Rozala-Susanna of Italy

Posthumous depiction of Rozala-Susanna of Italy, after 1497

Rozala-Susanna of Italy , also of Ivrea (* around 950 to 960; † January 26, 1003 ), was Countess of Flanders through marriage to Arnulf II of Flanders and, after the death of her husband, took over the regency for her underage son Baldwin IV. Shortly thereafter, she became the wife of the future French king Robert II , who, however, dismissed her before his accession to the throne.

Life

Rozala was born as one of seven children of the Italian King Berengar II and his wife Willa and was thus a granddaughter of Bosos , the Marquis of Tuscia. After her father finally had to surrender to Otto the Great in the battle for his kingdom in 964 , he and his family sent him to Bamberg . There Rozala spent her youth in a city tower guarded by Otto's men. According to the World Chronicle of Reginos von Prüm , however, she grew up in the care of Empress Adelheid of Burgundy .

Emperor Otto arranged a wedding for her with the Flemish Count Arnulf II, which did not take place before 968. This marriage, which lasted more than 20 years, had two children:

• Mathilde († 995 at the latest)
• Balduin IV (around 980 - 30 May 1035), Count of Flanders

When her husband died between 987 and 988, her son was still a minor, and so she took over the affairs of state in the county as his guardian . Since succession disputes loomed in Flanders, Rozala-Susanna decided to remarry not long after she had become a widow. In order to maintain power for the ruling dynasty in Flanders, she sought assistance from the French King Hugo Capet and, before April 1, 988, married his son Robert, who would later ascend the French throne as Robert II. The marriage was also a politically worthwhile connection for the Capetians , because in this way Flanders was not only removed from the Carolingian sphere of influence, but also the territory of Charles of Lower Lorraine , a supporter of the Carolingians, was encircled and isolated. In some publications you can find the information that Rozala changed her name to Susanna on the occasion of her second wedding, but documents from the time before that testify that she was also mentioned by this name before.

The bride was at least twelve years older than the groom at the time of the wedding. The marriage was not happy, which the chronicler Richer von Reims attributed in his Historiae to the fact that Rozala-Susanna was so much older than her husband. According to Richer, Robert disowned his wife when he was 19 years old. The reason given by the heir to the throne was that his wife had given him no children. If the age given is correct, the repudiation should be around 990, but other literature dates it to the years 991 and 992. Following her repudiation, Robert denied his wife the use of her Wittum Montreuil-sur-Mer , which some publications claim incorrectly referred to as their dowry . Rozala initially tried to enforce their rights, but was ultimately defeated in the dispute over the port city. She then went back to the court of her son from his first marriage in Flanders and is said to have supported him in his government. She died in Flanders in 1003 and was buried next to her first husband in the monastery church of Ghent's Saint Peters Abbey on the Blandinberg . Her tomb is no longer preserved today, because it was destroyed in the course of the Reformation iconoclasm in 1578 - as were the tombs of all other members of the Flemish count's family buried in the church.

literature

• Christian Bouyer: Dictionnaire des Reines de France . Perrin, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-262-00789-6 .
• Gerd Hit: The French queens. From Bertrada to Marie Antoinette (8th – 18th centuries) . VMA, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-928127-80-2 , pp. 73-74.
• Carsten Woll: The queens of high medieval France 987–1237 / 38 (= historical research . Volume 24.). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-515-08113-5 , pp. 51-56.

Web links

• About Rozala-Susanna of Italy on the website of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Information on Rozala-Susanna of Italy on the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy website , accessed March 10, 2013.
2. ^ Karl Strecker (ed.): The Latin poets of the German Middle Ages. The Ottonian period (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica . Antiquitates. Poetæ Latini medii ævi . Volume 5, Part 1). Karl W. Hiersemann, Leipzig 1937 ( online ).
3. ↑ Information on Berengar II on the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy website , accessed March 10, 2013.
4. ↑ Detlev Schwennicke : European family tables . Family tables on the history of the European states . New series, volume 3, part 1. JA Stargardt, Marburg 1984, plate 59 new.
5. ↑ G. Hit: The French queens. From Bertrada to Marie Antoinette (8th – 18th centuries) , p. 74.
6. ↑ ^{a b} C. Woll: The queens of high medieval France 987–1237 / 38 , p. 51.
7. ↑ Information on Arnulf II on the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy website , accessed on March 10, 2013.
8. ↑ Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 9. dtv, Munich 2002. Genealogical table of the Counts of Flanders I.
9. ↑ ^{a b} C. Woll: The queens of high medieval France 987–1237 / 38 , p. 55.
10. ↑ Hartmut Hoffmann (Ed.): Richer von Saint-Remi. Historiae (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). Scriptores . Volume 38). Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 2000, 4th book, no. 87 ( online ).
11. ↑ Website of the Ghent City Museum ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed March 10, 2013.