William IX Duke of Aquitaine

Notes:

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_IX,_Duke_of_Aquitaine

Called the Troubador, was the Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou, William was the son of William VIII of Aquitaine by his third wife, Hildegarde of Burgundy. He was also one of the leaders of the Crusade of 1101. Though his political and military achievements have a certain historical importance, he is best known as the earliest troubadour, a lyric poet in the Provençal language whose work survived.

William inherited the duchy at the age of fifteen upon the death of his father. In 1094, William married Philippa, the daughter and heiress of William IV of Toulouse. By Philippa, William had two sons and five daughters, including his eventual successor, William X. His second son, Raymond, eventually became the Prince of Antioch in the Holy Land, and his daughter Agnes married firstly Aimery V of Thouars and then Ramiro II of Aragon, reestablishing dynastic ties with that ruling house.

Pope Urban II urged him to "take the cross" (i.e. the First Crusade) and leave for the Holy Land, but William was more interested in exploiting the absence on Crusade of Raymond IV of Toulouse, his wife's uncle, to press her claim to Toulouse. He and Philippa did capture Toulouse in 1098, an act for which they were threatened with excommunication. Partly out of a desire to regain favor with the religious authorities and partly out of a wish to see the world, William joined the Crusade of 1101, an expedition inspired by the success of the First Crusade in 1099. To finance it, he had to mortgage Toulouse back to Bertrand, the son of Raymond IV.

William arrived in the Holy Land in 1101 and stayed there until the following year. His record as a military leader is not very impressive. He fought mostly skirmishes in Anatolia and was frequently defeated. His recklessness led to his being ambushed on several occasions, with great losses to his own forces. In September 1101, his entire army was destroyed by the Seljuk Turks at Heraclea; William himself barely escaped, and, according to Orderic Vitalis, he reached Antioch with only six surviving companions.

William, like his father and many magnates of the time, had a rocky relationship with the Church. He was excommunicated for "abducting" the Viscountess Dangerose (Dangerosa), the wife of his vassal Aimery I de Rochefoucauld, Viscount of Châtellerault. The lady, however, appears to have been a willing party in the matter. He installed her in the Maubergeonne tower of his castle in Poitiers.

Upon returning to Poitiers from Toulouse, Philippa was enraged to discover a rival woman living in her palace. She appealed to her friends at court and to the Church; however, no noble could assist her since William was their feudal overlord, and whilst the Papal legate Giraud (who was bald) complained to William and told him to return Dangerose to her husband, William's only response was, "Curls will grow on your pate [head] before I part with the Viscountess." Humiliated, Philippa chose in 1116 to retire to the Abbey of Fontevrault and did not survive there long, however: the abbey records state that she died on 28 November 1118.

Relations between the Duke and his elder son William also became strained. Father and son improved their relationship after the marriage of the younger William to Aenor of Châtellerault, Dangerose's daughter by her husband, in 1121.

William's greatest legacy to history was not as a warrior but as a troubadour, a lyric poet employing the Romance vernacular language called Provençal or Occitan. His work is the earliest surviving troubadour poems and songs.

An anonymous 13th-century vida of William remembers him thus:

"The Count of Poitiers was one of the most courtly men in the world and one of the greatest deceivers of women. He was a fine knight at arms, liberal in his womanizing, and a fine composer and singer of songs. He traveled much through the world, seducing women."

He died on 11 February 1127, aged 56, after suffering a short illness.




Buried:
Grave location:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=90062291

William married Philippa of Toulouse, Countess. Philippa (daughter of William IV of Toulouse and Emma of Mortain) was born ca 1073, Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, Midi-Pyrénées, France; died 28 Nov 1118, Fontevraud Abbey, France; was buried , Fontevraud Abbey Fontevraud-l'Abbaye Departement de Maine-et-Loire Pays de la Loire, France. [Group Sheet]

1. William X of Aquitaine was born 1099, Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, Midi-Pyrénées, France; died 09 Apr 1137, on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain; was buried , Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela Santiago de Compostela Provincia da La Coruña Galicia, Spain.

Notes:

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_VIII,_Duke_of_Aquitaine

Born Guy-Geoffrey, he was duke of Gascony, then duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers. He was the youngest son of William V of Aquitaine by his third wife Agnes of Burgundy.

William VIII was one of the leaders of the allied army called to help Ramiro I of Aragon in the Siege of Barbastro (1064). This expedition was the first campaign organized by the papacy, namely Pope Alexander II, against a Muslim city, and the precursor of the later Crusades movement. Aragon and its allies conquered the city, killed its inhabitants and collected an important booty.

However, Aragon lost the city again in the following years. During William VIII's rule, the alliance with the southern kingdoms of modern Spain was a political priority as shown by the marriage of all his daughters to Iberian kings.

He married three times and had at least five children. After he divorced his second wife due to infertility, he remarried to a much younger woman who was also his cousin. This marriage produced a son, but William VIII had to visit Rome in the early 1070s to persuade the pope to recognize his children from his third marriage as legitimate.

First wife: Garsende of Périgord, daughter of Count Aldabert II of Périgord (divorced November 1058), no children. She became a nun at Saintes.

Second wife: Matoeda (divorced May 1068), one daughter
Agnes (1052?1078), married Alfonso VI of Castile

Third wife: Hildegarde of Burgundy (daughter of duke Robert I of Burgundy)

Agnes (died 1097), married Peter I of Aragon
William IX of Aquitaine, his heir


Buried:
Grave location and biography:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=91952010

William married Hildegarde of Burgundy. Hildegarde was born 1056, County of Burgundy, France; died 1104, Aquitaine; was buried , Saint-Jean l'Evangéliste de Montierneuf Poitiers Departement de la Vienne Poitou-Charentes, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegarde_of_Burgundy

She was a French noblewoman and the only daughter of Robert I, Duke of Burgundy with his second wife, Ermengarde of Anjou. She was by marriage, the Duchess of Gascony and Aquitaine.

Hildegarde married William VIII, Duke of Aquitaine; she was his third wife had three children:

William IX, Duke of Aquitaine

Agnes of Aquitaine, Queen of Aragon and Navarre

Beatrice

William?s birth was a cause of great celebration at the Aquitanian court, but the Church at first considered him illegitimate because of his parents? consanguinity. This obliged his father to make a pilgrimage to Rome soon after his birth to seek papal approval of his marriage to Hildegarde.

Buried:
Grave location and historical portrait:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=91952236