Gertrude of Merania, the queen consort of Hungary as the first wife of King Andrew II (r. 1205–1235), was assassinated by a group of Hungarian lords on 28 September 1213 in the Pilis Mountains during a royal hunting expedition. Leopold VI, Duke of Austria and Gertrude's brother Berthold, Archbishop of Kalocsa were also wounded but survived the attack.
The assassination became one of the most high-profile criminal cases in the history of Hungary, and caused widespread astonishment across Europe in the 13th century. Despite a relatively diverse and large number of domestic and foreign sources, the motivation of the killers is unclear. According to contemporary sources, Gertrude's blatant favoritism towards her German kinsmen and courtiers had stirred up discontent among the native lords and prompted her murder. Later tradition says that Gertrude's brother Berthold raped the wife of Bánk Bár-Kalán, one of the lords, who, along with his companions, took revenge for the grievance. This story inspired many subsequent chroniclers and literary works in Hungary and the rest of Europe.
Background Gertrude was born into the House of Andechs as the daughter of Berthold, Duke of Merania. The Duchy of Merania, a fiefdom of the Holy Roman Empire, laid in the peninsula of Istria and also had nominal suzerainty over the coast of the Adriatic Sea. Merania was located in the neighborhood of Dalmatia, belonging to Croatia in personal union with Hungary, which was ruled by Emeric from 1196 to 1204. His younger brother Andrew constantly rebelled against him. Following a victory against the king, he forced Emeric to cede Croatia and Dalmatia as an appanage to him in 1197. In practice, Andrew administered the provinces as an independent monarch. Although Emeric defeated his brother after another conspiracy in 1199, Andrew was allowed to return to his duchy in 1200. Andrew married Gertrude of Merania sometime between 1200 and 1203; Gertrude's father Berthold owned extensive domains in the Holy Roman Empire along the borders of Andrew's duchy. Gertrude's influence and political involvement, already in the years before Andrew's reign as king, are clearly shown by the fact that when Emeric defeated his brother again in 1203, he found it necessary to send Gertrude back to her native land of Merania.
Andrew II ascended to the Hungarian throne in 1205. As queen consort, Gertrude had unusual (but not unprecedented; see Helena of Serbia) influence over governmental affairs. Theodoric of Apolda, in his hagiography of Elizabeth of Hungary, emphasizes Gertrude's "masculine characteristics". Two sources testify that Gertrude exercised power as regent during the king's absence on military campaigns. When Andrew II launched a campaign against the Cuman chieftain Gubasel in Bulgaria, Gertrude performed a judicial activity over a lawsuit between Abbot Uros of Pannonhalma and the castle serfs of Pressburg (present-day Bratislava, Slovakia) around 1212 or 1213. Another note mentions that when Gertrude was assassinated, the royal seal was lost. Both remarks imply that Gertrude acted as royal governor both times when Andrew led campaigns in Bulgaria and Halych, respectively, which caused resentment among the local elite.
Gertrude also expressed blatant favoritism towards her German kinsmen and courtiers, which may have stirred up discontent among the native Hungarian lords. Her younger brother Berthold was appointed Archbishop of Kalocsa in 1206 and was made Ban of Croatia and Dalmatia in 1209. Two other brothers, Ekbert, Bishop of Bamberg, and Henry II, Margrave of Istria, fled to Hungary in 1208 after they were accused of participating in the murder of Philip, King of the Germans. Andrew granted large domains to Ekbert in the Szepesség region (now Spiš, Slovakia). Andrew's generosity towards his wife's German relatives and courtiers added to the discontent of the local lords. According to historian Gyula Kristó, the anonymous author of The Deeds of the Hungarians referred to the Germans from the Holy Roman Empire when he sarcastically mentioned that " the Romans graze on the goods of Hungary." However, there is no source suggesting that Gertrude ever appointed German courtiers in her queenly court. Although it is possible that the 26th article of the Golden Bull of 1222, which prescribed that Hungarian properties could not be given to foreigners, and the 23rd article of the Golden Bull of 1231, which prescribed that foreigners could only be appointed to court positions if they remained in Hungary (because such people only "take the country's wealth [abroad]"), may reflect a negative response to Gertrude's favoritism, the few surviving royal donation letters from the period do not prove the mass acquisition of land by the Germans either; the local provost Adolph was granted lands in Szepesség due to the intervention of Gertrude and his brothers in 1209, while a certain Lenguer was granted a small portion in the village of Szántó upon the request of Archbishop Berthold. Both donations are considered insignificant gains compared to other acquisitions of the period, the beneficiaries of which were members of the native Hungarian elite. Officials of the queen's court (for instance, its count or head), including the future assassin Peter, were in all cases Hungarian magnates.
Assassination
In order to support his protege Danylo Romanovich against Mstislav Mstislavich, Andrew II departed for a new royal campaign against the Principality of Halych in the summer of 1213. During his absence, Hungarian lords captured and murdered Gertrude and many of her courtiers. Late 19th-century Hungarian historian Gyula Pauler was the first scholar, who compiled a professional synthesis, as well as a detailed examination of the circumstances of the murder, based on comprehensive source research and considering the conditions of the era. His findings were unanimously accepted by Hungarian historiography in the following decades.
According to Pauler, Queen Gertrude and her escort, also attending by his brother Archbishop Berthold and the reigning Austrian duke Leopold VI, took part in hunting in the Pilis Hills in late September 1213, when a group of Hungarian lords stormed the queen's tent and assassinated her partly for political reasons, partly because of personal grievances. Among the perpetrators were the queen's former confidant Peter, son of Töre, brothers Simon Kacsics and Michael Kacsics and a certain Simon, son-in-law of Palatine Bánk Bár-Kalán. It is possible, as Pauler considered, that the palatine himself and John, Archbishop of Esztergom were also involved in the planning of the conspiracy, but they remained in the background at the time of the assassination. Gertrude was brutally slaughtered, while Berthold and Leopold were physically assaulted, but they were released subsequently and managed to flee the scene. Based on new sources and philological considerations, historian Tamás Körmendi reexamined the circumstances of the assassination in his 2014 study.
Date and location Regarding the year, the contemporary and near-contemporary sources place the assassination in many different years, within a wide range between 1200 and 1218. However, Gertrude was firmly alive in 1211, when she sent her daughter Elizabeth with a substantial dowry to the Landgraviate of Thuringia in that year. On the other hand, her widower Andrew II mourned her death in his two surviving royal charters issued in 1214. Most of the narrative sources put the date of the murder to the year 1213. Tamás Körmendi accepted this year, since the majority of these works are the earliest and seemingly most authentic chronicles, including the Annals of Göttweig (Annales Gotwicenses) and the Annals of Salzburg (Annales Salisburgenses). 1213 is the only year, which appears in works that cannot be compared or related philologically, which makes it beyond doubt that the murder took place at that time.
Only three sources mentions the proper date of the murder. A 15th-century section of a Bavarian source, the Founders of the Monastery of Diessen (De fundatoribus monasterii Diessenses) refers the date to 28 September but with the year 1200, and cannot be considered an authentic report. The Annals of the Dominicans of Vienna (Annales Praedicatorum Vindobonensium) from the late 13th century preserved the exact date of assassination, 28 September, but without adding the year. Historian László Veszprémy accepted the date as authentic, since the annals also used necrologies as source, which always focused on the specific month and day instead of the year. The Aschaffenburgi Psalterium, which was compiled for Gertrude of Aldenberg, the queen's granddaughter, lists the time of death of various members of the House of Andechs; accordingly Queen Gertrude died on 28 September (the year is not given). The three unrelated sources confirm that the assassination did indeed take place on 28 September 1213.
Based on the narrations of the Austrian Rhyming Chronicle (Chronicon rhytmicum Austriacum) and the aforementioned Annals of the Dominicans of Vienna, which write that Gertrude was killed in her "field tent", and the fact that the queen was buried in the Pilis Abbey thereafter, Gyula Pauler claimed the assassination took place in the nearby Pilis royal forest on the occasion of a royal hunting. The subsequent Hungarian historiography accepted the theory without any reservations. Tamás Körmendi emphasized the speculative nature of this data; he emphasized, other sources say that the queen was assassinated either in her palace, bedroom or the royal military camp. The Galician–Volhynian Chronicle writes that Gertrude was murdered in the Premonstratensian monastery of Lelesz (present-day Leles, Slovakia), while accompanying her husband into the royal campaign against Halych. A royal charter from 1214 refers to that "a certain part of her [Gertrude's] body" was buried in Lelesz. Pauler argued Andrew II on his way to Halych was caught at Lelesz by the messenger who brought the news of her death, who presented a piece of the queen's corpse as evidence, which was subsequently buried there. In contrast, Körmendi considered the non-transportable pieces of the mutilated queen were quickly buried in the Lelesz monastery, near which the assassination could have taken place, perhaps in the Patak royal forest along the river Bodrog.
Perpetrators Peter, son of Töre, a former confidant of Gertrude, was the only sure participant in the assassination. One of the earliest records, the all three manuscripts of the Annals of Salzburg (its main corpus was written before 1216) contain that element which say the "queen of the Hungarians [...] was slaughtered by a certain count Peter". When Béla IV (the eldest son of Andrew and Gertrude) donated Peter's former lands to the newly founded the Cistercian Bélakút Abbey, the king states that these estates were confiscated from Peter, who "committed the crime of high treason by murdering our mother".