Hugh, Count of Champagne

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Hugh (c. 1074–1125) was the Count of Champagne from 1093 until his death.

The third son of Theobald I of Champagne, bearing the title comte de Bar-sur-Aube, his older brother Odo V, Count of Troyes, died in 1092, leaving him master of Troyes and Vitry. In this way the three countships were united in his person, and his descendents chose to carry only the County of Champagne.

The act of his that resonated longest in history was his granting lands in 1115 to the monk Bernard of the reformed Benedictines at Cîteaux, in order to found a Cistercian monastery at Clairvaux, in a wild valley of a tributary of the Aube, where Bernard was appointed abbot and became famous as Bernard of Clairvaux. Hugh's charter makes over to the abbey Clairvaux and its dependencies, fields, meadows, vineyards, woods and water. A deeply affectionate letter from Bernard to Hugh survives (References), written in 1125, as Hugh went off for a third time^[1] to fight in the Holy Land, joining the Knights Templar, leaving his wife pregnant, and, disinheriting his son Eudes, transferring his titles to his nephew, who became Theobald II of Champagne.

Hugh was also the generous patron of abbeys of Moustier-Ramey and of Molesme. A letter to him from Yves of Chartres (Letter CCCXLV), in which the Bishop of Chartres reminds him of his obligations of marriage, perhaps to deter him from making vows of continence.