European Royal History
Posts about Bertha of Burgundy written by liamfoley63
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European Royal History
From the Emperor’s Desk: in this examination of the life of Robert II, King of the Franks, I will mostly examine his three marriages.

Robert II (ca. 972 – 20 July 1031), called the Pious (French: le Pieux) or the Wise (French: le Sage), was King of the Franks from 996 to 1031, the second from the Capetian dynasty.

In contrast of his father, the exact date or birth place of Robert II is unknown, although historians advocated for the year 972 and the city of Orléans, the capital of the Robertians from the 9th century. The only son of Hugh Capet and Adelaide of Aquitaine, he was named after his heroic ancestor Robert the Strong, who died fighting the Vikings in 866. In addition to him, his parents’ marriage produced two other daughters whose parentage is confirmed by contemporary sources without any doubt: Hedwig (wife of Reginar IV, Count of Hainaut) and Gisela (wife of Hugh I, Count of Ponthieu).

Crowned Junior King in 987, he assisted his father on military matters (notably during the two sieges of Laon, in 988 and 991). His solid education, provided by Gerbert of Aurillac (the future Pope Sylvester II) in Reims, allows him to deal with religious questions of which he quickly becomes the guarantor (he heads the Council of Saint-Basle de Verzy in 991 and that of Chelles in 994). Continuing the political work of his father, after became sole ruler in 996, he managed to maintain the alliance with the Duchy of Normandy and the County of Anjou and thus was able to contain the ambitions of Count Odo II of Blois.

Robert II distinguished himself with an extraordinarily long reign for the time.

Immediately after associated his son to the throne, Hugh Capet wanted Robert II to marry a royal princess but due the prohibition to marry people within the third degree of consanguinity, obliges him to seek in the East. He had a letter wrote by Gerbert of Aurillac asking the Byzantine Emperor Basil II the hand of one of his nieces for Robert II; however, no Byzantine response is recorded.

After this rebuffal, and under the pressure from his father (who apparently wanted to reward the Flemish help he received when he seized power in 987), Robert II had to marry with Rozala, daughter of Berengar II of Ivrea, King of Italy and widow of Arnulf II, Count of Flanders. The wedding, celebrated before 1 April 988, brings to Robert II the possession of the cities of Montreuil and Ponthieu and a possible guardianship over the County of Flanders given the still young age of Rozala’s son Baldwin IV, for whom she already acted as regent since her first husband’s death.

Upon her marriage, Rozala became in Junior-Queen consort of the Franks and took the name of Susanna; however, after about three or four years of marriage (c. 991–992), the young Robert II repudiates his wife, due to the excesive age difference between them (Rozala was almost 22 years older than him), and probably too old to have more children.

The marriage was formally annulled in late 996, following Hugh Capet’s death and Robert II’s ascension as sole King of the Franks.

Now, Robert II was determined to find a bride who would give him the much hoped-for male offspring. In early 996, probably during the military campaign against Count Odo I of Blois, he met Bertha of Burgundy, the daughter of King Conrad of Burgundy and his wife Matilda, daughter of King Louis IV of the Franks and Gerberga of Saxony (sister of Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor), so was from an undisputed royal lineage. Bertha was first married to Count Odo I of Blois in about 983. They had several children, including Odo II.

Robert II and Bertha quickly became attracted to each other, despite the complete resistance of Hugh Capet (the House of Blois was the great enemy of the Capetian dynasty). However, Robert II sees in addition to his personal feelings, also a territorial gain since Bertha would bring all the Blois territories. The deaths in 996 of Odo I of Blois (March 12) and Hugh Capet (October 24) eliminated the main obstacles for a union between Robert II and Bertha.

However, two important details are opposed to this union: firstly, Robert II and Bertha are second cousins (their respective grandmothers, Hedwig and Gerberga, are sisters), and secondly, Robert II was the godfather of Theobald, one of the sons of Bertha. According to canon law, marriage is then impossible. Despite this, the two lovers began a sexual relationship and Robert II puts part of the County of Blois under his direct rule.

Robert II and Bertha quickly found complacent bishops to marry them off, which Archambaud de Sully, Archbishop of Tours, did in November/December 996, much to the chagrin of the new Pope Gregory V. To please the Holy See, Robert II annuls the sentence of the Council of Saint-Basle, frees Archbishop Arnoul and restores him to the episcopal see of Reims. Gerbert of Aurillac then had to take refuge with Emperor Otto III in 997. Despite this, the Pope ordered Robert II and Bertha to put an end to their “incestuous union”.

Finally, two councils meeting first in Pavia (February 997) then in Rome (summer 998) condemn them to do penance for seven years, and in the event of non-separation, they would be struck with excommunication. Moreover, at the end of three years of union, there are no living descendants: Bertha gave birth only one stillborn son, in 999. That year, the accession of Gerbert of Aurillac to the Papacy under the name of Sylvester II does not change anything. Following a synod, the new Pope accepted the condemnation of the King of the Franks whose “perfidy” he had suffered. Finally, the seven years of penance are completed around 1003.

Despite the threat of excommunication, Robert II and Bertha refused to submit until September 1001, when they finally became separated. The inability of Bertha to produce further offspring after her stillbirth would be probably one of the main reasons for this. Robert II, in need of male heirs, decided to remarry one more time.

After September 1001 and certainly before August 25, 1003, Robert II contracted his third and last marriage, this time with a distant princess he had never met to avoid any close relationship, the 17-years-old Constance, daughter of Count William I of Arles and Provence and his wife Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou. The new Queen’s parents were prestigious in their own right: Count William I was nicknamed “the Liberator” (le Libérateur) thanks to his victories against the Saracens, whom definitely expelled from the Fraxinet fortress in 972, and Countess Adelaide-Blanche was notorious by her several marriages (in the third one, she was briefly Queen of Aquitaine and junior Queen of the West Franks as the wife of King Louis V, whom she abandoned) and also she was the paternal aunt of Count Fulk III of Anjou, so thanks to his new marriage, Robert II could restore the alliance with the House of Ingelger.

But Constance would be a royal consort who does not make the King happy. The Queen’s personality gives rise to unfavorable comments on the part of the chroniclers: “vain, greedy, arrogant, vindictive”; these misogynist remarks, made by monks, where quite exceptional especially to a Queen in the 11th century. The only positive point is that Constance gives birth a large number of offspring. Six children born from her marriage to Robert II are recorded.

The conflict that lead to an attempt to annull this third union all started at the beginning of the year 1008, a day when the King and his faithful Count palatine Hugh of Beauvais were hunting in the forest of Orléans. Suddenly, twelve armed men appear and throw themselves on Hugh before killing him under the eyes of the king. The crime was ordered by Count Fulk III of Anjou and with all probability supported by the Queen.

Robert II, exasperated by his wife after six or seven years of marriage (c. 1009–1010), goes personally to Rome accompanied by Angilramme (a monk from Saint-Riquier) and Bertha de Burgundy. His plan was, of course, to obtain from Pope Sergius IV the annulment from his marriage with Constance and remarry with Bertha, whom Robert II still loved deeply, under the grounds of Constance’s participation in the murder of Hugh of Beauvais.

Odorannus, a Benedictine monk from the Abbey of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif in Sens, explains in his writings that, that during her husband’s journey to Rome, Constance withdrew in distress to her dominions at Theil. According to him, Saint Savinian would have appeared to him and secured that the royal marriage would be preserved; three days later, Robert II was back, definitively abandoning Bertha.

At Constance’s urging, her eldest son Hugh Magnus was crowned co-king alongside his father in 1017. But later Hugh demanded his parents share power with him, and rebelled against his father in 1025. Constance, however, on learning of her son’s rebellion was furious with him, rebuking him at every turn. At some point Hugh was reconciled with his parents but shortly thereafter died, probably about age eighteen. The royal couple was devastated; there was concern for the queen’s mental health due to the violence of her grief.

Robert and Constance quarrelled over which of their surviving sons should inherit the throne; Robert favored their second son Henry, while Constance favored their third son, Robert. Despite his mother’s protests and her support by several bishops, Henry was crowned in 1027. Constance, however, was not graceful when she didn’t get her way. The ailing Fulbert, bishop of Chartres told a colleague that he could attend the ceremony “if he traveled slowly to Reims—but he was too frightened of the queen to go at all”.

Constance encouraged her sons to rebel, and they began attacking and pillaging the towns and castles belonging to their father. Her son Robert attacked Burgundy, the duchy he had been promised but had never received, and Henri seized Dreux. At last King Robert II agreed to their demands and peace was made which lasted until the king’s death.

Robert II died on July 20, 1031 and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son as King Henri I of the Franks.

Constance died after passing out following a coughing fit on July 28, 1032 and was buried beside her husband Robert at Saint-Denis Basilica.

His 35-year-long reign was marked by his attempts to expand the royal domain by any means, especially by his long struggle to gain the Duchy of Burgundy (which ended in 1014 with his victory) after the death in 1002 without male descendants of his paternal uncle Duke Henri I, after a war against Otto-William of Ivrea, Henri I’s stepson and adopted by him as his heir. His policies earned him many enemies, including three of his sons.

Robert II’s life is presented as a model to follow, made of innumerable pious donations to various religious establishments, of charity towards the poor and above all of gestures considered sacred, such as the healing of certain lepers: Robert II is the first sovereign considered to be the first “miracle worker”.

The real reconstruction of his action in the Kingdom of the Franks is very difficult to pinpoint as the sources are flattering towards him (hagiographic conception of Helgaud). On the contrary, this was considered by some later historians that Robert II’s reign was a continuation of a decline that began under the last Carolingians; in reality, the charters of the first third of the 11th century rather show a slow adjustment of structures in time. In any case, Robert II, Capetian follower of Carolingian values, remains a great character in the 11th century.

Robert II (March 27, 972 – July 20, 1031), called the Pious or the Wise, was King of the Franks from 996 to 1031, the second monarch from the House of Capet. He was born in Orléans to Hugh Capet, King of the Franks and Adelaide of Aquitaine, the daughter of Guillaume III, Duke of Aquitaine and Adele of Normandy, daughter of Rollo of Normandy.

Robert II distinguished himself with an extraordinarily long reign for the time. His 35-year-long reign was marked by his attempts to expand the royal domain by any means, especially by his long struggle to gain the Duchy of Burgundy. His policies earned him many enemies, including three of his sons. He was also known for his difficult marriages: he married three times, annulling two of these and attempting to annul the third, prevented only by the Pope’s refusal to accept a third annulment.

Robert II, King of the Franks

Immediately after the coronation of Hugh Capet, the new Frankish King began to push for the coronation of his son Robert as a co-ruler. “The essential means by which the early Capetians were seen to have kept the throne in their family was through the association of the eldest surviving son in the royalty during the father’s lifetime,” Andrew W. Lewis has observed, in tracing the phenomenon in this line of kings who lacked dynastic legitimacy.

Hugh’s claimed reason was that he was planning an expedition against the Moorish armies harassing Borrel II of Barcelona, an invasion which never occurred, and that the stability of the country necessitated a co-king, should he die while on expedition. Ralph Glaber, however, attributes Hugh’s request to his old age and inability to control the nobility.

Modern scholarship has largely imputed to Hugh the motive of establishing a dynasty against the claims of electoral power on the part of the aristocracy, but this is not the typical view of contemporaries and even some modern scholars have been less sceptical of Hugh’s “plan” to campaign in Spain. Robert was eventually crowned on December 25, 987. A measure of Hugh’s success is that when Hugh died in 996, Robert continued to reign without any succession dispute, but during his long reign actual royal power dissipated into the hands of the great territorial magnates.

Marital problems

As early as 989, having been rebuffed in his search for a Byzantine princess, Hugh Capet arranged for Robert to marry Rozala, the recently widowed daughter of Berengar II of Italy, many years his senior, who took the name of Susanna upon becoming queen. She was the widow of Arnulf II of Flanders, with whom she had two children.

Robert II divorced her within a year of his father’s death in 996. He then married Bertha, daughter of Conrad of Burgundy, around the time of his father’s death. She was a widow of Odo I of Blois, but was also Robert’s second cousin. For reasons of consanguinity, Pope Gregory V refused to sanction the marriage, and Robert was excommunicated. After long negotiations with Gregory’s successor, Pope Sylvester II, this marriage was annulled.

Finally, in 1001, Robert entered into his final and longest-lasting marriage—to Constance of Arles, the daughter of Guillaume I of Provence. Her southern customs and entourage were regarded with suspicion at court. After his companion Hugh of Beauvais, count palatine, urged the king to repudiate her as well, knights of her kinsman Fulk III, Count of Anjou had Beauvais murdered in 1008.

Coat of Arms of Robert II, King of the Franks

The king and Bertha then went to Rome to ask Pope Sergius IV for an annulment so they could remarry. After this was refused, he went back to Constance and fathered several children by her. Her ambition alienated the chroniclers of her day, who blamed her for several of the king’s decisions. Constance and Robert remained married until his death in 1031.

Piety

Robert II was a devout Catholic, hence his sobriquet “the Pious.” He was musically inclined, being a composer, chorister, and poet, and made his palace a place of religious seclusion where he conducted the matins and vespers in his royal robes. Robert’s reputation for piety also resulted from his lack of toleration for heretics, whom he harshly punished.

He is said to have advocated forced conversions of local Jewry. He supported riots against the Jews of Orléans who were accused of conspiring to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Robert reinstated the Roman imperial custom of burning heretics at the stake.

The kingdom Robert inherited was not large and, in an effort to increase his power, he vigorously pursued his claim to any feudal lands that became vacant, usually resulting in war with a counter-claimant. In 1003, his invasion of the Duchy of Burgundy was thwarted, and it would not be until 1016 that he was finally able to get the support of the Church to be recognized as Duke of Burgundy.

The pious Robert II made few friends and many enemies, including three of his own sons: Hugh, HenrI, and Robert. They turned against their father in a civil war over power and property. Hugh died in revolt in 1025. In a conflict with Henri and the younger Robert, King Robert II’s army was defeated, and he retreated to Beaugency outside Paris, his capital. Robert II died in the middle of the war with his sons on July 20, 1031 at Melun. He was interred with Constance in Saint Denis Basilica and succeeded by his son Henri, in both France and Burgundy.