Women's Biography: Ermengard of Tours

The details of the selected biography:  

There are letters written to and by Ermengard of Tours.


Woman's name:

Ermengard of Tours

Woman's title:

Empress

Woman's biography:

Ermengard of Tours, empress, born 800(?), died 851. A daughter of Hugo of Tours, count of Alsace, and head of the Eticho clan, Ermengard married Lothar I, oldest son of Louis the Pious in 821. Her sister Bertha had married Gerhard, count of Paris and later duke of Lyons and Vienne in 819, and her sister Adelais married Conrad of Burgundy and after he died Robert the Strong, ancestor of the Capetian kings.
Ermengard’s husband Lothar was crowned joint emperor with his father in 817 but later revolted against Louis with his brothers, Pepin and Louis the German, not wanting to share the kingdom with their half-brother, Charles the Bald , but the alliance did not last. Lothar became King of Italy in 822, and was crowned emperor by the pope in Rome, in 823. Ermengard and Lothar had three sons, Louis II, Lothar II, and Charles of Provence, and several daughters, Hiltrude, Bertha, Irmgard, Gisela.
Ermengard embroidered a cloth on the life of St. Peter, for which Sedulius Scottus composed inscriptions.(1) She held San Salvatore Brescia as part of her dowry, founded Agna , and built a convent for women on her ancestral land at Erstein in Alsace (Stafford, 179).

Biographical notes:

(1) Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, The King's Wife in the Early Middle Ages (London: Batsford, 1983), 107.

Birth date:

800?

Birth place:

Death date:

851

Letters

Sender(s): Receiver(s): Date:
a nobleman  Ermengard of Tours  840-42 
Hincmar of Reims  Ermengard of Tours  after May 3, 845 
Hrabanus Maurus  Ermengard of Tours  841-51 
Hincmar of Reims  Ermengard of Tours  846-47 
Hrabanus Maurus  Ermengard of Tours  841-51