Constance of Aragon, Regent of Sicily

Constance of Aragon, queen of Hungary, regent of Sicily, and Holy Roman Empress (crowned queen of Sicily 15 August 1209)

Constance of Aragon was the eldest daughter of King Alfonso II of Aragon and his queen, Sancha of Castile, though the year of her birth is not certain, with sources ranging from 1179 to 1184.

The fabulous crown of
Constance of Aragon,
Holy Roman empress,
photo by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeir 

After Alfonso's death in 1196, his eldest son, Pedro, succeeded him on the throne of Aragon. It was Pedro II who arranged his sister's marriage to Emeric, the king of Hungary, to whom Constance was wed about the year 1198.

The marriage had been promoted by Pope Innocent III--Emeric sought an alliance that would strengthen him against his younger brother Andrew's efforts to gain the crown of Hungary for himself. Pedro had been crowned in Rome by Innocent, and after swearing to defend the faith, was known as "Pedro, the Catholic," but it's not clear (at least to me) what he got out of the alliance with Hungary.

In any event, Constance's marriage to the king of Hungary did not last long. She gave birth to a son and heir, Ladislaus, probably in the year 1200, but by 1204, Emeric was dead.

While he lay dying, and in order to ensure his son's succession, Emeric had arranged for the boy's coronation, but the king made the colossal mistake of deciding that his brother, Andrew, would be a good regent for the child--despite the fact that he had imprisoned Andrew, who had continued his efforts to gain the crown of Hungary for himself. Emeric only released Andrew from confinement so that he could be his son's guardian and protect the kingdom for him. Right.

After Emeric's death and fearing for the safety of her son, Constance escaped from Hungary, taking Ladislas with her. She took refuge with Leopold of Vienna, her husband's cousin, who agreed to shelter her and the boy, despite Andrew's threats of invasion. But within months, Ladislas, the "king" of Hungary, was dead.*

Now in undisputed control of the crown, Andrew demanded the body of Ladislas be returned to Hungary. The boy was buried in the basilica at Székesfehérvár, and Duke Leopold sent Constance, the dowager queen, back to Aragon. Upon her return, Constance joined her mother the convent of St. Sigena, where she would remain for the next five years.

In 1208, King Pedro arranged a second marriage for his sister, this one to Frederick, who had been crowned king of Sicily when he was just three years old. Like all royal marriages, this one had political advantages for all parties as well--except, perhaps, for Constance.

Constance of Aragon's second husband was the son of Henry VI, Holy Roman emperor, and the Empress Constance, queen of Sicily in her own right. But since both of his parents were dead, Frederick, still a minor, was then in the guardianship of Innocent III. The pope hoped not only to promote the boy's interests but also to secure an alliance against a too-powerful empire.

Frederick needed powerful assistance in asserting his rights in southern Italy and, eventually, in securing the title of Holy Roman emperor for himself. An alliance with Pedro of Aragon would provide this support in the form of 500 knights to fight for Frederick in Sicily.

For his part, Pedro II of Aragon wanted the pope to annul his marriage to Marie of Montpellier so he could marry Maria of Montferrat, queen of Jerusalem. Thus the king of Aragon was once again eager to agree to a proposal made by Innocent III.**

And so off the dowager queen of Hungary went to Sicily. On 15 August 1209, Constance, then between twenty-five and thirty years old, was married to the fourteen-year-old Frederick, king of Sicily and would-be emperor. Now queen of Sicily, Constance gave birth to a son, Henry, in 1211. 

Meanwhile, Otto IV, the current Holy Roman Emperor, had invaded Italy and been excommunicated by Innocent III. A rebellious group of German princes then elected Frederick as king of the Germans, and he headed off to war on the continent, leaving Constance as regent of Sicily. (She does appear to have joined her husband briefly in 1216.)

Although he was crowned as king in 1212, Frederick did not have widespread support until after Otto's defeat in 1214, and so he was elected king of Germans for a second time in 1215 and crowned in Aachen. Otto IV, the excommunicated emperor, died in 1218, and negotiations following his death--and the death of Innocent III--meant that Frederick did not become Holy Roman emperor until 1220.

During the years of her regency in Sicily, Constance defended the interests of her husband and son, working with the pope and supporting her brother's effort to extend his influence in the area that is now southwestern France. She confronted rebels, invaders, and the Muslim population.

When her husband was crowned Holy Roman emperor in Rome by the new pope, Honorius III, Constance was also crowned empress. Frederick returned to Germany while the new empress remained behind. Although Frederick was again in Sicily in 1222, he was occupied by a conflict with the saraceni della Sicilia and did not see Constance before she died in May of that year. 

Constance of Aragon, regent of Sicily and Holy Roman empress, is buried in the cathedral of Palermo.

The tomb of Constance of Aragon,
Cathedral of Palermo,
photo by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro

The most easily accessible account of Constance of Aragon's life is by Norbert Kamp in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, available online by clicking here. (The same source includes a biographical essay on Frederick, so a few details of Constance of Aragon's life also appear there.) 

You might also be interested in Christopher Mielke's analysis of the elaborate jeweled regalia buried with Constance--his essay, "From Her Head to Her Toes: Gender-Bending Regalia in the Tomb of Constance of Aragon, Queen of Hungary and Sicily," is available by clicking here.

*Since he had been crowned on 26 August 1204 and died on 7 May 1205, Ladislas "ruled" as king of Hungary for six months and five days.

**Marie of Montpellier fought back against her husband's efforts to annul her marriage, and--despite Pedro's efforts--Innocent III ultimately refused to grant the annulment. But on her way back to Aragon in 1213, Marie, still queen of Aragon, died. Pedro II died a few months later, succeeded as king of Aragon by Jaume, his son with Marie of Montpellier.

Constance of Hauteville, "A Brightness Kindled by All the Light That Fills Our Heaven"

Constance of Hauteville, Queen of Sicily (born 2 November 1154)

The daughter of Roger II, king of Sicily, and his wife, Beatrice of Rethel, Constance was born nearly nine months after her father's death--Beatrice of Rethel had only been married to the king of Sicily for three years, and she was just a few weeks pregnant when he died on 26 February 1154.*

A twelfth-century manuscript illustration of
Beatrice of Rethel, queen of Sicily, and her infant daughter,
Constance, born posthumously
(from Peter of Eboli, Liber ad Honorem
Augusti, 1196)

But the succession in Sicily did not have to wait for the birth of the king's posthumous child. Beatrice of Rethel was Roger's third wife. His first, Elvira of Castile, had given birth to six children, including five sons. The eldest, Roger, died before his father, and had had no children with his wife, Isabella of Champagne, but he had two with his mistress, Emma, the daughter of the count of Lecce. (This illegitimate family will become important later.) Roger II and Elvira of Castile's second and third sons, Tancred and Alfonso, also predeceased their father.

So when Roger II died in 1154, he was succeeded by his fourth son, William, who became William I, king of Sicily. William and his queen, Margaret of Navarre, had four sons--but, just as William's elder brothers had died before their father, William's two oldest sons predeceased him. When William I died, he was succeeded on the throne of Sicily by his third son, who became William II of Sicily. William II ruled until his death in 1189. He and his queen, Joan of England (who was one of the daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine) had no children. 

And that brings us back to Constance--because, it seems, Tancred of Lecce, one of the illegitimate sons of Roger, believed that he, rather than the legitimately born Constance, should succeed to the throne of Sicily. 

Tancred had already caused his share of trouble in Sicily. In 1161, he had rebelled against William I, taking the king, his queen, Margaret of Navarre, and their sons as prisoners. And then there was his involvement in a massacre of Muslims. Once order was restored and William I was back in control, Tancred was exiled to Constantinople. 

Pardoned on the accession of William II, Tancred seems to have behaved himself reasonably well until the king's death in 1189, when he once more rebelled and this time succeeded in seizing power. (And imprisoning Joan of England.) He settled himself uncomfortably on the throne, which he had to defend until his death in 1194. Tancred was succeeded as king of Sicily by his son, William, who reigned as William III of Sicily for only ten months, under the regency of his mother, Sibylla of Acerra. 

Throughout these decades, not much information is available about Constance. In 1168, when she was about fourteen, a rumor circulated that the chancellor had plans to depose William II, put his own brother on the throne, and marry him to Constance--he had to flee, his plot, if it were more than a rumor, coming to nothing.

Some two centuries later, the writer Giovanni Boccaccio would write, of Constance, that there was a monk present at her birth who predicted that Constance "would cause the destruction of the Kingdom of Sicily." Boccaccio claims that her father "believed this prediction." And so, in "amazement and terror," 

he began anxiously to brood on how this could be caused by a woman: the only possibilities he could visualize involved a husband or a child. Out of compassion for his kingdom, he formed a plan to prevent, if possible, this outcome. To remove all hope of marriage and children, he shut up the little girl in a monastery and made her promise God eternal virginity.

Boccaccio says that this "would not have been a reprehensible plan if it had succeeded." But, "powerless fools," our designs are frustrated. 

In her narrative study of Constance, Mary Taylor Simeti offers a version of Constance's life that is no less fanciful: "Constance grew up in Palermo amidst the gilded mosaics of churches and palaces, her youth blooming and fading among the flowers and fountains of Moorish cloisters and gazebos; as a potential heir to the throne, she was too valuable a pawn to international diplomacy to be ceded lightly."

Henry VI and Constance of Hauteville,
Holy Roman emperor and empress
(from Peter of Eboli, Liber ad Honorem
Augusti, 1196)

Whatever version of these years is closer to reality, it is true that no marriage was arranged for Constance until she was thirty years old, and her brother, William II, had no heir.

In 1184, Constance was betrothed to Henry of Hohenstaufen, king of the Germans, the second son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Boccaccio claims that Constance objected to the marriage--she "held fast to her religious vows," and she also thought her advanced age "seemed to pose an obstacle."

Nevertheless, because of the "deadly tumult" that might erupt in Sicily--and with the approval of the pope--Constance of Hauteville married in Milan in 1186. Or, as Boccaccio kindly puts it, "Thus did a wrinkled crone abandon the sacred cloister, discard her monastic veil, and, royally adorned, marry and emerge in public as empress." (Constance was only thirty-two at the time of her marriage, and Henry did not become emperor until 1190 . . . )

Recognizing that there would be opposition among Sicily's Norman elite to the influence of the Hohenstaufen family of Constance's husband, the childless William II, who had forged this alliance with the Holy Roman emperor, sought to have Constance's succession in Sicily recognized. 

Although Constance's rights to the succession were widely accepted, Tancred wrested control of Sicily after William's death, as we've seen. Because William II's widow, Joan of England, supported Constance, Tancred imprisoned her. (When he arrived in Sicily, Richard the Lionheart freed his sister--a story I related in an earlier blog post; click here and scroll down.)

After Frederick Barbarossa's death in 1190, Henry and Constance were crowned in Rome as Holy Roman emperor and empress. The two proceeded to Sicily in order to take the crown from Tancred. During the fight that followed, Constance was taken prisoner by Tancred--seeing the support for her among the Norman aristocrats and the people, Tancred's wife suggested he kill her. He did not, but he moved her to Naples, where she could be closely and securely guarded in the Castel dell' Ovo. 

The emperor found himself unable to liberate or ransom the captive empress. Pope Celestine III threatened Tancred with excommunication, so he finally freed Constance, who was reunited with her husband in 1192.

The couple returned to their imperial realm until 1194, when Tancred died. With the aid of the enormous ransom that had been paid for the captive Richard the Lionheart, who had been turned over to the emperor in 1193, Henry immediately turned his attention to Sicily and invaded, deposing Tancred's young son, William III. For her part, Constance followed Henry to Sicily, but she traveled slowly, since she was pregnant. Henry had himself crowned king of Sicily on 25 December 1194. 

Constance, giving birth to her son in front of witnesses

But Constance still wasn't queen of Sicily. She gave birth to her son, Frederick, on 26 December, the day after her husband had made himself king of Sicily. She was finally crowned as queen regnant on 2 April 1195.

(Boccaccio thinks Constance is far older than she really is--he thinks she's fifty-four when she is pregnant, and relates the story of the emperor inviting "all women in Sicily who so desired" to come to witness the birth in order "to remove any suspicion." And thus a multitude of women witness the birth of Frederick, "the monster and scourge not only of Sicily but of all Italy. Thus was the prophecy [made at Constance's birth] fulfilled."**)

Having at last secured the throne, Henry at first offered generous terms to Sibylla and her son, William III. But a conspiracy against the emperor and now king of Sicily was revealed, and Henry took vengeance on those who had supported Tancred, his wife, and his son. 

Henry is said to have had William blinded and castrated; that may or may not be true, but the boy was sent off as a prisoner to Germany, where he is believed to have died in 1198. Many of his supporters were burned alive, some hanged, including Sibylla's brother. Sibylla herself was imprisoned and sent to Germany with her other children, but she eventually escaped and wound up in France, where she died in 1205.

Henry, however, proved to be an unpopular ruler in Sicily, surrounding himself with German troops, who who occupied themselves by looting and pillaging, and he severely repressed the Norman elite who had ruled in Sicily. Nor could he bring peace to the greater Italian peninsula. Sympathetic to the sufferings of the people of all classes, and herself a member of the Norman Hauteville ruling dynasty, Constance rebelled against her husband--she turned the tables on all those who had held her captive and she besieged her husband, keeping him holed up in a castle, eventually forcing him to agree to a treaty.

Henry died in 1197--it was whispered that he had been poisoned, perhaps by his wife. In April 1198, with her son's election as queen of the Germans disputed, Queen Constance of Sicily had Frederick crowned as king and herself named as regent. She died just a few months later, however, on 27 November 1198. She was just forty-four years old.

Her son, Frederick, would marry another Constance, Constance of Aragon, who would also serve as regent of Sicily.

The quotation in the title--"a brightness kindled / by all the light that fills our heaven"--is from Dante's Paradiso, where he includes a few lines about "the great Constance" (Canto 3, 109-20). 

Constance of Hauteville's tomb,
Cathedral of Palermo
(photo by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro)

There are many translations of Bocaccio's Famous Women--I've used Virginia Brown's here. 

Much of the information about Constance of Hauteville can be gleaned from histories of Sicily, like Donald Matthews's The Norman Kingdom of Sicily and biographies of various men in her family, like David Abulafia's biography of Frederick II. 

Mary Taylor Simeti's Travels with a Medieval Queen narrates a year in Constance's life, her journey as Holy Roman empress from Germany to Sicily, beginning in May 1194 and ending with her coronation. I'm not crazy about this book--it's a combination of history plus Simetti's own travels with friends--but it does offer the most detail about a critical period of Constance's life. You may also want to consult Jacqueline Alio's Queens of Sicily, 1061-1266 for its chapter on Constance of Hauteville.

*Although Beatrice was only about twenty years old when Roger II died, she did not remarry--she survived her husband by more than thirty years, dying herself on 31 March 1185.

**I'm not sure why Boccaccio thinks Frederick was awful--by all accounts, he was an enormously successful ruler. Here's just one modern historian's view:

This Germany king who was born and bred a Sicilian . . . was one of the most remarkable monarchs in history. A man of extraordinary culture, energy, and ability--called by a contemporary chronicler stupor mundi (the wonder of the world), by Nietzsche the first European, and by many historians the first modern ruler – Frederick established in Sicily and southern Italy something very much like a modern, centrally governed kingdom with an efficient bureaucracy. (Donald Detwiler, Germany: A Short History, 43)

Update, 6 February 2023: John Phillip Lomax's biographical essay on Constance of Hauteville is available online via Routledge Resources Online. Access is free (click here).

Update, 5 February 2026: The Lorax essay is no longer freely available. Sigh. I’ve left the link in just in case you might have access. There is an abstract, which you might find useful. 

Sancha of Castile, Queen of Aragon

Sancha of Castile, Queen of Aragon (born 21 September 1154/5)

Sancha of Castile is the daughter of Alfonso VII of León and Castile and Richeza of Poland, the king's second wife. Although Alfonso's first wife, Berenguela of Barcelona, had given birth to seven children, five sons and two daughters, Sancha of Castile is the only surviving child of the king's second marriage.*

Detail of a twelfth-century miniature of
Alfonso II and Sancha, king and queen of Aragon,
from the  Liber Feudorum Maior

On 12 January 1174, Sancha was married to Alfonso II of Aragon--he was linked to her father not only by his position as a vassal of Castile but by their shared dedication to wiping out the Muslim kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula.

According to Antonio Ubieto Arteta's Historia de Aragón, Sancha's dowry was "amplia"--including many castles and territories in Aragon and Catalonia. After Alfonso II's capture of Cuenca from the Moors, an important step in the Reconquista, he was released from his tie of vassalage to Castile.

Alfonso was noted for his consolidation of Catalonia: his father, Raymond Berenguer, was the count of Barcelona, a title Alfonso inherited; Alfonso conquered Provence in 1166, becoming count of Provence; the dowry he received with his marriage to Sancha added to his influence in the region. But Alfonso was not only a warrior, he was also a troubadour poet, thus participating in the twelfth-century literary, chivalric, and courtly love culture that originated in Aquitaine, Provence, and Champagne and spread to Catalonia and northern Italy.

As queen of Aragon, Sancha too participated in court culture, primarily as a noted patron of troubadour poets. But for Sancha, there was more than the pleasant fiction of courtly love to occupy her time. In 1177, while her husband was in Provence, Sancha entered into "the countship of Ribagorza, and took possession of the fortresses and castles there, which belonged to the crown." Despite this description in a contemporary chronicle, which gives no further details of what might have motivated Sancha to assert herself in these extraordinary actions, these were possessions that had been part of her "ample" dowry. 

And, over the course of the twenty years of her marriage, Sancha also gave birth to at least eight children, seven of whom survived into adulthood. The first, Pedro II, who would succeed his father as king, was born soon after her marriage in 1174, the last, Dulcia, was born nearly twenty years later, in 1192.

The Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Sigena

After Alfonso's death in 1196, then dowager queen, Sancha retired to the El Real Monasterio de Santa María de Sigena (The Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Sigena), which she had founded in 1188: 

It was the main monastery for nuns of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem and it accepted, “dueñas” (owners) or prominent religious women from the most noble families of Aragon. The first nun ordained at this monastery, was Doña Dulce, daughter of Doña Sancha and King Alfonso II of Aragon. She died the following year and was buried in the monastery. Also buried in it was its founder: Doña Sancha of Castile (daughter of Alfonso VII "El Emperador" (The Emperor) and her son King Pedro II "el Católico" (the Catholic).

Apart from being a hospitable monastery and a Royal Pantheon it also had the role of a court archive. At its peak in the fourteenth century, more than 100 nuns, daughters of noble families of the Kingdom, came to live there with their attendants and servants.

Queen Sancha's reason for leaving the court and taking up residence in the convent may not have been purely spiritual--according to E. L. Miron's The Queens of Castile: Their Lives and Times (1910), she was motivated less by grief for her husband or religious devotion than the "wounds dealt her by the ungrateful conduct of her son." According to Miron, Pedro had given his mother no role or function in his court--although later in life, a reconciliation seems to have taken place, with the king seeking his mother's wisdom and counsel.

In addition to her daughter Dulcia, who died in St. Sigena when she was just eleven years old, Sanchia's daughter Leonor (b. 1182), also spent time in the monastery. She had been brought up there, in fact, but in 1200 she left St. Sigena to be married to Count Raymond VI of Toulouse--she was his fifth (or perhaps his sixth) wife. She returned to St. Sigena about two years later, after she was abandoned by her husband.

Pedro and Sancha surrounded by
the ladies of their court
(entire miniature, from which detail,
above, has come)

Sanchia's eldest daughter, Constance, joined her mother in the convent of St. Sigena for a time. Her first husband, Emeric of Hungary, died in 1204, but Constance remained in Hungary, where her son, Ladislaus, had succeeded his father as king. But after Ladislaus' death, Constance returned to Aragon. She spent five years with her mother in the convent while her brother negotiated a second marriage for her. (She was married to Frederick II, king of Sicily, who eventually became Holy Roman emperor.)

More unhappily, Queen Sancha's daughter-in-law, Maria of Montpellier, also spent a brief time in St. Sigena. Maria had married Pedro II of Aragon in 1204, but after giving birth to two children, including a son, Jaime (b. 1208), who would succeed his father as king of Aragon, Queen Maria was repudiated by her husband--he wanted to claim Montpellier (which she had inherited in her own right) for himself and marry Maria of Montferrat, queen of Jerusalem. Queen Maria of Aragon spent the last years of her life fighting her husband's efforts to divorce her. On her way to Rome to defend her marriage, Maria of Montferrat visited Queen Sancha. (Maria of Montferrat would spent nearly five years in Rome before the validity of her marriage was upheld--she would die there in 1213, just weeks after the papal decision on her marriage.)

After her death, Queen Sancha of Aragon was buried near the altar of the church in St. Seger. A kind of cult seems to have developed--according to Miron, "in times of scarcity," when the poor suffer, "tears of blood" seem to issue from "the tomb of the pious queen."

Bits and pieces of Sancha's story are available here and there--but the most extended account I have been able to find is Miron's book on queens of Aragon, cited above. It's dated, but at least it pays attention to the royal women of Aragon!

Queen Sancha of Aragon's tomb,
Monastery of Segena

*Alfonso's formidable mother was Urraca of Castile and León, "empress of all the Spains."

Alfonso VII also fathered several illegitimate children, including Urraca Alfonso (1133-c. 1179), who would become queen of Navarre and, after her husband's death, regent of Asturias. 

After Alfonso's death, Richeza was married twice more, to Ramon Berenguer II, the count of Provence, and to Albert III, count of Eberstein. Richeza gave birth to a daughter in her second marriage and to two sons during her third.