Ida, Countess of Hainaut
Ida, Countess of Hainaut (Ida of Louvain) (died 1139), daughter of Henry II, Count of Louvain, and Adela of Thuringa. Ida was sister to Godfrey I, Count of Louvain, and grand-niece to both Pope Stephen IX and Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Lorraine. She is sometimes confused with Ida of Louvain, a 13th-century nun.
Ida was married to Baldwin II, Count of Hainaut, who served in the First Crusade with Godfrey of Bouillon. Ida and Baldwin had nine children:
- Baldwin III, Count of Hainaut
- Louis (fl. 1096)
- Simon, a canon in Liege
- Henry (fl. 1096)
- Willem (d. after 1117)
- Arnould
- Ida, (d. after 1101), married first Guy de Chievres and second Thomas, Lord of Coucy, a knight whose behavior was exemplified in the lack of virtue
- Richilde (d. after 1118), married Amaury III de Montfort, and, repudiated, became a nun at Mauberge
- Aelidis, (d. 1153), married Nicolas II de Rumigny.
Baldwin sold some of his property to the Bishopric of Liège in order to take the cross in the First Crusade. In 1098 he was sent to Constantinople with Hugh of Vermandois after the siege of Antioch, to seek assistance from the Byzantine emperor. He disappeared during a raid by the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia, and was presumably killed.
While on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1106, Ida organized a search for her lost husband in Anatolia but to no avail. Ida’s fate remains unknown.
Sources
Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, pf 147
Medieval Lands Project, Comtes de Louvain