Irene Angelina OF SICILY
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The Rest of the Story: The Ancestors of Sarah May Paddock Otstott
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Irene OF SICILY's father: Isaac II ANGELUS ( -1204)

Irene Angelina OF SICILY (1181-1208)

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      Irene Angelina of Byzantium     Philip of Swabia and Irene Angelina of Byzantium, the parents of Marie of Hohenstaufen    
 
Name: Irene Angelina OF SICILY 1,2
Sex: Female
Father: Isaac II ANGELUS ( -1204)
Mother: -

Individual Events and Attributes

Birth 1181
Occupation (1) frm 1197 to 1208 (age 15-27) Duchess Consort of Swabia
Occupation (2) frm 1198 to 1208 (age 16-27) Queen Consort of Germany
Title Dowager Queen of Sicily
Child Count 4
Marriage Count 1
Death 1208 (age 26-27)
Burial the Staufen proprietary monastery of Lorch Abbey

Marriage

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      Philip of Swabia     Philip of Swabia and Irene Angelina of Byzantium, the parents of Marie of Hohenstaufen     Philip of Swabia depicted in a medieval manuscript (about 1200).    
 
Spouse Phillip II OF SWABIA (aft1177-1208)
Children Marie OF SWABIA (HOHENSTAUFEN) (1201-1235)
Marriage 25 May 1197 (age 15-16)

Individual Note

Irene Angelina was the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos by his first wife, perhaps named Herina, possibly a member of the Tornikes family.[1].

 

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"[citation needed].

 

Philip and Irene had four daughters:

 

Beatrice of Hohenstaufen (1198–1212), married Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor, died without issue.

Cunigunde of Hohenstaufen (1200–1248), married King Wenceslaus I, King of Bohemia, by whom she had issue.

Marie of Hohenstaufen (3 April 1201- 29 March 1235), married Henry II, Duke of Brabant, by whom she had issue.

Elisabeth of Hohenstaufen (1203–1235), married King Ferdinand III of Castile, by whom she had issue.

and two sons (called Reinald and Frederick) who died in infancy.

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

 

SOURCE:

Charles Cawley, Medieval Lands, Byzantium (1057- 1204)3

Sources

1Weis, Frederick Lewis & Sheppard, Walter Lee, Jr, "Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America before 1700: Lineages from Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Malcolm of Scotland, Robert the Strong, and other Historical Individuals". p 53, 45-27.
2"Genealogy Page of John Blythe Dodson".
3"Wikipedia". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Angelina.