1 Miles, seigneur de Courtenay, died after 1127 [NB actually in or after
1138 when he last occurs], married ca 1095 Ermengarde de Nevers
2 (their third son) Renaud, seigneur de Courtenay, allegedly married an
unnamed sister of Guy du Donjon [who is stated wrongly to have been living
in 1148], also described as daughter of Frederic, seigneur du Donjon
3a Elisabeth, died 14 September in or after 1205, married Pierre de France
(ancestors of the second French Courtenay line)
3b Unnamed daughter, died sp, married Avalon, seigneur de Saillenay
CP vol IV p 317 (table) states that Renaud (#2) lost his lands in France &
held Sutton, Berkshire in 1161. He is given a second marriage, to Maud, dame
du Sap, said to be childless. This version omits #3b above and adds instead:
3c Renaud de Courtenay, died 27 September 1194, married Hawise de Curcy,
lady of Okehampton (ancestors of the English Courtenays)
With minor variations this has become the standard genealogy in English
works since. In _Colonial Families of Long Island, New York and
Connecticut_, vol 5 (Chevy Chase,
Maryland, 1958) Herbert Furman Seversmith argued against the undocumented
link shown in CP - but not in Père Anselme - between the French & English
families, for reasons that were summarised by William Addams Reitwiesner in
a posting of 23 May 2002, as follows:
"Seversmith's argument that the English Reginald de Courtenay was not the
same person as the French Reginald de Courtenay appears on p. 2423, and
consists of four parts. First is the chronology, as the English Reginald
was born about 1125, while the French Reginald's parents were married around
1095. Second is their personal characters, the French Reginald being a
glorified bandit while the English Reginald escaped the notice of any
chroniclers, and is known only through charters. Third is their social
status, the French Reginald being a nephew of the Count of Odessa and having
a daughter who married a son of the King of France (who took her name of
Courtenay), while the English Reginald was only the lord of a not very large
manor, not a baron, and not even a knight. The fourth is that there is no
actual evidence to support the suggestion that they were the same person --
the connection was made by Cleaveland in his 1735 Courtenay genealogy and
has been repeated uncritically ever since."
I haven't seen Seversmith's work. Some of the following may overlap with his
argument but the maternity of Elisabeth is probably not covered, unless
incidentally in the matter of when Renaud #2 died.
Patrick van Kerrebrouck gave a marriage different from either of those shown
above for Renaud [_Les Capétiens 987-1328_ (Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2000) p 453].
This was to Moenée d'Arthel, given as mother of Elisabeth (#3a), and said to
have been remarried to Frederic (Ferri) V du Donjon, seigneur d'Yerres,
which suggests she was probably Renaud de Courtenay's widow & would clearly
preclude a subsequent marriage for him as well unless they were divorced. No
doubt is expressed by Kerrebrouck about this information. His source is
given as G Estournet's 'Les chevaliers du Donjon' (actually the third part
of this study), in _Annales de la Société historique et archéologique du
Gâtinais_ 38 (1926), pp 29-64 and 75-135.
I have now obtained a copy of this work, and find it gives an alternative
though not quite conclusive interpretation of the evidence. What follows is
basically a précis, with references expanded where I have access to the
works cited.
Moenée (Maeneia, but once given as Maencia and the latter name is recorded
for other women whereas the former appears to be highly unusual if not
unique in the 12th century) was sister of Guillaume the Hermit, archdeacon
of Soissons & perhaps identical with the dean of that name who occurs
several times between 1158 and 1182. She was probably the daughter of Hugues
III d'Arthel, vicomte de Clamecy (living 1137) or of Guy de Clamecy (living
1139). Estournet said she married Frederic V du Donjon as his second wife ca
1150, having by him three sons, Guy, Guillaume and Renaud. The second of
these was elected archbishop of Bourges in November 1200, died on 9 January
1210 (beatified 1212 & canonised 1218). He was described as
"Guillelmus...natus ex illustri genere nobilissimam et piisimam matrem
habuit nomine Maeneiam, cujus frater Guillelmus, archidiaconus
Suessionensis, ob severiorem vitam dictus est Eremita" (trans:
Guillaume...from a distinguished family, having a most noble & pious mother
named Maeneia, whose brother Guillaume, archdeacon of Soissons, was called
the Hermit due to his very austere way of life) [_Gallia christiana..._ vol
II (Paris, 1720) column 61]. It is rather unlikely that an uncle of
Elisabeth de Courtenay, who was herself married and producing children soon
after 1150, could have lived until 1210, becoming an archbishop at what must
have been an advanced age: it is altogether more credible that this man
belonged to the same generation, probably as Elisabeth's younger
half-brother (Estournet does not explicitly make this point).
A close link of some kind certainly existed in the 12th century between the
families of Donjon and Courtenay. Elisabeth's son Pierre, who became the
first Latin emperor of Constantinople in his family, together with his
daughter Mathilde, apparently called Guillaume du Donjon, archibishop of
Bourges "uncle". Estournet cited _Monumenta Germaniae historica_ vol XXVI
(Hanover, 1882) for this, without a page reference. On checking the index, I
can't find any appearance of these three people together, and none of the
individual occurrences of each one relates to this point. I suspect the
mention Estournet intended to cite could have been in the context of
Guillaume's canonisation, which was effected soon after Pierre's coronation
and by the same pope, Honorius III. I will keep looking for this.
Another of Moenée's sons, Guy du Donjon, referred to Elisabeth de
Courtenay's younger son Robert, seigneur of Champignelles & butler of
France, as "nepos meus et amicus" (trans: my nephew and friend) [_Layettes
du trésor des chartes_ edited by Alexandre Teulet, vol I (Paris, 1863
reprinted Liechtenstein, 1977) p 453], which was perhaps the ultimate source
for the relationship as outlined in Père Anselme. Elisabeth also had a son
named Guillaume, presumably after the archbishop of Bourges who was
definitely her close relative & probably her uterine half-brother - Aubry de
Trois-Fontaines says of them, unhelpfully, "domina de Monte-Argisi fuit
soror vel neptis illius" (trans: the dame de Montargis [Elisabeth] was his
sister or else his niece) [_Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la
France_, edited by Martin Bouquet & others, revised by Léopold Delisle, 24
vols (Paris, 1869-1904), vol XVIII p 760C]. In other words, the
relationships if not also the chronology above might be explained whether
Elisabeth de Courtenay or her mother should have been sister to Guillaume
and Guy.
Renaud de Courtenay (#2) was present with his parents at the foundation of
Écharlis abbey ca 1120, and judging from his mother's antecedents he was
probably around ten years old or more at the time, making it unlikely that
his wife (or his first, as per CP) was born to parents whose marriage took
place ca 1150 according to Estournet - without citing specific evidence, but
presumably this is just the disappearance of Renaud (#2) from French records
after 1149. He last occurs for certain in two letters of that year from
Thibaud le Grand, count of Blois to Suger [_Recueil des historiens..._ vol
XV p 511]. According to the editors [loc cit, note b], Renaud was then in
Palestine, where he had gone with King Louis VII in 1147, after the fall of
his Courtenay kinsman's county of Edessa (Estournet didn't refer to this
journey, or to any of the following paragraph).
Despite the legend of a dispute between king and vassal, resulting in
Renaud's dispossession and exile to England, there is no documentary
evidence that he ever returned from crusade, and since his elder daughter
was soon afterwards married as his heiress to the king's brother it may be
safer to assume that the seigneur de Courtenay didn't survive the
expedition. If he did go back to become the lord of Sutton (father of Renaud
#3c above), as in the CP version of events, then this Renaud must have been
a very old man when he died towards the end of 1190. On the whole this
identification appears fairly weak - if the mysterious father of the English
Renaud (#3c) belonged to the same family he was more probably illegitimate
than otherwise, maybe a son or nephew of his French namesake (#2). This
raises further questions - did the Renaud de Courtenay holding Sutton in
1161 have another wife before Maud du Sap, and who was/were the mother/s of
his successor Robert and of Renaud #3c? (Douglas Richardson has expressed
doubt as to the origin of the former, suggesting he came from France,
although so far he has declined to tell us why).
Frederic V du Donjon was evidently married to another wife before Moenée,
having four sons older than hers, Baudouin, Geoffroy, Pierre and Rainard.
Adding to the unlikelihood that Renaud #2's wife could have been a full- or
paternal half-sister of these sons is the marriage of Elisabeth #3's
granddaughter Clémence (daughter of Robert de Champignelles mentioned above)
to Pierre du Donjon's son and heir Jean II (Estournet pp 92 and 96-100
discussed Jean's filiation, summarised by Kerrebrouck, op cit pp 455-6 note
21 - older sources were frequently mistaken about him). This pair would have
been first cousins twice removed by the genealogies from Père Anselme & CP
given above.
In view of these considerations, it appears that Moenée (or Maencia)
d'Arthel was very probably Elisabeth de Courtenay's mother; but proof is
lacking.
Peter Stewart