Charter evidence: Parentage of Ermengarde (Lower Lorraine France)
The Hoorn
explicitly names Ermengarde as daughter of Charles, son of Louis IV
"d'Outremer" King of the Franks & his wife Gerberga of Germany (Laon
summer 953-in prison Orléans 12 Jun 991, bur 1001 Maastricht, St.
Servatius).
Ermengarde married Albert I, Count of Namur, and she is the ancestor
of the Counts of Namur.
Thank you in advance for your help.
WJho...@aol.com
_http://fmg.a
c/Projects/MedLands/LOTHARINGIA.htm#CharlesdukeLowerLothringiadied991_
(http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/LOTHARINGIA.htm#CharlesdukeLowerLothringiadied991)
where the difficulty is discussed at least partially
In a message dated 12/28/2010 9:31:52 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
The Hoorn
Joannes Baptista Gramaye in his Historia Namurcensis, on page 17
excerpted the following:
Charta D. Maximini prope Treueros.
Carolus Dei omnipotentis gratia Dux Lotharingiae &c. pro anima patris
& praediscesorum meorum potentissimorum Regum & uxoris mea Bona &
filii Odonis & filiarum Gerberga Montinensis & Irmgardis Namucensis
Comitise, &c. Datum in Treueris anno 989.
Is there another published source that contains the full charter?
Thanks again.
John P. Ravilious
-----------------
Dear Steve and Will,
Before proceeding further with this, I recommend you check the
SGM thread <Adelais and Bonne: Whose the mom?> and particularly Peter
Stewart's contribution of 23 Feb 2004.
The wife of Albert, count of Namur was evidently named
Ermengarde. The issue of her parentage (possibly either a daughter,
or granddaughter, of Charles) is discussed by Peter.
Hopefully, Peter will also be interested in discussing the text
you noted.
Cheers,
John
Peter Stewart
"The Hoorn" <sbarn...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3a2156f4-b936-4b13...@t35g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...
There is no such document - the text printed by Gramaye is patently
inauthentic. As noted in the earler thread pointed out by John Ravilious,
"Bona" was fictitious and there is no direct evidence for the parentage of
Countess Ermengarde of Namur.
This purported statement in a charter of Saint Maximin abbey at Trier was
either fabricated by Gramaye to substantiate an erroneous genealogy (also
given later by Chifflet and others) or perhaps copied by him from someone
else's forgery since lost. It can't even have been loosely based on a
genuine charter in which Charles paid respects to a deceased wife ("pro
anima ... uxoris meae bonae memoriae"), since we know from Richer that his
wife (named Adelais) was incarcerated with him two years later in 991. So
was their daughter Gerberga, who was evidently unmarried at the time - and
even if she had been married by 989 she would not have been identified as
"Montinensis" (i.e. countess of Hainaut) since her husband Lambert was count
of Louvain.
There was no wife named "Bona", who was probably invented in order to
obfuscate the fact that the family origin of Adelais was considered
unsuitable enough to disqualify Charles from the throne - descendants of
this marriage, or their flatterers, tried to pretend that there had been
another wife named "Bona". She was supposed to have been a daughter of Count
Ricuin, who was assassinated in 923, yet she was allegedly the wife of
Charles de Laon and mother of his children. It is nonsense: Charles was not
born until 953.
Peter Stewart
The Hoorn
Thanks for the clarification. From what I have been able to
determine, it looks like the only evidence available is the
Genealogica comitum Buloniensium which records that Charles, Duke of
Lower Lorraine was father of "Ermengardem et Gerbergam."
Peter Stewart
Not quite the only evidence, and not accepted by everyone. This was written
at the end of the 11th century, and is not a very reliable source in other
respects ("Karolus dux, frater Lotharii regis, genuit Ermengardem et
Gerbergam. Ermengardis genuit Albertum comitem de Namuco").
It is contradicted by a passage in an anonymous late-14th century
continuation of the chronicle of Saint-Trond, where Ermengarge is said to
have been a granddaughter of Charles, daughter of his son Otto ("Otto absque
filio reliquit post se filiam Hermegardem Namurci comitissam, de quo etiam
processit Godefridis comes de Bolyon et dux Lotharingie, qui et postea rex
Jherusalem ... Anno Domini MVII obiit Nothgerus Leodiensis episcopus ...
Huic successit Baldricus secundus, qui prefuit annis XI. Iste fuit filius
Ottonis comitis de Los, ex Lutgarde, filia Hermegardis Namurcensis
comitisse, Ottonis prefati ducis filie, progenitus").
I think I have posted on this before:-
Winfred Glocker in 1989 followed by Christian Settipani in 1993 accepted the
latter version, while Ferdinand Lot (1891) and Erich Brandenburg (1935)
followed by Karl Ferdinand Werner (1967) preferred the former, identifying
Ermengardis with Adelais, a daughter of Charles and sister of Otto named by
Richer in narrating the imprisonment of Charles with his family ("K(arolum)
ergo cum uxore Adelaide et filio Ludouico, et filiabus duabus quarum altera
Gerberga, altera Adelaidis dicebatur, necnon et Ar(nulfo) nepote carceri
dedit").
If the countess of Namur was a daughter of Charles, and Richer was not
mistaken in calling one of them Adelais, then either she must be supposed to
have borne both names or else there was a third daughter, called
Ermengardis, who was not incarcerated with her parents and the other
siblings - including Adelais - and so not mentioned by Richer in this
context.
However, if Ermengardis had been the only child of Otto, the last
Carolingian heir, as stated by the anonymous the 14th-century writer at
Saint-Trond, then the counts of Namur descended from her would have
inherited a unique relationship to the dynastic legitimacy of the old royal
and imperial family. This would surely have been remembered and mentioned
later, whereas the connection via Charles through two of his daughters,
shared with the counts of Louvain via Gerberga, would have been less
notable.
Lot (1891) pointed out the chronological difficulty of making Otto a
grandfather of Robert II of Namur, who was old enough to bear arms by
October 1013 (misstated as 1008). Much less could he have been a
great-grandfather of Baldric II, bishop of Li�ge, as stated in the passage
quoted above, since he was elected and consecrated before 1 July 1008 - this
source has evidently mistaken his placement within the comital family of
Looz by a generation, as he was more plausibly brother-in-law rather than
son of Liutgard the daughter of Ermengardis, as suggested by Thierry Stasser
(1991).
When Otto died his duchy of Lower Lorraine was given to Godefrid of Verdun,
and there is no evidence that the counts of Namur had a claim to inherit it
through Ermengardis. Her existence, at least under this name rather than
Adelais, is not attested in any source earler than 'Fundatio ecclesiae
sancti Albani Namucensis', written in or shortly after 1067, where her son's
ancestry through her is linked to the Carolingian family ("comes Albertus
secundus, ortus ex patre Lothariensi, matre vero Francigena Ermengarde,
nobilissimam Francorum regum prosapiam trahente"). Since the author knew her
son, and probably the lady herself, this vagueness over such a remarkable
detail is a fair indication that she was daughter of the disreputable
Charles by his unsuitable wife.
For these reasons it seems plausible that Richer simply omitted Ermengardis
because she was not present or else gave the wrong name for the second
daughter of Charles, calling her Adelais like her mother from vagueness over
a detail of little importance to him.
It is unlikely that Gerberga had been married before she was imprisoned with
her father in March 991, as Richer does not allude to this. Ermengardis may
have been already countess of Namur and not living with her parents, as
suggested by Rousseau in his edition of the comital charters of Namur; in
that case she would probably have been born by ca 976. Despite the
persistent and ill-founded theory that Charles was married twice, there is
no difficulty in this - he was born in 953 and was certainly married before
the end of 979 when he and his unsuitable wife reportedly frolicked in the
death-bed of Theudo, bishop of Cambrai.
Peter Stewart