Ermengarde of Anjou

Ermengarde of Anjou, daughter of Count Fulk IV of Anjou and Hildegarde de Beaugency, was successively Duchess of Aquitaine, Brittany, and the patron of Fontevraud Abbey. She was born in Angers around 1067.

Having lost her mother at a young age, she received a good education and grew to be pious and concerned about religious reform, especially over the struggle against the secular appropriation of church property.

Her first wedding, in 1089, was to the young duke and poet, William IX of Aquitaine, but he had the marriage annulled three years later.

In 1093, her father married her to Duke Alan IV of Brittany, probably to secure an alliance against Normandy, now controlled by William the Conqueror’s son, Robert Curthose. Her husband left for Palestine in 1096 to take part in the First Crusade and she assumed control of the Duchy from then until 1101.

She spent little time in Rennes or the west of Brittany, preferring Nantes and the Saumur region. Influenced by Robert of Arbrissel, she approved the expansion of the abbey at Fontevraud, to which she withdrew on two occasions. An admirer of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, she favoured the creation of Cistercian abbeys.

After her husband’s death in 1095, she returned to Brittany to support the new duke, her young son Conan III. In 1117, at the age of 50, she accompanied her son on Crusade.

She returned to Palestine ten years later, and some historians believe her life ended in Jerusalem at the convent of Saint Anne. But obituary lists at the abbey of Saint-Saveur de Redon record a date of death in 1147 in Redon where her husband was buried.