Mary of Brienne

The reclining figure from the tomb of Mary of Brienne in the cathedral of Saint-Denis.

Maria von Brienne (* 1225 ; † 1275 ) was an empress of the Latin Empire of Constantinople as the wife of Emperor Baldwin II († 1274).

Life

origin

Mary was a member of the Champagne -based house Brienne that a prominent in the Middle Ages cross driver tradition could have. Her father was Johann von Brienne († 1237), himself a descendant of the family, who rose to King of Jerusalem through his first marriage in 1210 and was one of the leaders of the Fifth Crusade (1217-1221). Maria's older half-sister was Queen Isabella II of Jerusalem († 1228), through whom she was related by marriage to Emperor Friedrich II , but who became an enemy of the Brienne.

In 1224 Johann married in Spain as his third wife Berengaria von León († 1237), their first child Maria was born in April 1225 in Capua . Three more brothers followed her:

• Alfons of Akkon († 1270), who married Marie d'Issoudun, Countess of Eu, and became Count of Eu as a husband , and also Grand Chamberlain of France;
• Johann von Akkon († 1273), who became the grand cupid of France in 1258;
• Ludwig von Akkon († 1297), who married Agnes von Beaumont and when her husband became Vice Count of Beaumont.

marriage

Maria's father was offered the reign of the underage Emperor Baldwin II by the barons of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1229 , which he was only willing to accept on the condition that he himself would be conferred the imperial dignity for life, which he himself was April 9, 1229 was contractually guaranteed by the barons in Perugia . The engagement of the then four-year-old Maria to the twelve-year-old Baldwin II was also part of the contract. The wedding is said to have been celebrated shortly after the Brienne family arrived in Constantinople in August 1231, but it probably didn't take place until around the year 1236/37 took place when Maria was about twelve years old.

The only known child of Mary from her marriage was the heir to the throne Philip († 1283), who was probably born around the year 1240/41. Since this later occasionally registered as the “first-born” (Primogentius), it can be assumed that Maria had another or more children who, however, died early.

Pawning the son

The Latin Empire in Constantinople, founded as a result of the fourth crusade in 1204, has shrunk to the city and its surrounding area since the reign of Emperor Robert (1219-1228) and has been acute in its existence since then due to the Greek counter-empires of Nicaea and Epirus-Thessaloniki and threatens the Bulgarian Empire . Without owning an army of their own, mercenaries had to be increasingly used to defend the city, whose costly recruitment, due to the lack of significant tax revenue, had to be done mainly by taking out loans from Italian merchants, primarily from the monopoly power of Venice . This led, among other things, to a sale of works of art and relics in the countries of the West; Emperor Balduin II himself was a traveling salesman on two trips to France in the years 1236 to 1240 and 1244 to 1248. Maria herself did not accompany her husband on these trips. So it is documented for April 4, 1247 in Constantinople. It is noteworthy here that during the second absence of her husband she did not act as his deputy regent, which she would have been allowed to do as emperor consort. Instead, the Baron Philippe de Toucy is named in this position.

In the spring of 1248, Baldwin II returned from his second trip to France in Constantinople, on which he wanted to sell, among other things, the family estates of the House of Courtenay , especially the Barony of Courtenay and the county of Namur , in order to raise funds . He was forbidden by the French crown to sell Namur and instead had to provide it with the county as security for a loan of £ 20,000. Because this amount has apparently remained far below expectations, Baldwin saw himself prompted to take an unusual step. As the chronicler Marino Sanudo describes in his works, the emperor pledged his son and heir to the throne for an undisclosed sum to a merchant family from Venice, who brought the seven-year-old Prince Philip to their mother city.

Trip to France

Already in October 1248 Maria set out with four ships on a voyage to the West, on which she primarily wanted to solicit financial support for the ransom of her son and received from her husband the authorization to sell the family estates of the Courtenay. This trip also represented one of the conditions of the French queen regent Blanka of Castile for the credit she had granted to Emperor Baldwin II. She was never to return to Constantinople.

When she wintered on Evia ( Negroponte ), Maria borrowed money from several Italian merchants and informed Queen Blanka, who was also her great-aunt, in four letters. The French treasury was later responsible for the loans taken out. Then she traveled on to Cyprus , where King Ludwig IX. camped with his crusade army. After her escort ship and her cloakroom were driven off to Acre in a storm , she met her compatriot from Champagne and relative Jean de Joinville in the port of Paphos , who immediately got her new fabrics for mending her dress. The knight Philippe de Nanteuil had complained about this to the king and accused Joinville of having brought disgrace to the other knights, because he had not heeded their clothes for the empress. Maria had hoped for military support for Constantinople from the king, but the latter had given his crusade a higher priority. At the latest after the Army of the Cross set sail from Cyprus against Egypt in June 1249, Maria also resumed her journey to France, where she joined the retinue of the Blanka of Castile.

Battle for Namur

After the Queen Regent's death in December 1252, Maria moved on to Namur, where she represented her husband's interests from then on. On June 24, 1253, she was registered in Viesville for a vassal as "Empress of Romania " (Marie, par le graze de Diu, empereriz de Rommenie). On July 26, 1254, she was a documentary witness to the armistice treaty with the German King Wilhelm of Holland in the Flemish War of Succession between the Dampierre and Avesnes in Le Quesnoy, alongside Countess Margarete von Flanders and Karl von Anjou . Then she came into conflict with Johann von Avesnes , one of the protagonists of the War of Succession, who as Count of Hainaut was also the liege lord of Namur. Already in 1248 he tried to confiscate Namur with the support of King Wilhelm, because Emperor Baldwin II, as its owner, had never taken a feudal oath and the Courtenay were also partisans of the Dampierre. The seizure failed after an intervention by the Blanka of Castile and the Pope, but after the regent died, Avesnes, with the permission of King Wilhelm, entrusted Count Henry V of Luxembourg with Namur on July 20, 1253 , his family with the Courtenay had been in dispute for generations over the possession of the Namurois.

In the conflict with Luxembourg, Maria was initially able to fight with the support of Charles of Anjou and then King Louis IX, who was returning from the crusade. claim. And after King Wilhelm had fallen in the spring of 1256 and John von Avesnes had thus lost his most important supporter, the tide finally seemed to turn in their favor. On September 24, 1256, Avesnes renounced all sovereign rights over Namur in the Péronne arbitration and negated his enfeoffment in favor of Luxembourg. But this in turn did not think of giving up. After a bailiff of Mary was murdered by a knight whom he was supposed to arrest for a crime, the local lords of the castle showed solidarity against her and called the Count of Luxembourg for help. He began the siege of Namur at Christmas 1256, whose castle was defended by Maria's loyal vassals, while she herself, in league with John of Avesnes, tried to lift the siege. But the support of Avesnes was only half-hearted, although he was obliged to support her according to the Péronne arbitration, which is why several attempts to horror the castle failed. For his part, the Luxembourger received the support of the newly elected King Richard of Cornwall , who recognized him as Count of Namur on July 13, 1257. Mary was a natural enemy of Cornwall, since she was a first cousin of King Alfonso X of Castile , who in turn had been elected king by some German princes as a counter-pretender to Cornwall. In 1258 Maria gave up the fight, but not without transferring control of her castles in Namur to the King of France, who immediately passed them on to the Counts of Flanders (Dampierre).

The castle of Namur surrendered to the Count of Luxembourg in the spring of 1259, but Mary's son was to cede the inheritance rights of the House of Courtenay on Namur in full to the House of Flanders in consensus with the King of France in 1263 for the price of 20,000 Paris pounds. which should ultimately prevail in the fight against Luxembourg.

Son's ransom

While the battle for Namur was still raging, Maria had apparently intensified her efforts to buy her son out. At least on January 8, 1258, the King of France commissioned a merchant in Melun with a trip to Venice in order to buy Prince Philip free for a sum of 1,000 Turnesian pounds. However, the merchants, with whom Philipp lived as a pledge, were not in the " Serenissima " at the time of this offer , so that this deal could not take place. The king and Mary learned of this in the summer of 1259 at the earliest through a letter from Philip on June 10th of that year.

Apparently Maria had then gone to Castile to her cousin King Alfonso X to pray for financial help. There are no contemporary reports on this. Only stories written later give an indication of an empress who desperately appeared in Spain, who received the necessary sum of money from the patronizing King Alfonso X. on the occasion of the wedding of the Infante Fernando de la Cerda with the Princess Blanche of France in 1268 who made it possible for her to ransom her husband, the emperor, from the captivity of the Saracens . As Marino Sanudo reports, Prince Philip was actually only released from his hostage in Venice thanks to the financial help of the King of Castile. However, this already happened in spring 1261 at the latest, at least Philip appeared as a documentary witness on May 1st of that year in Beauvais, France , thirteen years after his father had pledged him. Mary must have worked at the Castilian royal court from 1259 to 1261 to repay her family's debts with the Venetians.

Late years

The son's freedom coincided with the loss of the imperial throne of Constantinople. Because on July 25, 1261 , the troops of the Greek Emperor of Nicaea entered the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire almost without a fight and thus put an end to the Latin Empire. Emperor Balduin II was wounded and was able to escape capture by ship. From then on the imperial family was in exile, first in France and later in southern Italy, after Charles of Anjou took over the rule there and in 1267 concluded a political-dynastic alliance with the House of Courtenay.

Maria was last mentioned on June 8, 1266 in Paris in a document from her husband. However, she was still alive in May 1275, which is also her last testimony. Her grave was in the royal Cistercian Abbey of Maubuisson ; the reclining figure is now in the cathedral of Saint-Denis .

literature

• Robert Lee Wolff: Mortgage and Redemption of an Empero's Son: Castile and the Latin Empire of Constantinople , in: Speculum 29 (1954) 45-84.

Remarks

1. ↑ See Richard von San Germano , Chronica, in: MGH SS 19, p. 338f.
2. ↑ See Tafel, GL Fr. & Thomas, GM: Documents on the older commercial and state history of the Republic of Venice, Vol. 2 (1856), No. CCLXXIII, pp. 265–270.
3. ↑ See L'estoire de Eracles, in: RHC Hist. Occ. 2, p. 379.
4. ↑ See Wolff, p. 47, note 6.
5. ↑ Cf. Tisserant, Eugène: Le légation en orient du franciscain Dominique d'Aragon, in: Revue de l'Orient Chrétien, Vol. 24 (1924), p. 340.
6. ↑ See Marino Sanudo, Secreta Fidelium Crucis, ed. by Jacques Bongars in: Gesta Dei Per Francos, Vol. 2 (1611), p. 73; Istoria del Regno de Romania, ed. by Charles Hopf: Chroniques Gréco-Romanes (1873), p. 115f; "Fragmentum", ed. ibid., p. 171ff.
7. ↑ See De Laborde, Joseph: Layettes du trésor des chartes, Vol. 3 (1875), No. 3727, p. 50.
8. ↑ See Chronique de Flandre et des Croisades, ed. by Joseph Jean de Smet in: Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, Vol. 3 (1856), pp. 676f.
9. ↑ See De Laborde, Joseph: Layettes du trésor des chartes, Vol. 3 (1875), No. 3737, 3740, 3741, 3745, pp. 54ff.
10. ↑ See Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, in: RHGF 20, pp. 211f.
11. ↑ See Chronique de Flandre et des Croisades, ed. by Joseph Jean de Smet in: Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, Vol. 3 (1856), p. 677.
12. ↑ Cf. Wauters, Alphonse: Table chronologique des chartes et diplomes imprimés concernant l'histoire de Belgique, Vol. 5 (1876), p. 61; Reiffenberg, Frédéric AF: Monuments pour server à historie des provinces de Namur, de Hainaut, et de Luxemburg, Vol. 1 (1844), No. XVI, p. 144; Winkelmann, Eduard: Acta Imperii inedita, Vol. 1 (1880), No. 335, p. 447 .
13. ↑ Cf. Duvivier, Charles A .: La querelle des d'Avesnes et des Dampierre, Vol. 2 (1894), Preuves No. CCXXIV, p. 379ff.
14. ↑ Cf. Duvivier, Charles A .: La querelle des d'Avesnes et des Dampierre, Vol. 2 (1894), Preuves No. CCXLII, p. 422ff.
15. ↑ See Chronique de Flandre et des Croisades, ed. by Joseph Jean de Smet in: Recueil des chroniques de Flandre, vol. 3 (1856), p. 677ff.
16. ↑ Cf. Duvivier, Charles A .: La querelle des d'Avesnes et des Dampierre, Vol. 2 (1894), Preuves No. CCLXXV, p. 472ff.
17. ↑ Cf. Wauters, Alphonse: Table chronologique des chartes et diplomes imprimés concernant l'histoire de Belgique, Vol. 5 (1876), p. 182; Duvivier, Charles A .: La querelle des d'Avesnes et des Dampierre, Vol. 2 (1894), Preuves No. CCXCI, p. 523; De Laborde, Joseph: Layettes du trésor des chartes, Vol. 3 (1875), No. 4424, p. 417ff.
18. ↑ Cf. Wauters, Alphonse: Table chronologique des chartes et diplomes imprimés concernant l'histoire de Belgique, Vol. 5 (1876), pp. 285f.
19. ↑ See Wolff, p. 48ff.
20. ↑ See Louvet, Pierre: Histoire et antiquitez du pais de Beauvaisis, Vol. 1 (1631), pp. 415f.
21. ↑ See Berger, Élie: Layettes du trésor des chartes, Vol. 4 (1902), No. 5157, pp. 174ff.
22. ↑ On that date, Empress Maria wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Sens. Cf. Quantin, M .: Recueil de pièces pour faire suite au cartulaire general de l'Yonne, XIIIe siècle (1873), no. 684, p. 345. The historian Père Anselme , who in turn invokes the work of Du Cange , specified her last date of life to 5 May 1275. Cf. Père Anselme: Histoire des grands officiers de la couronne de France, Vol. 2 (1674), p. 417.
23. ↑ Cf. Bony, Pierre: Le gisant en marbre noir de Saint-Denis: les signes symboliques de l'impératrice Marie de Brienne ?, in: Revue française d'héraldique et de sigillographie, Vol. 54–59 (1984/89) , Pp. 91-112.

predecessor	Office	Successor
Jolante of Flanders	Empress of the Latin Empire 1234–1268	Konstanze von Staufen (Empress of the renewed Byzantine Empire )