Chapter three

Ermesinde: the connecting link

Namur, 1186: Ermesinde is born into a world of political turmoil.1 Small principalities had been developing within the wider area of the Southern Low Countries, and their ruling dynasties, although largely linked by intermarriage, were rivalling each other in expanding their territorial power. The Hohenstaufen emperors were unwilling to lose further control in a region, where imperial power had been declin- ing for more than a century. As a result, most local quarrels became entwined with the conflict between Papacy and Empire, and later, between Hohenstaufen and Guelfs. In addition, some French mag- nates were only too willing to exploit the situation and extend their influence into these neighbouring lands, adding a fourth dimension to the struggles. The situation intensified during the power vacuum after the death of Ermesinde’s father, Henry IV of Namur (†1196). Her fiancé, Henry of Champagne, to whom she had been promised at the tender age of three, had ventured to the Holy Land, where in 1192 he discovered a better match in the person of Isabella, queen of Jerusalem. At the age of ten, Ermesinde found herself stranded without a male protector, while Emperor Henry VI and Count Baldwin VI of Flanders shared the possession of her ancestral lands of Luxembourg and Namur. Some years later, Thibaut of Bar decided to seize the opportunity and married the disinherited countess. In the following years, he bought back his wife’s rights over Luxembourg, riding unsuccessfully against Namur, but negotiating effectively for the of Laroche and Durbuy to the north. When Thibaut died at the battle of Bou- vines in 1214, the lands of Luxembourg had been largely regained, some new territories added, but most of Namur seemed lost. With the

1 on the life of Ermesinde, see in particular Michel Margue, ‘Ermesinde. Notice biographique’, in Ermesinde et l’affranchissement de la ville de Luxembourg. Etudes sur la femme, le pouvoir et la ville au XIIIe siècle. Publications du Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, Publications du CLUDEM 7, ed. Michel Margue (Luxembourg: CLUDEM and Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, 1994), 23–41. 110 chapter three death of her husband, the countess, now at the age of twenty-eight and without a male heir, found herself back in a vulnerable situation. She remarried after only three months of grieving. Her new suitor was Waleran (or Walram) of Limburg, a distinguished knight, twice crusader and himself only recently widowed.2 Since he was a younger son, the marriage provided him with a territory. But after the death of his older brother, Waleran unexpectedly inherited all of his father’s possessions, thus becoming the master of a large complex of lands, stretching from the duchy of Limburg in the north to the of Luxembourg in the south. After the death of her second husband, Ermesinde kept her ances- tral lands as well as the marquisate of Arlon, the dowry from her second marriage.3 The duchy of Limburg fell to Henry II, Waleran’s eldest son from his first marriage. Waleran’s eldest son with Ermes- inde, Henry, called ‘Blondel’, was still under age, and the county was administrated jointly by Ermesinde in her role as countess, and her younger step-son, Waleran of Montjoie, as guardian. From the mid- 1230s, the insurmountable differences in political style between the rash Montjoie and the more rational countess caused her to end his regency. The following years of her political career were marked by attempts to enhance stability within the country and consolidate her rule. Two major decisions were the installation of a noble council, and the granting of civic liberties to a number of localities. This created a stable political relationship between count and towns to the benefit of both. Ermesinde died in February 1247, leaving her son, by now a well-trained politician, solely in charge. She was buried in Clairefon- taine, in what was soon to become an abbey of Cistercian nuns.4 The first two sections of this chapter will investigate the nineteenth- century initiators of the modern-day representations of the countess: the liberal historians from the of Luxembourg and the Jesuits of Clairefontaine in . A third section will explore how these two

2 For a biography of Waleran, see Mike Richartz, ‘Waleran de Limbourg (ca. 1165–1226). Le devenir d’un grand politique entre et Rhin’, (Unpublished MA thesis, Université de Liège, 2000). 3 she had already passed on the dowry from her first marriage, the lands of Mar- ville, as the dowry of her daughter from her marriage with Thibaut to Waleran’s younger son of that same name from his first marriage. 4 on the foundation of Clairefontaine, see Georges Despy, ‘Le “testament” d’Ermesinde et la fondation de l’abbaye de Clairefontaine’, in Ermesinde et l’affranchissement de la ville de Luxembourg (see note 1), 211–219.