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Irene Angelina

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Irene Angelina (1181 - 1208) was the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos by his first wife Herina.

In 1193 she married Roger III of Sicily, but he died on 24 December, 1193. Irene was captured in the German invasion of Sicily on 29 December, 1194 and was married on 25 May, 1197 to Philip of Swabia. In Germany, she was renamed Maria.

Her father, who had been deposed in 1195, urged her to get Philip's support for his reinstatement; her brother, Alexius, subsequently spent some time at Philip's court during the preparations for the Fourth Crusade. She thus had an early influence on the eventual diversion of the Crusade to Constantinople in 1204.

She was described by Walther von der Vogelweide as "the rose without a thorn, the dove without guile."

Philip and Irene had four daughters:

and two other children, both sons -Reinald and an unnamed son, possibly called Frederick- who died in infancy.

After the murder of her husband (21 April 1208), Irene -who was pregnant by that time- retired to the Burg Hohenstaufen. There, four months later (27 August 1208), she gave birth to a daughter (called Beatrice Postuma); but both mother and child died shortly afterwards. She was buried in the Staufen Mausoleum in the Monastery of Lorch, along with her daughter and sons. Her grave, now destroyed, cannot be reconstructed today.

Sources

  • O city of Byzantium: annals of Niketas Choniates tr. Harry J. Magoulias (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984).

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