I thought I should start a new entry as you suggested earlier.
On Friday, May 14, 2021 at 12:40:14 PM UTC+1,
pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> On 14-May-21 7:29 PM, keri CA wrote:
> > On Friday, May 14, 2021 at 5:39:50 AM UTC+1,
pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> >> On 14-May-21 9:09 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
> >>> On 14-May-21 1:03 AM, keri CA wrote:
> >> <snip>
> >>>> Volvestre is quite a big area south of Toulouse, this charter sounds
> >>>> like it was some kind of court judgement at an assembly, if both
> >>>> a bishop and a viscount were present. Was the Arnald representing
> >>>> Count Raymond, later Count of Carcassonne?
> >>>
> >>> Arnald was the paternal grandfather of the Raimond who was later count
> >>> of Carcassonne - he was more probably representing Raimond (IV) of
> >>> Toulouse, the father-in-law-to-be of Adelais of Anjou. Arnald occurs in
> >>> his own charters dated April 945 and April 949 with no title, and in an
> >>> undated notice ca 940/50 mentioned in his official capacity with the
> >>> title count. He is usually assumed to have been count of Comminges but
> >
> > Yes this is what i was trying to mean but i wrote it badly. I think one of the
> > theories about the Raymonds suggests that it was a dispute over
> > control of this area - Carcassonne and Comminges - tarditionally
> > under Toulouse, with Roger the old was central to the story of what
> > happened in these obscure years of the late 10th century. Arnald
> > appears as a man of the Count of Toulouse not even a count, but his son is
> > independant and all powerful in the region, controlling even the
> > bishops and sees. As Roger first appears I think with his mother
> > Countess Arsinde, I wonder if she might be the key to all this. Was
> > she perhaps a member of the Toulouse or Rouergue family? I
> > think one of theories [Stasser?] suggests this.
> Stasser speculated that Arsinde was daughter of Ermengaud of Rouergue,
> but his argument for this was far from convincing to me - it was based
> on chronology that is not at all compellingly specific and on a pattern
> of onomastics that (if it was as highly plausible as he supposed in the
> first place) he failed to illustrate from any real and proven precedent.
> His rationale for setting aside the conventional scheme with Arsinde as
> heiress of the first dynasty of counts of Carcassonne was feeble: just
> that maybe Carcassonne was granted to her husband Arnald because heirs
> were lacking rather than passing to an heiress (again, failing to
> provide a similar example in 10th-century Languedoc), or that perhaps he
> was himself related to the former counts (but offering no onomastic
> support whatever for this unappetising portion of his conjectural dish).
>
> Paul Ourliac in 1955 suggested more persuasively that Arnald obtained
> Carcassonne through Arsinde, as Devic and Vaissette proposed, and that
> he had risen to comital rank in Comminges, like others elsewhere in the
> region, at the expense of the over-extended Raimondines.
> >>> this is not directly evidenced. At any rate, his appearance in n° 223
> >>> with bishop Raimond Aton allows for a guess that this man may have been
> >>> bishop of Comminges, not far from Volvestre. No bishop there appears to
> >>> be recorded by name between 880 and 990, so that Comminges appears a
> >>> possible diocese where any stray bishop in the region may have belonged
> >>> (including also the Hugo killed hunting for that matter).
> >> It is worth adding that Volvestre in the late-10th century belonged half
> >> with the county of Comminges and half with Couserans, both held in part
> >> or whole by Arnald's son Roger le Vieux of Carcassonne - in his
> >> testament written ca 1002 he left the moieties of Volvestre along with
> >> his share of these counties respectively to his elder son Raimond and to
> >> his widow and younger son Bernard ("Ego Rogerius comes facio brevem
> >> divisionalem inter filios meos Raimundo et Bernardo ... Et ipsam
> >> medietatem de Bulbastreso, et ipsa tertia parte de comitatu Cominico,
> >> remaneat ad te filio meo Raimundo ... Dono ipsum comitatu de Cosoragno
> >> cum ipso episcopato, et cum ipsa medietate de Bolbastreso ... dono ad
> >> Adalais uxor mea et Bernardo filio meo insimul".)
> >>
> >> The bishopric of Couserans controlled by Roger, apparently by
> >> inheritance from his father Arnald, is another plausible diocese for
> >> Raimond Aton in the mid-10th century - Gams (1931 edition) listed no
> >> bishop there between Roger in 887 and Bernard in 973.
> >
> > Yes both Couserans and Comminges are both possible, especially if there
> > are big gaps in the lists of bishops. Comminges is now famous for
> > St.Bertrand built on a hill above the old city destroyed by Guntram
> > armys 585, and Bishop Bertrand was WTs grandson I think. Nice
> > connection.
> Comminges is approximately as far from both Lézat and Volvestre as they
> both are from Toulouse, and Volvestre is roughly half-way between
> Commings and Couserans so that a partition between these counties under
> the primacy of Toulouse when Arnald was still the viguier and missus of
> a count Raimond is plausible enough. His assumption of the title count
> evidently occurred fairly near the end of his life, as he was dead by
> November 957 and perhaps some years before then. The only document
> naming him as count was dated to ca 950 by the editors of the Lézat
> cartulary in their introduction, to ca 940-50 in their note on the
> charter itself (from memory Devic and Vaissette had placed it ca 945).
> He used no title for himself in April 945 (not 944 as in HGL) or in
> April 949, so ca 950 seems preferable on this uncertain basis.
yes that seems quite possible but what proof is there that Arsinde
was linked to the earlier counts of carcassonne? They used names like
Acfred and Oliba which never appear in Rogers family. In French and Catalan
historigraphy this family is called the Bellonids, but there doesnt seem much
foundation in the sources for this dynasty. I wondered what the proof was that this family descended unbroken from a Goth called Bello [yes really!] in the 8th century, but I could only find a few definite links of relationships for this earlier family:
Oliba [II] Count 870/77 had a brother Acfred [I] in 873 who is presumed to be the count who appears at Carcassonne in 883 and had died by February 906 when his widow Adalinde enacts his last testament. They may have been related to an earlier Oliba [I] 820-35/7 who had 2 wives but doesnt mention any children. Acfred and Adalinde had a son Acfred who signs her charter
for Montolieu in 906. Another Count Acfred [II] also donates to Montolieu in 934 if that date is correct. However historians have traditionally seen Acfred son of Adalinde and Acfred as Duke Acfred of Aquitaine who names his parents in his will of October 927 and apparently died soon after. Duke Acfred had 2 older brothers William and Bernard but they do not appear in the 906 charter.
So this other Acfred [II] is usually seen as the son of Oliba [II], and Arsinde is supposed to be his daughter. At least I think this is how Settipani sees it.
kerica