Judith (Empress)

Judith - Figure from the Weingartener Stifterbüchlein, around 1510

Judith (* probably 795 / 807 , † 19 April 843 ) was in February 819 second wife of Louis the Pious . Judith was the daughter of Count Welf I , the progenitor of the Welfen dynasty , and the noble Saxon Heilwig (Eigilwi). She was the sister of Hemma , the wife of Ludwig the German , and of Rudolf and Konrad , who were counts in the Lake Constance area and in Zurichgau .

In February 819, Judith was chosen by Ludwig the Pious to be his second wife at a bridal show among Frankish noble daughters . She is said to have been strong-willed and very beautiful. When they married, she received the monastery of San Salvatore in Brescia as a fief ( beneficium ). Judith won strong influence on Ludwig and was able to the Gender help of Guelph to great power. She was initially very popular with the people and was revered for her generosity. So the winter into the year 822 was extremely severe in Europe. The Rhine, Danube, Elbe and Seine were covered with ice for months, many people and animals froze to death. Judith helped the people, for which Rabanus Maurus and the poet monk Walahfrid Strabo thanked her with beautiful verses that went down in literary history. But she was also anxious to secure a share in the legacy of Ludwig the Pious for her son Karl the Kahlen, born in 823 , after a plan for the division of the Frankish Empire among Ludwig's other three sons from his first marriage with the Ordinatio imperii since 817 existed, the princes Lothar , Pippin of Aquitaine and Ludwig of Bavaria .

As a result, Judith drew the hatred of her step-sons and that of the nobility. She was accused of adultery with Bernhard of Septimania and in 830 sent to a monastery near Poitiers , from where Ludwig was able to bring her back from Nijmegen after the imperial assembly . After the events on the " Lies Field " in Colmar , she was exiled to Tortona (Italy). After Ludwig the Pious came to power again, she returned to Aachen at his side .

During the thirties, providing her son Karl with an appropriate portion of the inheritance remained her top priority, which she sought to achieve by changing coalitions with her step-sons Ludwig the German and Emperor Lothar I. When, when her husband Louis the Pious died in 840, however, no viable inheritance regulation was found and a war for the inheritance immediately broke out among his sons, Karl had the most unfavorable starting position compared to his half-brothers. Above all, it was thanks to Judith's active support that Karl was given a large empire in the west at the end of the war, which was sealed in the Treaty of Verdun in 843. His mother had previously successfully recruited supporters for him and brought him troops.

Judith's image in contemporary sources could hardly be more ambivalent. Authors close to the court such as Hrabanus Maurus and his pupil Walahfrid Strabo (the latter was also their court chaplain and teacher of their son) practically adored them, while their opponents, such as Agobard of Lyon and Wala of Corbie , called them the cause of all evil. It is also assessed very inconsistently in historical research. While older research from the 19th and early 20th centuries ascribes her great complicity in the decline of the Carolingian Empire, Judith's image has been relativized in more recent works. Her striving to equip her son Karl and to secure her own protection in the event of widowhood is judged to be entirely legitimate and her role is seen much more in the context of the general signs of decline in the empire of that time.

Judith died in 843 and was buried in St. Martin in Tours , one of the most important churches in the Franconian Empire, as St. Martin was the national saint.

literature

• Friedrich von Bezold : Empress Judith and her poet Walahfrid Strabo. In: Historical magazine . Vol. 130, 1924, pp. 377-439.
• Josef Fleckenstein : About the origin of the Guelphs and their beginnings in southern Germany. In: Gerd Tellenbach (Hrsg.): Studies and preliminary work on the history of the Greater Franconian and early German nobility. Freiburg 1957, pp. 71-136.
• Johannes Fried : The long shadow of a weak ruler. Ludwig the Pious, the Empress Judith, Pseudoisidor and other people in the perspective of new questions, methods and findings. In: Historical magazine. Vol. 284, 2007, pp. 103-138 ( online ).
• Armin Koch: Empress Judith. A political biography. Matthiesen, Husum 2005, ISBN 3-7868-1486-4 (also dissertation, University of Konstanz 2004).
• Karl-Ludwig Ay , Joachim Jahn , Lorenz Maier (eds.): The Welfs. Regional historical aspects of their rule (= Forum Suevicum. Vol. 2). UVK, Konstanz 1998, ISBN 3-87940-598-0 , therein:
  • Wilhelm Störmer : The southern German Welfs with special consideration of their rule policy in the Bavarian-Swabian border area. Pp. 57-96.
  • Alois Niederstätter : Welfish traces south of Lake Constance and in Raetia. Pp. 97-115.
• Theodor Schieffer :  Judith. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 639 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Elizabeth Ward: Caesar's Wife. The Career of the Empress Judith 819-829. In: Peter Goodman, Roger Collins (Eds.): Charlemagne's Heir. New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840). Clarendon, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-821994-6 , pp. 205-227.

Web links

Commons : Judith  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

1. ↑ Armin Koch, Kaiserin Judith: a political biography (historical studies 486), Husum 2005. P. 35. (Reference to marriage at the earliest from the age of 12)
2. ↑ Allen Cabaniss, "Judith Augusta and Her Time." University of Mississippi Studies in English 10 (1969), pp. 67-109, p. 70. (Reference to marriage after Charlemagne's coronation in 800)
3. ↑ Ernst Tremp (ed.): Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 64: Thegan, Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs (Gesta Hludowici imperatoris). Astronomus, Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs (Vita Hludowici imperatoris). Hanover 1995, p. 393 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
4. ↑ Ernst Tremp (ed.): Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 64: Thegan, Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs (Gesta Hludowici imperatoris). Astronomus, Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs (Vita Hludowici imperatoris). Hanover 1995, p. 215 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
5. ↑ Ernst Tremp (ed.): Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 64: Thegan, Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs (Gesta Hludowici imperatoris). Astronomus, Das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs (Vita Hludowici imperatoris). Hanover 1995, p. 223 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
6. ^ RI I, 2.1 n. 361 edited by Irmgard Fees 2007; BÖHMER, JF / MÜHLBACHER, E., Regesta Imperii, Die Regesten des Kaiserreich under the Carolingians 751-918, 1103a.

predecessor	Office	Successor
Irmingard of Hespengau	Roman-German Empress 819 to 843 (co -empress from marriage was Irmingard von Tours from 821 to 849 )	Engelberga

predecessor	Office	Successor
Irmingard of Hesbain	Queen of the Franconian Empire 819–840	Irmentrud von Orléans ( Western France ) Irmingard von Tours (Lotharii Regnum) Hemma ( Eastern France )