Constance of Sicily

This article is about the daughter of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily. For the daughter of the same name of the Hohenstaufen king Manfred, her great-granddaughter, see Konstanze von Sizilien (1249–1302)

Henry VI. and Constance of Sicily (from Liber ad honorem Augusti by Petrus de Ebulo , 1196)

Konstanze von Sizilien , also Konstanze I ( Norman Constance d'Hauteville , Italian Constanza I di Sicilia or Constanza d'Altavilla ; * 1154 - 27 November 1198 in Palermo ) was Queen of Sicily from 1194 to 1198 in her own right and the last member of the Hauteville family on the Sicilian throne. After the death of her father, King Roger II of Sicily , she was born posthumously to his third wife Beatrix von Rethel . As the wife of Emperor Heinrich VI. she became the empress and mother of the future emperor Friedrich II.

Life

Konstanze was already an unusual 30 years old when she got engaged. This later gave rise to suspicions that, being a nun, she needed papal dispensation, but also that she was extremely ugly.

After the death of the male family members, Konstanze became the heir to the kingdom. Her father had died before she was born, of his five sons only the youngest was still alive: Wilhelm I himself died in 1166 and left behind only one underage son, Wilhelm II , who remained childless.

Why Wilhelm waited so long to find a husband for his aunt is not known. It is also not clear why he ultimately chose Heinrich, the son and heir of the Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa , since the Sicilian and German rulers had long been enemies. The Pope , also an opponent of the emperors, could not advocate seeing the great kingdom in the south in German hands because the papal state would then have found itself in a bracket between Germany and the Norman Empire. Resistance to this solution also arose among the nobles of the empire.

Nevertheless, Konstanze was betrothed to Heinrich in 1184 and married to him on January 27, 1186 in Milan . Wilhelm made the nobility and the other important men of his court promise to recognize Constance's successor if he should die without direct heirs. After his unexpected death in 1189, his cousin Tankred of Lecce took the throne - Tankred was illegitimate but had the support of most of the kingdom's important men.

Constance's father-in-law Friedrich Barbarossa died in 1190, and in the following year (April 15) Heinrich and Constance were crowned emperor and empress. Immediately thereafter, Heinrich set about enforcing his double, imperial and inheritance-based claim to the Sicilian Regnum against Tankred's usurpation. The conflict with Henry the Lion and the death of his father had delayed the company. During this first attempt by Henry to invade Sicily, which failed due to an epidemic that broke out during the siege of Naples, Konstanze was captured by Tankred through an uprising in Salerno, who, however, responded to the intervention of Pope Coelestin III. released and placed in the care of the Pope. On the way to Rome she escaped and returned to Heinrich's court. After Tankred's unexpected death (February 1194) and the reconciliation with Henry the Lion (March 1194), Heinrich finally managed to conquer the Kingdom of Sicily with the help of the huge ransom for the release of Richard the Lionheart, who had been imprisoned since 1192 (February 1194). In the same year he moved south, seized the widow and children of Tankreds, and set his young son Wilhelm III. from and yourself to the throne. On Christmas Day 1194 he was crowned King of the Sicilian Regnum.

While Heinrich moved south quickly, Konstanze followed him more slowly because of her pregnancy. On December 26th, one day after Heinrich's coronation in Palermo , she came to the small town of Jesi near Ancona with the later Emperor Friedrich II .

Konstanze was already 40 years old at birth and had only given birth to an heir to the throne after nine years of marriage. Opponents of the Hohenstaufen quickly cast doubts about the legality of the birth, which were embellished in the later sources with increasingly fantastic details. According to Albert von Stade , a pseudo-pregnancy was brought about by medical means and then an infant stolen from its parents was pushed aside. According to various sources, Friedrich's real father was a doctor, miller or falconer. According to Ricordano Malispini , in anticipation of such doubts, Konstanze gave birth to Friedrich in a tent on the town's market square, with the local women as witnesses. A few days later, she returned to the market square to publicly breastfeed the child. However, none of these legends can stand up to modern source criticism. They are only significant as sources for anti-Staufer propaganda, as, conversely, the enkomiastic representations with which Petrus de Ebulo and the anonymous author of Gesta Heinrici VI respond to the birth of the heir to the throne, document the Hohenstaufen representation of power. On Heinrich's instructions, Konstanze gave her son to the wife of Konrad von Urslingen , Duke of Spoleto , for education, at whose court in Foligno he spent his first three and a half years of life. She herself moved to southern Italy, because she was intended as regent of the Sicilian Regnum. After the discovery and smashing of a nobility conspiracy, the Tankreds widow and her son Wilhelm III. were involved, the government of Regnum was reorganized at the court day in Bari (Easter 1195). Konstanze was crowned queen here or a little later in Palermo and entrusted with the reign, in the exercise of which she was chancellor Walter von Pagliara , the bishop of Troy, and Konrad von Urslingen as vicarius, both of Henry's trusted partisans, and a circle of confidants , which included the Archbishops of Palermo and Capua. You could still rely on the Norman administrative apparatus. She resolutely joined the attempts of Pope Coelestin III. against, based on the feudal contract with Tankred of 1192, to intervene arbitrarily in the conditions of the Sicilian Regnum. Like Heinrich, she also emphasized the close relationship between Sicily and the empire.

Porphyry sarcophagus by Constanze in the Cathedral of Palermo

Heinrich died unexpectedly in 1197. Konstanze now devoted himself to securing rule for herself and her son in the difficult environment in which the Staufer opponents and the Pope threatened to regain the upper hand. In a realistic assessment of the balance of power, she intended to limit herself initially to securing the Sicilian Regnum and defending her independence under inherited rule. She therefore had the three-year-old Frederick brought to Sicily from the Duchy of Spoleto , first installed him as co-regent and had him crowned King of Sicily on May 17, 1198 in Palermo. The knots that Henry VI. between the government of Sicily and the empire dissolved it in the name of his son. She also renounced his claim to the German crown and placed him under the protection of Pope Innocent III. In order to strengthen her position, she banned Heinrich's unpopular alien partisans such as Walter von Pagliara , Markward von Annweiler and Konrad von Urslingen , especially since they now seemed to be pursuing their own interests in power, from Regnum. Markward was even ostracized in the end. She raised her son as a Sicilian and sought for him the position of King of Sicily, without giving up her own imperial title. She also renounced his title as rex Romanorum only with his coronation in Palermo under the impression of the election of Philip of Swabia , when it was a matter of avoiding a split in the Hohenstaufen appendix. Clearly aware of the fact that she was now much more dependent than before on coming to terms with the papacy, Konstanze immediately started negotiations with the Holy See after the death of her husband. These dragged on, however, and only came after the death of Coelestin III. under his successor Innocent III. in conclusion. Konstanze did not live to see the signing of the treaty, in which she had to wrest far-reaching concessions that deprived the kings of almost all influence on the church and the appointment of church offices in Regnum. On November 27, 1198, she died surprisingly at the age of 44. Like her husband, she was buried in the Cathedral of Palermo in a porphyry sarcophagus under a canopy supported by six columns decorated with mosaics. Pope Innocent III took over the reign of her underage son, who had become an orphan and was facing an uncertain future, determined not to let the opportunity to assert the interests of the papacy slip by.

reception

In his Divine Comedy, Dante transfers Constanze to Paradise (with which he supports the story that she was a nun):

E quest'altro splendor che ti si mostra da la mia destra parte e che s'accende di tutto il lume de la spera nostra, ciò ch'io dico di me, di sé intende; sorella fu, e so le fu tolta di capo l'ombra de le sacre bende. Ma poi che pur al mondo fu rivolta contra suo grado e contra buona usanza, non fu dal vel del cor già mai disciolta. Quest'è la luce de la gran Costanza che del secondo vento di Soave generò 'l terzo e l'ultima possanza.

The other shine that is you on my right So brightly irradiated, because it ignites In our sphere Understand what I say about myself. For, like mine, they were torn from their heads The veil that wraps the nuns forehead. But whether you will allow her to return to the world But her heart remained crowned with that wreath, The wicked deed stolen from her forehead. She is the light of excellent constancy, The one with the second storm from Swabia The third begets, shimmers with the last splendor.

literature

• Gerhard Baaken:  Constance. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 560 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Theo Kölzer : Konstanze I . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 5, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-7608-8905-0 , Sp. 1406 f.
• Theo Kölzer:  Costanza d'Altavilla, imperatrice e regina di Sicilia. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 30:  Cosattini – Crispolto. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1984.
• Theo Kölzer: Documents and chancellery of Empress Konstanze, Queen of Sicily (1195–1198). Böhlau. Cologne Vienna 1983.
• Theo Kölzer: The Sicilian chancellery from Empress Konstanze to King Manfred (1195–1266). In: Deutsches Archiv 40, 1984, pp. 532-561.
• Theo Kölzer: The documents of the Empress Konstanze (Constantiae Imperatricis diplomata) . (= MGH Diplomata; The documents of the German kings and emperors; 11, 3). Hahn'sche Buchhandlung, Hanover 1990 ( online ).
• Theo Kölzer, Marlis Stähli (eds.), Gereon Becht-Jördens (text revision and translation): Petrus de Ebulo. Liber Ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis. Codex 120 II of the Burgerbibliothek Bern. A pictorial chronicle of the Staufer period. Jan Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1994, pp. 37-39; Pp. 93-99; Pp. 113-135; Pp. 149-167; Pp. 205–209 (important source with numerous illustrations of Constance).
• Uwe A. Oster: The women of Emperor Friedrich II. Piper Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-492-25736-7 .
• Wolfgang Stürner : Friedrich II. Part I The royal rule in Sicily and Germany 1194-1220. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1992, pp. 34–57; Pp. 80–86 (detailed references).
• Tobias Weller : Constance of Sicily . In: The Empresses of the Middle Ages, ed. by Amalie Fößel , Pustet Verlag, Regensburg 2011, pp. 213-231.
• Ovidio Capitani:  Costanza d'Altavilla. In: Enciclopedie on line. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1970. Retrieved March 29, 2017.

Web links

Commons : Konstanze von Sizilien  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

1. ↑ On this in detail with listing of the numerous sources Wolfgang Stürner: Friedrich II. (See below: Literature) S., note 2; Pp. 43-49
2. ↑ ibid. Pp. 49-51; Kölzer / Stähli (see below: Literature) p. 206f. with illustration
3. ↑ Quotation from: Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy , translated and explained by Carl Streckfuss , newly edited by Rudolf Pfleiderer, Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1876, Paradies, 3rd song, p. 416

predecessor	Office	successor
William III.	Queen of Sicily 1194–1198	Friedrich
Beatrix of Burgundy	Roman-German queen 1186–1197	Irene of Byzantium
Beatrix of Burgundy	Roman-German Empress 1191–1197	Beatrix of Swabia