Rudolf of Rheinfelden

Rudolf of Rheinfelden ( – 15 October 1080) was Duke of Swabia from 1057 to 1079. Initially a follower of his brother-in-law, the Salian emperor Henry IV, his election as German anti-king in 1077 marked the outbreak of the Great Saxon Revolt and the first phase of open conflict in the Investiture Controversy between Emperor and Papacy. After a series of armed conflicts, Rudolf succumbed to his injuries after his forces defeated Henry's in the Battle on the Elster. Life Rudolf was the son of the Swabian count (Graf) Kuno of Rheinfelden. He was first mentioned in a 1048 deed issued by the Salian emperor Henry III as a count in the Swabian Sisgau on the High Rhine (in present-day Northwestern Switzerland), an estate then held by the Prince-Bishopric of Basel. Rudolf's family had large possessions up to Sankt Blasien Abbey in the Black Forest and down to the Aargau beyond the border with the Kingdom of Burgundy. He probably was related to King Rudolph II of Burgundy (d. 937), the Dukes of Lorraine and the Ottonian dynasty. Duke of Swabia When Duke Otto III of Swabia died without male heirs in 1057, Empress Agnes, consort of late Henry III, appointed Rudolf Swabian duke and administrator of Burgundy. Rivalling with the Zähringen count Berthold, Rudolf, according to Frutolf of Michelsberg, had taken advantage of the minority of Agnes' son Henry IV, elected King of the Romans, by kidnapping his sister Matilda of Swabia. Rudolf demanded, and received, Matilda's hand in marriage (1059). In 1061 Berthold received the Duchy of Carinthia instead. When Matilda died in 1060, Rudolf subsequently, in 1066, married Adelaide of Savoy (d. 1079), a daughter of Count Otto of Savoy and Adelaide of Susa. When Adelaide's sister Bertha of Savoy married Henry IV in 1066, Rudolf became brother-in-law to the king twice over. During Agnes' regency, the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire could further strengthen their position against the Imperial authority. In the 1062 Coup of Kaiserswerth, several princes led by Archbishop Anno II of Cologne even abducted the minor king to enforce the surrender of the Imperial Regalia. When Henry came of age in 1065, he continued the policies of his father against the reluctant Saxon nobility, sparking the Saxon Rebellion in 1073.