Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 184: Barbara of Celje, the German Messalina, which also episode 21 of Season 9: The Reformation before the Reformation.
Barbara ist geil und ruchlos is the title of a 17th century description of emperor Sigismund’s second wife, Barbara of Celje and it goes on as follows:
“Barbara, was a German Messalina, a woman of insatiable lust; so nefarious / that she had no god / nor angel nor devil / nor heaven nor hell/that she believed in.
When her handmaidens fasted and prayed / she scolded them / that they tortured their bodies / to worship a fictitious god.
Instead she admonished them / in her good Sardanapalian way / that they should in every way enjoy the pleasures of this life / because after this there is no other to be hoped for.
This godless harlot / sought paradise on this foul earth in doglike lust / although she was already close to 60 years of age.” End quote.
But this is not where it ends. The Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu described her end, in an abandoned church in Styria thus:
Quote: The features, though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life. Her eyes were open; no cadaverous smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical men, one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter of the inquiry, attested the marvelous fact, that there was a faint but appreciable respiration, and a corresponding action of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed. Here then were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism. The body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects as might escape from a living person in the last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of blood flowed from the severed neck. The body and head were next placed on a pile of wood, and reduced to ashes, which were thrown upon the river and borne away, and that territory has never since been plagued by the visits of a vampire. End quote.
Excellent – HotGPod has its first sexually charged lesbian vampire…I suggest we take a bite at the reality of that story.
But before we start just a quick reminder that this show remains free of bloodsucking advertisers or paywalls. The History of the Germans is free for everyone to enjoy uninterrupted thanks to the generosity of our patrons who have gone to historyofthegermans.com/support and have either signed up for a membership or for a one-time donation. And our special thanks go to: Greg Dux, Brian W., Christine, Mine Spot, Ghill Donald (like the fish), Beth B., Mickeymarbh and Matthew G. who have already signed up.
And with that, back to the show.
The subject of all these lurid stories is Barbara of Celje, the second wife of our long standing emperor Sigismund.
She was born in 1390, the daughter of count Hermann II of Celje. The counts of Celje were a family on its way up. They had started out as nobles of Soun, vassals of the dukes of Styria based on their castle of Sanneck, in modern day Slovenia. They expanded their position and were elevated to counts in the 14th. By the beginning of the 15th century they had acquired material possessions in Hungary. And their position in the European nobility had received a boost. They were now related to the royal house of Bosnia and Barbara’s cousin Anna was married to king Jogaila of Poland.
During the long conflict that brought Sigismund to the throne of Hungary, the counts of Celje sided with the Garai family, the leaders of one of the three main factions. They initially supported Sigismund’s mother-in-law, the formidable Elisabeth but after having more or less caused her death in 1386, they rallied behind Sigismund. Episode 169 if you want to wade through that sea of murder and misery again.
As we know Sigismund’s reign in Hungary remained unstable during these first decades. In 1401 his magnates had lost patience with him and his attempts to centralize the kingdom, favoring foreigners for top jobs and spending a lot of time in Bohemia. They captured him and locked him up in a castle.
But then there was the question, what to do next. They were disappointed with Sigismund, but there wasn’t any ready alternative they could all agree on. So they did what you would always do in the middle ages, tie everything together in marriage alliances. Nicolas Garai married Anna of Celje and her sister Barbara married Sigismund. That arrangement made the head of the most powerful faction in the empire the brother-in-law of the king whilst one of the country’s richest landowners became his father-in-law.
This alliance of Garai, Celje and Sigismund kept the other parties down, in particular since their heads, John Lakfi and John Horvati were both dead and their possessions distributed amongst Sigismund’s followers.
Still Sigismund had married down, the son of an emperor sharing his bed with a girl whose great grandfather may have been a simple knight for all we know. How bad this was can be seen in the assessment by Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini, the future pope Pius II and someone well versed with imperial politics. quote: “Many thought it was monstrous since a king who married a countess married beneath his station. Moreover, at that time, the counts of Cilly were neither powerful nor illustrious, as they are now, for they were considered to be subject to the House of Austria. But Sigismund, who at the time was not very fond of the House of Austria, separated these counts from Austria and made them free and illustrious princes. This matter became the beginning and reason for many conflicts.” End quote.
Despite the difference in status, the happy couple was otherwise very well matched.
Here is how Piccolimini described the groom: quote “Sigismund was a man of distinguished stature, with shining eyes, a large forehead, pleasantly rosy cheeks, a long and plentiful beard, and a great mind.” Unquote. He was a tall and slim man and he emphasised his height by wearing a rather unusual fur cap. I am a bit at a loss how to describe this particular garment, but it was a fairly tall, round hat with enormous flaps on both sides and another, even more enormous front flap that was always folded upwards. This fancy gear must have made him even taller than he already was.
The advantage of wearing something nobody else did is that we can recognise Sigismund in many images from the time that weren’t meant to be portraits. Meister Francke’s painting cycle of St. Barbara that was made for a trading city way up north in Finland very clearly shows Sigismund as the stern father of a gorgeous but sartorially deprived Barbara. As a very weird coincidence, we had discussed this picture already once here, way back in episode 127 – the Art and Culture of the Hanse though without me noticing the link to Sigismund.
And about his wife the future pope said: quote: “Barbara was a beautiful woman, tall, white, but with some face blemishes. She ardently sought beauty. Unquote. As for sartorial quirks, there are various websites etc. that claim she wore black dresses and black gloves at all times. There is no evidence for that in any contemporary source nor in the confirmed depictions of her. Apparently she was just wearing what suited her, and judging by the imagery, quite a lot did suit her quite well.
Thus two very beautiful spouses were united. When exactly they got married is unclear. But if she was born in 1390, the earliest date for the consummation of the marriage would have been her 12th birthday, i.e., sometime in 1402. By that time her groom was already 32.
Sigismund, as we know from episode 169 did not have anything resembling a pleasant childhood. From the age of 11 he had been thrown into the snake pit that was Hungarian politics from which he emerged victorious after all his adversaries, male and female had come to an equally untimely as unpleasant end.
Getting married to much older and emotionally distant husband wasn’t anything unusual in this period. An aristocratic girl should not expect anything else. Here is our friend Piccolomini again: quote “He was passionate but inconstant, clever in speech, fond of wine, ardent in love, guilty of a thousand adulteries, quick to anger and ready to forgive. He did not hoard money but spent prodigiously. He promised more than he kept, and often dissimulated.”
Not a dreamboat, in particular if you add the deformation of his jaw that prevented him from closing his mouth. Still it seemed the two of them got on reasonably well.
Their first and only child, Elisabeth was born in 1409, already several years into the marriage. There would not be any more children despite sexual relations between husband and wife continuing with interruptions throughout their marriage. We obviously have no medical records, though we know that Sigismund suffered severely from gout which can negatively affect fertility. There are also no records of illegitimate sons from his innumerable affairs.
Some of Sigismund’s commentaries suggest that he was not expecting any more offspring after Elisabeth had been born, though he gave no further details.
One thing in which the couple differed quite dramatically was in their approach to money. As the queen of Hungary she had received a number of castles as her dower, as her personal property. Barbara was always very careful with her property. The overwhelming majority of documents that can be ascribed to her personally were demands for payment of dues and taxes sent to the various towns and villages she owned. Sigismund on the other had was always completely broke He was so down on his luck that at some point he pawned his crowns, his Order of the Garter, even his clothes. He rarely paid his courtiers and officers in cash. Instead he granted them lands and rights to the extent such was still available. The biggest such payout was to his close friend, the burggrave Frederick of Zollern who he made Margrave of Brandenburg and a Prince elector to pay off his enormous debts.
When he met Pope Eugene IV in Rome, he allegedly told him, “Holy Father, we are dissimilar in three ways and similar in other three: You sleep in the morning, I get up before dawn. You drink water, I drink wine. You flee women, I pursue them. But we are similar in this that you pour out the money of the Church, while I keep nothing for myself. You have bad hands, and I have bad feet. You destroy the Church, and I the Empire.”
One of the rather unusual dynamics that developed between Barbara and Sigismund was that she lent him money, and as time went by and Barbara became ever richer, the sums she lent him and the mining rights, taxes and properties she collected as security for these loans grew larger and larger in scale.
Another point of difference between husband and wife was their relationship to the Habsburgs. The Counts of Celje had originally been vassals of the Habsburgs and they let Barbara and her family feel their inferior status at every opportunity. This was not just a source of irritation, but had also some material political implications. As we know Albrecht of Habsburg was Sigismund’s designated successor and was slated to marry their only child and heiress of the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. At the same time the Celjes and Garais were essential for Sigismund’s rule of Hungary.
Despite the political differences, Sigismund gave Barbara a material role in Hungarian politics. She often served as a member of the regency councils that he put in place during his regular absences and for some periods she ruled the country more or less on her own. Most modern historians try to make her out as a sensible and successful ruler during these periods, though looking at the evidence of what she actually did, I would judge it at best middle of the road. She was no Margarete Mautasch who held her lands against Karl IV, one of Europe’s greatest tactician of the times. But she wasn’t a disaster either, just average.
This has been going for 10 minutes now, so where is the Messalina and vampire part.
The moment when it allegedly all went pear shaped was around 1415. We are at the Council of Constance where Barbara acts as the first lady of europe. She was given a splendid entry into the city and participated in all the great festivities laid on to entertain the thousands of senior princes and prelates.
A French nobleman who lived next door to Barbara during the council tells us that Barbara kept an open house, where anyone was welcome to come and go, enjoy the musicians and comedians she had brought on. He points out that quote; “Nowhere in the world is a more indulgent husband than Sigismund who not only lets his wife do anything she wants, but actively encouraged her to take part in public dances, speak with everyone, and relate to people in such a friendly way that some who do not know her would not consider her a queen but as a woman of some lowly trade” end quote.
M. de Montreuil who wrote this was a bit of a bigot and a touch creepy. He actually got Barbara’s chambermaid to show him the queen’s bedroom.
Next thing that happened was that in 1415 Sigismund sets off on his journey to convince the last reluctant pope, Pedro da Luna, to resign. Barbara in turn goes home to Hungary. And then, nothing. She did not have a political function for the next eight years. She issued only very few charters in the first three years, but was still able to do certain financial transactions. In 1419 she dropped off the face of the earth. It will take until 1423 that she reappears in her role as queen.
According to Sigismund’s chronicler, Eberhard Windeck, the king had received malicious rumours about Barbara’s conduct at Constance and had decided to banish her. Piccolomini’s take was more explicit: quote “[..] since Sigismund often fell in love with other women, she, too, began to love others, for a cheating husband makes a cheating wife.” End quote.
As to the alleged lovers, no names are given in contemporary sources, but Frederick I of Brandenburg and Sigismund’s close collaborator Jan Wallenrode had been listed as well as a third person, a knight called Johannes Wallenroth.
Royal adultery was no laughing matter. If there was doubt about the legitimacy of any or all of the royal children, civil war was almost the inevitable result. Accusations of infidelity were usually taken seriously and investigated. Barbara’s cousin Anna, the queen of Poland had been subjected to such a process and acquitted.
So far, naughty, but not exactly Messalina.
After 1423 the royal couple seemed to be reconciled. They go on several diplomatic visits together and Sigismund endows her most generously with castles, towns and mining rights. Over the subsequent 14 years, thanks to careful management of her estates and Sigismund’s eternal need for ready cash, Barbara became one of the richest landowners in Hungary.
In 1436 Sigismund finally becomes the fully recognised king of Bohemia and she is crowned queen with full pomp and circumstances. But as we know Sigismund was not allowed to enjoy the summit of his ambitions for very long.
A few days before Sigismund’s death, Barbara gets arrested. Why and by whom is heavily contested.
One story is that Sigismund discovered a conspiracy whereby Barbara was planning to marry king Wladyslav III of Poland upon Sigismund’s death and pass the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary to the Poles, sidestepping Albrecht of Habsburg and her daughter Elisabeth.
The other version was that duke Albrecht of Habsburg, Sigismund’s official heir, had her arrested to rob her of her possessions and to remove a potential opponent to his rule.
Here is our friend Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini again with what happened next: After Sigismund’s death, Barbara wanted to go to Poland, bringing with her an immense [treasure of] gold and silver, but on the way, she was held up and plundered. Now she has some castles in the Kingdom of Bohemia that belong to the queen’s estate. There she lives, not like an empress but not in poverty. End quote
Albrecht seized all her 30 castles and copious lands which amounted to significant more in revenue than the whole of the royal demesne. She would never receive that back, and was only granted a small dower as queen of Bohemia.
She lived for another 14 years, until 1451, spending her time with alchemy, trying to regain her lost fortunes by turning copper into silver or gold.
Sad, but still no Messalina.
Over the centuries writers seeking a thrilling or titillating story embellished these rather meagre facts and created a veritable monster. Her one potential fling with an unknown knight in Constance became a string of lovers, lovers who often came to a sticky end. There are some similarities to the stories about Elisabeth Bathory, the other Hungarian alleged serial killer from the 17th century.
The combination of sexual licentiousness and interest in alchemy coalesces in Carmilla, the very first vampire novel written in 1872, the one I quoted at the top of the episode.
In Croatia she is still known as the Black queen, on account of always wearing black and carrying a black raven on her shoulder. The story goes she had given her castle to the devil to protect her fortune and in the tunnels under the city she still resides as the snake queen.
Moving away from the land of fables, the question is what really happened. Did she have an uncontrolled sex drive, or was it all politics.
Let’s start with the politics.
As we know Sigismund’s politics were extremely inconsistent. One day he was pursuing this objective with these allies and the other day, he was heading elsewhere. That was not entirely his fault, but was largely a function of the extremely convoluted political situation he found himself in.
As for Barbara, she was a lot more straightforward, in part because her main concern was Hungary and her family. She was arguong for a closer alliance with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its ruler, King Wladyslaw II, Jagiello. Why. One may argue that an alliance of Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia and Hungary was the best way to protect Hungary’s southern border against the rising Ottoman power. And she was opposed to a closer alliance with the Habsburgs. The latter was likely down to old family rivalry, but may also have been driven by personal animosity. We do not know, because she left no notes on her political thought.
As for Sigismund’s relationship with the Habsburgs, he did have a close link to Albrecht, the duke of Austria. So close in fact that little Elisabeth, barely a year old, was engaged to Albrecht. And if there was any consistency in Sigismund, it was his commitment to building Albrecht up as his successor.
Still, an engagement at such a young age was not much more than an option. Sigismund himself had been engaged to various noble ladies before he settled on Mary of Hungary when he was 6.
Therefore the Habsburg alliance wasn’t set and done until such time that Albrecht and Elisbeth would consume the marriage, which did eventually happen in 1422, once Elizabeth had turned 12. But in the meantime there was a lot of room for negotiations, and as we know, Albrecht had to pay the huge sum of 400,000 florins for his bride, money that went into the futile campaign in Bohemia.
It is therefore possible that Barbara had been exploring and supporting alternatives to the Habsburg marriage before 1422. Constance would have been a perfect stage to do that given the presence of dozens of princes and royal delegations, as well as prelates who could block and approve marriages on the basis of how closely related the bride and groom were.
So it is quite possible that the rift between Sigismund and Barbara had nothing to do with alleged infidelities, but actual political disagreements about who Elisabeth was going to marry. Once the marriage had been consumed and there was no way back, the couple could reconcile, which is what they did.
The second incident, the arrest in 1437 was a political act, irrespective which side one follows. I personally doubt that Barbara was indeed committed to marry king Wladyslaw III of Poland and disinherit her daughter. Apart from anything, the proposed groom was merely 13 years old at the time and she was 47. Not unheard of, but a bit far-fetched.
The idea that Albrecht had her arrested whilst concocting a conspiracy theory is a lot more credible. Albrecht needed Barbara’s castles and towns both to provide him with the financial resources to rule Hungary and for military strategic reasons. And Barbara would not have handed them over voluntarily.
A which point there emerges a good reason for the Habsburgs to damage Barbara’s reputation. Painting her as a cougar conspiring to satisfy her lust for a boy king of Poland was a great way to justify their illegal expropriation. And they did have a perfect weapon to do that with, our friend Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini, the future pope Pius II. This great humanist had been a close friend and supporter of the Habsburgs, in particular Albrecht’s cousin, the emperor Frederick III. Most of the lurid stories about Barbara can be traced back to Piccolomini and have been distributed by sources close to the Habsburgs.
So, she was framed.
That is at least what the vast majority of historians now believe.
There is however one last point that I would like to make. Many of these attempts to exonerate female figures in history have a habit of painting the victim of slander as a sober, almost prudish figure, focused on sensible matters.
I am not sure this is always true. In case of Barbara of Celje, she was clearly someone who enjoyed life, liked to dance, music, comedy and just conviviality.
And let’s put this into the context of the times. The court of Sigismund was a long, long way from Victorian England. He himself was clearly keen on all kinds of sexual adventures. And so were the people around him. His chancellors, Georg von Hohenlohe and Jan von Wallenrode were both bishops, but their behaviour was not exactly in line with the exigences of the ecclesiastical office. And then there is Kaspar Schlick. He was the son of a patrician from Eger, modern day Cheb. He had joined Sigismund’s entourage as a scribe and slowly but surely moved through the ranks before he became the very first ever chancellor not to be a prelate. He amassed a huge fortune in Sigismund’s service, some of it as direct donations, some as repayment of loans granted to the monarch at exorbitant interest and the rest through bribes and counterfeit documents. Towards the end of Sigismund’s life, the emperor arranged a marriage for his chancellor to a Silesian duchess and one of his own distant relatives. Five weeks before Sigismund’s death he was elevated to count of Bassano and prince of Wenden. And even after Sigismund passed away, “His versatile intellect and exceptional natural goodness made it possible for him to enjoy equal favour with three emperors of very different character.”.
What matters here is that Kaspar Schlick was not only an incredibly successful civil servant, but also a sponsor of our friend Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini who he helped to become bishop of Trieste which set him up for a career that ended up on the papal throne.
And in return, Piccolomini created a literary monument for his friend when he made him the main character of his book Historia de Duobus Amantibus. He is Euryalus, an imperial courtier and passionate lover of Lucretia, a married women in Siena. Let me give you a short excerpt from this rather unique work by a future pope: quote
"You are my Ganymede, my Hippolytus, my Diomedes," said Lucretia.
"You are my Polyxena," Euryalus replied, "my Emilia, you are Venus herself."
Now he praised her lips, now her cheeks, now her eyes. At times, lifting the covering and revealing what he had never seen before, he gazed in admiration and said:
"I find more than I imagined. Just like this, Actaeon saw Diana bathing in the spring. What could be more beautiful than these limbs? What could be more radiant? I have already redeemed my perils—what is there that should not be endured for you?
O lovely chest! O breasts made to be pressed! Do I truly touch you? Do I hold you? Have you fallen into my hands?
O smooth limbs! O fragrant body!"
"Euryalus, where am I? Why did you not let me die? I would have died happy in your arms. Would that I could die like this before you leave this city!"
As they spoke these words, they made their way toward the bedroom, where they spent a night, we imagine, much like that of Paris and Helen after he carried her away to his high-prowed ships. That night was so delightful that both of them declared even Mars and Venus could not have known such joy.”
End quote.
That sheds not just some light on the youth of a pope who turned out to be a bit of a prude later on but also on the court of Sigismund. There was clearly a lot of partying going on there and it seems the women were participating with some level of enjoyment.
Is it therefore impossible to assume that Barbara did go out to have some fun too? She was an independently wealthy woman, backed by a powerful family without which Sigismund would be unable to rule Hungary, she beautiful, still just 25 years old and by then certain she would not conceive another child with Sigismund. So maybe she did believe that “they should in every way enjoy the pleasures of this life” as her enemies claimed.
All that is of course speculation. She did not leave any writings about what she did or did not do. But it is as much a viable speculation as the idea that she lived a life of an unimpeachable matron hoarding castles and riches.
After 30 minutes of talking about things we do not know, here is what we do know. The next season of the History of the Germans will begin on March 20th with an episode about the most senior of the Prince Elector, the Primate of Germany, the Archbishop of Mainz. I hope you will join us again.
And in the meantime, remember that there are already 184 episodes of the History of the Germans, plus a brace of bonus episodes. And given I can barely remember what was in it, maybe you will enjoy listening to them again too. If I can recommend some, what about
- Episode 25 – Konrad II and the Construction of the empire,
- Episode 35 “to Rome, to Rome” about emperor Henry IV taking revenge for the humiliation before Canossa,
- Episode 47 Konrad’s Coup about the Hohenstaufen gaining the imperial throne,
- Episode 59 The City of Straw about Barbarossa’s last and fateful Italian campaign,
- Episode 77 A Nail in the Coffin about Frederick II’s decision to let the empire be,
- Episode 101 Gottschalk and Adalbert about the formation of Mecklenburg,
- Episode 112 Grain and Beer about the Hanseatic trade in these commodities,
- Episode 130 The Conquest of Prussia by the Teutonic Knights, and
- Episode 146 Henry VII’s journey to Rome.
See you all on the other side and last thing, historyofthegermans.com/support is still available for anyone wanting to make a contribution.