Margarete von Henneberg

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The castle of the Henneberg family in Loosduinen

Margarete von Henneberg (* 1234 ; † March 26, 1276 in Loosduinen ) was a daughter of Florens IV (Holland) and Mathilde von Brabant.

Life

Margarete married Count Hermann von Henneberg-Coburg on Whitsun 1249 . This marriage had political reasons, because Hermann von Henneberg-Coburg had hoped to become ruler of the Holy Roman Empire in the elections in 1246 , but was inferior to Margarete's brother Willem . In order to consolidate his influence in Germany, Willem arranged Margarete's marriage to the German count.

Margarete von Henneberg lived with her husband in Coburg ; however, the couple also had a residence in Loosduinen near Hooghe Werf , where they often stayed. In 1250 their eldest child, Herman, who had died young, was buried in Loosduinen church. The marriage resulted in two more children who reached adulthood: their daughter Jutta married Otto von Brandenburg in 1268 , and their son Poppo lived until 1291.

In the spring of 1276 Margarete von Henneberg fell seriously ill in Loosduinen. Before her death she was able to dictate letters to her nephew Florens V (Holland) regarding the inheritance; she died on Good Friday 1276. Like her first son, she was buried in the church of Loosduinen Abbey.

The legend of the 365 children

From the notes that her widower made in the years after her death, it does not appear that there were any special circumstances surrounding the death of Margarete von Henneberg. Later, however, the legend developed that the Countess died in childbirth after giving birth to no fewer than 365 children.

One of the first surviving evidence of this legend comes from the late 14th century: In Egmond's tablet , which is in the University Library of Utrecht , it is briefly and succinctly reported that Margarete died after giving birth to 364 (!) Sons and daughters have. The children would not have survived either. They are all buried together in Loosduinen, where an epitaph commemorates them.

Insulting the beggar woman. Print from 1620

De Clerks Kronyk van Holland also dates from the 14th century . It gives the reason for the strange multiple birth. The Countess once insulted a mother of twins by claiming that these children must have come from two different fathers, and was then cursed. Her 365 (!) Mouse-sized children were baptized in a large vessel and died afterwards.

Hermann Korner wrote the Chronica Novella between 1415 and 1535 . The legend can be found here in an embellished form. The twin mother has a name, Katharina, and is portrayed as Margarete's personal enemy, who is referred to as the wife of Count Johan of Holland. According to Korner, Margarete said that it was just as impossible for Katharina to have two children from the same man at the same time as it was impossible for herself to have as many children as there were days in the year. Simon, Catherine's husband, then separated from her and she was sent to prison, where she passionately prayed for her good reputation to be restored. Then Margarete had come down with 364 (!) Children and Simon had changed his mind and recognized Katharina again as his wife. The 364 children are described here as tiny as crabs and are also said to have died in a large vessel after being baptized.

Jan van Naaldwijk also told the story in his Croonijcke van Holland . In his version of the event, Hermann von Henneberg was present at the time of the birth and baptism in Loosduinen and invited numerous nobles to become godparents of his children. In this version the twin mother is depicted as a beggar, and as an additional detail it is mentioned that the baptism was performed by Bishop Guido of Utrecht and that all boys were given the name Jan and all girls the name Elisabeth.

The legend spread more and more in the 16th century. Ludovico Guicciardini , who had probably visited Loosduinen, published a detailed account of the events in 1567. In his work De Monstris, Irenaeus moved the event to 1555, another writer referred to Jobus Fincelius when he gave the year 1313 as the time of the miraculous birth and made Margaret an Irish woman.

Cyriacus Spangenberg published the Henneberg Chronica in 1599 . He gives the number of children as 364, half were boys who were baptized in the name of Johannes, the other half were girls who were named Elisabeth. A corresponding inscription can be found in the church in Loosduinen. In the handwriting of the Hennebergische Chronica, which is kept in Dresden , there are handwritten additions by the historian Nathaniel Carolus . According to these notes, there was a kind of monument to the deceased children in the church.

The child's bed and the children in the vessel. Print from 1620

In the late 16th century the theme was taken over by a Spanish songwriter who sang the fate of madama Margarita and told her about 360 surviving children whose silver baptismal vessel was later exhibited in a church. Edward Grimeston's General Historie of the Netherlands from 1609 went into the legend, as did Thomas Coryat's Crudities from 1611 and John Stow's Annales . In 1620 the ballad The Lamenting Lady was printed in London , which probably drew from these sources. The subject appears in William Strode's The Floating Island of 1639 as well as in a poem by Robert Waring from 1651, by Abraham Cowley , in Jacob Westerbaans Ockenburgh from 1654 and in numerous other writings. The two versions with the different numbers of children were often generously mixed together. The interest of some writers at this time who opted for the version with 365 children was directed to the gender of the 365th child, which seemed unclear when the sexes were evenly distributed among the number of children. The solution that was found is clearly a creation of the 17th century: the surplus child was declared a hermaphrodite . It wasn't until the end of the 18th century that the fascination of the audience subsided and the legend was now perceived as rather silly. However, this did not change much about the fact that numerous travelers made pilgrimages to Loosduinen.

Loosduinen as a pilgrimage destination

Loosduinen abbey church

Like Spangenberg, Wilhelmus von Heda confirmed that there was a monument to the dead children in the church; in addition, the vessel in which they were baptized can still be seen there. This vessel gradually became a place of pilgrimage for childless women who hoped to be fertile if they washed their hands in it.

Incidentally, one consequence of the spread of the legend was the naming of a castle in Pouderoyen : because it had 365 windows, it was called Arx puerorum .

The memorabilia in the church were destroyed in the war between Philip II and Willem of Orange in 1572. But a few years later Jacobus Meursius procured new devotional objects for the now Protestant church: He had a bilingual plaque made on which the alleged fate of Margarete von Henneberg and her 365 (!) Children could be read in Latin and Dutch, and he also bought Delft two vessels to replace the lost baptismal vessel. The pilgrimages to Loosduinen could therefore be resumed.

Representations in art

Child bed of Margarete von Henneberg, French print from the 17th century after Petrus Kaerius
Michael Waginger's painting from 1712

A representation of the events was now also shown outside the church: In the inn Het wapen van de Prins van Oranje , a picture of Petrus Kaerius was to be seen, which showed the child bed of Margaret von Henneberg. This painting was also distributed in prints in the 17th century and is now in Loosduinen Abbey Church. On the left wall it shows a kind of chest of drawers on which there is a bowl with the many children, behind it a smoking open fireplace, in front of which obstetricians are busy with hot water and sheets, and on the right the bed of the childminder.

Another early pictorial representation of the fate of Margaret von Henneburg is in the chapel of Thierberg Castle in Kufstein . It was made by Michael Waginger and shows the insult to the beggar on the one hand and the baptism of the tiny children on the other.

tourism

From the 17th century at the latest, Loosduinen became the destination of numerous travelers, preferably from England. Fynes Morrison visited the place in the footsteps of Margarete von Henneberg, as did John Evelyn , James Howell , Samuel Pepys , Mathias Poulsen , John Rawlinson , Maximilien Misson and many others. The travelers' testimonies show that in the late 17th century there was no longer a monument to Margaret and her children in the church, only the inscription tablet with the two baptismal vessels.

The child in the glass

Despite the general tradition that children were buried in the abbey church, the version spread from the 16th century that they had been preserved as a curiosity. Battista Fregoso, for example, claimed in 1565 that they were kept in a bottle and that King Charles V picked up some of them for closer inspection. Jean-François Regnard , who visited Copenhagen in 1681, toured the art chamber of King Frederick III. and was shown one of Margarete von Henneberg's children, which was kept in this curiosity cabinet. This exhibit was said to have been bought by Hannibal Sehested in Belgium and then given as a gift to the king. This is how Holger Jacobsen , who compiled the catalog for the collection, wrote it down. In an anonymous work with the title Description of Holland from 1741 it is already indicated that it was more likely the result of a miscarriage or abortion. The thumb-sized child was handed over to the Museum of Natural History in Copenhagen after the Royal Chamber of Art was dissolved on December 26, 1826 and later disappeared without a trace.

Medical theories

Moles

The legend of Margarete von Henneberg and her multiple birth was viewed with increasing skepticism among medical professionals. One of the last defenders of the truth of this story was John Maubray , who was ridiculed for it in 1726. Until the 1930s, the medical profession lost interest in this case. Then the gynecologists Dr. Schumann and Dr. Brews, apparently independently of one another, theorized that it could have been a case of moles . The lost cysts were then mistaken for tiny children.

The Frenchman Struyk offered another solution to the problem in 1758 in the Journal des scavans : In Margaret's day, the new year began on March 25th. If Margarete had not given birth to 365 children on March 26, but had twins, the number of her children would have matched the number of days of the (new) year. This assumption that only the twins Jan and Elisabeth were born on March 26, 1276, has been repeated many times. It seemed to be supported by the son of the mayor of Rotterdam , Mr Rosemale, who wanted to have seen the fragment of a tombstone on which it could be read that Margarete von Henneberg had died on Good Friday after the birth of twins Johan and Elisabeth. This statement can only be found in the historian van Heusen, which is why it is more doubtful today.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Margarete von Henneberg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Holland, Margarete von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Countess von Henneberg
DATE OF BIRTH 1234
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 1276
Place of death Loosduinen