Emmerich (Hungary)

Emmerich, lithograph by Josef Kriehuber after a drawing by Moritz von Schwind , ca.1828

Seal of Emmerich from 1203

Emmerich ( Latin also Henricus , Aimeric or Hemericius ; Hungarian Imre ; Croatian Emerik ; * 1174 ; † November 30, 1204 ), from the Arpaden family, was king of Hungary and Croatia from 1196 .

Life

He was the son and successor of King Béla III. of Hungary († 1196). His mother was Agnes de Châtillon .

As a child, Emmerich was betrothed to Agnes , a daughter of the Roman-German Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa , but she died in 1184.

Around 1199 he married the king's daughter Constance of Aragón († 1222). From this marriage comes his successor Ladislaus († 1205).

His father had him crowned co-king on May 16, 1182. In 1194 he appointed Emmerich governor of Croatia and Dalmatia and had him crowned again, probably to secure the primogeniture against the younger brother Andreas II . When Emmerich took over the government of the entire kingdom after the death of his father in 1196, Andreas II forced the surrender of Croatia and Dalmatia as a duchy by force of arms in 1197. The two subsequent attempts of Andreas to overthrow his brother Emmerich failed, also because the latter was led by Pope Innocent III. and his brother-in-law Ottokar I was supported by Bohemia . However, in these troubled times began the fatal waste of the royal domains on partisans of the two rivals. Emmerich made extensive donations of land to the Hungarian nobility and to the Cistercians from the Heiligenkreuz Abbey in Lower Austria , which permanently weakened the power of kingship.

He supported the side of the Guelphs in the German controversy for the throne and in 1201/02 conquered Serbia, where he fought the Bogomils with papal support .

Before his death on August 26, 1204, he left his underage son and heir Ladislaus III. crown and appointed Andrew II as his guardian and regent. After Emmerich died in November 1204, Andreas used his new position of power to seize power in the country. Emmerich's widow Konstanze von Aragon fled from him shortly afterwards with the young King Ladislaus III. to Vienna. As Ladislaus III. Andreas died there in 1205, reached his destination and became King of Hungary himself.

Emmerich's widow married the future Roman-German Emperor Friedrich II in Palermo in 1209. Both her marriage to Emmerich and Friedrich was from Pope Innocent III. arranged since Aragon, Hungary and Sicily were papal fiefs.

literature

• Thomas von Bogyay: Emmerich . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 3, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-7608-8903-4 , Sp. 1889 f.
• Pallas' online large lexicon (Hungarian)
• János M. Bak : Emmerich. in: Biographical Lexicon on the History of Southeast Europe. Vol. 1. Ed. By Mathias Bernath and Felix von Schroeder . Munich 1974, pp. 459–460 ( online edition ) [not evaluated]

Web links

Commons : Emeric of Hungary  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

predecessor	Office	successor
Béla III./II.	King of Hungary 1196–1204	Ladislaus III./II.
Béla III./II.	King of Croatia, Dalmatia and Rama 1196–1204	Ladislaus III./II.