Baldwin IV (Flanders)

Baldwin IV. Schönbart , or the bearded one, (* around 980; † 1035 ) was a Count of Flanders from the House of Flanders . He was the only son of Count Arnulf II of Flanders († 987) and Rozala († 1003), a daughter of King Berengar II of Italy .

Life

When his father died, Baldwin was still a minor, which is why his mother soon married King Robert II the Pious in order to win him over as the protector of her son. The ruling King Hugo Capet took advantage of the situation and installed his henchman Hugo in Ponthieu shortly after 989 . King Robert II divorced Rozela as early as 992, for which, according to Richer von Reims, the age difference was decisive. Robert kept her dowry, the important seaport of Montreuil with its castle, for which Baldwin's ancestors had long fought.

Having come of age, Baldwin restored the power of the count in Kortrijk and Gent . Strengthened by this, he took up the expansion policy of his ancestors again. Bound to the south, it oriented itself to the east, to the regions to the right of the Scheldt and thus to imperial territory . First he took Cambrai , whose bishop fled to King Henry II, and in 1006 the march of Valenciennes was conquered in league with Count Lambert I of Leuven . In response to this, the future Emperor Heinrich II the Saint allied himself with King Robert II and entered Ghent in the summer of 1007, which Baldwin forced to submit to the German king in Aachen in October of the same year .

Not long afterwards, Baldwin approached King Henry II by diplomatic means, from whom he finally received Walcheren (1012) and Valenciennes (1015) as fiefs from imperial hands. On the other hand, he had to renounce Cambrai, whose dignity was handed over to the bishop. But Baldwin was the first Count of Flanders to gain a foothold on imperial soil (see " Imperial Flanders ") and thus to be a vassal to France and the empire.

The agreement with the future emperor was deepened by his marriage to Otgiva of Luxembourg , who was a niece of Empress Kunigunde , around 1012 . The inheritance resulting from marriage

• Baldwin V († 1067) turned out to be a rebellious son who rose up against his father several times. Apparently Baldwin IV was even expelled from Flanders once, so that only the Norman Duke Robert I was able to mediate his return. Father and son reconciled in 1030 at a meeting in Oudenaarde .

After Otgiva's death in 1031, Baldwin IV married Eleanor , a daughter of the Norman Duke Richard II , with whom he presumably had a daughter:

• Judith († March 5, 1094)
  • ⚭ 1051 with Earl Tostig of Northumbria († 1066)
  • ⚭ 1071 with Duke Welf I of Bavaria († 1101)

literature

• Helmut Gajic: The great dynasties (“Le grandi dinastie”). Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1996, ISBN 3-86070-561-X .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ For the nickname "Schönbart" ( Pulchra barba ) see: Flandria Generosa , ed. by Ludwig C. Bethmann in MGH SS 9 (1851), p. 318; For the nickname “the bearded one” ( Barbatus ) see: Genealogia comitum Flandriae Bertiniana , in MGH SS 9, p. 305
2. ↑ On the descent of Judith from Baldwin IV. And Eleonore see the article on Judith

predecessor	Office	successor
Arnulf II the Younger	Count of Flanders 988-1035	Baldwin V. the Pious
Arnulf II of Cambrai	Count in Hainaut (Mark Valenciennes) 1013-1035	Baldwin V. the Pious