Barbara of Cilli

Barbara of Celje (. Ungar Cillei Borbála, slow: Barbara Celjska, tschech. Barbora Cellská ) (* 1390, † July 11, 1451 in Melnik ) from the noble Cilliers was the second wife of the Emperor Sigismund. She was an astrologer and alchemist.

The engagement of fifteen year old daughter of Count Herman II with twenty years older than King Sigismund was 1405. 1409 she gave birth to her first daughter Elisabeth ( Czech Alžběta ). Barbara remained most of the time at the Hungarian court, while the political situation forced her husband to travel through Central Europe. This led to the alienation of the partners and infidelity, which had no consequences for the king, and he but his wife has cut funding. Alienation also documented their absence during the coronation ceremony of King King of Bohemia 1420. Approach to a there was only towards the end of the twenties, when Sigismund was preparing for his journey to Rome. Barbara, in 1408 already crowned with the Holy Crown of Hungary, and in 1411 the German Queen, took the 1433 trip to Rome part.

On February 11, 1437 she was also appointed to the Queen of Bohemia. For the Bohemian nobility this coronation played an important role, as these were about claims to power after the death of the emperor, who also made the unpopular in Bohemia, Albrecht von Habsburg. Through the marriage of the two daughters with the Polish throne, the administration of the country should remain in the hands of Barbara. However, these plans thwarted her daughter Elizabeth, by preventing that Barbara was able to engage in political activity before the death of the emperor in the last few weeks. After the death of the Emperor Barbara lived in Melnik. She devoted herself to the occult sciences and dealt with alchemy what several contemporaries displeased. In his Chronicle of 1493 Hartmann Schedel calls it a " schentlich boßhaftig female " and writes: She fell into a such absynnige plinthait they iunckfrawen the healing time which was called by cristo because the dead gelidden Hetten offenlich fool and Nerrin And say that after disem live no who live differently. and the physical and sele die together. She died on July 11, 1451 in Melnik of the plague; she was buried in the royal crypt in Prague.