Constance of Arles, Queen of the Franks

Constance of Arles, queen of the Franks (died 28 July 1032)

Lucky Constance of Arles, third wife of Robert II of France
(detail from a copy of Grandes Chroniques de France,
Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS 10135);
the manuscript's text indicates this image depicts Constance.
confronting her son, Henry, who is fleeting from her

Consider the terrible plight of Robert II of France--Robert "the Pious"--the son and heir of Hugh Capet, king of the Franks. Poor Robert just wanted a wife.

And so in 988, he married Rozala (or Rosela) of Italy--it was a marriage that was arranged by his father, Hugh Capet, a marriage that brought the king an important alliance and Robert significant territorial possessions, and a marriage that gave Rozala a new name, Susanna. 

A fifteenth-century image
of Rozala of Italy--
too old
(detail from a panel,
St. Peter's Abbey, 
Ghent)

But within a very few years, the marriage had broken down. By 992, the couple was living separately, and after Hugh Capet's death in 996, Robert was quick to repudiate Rozala/Susanna.

According to one contemporary chronicler, Robert was still a young man, and Susanna was "too old" to bear children. This view of the gross disparity in their ages persisted--the noted nineteenth-century historian Chrétien  Pfister, whose account of Robert's marital career remains the most thoroughly documented, sniffs at the marriage between Rozala, "the old widow" (la vieille veuve), and poor Robert, tied to an aged crone, a man "in the springtime of youth" (dans le printemps de sa jeunesse). Sheesh. 

Although the birthdates of Rozala and Robert are unknown, she was some ten to fifteen years older than he was--Robert was likely about eighteen when they married, Rozala about thirty. Notably, when he rid himself of his "old" wife, Robert kept a significant part of her dowry.*

So then poor Robert married Bertha of Burgundy. He'd met her before he repudiated his first wife--he was a godfather to one of Bertha's children (like Rozala, Bertha had been married before and had several children with her first husband). Bertha's husband, Theobald of Blois, conveniently died just before the death of Robert's father, and after repudiating Rozala/Susanna, Robert quicky married Bertha. Interestingly, his new wife was not much younger than the discarded "old" one--Bertha was over thirty when she married Robert, who was still in his early twenties.

A twelfth-century image
of Bertha of Burgundy--
too incestuous
(detail from Genealogy of 
the Germans) 

Unfortunately, Robert's second marriage was "incestuous," and the two, Robert and Bertha, had known about the problematic nature of their relationship, but they had married anyway--according to church rules about consanguinous marriages, Robert and Bertha were too closely related. Moreover, their "spiritual affinity," the bond that had been created with Robert's role in the baptism of Bertha's child, compounded their incestuous (by contemporary standards) union. 

In 998, because the couple refused to separate, Robert was sentenced to a period of penance by Pope Gregory V and threatened with excommunication if he failed to separate from Bertha. Under a new pope, Sylvester II, the sentence was confirmed. Robert and Bertha were finally compelled to separate in 1001--significantly, while Bertha had given her first husband a son and heir (and several spares), she had not given birth to a single child with Robert. So Bertha also had to go. 

Robert repudiated his second wife about the year 1003. None of this whole affair seemed to damage Robert's reputation. In his biography of the king, Robert's chaplain, Helgaud de Fleury, did mention the unfortunate nature of the king's marriage to Bertha, but rather than condemning the sin of incest, Helgaud regarded the whole affair as yet another reason to praise Robert "the Pious"--Helgaud compared the "virtuous" and "humble" King Robert to the biblical King David and then explained that Robert's sin had been "washed away" because he had recognized his fault and prayed for forgiveness.**

Which brings us, at last, to Constance of Arles, the daughter of the count of Provence and the politically capable and experienced Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou. Robert married Constance about the year 1004--when she was about eighteen and he was about thirty-two. Hmmmm. Nothing from contemporary chroniclers or more recent historians about a poor young woman in the freshness of youth being tied to an ancient, twice-divorced man . . .

A fourteenth-century image of
Constance of Arles--
too not right
(detail from a manuscript of
Grandes Chroniques de France,
Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS 2813); 
in this image, Constance is
surrendering to her son, Henry

Robert of course would remain "the very good and very pious king of the French," whose "piety and goodness . . .  resounded throughout the world." Constance, by contrast, quickly became the target of hostility and animosity.

Fulbert, the bishop of Chartres, claimed he was "frightened" by Constance's "savagery." In his view, she was "quite trustworthy when she promises evil." In contrast to her patient, pious husband, Constance is always "inflamed with fury" or knocking some poor guy's eye out or otherwise acting in ways beyond her husband's control. 

She was, in the view of her critics, willful, haughty, and, obviously (and dangerously), foreign. She and her Provençal attendants were "strange" and "eccentric" in their clothing and behavior--even their horses' eqipage was viewed with suspicion. One cleric claimed all these "novelties" showed "the mark of the devil."

Historian Penelope Adair notes the many difficulties Constance faced when she became queen: the kingdom's deteriorating finances, the king's declining authority, and ongoing tension with the son of the discarded Bertha, Odo II, count of Blois, among them. According to Adair, "The repudiated Bertha, her children, and allies would not have welcomed her successor as queen" and "may have worked to weaken Constance's marriage." 

According to contemporary sources, allies of Odo, including the king's favorite, "sowed the seeds of discord between the king and his spouse." Pfister writes that even after their separation, Bertha "found an ally in Robert's heart" (Berthe trouva dans le cœur de Robert un allié). In their recent history of Capetian France, Elizabeth Hallam and Judity Everard indicate that it was Constance who "polarised the court into two factions," one favoring her own family, the other supporting Bertha and her sons. But considering the circumstances in which she found herself, I'm not altogether sure why Constance should be blamed for developing allies among her family and friends. 

Whether or not Bertha remained in Robert's heart, Constance of Arles gave the French king what his previous two queens had not: children. Constance gave birth to a daughter, shortly after her marriage, and a son and heir in 1007. Despite this, Robert seems to have listened to his favorite, Hugh of Beauvais, and separated himself from his wife. In defense of Constance, a group of her supporters murdered Hugh. This bloody act--for which she was blamed, whether the deed had been performed at her request or not--lay behind Robert's trip to Rome in 1010 to see whether he could divorce her (and maybe remarry Bertha).

But the pope did not allow Robert to divorce Constance, and the two remained married. In fact, while he "separated" from his third wife and trying to divorce her, Constance gave birth to two more children during this period. (During her marriage to Robert, Constance had seven children, four sons and three daughters.)

Ultimately, after Robert and Constance were reconciled, the king gave her the authority to manage finances, to some extent, and Helgaud de Fleury's biography of the king is filled with anecdotes about the king's great generosity and Constance's efforts to restrain him. Rather than using these incidents as a way of demonstrating Constance's concern for the well-being of the treasury, the chaplain uses them to suggest that Constance was motivated by avarice. 

Constance's eldest son, Hugh Magnus, was recognized as Robert's heir in 1016, when he was about nine years old, but he rebelled against his father in 1025, earning his mother's disapproval. Although father and son were soon reconciled, Constance was blamed for Hugh's rebellion, because in consecrating Hugh as his heir, Robert had ignored "the great and more prudent men" and listened to his wife instead. Unfortunately Hugh Magnus died in September of that year, just eighteen years old. 

Which left the question of who should succeed Robert as king of France to be answered once more. Robert favored Henry (born in 1008), while Constance favored Robert (born in 1011), whom she thought better suited for kingship. After Henry was crowned as his Robert's heir in 1027, Constance encouraged her sons to rebel against their father, which they did, in 1030--evidently each son had a reason to be angry with what he got out of the arrangement, and they decided to join together to oppose their father. The two sons were ultimately reconciled with Robert before his death in 1031, with Henry succeding him as king of France and Robert confirmed as duke of Burgundy.*** 

Scarcely had Robert died when Constance turned on Henry, now king of France, gathering a number of important allies to oppose her son. Henry fled to Normandy. Gathering his own supporters, Henry returned to France and besieged Constance at Poissy, where she had retreated. She enlisted her son Robert, duke of Burgundy, in her opposition to Henry, though after a defeat in battle against Henry, Robert reconciled with his brother and recognized his title. 

For her part, Constance managed to escape, but she died on 28 July 1032, supposedly as a result of a fit of coughing. 

Constance is buried next to her husband, King Robert II of France, in Saint-Denis.

The tomb of Constance of Arles,
Basilica of Sant-Denis
(Paris, France)

*Rozala of Italy was the daughter of Berengar II, king of Italy, and Willa of Tuscany, countess of Ivrea. Although Rozala's exact date of birth is uncertain, she was probably born c. 960, making her about sixteen years old when she married Arnulf II, count of Flanders, in 976. Arnulf himself was born in 960/61, a date helping to clarify Rozala's own birth date. During her first marriage, Rozala gave birth to two children including a son and heir, Baldwin IV of Flanders. When Arnulf died in 987, Rozala became regent for her son, but she lost the regency when she married Robert of France. Although Rozala's name change is usually said to have taken place after her second marriage, that may not have been the case--at least one reference to her as Susanna occurs in a charter before her second marriage.

After she was repudiated and divorced by Robert, Rozala/Susanna returned to Flanders, where she acted as an advisor to her son and where several charters document her charitable donations to religious institutions. She died in 1003 or 1004 (accounts vary) and is buried in St. Peter's Abbey, Ghent, next to her first husband. For a brief overview of the speculation about the age difference between Rozala and Robert, see Penelope Ann Adair, "Constance of Arles: A Study in Duty and Frustration" in Kathleen Nolan, Capetian Women--click here and scroll to note. 7.

**Born in 964, Bertha of Burgundy was the daughter of Conrad I, king of Burgundy, and Matilda of France, daughter of King Louis IV. Bertha was married to Otto I, count of Blois, about the year 983 and gave birth to three sons and a daughter. Bertha's husband, Otto, died on 12 March 996, and Robert's father, Hugh Capet, died months later, in October--despite knowing the ecclesiastical objections to their marriage, the two still wed. For the best explanation of this "problem," see Constance B. Bouchard's "Consanguinity and Noble Marriage in Tenth and Eleventh Centuries," Speculum 56, no. 2 (1981): 268-87.

After years of ignoring and resisting condemnations of their marriage, the two were "forced to separate," although "Robert repeatedly attempted--perhaps even after he remarried--to rejoin Bertha" (Bouchard 276). There is some evidence that, as late as 1010, when Robert visited Rome, he was trying to divorce his third wife, Constance of Arles, in order to reunite with Bertha. According to historian Penelope Ann Adair, Bertha "followed Robert to Rome hoping for permission to remarry him." 

I haven't been able to trace Bertha after she was separated from Robert, and her death is generally dated to this year, based on a reference in the records of the cathedral of Chartres recording the death on "XVII Kal Feb" 1010 of "Berta mater Odonis comitis" ("Bertha, mother of count Odo"), but some sources indicate (without documentation) Bertha may have died years later. Writing about Bertha, the nineteenth-century historian Chrétien Pfister notes a "legend" that the repudiated Bertha sought refuge in Montreuil, just outside Paris, and built a number of churches. Here and there I've also run across speculation that Bertha of Burgundy may be the Bertha who married Arduin of Ivrea, who became king of Italy in 1002, just a year or so before Bertha was separated from Robert of France. I'd like to think she was the Bertha who married Arduin of Ivrea, became his queen, had three sons with him, and lived happily ever after for some number of years. That's probably not the case, but, still, it would be a nice ending for her. (I'm not at all a Hemingway fan, but I'll steal a line from The Sun Also Rises: "Isn't it pretty to think so?")

***As for the other children of Constance of Arles: 

Advisa (or Hedwig), who seems to have been the eldest child (born c. 1003), was married to Renaud, count of Nevrs, in 1016 and gave birth to several children. Her husband died in 1028, fighting against his wife's brother at the battle of Seignelay.

Fourteenth-century
depiction of Baldwin V,
count of Flancers,
 and Adela of France,
sequence of 28 portraits
of counts of Flanders by
Jan van der Asselt,
Gravenkapel (Count's
Chapel), in the Belgian 
city of Courtrai

Adela, the couple's second daughter (born in 1009), was married first to Richard III, duke of Normandy, in January 1027, but after his death just months later, she married Baldwin V, count of Flanders, early in 1028. She gave birth to several children, including a daughter, Matilda, who would marry William of Normandy, William "the Conqueror," and become queen of England. After the death of Baldwin in 1067, Adela became a Benedictine nun and was sainted, now recognized as "Adela the Holy."

Poor Odo, or Eudes, was Constance and Robert's fourth son (born in 1013)--he lived until 1055, but he died without title or lands or marriage or anything . . . The nineteenth-century historian Chrétien Pfister claims that Odo, having received nothing from his father, knew that he would have to succeed on his own (il fallait, lui aussi, se soulever). And so in 1037 he joined Odo II, count of Blois (yes, that Odo, Bertha of Burgundy's son) and went to war against his brother, King Henry. He was defeated and imprisoned in Orléans. When he was freed, he still had nothing, so he wound up fighting once more, this time with Henry, when the king invaded Normandy, but once again he wound up on the losing side when Henry was defeated in 1054 at the battle of Mortemer. Pfister ends his brief summary of Odo's life by an account of his sacking and pillaging of some small villages. Odo supposedly took the food stores he found to a church, ordering that a banquet be prepared for him. But, Pfister claims, St. Benedict had his revenge--the night after he stuffed himself full of stolen food, Odo died. Yikes.

Constance's youngest child, Constance (born c. 1014?), was married to Manasses, count of Dammartin (in central France). The couple had several children. Manasses died in Burgundy when it was invaded by Odo II, count of Blois--yeah, that guy . . . Manasses was succeeded by his (and Constance's) eldest son, named, hmmm, Odo! There is some question among some historians, though, about whether this Constance is the daughter of Robert and Constance or whether she was a daughter-in-law, an illegitimate child of Robert's, or a goddaughter.