Ermengarde of Anjou (d. 1146)

Ermengarde of Anjou (ca. 1068 – 1 June 1146) was a member of the comital House of Anjou and by her two marriages was successively Duchess of Aquitaine and Brittany. Also, she was a patron of Fontevraud Abbey. Ermengarde was the regent of Brittany during the absence of her spouse from 1096 until 1101.

Born in Angers she was the eldest child of Count Fulk IV of Anjou but the only one born by his first wife, Hildegarde of Beaugency. Having lost her mother in 1070, at only two years of age, she received a good education and grew to be pious and concerned about religious reform, especially the struggle against the secular appropriation of church property. She was also noted for her beauty in her youth.

It has long been presumed that, in 1089, her marriage was arranged to the young Duke and poet, William IX of Aquitaine. However, this union proved a dismal failure. Her husband was a voracious philanderer, whose affairs infuriated his wife. She suffered from severe mood swings, vacillating between vivacity and sullenness, and would nag her husband. She also had a habit of retiring in bad temper to a cloister after an argument, cutting off all contact with the outside world, before suddenly making a reappearance in the court as if her absence had never occurred. Such behavior, coupled with her failure to conceive a child, led William to send her back to her father and have the marriage dissolved in 1091.

Her behavior during her marriage to the Duke has been described by both Marion Meade and Alison Weir as schizophrenic, with Weir adding a suggestion of manic depression.

However, Ruth Harvey's 1993 critical investigation shows the assumption of William's marriage to Ermengarde to be based largely on an error in a nineteenth-century secondary source and it is highly likely that Philippa of Toulouse was William's only wife. Further research has found the claim that William was married to "Hermingerda", daughter of Fulk IV of Anjou is based on the very unreliable chronicle of William of Tyre, written between 1169 and 1187, more than 70 years after the events in question would have taken place. Tyre erroneously identifies Ermengarde's mother as Bertrad of Montfort, the sister of Amalricus de Montfort when her mother was in fact Audearde or Hildegarde of Beaugency. Tyre's chronicle lacks any contemporary corroboration, no primary text ever mentions a marriage between William and Ermengarde. It is therefore not only improbable that William married Ermengarde, it is likely that Ermengarde - at least as a wife of William - never existed.

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