Eleonore Helena of Portugal

Eleanor of Portugal

Eleonore Helena of Portugal (born September 18, 1436 , † September 3, 1467 ) was the wife of Frederick III. , Holy Roman Emperor .

Life

Childhood and youth

Eleanor was a daughter of the Portuguese King Edward I and his wife Eleanor of Aragon . However, her father died relatively early, on September 9, 1438, of the plague. Since Eleanor's brother Alfonso V was only six, he succeeded his father on the throne, but could not exercise his sovereign power due to his minority. In this case, Eduard had determined his wife as his successor in his will, but this displeased the estates and the nobility. They preferred Edward's brother, Peter , because they regard the queen as a foreign body. This opposed their abdication with the help of a not inconsiderable number of local supporters. She fled from her widow's residence Almeirim to Crato Castle , where she holed up and took her daughter Johanna with her. Her daughter Eleonore was sick at this point and so she left her in Almeirim. Peter forced his sister-in-law into exile with military power and took care of her children. Peter ensured an excellent education and gave Eleonore Guiomar de Castro, wife of the 1st Count of Atouguia, as an educator. When Alfonso V came of age and reached for the crown, but Peter never thought of abdicating, a battle broke out between uncle and brother. Peter was fatally wounded by an arrow at the beginning of the fighting, so that Eleonore's brother Alfons took power. But he also took excellent care of his siblings.

Marriage projects

Pinturicchio (1502–1507):
ES Piccolomini presents Friedrich III. the bride Eleonora of Portugal (detail)

Empress Eleonore with her daughters, German Prayer Book of Frederick III, Vienna, 1466/67, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 67 and 68, folio 2r.

The impetus for the marriage project between Eleonore and Friedrich, who was still king at the time and only after his coronation Friedrich III. Isabella , a sister of Peter who was married to Duke Philip of Burgundy , was probably given . He hoped through a successful marriage through his house that his duchy would be upgraded to a kingdom. But the marriage business did not run through Burgundy, but through Alfonso of Aragon-Naples, Uncle Eleonores on his mother's side and one of the dominant forces in the Mediterranean. In 1448 two emissaries from Frederick and a painter appeared at the Neapolitan court, who received letters of recommendation and then traveled on to Portugal. The painter should paint Eleonore, since Friedrich III. obviously attached great importance to the appearance of his future wife and did not want a falsified representation by a Portuguese painter. When the ambassadors arrived in Portugal, the above-mentioned change of power between Peter and Alfonso V had taken place, which, however, was also inclined towards the marriage project. Both the picture and the report met with the approval of Frederick III, but all of this had taken so long that a new applicant had come on the scene, the son of the French king. But here, according to the chronicler Aenas Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II ), Eleanor intervened and opted for Friedrich, because she wanted to decorate herself and her house with the promised title of Empress.

The marriage negotiations themselves took place in Naples and lasted two weeks. Eventually they agreed on a dowry of 60,000 guilders. 50,000 of these were freely available to Friedrich and 10,000 guilders were intended for Eleonores' crossing. In return, Friedrich had to provide lands and farms worth 60,000 guilders, which were to serve as Eleanor's retirement home. She was supposed to arrive on November 1, 1451 in a port ( Talamone ) selected by Friedrich . The crossing turned out to be very difficult, however, as one was ambushed by pirates and got into heavy storms, so that the fleet was scattered. Only one ship arrived in Talamone, which did not know where the rest of the fleet was and which Eleanor was not on either, so that rumors of her death quickly spread.

Wedding with Friedrich III.

They met in Siena , where Eleonora and Friedrich met for the first time. Friedrich is said to have turned pale at the sight of them, either from excitement or from fear that the petite Eleanor would have difficulties bearing children. The wedding with Friedrich took place on March 16, 1452 by Pope Nicholas V in Rome. Three days later, Eleanor was crowned empress at the side of the Habsburgs. She was the last empress to be crowned in Rome. Friedrich gave her the name Helena, but she never used it all her life. (The name Helena was given to her by the Pope and not by the Emperor.) The subsequent wedding celebrations were organized for them by Eleonore's uncle Alfons , a brother of her mother, in Naples.

She died at the age of 30, presumably of a gastrointestinal infection. From the marriage with Friedrich III. six children were born. However, only Maximilian, born in 1459, and Kunigunde, born in 1465, survived .

literature

• Antonia Zierl: Empress Eleonore and her circle. A biography (1436-1467). phil. Diss. (Unprinted), Univ. Vienna, 1966.
• Eberhard Holtz: A Portuguese woman in Austria - Eleonore, wife of Emperor Friedrich III. In: Gerald Beyreuther, Barbara Pätzold, Erika Uitz (eds.): Fürstinnen und Städterinnen. Women in the Middle Ages. Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1993, pp. 255–282.
• Achim Thomas Hack : Eleonore of Portugal. In: Amalie Fößel (Ed.): The Empresses of the Middle Ages. Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2360-0 , pp. 306-326.
• Achim Thomas Hack: A Portuguese woman in Austria around the middle of the 15th century. Cultural exchange as a result of an imperial marriage? In: Franz Fuchs , Paul-Joachim Heinig , Martin Wagendorfer (eds.): King and Chancellor, Kaiser and Pope. Friedrich III. and Enea Silvio Piccolomini in Wiener Neustadt. Böhlau, Cologne 2013, pp. 181–204.

Web links

Commons : Eleonore Helena of Portugal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Grave site in the new monastery ( Memento from May 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
• Entry on Eleonore Helena of Portugal in the database of the memory of the country for the history of Lower Austria ( Museum Niederösterreich )

Remarks

1. ↑ Achim Thomas Hack: The date of birth of the Empress Eleonore. In: Mitteilungen des Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 120, 2012, pp. 146–153.
2. ^ Claudia Zey : Imperatrix, si venerit Romam ... On the coronations of empresses in the Middle Ages. In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages , Vol. 60 (2004), pp. 3–51, here: p. 39.
3. ↑ cf. Antonia Zierl: Empress Eleonore and her circle. A biography (1436-1467). phil. Diss. (Unprinted), Univ. Vienna, 1966, p. 104f.
4. ↑ On Friedrich's children, cf. Achim Thomas Hack: A Portuguese woman in Austria around the middle of the 15th century. Cultural exchange as a result of an imperial marriage? In: Franz Fuchs, Paul-Joachim Heinig, Martin Wagendorfer (eds.): King and Chancellor, Kaiser and Pope. Friedrich III. and Enea Silvio Piccolomini in Wiener Neustadt. Cologne 2013, pp. 181–204, here: p. 193, note 42.

predecessor	Office	Successor
Barbara from Cilli	Roman-German Empress March 19, 1452 to September 3, 1467	Bianca Maria Sforza