Eupraxia of Kiev

Eupraxia of Kiev (1071 – July 20, 1109 AD) was the daughter of Vsevolod I, Prince of Kiev and second wife of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. She was the sister of Vladimir Monomakh.

Eupraxia was first married to Henry I the Long, Margrave of the Northern March, son of Lothair Udo II. They had no children before his death in 1087. Eupraxia went to live in the convent of Quedlinburg, where she met Henry IV, who was then the Saxon king. He was greatly impressed by her beauty, and, after his first wife died in December 1087, married her in 1089 in Cologne. She assumed the name Adelheid upon her coronation.

During Henry's campaigns in Italy, he took Eupraxia-Adelheid with him and kept her sequestered at Verona. She escaped in 1093 and fled to Canossa, where she sought the aid of Matilda of Tuscany, one of Henry's enemies. She met with Pope Urban II, and on his urgings Eupraxia-Adelheid made a public confession before the church Council of Piacenza. She accused Henry of holding her against her will, of forcing her to participate in orgies, and of attempting a black mass on her naked body.^[1] Those accusations were confirmed in turn by Conrad, who stated that this was the reason he turned against his father.

According to the chroniclers, Henry became involved in the Nicolaitan sect, and hosted the sect's orgies and obscene rituals in his palaces. Eupraxia-Adelheid was forced to participate in these orgies, and on one occasion Henry allegedly offered her to his son, Conrad. Conrad refused indignantly, and then revolted against his father. This black legend takes its origin from the hostility between Henry and Urban II during the Investiture Controversy.

Eupraxia-Adelheid left Italy for Hungary, where she lived until 1099, when she returned to Kiev. After Henry's death in 1106 she became a nun until her own death in 1109.

References

• Vernadsky, George (1976). Kievan Rus. New Haven: Yale University Press. 
• Raffensperger, Christian (2003). "Evpraksia Vsevolodovna between East and West". Russian History/Histoire Russe 30 (1–2): p. 23. 
• Rüß, Hartmut. "2006". Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (54): pp. 481–518.