– GLEIBERG –

The Lahngau pagus formed around the Lahn river valley beyond the Roman limes. In Carolingian times it was divided into upper and lower sectors, and the county of Gleiberg represents Upper Lahngau; but uncertainty exists as to the easterly extent of the pagus. There is evidence that the region was divided in various ways under the Konradiner of the early tenth century, but reversion to an upper-lower distinction demonstrates preserved custom.

Until Duke Eberhard’s rebellion of 938/9 the county was held in the senior line of the Konradiner. Subsequent gaps in the comital documentations are extensive, and it is difficult to be confident about a general pattern of succession. Two significant points of reference are the testament of Udo († 949), who divided fiefs and jurisdictions ‘like an inheritance among sons’, and the passage of the Gleiberg county to Otto of Hammerstein’s Luxembourg heirs after 1036. In the meantime we have one relevant comital documentation, for a Count Hildilin from 975. Otto of Hammerstein cannot have inherited lineally from Hildilin, yet Hildlin must surely be a close relative of Otto’s Konradiner forebears.

The Luxembourgs in Hessen: That Otto himself held Upper Lahngau can only be inferred. At least with his Luxembourg heirs we have a localization to the region in question through the Gleiberg cognomen; and the data available for heirs such as the counts of Solms are able to certify the geographical inference. Clearly the county passed in the marriage of Otto’s sister to Frederick of Luxembourg († 1019) and became available to the Luxembourgs at Otto’s death. Count Wernher III, otherwise active in Hessengau, was count of Upper Lahngau in 1065, but this was after the Luxembourg duke Frederick of Lower Lorraine forfeited certain comital jurisdictions due to his intransigence over the succession of Emperor Henry IV in 1057. Upper Lahngau was no doubt restored to the Luxembourgs at Wernher III’s death in 1067, given that Wernher’s son and successor was a minor.

In contemporary sources the Gleiberg cognomen is first attested around 1070. Hermann of Salm, the anti-king, was count of Gleiberg, and the identity of the senior Luxembourgs seems to have been conceived primarily in terms of Gleiberg. Not until the mid-twelfth century is there a local count. The individual in question is Count William of Gleiberg (fl. 1129-58), who can be affiliated with considerable confidence as Hermann II of Salm’s eldest son. The inheritance then passed cognatically.

The clearest of William’s daughters is Salome, given that William’s wife bore the same name. The younger Salome was the mother of Mathilde, who married Count Palatine Rudolf of Tübingen († 1219) and established her husband’s family in the region. We do not know the husband of the younger Salome, yet William was succeeded by a Count Otto of Gleiberg, and there is no reason why he should not be the husband. His background seems impossible to discern: late source material providing an anonymous count of Eberstein as husband has the stamp of unreliability.

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