Matilda of Ringelheim, also known as Saint Matilda, was a Saxon noblewoman. Due to her marriage to Henry I in 909, she became the first Ottonian queen. Her eldest son, Otto I, restored the Holy Roman Empire in 962. Matilda founded several spiritual institutions and women's convents. She was considered to be extremely pious, righteous and charitable. Matilda's two hagiographical biographies and The Deeds of the Saxons serve as authoritative sources about her life and work.
The Ottonian dynasty was a Saxon dynasty of German monarchs (919–1024), named after three of its kings and Holy Roman Emperors named Otto, especially its first Emperor Otto I. It is also known as the Saxon dynasty after the family's origin in the German stem duchy of Saxony. The family itself is also sometimes known as the Liudolfings, after its earliest known member Count Liudolf and one of its most common given names. The Ottonian rulers were successors of the Germanic king Conrad I, who was the only Germanic king to rule in East Francia after the Carolingian dynasty and before this dynasty.
Widukind of Corvey was a medieval Saxon chronicler. His three-volume Res gestae Saxonicae sive annalium libri tres is an important chronicle of 10th-century Germany (Germania) during the rule of the Ottonian dynasty.
The Duchy of Saxony was originally the area settled by the Saxons in the late Early Middle Ages, when they were subdued by Charlemagne during the Saxon Wars from 772 and incorporated into the Carolingian Empire (Francia) by 804. Upon the 843 Treaty of Verdun, Saxony was one of the five German stem duchies of East Francia; Duke Henry the Fowler was elected German king in 919.
Ezzo, sometimes called Ehrenfried, a member of the Ezzonid dynasty, was Count Palatine of Lotharingia from 1015 until his death. As brother-in-law of Emperor Otto III, father of Queen Richeza of Poland and several other illustrious children, he was one of the most important figures of the Rhenish history of his time.
Thietmar, Prince-Bishop of Merseburg from 1009 until his death, was an important chronicler recording the reigns of German kings and Holy Roman Emperors of the Ottonian (Saxon) dynasty. Two of Thietmar's great-grandfathers, both referred to as Liuthar, were the Saxon nobles Lothar II, Count of Stade, and Lothar I, Count of Walbeck. They were both killed fighting the Slavs at the Battle of Lenzen.
Memleben is a village and part of the Kaiserpfalz municipality of the Burgenlandkreis district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is known for former Memleben Abbey, the site of a medieval Kaiserpfalz.
The Bishopric of Merseburg was an episcopal see on the eastern border of the medieval Duchy of Saxony with its centre in Merseburg, where Merseburg Cathedral was constructed. The see was founded in 967 by Emperor Otto I at the same time in the same manner as those of Meissen and Zeitz, all suffragan dioceses of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg as part of a plan to bind the adjacent Slavic ("Wendish") lands in the Saxon Eastern March beyond the Saale River more closely to the Holy Roman Empire.
The March of Merseburg was a short-lived march of the Holy Roman Empire. It comprised the lands of the Polabian Slavs beyond the margravial residence at Merseburg on the Saale river.
Eckard I was Margrave of Meissen from 985 until his death. He was the first margrave of the Ekkehardinger family that ruled over Meissen until the extinction of the line in 1046.
Werlaburgdorf is a village and a former municipality in the district of Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, Germany. Since 1 November 2013, it is part of the municipality Schladen-Werla.
The Annals of Quedlinburg were written between 1008 and 1030 in the convent of Quedlinburg Abbey. In recent years a consensus has emerged that it is likely that the annalist was a woman. The annals are mostly dedicated to the history of the Holy Roman Empire; they also contain the first written mention of the name of Lithuania ("Litua"), dated to March 1009. The original document has disappeared, surviving only as a 16th-century copy held in Dresden, but its contents endure as a scholarly resource.
Adelaide I, a member of the royal Ottonian dynasty was the second Princess-abbess of Quedlinburg from 999, and Abbess of Gernrode from 1014, and Abbess of Gandersheim from 1039 until her death, as well as a highly influential kingmaker of medieval Germany.
Matilda, also known as Mathilda and Mathilde, was a German regent, and the first Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg. She served as regent of Germany for her brother during his absence in 967, and as regent during the minority of her nephew from 984.
Sophia I, a member of the royal Ottonian dynasty, was Abbess of Gandersheim from 1002, and from 1011 also Abbess of Essen. The daughter of Emperor Otto II and his consort Theophanu, she was an important kingmaker in medieval Germany.
The Hassegau was a medieval shire (Gau) in the Eastphalia region of the Duchy of Saxony. It was located in the duchy's southeastern corner; confined by the Saale river to the east and its Unstrut and Wipper tributaries to the south and north. Its most important town was Merseburg. In present-day borders, it is in the southeastern part of Saxony-Anhalt.
The Schwabengau was an early medieval shire (Gau) in the Eastphalia region of the medieval Duchy of Saxony. Ruled by the House of Ascania, it became the nucleus of the later Principality of Anhalt, today part of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
The German–Polish War consisted of a series of struggles in 1003–1018, between the Ottonian king Henry II of Germany and the Polish Piast ruler Bolesław I the Brave. The locus of conflict was the control of Lusatia, Upper Lusatia, as well as Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia. The fighting ended with the Peace of Bautzen in 1018, which left Lusatia and Upper Lusatia as a fief of Poland, and Bohemia became a duchy in the Holy Roman Empire.
The Hersfeld Tithe Register is a list of the places and castles in the Friesenfeld Gau (territory) and in Hassegau, from which Hersfeld Abbey received tithes. The original document dates from between 881 and 887 or between 896 and 899, but no longer exists. The list is found in a transcript from the 11th Century, which is now in the Hessischen Staatsarchiv Marburg.
Theophanu (955–991) was a Byzantine princess who became Holy Roman Empress through marriage to Emperor Otto II. As the trusted political partner of her husband and later the regent of her young son Otto III, she left a remarkable legacy as one of the most powerful female rulers of the Ottonian era as well as of the Holy Roman Empire's history in general. Her reign is associated with the exchange of political, religious and cultural ideas and international activities between the Western Empire and the East, including the Byzantine Empire as well as the Slavic countries. Although the empress's personal role in some aspects of these processes is a subject of debate, she is often depicted in historiography and artistic portrayals as a cultured, spirited woman who had to adapt to a difficult situation after her husband's death and whose political vision was unfulfilled due to the early deaths of herself and her son. This image is also influenced by the masculine posture she adopted in her lifetime as coimperatrix and even imperator.
