Re: existence of Richlint (works of Donald C. Jackman)

[Nathaniel Taylor]

On May 28, 2012, at 3:17 AM, Sjostrom wrote:

> Richlint: Fact or Fiction?
>
> http://www.enlaplage.com/prosop/richlint.htm
>
> recently, in 2008, Donald Jackman has published what he calls
> *an exposé of Eduard Hlawitschka's recent false testimony regarding
> Jackman’s original contribution to the controversy: this fraud ...
> Jackman, Donald C. “Comparative Accuracy.” *Historicity*, no, 1, 2008.
> *
>
> *Hlawitschka's writings are called polemic….
> -----------------------
>
> the following piece appears to have moved in the internet and is no longer
> available in the place where links provided in this group lead. I thought
> it better to give the text here rather than rely on somewhat changeable
> link options.
>
> The Medieval Review
> <https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3631> 04.06.16
>
>
> Hlawitschka, Eduard. Konradiner-Genealogie, unstatthafte Verwandtenehen und
> spatottonisch-fruhsalische Thronbesetzungspraxis. Series: MGH Studien und
> Texte, vol. 32. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2003. Pp. xx, 220. $35.00
> 3-7752-5732-2. ISBN: .
>
> Reviewed by:
> Nathaniel L. Taylor...

_The Medieval Review_ recently changed hosts and old URLs for individual reviews don't work, but all their many years of reviews can still be readily found by searching on author, title or reviewer, at the current principal page for _The Medieval Review_.

I just updated my own website's link to this particular review I wrote (which you pasted here in full) -- it is now at:

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/5756/04.06.16.html?sequence=1

By the way, re: the works of Donald Jackman which you cited at the top, note that 'enlapage.com' is Jackman's own site -- hardly a dispassionate 'pro' and 'con' table about Richlint. The serials named _Historicity_ and _Archive for Medieval Prosopography_ are all wholly Jackman's. See a list for the latter serial, on the same site, here --

http://www.enlaplage.com/ampseries.html

-- which shows a (not-yet-available) two-part study of the "three Bernards" question, a venture into West Francia which should be interesting to see.

Nat Taylor

[Sjostrom]

> *

> > recently, in 2008, Donald Jackman has published what he calls
> > *an exposé of Eduard Hlawitschka's recent false testimony regarding

> > Jackman’s original contribution to the controversy: this fraud *was
> perpetrated by Hlawitschka in his volume of 2003. Hlawitschka thereby
> forfeits his status in the debate over Richlint.*
> *> Jackman, Donald C. “Comparative Accuracy.” *Historicity*, no, 1, 2008.
> > *
> *





> *

> By the way, re: the works of Donald Jackman which you cited at the top,
> note that 'enlapage.com' is Jackman's own site -- hardly a dispassionate
> 'pro' and 'con' table about Richlint.

> *



Yep, it is intriguing to see how Jackman's text actually is like a
prosecutor's letter of indictment,
after Hlawitschka has written in those very acrimonious and petulant terms.
Seemingly both men take their own view to the Konradiner topic very
seriously and do not tolerate any 'heretical' thoughts.

As I understand, particularly Hlawitschka has already several decades been
a pension-age man. Thusly it is not difficult to gather that he (A) has
calcified to his position and (B) tends to get very angry, say mad, when
facing opposition, like many other elderly persons. Flexibility and
creativity in intellectual pursuits is not something which should be
expected any longer from him, so he would presumably be incapable of
reasoning if or when new evidence comes forth.

In my view, Jackman made some weakly grounded leaps in his reconstructions
and I do not find it easy to endorse those.
However, the alternatives offered by Hlawitschka seems to contain things he
binds himself to merely because they are traditional genealogies. Such
shows astonishing and damaging lack of criticality on part of Hlawitschka.
I wonder whether Hlawitschka has even understood that often some pieces of
traditional genealogies are even worse than weakly grounded leaps of
analysis by modern methods.












> *
>
> *

[Nathaniel Taylor]

Both Hlawitschka and Jackman have overstated their case and gone out of the way to denigrate the opposing view. Armin Wolf has also indulged in such rhetorical games but (I think) to a lesser extent. Ultimately both 'sides' of the Richlint debate fail to acknowledge a middle ground -- that the question remains *open* and neither the Wolf thesis nor the earlier reconstruction by Hlawitschka can be considered proved.

Nat Taylor

[Wjhonson]

But do you have an *opinion* based on the *evidence* ?
"Proved" is such a strong word that I reserve it for Physics and Math, and I'm not too sure about Physics.

What about the weight of evidence?

o denigrate the opposing view. Armin Wolf has also indulged in such rhetorical

ames but (I think) to a lesser extent. Ultimately both 'sides' of the Richlint

ebate fail to acknowledge a middle ground -- that the question remains *open*

nd neither the Wolf thesis nor the earlier reconstruction by Hlawitschka can be

onsidered proved.
Nat Taylor

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[Stewart Baldwin]

"Sjostrom" <mqs...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yep, it is intriguing to see how Jackman's text actually is like a
> prosecutor's letter of indictment,
> after Hlawitschka has written in those very acrimonious and petulant
> terms.
> Seemingly both men take their own view to the Konradiner topic very
> seriously and do not tolerate any 'heretical' thoughts.
>
> As I understand, particularly Hlawitschka has already several decades been
> a pension-age man. Thusly it is not difficult to gather that he (A) has
> calcified to his position and (B) tends to get very angry, say mad, when
> facing opposition, like many other elderly persons. Flexibility and
> creativity in intellectual pursuits is not something which should be
> expected any longer from him, so he would presumably be incapable of
> reasoning if or when new evidence comes forth.
>
> In my view, Jackman made some weakly grounded leaps in his reconstructions
> and I do not find it easy to endorse those.
> However, the alternatives offered by Hlawitschka seems to contain things
> he
> binds himself to merely because they are traditional genealogies. Such
> shows astonishing and damaging lack of criticality on part of Hlawitschka.
> I wonder whether Hlawitschka has even understood that often some pieces of
> traditional genealogies are even worse than weakly grounded leaps of
> analysis by modern methods.

In my opinion, neither Hlawitschka (now 83) nor Jackman (now 58) has behaved
in an exlempary fashion in their long-standing feud. (Given their
respective ages, I am guessing that Jackman will get in the last word. I
haven't seen anything from Hlawitschka in the last few years.) However,
having read quite a few items written by both men, including work by both
that is unrelated to their feud, in my opinion Hlawitschka is the better
scholar by a significant margin, although there are occasionally specific
points where I think that Jackman is right and Hlawitschka is wrong. Both
of them have often resorted to unproven genealogical conjectures over the
years, which, given the scarcity of evidence for the material that they
write about, is understandable and even inevitable. In general, I have
found Hlawitschka's arguments to be well-reasoned, even if I did not always
agree with the conclusions. In contrast, Donald Jackman's arguments
frequently contain serious logical jumps, and he indulges in guesswork much
more than Hlawitschka does. Time and time again, I have found myself just
shaking my head as I read one of Jackman's new papers. (One I considered
particularly bad was his theory in a paper entitled "Rorgonid Right: ..."
that the eighth and ninth century Danish kings were a cadet branch of the
Frankish "Rorgonid" dynasty) As a mathematician with some degree of
expertise in logic, I find Jackman's attempts to introduce his own system
for logically deducing genealogical relationships to be particularly
ill-advised and untrustworthy. More recently, Jackman seems to have been
publishing much of his work himself, which is not necessarily a bad thing,
but makes me wonder what kind of peer-review process it is going through (if
at all). Negative traits that both men have shared during their feud are
their rigidity, their tendancy to interpret any disagreement of the other as
a personal insult, and their agressiveness in repeating the same points over
and over again. (When reading recent papers by either of them on the
subject of their feud, my reaction is often something like "I've seen that
before. When are we getting to something new?")

As for the subject of their feud, two of the important places of
disagreement are on the parentage of duke Konrad of Swabia (Kuno von
Öningen) and on the identity of his wife. On the parentage of Konrad, in my
opinion Hlawitschka is almost certainly right about this. On the name and
ancestry of Konrad/Kuno's wife, things are less clear. Hlawitschka's
argument that her name was Judith does not seem particularly strong to me,
and his argument for her ancestry even weaker. Jackman's argument that her
name was Richlint is at least plausible, if not based on the best evidence,
but I find the argument that she was a daughter of Liudolf of Swabia
(obtained by taking a suspicious statement in a dubious source and changing
"daughter" to "granddaughter") to be unconvincing.

Stewart Baldwin

[Sjostrom]

speaking of the other point where Hlawitschka and Jackman conflict,
my 'notes to self' includes the following which I had decided to presume to
be more correct than alternatives:
"count palatine Heribert and his brother duke Konrad 'Kuno' (both born in
about early 940s) were sons of count Udo and the mother presumably of both
was his Vermandois wife, Heribert's anyway. They were not sons of the
Konrad who belonged to the entirely other branch of the Konradiner."

My note originally came from gut feeling of mine, having read through
several conflicting genealogies and some literature around them.

This filiation, I gather, is basically what Hlawitschka has fought for in
the matter of this filiation point.

This also is the more traditional of the versions about this genealogical
point, I gather.
I suppose this has come through to us from relatively long-time
genealogies. And that this is one example of cases where traditional
genealogy happens to have a filiation correct.

[Volucris]

On the subject of the election of 1024 there is a German paper by Hein
H. Jongbloed available.
It is titled "Wanburtich: Heinrichs II. Beteiligung an der Wahl von
Kamba (1024)", published in Deutsches Archiv für die Erforschung des
Mittelalters 62/1 (2006).
He also reviews the election of 1002 and Heinrich II motivations.
His conclusion is that dispensation for consanguinous marriages was
not a problem at the time but depended more on the changing politics
of king Heinrich II.
That kind of undermines the dogmatic black or white view of
Hlawitschka.

Anyone interested can contact me and I'll send you the paper in an PDF-
format.

Hans Vogels
volu...@upcmail.nl

> https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/5756/04.06.1...