Othon de la Roche

Otto or Othon de la Roche ( † 1234 in Bellevaux monastery) was a crusader and the first Frankish lord of Thebes and Athens.

Life

Otto was the son of Pons, lord of La Roche- sur- l'Ognon in the Franche-Comté. He built, introduced by his first wife in the marriage castle Ray from the largest medieval castle of the Franche -Comté.

Otto took in Citeaux the cross the Fourth Crusade and fought in the conquest of Constantinople by Opel in 1204. He then joined the crusade leader Boniface of Montferrat and moved with him to ancient Greece to the Emperor Alexios III volatile. to pursue. From Boniface as the king of Thessaloniki Otto received the landscapes of Boeotia and Attica with their centers Thebes and Athens ( end 1204 captured ) transferred as a fief. Later Locris and Megara were added.

Great lord of Thebes and Athens

Otto taught in his country newly obtained a Frankish feudal system modeled after the Crusader states in Palestine. The ancient Greek aristocracy was widely distributed and distributed the land to French knights. Otto kept Thebes and Athens, and all former imperial goods as their own domains. As the highest Lehnsgericht and advisory body he created the so-called " Haute Cour ." He also drove the establishment of a Latin church system forward in his rule by appointing his chaplain Berard for the first Latin archbishop of Athens. Pope Innocent III. confirmed this action in 1206 and assumed the new Archdiocese of eleven suffragan sees. In Thebes also an archbishopric with two own dioceses was established. In Athens, Otto founded the monastery of Daphni, which he entrusted to the Cistercian monks from the monastery Bellevaux, had founded his great-grandfather in the Franche -Comté.

Otto was called in official documents as a Frankish Athenarum dominus ( lord of Athens) and by the native Greeks Megaskyr (Great Lord ). The title of a duke ( dux Atheniensium ateque Thebanorum ) was only imputed to him by the chronicler Alberic of Trois- Fontaines, which the conquest of Athens by the Crusaders in his chronicle noted profusely in the French homeland.

In 1207, Otto mediated the marriage of Emperor Henry with a daughter of Boniface of Montferrat. This turned out a little later in the fight against the Bulgarians, which Otto fell into a vague feudal relation. Because in the UK Thessalonica took Lombard regent power, which Otto refused to pay homage to. Instead, he now recognized the emperor as his direct vassals. At the beginning of 1208 the Lombards fell under Alberto Pallavicini in his domain and occupied Thebes and then Kadmeia. Emperor Henry summoned in haste in Ravennika a parliament together, where the Lombards pointedly did not attend. With a united army joined Otto and the Kaiser them in the Kadmeia and forced their surrender. The Kadmeia was then handed over to the Emperor, and Otto was Thebes refunded. The Lombards but were rewarded with Euboea ( Negroponte ), it was still to conquer.

After Otto supported his allies Gottfried I of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, in the conquest of Akrokorinth, Argos and Nauplia in 1212. The latter two cities Otto received from you as a fief of Achaia. In 1214 he received from the Pope Livadia as an ecclesiastical fief.

On May 2, 1210 Otto was recognized in the second Parliament in Ravennika there negotiated the Concordat with the Pope, which regulated the relationship between clergy and secular lords in Greece. Nevertheless, he constantly came into conflict with the Church, which charged him with unlawful enrichment of church property. 1218 was pronounced by the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople Opel interdict over Athens, 1220 even followed the excommunication against Otto by a papal legate.

1225 he returned to his home and left the dominion of Athens his son Guido I. de la Roche. He first settled in the castle Ray. He spent his last years withdrawn in the 'Family Monastery ' Bellevaux near the family castle in Rigney. After his death he was buried in the monastery church affiliated family chapel. His grave plate was placed after the French Revolution in the Church of Seveux where it remains today.

Family

Otto married his cousin Isabelle ( Elizabeth) de Ray, daughter of Guy, Seigneur de Ray. They had a daughter, Margaret ∞ ( 1252), Count Henry I of Vaudémont (* around 1232, † 1278 ).