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– NASSAU – (continued)
Dudo, the Counts Drutwin, and the Idstein inheritance: In 1117 Dudo of Laurenburg transformed his chapel of Lipporn into a priory of the Swabian monastery of Schaffhausen, and he institiuted a commemoration for a certain Drutwin who had brought relics of St. Florin to Lipporn. Schaffhausen monastery was a foundation of Eberhard of Nellenburg, and the relationship between Eberhard and Dudo is relatively clear. The seigneurial house of Metzingen descended from a son of Eberhard of Nellenburg, probably another Eberhard († 1075), who must have married Dudo’s aunt. The name Drutwin appears in the next Metzingen generation, and one can hardly doubt that Dudo himself descended from the Drutwin he wished to commemorate. Descent from Count Drutwin of Königssundern (fl. 991-5) and another Count Drutwin († 959) is very likely. The earlier Drutwin was apparently a Konradiner of an obscure junior line, who reestablished his place in the successions by marrying a sister of Duke Konrad (I) of Alsace († 982). He can be assigned the sons Rupert and Hugo, counts of Einrich. Of these, Rupert must have died young, and so Hugo succeeded to the Einrich jurisdiction. One assumes that Rupert’s son, thus the Drutwin who flourished towards the end of the century, was eventually compensated with the grant of Königssundern; yet he too must have died young, for Königssundern later passed to a line that most likely stemmed from Hugo. This line was the house of Idstein, and we assume that at its extinction in 1122/4 it still descended in the male line from Hugo. The death of a Drutwin is noted in the necrological annals of Fulda under 1024, and it is unclear whether he represents an intervening generation or merely a brother of a Rupert who died in 1055. Both are likely to belong to the Laurenburg dynasty. In any event, we assume that this line, like Idstein, descended agnatically from the Counts Drutwin. These assumptions allow a strong legal basis for Laurenburg’s inheritance of the Idstein county in 1122/4, for the reconstructions do not permit the possibility that Idstein passed cognatically to the Laurenburgs.
SHIELD By the mid-thirteenth century, before a lasting division took place between the Walramian and Ottonian lines, the Nassau arms were established as a lion in or on a field of azur strewn with bricks of or. These were identical to the Geldern arms of this period, although Geldern later made significant alterations. In one sense, Nassau simply inherited these arms through the marriage of Count Henry II († ante 1251) to Mathilde of Geldern. Nevertheless, Nassau had previously borne a lion, and there is a deeper connection in the circumstance that the counts of Nassau maintained the office of standard bearer of the archbishop of Cologne, previously held by Geldern. They received this office of standard bearer many years prior to the Geldern-Nassau marriage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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