Richeza of Lotharingia

Richeza of Lotharingia, also known as Richeza of Lorraine and in Polish as Rycheza Lotaryńska, belonged to the Ezzonen, one of the leading noble houses of the Holy Roman Empire in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. She was the daughter of Ezzo, Count Palatine of Lotharingia, and of Matilda, a daughter of Emperor Otto II and Empress Theophanu. Through her mother she was a granddaughter of Otto II and a niece of Emperor Otto III, and she stood close both to the Ottonian imperial family and to the church of Cologne. Her parents were the founders of Brauweiler Abbey. Contemporary sources do not record her year or place of birth with precision; historians generally place her birth in the last years of the tenth century or about the year 1000, in the Lotharingian milieu of her father’s palatine power.

In the aftermath of the long wars between Bolesław I of Poland and Emperor Henry II, Richeza was married to Bolesław’s son Mieszko, the future Mieszko II Lambert. The marriage, contracted in the early eleventh century, was a dynastic settlement intended to bind the Piast rulers to the imperial house. After Bolesław I assumed a royal crown in 1025 and died the same year, Mieszko II succeeded as king of Poland and Richeza became queen. The couple had children who are securely attested, including their son Casimir, later called Casimir I the Restorer, and their daughter Gertrude, who married Grand Prince Iziaslav I of Kiev. Other daughters have been attributed to them in later historiography, but not all such attributions are certain.

In the early 1030s the Polish kingdom entered a severe political and social crisis. Mieszko II lost control of the realm, and Richeza left Poland. According to later tradition she took with her the Polish royal insignia, which then came into the possession of Emperor Conrad II. Mieszko II died in 1034. Poland subsequently suffered a pagan reaction, the collapse of church organization in parts of the country, and a period without a stable Piast ruler. Richeza resided thereafter in the Empire, connected with her family’s monasteries and with holdings such as Saalfeld. She was an important supporter of her son Casimir’s return to Poland around the end of the 1030s, a restoration accomplished with the backing of Emperor Henry III and of the church.

In her later life Richeza was known for religious patronage and a reputation for piety, remaining associated with Brauweiler and with ecclesiastical circles in Cologne. She died on 21 March 1063 at Saalfeld. She was buried in the church of St. Maria ad Gradus in Cologne; after that church was demolished in the early nineteenth century, her remains were transferred to Cologne Cathedral. In Polish historical and religious memory she is recalled as a queen who linked the Piasts with the imperial dynasty and as a woman of notable devotion. Some later Catholic and popular traditions have styled her blessed, but a formal papal beatification or canonization is not clearly established in the documentary record, and she is not a universally recognized saint of the Roman calendar.