Berenguela of Castile
Berenguela (or Berengaria ) (born June 1, 1180 in Segovia , † November 8, 1246 in Las Huelgas ) was briefly Queen of Castile in 1217 .
Life
She was the eldest daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile (1155-1214) and Eleanor Plantagenet , Countess of Gascogne (1162-1214).
On April 23, 1188, her father and Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa agreed in the Seligenstadt Treaty that she would marry Barbarossa's son, Duke Conrad II of Swabia. In July 1188 the wedding took place in Carrión near Burgos . However, the marriage was never consummated. Pope Celestine III succeeded. to nip an expansion of the Hohenstaufen to Spain in the bud. The connection was canceled between the autumn of 1191 and the beginning of 1192 by the Archbishop Gonzalo of Toledo and the papal legate Gregory, cardinal deacon of San Angelo, on the grounds that the bride had spoken out against the continuation.
Berenguela married Alfonso IX in 1198 . von León - a marriage that gave birth to five children, including one who died prematurely. Pope Innocent III annulled the marriage in 1203 because of a close relationship, because Berenguela's great-grandfather Alfonso VII was her husband's grandfather. Thereupon she returned with her children to the Castilian court of her father.
After a fatal accident of her brother Heinrich I , Berenguela inherited the Castilian crown in 1217, but renounced that same year in favor of her son, who became King of Castile as Ferdinand II . Now in the role of Queen Mother, according to the Chronica Latina , she invested all of her energy in securing honor and recognition for her son. She helped Ferdinand put down a rebellion of the nobility and in 1220 arranged his marriage to Beatrix von Schwaben (the younger) , a daughter of King Philip of Swabia and cousin of King Friedrich II , who was crowned Roman-German Emperor that same year.
In the Kingdom of León, her divorced husband Alfonso IX wanted. favor his two daughters Sancha and Dulce from his divorced first marriage to Theresa of Portugal . For this purpose he invited Johann von Brienne to marry his eldest daughter and thus to take over the kingdom after his death. Berenguela thwarted this plan by convincing Johann in 1224 to marry her own daughter, Berenguela, instead.
When Alfonso died in 1230, Ferdinand II, with Berenguela's support, replaced his half-sisters' claims to the throne with 30,000 gold pieces ( aurei ). Ferdinand succeeded his father in León. Thereby he united the kingdoms of Castile and León, which had been separated since 1157, when his grandfather Alfonso VII bequeathed them to his sons.
Throughout her life, Berenguela maintained strong relationships with her sister Blanka , who was Queen in France at the side of Louis VIII . At their suggestion, the Queen Mother chose Jeanne von Ponthieu as the new wife for her son, after Elisabeth (Beatrix) v. Swabia had died.
The queen was nicknamed "the great" by posterity because she cleverly secured the succession to the throne in Castile in 1217 and in León in 1230 for her son Ferdinand. Thus she was jointly responsible for the permanent unification of the formerly separate empires of Castile and León.
progeny
She was the mother of the following children:
- Leonor (* 1198/99; † 1210)
- Ferdinand (* 1199; † 1252), from 1217 King Ferdinand II of Castile and from 1230 King Ferdinand III. of Castile and León
- Alfons (* 1203; † 1272), Duke of Molina
- Berenguela (* 1204; † 1237), married Johann von Brienne in 1224
- Constanza (* 1205; † 1242)
literature
- Odilo Engels: Berenguela (Berengaria), Queen of Léon, Infanta of Castile . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 1, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-7608-8901-8 , Sp. 1941 f.
- Peter Rassow: The Prince Consort. A Pactum Matrimonale from 1188. Weimar 1950.
- Miriam Shadis: Berenguela of Castile (1180-1246) and political women in the High Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-312-23473-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ MGH DD FI, Volume 4, No. 970 .
- ^ Peter Koblank: Treaty of Seligenstadt 1188. On stauferstelen.net. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
- ^ Tobias Weller : The marriage policy of the German nobility in the 12th century , Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2004, pp. 152–154.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Heinrich I. |
Queen of Castile 1217 |
Ferdinand III. |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Berenguela of Castile |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Berengaria |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Queen of Castile |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 1, 1180 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Segovia |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 8, 1246 |
| Place of death | Las Huelgas |