Ida from Austria

Margravine Ida, wife of Leopold II (excerpt from the Babenberger family tree , Klosterneuburg Abbey)

Ida of Austria , also called Itha († probably 1101 near Heraklea ), was a margravine of Austria and participant in the crusade . She was married to Margrave Leopold II of Austria († 1095).

origin

Your family origin is uncertain. Thomas Ebendorfer describes her in his Cronica Austriae (Book II), completed in 1463, as the daughter of the Roman Emperor Heinrich III. He is followed by Ladislaus Sunthaym in the Babenberg family tree from 1489–1492, which was made for Klosterneuburg Abbey . Ebendorfer drew his assumption from a fairytale story in the Austrian Chronicle of 95 Dominions , a work of the late 14th century. In this story, about the bridal trip of Margrave Leopold II to the court of Heinrich III. reported, Ida is portrayed as a woman of unusual beauty. A descent of Ida from Emperor Heinrich III. Although their participation in the crusade of Duke Wilhelm IX. of Aquitaine , who was therefore her cousin. On the other hand, their son Leopold III would be. in this case he was married to his cousin in his second marriage, which was not permitted under canon law.

Later interpretations attributed Ida to other families. Their assignment to the counts of Formbach based on a to 1060/70 in Schäftlarn issued certificate, which previously took place conversion of the castle Suben to a collegiate by Tuta of Formbach , wife of the Hungarian king Béla I. reported. Three children of Count Thiemo II von Formbach are named as co-funders in the document, namely Ekbert, Heinrich and a mistress Ita (Dominam Itam). After the publication of this document in 1765, the Margravine Ida of Austria was identified with that Mistress Ita.

However, the historian and genealogist Wilhelm Wegener contradicted this assignment: Since Thiemo II died in 1040, Ita was born too early to be able to marry the considerably younger Margrave Leopold II. In his opinion, Ida came from the Rapoton family . From the fact that Leopold II was at the forefront of the witnesses at the consecration of the Romanesque monastery church in Michaelbeuern , he assumed that Leopold's wife was closely related to the founders of the church building, the Sieghardingers . This would mean that Ratpoto IV., A Rapotone, and his wife Mathilde, who was possibly a Sieghardinger, were to be regarded as Ida's parents, while another Mathilde, Ratpoto's sister, who was married to the Sieghardinger Friedrich von Tengling , was Ida's aunt should have.

Regardless of this, Karl Lechner, in his story of the Babenbergs first published in 1976, stuck to an assignment of Ida to the Counts of Formbach. He points out that, because of her attitude to the investiture dispute , Ida must come from a family loyal to the Pope. In contrast, the Rapotons belonged to partisans of Henry IV. More recent representations, on the other hand, refrain from clearly assigning Ida to a specific family; they mark possible family relationships with a question mark.

Marriage to Haderich von Schwarzenburg

Some historians like Karl Lechner and Karl Brunner assume that Ida was married to the nobleman Haderich von Schwarzenburg before her marriage to Leopold II. Haderich came from the Upper Palatinate dynasty of the Schwarzenburgs , but had also been wealthy in Lower Austria with the town of Hadres since 1055 . The assumption of a connection between him and Ida is based on the fact that in several documents a younger Haderich in close connection with Ida's son Leopold III. appears: In 1083, in the foundation letter of the Göttweig monastery, that younger Haderich is referred to as margrave, in 1108 King Heinrich V transfers him to him on the basis of services that Leopold III. has given the ruler three royal hooves and in 1113 the younger Haderich and his sons Heinrich and Rapoto attest twice to gifts from Leopold III. In the founding document of 1136 for the monastery Klein-Mariazell near Nöstach in the Vienna Woods, which was donated by Heinrich and Rapoto, Leopold III appears. as co-funder and beneficiary of the two brothers who remained childless. In the book of the dead of that monastery he is referred to as patruus fundatorum nostrorum (father brother of our founders).

From the proximity recognizable in these statements, Lechner and Brunner conclude that the younger Haderich is a son of Ida and thus an older half-brother of Leopold III. has acted. Ida was therefore married to the older Haderich. After the death of her husband, she brought her son into her second marriage to Leopold II, which is what his address as margrave, d. H. declared as a member of the margravial family in the document of 1083.

Margravine of Austria

As the wife of Leopold II and Margravine, Ida shared her husband's opposition to Henry IV in the investiture dispute. Even after Leopold's death in 1095, she retained this position, as shown by her relationships with two leading representatives of the papal party in Germany, Duke Welf IV of Bavaria and Archbishop Thiemo of Salzburg . The Chronicon pii marchionis , an early biography of Margrave Leopold III, tells of four children who emerged from the marriage:

• Elisabeth († 1107/11), ∞ with Margrave Ottokar II of Steyr
• Ida, ∞ with Lutold von Znaim , son of Duke Konrad I of Bohemia
• Gerberga († July 13, 1142), ∞ with Duke Bořivoj II of Bohemia
• Leopold III. († November 15, 1136), Margrave of Austria

The assignment of up to four other daughters to this marriage is uncertain. A rape of the margravine by her brother-in-law, Leopold's younger brother Adalbert , about which the Austrian Chronicle of 95 Rulers tells about 300 years apart , is not mentioned in contemporary sources. The report in the chronicle of the 14th century seems untrustworthy because it is in a fairytale style, does not know the name of the margravine and cannot otherwise give any facts about the reign of Leopold II.

The family lived in the Babenberg residences Gars am Kamp and Tulln an der Donau and, at least in the early years, in Melk , where the couple of margraves founded a Benedictine monastery on the site of the castle in 1089 . The fact that Ida took the initiative to found the monastery is evident from the fact that the monks came from the Lambach monastery . The founders of this mother monastery, the Counts of Wels-Lambach , were connected to both the Formbachers and the Rapotons and thus belonged to their relatives in each of the two family contexts considered in Ida.

Participation in the crusade of 1101

Together with Archbishop Thiemo of Salzburg, Ida joined the dukes Welf IV of Bavaria and Wilhelm IX. from Aquitaine in the so-called crusade from 1101 . Steven Runciman gives the motif that she “asked for the pious excitement of the crusade”, which does not, however, rule out more concrete reasons for her participation. For example, the Zimmerische Chronik mentions a Count Heinrich von Schwarzenburg as a participant in the first crusade , who may have been another son from Ida's assumed marriage to Haderich.

On the march through Asia Minor, the Crusaders were surprised at Heraklea by an army of the Seljuks and completely wiped out. The dukes were able to save themselves by fleeing. The sources of the 12th century offer three different accounts of the fate of Margravine Ida:

• Ekkehard von Aura , a contemporary who also took part in the crusade but embarked in Constantinople, reports succinctly in his chronicle for the year 1101 that the margravine was slain ( marchisiam N. trucidatam ). His sources were survivors of the Battle of Heraklea, which Ekkehard met a few weeks later in Jaffa .

• Albert von Aachen also writes about the events in his Historia Hierosolymitanae Expeditionis (Book 8, Chapter 39) that some say the Margravine was captured and, together with a thousand other captured women who had accompanied the crusader army, in an "aeterno exilio "(eternal exile) in the Kingdom of Khorasan have been led away.

• The anonymous author of the Historia Welforum , which was created around 1170, reports in Chapter 13 that a Saracen prince stole the margravine and created “that wicked Sanguin” (meaning Zengi , the Seljuk governor of Mosul ) with her .

Ekkehard von Aura is likely to offer the most probable version, as he is the only one who can rely on eyewitnesses, while Albert von Aachen and the author of the Historia Welforum only report on hearsay.

swell

• Ekkehard from Aura : Chronica . In: MGH SS VI, p. 220f.
• Albert von Aachen : Historia Hierosolymitanae Expeditionis (Book 8, Chapter 39)
• Chronicon pii marchionis . In: MGH SS IX, p. 612
• Historia Welforum , ed. v. Erich König. Stuttgart / Berlin 1938 (Swabian Chronicles of the Staufer Period 1), p. 23 (Chapter 13)
• Austrian chronicle of the 95 dominions. In: MGH Dt. Chron. VI, pp. 89-91
• Thomas Ebendorfer : Cronica Austriae (Liber secundus). In: MGH, SRG, NS XIII, p. 61f.

literature

• Wilhelm Wegener : Genealogical tables for Central European History, Delivery 8, 1965, p. 188
• European Family Tables XVI, 1995, p. 37; NF 1/1, 1998, plate 84
• Steven Runciman : History of the Crusades . Munich 1978 (special edition), pp. 341–343
• Karl Lechner: The Babenberger. Margraves and Dukes of Austria 976–1246 . 6th edition, Vienna 1997, pp. 112, 135
• Karl Brunner: Leopold the saint. Vienna 2009, pp. 79–81

Individual evidence

1. ^ Thomas Ebendorfer: Cronica Austriae (Liber secundus). In: MGH, SRG, NS XIII, p. 61f.
2. ↑ Austrian Chronicle of the 95 Dominions. In: MGH Dt. Chron. VI, pp. 89-91
3. ↑ Monumenta Boica , Volume Quartum, edidit Academ. Scientar. Maximiliana, MDCCLXV, p. 98 (Formbacher Traditionscodex Nr.CXXVII)
4. ^ Wilhelm Wegener: Genealogical tables for Central European history . Delivery 8, 1965, pp. 181, 188
5. ^ Karl Lechner: The Babenberger. Margraves and Dukes of Austria 976–1246 . 6th edition, Vienna 1997, pp. 112, 135
6. ^ Walter Koch:  Leopold II, Margrave of Austria. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 276 f. ( Digitized version ).
7. ^ Heide Dienst: Leopold II, Margrave of Austria . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 5, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-7608-8905-0 , Sp. 1898 f.
8. ^ Tobias Weller: The marriage policy of the German high nobility in the 12th century. Cologne 2004, p. 328
9. ^ Karl Lechner: The Babenberger. Margraves and Dukes of Austria 976–1246 . 6th edition, Vienna 1997, p. 116f., Karl Brunner: Leopold der Heilige. Vienna 2009, p. 79
10. ↑ Maximilian Fischer: Strange Fates of the Monastery and the City of Klosterneuburg , Volume 2. Vienna 1815, pp. 7–11; Yearbooks of Literature 40. Vienna 1827, pp. 39–41; Document book on the history of the Babenbergs in Austria , 4.1. Vienna 1968 (reprint Vienna / Munich 1997) p. 40 (No. 602)
11. ^ Chronicon pii marchionis . In: MGH SS IX, S. 612. For this: Tobias Weller: The marriage policy of the German nobility in the 12th century. Cologne 2004, pp. 343-348
12. ↑ Austrian Chronicle of the 95 Dominions. In: MGH Dt. Chron. VI, p. 89f.
13. ↑ Steven Runciman: History of the Crusades . Munich 1978 (special edition), p. 341
14. ↑ Froben Christoph von Zimmer: Zimmerische Chronik . Volume I. Edited by Karl August Barack. Freiburg / Tübingen 1881, page 92, full text on Wikisource
15. ↑ Ekkehard of Aura: Chronica . In: MGH SS VI, p. 220f.
16. ↑ Albert von Aachen: Historia Hierosolymitanae Expeditionis (Book 8, Chapter 39)
17. ↑ Erich König (ed.): Historia Welforum . Stuttgart / Berlin 1938 (Swabian Chronicles of the Staufer Period 1), p. 23 (Chapter 13)