Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (57 page)

*not crowned

Queens and Empresses

The Empire and France were medieval Europe’s only two major states where female rule was not recognized, though its exercise elsewhere was also limited to only 20 reigning queens between 1100 and 1600.
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All the Empire’s rulers were married, and their female partners played important roles in imperial governance. Clerical pressure forced the Carolingians to accept that formalized marriage was necessary to legitimize birth and inheritance claims by the late ninth century. Louis I’s first wife, Irmingard, was crowned queen by Pope Stephen IV in 816 and all official consorts appear to have been crowned thereafter. Ageltrude, wife of Guido of Spoleto, was the first to be crowned empress, in February 891. The coronation
Ordines
of 960 provided for female coronation, and Otto I’s second wife, Adelaide, became the second crowned empress, in 962. The Salians continued this practice. Frederick III’s wife, Eleonora of Portugal, was the last to be crowned
in the same ceremony as her husband, in 1452, until the practice was revived for Matthias and Anna of Tirol in 1612, though that for the empress was now staged two days after the emperor’s coronation.
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The relatively inferior status of early queens is illustrated by the way Louis II’s wife Emma was titled
coniunx
(wife) and not
regina
(queen) prior to the last two decades of his reign. The title shifted to
Romanorum regina
by the late ninth century for queens, and
imperatrix augusta
if her husband had been crowned emperor. An association with promoting spirituality and the patronage of family nunneries contributed to this improving status.
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However, wives still faced repudiation if they failed to produce a male heir or if remarriage became politically expedient. Senior male clergy tended to divide women into virtuous Esthers and wicked Jezebels, providing the language that was exploited by hostile aristocratic factions to charge queens with adultery in the hope of getting them replaced by one of their own kin.

Empress Adelaide was fundamental in securing both the status and political influence of future queens. She was the first to be titled ‘royal consort’ (
consors regni
) in a deliberate revival of ancient Roman practice, implying a political role.
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Later chroniclers called her ‘mother of the realm’ (
mater regnorum
), and she was certainly crucial in securing support from the Italian lords to Otto I’s accession in Italy. Adelaide was canonized in 1097, indicating the continued importance of royal women in promoting the sanctity, piety and virtue underpinning their husband’s political legitimacy. This peaked with Henry II’s wife Kunigunde, who, perhaps to compensate for the couple’s lack of children, played a leading part in developing the imperial church and became a cult figure after her canonization in 1200.
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Patronage of convents also allowed queens to maintain family memoria through prayers for deceased kings and kin.

Although they could not rule in their own name, wives could play political roles. At least three empresses presided as judges over sessions of the royal court, especially in Italy: Adelaide, Matilda of England and Richenza, wife of Lothar III of Supplinburg. Henry I’s widow Matilda brokered truces within the royal family during Otto I’s reign, while Otto’s own first wife, Edith of Wessex, patched up a feud between her husband and mother-in-law. A king could listen to his wife’s calming advice without losing face. Accepting it could be presented as being gracious rather than weak. Thus, female mediation was an important
element in moderating violence, something that appears to have been replicated at lower levels of the elite. Queens frequently acted as intercessors, promoting petitions from kin, friends and others seeking royal favour. One-third of Henry II’s diplomas record his wife’s interventions. Other female relations performed similar tasks, extending the reach of the royal family, even into other countries. Otto I’s sisters Gerberga and Hadwig married the rival claimants to the West Frankish throne, enabling the emperor to broker peace there. His eldest daughter Liudgard married Conrad the Red in 944, helping to consolidate Ottonian control of Lorraine.

Royal women possessed agency and did not always do the bidding of male relatives. Engelberge greatly influenced her husband, Emperor Louis II, in his attempts to extend imperial control to southern Italy in the 870s. Matilda’s favouritism for her younger son Heinrich caused Otto I considerable trouble, while Adelaide sided with her extended kin against her own son, Otto II, until he temporarily exiled her to Burgundy in 978.
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Agency was clearest during regencies, because these lacked formal rules, offering scope for forceful personalities to assert themselves. The trend towards hereditary rule under the Ottonians necessitated regencies, because Otto III and Henry IV were both under 12, the Frankish age of majority, when they succeeded their father.
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Otto III was only three when he was elected co-king in June 983, just six months ahead of his father’s death in the wake of the catastrophic defeat at Cotrone and amidst the Slav uprising. In an age of warriors, many found the idea of a boy-king wholly unacceptable and Heinrich ‘the Quarrelsome’, duke of Bavaria, attracted some support when he declared himself king in 984. The Empire’s integrity was saved by Otto’s mother, Empress Theophanu, who, in so many ways, occupied an exceptional position (see
Plate 22
). Several of Otto II’s advisors urged him to send her packing back to Byzantium when it was discovered on her arrival in 972 that she was only the niece rather than daughter of the Byzantine emperor.
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Nonetheless, her imperial lineage and the fact that she arrived with her weight in gold as a dowry ensured her marriage to Otto II went ahead. She became the only consort to receive the title ‘co-empress’ (
coimperatrix augusta
), and it was envisaged she would succeed as sole ruler if Otto II died without a son.
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Without question, Theophanu’s special status owed much to her own ability and force of character. She was aided by Archbishop
Willigis of Mainz, who used the crisis of 983 to extract concessions consolidating his see’s premier status. Heinrich the Quarrelsome was soon isolated and obliged to back down, allowing Theophanu to direct affairs without ever formally assuming a title as regent. On the contrary, she issued documents in her own name whilst in Italy, dating them like a reigning monarch from the year of her own coronation in 972 and on one occasion using the male form
imperator augustus
.

This was the closest the Empire came to Byzantine-style female imperial rule. The contemporary response was mixed. Critics combined traditional misogyny with xenophobia, accusing Theophanu of spreading a craving for luxury amongst the Empire’s female inhabitants. Thietmar of Merseburg and others praised her for restoring stability after Cotrone. Theophanu’s interests were personal and she showed no sense of female solidarity with her mother-in-law, Adelaide, whom she tried to banish. Adelaide continued the regency from 991 to 994 after Theophanu’s death, while Otto III’s aunt Matilda acted as ‘matriarch’ (
matricia
), looking after Germany during his Roman expedition in 999.

The last female regency was less successful. Empress Agnes acted as regent for her six-year-old son Henry IV, but was more obviously dependent on male advisors, notably Bishop Heinrich II of Augsburg, who was rumoured to be her lover. She made important errors, but also took an unfair share of the blame, with the monks of Niederalteich dismissively recording that she, ‘as is often the case with women, was easily swayed by the advice of all sorts of people’.
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Her retirement into pious widowhood in November 1061 was ostensibly to atone for her mistakes, but it also allowed her to regain autonomy and she retained some influence until her son’s formal majority in March 1065.

Gregorian misogyny increased hostility towards female power soon thereafter, but the prime reason why no future consorts played such roles was that the exercise of clearer elective monarchy ended the possibility of minorities. The Habsburgs still relied on female relations as governors of their various hereditary possessions during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, while empresses acquired new status with the development of dynastic, representative courts.
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The revisions to Habsburg inheritance law known as the Pragmatic Sanction allowed Maria Theresa to rule her family’s hereditary possessions herself after 1740, though the dispute over these changes caused the War of the
Austrian Succession (1740–48) and temporarily deprived the Habsburgs of the imperial title. Female regencies were fairly common in the German principalities where, usually, a widowed mother would rule jointly with a male relation until her son achieved his majority. Although women were personally ineligible from attending the Reichstag, this practice effectively widened female political influence in the Empire considerably beyond the remaining convents still recognized as imperial Estates, such as Essen and Quedlinburg (whose abbesses were likewise disbarred from attending in person and were represented instead by a male envoy). Women were disbarred from citizenship in imperial cities on the grounds they could not bear arms, but those in the countryside could still stand in for sick or absent husbands in village assemblies, or in some cases represent a household themselves as widows. In terms simply of female access to power, this situation contrasted favourably with that in supposedly more progressive western Europe.
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Imperial Vicars and Counts Palatine

The case of female regencies opens the question of how far others could substitute for an absent emperor. The position of imperial vicar emerged to exercise authority during the king’s absence (
absente rege
), especially for Germany during Roman expeditions. The term ‘vicar’ derived from the Latin
vicarius
, meaning ‘second hand’ and thus designating an assistant and not an ecclesiastical office (though the modern title ‘vicar’ also originated as a bishop’s assistant). The position of co-king generally fulfilled this function into the thirteenth century, but after the problems with Henry (VII), Frederick II planned to appoint vicars for Germany. Richard of Cornwall deliberately appointed the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz and the Count Palatine as vicars during his absences to ensure this important post was not held by a single person.
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Few subsequent kings left Germany for long periods, reducing the need to make such arrangements except for interregna following an emperor’s death without a king of the Romans having been elected. The Golden Bull established that in such situations the elector of Saxony would exercise imperial authority in northern Germany, while the elector Palatine was responsible for the south. The requirement to complete an imperial election within four months of an emperor’s death
was overshot on several occasions, but it was not in the other electors’ interests to allow their Saxon and Palatine colleagues too long as vicars. Only in 1657–8 and 1740–42 were there prolonged interregna, in both cases deliberately and through external interference.
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Imperial vicars were more common in Italy where a count was already appointed in Spoleto in 972 to oversee imperial interests during the emperor’s absence. Others were appointed temporarily for all or part of Italy with powers to issue decrees, collect imperial revenue, name magistrates, and deal with disputes. The pope increasingly tried to usurp these powers, claiming the right to exercise a ‘general vicariate’ over Italy and Arles during imperial interregna. Since the papacy defined an ‘interregnum’ as the absence of an emperor rather than a German king, it felt fully entitled to these powers after 1250 and named its new ally Charles d’Anjou as vicar for ten years in 1268. Rudolf I already reasserted claims in 1281, even without being crowned emperor, and this stance was continued by Henry VII and Louis IV, who appointed imperial vicars for specific territories and cities.
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The count of Savoy was made general vicar by Charles IV in 1372 and his successors claimed this position as a hereditary right after 1422.
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Charles V entrusted the position to his son Philip II as duke of Milan in 1548, but an administrative error in the imperial arch-chancellery upheld Savoy’s objections in 1582. Despite the wide remit, actual powers remained curtailed by the emperor’s prerogatives as suzerain over all Italian imperial fiefs and by the practical presence of real Habsburg power in northern Italy.

The formal delegation of lesser imperial powers also remained quite restricted. The main figure was the count Palatine, literally ‘count of the palace’ (
comes palatinus
,
Pfalzgraf
), emerging from the position of palace mayor, the highest official at the royal palace in Aachen. Having themselves used this position to usurp the Merovingian throne (as would the Capetians later in France), the Carolingians limited its powers, which became associated with jurisdiction of a fairly large county on the Lower Rhine by 916. The Ezzonid family held the position from 1023 to 1095, but were displaced through conflict with the pugnacious Archbishop Anno II of Cologne to the Middle Rhine during the 1060s, forming the basis of the later territory known as the Lower Palatinate.
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Palatine powers included the ability to legitimize births and make other changes of status short of ennoblement. Such powers were increasingly
also granted to other princes, for example Schwarzburg-Sondershausen in 1697. Nonetheless, the original count Palatine retained sufficient prestige to acquire both electoral status and the powers of imperial vicar in 1356.