Christopher of Bavaria
Encyclopedia
Christopher of Bavaria or Christopher the Bavarian; as king named Christopher (Cristofforus); Danish
and Norwegian
: Christoffer af/av Bayern; Swedish
Kristofer av Bayern (26 February 1416 – 5 or 6 January 1448) was union
king of Denmark
(1440–1448 as Christopher III), Sweden
(1441–1448) and Norway
(1442–1448).
, the son of John, Count Palatine of Neumarkt
, and Catherine of Pomerania
, the daughter of Wartislaw VII
, Duke of Pomerania in Pomerania-Stolp, and Catherine of Pomerania, sister of the Scandinavian king, Eric of Pomerania
. Count Palatine John was a son of King Rupert of Germany
. In 1445, Christopher married Dorothea of Brandenburg
(1430 – 25 November 1495), in Copenhagen
.
Eric of Pomerania
was deposed as king of Denmark and Sweden in 1439. As Eric's nephew, Christopher, who was rather unfamiliar with Scandinavian conditions, was elected by the Danish State Council
as the successor to his uncle, first as regent
from 1439, and then proclaimed King of Denmark at the Viborg Assembly (Danish landsting) on 9 April 1440. He was meant to be a puppet, as evidenced by the saying: "Had the Council demanded the stars of heaven from him, he would have ordered it." However he succeeded in maintaining some personal control. As a whole his rule, according to the politics of the nobility and his succession, might be called the start of the long period of balance between royal power and nobility which lasted until 1660. He was later elected king of Sweden in 1441, and Norway in June 1442.
At the start of his reign, he put down peasant rebellions on Funen and Jutland. Once the rebellion on Funen was suppressed, he turned his attention the uprising in Jutland. North Jutland, especially Vendsyssel, was so restive that a peasant army of 25,000 led by Henrik Reventlow
posed a serious threat to Christopher's continued reign. Before the king could act, Jutland's noble families raised their own army and marched west of Aalborg
to meet Reventlow's forces. The peasants had created a gigantic wagon fortress three layers deep to protect themselves from the mounted knights they knew would come against them. They also placed tree branches across the bog in front of the camp and then cast earth on top to make it look like solid ground. The overconfident army of nobles led by Eske Brok appeared at St Jorgen's Hill on 3 May 1441. The knights charged the camp, and were quickly mired down in the bog. The peasants moved in for the kill. Brok was killed and dismembered and the pieces sent to the towns in the area as a warning. The peasants then raided the area's most important manor at Aagard and burned it, forcing the noble Niels Guldenstierne to flee with nothing but a staff.
The treatment of the captives after the battle strengthened Christopher's determination to put down the peasants. With his own army Christopher rode north to the rebel camp at Husby Hole near St Jorgen's Hill in northern Jutland. Because the rebels outnumbered his troops, Christopher sent word that anyone who left the camp and went home would not be punished for rebellion. The men from the island of Mors
and Thisted
left, for which they were called cowards and traitors ever after. Christopher ordered the attack on the rebel camp on 8 June 1441 and despite fighting ferociously the rebels could not overcome the heavily armed knights. Thousands of rebels were killed, those who survived were fined heavily. The more severe consequence was that rebels lost their free status and became serfs on the farms where they worked. The king made it a capital crime for peasants to carry weapons longer than a short knife. The subjugation of Denmark's once free peasants was complete.
In May 1442 Christopher traveled to Lödöse
to meet with the nobles from all three kingdoms. He was crowned King of Norway there and then went to Oslo and the Trondheim to be confirmed as the king. The next year he was proclaimed King of Denmark at the Urnehoved Assembly near Ribe. When his residence at Roskilde burned down, Christopher moved to Copenhagen and made it the capital of Denmark. The Swedish nobles were not happy to relinquish any power and thus didn't like him, claiming he was too German for them and that he allowed his uncle (ex-King Eric) to plunder shipping from his castle on Gotland
without any attempt to stop him. They blamed a series of bad harvests on him. People were so hungry they mixed ground tree bark with the little flour they could find. Christopher was contemptuously nicknamed the "Bark King" in Sweden.
On the other hand he tried to support the cities and their merchants as far as the limits of nobility and Hanseatic cities allowed. During his reign Copenhagen
was made permanently the capital of Denmark (municipal charter
of 1443).
He carried on an ineffective policy of war and negotiations against Eric on Gotland which did little to help the dissatisfaction within both Sweden and the Hanseatic League. The Kalmar Union Treaty was changed so that the aristocracy had most of the policy-making powers, and the king lost many of the powers monarchs had acquired since Viking times. The results of this policy of balance were still not reached when he suddenly died as the last descendant of Valdemar IV of Denmark.
Christopher died suddenly at Helsingborg
in 1448. On 28 October 1449, Dorothea remarried Christian I
. King Christopher was buried in Roskilde Cathedral
. In 1654 his Wittelsbach
family returned to power in Sweden.
By the Grace of God
, King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the Wends
and the Goths
, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria.
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
and Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
: Christoffer af/av Bayern; Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
Kristofer av Bayern (26 February 1416 – 5 or 6 January 1448) was union
Kalmar Union
The Kalmar Union is a historiographical term meaning a series of personal unions that united the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway , and Sweden under a single monarch, though intermittently and with a population...
king of Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
(1440–1448 as Christopher III), Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
(1441–1448) and Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
(1442–1448).
Biography
He was probably born at Neumarkt in der OberpfalzNeumarkt in der Oberpfalz
Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz is the capital of the Neumarkt district in the administrative region of the Upper Palatinate, in Bavaria, Germany. With a population of about 40,000, Neumarkt is the seat of various projects, and acts as the economic and cultural center of the western Upper Palatinate,...
, the son of John, Count Palatine of Neumarkt
John, Count Palatine of Neumarkt
John was the Count Palatine of Neumarkt from 1410 until 1443.-Life:John was born in Neunburg vorm Wald in 1383 as the second surviving son of Rupert III of the Palatinate, King of Germany. In 1407 he married Catherine of Pomerania, the daughter of Duke Warcislaw VII of Pomerania-Stolp...
, and Catherine of Pomerania
Catherine of Pomerania, Countess Palatine of Neumarkt
Catherine of Pomerania , was a Pomeranian princess and Countess Palatine of Neumarkt...
, the daughter of Wartislaw VII
Wartislaw VII, Duke of Pomerania
Wartislaw VII was one of the Dukes of Pomerania. He was the son of Bogislaw V, brother of Casimir IV and Bogislaw VIII. He married Maria of Mecklenburg and was the father of Eric of Pomerania and Catherine of Pomerania....
, Duke of Pomerania in Pomerania-Stolp, and Catherine of Pomerania, sister of the Scandinavian king, Eric of Pomerania
Eric of Pomerania
Eric of Pomerania KG was King Eric III of Norway Norwegian Eirik, King Eric VII of Denmark , and as Eric King of Sweden...
. Count Palatine John was a son of King Rupert of Germany
Rupert of Germany
Rupert of Germany from the House of Wittelsbach was Elector Palatine from 1398 and German King from 1400 until his death...
. In 1445, Christopher married Dorothea of Brandenburg
Dorothea of Brandenburg
Dorothea of Brandenburg was the consort of Christopher of Bavaria and Christian I of Denmark. She was queen of Denmark , Norway and Sweden two times each...
(1430 – 25 November 1495), in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
.
Eric of Pomerania
Eric of Pomerania
Eric of Pomerania KG was King Eric III of Norway Norwegian Eirik, King Eric VII of Denmark , and as Eric King of Sweden...
was deposed as king of Denmark and Sweden in 1439. As Eric's nephew, Christopher, who was rather unfamiliar with Scandinavian conditions, was elected by the Danish State Council
Rigsraadet
Rigsraadet, or Riksrådet, , is the name of the councils of the Scandinavian countries that ruled the countries together with the kings from late Middle Ages to the 17th century...
as the successor to his uncle, first as regent
Regent
A regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...
from 1439, and then proclaimed King of Denmark at the Viborg Assembly (Danish landsting) on 9 April 1440. He was meant to be a puppet, as evidenced by the saying: "Had the Council demanded the stars of heaven from him, he would have ordered it." However he succeeded in maintaining some personal control. As a whole his rule, according to the politics of the nobility and his succession, might be called the start of the long period of balance between royal power and nobility which lasted until 1660. He was later elected king of Sweden in 1441, and Norway in June 1442.
Henrik Reventlow
Henrik Reventlow was a leader of a peasant revolt in Denmark, during the reign of King Christopher II of Denmark....
posed a serious threat to Christopher's continued reign. Before the king could act, Jutland's noble families raised their own army and marched west of Aalborg
Aalborg
-Transport:On the north side of the Limfjord is Nørresundby, which is connected to Aalborg by a road bridge Limfjordsbroen, an iron railway bridge Jernbanebroen over Limfjorden, as well as a motorway tunnel running under the Limfjord Limfjordstunnelen....
to meet Reventlow's forces. The peasants had created a gigantic wagon fortress three layers deep to protect themselves from the mounted knights they knew would come against them. They also placed tree branches across the bog in front of the camp and then cast earth on top to make it look like solid ground. The overconfident army of nobles led by Eske Brok appeared at St Jorgen's Hill on 3 May 1441. The knights charged the camp, and were quickly mired down in the bog. The peasants moved in for the kill. Brok was killed and dismembered and the pieces sent to the towns in the area as a warning. The peasants then raided the area's most important manor at Aagard and burned it, forcing the noble Niels Guldenstierne to flee with nothing but a staff.
The treatment of the captives after the battle strengthened Christopher's determination to put down the peasants. With his own army Christopher rode north to the rebel camp at Husby Hole near St Jorgen's Hill in northern Jutland. Because the rebels outnumbered his troops, Christopher sent word that anyone who left the camp and went home would not be punished for rebellion. The men from the island of Mors
Mors (island)
Mors or Morsø is a 367.7 km2 land locked island in the shallow sound called Limfjorden in Denmark. As of 1 January 2010, it has a population of 21,800. The main town on the island is called Nykøbing Mors. Geologically Mors is unique...
and Thisted
Thisted
Thisted is a town in Thisted municipality of Region Nordjylland, in Denmark. It has a population of 13,005 and is located in Thy, in northwestern Jutland....
left, for which they were called cowards and traitors ever after. Christopher ordered the attack on the rebel camp on 8 June 1441 and despite fighting ferociously the rebels could not overcome the heavily armed knights. Thousands of rebels were killed, those who survived were fined heavily. The more severe consequence was that rebels lost their free status and became serfs on the farms where they worked. The king made it a capital crime for peasants to carry weapons longer than a short knife. The subjugation of Denmark's once free peasants was complete.
In May 1442 Christopher traveled to Lödöse
Lödöse
Lödöse is a locality situated in Lilla Edet Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden. It had 1,265 inhabitants in 2005...
to meet with the nobles from all three kingdoms. He was crowned King of Norway there and then went to Oslo and the Trondheim to be confirmed as the king. The next year he was proclaimed King of Denmark at the Urnehoved Assembly near Ribe. When his residence at Roskilde burned down, Christopher moved to Copenhagen and made it the capital of Denmark. The Swedish nobles were not happy to relinquish any power and thus didn't like him, claiming he was too German for them and that he allowed his uncle (ex-King Eric) to plunder shipping from his castle on Gotland
Gotland
Gotland is a county, province, municipality and diocese of Sweden; it is Sweden's largest island and the largest island in the Baltic Sea. At 3,140 square kilometers in area, the region makes up less than one percent of Sweden's total land area...
without any attempt to stop him. They blamed a series of bad harvests on him. People were so hungry they mixed ground tree bark with the little flour they could find. Christopher was contemptuously nicknamed the "Bark King" in Sweden.
On the other hand he tried to support the cities and their merchants as far as the limits of nobility and Hanseatic cities allowed. During his reign Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
was made permanently the capital of Denmark (municipal charter
Municipal charter
A city charter or town charter is a legal document establishing a municipality such as a city or town. The concept developed in Europe during the middle ages....
of 1443).
He carried on an ineffective policy of war and negotiations against Eric on Gotland which did little to help the dissatisfaction within both Sweden and the Hanseatic League. The Kalmar Union Treaty was changed so that the aristocracy had most of the policy-making powers, and the king lost many of the powers monarchs had acquired since Viking times. The results of this policy of balance were still not reached when he suddenly died as the last descendant of Valdemar IV of Denmark.
Christopher died suddenly at Helsingborg
Helsingborg
Helsingborg is a city and the seat of Helsingborg Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 97,122 inhabitants in 2010. Helsingborg is the centre of an area in the Øresund region of about 320,000 inhabitants in north-west Scania, and is Sweden's closest point to Denmark, with the Danish city...
in 1448. On 28 October 1449, Dorothea remarried Christian I
Christian I of Denmark
Christian I was a Danish monarch, king of Denmark , Norway and Sweden , under the Kalmar Union. In Sweden his short tenure as monarch was preceded by regents, Jöns Bengtsson Oxenstierna and Erik Axelsson Tott and succeeded by regent Kettil Karlsson Vasa...
. King Christopher was buried in Roskilde Cathedral
Roskilde Cathedral
Roskilde Cathedral , in the city of Roskilde on the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark, is a cathedral of the Lutheran Church of Denmark. The first Gothic cathedral to be built of brick, it encouraged the spread of the Brick Gothic style throughout Northern Europe...
. In 1654 his Wittelsbach
Wittelsbach
The Wittelsbach family is a European royal family and a German dynasty from Bavaria.Members of the family served as Dukes, Electors and Kings of Bavaria , Counts Palatine of the Rhine , Margraves of Brandenburg , Counts of Holland, Hainaut and Zeeland , Elector-Archbishops of Cologne , Dukes of...
family returned to power in Sweden.
Full title
Christopher's full title was:By the Grace of God
By the Grace of God
By the Grace of God is an introductory part of the full styles of a monarch taken to be ruling by divine right, not a title in its own right....
, King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the Wends
King of the Wends
The title of King of the Wends denoted sovereignty or claims over once-Slavic lands of southern coasts of the Baltic Sea, those otherwise called Mecklenburg, Holstein and Pomerania, and was used from 12th century to 1972 by Kings of Denmark and from ca 1540 to 1973 by the Kings of Sweden.The...
and the Goths
King of the Goths
The title of King of the Goths was for many centuries borne by both the Kings of Sweden and the Kings of Denmark, denoting sovereignty or claimed sovereignty over the antique people of the Goths....
, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria.