Emilia of Orange-Nassau

Princess Emilia of Orange-Nassau

Princess Emilia of Orange-Nassau

Emilia von Nassau (born April 10, 1569 in Cologne , † March 16, 1629 in Geneva ) was the third and youngest daughter from the marriage of Wilhelm I of Orange-Nassau (* 1533; † 1584) and Anna of Saxony (* 1544; † 1577). It was named after Amalia von Neuenahr , who was running her mother's household when she was born.

Life

Her parents' marriage was soon marked by disharmony, and her father looked around for another woman. Her mother was then accused - presumably without the factual basis - of a relationship with Jan Rubens, the father of the painter Peter Paul Rubens , who managed her property, and she was separated from her children. Emilia and her siblings Anna (* 1563; † 1588) and Moritz (* 1567; † 1625) came into the care of their uncle Johann (* 1536; † 1606) at Dillenburg Castle . Later Emilia lived for some time with her father in Delft , with sister Anna in Friesland and as a lady-in-waiting at the court of her brother Moritz, who in the meantime had succeeded the murdered father and was governor of the northern Netherlands .

It was there that she met her future husband: Manuel of Portugal (* 1568; † 1638). The Emilia family was one of the most prominent representatives of Calvinism in Europe, but Manuel was a Roman Catholic . The family put up considerable resistance to the connection, but this did not prevent the engaged couple from secretly marrying a Roman Catholic priest on November 7, 1597 . Manuel then had to flee to Wesel . Emilia was first placed under house arrest and her brother tried to force her to break up the marriage, which she did not agree to. Both were banished from the brother's court.

Due to the way in which the marriage had come about, the two were cut off from the offices and income otherwise usual for their class. Manuel and Emilia lived in constant financial need in the first years of their marriage. It was not until 1608 that, through the mediation of Prince Philipp Wilhelm of Orange-Nassau, a reconciliation between Manuel and Emilia on the one hand and Moritz of Orange on the other. Emilia was given the Wychen fortress near Nijmegen as a fief , but until 1626 lived mostly in The Hague. But life at the governor's court was still not easy for the two of them, as Manuel was cut socially as a Catholic. He then entered into secret negotiations with the governor of the Catholic Spanish Netherlands , Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and her husband, Archduke Albrecht VII of Austria , the fiercest opponents of the split-off northern Netherlands. Isabella and Albrecht assured Manuel a higher allowance than he received from the Orange. When, after the governor Moritz's death in 1625, tensions with his successor, Prince Friedrich Heinrich von Orange-Nassau, increased, Manuel went to Brussels. His wife, who saw the father of Isabella, King Philip II of Spain, as the driving force behind the murder of her father, could not make up her mind to go to his daughter's court and moved with her daughters to reformed Geneva, where she died in 1629.

The fate of the family's daughters was overshadowed by a scandal: the eldest, Maria Belgica, was originally supposed to marry a Margrave of Baden, but ran away with Colonel Theodor Croll, who was in service there, which opened up the chances of her younger sisters getting married in society at the time Zero reduced. The exception: Eleonora Mauritia, see: here .

progeny

Their marriage revealed:

• Maria Bélgica (* before October 12, 1598; † July 28, 1647), married in June 1629 to Colonel Theodor Croll († 1640 in Venice [murdered]), Quartermaster General of Duke Odoardo I Farnese of Parma.
• Manuel António of Portugal (born February 24, 1600 in Delft , † October 27, 1666 in Schagen ).
• Emília Luisa (born June 1603 in Delft; † October 29, 1670), unmarried
• Luís Guilherme (* 1604 - 7 July 1660), military, 1624 chief of the Guard of Moritz von Orange , Knight of Malta , married Anna Maria von Moutéleone.
• Ana Luisa Frísia (* before May 3, 1605; † April 5, 1669), unmarried.
• Juliana Caterina (* approx. 1607; † July 22, 1680), unmarried
• Maurícia Leonore (* before May 10, 1609; † June 25, 1674), married Count Georg Friedrich von Nassau-Siegen on June 4, 1647 in The Hague .
• Sabina Delphica (* 1612; † July 20, 1670), unmarried.

literature

• AWE Dek: De afstammelingen van Juliana van Stolberg tot aan het jaar van de Vrede van Munster . In: Spiegel der Historie 3, 7/8 (1968).
• JLJ van Kamp: Nog een tak afstammelingen van Willem de Zwijger . In: De nederlandsche Leeuw . Book LXXIV, 9 (September 1957), columns 266-287; 306-316.
• Hans-Joachim Böttcher : Princess Anna of Saxony 1544-1577 - A life tragedy. Dresdner Buchverlag 2013. ISBN 978-3-941757-39-4 .
• Fritz Heymann: The Chevalier von Geldern, a chronicle of the adventure of the Jews, p. 100 ff digitized

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} That day she was baptized in Delft. - See Dek: De afstammelingen ... , p. 243f.