

After the death of her first husband shortly before 975, she married Raymond, Count of Toulouse and Prince of Gothien , who died around 978 and widowed her again. With him she had a son

⚭ 1) Arsinde (maybe Arsinde of Provence)
⚭ 2) between 1008 and 1021 Emma of Provence

Her marriage to the future King Ludwig V in 982 remained childless.

After leaving her royal husband, she married a fourth time. The groom was William I, Count of Arles and Margrave of Provence . The following children came from this connection:

In addition, the literature lists other possible children of Adelheid, who, however, have not yet been proven beyond doubt as their descendants and are also assigned to different fathers in the literature. Only the aforementioned five sons and two daughters are certain. Other possible children of Adelheid are:

  • Almodis († between 1005 and 1010)
⚭ 1) Aldebert I († 997), Count of La Marche
⚭ 2) Wilhelm V (* 969; † January 30, 1030), Duke of Aquitaine

Some historians, including Constance Brittain Bouchard, also see Adelheid von Anjou as the second wife of Count Otto Wilhelm of Burgundy . This possible fifth marriage is justified by the fact that in a letter from Pope Benedict VIII from the beginning of 1020, in addition to the bishops of Provence, Burgundy and Aquitaine, Count Otto Wilhelm of Burgundy, his son Rainald I and Countess Adelheid, known as Blanche, and whose daughter-in-law Gerberga are named as addressees. However, since a connection between Adelheid and Otto Wilhelm is not explicitly mentioned in this letter, it is also possible that she is mentioned there in her capacity as regent of the county of Provence. A fifth marriage of Adelheid is therefore not guaranteed.

Life

Nothing is known about Adelheid's childhood. She was not yet 16 years old when she married the Count of Gévaudan, Étienne de Brioude, and became his second wife, because no male heirs had emerged from his first marriage. This first connection with Adelheid is not known from contemporary documents, but only from the chronicle of the monastery of Saint-Pierre de Puy. When Étienne died, Adelheid's sons were minors, and so the young widow initially ran the affairs of state for them in the counties of Gévaudan and Forez. A short time later, around 975, she entered into a second marriage to Raymond de Toulouse. This connection is known from the historical work Historiae by the monk Richer von Reims. The only guaranteed child from this connection was Wilhelm III. Taillefer, who was not of legal age when his father died, so that his mother also took over the reign for him.

In 980, Adelheid's brother Gottfried I von Anjou arranged a marriage between his twice widowed sister and the French heir to the throne Ludwig for political reasons. First of all he sent negotiators to Queen Emma to make her the offer of marriage. When the latter signaled their approval, Gottfried I presented himself to King Lothar and made the same proposal. The plan also met with approval, because what made a connection between Adelheid and the royal family so desirable for the Carolingians was the extensive possessions in the south of France that they controlled. Together with the lands of the crown in the north of the country, the territory of the aspiring Capetians , who rivaled the Carolingians, was thus in a pinch. In the same year Lothar traveled with his son and the entire court to the area ruled by Adelheid, where the wedding of the two took place in Brioude in 982 . On the day of the marriage, the newly wed couple was crowned King and Queen of Aquitaine by the bride's brother, Bishop Guido II of Anjou . At around 30 years of age, Adelheid was about twice as old as Ludwig, who was only around 15 years old. The large age difference between the two is probably the main reason why the couple did not get along at all and Adelheid left her husband after less than two years of marriage. Since Louis also did not understand how to bring Auvergne and the county of Toulouse under his control in his capacity as King of Aquitaine, King Lothar was forced to go to Brioude and take his son north with him.

After Ludwig's departure, Adelheid seems to have feared for her safety and therefore went to Provence . There the meanwhile mature woman married William I, Count of Arles and since 972 Margrave of Provence at the latest in January 984. Adelheid was his second wife, because Wilhelm's first marriage to Arsinda von Comminges apparently had only one daughter. The connection between the two attracted particular attention in Rome, because Adelheid's marriage to Ludwig had not been annulled by the Pope. It can be assumed that she had her third marriage dissolved by a local patriarch , but it is not known who it was. Wilhelm died in Avignon between August 29, 993 and May 11, 994, after having become a monk shortly before. Adelheid was widowed for the third time, and again the children from this marriage were minors. Until 1013, when her fourth husband died, the 45-year-old ruled the county of Provence in the name of her son Wilhelm II. In the beginning she was supported by her brother-in-law Rotbald II , whose daughter she married off to her son Wilhelm from her second marriage. From 1008 at the latest, Adelheid ran government business alone, presumably because Rotbald had died, and had to assert himself against revolting vassals who hoped for advantages in the county from the lack of male leadership. These conflicts did not end when William II finally took over the government of Provence himself. He was fatally wounded in armed conflict with the de Fos and d'Hyères families and died on March 4, 1019. Once again, Adelheid found himself in government, this time together with her son's widow, Gerberga von Burgund, for their three underage children . When the unrest in the country intensified after the death of Wilhelm II, Adelheid asked her son from his second marriage, Wilhelm von Toulouse, for support, who rushed to her aid together with his brother-in-law Bernhard von Besalú. Nevertheless, the fighting and unrest did not end until 1023. Adelheid had managed to preserve the inheritance for her grandchildren, but the family of the Counts of Provence emerged weakened from these conflicts. The regency was accompanied by a loss of the count's power, but historians attribute this not to Adelheid's political ineptitude, but to the social and structural changes of that time.

Adelheid is mentioned one last time in a document from 1024. According to the records of the monk Arnulf from the Saint-André monastery in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon , she died in 1026 in the estates of her last husband. She was buried in the Abbey of Montmajour near Arles , which she supported throughout her life and made her family hereditary burial place. Her son Wilhelm II had previously been buried there in 1019, and her grandson Gottfried also found his final resting place there.

literature

  • Christian Bouyer: Dictionnaire des Reines de France . Perrin, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-262-00789-6 .
  • Hartmut Hoffmann (Ed.): Richer von Saint-Remi. Historiae (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). Scriptores . Volume 38). Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 2000, 3rd book, No. 92-95 ( online ).
  • Eliana Magnani Soares Christians: Les femmes et l'exercice du pouvoir comtal dans le Midi. Autour d'Adélaïde Blanche d'Anjou, comtesse de Provence († 1026) . In: Armel Nayt-Dubois (ed.), Emmanuelle Santinelli-Foltz (ed.): Femmes de pouvoir, pouvoir des femmes dans l'Occident médiéval et modern . Presses Universitaires de Valenciennes, Valenciennes 2009, ISBN 978-2-905725-99-8 , pp. 273-289.
  • Thierry Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance. Etat de la question . In: Le Moyen Âge . Revue d'histoire et de philologie . Volume 103, Issue 1. Brussels 1997, ISSN  0027-2841 , pp. 9-52.
  • Gerd Hit: The French queens. From Bertrada to Marie Antoinette (8th – 18th centuries) . VMA, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-928127-80-2 , pp. 69-70.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ E. Magnani Soares Christians: Les femmes et l'exercice du pouvoir comtal dans le Midi. Autour d'Adélaïde Blanche d'Anjou, comtesse de Provence († 1026) , p. 273.
  2. ↑ a b Information on Adelheid-Blanche von Anjou of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy website , accessed March 5, 2013.
  3. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 24.
  4. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 9.
  5. ↑ a b T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 13.
  6. ^ E. Magnani Soares Christians: Les femmes et l'exercice du pouvoir comtal dans le Midi. Autour d'Adélaïde Blanche d'Anjou, comtesse de Provence († 1026) , p. 274.
  7. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 14.
  8. ↑ information according to T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 50. Older publications often give different information about Adelheid's descendants.
  9. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 27.
  10. ↑ Christian Lauranson-Rosaz: L'Auvergne et ses Marge (Velay, Gevaudan) du VIIIe au XIe siècle. La fin du monde antique? Les Cahiers de la Haute-Loire, Le Puy-en-Velay 1987, pp. 126-127.
  11. ↑ a b E. Magnani Soares Christians: Les femmes et l'exercice du pouvoir comtal dans le Midi. Autour d'Adélaïde Blanche d'Anjou, comtesse de Provence († 1026) , p. 275.
  12. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 33.
  13. ↑ information according to T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 52. Older publications often give different information about Adelheid's descendants.
  14. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 26.
  15. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , pp. 50–51.
  16. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 42.
  17. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 46.
  18. ^ Constance Brittain Bouchard: Those of My Blood. Constructing Noble Families in Medieval Francia . University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2001, ISBN 0812235908 , p. 23.
  19. ↑ a b information according to E. Magnani Soares Christians: Les femmes et l'exercice du pouvoir comtal dans le Midi. Autour d'Adélaïde Blanche d'Anjou, comtesse de Provence († 1026) , p. 285. Meanwhile, Thierry Stasser states that the letter is from September 1021/22.
  20. ↑ Harald Zimmermann : Papal documents 896-1046 . 2nd edition, Volume 2: 996-1046. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-7001-0718-8 , No. 530.
  21. ^ Bernard S. Bachrach: Fulk Nerra the Neo-Roman Consul, 987-1040. A political biography of the Angevin count . University of California Press, Berkeley [et al. a.] 1993, ISBN 0-520-07996-5 , p. 9 ( online ).
  22. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 16.
  23. ^ Claude Devic , Joseph Vaissète : Histoire générale de Languedoc (HGL) . Volume 5. Édouard Privat, Toulouse 1875, Sp. 14-15 ( online ).
  24. ↑ a b Bernard S. Bachrach: Fulk Nerra the Neo-Roman Consul, 987-1040. A political biography of the Angevin count . University of California Press, Berkeley [et al. a.] 1993, ISBN 0-520-07996-5 , p. 15 ( online ).
  25. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 18.
  26. ^ H. Hoffmann (ed.): Richer von Saint-Remi , 3rd book, no. 92 ( online ).
  27. ↑ a b c T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 20.
  28. ↑ a b T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 22.
  29. ↑ T. Stasser: Adélaïde d'Anjou, sa famille, ses unions, sa descendance , p. 21.
  30. ↑ C. Bouyer: Dictionnaire des Reines de France . Perrin, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-262-00789-6 .
  31. ↑ a b information according to E. Magnani Soares Christians: Les femmes et l'exercice du pouvoir comtal dans le Midi. Autour d'Adélaïde Blanche d'Anjou, comtesse de Provence († 1026) , p. 280.
  32. ^ Jean-Pierre Poly: La Provence et la société féodale (879–1160). Contribution à l'étude des structures dites féodales dans le Midi . Bordas, Paris 1976, p. 174.
personal data
SURNAME Adelheid of Anjou
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Adélaïde-Blanche d'Anjou (FrS)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French nobles from the house of the Counts of Anjou
DATE OF BIRTH around 950
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1026
Place of death unsure: Avignon