Elisabeth von Österreich

Elisabeth of Austria was born on July 8, 1317, in Schaffhausen, and died on October 23, 1336, in Vienna. She came from the House of Habsburg and was the daughter of Frederick the Fair, Duke of Austria and anti-king of the Romans, and his wife, Isabella of Aragon. Her short life was strongly shaped by her family’s political interests and by marriage plans intended to influence the balance of power in the Holy Roman Empire and the neighboring realms. As a child, Elisabeth became involved in the conflicts between her father and Louis the Bavarian. On March 13, 1325, Frederick the Fair promised his then seven-year-old daughter in marriage to Stephen II of Bavaria, Louis the Bavarian’s son. At the time, Frederick was being held prisoner by Louis at Trausnitz Castle; Louis also claimed the title of King of the Romans. The proposed marriage formed part of the conditions under which Frederick was to be released. The central provision of the agreement, however, was Frederick’s renunciation of his claims to the imperial title for as long as Louis lived. Because Elisabeth and Stephen were still very young and were also related within a degree of kinship that posed a legal obstacle to marriage, their fathers needed a papal dispensation. They hoped to obtain it from a future pope who would be more favorably disposed toward them than John XXII, the reigning pope and an opponent of Louis the Bavarian. Frederick was released on April 7, 1325, but his brothers rejected the agreed conditions. He therefore voluntarily returned to captivity and took eight-year-old Elisabeth with him. In the negotiations that followed, Louis and Frederick agreed to secure Louis’s preeminence in the Empire while allowing Frederick to retain the title of King of the Romans. The marriage plan between Elisabeth and Stephen was to remain in place. On September 1, 1325, they even formally petitioned John XXII for the necessary dispensation. The plan was soon abandoned, however. A major turning point was the death in 1326 of Leopold I of Austria, Elisabeth’s uncle and Frederick the Fair’s most important supporter. Louis the Bavarian may also by then have favored a different match for his son. After February 15, 1327, the proposed marriage was no longer pursued. Before April 1332, a second marriage plan was developed. Elisabeth was to marry Stefan Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia. A chronicle reports that she rejected the union because the Serbian ruler belonged to the Orthodox faith. According to the account, she prayed and fasted every day and would even have preferred death to such a marriage in order to preserve her virginity. It remains uncertain whether this portrayal truly reflects Elisabeth’s personal attitude, since no other source confirms it. It may instead be a literary motif presenting an especially devout and virtuous princess. The second plan more likely failed for political reasons. Stefan Uroš IV Dušan ultimately chose Helena of Bulgaria, the sister of Ivan Alexander, the powerful Bulgarian tsar and Serbia’s neighbor. The proposed marriage to Elisabeth was therefore never realized. A third marriage attempt began on March 12, 1332. Elisabeth’s uncles, Albert II and Otto, negotiated with John I, King of Bohemia. Elisabeth’s father, Frederick the Fair, had already died in 1330, so her uncles now represented the family’s interests. A marriage treaty was concluded in Vienna on July 12, 1332. This plan also required a papal dispensation because a canonical impediment to the marriage existed between the intended spouses. Pope John XXII refused the dispensation on May 1, 1333, in Avignon. He did not explicitly state a reason, but the cause was known from other sources: John of Bohemia had apparently changed his mind about the marriage and claimed that he had become impotent. Under canon law, this constituted an impediment to the proposed union. The pope also asked the French king, Philip VI of Valois, for his assessment. Philip probably took into account the wishes of John of Bohemia, his close political ally. Elisabeth’s third marriage plan also failed. She never married during her lifetime and died in Vienna on October 23, 1336, at the age of nineteen. She was buried in the abbey church of Mauerbach. Her life exemplifies the medieval marriage politics of ruling dynasties, in which dynastic alliances, canon-law requirements, and power interests often outweighed the personal fate of the princesses involved.