Constance of Arles, Queen of the Franks

Constance of Arles, queen of the Franks (died 22 or 25 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, Robert married Rozala (or Rosela) of Italy--it was a marriage that was arranged by his father, a marriage that brought Hugh Capet an important alliance and Robert significant territorial possessions. 

A fifteenth-century image
of Rozala of Italy--
too old
(detail from a panel, 
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 and divorce Rozala.

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, seems shocked 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 maybe thirty. Notably, when he rid himself of his "old" wife, Robert kept a significant part of her dowry.

After finally getting rid of Rozala, Robert quickly 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 children with her first husband). Bertha's husband, the count of Blois, conveniently died just before the death of Robert's father, and after repudiating Rozala, 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-y
(detail from family tree in the

Royal Chronicle of Cologne

[Chronica Regia Coloniensis],

Cod. Guelf. 74.3 Aug. 2°;

Heinemann-Nr. 2710, fol. 114v) 

Unfortunately, Robert's second marriage was "incestuous." 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. So Bertha also had to go. After much delay, Robert finally repudiated his second wife about the year 1003. 

Which brings us, at last, to Constance of Arles. Born on 22 or 25 July 1032 (sources vary), Constance was 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

Despite all that unpleasantness about his incestuous marriage to Bertha of Burgundy, Robert would of course 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 could seem "quite trustworthy" even "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' equipage 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, among others, Odo II, count of Blois, the son of the discarded Bertha. 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 Judith 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 the years of 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 born in 1007 and recognized as Robert's heir in 1016, when he was about nine years old. 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 c. 1008/9), while Constance favored Robert (born c. 1011/12), 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)

*Canon law concerned itself with the blood relationships among those who would marry. For a discussion of consanguinity as an impediment to a valid marriage, click here.

**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 Flanders,
 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, 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." Letters written to her are available at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters (click here).

Poor Odo, or Eudes, was Constance and Robert's fourth son (born c. 1013)--he lived until 1057/9, 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 may have been a daughter named Constance (born c. 1014?), who 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! However, there is some question about whether this Constance is the daughter of Robert, king of the Franks, and Constance of Arles, with the Foundation of Medieval Genealogy suggesting that "the affiliation [may have been] proposed for onomastic reasons only." This Constance may also have been a daughter-in-law, an illegitimate child of Robert's, or a god-daughter. 

Bertha of Burgundy, queen of the Franks? Sort of?

Bertha of Burgundy, queen of the Franks? (succession of Conrad I to the kingdom of Burgundy, 11 July 937)

I am back again to profile yet another of the wives of Robert "the Pious," king of the Franks. But, hey! It's not like the guy is Henry VIII or anything--he only had three wives, and he didn't kill any of them . . . (Once you've read about Robert's three marriages, you'll see why I can't call him "the Pious" without the quotation marks.)

It's not that poor Robert's wives kept dying on him either. Rather, poor Robert needed an heir, but he had a terrible time finding a wife whom he found suitable--his first wife was Rozala of Italy, but he repudiated her because she was too old. Then he married Bertha, who wasn't that much younger than Rozala, but he thought she was better. And then, when he was forced to separate from Bertha because his marriage was deemed "incestuous," he married Constance of Arles. She bore Robert the children neither of his previous wives had managed to produce for him, but he tried to get rid of her too . . . You just have to love "traditional marriage"!

A twelfth-century image
of Bertha of Burgundy
(detail from the Genealogy
of the Ottonians) 

So that's the background for today's post: poor "pious" Robert who just needed a wife. And although he had three, one of whom obligingly gave him an heir (and then some--Constance gave birth to seven surviving children), none of the women he married seemed to be just what he was looking for. 

All that said, here is what we know about the second of Robert's three wives, Bertha of Burgundy.

Bertha (or Berthe) of Burgundy was the daughter of Conrad I, king of Burgundy. Conrad was the second king of a united Upper and Lower Burgundy, inheriting the throne from his father, Rudolf II, who died on on 11 July 937 (and thus the date for today's post). Conrad's mother, by the way, was Bertha of Swabia, who has her own interesting marital connections.* 

As for Bertha of Burgundy's mother, she was Matilda of France, who was Conrad I's second wife. (Conrad's first wife, Adelaide of Bellay, had given birth to at least one child, a daughter named Gisela, born c. 955-60. Adela seems to have died about the year 963, since a charter dated 23 March refers to her, suggesting she was still alive.) Matilda, whose marriage to Conrad thus took place around 964, was the daughter of the Carolingian Louis IV, king of the Franks, and Gerberga of Saxony. (Louis was Gerberga's second husband--she had had four children with her first husband, Gilbert, duke of Lorraine) and then, during her marriage to Louis, she bore eight more, including Bertha.

Bertha of Burgundy was first married to Otto (or Odo or Eudes) I, count of Blois, probably between the years 978-80, and during the years of this marriage, she gave birth to at least three sons and a daughter. In 986, a charter refers to the presence of Bertha, the countess, during the signing of the document--also present were two sons, Theobald and Otto, who was "still in the cradle" (adhuc in cunabulo). Another charter, from 989, also refers to her sons, naming Robert, Theobald, and Otto. A donation in 1001 and a charter from 1024 refer to Agnès, Bertha's daughter. Two other sons may have been born, though their existence seems less certain--in 1007 a charter about property is confirmed by "Count Otto and his brother Landry," and in 1024, a record notes that a boy named Thierry was buried "at his brother Theobald's feet."

As you can see from these references, the birth order of Bertha's children isn't clear. The most reliable source I have found for this period is the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, which I've linked to several times, above. The FMG suggests the following about the births and deaths (and possible birth order?) of Bertha's children: Robert (b. date unknown - d. 989-95); Theobald (b. c. 979-81 - d. 11 July 1004); Otto (b. 982-3 - 15 November 1037); Agnès (fl. 1001 - 1024); Thierry (d. c. 1024); and Landry (d. after 27 September 1007).

  

At some point during the decade and a half of her marriage to Otto, Bertha of Burgundy, then countess of Blois, met the man who would become her second "husband," Robert, king of the Franks. In fact, Robert acted as godfather to one of her children. (An online source suggests this was Theobald, but I have not been able to verify that information.)

Bertha's husband, Otto, died on 12 March 996, leaving her a widow. A few months later, on 24 October 996, Robert's father, Hugh Capet, also died. It was after the death of his father that Robert, now king of the Franks, decided to marry Bertha of Burgundy.

Genealogy of the Ottonians,

including Rudolf II and Berthe

(Royal Chronicle of Cologne

[Chronica Regia Coloniensis],

Cod. Guelf. 74.3 Aug. 2°;

Heinemann-Nr. 2710, fol. 114v)

There was only one problem. In 996, Robert was already married--he had been married to Rozala of Italy since 988, although he had separated himself from her within a year or two of their marriage. But after the death of his father, who had arranged his marriage to Rozala, Robert decided to free himself entirely from his first wife, and he formally repudiated her. The two were divorced. (Rozala doesn't seem to have fought this action, and she returned to Flanders, where she was reunited with her son, Baldwin IV, count of Flanders. Rozala, once queen of the Franks, would never remarry. She died in Flanders in 1003. 

Interestingly, one of the principal reasons Robert gave for discarding Rozala was that she was too old to bear him children. She was not infertile or incapable, that much was clear--Rozala had been married before, and she had borne two children, an all-important male heir and a girl. As for her age--there is a great deal of uncertainty about the date of Rozala's birth (and of Robert's, for that matter) as well as a great deal of exaggeration about the difference in age between Rozala and Robert. But the best historical evidence, as opposed to misogynist story-telling, is that Rozala was probably ten (or perhaps fifteen) years older than Robert, that when she was repudiated for being "too old" for Robert, she was likely in her mid-thirties while he was in his mid-twenties.

But here's the thing--Bertha was not much younger than Rozala. In recent analysis, historian Jean Dhondt suggests that Rozala may have been born just before 962. Bertha meanwhile, was born in 964 or 965. 

But the age of his second wife was the least of Robert's problems. Unfortunately, Robert and the woman he now wanted to marry were too closely related--Robert's father, Hugh Capet, had considered Bertha when he was first looking for a marital alliance for his son, but he rejected her as a possible bride because the two were cousins. A marriage between them would be considered incestuous by the Church because they were too closely related by blood.** 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.*** 

The two, Robert and Bertha, knew about the problematic nature of their relationship, but in December 996, despite the union being "in breach of canon law," they married anyway, the ceremony performed by the obliging archbishop of Tours with some additional French bishops witnessing the marriage.

In reaction, Pope Gregory V convened a synod in Pavia in January 977 (where he had gone after he had been forced to leave Rome). Robert and Bertha were condemned and prescribed seven years of penance. (Archambaud of Tours, who had married the pair, was summoned to appear before the synod and if he failed to appear, threatened with "suspension from communion.") If they did not separate, Robert was threatened with excommunication. And, for good measure, the French clerics who had supported Robert were 'rebuked." But this ruling had no effect on Robert, and so a general council in Rome was convened in 998 and "threatened the king with anathema" (menaça le roi d'anathème). 

Still Pope Gregory V didn't live long enough to bother Robert very much--the pope died in early 999, to be succeeded by Pope Sylvester II, a man that Robert hoped would be more amenable to the king of the Franks. After all, as a younger man, then Gerbert of Aurillac had supported Robert's father, Hugh Capet, in particular when the king of the Franks wanted to establish a co-kingship with his son, and Gerbert had also functioned as a kind of teacher for Robert. But perhaps Robert shouldn't have been so hopeful when Gerbert became pope--at some danger to himself, Gerbert had refused Robert and Bertha when he had been asked to perform their marriage.

Jean-Paul Laurens, 1875

The Excommunication of Robert the Pious

L'Excommunication de Robert le Pieux

(Paris, Le Musée d'Orsay)

As it happened, then, the new pope proved less supportive than Robert might have wished--or, maybe not. Because in 999, after three years of marriage, Robert's second "wife" had failed to provide him with an heir. A single pregnancy had resulted in a stillborn son, which perhaps was a sign of God's disapproval of this marriage. 

In any case, after yet another synod addressed the issue, Pope Sylvester II, formerly Gerbert of Aurillac, confirmed Robert's condemnation. Still, Robert and Bertha stayed together. They finally separated in September 1001 after Rome repeated the call for Robert to separate himself from Bertha and put his kingdom under a sentence of excommunication. Still without an heir, Robert decided at last that Bertha had to go. Robert "the pious" repudiated his second wife about the year 1003. 

Jean-Paul Laurens, 1883
The Parting of King Robert and Bertha
(Philadelphia Museum of Art)--
unfortunately, the painting is very dark,
but if you click the link and go to the original,
you can enlarge the image and see
the suffering on Bertha's face

Still in need of an heir, Robert "the Pious" married Constance of Arles in 1004. It was a somewhat peculiar arrangement, at least from a modern point of view. I'll let historian Kathleen Nolan describe it:

Bertha [of Burgundy]'s son, young count Odo II of Blois, married Ermengarde of Auvergne, granddaughter of Adelaide of Anjou and her first husband, Stephen of Brioude, while Robert himself wed Constance, daughter of the same Adelaide of Anjou and her last husband, Count William "the Liberator" of Provence. 

In other words, while Bertha's son married the granddaughter of Adelaide of Anjou, her former husband (right after he divorced her) married the daughter of the same woman. Got that?

As Nolan writes, a royal marriage was difficult in the best of circumstances, since a bride "entered a rather closed community" where there were already long-established connections and loyalties. But poor Constance encountered a rather different set of circumstances--she faced "personal animosity, political intrigue, and clerical hostility." 

None of the whole affair between Bertha and Robert seemed to do much damage Robert's reputation, however. Remember, his sobriquet: "the Pious." In his biography of the king, for example, 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.

 A distraught Bertha of Burgundy,
detail from Jean-Paul Laurens,
The Excommunication
of Robert the Pious

Despite Helgaud's claims about the king recognizing his sin and praying for forgiveness, Robert wasn't quite done with Bertha of Burgundy. In the words of medieval historian Constance Bouchard, "Robert repeatedly attempted . . . to rejoin Bertha." There is some evidence that, as late as 1008, when Robert visited Rome, he was trying to get Pope John XIII to grant him a divorce his third wife, Constance of Arles, in order to reunite with Bertha. 

According to historian Penelope Ann Adair, Robert was back in Rome again, in 1010, still trying to get a divorce from Constance. And Bertha "followed Robert to Rome hoping for permission to remarry him." But Pope Sergius IV, who had assumed the papacy in July 1009, was no more interested in granting it than his predecessors had been.

Unfortunately--or fortunately?--for Bertha of Burgundy, Robert "the Pious" was never able to divorce his third wife, Constance of Arles who, despite her own set of difficulties with Robert, managed to produce seven children with him, four sons and three daughters.

I haven't been able to trace Bertha after she was separated from Robert, and the date of her death is based on a reference in the records of the cathedral of Chartres recording the death on "XVII Kal Feb" 1010 of "Bertha, mother of count Odo" (Berta mater Odonis comitis), but some sources suggest (without documentation) that 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 finally repudiated by Robert of France. But, then, you find all sorts of crazy stuff online, and I've found no documentation that supports this identification--nothing that provides any sources. 

Still, I'd like to think Bertha of Burgundy 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?")

There were no contemporary chroniclers like Helgaud de Fleury who cared to document Bertha of Burgundy's life, and even today there are no biographies of her--there is just too little known about her, other than that she was married at least once, twice if you count her union with Robert, that she had at least four children, maybe two more, and that she was ensnared in what the Church regarded as an illegal marriage. But I have to think that her story would make a great novel . . . 

*Fun fact: after the death of her first husband, Rudolf II, king of Burgundy, Bertha of Swabia, married Hugh of Provence, king of Italy. With this marriage, the widowed queen of Burgundy became the queen of Italy--Bertha was Hugh's fourth wife. Hugh's marital career was as complicated as that of Robert "the Pious." Hugh's first wife died, who knows what happened to his second, and his third wound up imprisoned and dead (and their marriage seems to have been illegal anyway). And oh, by the way--before her marriage to Hugh, Hugh's first wife, Guilla of Provence, had been married to Rudolf I of Upper Burgundy, the father of--you guessed it--Rudolf II, Bertha of Swabia's first husband! To put this another way, Hugh of Provence, king of Italy, married Rudolf II's mother and then his widow. Hugh also married off his son, Lothair, to Rudolf II and Bertha of Burgundy's daughter, Adelaide. All these marriages were attempts to resolve ongoing conflicts bertween Burgundy and Italy.

**Robert and Bertha were cousins. According to historian Penelope Ann Adair, "Robert and Bertha were both great-grandchildren of the German king, Henry I, and thus second cousins." In their excellent edition of Helgaud de Fleury's life of Robert the Pious, Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette LaBoury note that the relationship of Robert and Bertha was calculated "at the third degree" (au troisième degré), a claim that is also made by Elizabeth Hallam. (Being related in the third degree is not the same as being second cousins--degrees count "steps" to reach a common ancestor, while "cousins" are about generations--but to be honest, I just can't figure out cousins/degrees myself.) Anyway, the excellent genalogical table provided by Bautier and LaBoury shows their relationship--Robert II's grandmother was Hedwig of Saxony, while Bertha's grandmother was Hedwig's sister, Gerberga of Saxony, both daughters of Henry the Fowler, king of Germany, and his wife, Matilda of Ringelhelm. On cousinship and degrees, click here.

Canon law concerned itself with the blood relationships among those who would marry. For a discussion of consanguinity as an impediment to a valid marriage, and for an explanation of the way these relationships were calculated, click here.

***Among the marriage canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) were several relating to godparents, including one that prohibited the marriage of a person to his/her child's godparent. To be a godparent established a spiritual consanguinity (blood relationship)--so the marriage of a godparent to a godchild, of two godparents to one another, or of a spiritual and natural parent, were all considered incestuous. (And the Fourth Lateran council extended consanguinity to the fourth degree, so that marriages of fourth cousins, or any nearer relatives, were prohibited.)

For the problems of finding royal marriage partners during this period, see For the best explanation Constance B. Bouchard's "Consanguinity and Noble Marriage in Tenth and Eleventh Centuries," Speculum 56, no. 2 (1981): 268-87.

Blanche of Castile: Following in Her Grandmother's Footsteps

Blanche of Castile, queen of France (born 4 March 1188)

Blanche of Castile was the daughter of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and his English wife, Eleanor Plantagenet--who was herself the daughter of the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine.* As queen of Castile, Eleanor Plantagenet had considerable influence, her political acuity and ability recognized by her husband, who specified in his will of 1204 that, should he die before his son and heir reached the age of his majority, Eleanor should act as regent of Castile.

Blanche of Castile,
from a contemporary ms. 

But Queen Eleanor did not live long enough to act as regent for her son, Enrique, when he became king--she died on 31 October 1214, just days after King Alfonso's death. Instead, her daughter, Berengaria, acted as regent for her brother, who was just ten years old.

Like her sister, Blanche would also prove to be a capable--and successful--ruler, when she was regent of France not once but twice, from 1226 to 1234, and then again from 1248 to 1252.

In the year 1200, the twelve-year-old Prince Louis of France was married to Blanca de Castilla, then aged eleven--in a historically fascinating note, Blanca's eighty-year-old grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, traveled to Castile in order to accompany her granddaughter on her journey to France. 

Now in France, where the Spanish Blanca was known as Blanche, she had her first child in 1205.

Over the course of the next twenty years, Blanche gave birth to at least eleven more children (and perhaps as many as thirteen--accounts vary). Her husband Louis became king of France in 1223. By 1225, aware that he was becoming increasingly ill, Louis named his wife Blanche of Castile as co-regent of France and as the sole guardian for his son and heir. When when Louis VIII died in 1226, his son was twelve years old. Blanche finessed any question of co-regency by having her son crowned as King Louis IX within a month of his father's death. 

Although she was to become one of the most long-serving and successful regents in France, Blanche was not the first woman to serve in this capacity--indeed, there was a long tradition of powerful women who had shared in government extending back to the time of Hugh Capet and his wife, Adelaide of Aquitaine (fl. 960s-1006), and Constance of Arles (c. 986-1032), the wife of Robert II, Adelaide's son.

The first woman to serve officially as regent of France seems to have been Adèle of Champagne (c. 1140-1206), the third of Louis VII's wives. During her twenty-year marriage to Louis, Adèle proved a "capable and energetic" queen. She attempted to take control of the government for her fifteen-year-old son, Philip, after Louis VII's death in 1180 but was unable to do so. Ten years later, in 1190, when he went on Crusade, Philip II appointed his mother as co-regent in his absence

But certainly one of the most successful and well-known women to have functioned as regent of France is Blanche of Castile. In his discussion of the long tradition of female regents in France, historian André Poulet indicates something of the breadth of her "absolute power" as queen-regent when it was her turn to take up the role: she "legislated, dealt with foreign powers, waged war, arranged marriages." "In short," he concludes, she "imposed herself as sovereign of the realm."

Although her son reached the age of majority in 1236, Blanche maintained her influence. As Poulet notes, although Louis IX was "under [his mother's] sway far longer than was stipulated by law," he nevertheless "respected her command of statecraft and recalled her to affairs of state when he went on crusade in 1248." 

Then, instead of appointing his wife, Margaret of Provence, to function as regent in the event a regency were needed, Louis IX turned once more to his mother. Although she opposed his crusading venture, Blanche again assumed her role as regent of France. After her son was captured in 1250, she added the job of raising his ransom to her responsibilities as regent. She died in 1252, while her son was still in the Holy Land.

Maubuisson Abbey, founded by Blanche of Castile,
and site of her burial

It is interesting to place Blanche of Castile in the of a powerful family of women--her grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine; her mother, Eleanor Plantagenet of England, queen of Castile; her sister Berengaria, who acted not only as regent of Castile for her younger brother, but who became queen regnant of Castile after his death (though her only way of maintaining power was to abdicate in favor of her son); her sister Urraca, who became queen of Portugal (named as regent, though she died before assuming the role); and her sister Eleanor, who became queen of Aragon. 

A new, full-length biography of Blanche of Castile is desperately needed, though Régine Pernoud's 1975 Blanche of Castile is very enjoyable. There is also an excellent assessment of Blanche of Castile, by Miriam Shadis, in Kathleen Nolan's Capetian Women.

Update: And here it is, a new scholarly biography, Lindy Grant's Blanche of Castile: Queen of France (Yale University Press, 2017).

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

Anna of Kyiv, Queen and Regent of France

Anna of Kyiv, queen and regent of France (married 19 May 1051)

Anna of Kyiv was the daughter of Yaroslav I Vladimirovich, grand prince of Kyiv. If you read that he was called "the Wise," the source for that soubriquet is not to be found among his tenth-century contemporaries but, as historian Christian Raffensperger notes, in the nineteenth century, part of a "nation-building scheme" by academics. And it wasn't only Ukrainian academics who burnished Yaroslav's reputation--in his 1878 Histoire de la Russie, French historian Alfred Rambaud called him "the Charlemagne of the Russians" (les Charlemagne des Russes).

A "portrait" of Anna of Kyiv, 

(detail, MS NAL 779, fol. 176r

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale)

Anna of Kyiv's mother was Ingegerd Olofsdotter, a Swedish princess, the daughter of Olof Skötkonung, king of Sweden, and his Slavic wife, Estrid of the Obotrites (the Obotrites were members of a West Slavic confederation). Estrid's family and history are not known. According to the Saga of St. Olaf (Óláfs saga helga), Estrid had been kidnapped and brought back to Sweden, where she was "lawfully" married to Olof about the year 1000. That's important to note, because while Estrid became Olof's queen, another Slavic woman became his concubine. Like Estrid, Edla had also been captured and taken to Sweden, but she was Olof's "slave woman" (and mother of two of Olof's sons and two of his daughters).*

Unlike many of the women in this blog, whose lives are difficult to trace, much has been written about Anna of Kyiv, though very little is known about her childhood. The exact date of her birth is unknown; as Emily Warden notes in her recent work on Anna of Kyiv,  "the best estimates have still only succeeded in narrowing it down to sometime between 1024 and 1032."

Anna was one of nine children born to Yaroslav I and Ingrid Olofsdottir. (Ingrid may have been Yaroslav's second wife; as the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy notes, the existence of a first wife is possible--there does seem to have been a son, Iliya Yaroslavich, born before Yaroslav's marriage to Ingrid, though the existence of this child seems also uncertain.)

Nothing is known about Anna's education either, though something of it has been inferred. Anna was born during the period, from 988 to 1244, identified as the "golden age" of Kyivan Rus´. Under her father's rule, Kyiv "became eastern Europe’s chief political and cultural center." Yaroslav I expanded his territories, supported arts and artists, and built St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. In addition to territorial expansion and the "embellish[ing]" of his capital, Anna's father "collected books" and sponsored their translation. He also founded schools. 

At least one modern historian has speculated that, given Yaroslav’s father's interest in education, his daughter would have been well educated. Anna is known to be literate--what may be her autograph signature survives, in Cyrillic script, which suggests she learned to write before her marriage. And she presumably learned French before her marriage in order to converse with her husband. (As Joel Rosenthal notes, there is no evidence that the man Anna would marry, Henry I, king of the Franks, was himself literate, and "no direct evidence which testifies to any appreciable education.")

The life of Anna of Kyiv emerges more fully after her marriage. A fair amount of analysis has focused on the making of the marriage between the daughter of the grand prince of Kyiv and the king of the Franks. As Talia Zajac notes, "Over two hundred articles and books exist on the reign of the princess who left her Eastern Orthodox cultural environment of Kyiv (Kiev) and travelled some 2,000 kilometres across Europe to become the wife of the French king."

The fourteenth-century family tree

(arbre généalogique) showing

Anna of Kyiv, on the right; 

Henry I's first wife, Matilda,

is just to Anna's left 

(MS NAL 779, fol. 176r,

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale)

Much of the analysis about Anna's marriage reflects the need for the Capetian king, grandson of Hugh Capet, to avoid his father's marital disasters. Hugh Capet had looked to the east to find an appropriate bride for his son, Robert "the Pious"--reflecting the concern of the king of the Franks about arranging a marriage that would not violate clerical injunctions against spouses who were too closely related by blood. Hugh Capet had first sought a bride for his son and heir from the Byzantine emperor.** When it came time for Hugh's grandson, Henry I, to seek a wife, these worries about consanguinity were still significant. (And the Church's strictures about such marriages will be important later in Anna's life too . . . )

For Henry, this would be a second marriage. He had been betrothed to Matilda of Franconia, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II and Gisela of Swabia, but the girl died in 1034, before any marriage could take place. (By the way, Matilda was just six years old in 1033 when she was betrothed to the twenty-five-year-old Henry.) In 1034, "little Matilda was replaced by 'another Matilda,'" who was also quite young. The king of the Franks married Matilda of Frisia (b. c. 1025-27), daughter of Liudolf, the marquis of Frisia, and Gertrude of Egesheim.*** Matilda of Frisia gave birth to a daughter about the year 1040. Within four years, both mother and child had died. 

And so, after 1044, Henry needed a wife--or, rather, he needed an heir--but it wasn't until 1049 that his envoys reached Kyiv in search of a woman who would bear him children. 

Meanwhile, Anna's father had been securing significant marriages for his many sons and daughters throughout the continent. The identity of the wife of Yaroslav's son Vladimir of Novgorod (b. 1020) is not clear, but Yaroslav's daughter Anastasia of Kyiv (b. c. 1023) married Andrew I, king of Hungary; his son Iziaslav of Kyiv (b. 1024) married Gertrude of Poland, daughter of Mieszko II, king of Poland; his daughter Elisiv of Kyiv (b. c, 1025) married Harald II, king of Norway****; Sviatoslav (b. 1027) married Killikiya (or Cecilia) of Dithmarshen, daughter of Etheler, count of Dithmarshen, and then, after Killikiya's death, he married Oda of Stade, the daughter of Liudolf of Derlingau and Ida of Elsdorf (who, by the way, was the sister of Matilda of Frisia, Henry I's first wife--yikes!)--Oda had also been a nun, and she was the sister of the bishop of Trier; Vsevolod of Kyiv (b. c. 1030) married a Byzantine  princess whose name was Irina (or maybe Anastasia), and after her death, he was married a second time, to Anna, the daughter of a khan of the Kumans (or Cumans); Igor Yaroslavich (b. c. 1034-6) was married to the countess of Orlamünde (whose name may have been Konigunda); and then there may have been Agatha (b. before 1030), about whose parentage nothing is known, but who has been suggested (by some scholars) as a daughter of Yaroslav, and who was married to Edward the Exile (Edward Ætheling), an unsuccessful claimant to the English throne.

A map showing the "dynastic connections"
of Yaroslav's "ruling family"
and the rest of medieval European royalty
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
(Ukrainian Research Institute,
Harvard University)

I've listed all these marriages in order to show the range of Yaroslav's politcal connections, alliances secured by the marriages of his children. (I've also included the dates of birth for Anna's siblings here to demonstrate possibilities for her date of birth.) As for Anna, in 1043, Yaroslav had sent an envoy to the Holy Roman Emperor, seeking to arrange a marriage between his daughter and the emperor, Henry III. As Raffensperger lays out the advantages for the emperor, Yaroslav's daughters "were the queens of much of Europe, ruling [in] the German Empire, Hungary, Norway, and Poland in the mid-eleventh century." But the emperor declined the invitation, most likely because he needed to secure alliances on his western, rather than his eastern, "frontiers." (The emperor wound up marrying Agnes of Poitou, daughter of the duke of Aquitaine.)

Anna of Kyiv,
miniature from the fourteenth-century
Grandes Chronices de France
MS Royal 16 G VI, fol. 269v
(British Library)--
I love the hesitant expression 
on Anna's face!

And so, when Henry I sent two bishops to Kyiv in 1049, seeking a bride from among Yaroslav's daughters, there were political advantages for both men. Raffensberger notes that there are no surviving records of the negotiations, but their success is clear: in 1050, Anne Yaroslavna arrived in France with the bishops and some unspecified gifts. On 19 May 1051 she was married to the king of the Franks in a ceremony in Rheims and consecrated as queen. The king was forty-two years old, and Anna between nineteen and twenty-seven.

The new queen of the Franks quickly fulfilled her most important role, at least in Henry's eyes: she had children. She gave birth to a son and heir, Philip, in February of 1052 (though there is some uncertainty about this date). His birth was followed by Robert (b. before 1054), whom chronicles say died young, and then Hugh (b. 1057). A daughter, Emma, may have been born about 1054, between the births of Robert and Hugh. 

As was the practice for Capetian kings, Henry had his heir crowned in Rheims on 23 May 1059, when the boy was about seven years old. And then, having secured the succession, Henry died a year later, on 4 August 1060.

Recent scholarship has revisited Anna's role as queen consort, arguing her active role during Henry's reign rather than relegating her to a role as a producer of heirs. In Emily Joan Ward's words, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians' views of Anna of Kyiv, reducing her to a "pious" queen and "dutiful" wife,  were "limited by a refusal fully to recognize the evidence with which they were presented." Historians also focused on her foreignness, identifying Anna as an "alien" queen, unable to play a significant role as queen. As Talia Zajac notes, Anna was dismissed for her "inability" to exercise her public abilities as queen" or for her lack of preparation to do so.

I will not rehearse their arguments here--I've linked you to two great sources, readily available online, and you can access these materials if you are interested. In brief, royal charters demonstrate Anna's role in royal power, as does her presence in the royal court (curia regis) when important disputes were heard and resolved. Along with her husband, Anna also extended patronage to numerous ecclesiastical institutions.

After Henry I's death, Anna's son, Philip, became the sole king of the Franks. Since he was still a minor, the young king had two regents, his mother and his uncle Baldwin V of Flanders (Baldwin was Henry I's brother-in-law, married to the king's sister, Adela of France--both Henry and Adela were the children of their father's third marriage). Anna's role as co-regent has also been discounted in the past, though contemporary chronicles emphasize the queen's significance in her son's reign. Just a few months after Philip became king, in a document dated 25 November 1060, the bishop of Chartres addressed Anna and Philip jointly "our most serene lords, the kings" (dominos nostros serenissimos reges)--though the document has only the young king's seal affixed, with the notary acknowledging Baldwin's acceptance. The young king also acknowledges the role of his mother in a charter from 1061:  "I, Philip, his [Henry's] son I, when still very young, assumed the kingdom together with my mother" (ego, Philippus, filius ejus [Henrici] admodum parvulus, regnum unacum matre suscepissem).

But quite soon after her son became king of France, the dowager queen married again. Her "hasty marriage" to Raoul, count of Crépy-en-Valois, encountered some difficulties because of Raoul's complicated marital history. But whatever scandal this second marriage may have caused among her contemporaries, it did not alienate Anne from the royal court, nor did it end her active role as co-regent. Recent scholarship, like that of Ward and Zajac, has emphasized, in Ward's words, Anna's ongoing "maternal power in the minority kingship of Philip I of France."

And now, we are back to the Church's views of what constituted a valid marriage and what did not--and what role these views played in the judgments made of the dowager queen's second marriage. Before Raoul of Crépy's marriage to Anna, he had been married twice. He first married Adèle of Bar-sur-Aube (he was her fourth husband), and after her death (about 1053-4), he married a woman possibly named Eleanor (or Alienor), who was also derisively referred to as "La Haquenée" (or "the mare"), supposedly a great heiress. But Raoul repudiated his second wife, accusing her of adultery, and then married Anna.

Aside from the obvious charge of bigamy (as if that weren't enough), another problem for this marriage was the relationship between Anna's first and second husbands. The two men were second cousins, both descendants of Herbert of Vermandois, this connection falling well within the prohibited degree of consanguinity (blood relationship). In the words of one outraged chronicler, "Count Raoul, [the king's] cousin, married his widow, which was contrary to human law and divine law [contre jus et fas]" (comte Raoul, son cousin, épousa sa veuve, ce qui était contraire au droit humain et à la loi divine [contre jus et fas]). Raoul's repudiated second wife may have gone to Rome to appeal her case, and Raoul may have been threatened with excommunication or even excommunicated. Sources on all this vary. 

But surviving evidence suggests that Anna continued her role as co-regent for her son despite whatever "scandal" may have been the result of her marriage. She continued to play a role at court and her name continues to appear in numerous royal charters. She was described as the queen throughout her second marriage. As well, Anna arranged for the marriage of her son, Hugh, with Raoul's granddaughter, Adela of Vermandois. And Raoul's son, Gautier, fought with his father at the siege of Vitry, both men serving King Philip. Anna's role as co-regent did not end with her remarriage: as Zajac observes, "it was not when Anna remarried in 1061 that her status as queen changed." Anna remained a strong presence in her son's life even after he began his personal rule in 1066. Her significance only diminished "when her son Philippe married in 1072 and hence had a queen of his own."*****

Anna of Kyiv's second husband died in 1074. In the mean time, Anna had devoted herself to the restoration of the abbey of St. Vincent in Senlis, where she had dower lands. According to the charter of foundation, her support was "a gift from my goods and those which king Henry, my husband, gave me at our marriage, all of which, with the favour of my son Philip, by the grace of God king, and the counsel of all the magnates of his kingdom, I granted to be assigned to it." Anna's further contributions are documented in two surviving charters signed by Philip, one of which was issued after his mother's death.

The last documented evidence of Anna of Kyiv is in a charter of 1075. There is no record of her death--but in 1079, her son made a donation to the Church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs (Paris) for the remission of his own sins and for "those of my father and mother and of all the kings of the Franks, my ancestors" (Facio autem hanc donationem pro remissione peccatorum meorum et genitoris gentricisque meę et omnium regum Francorum, antecessorum meorum). Her place of burial is unknown.

The monastery at Senlis dedicated an annual memorial service for Anna of Kyiv every year, on 5 September, which suggests she may have died on that date. The memorial was held until the French Revolution.

Mykola and Valentyn Znoba's
bronze statue of Anna of Kyiv
at Senlis (Ouse, France),
unveiled in 2005 as a gift from Ukraine

A selection of letters from Anna of Kyiv can be found at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters. Letters come from both Anna and Henry, from Anna and her son, Anna and her second husband, and Anna alone. Also included there is a letter to Anna of Kyiv from Pope Nicholas II. 

I've linked to so many of my sources above that I will not add any further suggestions for reading here. As I have noted, there is a great deal written about Anna of Kyiv, so an interested reader will have no trouble finding a wide range of online sources as well as books and articles to be accessed through libraries. 

By the way, Anna of Kyiv can be linked to Olga of Kyiv, a woman whom I've written about before in this blog. Olga was the grandmother of Vladimir the Great, while Anna was the granddaughter of Vladimir the Great--Vladimir the Wise was Vladimir the Great's son.

*For an extended exploration of marriage during this period, and of how Olof's relationship to Edra might have been understood at the time, I recommend Caroline Wilhelmsson's The Queens and Royal Women of Sweden, c. 970-1330: Their Lives, Power, and Legacy.

**Henry I was Hugh Capet’s grandson. His father,  poor Robert "the Pious," had a disastrous marital career. To read about his first wife, Rozala of Italy, click here. To read about his second, Bertha of Burgundy, click here. And to read about his third, Constance of Arles, click here. (Robert’s third wife, Constance, was Henry I’S mother.)

***Little is known about this "other Matilda," but what is known is carefully articulated in Szabolcs de Vajay's “Mathilde, Reine de France Inconnue,” Journal des Savants 1971, no. 4 (1971): 241-60 (full text availble here). Vajay undertakes extensive genealogical research, a research that leads to this rather startling claim: in marrying Anna of Kyiv, Henry I is "united" with the "sister-in-law of the niece of his dead wife, who was, herself, the niece of [the woman to whom he was first betrothed]." (See especially the family tree on p. 259.) Yikes! Is it any wonder it was hard to find a royal alliance that didn't challenge ecclesiastical "laws" about marriage!

****This Harald is the Harald who invaded England, landing in the north, on 25 September 1066, while William of Normandy invaded on 28 September, landing in Sussex. Elisiv and her children may have landed in England with her husband. 

*****Anna's son had his own marital scandals. He repudiated his first wife, who had given him an heir, and then "remarried" a woman who may or may not have still been married to her first husband . . . The king of France was excommunicated--more than once, since he kept going back to the woman from whom he was supposed to separate. I'll let  you follow up on all this on your own, but you can start by clicking here . . . 

Rozala of Italy, Countess and Regent of Flanders, and Queen of the Franks

Rozala of Italy, countess and regent of Flancers, then queen of the Franks (married 1 April 987)

The year of Rozala of Italy's birth is not certain--she seems to have been born near the middle of the tenth century, likely between 950 and 960. She was the daughter of Berengar II of Ivrea, who ruled as king of Italy during this same decade. Her mother was Willa of Tuscany, daughter of Boso, margrave of Tuscany.*

Detail from a late-fifteenth
century manuscript portrait
of the counts of Flanders
and members of theirfamilies
buried in St. Peter's Abbey,
Ghent

According to at least one contemporary chronicle, Rozala and her sister were "brought up in the imperial palace by the empress after being brought to Germany." (Although it seems clear that Berengar and his wife had two daughters, the name of Rozala's sister is unknown.)

Given the dates suggested for Rozala's birth, the Holy Roman Emperor would have been Otto I. As a younger man, Berengar, then margrave of Ivrea, had led a revolt against his uncle, who was king of Italy--the unsuccessful Berengar had been forced to flee, winding up in then King Otto of Germany's court, where he spent several years. Thus Berengar's decision to send his daughters to Otto's imperial court makes political sense.

According to several contemporary chroniclers, it was the emperor who arranged Rozala's marriage to Arnulf II, count of Flanders. Again, however, the dates of this marriage are not clear. According to the Annales Elnonenses Minores (Minor Annals of Elnon, Latin chronicles of the Abbey of Saint-Amand), the marriage took place about 968. By contrast, in his history of medieval Flanders, the historian David Nicholas claims that the marriage took place in 976, when Arnulf reached the age of majority. (Arnulf had been born c. 960, making him sixteen in 976). 

Before Arnulf's death on 30 March 987, Rozala had given birth to two children, a son named Baldwin, born in 980, and a daughter, Mathilde, whose date of birth is unknown. After Arnulf's death, Baldwin succeeded his father as count of Flanders, with Rozala acting as regent for her minor son. 

Early in 988, Rozala was married for a second time, to Robert the Pious, the son and "co-ruler" of Hugh Capet, king of the Franks. (To reinforce his kingship, Hugh Capet advocated for his son's "co-kingship," a way of reinforcing the legitimacy of this new dynasty.) The marriage was evidently a way of rewarding the Flemish for their support when Hugh seized power in 987. As for Rozala--hstorian Jean Dhondt has argued that the widowed Rozala would likely have been "pushed" (poussée) into this marriage by her Flemish advisors, fearing that Flanders, assailed on all sides by more powerful neighbors, would crumble.

Fifteenth-century manuscript
containing portraits of
the counts of Flanders
(Ghent, Ghent City Museum
 [STAM], Inv. 779)

At some point, Rozala's name seems to have been changed, never mind all the variations in the spellings of Rozala (Rozela, Rosala, Rosela, for example). 

According the author of the contemporary Vita Sancti Bertulfi (Life of Saint Bertulf), after her marriage to Robert, Rozala became Suzanne (or Susanna or Susanne): "after the death of Prince Arnulf, she married Robert, king of the Franks, and was called Susanna" (post mortem Arnulfi . . . principis, Roberto Regi Francorum nupsit et Susanna dicta). As research by the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy illustrates, however, contemporary records refer to Rozala as "Susanna" before her marriage to Robert.

No matter when Rozala became Suzanne, her second marriage would not turn out well for her. By 991, Robert had separated himself from Rozala/Suzanne. During the brief years of their marriage, Rozala/Suzanne had not borne a child, and according to Robert (and many accounts of Robert's complicated marital disputes), that was because she was too old.

Here's where Rozala's date of birth becomes crucial. The exact birth date of Robert "the Pious" (got to love his soubriquet) is also unknown--if you look at the entry in Wikipedia, for example, the date is given as "c. 972." This date reflects the conclusions of many historians, including the nineteenth-century Chrétien Pfister, in his Études sur le règne de Robert le Pieux (996-1031): while Robert's exact date of birth is not clear, he was known to be "about sixty" when he died on 20 July 1031, suggesting he was born about 970. Pfister also claims that, when Robert separated from Rozala/Suzanne (Pfister says this occurs in 989), the young man was "in his nineteenth year." 

But how old was Rozala when Robert decided he had to get rid of her? She had married Arnulf of Flanders (born c. 960) in 976, when he was about sixteen. Would Rozala have been similarly aged (born c. 960), or a decade older (born c. 950)? In other words, would Rozala have been about sixteen years old, like her husband, when she was first married, or would she have been twenty-six?

More critically for Rozala/Suzanne, how old would she have been when Robert claimed that she was too old to bear children? In his Histories, the monk Richerus of Reims says that poor Robert is "in the prime of his youth" when he marries, while his wife was "too old" (and also Italian . . . ). For his part, Pfister sniffs at the marriage between Rozala, "the old widow" (la vieille veuve), and Robert. The young king hasdbeen tied to an aged crone, a woman who was much older than he (beaucoup plus âgée que lui) while he is a man "in the springtime of youth" (dans le printemps de sa jeunesse). By the mid-twentieth century, historian Alexander Vasiliev would casually refer to Rozala as an "elderly widow" at the time of her marriage. 

What can we say about the characterizations of Rozala/Suzanne and her marriage? If we use the earliest suggested date for Rozala's birth, 950, she would be some twenty years older than Robert, who was born in 970. If she was born around the year 960, she would have been about ten years older than he was. If Robert was eighteen or so when he married, Rozala could have been anywhere between twenty-eight and thirty-eight. 

More recently, Dhondt has suggested a likely date of around 962 for Rozala's birth: "She was at least ten years older than Robert, perhaps fifteen" (Elle avait aux moins dix ans de plus que Robert, peut-être quinze). In Dhondt's view, the age difference was not a relevant consideration for Robert's father, Hugh Capet, who had arranged his son's marriage solely for its political advantage, the alliance giving the Franks a level of influence and authority in Flanders. Interestingly, Dhondt suggests that the union may never have been consummated. 

But whatever Rozala's age at the time of her second marriage (and whether it was ever consummated), once Robert's father, the "senior" king, Hugh Capet, died in 996, Robert formally repudiated Rozala and divorced her. Even though he had ended their marriage, Robert kept a significant part of her dowry, including the castle of Montreuil in Ponthieu.** 

According to Richerus of Rheims, when Robert wouldn't return the castle to her, Rozala built another one nearby. (I really hope Richerus is right about this.) After her separation from Robert, she returned to Flanders, where she was reunited with her son, Baldwin IV, who had by now reached his age of majority. Although Robert managed tp lee[ Montreuil-sur-Mer, Baldwin managed to recover several of the territories that had been given to his mother on the occasion of her marriage, including Artois and Ostrevant. Rozala also became one of Baldwin's "principal advisors." A charter dated 26 June 995 notes that, along with her son Baldwin, "Queen Susanna" (Susanna regina) made donations to St. Peter's Abbey (Ghent), for the soul of her daughter, Matilda. On June 1003, she made several grants of land to St. Peter's. 

In the Annales Elnonenses, Rozala's death is recorded in 1003. A Latin poem in memory of her death says that she died on 7 February, but if the date of the charter granting land to St. Peter’s Abbey is correct, then Rozala cannot have died in February. A date of 13 December 1003, recorded in another contemporary annal, is also possible. As with her birthdate, then, the exact date of Rozala’s death is uncertain. 

Rozala of Italy, countess of Flanders (and briefly queen of the Franks) is buried in St. Peter's Abbey, Ghent, next to her first husband. 

By the way, after repudiating Rozala, Robert "the Pious" had a long and sordid marital career. He entered into an incestuous marriage with Bertha of Burgundy, then repudiated her, then married Constance of Arles--who was eighteen when he was thirty-two. Hmmm. Although she did give him children, he wanted to get rid of her too . . .  

You may also be interested in reading a bit about Rozala's father, Berengar II, who had his own adventures in marriage, attempting to force the widowed Adelaide of Burgundy whom he was holding captive, into marrying his son, Rozala's brother Adalbert. 

All I can say is: traditional marriage! Yikes!

*One of the most reliable sources I've found is the genealogical information made available by the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, which I've linked to several times throughout this post. 

**In "Sept femmes et un trio de rois," Dhondt examines why this marriage would have been politically advantageous for Hugh Capet. He also provides documentary evidence for why Rozala was likely born before 962 (when her father was dethroned), and he suggests that it would have been highly unlikely, even given his political considerations, that Hugh would have forced his son into a marriage with a woman who was too old to bear an heir.