Prestige Marriage

Jestice, Phyllis G.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-77306-3_3

Prestige Marriage

Phyllis G. Jestice⁴

Chapter
First Online: 13 April 2018

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Part of the book series: Queenship and Power ((QAP))

Abstract

Unlike earlier dynasties, the Ottonians carefully arranged prestigious marriages for themselves and their sons. Jestice argues that the Ottonians’ decision to marry the daughters of foreign rulers (instead of native noblewomen) had a profound impact on the position of queens of the Ottonian dynasty. As foreigners, they stood outside of the noble networks of the era and had both the need and the opportunity to forge their own relations, while their royal blood enhanced their prestige. Adelheid’s position as widowed queen of the Lombards allowed Otto I to justify his conquest of the region, while Theophanu’s marriage to Otto II brought the honor of a Byzantine match to the dynasty.

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Notes

1.
Richer of Saint-Rémi, Histories, ed. and trans. Justin Lake (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), IV.11; Janet L. Nelson, “Rulers and Government,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 3, ed. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 125.
2.
See Janet L. Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” in Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London: Hambledon Press, 1986), 4; Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983), 66–67.
3.
For example, in 790 Charlemagne planned to unite his son Charles with Offa of Mercia’s daughter, but the scheme fell through. See Silvia Koneckny, Die Frauen des karolingischen Königshauses (Vienna: Verband der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs, 1976), 78–79.
4.
Georg Pertz and Friedrich Kurz, eds., Annales regni Francorum, MGH SS rer. Germ. in us. schol. (1895), a. 819, 150; Astronomus, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, ed. Ernst Tremp, MGH SS rer. Germ. in us. schol. (1995), (32) 392. Pauline Stafford suggests that the story, with its strong echoes of the biblical story of Esther, may have been a borrowing from Byzantine practice. Stafford, Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers, 56–57.
5.
Thilo Offergeld, Reges pueri. Das Königtum Minderjähriger im frühen Mittelalter (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2001), 523; Joachim Ehlers, “Die Königin aus England,” Sachsen und Anhalt 22 (1999/2000): 36.
6.
Daniela Müller-Wiegand, Vermitteln—Beraten—Erinnern. Funktionen und Aufgabenfelder von Frauen in der ottonischen Herrscherfamilie (919–1024) (Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2003), 47–48.
7.
Vita Mathildis posterior, (1) 147–48.
8.
Widukind, (I.31) 43–44.
9.
Müller-Wiegand, Vermitteln—Beraten—Erinnern, 45–46.
10.
Widukind, (I.25) 38.
11.
Ehlers, “Königin aus England,” 33 for a full genealogy of Edgitha’s family; see also Müller-Wiegand, Vermitteln—Beraten—Erinnern, 56.
12.
Winfrid Glocker, Die Verwandten der Ottonen und Ihre Bedeutung in der Politik (Cologne: Böhlau, 1989), 23; Karl Leyser, “The Ottonians and Wessex,” in Leyser, Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. Timothy Reuter (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 84.
13.
Glocker, Verwandten der Ottonen, 23; Ehlers, “Die Königin aus England,” 34. MacLean also stresses that the marriage demonstrates Henry I’s desire to connect to French and Burgundian royal networks besides English ones. Simon MacLean, Ottonian Queenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 34–37.
14.
Flodoard of Rheims, Annales, ed. Philippe Lauer (Paris: Alphonse Picard et fils, 1905), 36.
15.
Annales Quedlinburgenses, ed. Martina Giese, MGH SS rer. Germ. in us. schol. 72 (2004), a. 929, p. 457; Adalbert, a. 930, p. 158.
16.
Liudprand of Cremona, Antapodosis, in Opera, ed. Joseph Becker, MGH SS rer. Germ. in us. schol. 41 (1915), (IV.17) 114; Widukind, (I.37) 54.
17.
Hrotsvit, Gesta Ottonis, 206–207, esp. ll. 95–97.
18.
Ehlers, “Die Königin aus England,” 31–32; Leyser, “Ottonians and Wessex,” 78–79. MacLean suggests that perhaps Hrotsvit invented the link between Edgitha and St. Oswald, Ottonian Queenship, 142–43; Nash stresses that the relationship was through the maternal line. Penelope Nash, Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 19.
19.
Widukind, (II.41) 99–100.
20.
See Karl F. Morrison, “Widukind’s Mirror for a Princess—An Exercise in Self Knowledge,” in Forschungen zur Reichs-, Papst- und Landesgeschichte, vol. 1, ed. Karl Borchardt and Enno Bünz (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1998), 61.
21.
Adalbert, a. 929; p. 158; the event really took place in 928.
22.
Hermannus Augiensis, Chronicon, MGH SS 5, a. 947, 114; Widukind, III.6. For details on the marriage, see Glocker, Verwandten der Ottonen, 70; Adelheid Krah, “Der aufständische Königssohn: ein Beispiel aus der Ottonenzeit,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 114 (2006): 48–64, esp. 48.
23.
Thomas Zotz, “Die Ottonen und das Elsaß,” in Kaiserin Adelheid und ihre Klostergründung in Selz, ed. Franz Staab and Thorsten Unger (Speyer: Verlag der pfälsischen Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, 2005), 53.
24.
Liudprand, Antapodosis, (II.60) 64; Gina Fasoli, I re d’Italia (888–962) (Florence: Sansoni, 1949), 90–103 does a good job sorting out this complex story.
25.
Fasoli, I re d’Italia, 140. See Chap. 4 for a discussion of the dos and its significance.
26.
Flodoard, Annales, 35; Liudprand, Antapodosis, (III.20) 82; Constance Bouchard, “Burgundy and Provence, 879–1032,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Reuter, 341.
27.
Michel Parisse, “Adélaïde de Bourgogne, reine d’Italie et de Germanie, impératrice (931–999),” in Adélaïde de Bourgogne: Genèse et representations d’une sainteté impériale, ed. Patrick Corbet, et al. (Dijon: Ed. Universitaires de Dijon, 2002), 14.
28.
Liudprand, Antapodosis, (IV.1) 104.
29.
Gerd Althoff, Die Ottonen: Königsherrschaft ohne Staat (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2000), 93.
30.
For example, see Edith Ennen, Frauen im Mittelalter, 2nd ed. (Munich: Beck, 1985), 63; Franz-Reiner Erkens, “Die Frau als Herrscherin in ottonisch-frühsalischer Zeit,” in Kaiserin Theophanu, ed. Anton von Euw (Cologne: Schnütgen-Museum, 1991), 2: 248.
31.
Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, MGH SS rer. Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. vi–ix (III.35) 113–14.
32.
Fredegar, The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations, ed. and trans. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1960), (70–71) 59–60.
33.
Gerald Beyreuther, “Kaiserin Adelheid: ‘Mutter der Königreiche,’” in Herrscherinnen und Nonnen. Frauengestalten von der Ottonenzeit bis zu den Staufern, ed. Erika Uitz, et al. (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1996), 47; Werner Maleczek, “Otto I. und Johannes XII. Überlegungen zur Kaiserkrönung von 962,” in Mediaevalia Augiensia. Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, ed. Jürgen Petersohn (Stuttgart: Torbecke, 2001), 186.
34.
Hermannus Augiensis, Chronicon, a. 949, p. 114.
35.
Hrotsvit, Gesta Ottonis, 218.
36.
See Stefan Weinfurter, “Kaiserin Adelheid und das ottonische Kaisertum,” FMSt 33 (1999): 7; Harald Zimmermann, “Canossa e il matrimonio di Adelaide,” in Canossa prima di Matilde (Milan: Camunia, 1990), 144. Note that according to the chronicle of Novalese the queen was imprisoned in a chamber of the royal palace in Pavia; Donizo of Canossa is the source for Garda. Chronicon Novaliciense, MGH SS 7: (V.10) 68.
37.
Monique Goullet, “De Hrotsvita de Gandersheim à Odilon de Cluny: images d’Adélaïde autour de l’an Mille,” in Adélaïde de Bourgogne, ed. Corbet, et al., 43.
38.
Gerd Althoff, “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg. Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschafts- und Überlieferungzentren,” FMSt 25 (1991): 136–37.
39.
Ibid., 124.
40.
Rosamund McKitterick, “Women in the Ottonian Church: An Iconographic Perspective,” in Women in the Church, ed. W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 99.
41.
Jan Gerchow, “Sächsische Frauenstifte im Frühmittelalter: Einführung in das Thema und Rückblick auf die Tagung,” in Essen und die Sächsischen Frauenstifte im frühen Mittelalter, ed. Gerchow (Essen: Klartext, 2003), 14–15; Michel Parisse, “Les chanoinesses dans l’Empire germanique (IX^e–XI^e siècles),” Francia 6 (1978): 114.
42.
Hrotsvit, Gesta Ottonis, 217.
43.
Philippe Buc, “Italian Hussies and German Matrons: Liutprand of Cremona on Dynastic Legitimacy,” FMSt 29 (1995): 207.
44.
Annales Quedlinburgenses, a. 951, pp. 465–66.
45.
Zimmermann, “Canossa,” 144.
46.
Widukind, (III.7) 108.
47.
Maleczek, “Otto I. und Johannes XII,” 165.
48.
Amalie Fößel, Die Königin im mittelalterlichen Reich (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000), 20.
49.
Odilo of Cluny, Epitaphium Adelheide, ed. Herbert Paulhart (Graz: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., 1962), (2) 31.
50.
Widukind reports that, after his defeat, Berengar followed Otto to Germany, where he was made to wait three days for an audience. But then he was received into the good graces of both the king and the queen, promising to accept Ottonian overlordship. Widukind, (III.10) 110.
51.
Odilo, Epitaphium Adelheide, (2) 31.
52.
Patrick Corbet, Les saints ottoniens (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1986), 59. A number of authors, most recently Penelope Nash, have followed the tradition that Berengar was attempting to force Adelheid to marry his own son, which helps stress Adelheid’s political significance (Nash, Empress Adelheid, 1). It is surprising, though, that no contemporary accounts suggest this as Berengar’s motive.
53.
Marco Giovini, “L’evasione e le peripazie di Adelaide di Borgogna, regina fuggiasca, nei Gesta Ottonis di Rosvita di Gandersheim,” Studi medievali, 3rd series 45 (2004): 910–17.
54.
Karl Strecker, ed., Waltharius, MGH Poetae 6.1 (1951), ll. 72, 330–45.
55.
Käthe Sonnleitner, “Selbstbewußtsein und Selbstverständnis der ottonischen Frauen im Spiegel der Historiographie des 10. Jahrhunderts,” in Geschichte und ihre Quellen: Festschrift für Friedrich Hausmann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Reinhard Härtel (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1987), 116.
56.
MacLean argues that it took a number of years for the “myth” of Adelheid to begin, not until Otto I began real conquest of Italy in 961. See MacLean, Ottonian Queenship, 95–115, esp. 108–109.
57.
See Weinfurter, “Kaiserin Adelheid,” 7; Zimmermann, “Canossa,” 146–47.
58.
Thietmar, (II.5) 42.
59.
See Parisse, “Adélaïde de Bourgogne,” 13–14.
60.
Herbert Zielinski, “Der Weg nach Rom. Otto der Große und die Anfänge der ottonischen Italienpolitik,” in Die Faszination der Papstgeschichte, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and Klaus Herbers (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008), 101.
61.
Hagen Keller, “Entscheidungssituationen und Lernprozesse in den ‘Anfängen der deutschen Geschichte.’ Die ‘Italien- und Kaiserpolitik’ Ottos des Großen,” FMSt 33 (1999): 32; Adalbert, p. 165 tells how Liudolf’s venture had offended Otto.
62.
Maleczek, “Otto I. und Johannes XII,” 187; Keller, “Entscheidungssitua-tionen,” 34.
63.
Annales Altahenses maiores, ed. W. Giesebrecht and E. Oefele, MGH SS rer. Germ. in us. schol. 4 (1891), 9; the same report is repeated in Annales Hildesheimenses, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS rer. Germ. in us. schol. 8 (1878), 21.
64.
Chronicon Novaliciense, (V.12) 69.
65.
Annales Weissemburgenses, MGH SS 3, a. 951, p. 59.
66.
Annales Hildesheimenses, 21.
67.
Flodoard, Annales, 132.
68.
Thietmar, (II.5) 44.
69.
Widukind, (III.9) 109.
70.
Annales Quedlinburgenses, a. 951, pp. 465–66.
71.
Adalbert, a. 951, pp. 164–65. “Rex Otto in Italiam ire volens multo se ad hoc iter apparatu prestruxit, quoniam Adalheidam viduam Lotharii regis Italici, filiam Ruodolfi regis, a vinculis et custodia, qua a Berengario tenebatur, liberare sibique eam in matrimonium assumere regnumque cum ea simul Italicum adquirere deliberavit.”
72.
Weinfurter, “Kaiserin Adelheid,” 9; Hermann Weisert, “War Otto der Große wirklich rex Langobardorum?,” Archiv für Diplomatik 28 (1982): 23–24.
73.
Franz-Reiner Erkens, “Fürstliche Opposition in ottonisch-salischer Zeit,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 64 (1982): 320; Zielinski, “Der Weg nach Rom,” 102. Thietmar tells that Berengar placated Adelheid’s anger against him with his humility. Thietmar, (II.5) 44.
74.
Giuseppe Sergi, “The Kingdom of Italy,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Reuter, 357.
75.
Weinfurter, “Kaiserin Adelheid,” 9–11.
76.
Maleczek, “Otto I. und Johannes XII,” 183–84.
77.
See Gertrud Bäumer, Otto I. und Adelheid (Tübingen: Reiner Wunderlich Verlag, 1951), 67–68.
78.
Vita Mathildis posterior, (15) 173–75.
79.
Konecny, Frauen des karolingischen Königshauses, 79. Gisela was eight at the time. She was also betrothed to a Lombard when she was twelve, but that wedding never took place either; in time she became abbess of Chelles. See also Stafford, Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers, 55.
80.
Konecny, Frauen des karolingischen Königshauses, 79–80.
81.
Ibid., 126.
82.
Anna Muthesius, “The Role of Byzantine Silks in the Ottonian Empire,” in Byzanz und das Abendland im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert, ed. Evangelos Konstantinou (Cologne: Böhlau, 1997), 304–305; Krijnie N. Ciggaar, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium, 962–1204 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 205.
83.
Fasoli, I re d’Italia, 147–48; Liudprand, Antapodosis, (V.14) 137.
84.
Ekkehard IV, Casus s. Galli, ed. Hans F. Haefele (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), (90), p. 184; Ciggaar, Western Travellers, 207–208; Gudrun Schmalzbauer, “Theophano als Kaiserin des Westens und ihren Verbindungen zu Byzanz und Armenien,” Armenisch-Deutsche Korrespondenz 83 (1994): 25 on the theory that the wedding was planned as part of an alliance against the Magyars.
85.
Otto apparently made the decision to seek a Byzantine match no later than 967; he tells of his plans in a letter of January 18, 968 to the margrave Hermann Billung, preserved in Widukind, (III.70) 146–47.
86.
As Johannes Fried characterizes them in “Kaiserin Theophanu und das Reich,” in Köln—Stadt und Bistum in Kirche und Reich des Mittelalters, ed. Hanna Vollrath and Stefan Weinfurter (Cologne: Böhlau, 1993), 144. Although Ottonian palaces were certainly much smaller than their Byzantine counterparts, Timothy Reuter points out that they were still impressive; a survey of Ottonian palaces in Saxony and Thuringia has demonstrated that they dominated the landscape and would have impressed contemporaries. Timothy Reuter, “Regemque quem in Francia pene perdidit, in patria magnifice recepit: Ottonian Ruler Representation in Synchronic and Diachronic Comparison,” in Herrschaftsrepräsentation in ottonischen Sachsen, ed. Gerd Althoff and Ernst Schubert (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1998), 376.
87.
See Liudprand, Legatio, in Opera, ed. Joseph Becker, MGH SS rer. Germ. in us. schol. 41 (1915), passim.
88.
Gunther Wolf, “Theophanu und Adelheid,” in Kaiserin Theophanu. Prinzessin aus der Fremde—des Westreichs grosse Kaiserin, ed. Wolf (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991),79; Bruno of Querfurt, S. Adalberti Pragensis Episcopi et Martyris Vita Altera, ed. Jadwiga Karwasinska, Monumenta Poloniae Historia, Series Nova, vol. 4.2 (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydownictwo Naukowe, 1969), (18) 23.
89.
Tobias Hoffmann, “Diplomatie in der Krise. Liutprand von Cremona am Hofe Nikephoros II. Phokas,” FMSt 43 (2009): 143.
90.
DOI 355; Widukind, (III.70) 146–48; Ioannes G. Leontiades, “Die Westpolitik Basileios’ II. (976–1025),” in Byzanz und das Abendland, ed. Konstantinou, 261–62.
91.
Anna was finally given in 987 to Prince Vladimir of Kiev, in return for desperately needed military assistance. See Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 517–18; Johannes Irmscher, “Otto III. und Byzanz,” in Byzanz und das Abendland, ed. Konstantinou, 221.
92.
Gunther Wolf argues that Theophanu was raised in the imperial palace in Constantinople from a young age, basing his contention on the statement in the older vita of Queen Mechtild that Theophanu was “from the imperial palace.” See Wolf, “Vom Kaiserpalast in Byzanz zum Valkhof in Nimwegen,” in Kaiserin Theophanu, ed. Wolf, 19. But it is unlikely that the author of the vita in fact knew anything about Theophanu’s upbringing. If she did have exposure to the imperial palace in Constantinople, it would certainly only have been after the time her uncle John Tzimiskes became emperor. See Karl Leyser, “Theophanu divina gratia imperatrix augusta: Western and Eastern Emperorship in the Later Tenth Century,” in Leyser, Communications and Power, 145.
93.
Thietmar, (II.15) 54–56. Johannes Fried points out that sending Theophanu back home would have led to a major conflict with Archbishop Gero of Cologne, who had completed the negotiations and brought the princess west, and also with his powerful Saxon kin group, as well as difficulties with Bishop Dietrich of Metz, who had brought her to court after her landing at Benevento. Fried, “Kaiserin Theophanu und das Reich,” 142.
94.
For an insightful discussion of the wedding document, see Anthony Cutler and William North, “Word over Image: On the Making, Uses, and Dating of the Marriage Charter of Otto II and Theophanu,” in Interactions: Artistic Interchange between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period, ed. Colum Hourihane (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 167–87.
95.
See for example Annales Hildesheimenses, 23.
96.
Gerbert of Aurillac, Die Briefsammlung Gerberts von Reims, ed. Fritz Weigle, MGH Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit 2 (1966), Letter 111 (January 988), 139–40.
97.
Gerd Althoff, Otto III, trans. Phyllis G. Jestice (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 78; Ciggaar, Western Travellers, 214.
98.
For controversies involving Kunigunde’s brothers, see Stefan Weinfurter, “Kunigunde, das Reich und Europa,” in Kunigunde—consors regni, ed. Stefanie Dick, et al. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2004), 22; Ingrid Baumgärtner, “Kunigunde. Politische Handlungsspielräume einer Kaiserin,” in Kunigunde—eine Kaiserin an der Jahrtausendwende, ed. Baumgärtner (Kassel: Furore Verlag, 1997), 18.

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Jestice, P.G. (2018). Prestige Marriage. In: Imperial Ladies of the Ottonian Dynasty. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77306-3_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77306-3_3
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