Ulrich X, Count of Bregenz

Ulrich X was the son of Ulrich IX of Bregenz (d. 1079).[1] In late 1080 or early 1081 Ulrich married Bertha of Rheinfelden, daughter of Rudolf of Rheinfelden.[2] When he met Bertha, Ulrich was already betrothed to another woman, a daughter of Count Werner of Habsburg (d. 1096). Yet he and Bertha began an affair, and when her relatives found out, they compelled Ulrich to marry Bertha.[3]

During the Investiture Contest, Ulrich was on the papal side, allied with Rudolf of Rheinfelden and Welf I, Duke of Bavaria.[4] With the permission of Pope Gregory VII He founded the abbey of Mehrerau in Bregenz.[5] Ulrich was also engaged in a long-running dispute with the monastery of Petershausen over property in Bigenhausen which he had appropriated from the monks.[6]

In 1097 Ulrich died while on a hunting trip in Prättigau. Members of the hunting party began rolling stones down a hill and Ulrich, in a show of bravado, tried and failed to jump one of the stones. He died from the injuries he sustained and his body was taken back to Bregenz for burial.[7]

With Bertha, Ulrich X had the following children:[8]

• Rudolf I, Count of Bregenz
• Ulrich XI
• Henry of Kellmünz (d. 1128)
• Adelaide (d.28 June 1168), married Ulrich, count of Ramsperg and Hegau (d.c.1155)[9]

• Casus monasterii Petrishusensis, ed. O. Abel and L. Weiland, MGH SS XX (1869), pp. 624-683
• Historia monasterii Marchtelanensis, MGH SS XXIX, pp. 660-683
• Berthold of Zwiefalten, Chronicon, in L. Wallach, ‘Berthold of Zwiefalten's Chronicle,’ Traditio 13 (1957), pp. 187-233.
• A.I. Beach, The Trauma of Monastic Reform: Community and Conflict in Twelfth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 2017).
• J. Zösmair, ‘Geschichte Rudolfs des letzten der alten Grafen von Bregenz (1097–1160),’ Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte des Bodensees und seiner Umgebung, 44 (1915), 25–39.