Otto I, Count of Burgundy

Otto I
Count of Burgundy
Portrait in Besançon Cathedral
Spouse(s)	Margaret, Countess of Blois
Issue Joanna I, Countess of Burgundy Beatrice II, Countess of Burgundy
Noble family	Hohenstaufen Dynasty
Father	Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor
Mother	Beatrice I, Countess of Burgundy
Born	Between 1167 and 1171
Died	13 January 1200
Buried	St Stephen's Cathedral (Citadel of Besançon)

Otto I (between 1167 and 1171 – 13 January 1200) was Count of Burgundy from 1190 to his death and briefly Count of Luxembourg from 1196 to 1197. He was the fourth son of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor by his second wife Beatrice I, Countess of Burgundy,^[1] daughter of Count Renaud III.^[2]

Reign

Upon the death of his mother in 1184, his father granted him the Burgundian county, elevating him to the rank of a Count palatine (Freigraf). Haughty Otto however soon entered into several feuds: not only with the Anscarid lords of Auxonne and Mâcon, who claimed late Beatrice's heritage, but also with the Counts of Montbéliard, the French Odo III, Duke of Burgundy and Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen. In the course of negotiations in 1195, he killed Count Amadeus of Montbèliard with his own hands, followed by the assassination of Alsatian Count Ulric of Ferrette in 1197 and the execution of a brother of Konrad von Hüneburg, Bishop of Strasbourg, in 1198.

Otto's coat of arms (right), Georg Rüxner c. 1530, 17th century reprint

When Henry IV, Count of Luxembourg died without heirs in 1196, his county escheated to the Emperor and Henry VI enfeoffed his brother Otto. Theobald I, Count of Bar, who had married Ermesinde, daughter of late Count Henry IV, negotiated the renunciation of Luxembourg with Otto the next year.

Meanwhile Count Palatine Otto's regional conflicts had become a severe threat to the power politics of his Hohenstaufen relatives. After Philip of Swabia had been elected King of the Romans in 1198, rivaling with the Welf duke Otto of Brunswick, he tried to settle the numerous quarrels picked by his brother. In 1200 Otto was assassinated at Besançon, his death came in useful to many political actors.

Otto was buried at St Stephen's Cathedral, today the site of the Citadel of Besançon.

Family

Otto had married Margaret, daughter of Theobald V, Count of Blois, in 1192.^[3] After her husband's death her brother-in-law King Philip enfeoffed her with the Burgundian county, as regent for her minor daughter Joanna. Upon Joanna's death in 1205, Otto's second daughter, Beatrice, became countess and Philip married her to Otto I, Duke of Merania.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Otto I, Count of Burgundy

16. Frederick von Büren               8. Frederick I, Duke of Swabia                       17. Hildegard von Bar-Mousson               4. Frederick II, Duke of Swabia                             18. Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor               9. Agnes of Germany                       19. Bertha of Savoy               2. Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor                                   20. Welf I, Duke of Bavaria               10. Henry IX, Duke of Bavaria                       21. Judith of Flanders               5. Judith of Bavaria                             22. Magnus, Duke of Saxony               11. Wulfhild of Saxony                       23. Sophia of Hungary               1. Otto I of Burgundy                                         24. William I, Count of Burgundy               12. Stephen I, Count of Burgundy                       25. Stephanie               6. Renaud III, Count of Burgundy                             26. Gerard, Duke of Lorraine               13. Beatrix of Lorraine                       27. Hedwige of Namur               3. Beatrice I, Countess of Burgundy                                   28. Theodoric II, Duke of Lorraine               14. Simon I, Duke of Lorraine                       29. Hedwige of Formbach               7. Agatha of Lorraine                             30. Henry III of Leuven               15. Adelaide of Leuven                       31. Gertrude of Flanders

References

1. Gislebertus (of Mons), Chronicle of Hainaut, transl. Laura Napran, (Boydell Press, 2005), 55 note245.
2. Constance Brittain Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister: Nobility and the Church in Burgundy, 980-1198, (Cornell University Press, 1987), 276.
3. Joachim Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, transl. Thomas Dunlap, (University of California Press, 1991), 76.