Hedwig, Duchess of Bavaria

Hedwig (c. 778 – after 833) was a Saxon noble woman, the wife of Count Welf I and mother-in-law of Emperor Louis the Pious through his marriage to Judith, her daughter.

Life

She was possibly born at Altdorf in the Frankish lands of Alamannia (present-day Germany). According to Bishop Thegan of Trier, she was a member of the Saxon high nobility, the daughter of Count Isambart. She had a sister Adalung des Franken, half brother Hunfrid I de Recia e de Istria, and brother Guelph, Count of Andech.

In her later life (about 826) she appears as abbess of Chelles near Paris,^[1][2][3] however, it is uncertain if she had already become a widow by then.

Family

Hedwig married Count Welf I^[4] and together they had the following children:

• Judith, Roman Empress and Frankish Queen, died 843;
• Rudolph, died 866;^[5]
• Conrad,^[6] Count of Paris, ancestor of the Welf kings of Burgundy;
• Hemma, Frankish Queen, married to Louis the German, son of Louis the Pious, died 876.
• Mathilda d'Andech von Altdorf

Through her marriage to Welf she is the matriarch of the Dynastic Welf Family^[7] and is an ancestor of the Carolingian dynasty, the Kings of Italy, Russia, Brittan, the Hagenéter rulers of Piedmont and the Bavarian Welfs.

Hedwig died 19 April 843 in Bayern, Frankish Empire (present Germany) and was buried in Bayern Lande.

Gallery

• 
  Husband Welf I
• 
  Tomb effigy of daughter Queen Hemma.
• 
  Daughter, Judith of Bavaria
• 
  Son-in-law Louis on a denarius from Sens, c.818
• 
  Seal of grandson Charles the Bald

See also

• Hedwig Jagiellon, Duchess of Bavaria

References

1. Hedwig of Saxony at cft-win.com.
2. Hedwig or Heilwig, Duchess of Bavaria at connectedbloodlines.com.
3. Pierre Riche, The Carolingians, A family who Forged Europe (translated by Michael Idomir Allen; University of Philadelphia Press, 1993), pp. 52, 149.
4. Hedwig Duchess Of Bavaria at family Tree maker.com. Archived 5 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine.
5. by Cesare Rivera, I Conti de' Marsi e la loro discendenze fino alla fondazione dell'Aquila, (Teramo, 1915).
6. The Annals of Fulda. (Manchester Medieval series, Ninth-Century Histories, Volume II.) Reuter, Timothy (trans.) (Manchester University Press, 1992).
7. Halliday, Sir Andrew (1826). Annals of the house of Hanover. Vol. 1. London, UK: N. Sams. OCLC 674208974. Retrieved 2014-09-05.