Agatha of Hungary (or not of Hungary)
James Drumm
Byzantine names?! How intriging! What language family would that be? I
have had this idea that we look for a language that a word like
"drum"/"drummond"/ for that matter "atheling" /"et al" is a common word
in, then look for place names the same and finally look for people,
there. Any source you could reccomend? ( Inever have an `original idea';
someone has always done it, likely 1500 years ago.!)
--JD
Don Stone
>
> One point seems to be getting lost track of in the discussion of the
> origins of the Drummonds, Livingstons and so forth. Claims that these
> families shared Hungarian origins with St Margaret obviously derive from
> the old belief, which is nowadays discounted, that Margaret's mother was
> Hungarian. (There continues to be considerable debate about Agatha's
> background, some claiming she belonged to the house of Brunswick, others
> that she was Russian; but it seems fairly well accepted today that she was
> NOT Hungarian.)
This is certainly true for published discussions of Agatha's parentage.
However, Prof. David H. Kelley recently made the following comments to
me on the matter of Agatha's parentage:
Even if one accepts Yaroslav, which I think is a reasonable explanation,
one still should have some sort of Hungarian wife, because it seems to
me that the evidence from Britain is awfully strong in favor of actual
Hungarian lineage (which, of course, Vajay's explanation doesn't supply,
and neither does the new one, but there's no reason that Yaroslav
couldn't have had half a dozen other wives).
Kelley goes on to point out that Byzantine names were used in the
Hungarian family as well as in the Russian family.
-- Don Stone
John Carmi Parsons
compelling (to me, anyway) is whether we can rely on 11th-century English
reports about what Agatha's parentage was *thought* to be. One confused
chronicler could have touched off the whole confused train of thought,
with other chroniclers merely repeating what the first confused fellow had
written. Remember, there IS evidence that the short-lived twin brother of
Agatha's husband HAD married an Hungarian king's daughter, and an English
chronicler might well have conflated the two wives. Vajay's system at least
fits the imperial kingship criterion--and an English chronicler might well
have got just that sort of FAMILY connection right, yet still muff an exact
geographical origin for Agatha.
I'm not sure what bearing Byzantine names have on any argument because no
such names occur among Agatha's immediate descendants. Most of St
Margaret's children bore Anglo-Saxon names (her son Alexander is known to have
been named to honor the pope, and David is of course Biblical.)
John Parsons
On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Don Stone wrote:
> This is certainly true for published discussions of Agatha's parentage
> [i.e., that she was NOT Hungarian].
John P. DuLong
and not a Hungarian, I believe that it is still chronologically possible
that she and Edward may have lived in Hungary, even briefly, before
moving to England. If memory serves me, I think Jetté mentions that
Edward would have gone to Hungary with his sister-in-law's Hungarian
husband to reclaim the throne. (Sorry, but I do not have Jetté's article
in front of me, I think this is the daughter of Yaroslav who was married
to Andrew of Hungary). Edward and Agatha could have picked up Hungarian
retainers at that time.
I asked Jetté via email recently if he wanted to respond to another
recent posting on Agatha. The main concern in the previous posting was
the issue of consanguinity between Edward and Agatha if she were the
daughter of Yaroslav. He only wrote back "Nothing proves that they were
first cousins. But more on that in the coming article by Dr. Ingham."
Apparently, Dr. Ingham's forthcoming article in, I believe, the journal
_Russian History_, will be the next part of this debate. I look forward
to reading it.
--
John P. DuLong, Ph.D.
Acadian and French Canadian Genealogy
959 Oxford Road
Berkley, MI 48072-2011
(248) 541-2894
http://fp-www.wwnet.net/~dulongj