Ida of Carinthia
Overview
Biography
Ida of Carinthia, countess of Nevers, daughter of Engelbert II, duke of Carinthia and his wife Uta of Passau, married William/Guillaume III of Nevers (1149-61). Their children were William IV, count of Nevers (+1168), Guy/Guido, count of Nevers (+1175), Reynald, lord of Decize, Adelaide of Nevers (m. Reynald, count of Joigny), and Ermengard. Ida’s sister, Mathilda of Carinthia was married to Thibaut IV of Blois, II of Troyes and Champagne, son of Adela and Stephen, in 1123. Ida’s father-in-law, William II, had been imprisoned briefly by Thibaut (see Charles Warren Hollister, Henry I [Yale, 2003]). Ida first appeared in a charter with her husband in 1142, and served as regent for him while he was in the Holy Land (see Constance Bouchard, Sword, Mitre, and Cloister [Ithaca: Cornell, 1987], 347-48). She outlived her husband and two of her sons and died in 1179.
Ida was involved in conflicts with the abbey of Vezelay for many years, beginning during her regency but continuing for two decades during the reign of her son, William IV. Bernard of Clairvaux and pope Eugene III both wrote to her asking her to stop her oppressions of the monastery in 1148, and Alexander III wrote in 1164 about the abuses committed by her and her son. Alexander wrote in even stronger terms to the king of France, Louis VII, about their physical attacks on the monastery and seizure of goods and people; Louis asked the archbishop of Sens to intervene and he excommunicated the count and his mother. According to the abbey’s chronicle, Ida met with the archbishop and abbot and offered one hundred gold pounds as a guarantee of good intentions. The king was supposedly annoyed that the count left the negotiations to his mother, and then insulted the royal envoys. Finally only the threat of war made the count settle. At which point, the countess refused to swear to the agreement without assurances from the abbot, and her son had to have a surrogate swear for her.
The story of the conflict with Vezelay comes from René de Lespinasse, Le Nivernais et les Comtes de Nevers (Paris: H. Champion, 1909), chapter 9. The abbey account tends to put much of the blame on Ida in rather strong terms, which may be exaggerated, but does suggest she had influence during her son’s reign: “But that old Herodiade, a Jezebel, daughter of Amalech, the mother of count William of Nevers, by name Ida, a rival of honesty and enemy of all goodness, infused a virus of hatreds from her pestilential mouth into the breast of her son; she urged her satellites as if partisans of her son, to persecute sharply the monastery of Vezelay. There were slaughters, rapines, captures, various torments, different kinds of death, all coming from from the cave/mind of that evil woman,” Hugh of Poitiers, HGF 15.714, note, and Spicilegium, 2.544: “Sed et illa vetus Herodias, filia Jezabel de semine Amalech, mater videlicet Guillelmi Comitis Nivernis, nomine Ida, virus odiorum ore pestifero jugiter infundebat in filii pectore, aemula honestatis et inimica totius bonitatis, et quae satellites suos, quasi filii partibus favoris, ad persequendum monasterium Vizeliaci acriter perurgebat. Hinc caedes, hinc rapinae, hinc captivitates, hinc varia tormenta, hinc mortis diversa genera, omnia de antro femineae nequitiae manantia,” It is hard to tell how much truth there is in this picture of Ida. According to Lespinasse, other acts of her administration show her to be active, benevolent, and charitable, 316.
During the reign of her second son, Guy, Ida continues to have a presence in the court of Nevers. She is mentioned as a witness in donations, e.g.: “William [of the White hands], archbishop of Sens, and Hugo, apostolic legate, attest that the count of Nevers, Guy/Guido, gave in alms to the church of Pontigny, with the agreement of his wife Mahaut, his brother Renaud, and his mother Ida, maternal aunt of said archbishop, the close of St. Martin at Auxerre, in the presence of the bishops of Auxerre, William, and of Nevers, Bernard,” Le Premier Cartulaire de l’Abbaye Cistercienne de Pontigny, ed. Martine Garrigues (Paris: Bibliotheque nationale, 1981), 89-90, #8, dated 1175: “” Hanc donationem laudavit et concessit in presentia nostra Mathildis, uxor sua, et Rainaldus, frater ipsius comitis, et Ida, illorum mater, matertera nostra.”
Letters from Ida of Carinthia
A letter to Louis VII, King of France (1163)A letter to Public (1175)
A letter to Suger, abbot of St. Denis (1147/1148)
Letters to Ida of Carinthia
A letter from Bernard of ClairvauxA letter from pope Alexander III
A letter from Pope Eugene III