Otto de la Roche

Otto or Othon de la Roche († 1234 in Bellevaux Monastery ) was a crusader and the first Frankish lord of Thebes and Athens .

Life

Otto was the son of Pons, lord of La Roche-sur-l'Ognon in the Free County of Burgundy . He expanded Ray Castle , which his first wife had brought into the marriage, into the largest medieval castle in Franche-Comté .

Otto took the cross for the Fourth Crusade in Citeaux and fought in the conquest of Constantinople in 1204. Then he joined the crusade leader Bonifatius von Montferrat and moved with him to ancient Greece to meet the fugitive Emperor Alexios III. to pursue. From Boniface as King of Thessaloniki Otto received the landscapes Boeotia and Attica with their centers Thebes and Athens (conquered at the end of 1204) as fiefdoms. Later Lokris and Megara joined them.

Grand Lord of Thebes and Athens

Otto set up a Frankish feudal system based on the model of the Crusader states in Palestine in his newly preserved land . The old Greek nobility was largely expelled and their land was distributed to French knights. Otto kept Thebes and Athens as well as all former imperial goods as separate domains. As a supreme feudal court and advisory body, he created the so-called "Haute Cour". He also promoted the establishment of a Latin church system in his rule by appointing his chaplain Berard as the first Latin Archbishop of Athens. Pope Innocent III confirmed this act in 1206 and subordinated the new archdiocese to eleven suffragan dioceses. An archbishopric was also set up in Thebes with two separate districts. In Athens Otto founded the monastery of Daphni , which he entrusted to Cistercian monks from the Bellevaux monastery , which his great-grandfather had founded in Franche-Comté.

Otto was named in the official Franconian documents as dominus Athenarum (Lord of Athens) and Megaskyr (Grand Lord) by the local Greeks . The title of duke ( dux Atheniensium ateque Thebanorum ) was only ascribed to him by the chronicler Alberich von Trois-Fontaines , who exuberantly noted the conquest of Athens by the Crusaders in his chronicle in his French homeland.

In 1207 Otto brokered the marriage of Emperor Heinrich to a daughter of Boniface von Montferrat. This fell a little later in the fight against the Bulgarians, with which Otto got into an unclear feudal relationship. Because in the Kingdom of Thessalonica, Lombard rulers took over power, to which Otto refused to pay homage. Instead, he now recognized the emperor as his direct liege lord. At the beginning of the year 1208 the Lombards under Alberto Pallavicini invaded his domain and occupied Thebes and then the Kadmeia . Emperor Heinrich hastily convened a parliament in Ravennika in which the Lombards demonstratively did not take part. With a united army Otto and the emperor enclosed them in the Kadmeia and forced them to surrender. The Kadmeia was then handed over to the emperor and Otto was returned to Thebes. The Lombards, however, were compensated with Euboea (Negroponte) , which still had to be conquered.

Otto then supported his ally Gottfried I von Villehardouin , Prince of Achaia , in the conquest of Acrocorinth , Argos and Nauplia in 1212. Otto received the latter two cities out of gratitude as fiefs of Achaia. In 1214 he received from Pope Livadia as an ecclesiastical fief.

On May 2, 1210, Otto recognized the concordat negotiated there with the Pope at the second parliament in Ravennika , which regulated the relationship between the clergy and secular lords in Greece. Nevertheless, he constantly got into conflicts with the church, which accused him of unlawful enrichment of church property. In 1218 the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople pronounced the interdict over Athens, in 1220 even the excommunication against Otto followed by a papal legate.

In 1225 he returned to his homeland and left the rule of Athens to his son Guido I de la Roche . First, he settled in Ray Castle. He spent the last years of his life withdrawn in the 'family monastery' Bellevaux near the ancestral castle in Rigney. After his death he was buried in the family chapel attached to the monastery church. His tombstone was brought to the Seveux church after the French Revolution, where it is preserved to this day.

family

Otto married his cousin Isabelle (Elisabeth) de Ray, daughter of Guy, Seigneur de Ray. They had a daughter, Margarete ∞ (1252) Count Heinrich I of Vaudémont (* around 1232; † 1278).

See also La Roche House

literature

• Ferdinand Gregorovius : History of the City of Athens in the Middle Ages. From the time of Justinian to the Turkish conquest. 2 volumes. Cotta, Stuttgart 1889, ( digitized volume 1 , digitized volume 2 ; numerous editions).
• Günter Prinzing : la Roche. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 7: Planudes to City (Rus'). Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-59057-2 , Sp. 921.
• Gérald Barbet: Othon de La Roche. Chroniques sur l'étonnante histoire d'un chevalier Comtois devenu Seigneur d'Athènes. Fortis, Besançon 2012, ISBN 978-2-9539227-1-4 .

Web links

• medieval-genealogie.de
• Foundation for Medieval Genealogy

predecessor	Office	successor
---	Grand Lord of Thebes and Athens 1205–1225	Guido I. de la Roche