Maria of Montpellier

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Maria von Montpellier (* 1182 , † April 1213 in Rome ) was a queen of Aragon .

Descent and First Marriages

Maria von Montpellier was the daughter of William VIII , Lord of Montpellier , and Eudokia Komnena , a niece of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I. According to the marriage contract of Maria's parents, the first-born child, regardless of gender, should be in follow the rule of the city of Montpellier. But Maria's father expelled his wife in 1187 and married Agnes of Castile , who gave him a son, Wilhelm IX. from Montpellier , and gave birth to seven other children. Maria's inheritance law was already in question when she was a small child.

First, King Alfonso II of Aragon was envisaged as husband for Mary ; but he had already married. She was then married to Vice Count Raimund Gottfried (Barral) of Marseille in 1192 . But this first marriage of Mary lasted only a short time, because her husband was old and died in the same year. Her second marriage to Count Bernhard IV von Comminges , which was concluded in 1197, was also not a good star, as he was still married to one (or, according to other sources, two) other living women. Maria also had to renounce her right of inheritance to Montpellier. Although she bore her second husband two daughters, Mathilde and Petronilla, he disowned her in 1201.

Marriage to King Peter II of Aragon

After the death of Wilhelm VIII (1202) Maria's illegitimate half-brother Wilhelm IX took over. rule over Montpellier, but the urban upper class drove him out in 1204 and recognized Mary as mistress. She married the politically influential King Peter II of Aragón on June 15, 1204 in the hope that this marriage would help her to defend her right to government in Montpellier against her illegitimate step-siblings. But immediately after the wedding, Peter II pledged the port of Montpellier with the castle of Lattes and in 1205 the whole city. When Maria gave birth to her daughter Sancha in October 1205, she had to cede all rights to her city to her husband. Without the consent of his wife, he engaged his newborn daughter to Count Raimund von Toulouse's son, who was also a baby, and promised Montpellier as a dowry. After the death of his daughter (1206), Peter II turned to Pope Innocent III. to obtain the annulment of his marriage, but did not get through. However, the Aragonese king refused to submit.

Maria was able to get a son, the later Jacob I of Aragón (born February 2, 1208), with her husband through cunning . According to one source, at midnight she faked him to be his current lover, lured him to bed and triumphantly revealed to him some time later that she was pregnant. In his book Libre dels feuts (= Book of Deeds ), written decades later, Jakob himself reports that at the request of a nobleman, his separated parents spent a night together and fathered him; this was the will of the Lord. After his birth, his mother lit twelve candles of the same size with the names of the apostles and named him after the one that burned the longest.

Although the newborn son was cheered in Montpellier, Peter II continued to push for a divorce and did not want to give up his claims to the city. When during the bloody Albigensian Crusade northern French troops marched against southern empires and also threatened the empire of Peter II, he took away her young son from Mary, betrothed him to a daughter of Simon IV de Montfort , the leader of the crusaders, and sent him in 1211 this practically as a hostage. In 1212 Peter II then sought, based on a papal decree, to take control of Montpellier and Mary's half-brother Wilhelm IX. return. Because of Maria's popularity, the city government refused to surrender, and rebellions ensued, during which the castle was destroyed and the goods of Catalan merchants looted. Nevertheless, Maria finally lost control of Montpellier in early 1213.

Mary then went to Rome and turned to the Pope to prevent her marriage from being annulled. Since the spouses were not too closely related to each other to marry, Peter II had to justify his annulment complaint of the marriage differently. He alleged that he had an extramarital relationship with a relative of Mary and was therefore out of the question as Mary's husband and that by marrying him she had committed adultery because she had not divorced her second husband Bernhard IV . The first argument was even rejected by the medieval church, which was dominated by male morality, while the latter argument was refuted by Maria's lawyers by stating that her marriage to Bernhard IV was invalid because of his simultaneous marriage to another woman. On January 19, 1213 Innocent III refused. Peters II's application for divorce on the grounds that he could not prove that he was too closely related to Maria and that Bernhard IV. had not divorced his previous wife, the noblewoman Beatrice, before his marriage to Maria. In addition, on April 18, 1213, the Pope decreed that the Archbishop of Narbonne had to see to it that the government of Montpellier had to recognize Mary as the rightful ruler again and that the money raised by the illegal pledging of the city had to be returned to her. In order to enforce his demands, the archbishop should also threaten church punishments. From this case one can conclude that women in high positions were able to successfully defend their rights in court in the Middle Ages, despite the male dominance structures.

On April 20, 1213, Mary wrote her will , in which she appointed her son Jacob as heir, and died soon afterwards. Her husband, Peter II, died on September 13, 1213 in the battle against Simon IV. De Montfort, to whom he had entrusted little Jacob. He inherited Montpellier and Aragón and, as James I, became one of the most important kings of Aragón. He claimed that his mother Mary worked miracles after her death : sick people who scraped dust from their grave and drank it dissolved in water or wine would have been healed.

Marriages and offspring

Maria was married three times:

  • 1. ⚭ 1192 Vice Count Raimund Gottfried (Barral) of Marseille († 1192)

Your children were:

  • From the 3rd marriage:

literature

  • O. Engels: Maria 14) . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 5, Col. 280.
  • Dolores Carmen Morales Muñiz: María de Montpellier , in: Diccionario biográfico español , Madrid 2009–2013, online version.
  • David Stevenson: Maria of Montpellier . In: Women in World History . Volume 10, 2001, pp. 337-339.

Remarks

  1. ↑ So D. Stevenson (2001), p. 337; According to the English Wikipedia, Maria or her later husband Peter II of Aragón were the driving forces behind the separation.
personal data
SURNAME Maria of Montpellier
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French nobles, Queen of Aragon
DATE OF BIRTH 1182
DATE OF DEATH April 1213
Place of death Rome