Holy Roman Empress
When Constance returned to Aragon, she took up residence with her mother, Queen Sancha, in the Abbey of Nuestra Senora, at Sijena; Sancha had founded the abbey after her husband's death, and now lived there in retirement. Constance spent the next five years in the abbey with her mother, until her fate, again, was changed by her brother.
Pedro II wanted to be on good terms with Pope Innocent III, since he wanted an annulment of his marriage with Maria of Montpellier, and needed the blessing of the Pope. The Pope solicited the hand of the Dowager Queen of Hungary for his pupil, the young King Frederick I of Sicily. The Aragonese King accepted the proposal; Constance left her mother and the abbey of Nuestra Senora and began her trip to Sicily (1208). She never returned to Aragon or saw her mother again. Sancha died shortly after the departure of her daughter.
Constance and Frederick were married in the Sicilian city of Messina on 15 August 1209. In the ceremony, she was crowned Queen of Sicily. By this time, Constance was thirty years old and her new husband only fourteen. Two years later, in 1211, Constance gave birth a son, called Henry, who later had a tragic end.
On 9 December 1212, Frederick was crowned King of Germany in opposition to Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor. During the absence of her husband, Constance stayed in Sicily as regent of the Kingdom until 1220.
At first Frederick controlled Southern Germany but Otto IV was effectively deposed on 5 July 1215. This time Constance was crowned German Queen with her husband.
Pope Honorius III crowned Frederick Holy Roman Emperor on 22 November 1220. Constance was crowned Holy Roman Empress while their son Henry became the new King of Germany. She died of malaria less than two years later in Catania and was buried in the Cathedral of Palermo, in a Roman sarcophagus with a beautiful oriental tiara.
Read more about this topic: Constance Of Aragon
Famous quotes containing the words holy, roman and/or empress:
“and the oxen near
The worn foundations of their resting-place,
The holy manger where their bed is corn
And holly torn for Christmas. If they die,
As Jesus, in the harness, who will mourn?
Lamb of the shepherds, Child, how still you lie.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“My first childish doubt as to whether God could really be a good Protestant was suggested by my observation of the deplorable fact that the best voices available for combination with my mother’s in the works of the great composers had been unaccountably vouchsafed to Roman Catholics.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The Empress is Legitimist, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.”
—Napoleon Bonaparte III (1808–1873)