Dohna Castle
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Dohna Castle
Dohna Castle (german: Burg Dohna, cz, hrad Donín) on the once important medieval trade route from Saxony to Bohemia was the ancestral castle seat of the . Of the old, once imposing double castle only a few remnants of the walls remain. The ruins of the old castle are located on the hill of ''Schlossberg'' near the subsequent suburb of the town of the same name, Dohna, in the district of Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge in Saxony, Germany. History Dohna Castle was probably founded around A.D. 950 by Emperor Otto I (936–973) on the Schlossberg hill on the site of a Sorbian hillfort fortification. This region around the Schlossberg had been a Sorbian settlement from prehistoric times. The name of the associated settlement was Donin, from which the castle received its name. The castle was the centre of the imperially immediate lordship of the burgraves of Dohna. They had the task of guarding the important trade route between Saxony and Bohemia, hold the conquered and subj ...
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Hill Castle
A hill castle or mountain castle is a castle built on a natural feature that stands above the surrounding terrain. It is a term derived from the German ''Höhenburg'' used in categorising castle sites by their topographical location. Hill castles are thus distinguished from lowland castles (''Niederungsburgen''). Hill castles may be further subdivided depending on their situation into the following: * Hilltop castle (''Gipfelburg''), that stands on the summit of a hill with steep drops on all sides. A special type is the rock castle or ''Felsenburg''. * Ridge castle (''Kammburg''), that is built on the crest of a ridge. * Hillside castle (''Hangburg''), that is built on the side of a hill and thus is dominated by rising ground on one side. * Spur castle (''Spornburg''), that is built on a hill spur surrounded by steep terrain on three sides and thus only needs to be defended on the one remaining side. When in the 10th and 11th centuries castles lost their pure fortress charac ...
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Christianization
Christianization ( or Christianisation) is to make Christian; to imbue with Christian principles; to become Christian. It can apply to the conversion of an individual, a practice, a place or a whole society. It began in the Roman Empire, continued through the Middle Ages in Europe, and in the twenty-first century has spread around the globe. Historically, there are four stages of Christianization beginning with individual conversion, followed by the translation of Christian texts into local vernacular language, establishing education and building schools, and finally, social reform that sometimes emerged naturally and sometimes included politics, government, coercion and even force through colonialism. The first countries to make Christianity their state religion were Armenia, Georgia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. In the fourth to fifth centuries, multiple tribes of Germanic barbarians converted to either Arian or orthodox Christianity. The Frankish empire begins during this same pe ...
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List Of Margraves Of Meissen
This article lists the margraves of Meissen, a march and territorial state on the eastern border of the Holy Roman Empire. History King Henry the Fowler, on his 928-29 campaign against the Slavic Glomacze tribes, had a fortress erected on a hill at Meissen (''Mišno'') on the Elbe river. Later named '' Albrechtsburg'', the castle about 965 became the seat of the Meissen margraves, installed by Emperor Otto I when the vast '' Marca Geronis'' ( Gero's march) was partitioned into five new margraviates, including Meissen, the Saxon Eastern March, and also the Northern March which eventually became the Margraviate of Brandenburg. During the tenth century, the Meissen margraves temporarily extended their territory into the Milceni lands up to the Kwisa (''Queis'') river and the border with the Silesian region of the Early Polish state. The eastern lands around Bautzen (''Budissin''), later known as Upper Lusatia, were ceded to the Polish duke Bolesław I the Brave according to ...
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Wiprecht Of Groitzsch
Wiprecht (or Wigbert) of Groitzsch (died 22 May 1124) was the Margrave of Meissen and the Saxon Ostmark from 1123 until his death. He was born to a noble family of the Altmark, the son of Wiprecht of Balsamgau and Sigena of Leinungen. After his father's death in 1060, he was raised at the court of Lothair Udo II, Margrave of the Nordmark, in Stade. Lothair Udo granted him the castle of Tangermünde in the Balsamgau as a fief and later transferred him to the castle of Groitzsch in the Osterland, between the Pleisse, the Mulde, and the Elster, from which he took his name. Sometime between 1075 and 1080, he was forcibly exiled from Groitzsch by the regional nobility, who opposed his colonisation movements. He fled to the court of Vratislaus II of Bohemia in Prague. Under Vratislaus he rose to a position of influence at court and, as a favourite of the Emperor Henry IV, he supported Vratislaus for a crown in 1080. In 1085 married the king's daughter Judith, daughter of his third ...
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Gau (country Subdivision)
''Gau'' (German , nl, gouw , fy, gea or ''goa'' ) is a Germanic term for a region within a country, often a former or current province. It was used in the Middle Ages, when it can be seen as roughly corresponding to an English shire. The administrative use of the term was revived as a subdivision during the period of Nazi Germany in 1933–1945. It still appears today in regional names, such as the Rheingau or Allgäu. Middle Ages Etymology The Germanic word is reflected in Gothic ''gawi'' (neuter; genitive ''gaujis'') and early Old High German ''gewi, gowi'' (neuter) and in some compound names ''-gawi'' as in Gothic (e.g. ''Durgawi'' "Canton of Thurgau", ''Alpagawi'' "Allgäu"), later ''gâi, gôi'', and after loss of the stem suffix ''gaw, gao'', and with motion to the feminine as ''gawa'' besides ''gowo'' (from ''gowio''). Old Saxon shows further truncation to ''gâ, gô''. As an equivalent of Latin ''pagus'', a ''gau'' is analogous with a ''pays'' of the Kingdom of F ...
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Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry IV (german: Heinrich IV; 11 November 1050 – 7 August 1106) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1084 to 1105, King of Germany from 1054 to 1105, King of Italy and Burgundy from 1056 to 1105, and Duke of Bavaria from 1052 to 1054. He was the son of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor—the second monarch of the Salian dynasty—and Agnes of Poitou. After his father's death on 5 October 1056, Henry was placed under his mother's guardianship. She made grants to German aristocrats to secure their support. Unlike her late husband, she could not control the election of the popes, thus the idea of the "liberty of the Church" strengthened during her rule. Taking advantage of her weakness, Archbishop Anno II of Cologne kidnapped Henry in April 1062. He administered Germany until Henry came of age in 1065. Henry endeavoured to recover the royal estates that had been lost during his minority. He employed low-ranking officials to carry out his new policies, causing discontent in Saxony and ...
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Vratislaus II
Vratislaus II (or Wratislaus II) ( cs, Vratislav II.) (c. 1032 – 14 January 1092), the son of Bretislaus I and Judith of Schweinfurt, was the first King of Bohemia as of 15 June 1085, his royal title granted as a lifetime honorific from Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV that did not establish a hereditary monarchy. Before his elevation to the royal dignity, Vratislaus had ruled Bohemia as duke since 1061. On his father's death in 1055, Vratislaus became duke of Olomouc, whereas his older brother became Duke of Bohemia as Spytihněv II. He fell out with his brother and was exiled to Hungary. Vratislaus regained the ducal throne of Olomouc with Hungarian assistance and eventually reconciled with his brother, then succeeded him as duke of Bohemia when he died in 1061. Campaigns of Henry IV Both Pope Alexander II and Pope Gregory VII confirmed Vratislaus in the privilege of wearing the mitre and tunic which his predecessors had. Despite this, Vratislaus supported Henry in both the In ...
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Duchy Of Bohemia
The Duchy of Bohemia, also later referred to in English as the Czech Duchy, ( cs, České knížectví) was a monarchy and a principality of the Holy Roman Empire in Central Europe during the Early and High Middle Ages. It was formed around 870 by Czechs as part of the Great Moravian realm. Bohemia separated from disintegrating Moravia after Duke Spytihněv swore fealty to the East Frankish king Arnulf in 895. While the Bohemian dukes of the Přemyslid dynasty, at first ruling at Prague Castle and Levý Hradec, brought further estates under their control, the Christianization initiated by Saints Cyril and Methodius was continued by the Frankish bishops of Regensburg and Passau. In 973, the Diocese of Prague was founded through the joint efforts of Duke Boleslaus II and Emperor Otto I. Late Duke Wenceslaus I of Bohemia, killed by his younger brother Boleslaus in 935, became the land's patron saint. While the lands were occupied by the Polish king Bolesław I and intern ...
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Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. From the accession of Otto I in 962 until the twelfth century, the Empire was the most powerful monarchy in Europe. Andrew Holt characterizes it as "perhaps the most powerful European state of the Middle Ages". The functioning of government depended on the harmonic cooperation (dubbed ''consensual rulership'' by Bernd Schneidmüller) between monarch and vassals but this harmony was disturbed during the Salian period. The empire reached the apex of territorial expansion and power under the House of Hohenstaufen in the mid-thirteenth century, but overextending led to partial collapse. On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe, more than three centuries after the fall of the earlier ancient Weste ...
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Fief
A fief (; la, feudum) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal allegiance, services and/or payments. The fees were often lands, land revenue or revenue-producing real property like a watermill, held in feudal land tenure: these are typically known as fiefs or fiefdoms. However, not only land but anything of value could be held in fee, including governmental office, rights of exploitation such as hunting, fishing or felling trees, monopolies in trade, money rents and tax farms. There never did exist one feudal system, nor did there exist one type of fief. Over the ages, depending on the region, there was a broad variety of customs using the same basic legal principles in many variations. Terminology In ancient Rome, a " benefice" (from the Latin noun , meaning "benefit") was a gift of l ...
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Eckard II, Margrave Of Meissen
Eckard II (german: Ekkehard; – 24 January 1046) was Margrave of Lusatia (as Eckard I) from 1034 and Margrave of Meissen from 1038 until his death. He was the last of his dynasty, with his death the line of Ekkeharding margraves descending from Eckard I of Meissen (d. 1002) became extinct. Life He was a younger son of Margrave Eckard I of Meissen and his wife Swanehilde. Eckard was a count in the '' Gau'' Chutizi east of Merseburg as well as in the burgward of Teuchern. Upon the assassination of his father in 1002, Eckard II and his elder brother Herman I ruled over the Ekkeharding allodial lands, while the Meissen margravial title first passed to their uncle Gunzelin feuding with his nephews until his deposition in 1009. During the German–Polish War around the Lusatian and Milceni lands, the brothers were able to maintain the rule over the Meissen lands until fighting ended with the 1018 Peace of Bautzen. About 1026, Eckard married Uta von Ballenstedt, sister of the S ...
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Margravate Of Meissen
The Margravate of Meissen (german: Markgrafschaft Meißen) was a medieval principality in the area of the modern German state of Saxony. It originally was a frontier march of the Holy Roman Empire, created out of the vast '' Marca Geronis'' ( Saxon Eastern March) in 965. Under the rule of the Wettin dynasty, the margravate finally merged with the former Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg into the Saxon Electorate by 1423. Predecessors In the mid 9th century, the area of the later margravate was part of an eastern frontier zone of the Carolingian Empire called Sorbian March (''Limes Sorabicus''), after Sorbian tribes of Polabian Slavs settling beyond the Saale river. In 849, a margrave named Thachulf was documented in the '' Annales Fuldenses''. His title is rendered as ''dux Sorabici limitis'', "duke of the Sorbian frontier", but he and his East Frankish successors were commonly known as ''duces Thuringorum'', "dukes of the Thuringians", as they set about establishing their power over ...
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