Tags
Adelaide of Burgundy, Anna of Provence, Berengar I of Italy, Byzantine Emperor Leo VI, Charles-Constantine, Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig III, King Rudolph I of Upper Burgundy, Zoe Zaoutzaina
Marriages and heirs
In 899, Emperor Ludwig III was betrothed to Anna of Constantinople, the daughter of Byzantine Emperor Leo VI “the Wise” and his second wife, Zoe Zaoutzaina.
The evidence for this betrothal is a letter by Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos in which he testifies that Leo VI had united his daughter to a Frank prince, a cousin of Bertha, to whom came later a great misfortune. That unfortunate prince could only be Ludwig III, whose mother Irmingardis was a first cousin of Bertha. Emperor Ludwig III was blinded on July 21, 905.
This betrothal occurred shortly before the fall of Taormina to the Arabs, and was part of extended diplomatic activities meant to strengthen Byzantine alliances with the western powers to preserve Byzantine territory in southern Italy.
The question of whether the betrothal was ever followed up by an actual marriage is still a matter of some controversy. Ludwig fathered a son called Charles-Constantine, who would become Count of Vienne.
Charles-Constantine’s mother is not named in any sources. There has been modern speculation, proposed by Previté-Orton and championed by Christian Settipani, that she was Anna, the daughter of Leo VI and Zoe Zaoutzaina, based both upon the documented betrothal, as well on the onomastic evidence, stating that Charles-Constantine’s name points to a Byzantine mother. Shaun Tougher doubts they were ever married.
Detractors of the theory point out that when Anna was born, however, she was the daughter of a concubine who later became empress. Her father, at the time of Charles-Constantine’s birth, was the reigning Emperor, therefore the silence of primary sources works against this theory.
In addition, Liutprand of Cremona makes no mention of this, and it would have been very interesting to him, given that he was a thorough gossip, had been ambassador to Constantinople and devoted several chapters to the misadventures of Ludwig III in Italy with no mention of these Byzantine connections.
René Poupardin believed that Constantine was not a baptismal name, but Settipani disagrees. Richer specifically stated that Charles-Constantine’s ancestry was tainted with illegitimacy and mentioned nothing of his mother’s supposed illustrious Byzantine parentage.
Christian Settipani challenges that theory by stating that the only reason why René Poupardin made him a bastard of Louis III was a passage by Richerius claiming that “Charles Constantine (…) was from a royal race, but which nobility had been vilified by a bastard ancestry remounting to his great-great-grandfather”, proving nothing about Charles-Constantine’s mother. Such a union would also account for the mention of Greek merchants in Ludwig’s privilege of 921.
In 914, Ludwig III entered a second union, which would then be either his first or second marriage, by marrying Adelaide of Burgundy, daughter of King Rudolph I of Upper Burgundy, likely mother of Rudolph, the other documented son of Ludwig the Blind.
In December 915, his daughter, Anna of Provence, married Berengar. It has been suggested, largely for onomastic reasons, that Anna was a daughter of Ludwig III and his wife Anna, daughter of Leo VI the Wise. In that case, she would have been betrothed to Berengar while still a child and only become his consors and imperatrix in 923.