Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile
Kenneth Harper Finton
been published and mailed to "The Plantagenet Connection" subscribers.
I assume that most have their copies by now.
Those wanting their own copy of the long article can download from the
following link: http://ebookad.com/eb.php3?ebookid=19631
The printed issue and the download is also avaliable from the link
kennethharperfinton.com
Go to The Plantagenet Connection, then back issues.
Enjoy,
Kenneth Harper Finton
HT Communications
PO Box 1401
Arvada, CO 80002
khf...@aol.com
kennethharperfinton.com
303-420-4888
Kenneth Harper Finton
there were typos in the first post because I did not preview the post
-- including the misspelling of the author's name. Sorry.
_________________________________________________________
The long awaited article on Agatha the Bulgarian by Ian Mladjov has
been published and mailed to "The Plantagenet Connection" subscribers.
I assume that most have their copies by now.
Those wanting their own copy of the long article can download from the
following link: http://ebookad.com/eb.php3?ebookid=19631
The printed issue and the download is also available from the link
Kenneth Harper Finton
> The long awaited article on Agatha the Bulgarian by Ian Mladjov has
> been published and mailed to "The Plantagenet Connection" subscribers.
> I assume that most have their copies by now.
I finally had a message from John Carmi Parsons on this article. He
has a few objections to some conclusions presented by the author which
he will go into in detail at a later time. Parsons has noted that the
methods of configuring consanguinity were not universal and wonders
about the value of the genealogies presented because of the different
degrees of acceptable affinity in different ages and countries. He
will present a more detailed report an another time.
-Kenneth Harper Finton
Kenneth Harper Finton
that the matter of marriage between the prohibited
degrees of kinship is not by itself central to my
case. It is a very real problem, and I took care to
apply the relevant (pre-1215) standards to it,
following among others the excellent article by
Constance Bouchard in Speculum 56 (1981), cited on
page 29 of the TPC issue. However, as is readily apparent
by any glance at royal and noble genealogy in the
Middle Ages, such rules do get broken and a
relationship within the prohibited degrees does not
always preclude marriage. I implied this (for example
on page 19), but should have been more explicit.
While I discussed the consanguinity and affinity
problems in each of the hitherto proposed
reconstructions and outlined them in the genealogical
tables, I have not considered these decisive. They
are important problems, but rejecting alternative
hypotheses depended in each case on the absence of
precedent and other general or particular
unlikelihood.
Best wishes,
Ian Mladjov
Greg Vaut
debate to date (lit review).
Greg
Phil Moody
own supposition in your Stemma by noting Affinity and Consanguinity? I note
on page 74 that Adelajda of Poland had children by the BROTHERS Dukes Geza
and Mihaly, but you fail to note this 1st degree of affinity in the line
your putative Agatha descends from.
I am no expert on Consanguainity and Affinity, but your neglect of these
issues in your own Stemma certainly merits closer scrutiny by those with
more knowledge than I; especially as your Stemma are so extensive and
disjointed, albeit by necessity.
Cheers,
Phil
Kenneth Harper Finton
5 was not intended as the same kind of illustration,
and that it does not actually contain the same kind of
problem. The marriage between duke Geza and his
brother's widow Adelajda of Poland is indeed a case of
affinity, but it is historically attested and it is
not the result of hypothetical genealogical
reconstructions (which is the case with "problems"
identified in the preceding genealogical tables). The
marriage itself was contracted at a time when relgious
affiliations and practices at the Hungarian court were
far from uniform (with pagans, Orthodox, and Catholics
coexisting even among the royal family), which may
have had something to do with the apparent ease with
which Adelajda's second marriage was contracted. If
this had required a special dispensation, it is very
unlikely that we would ever find a trace of it. The
principle of levirate may also have been held to
apply. But the point is that descendants of Geza,
Adelajda, and Mihaly did not marry each other within
the prohibited degrees of kinship. I cannot point out
problems that do not exist. The successive marriages
of Adelajda of Poland to two brothers (or half
brothers) is not in question, and we would only run
into problems if we were to create a hypothetical
genealogical connection that introduced marriages
within the prohibited seven degrees among Adelajda's
descendants. This is not the case. In regard to
calling attention to consanguinity and affinity
problems in other proposals, I wish to emphasize again
that whereas such problems cast doubts on the
credibility of any hypothetical reconstruction that
may contain them, they are not decisive by themselves.
Best regards,
Ian Mladjov
moody...@cox.net ("Phil Moody") wrote in message news:<032d01c46d45$9740e4c0$7ce70d44@researchwq98t0>...
Phil Moody
Thank for kindly addressing my concern with affinity! However, if cases of
Affinity were actually accepted by the church, which I presume to be the
case, since it did not effect the subsequent children from becoming
Bulgarian Emperors and Hungarian Kings (the descendants of Adelajda of
Poland), then why even use Affinity to cast doubt on hypothetical descents;
especially as far as Affinity in the fifth degree? I personally don't
believe Affinity was ever a bar to marriage, unless the church wanted to
manipulate temporal politics, which it did occasionally for self serving
reasons.
The only other issue I have with your work is your standardized use of the
7th degree of consanguinity to cast doubt on the other various theories. I
know for a fact that the church became more relaxed, and went to a 4th
degree of consanguinity as a bar to marriage at some point in time; so by
inferring that the 7th degree of consanguinity was always contraindicative
of a legitimate marriage is misleading at best. Your noting a 3rd degree of
consanguinity in John Carmi Parsons hypothesis does effectively cast doubt
on the probability of his supposition, so I will be interested in seeing how
he responds to this issue:-)
Your present article, and William Humphreys forthcoming article in
Foundations on the ancestry of Agatha are the only works on this subject
that I have read, so I do not know if dispensations were obtained for the
marriages which you indicate consanguinity problems in these other theories,
but this would be a tangent worth exploring.
Best Wishes,
Phil Moody
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenneth Harper Finton" <khf...@aol.com>
To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile
Ian Mladjov
I can finally post directly to the forum, and I thank Mr. Finton for
conveying my responses in the past.
I am not sure why you think that affinity would affect succession to
the throne. It is primarily a bar to marriage, but unless a marriage
was condemned and dissolved because of this or consanguinity, the
status of the issue remains unaffected. Moreover, the Bulgarian
emperors and Hungarian kings descended from the marriages of Adelajda
of Poland took power by force in each initial case (Petar II of
Bulgaria in 1040, Andras I of Hungary in 1046, and Bela I of Hungary
in 1061). Apart from this, we should be weary of assuming the
survival of major complications across state, cultural, and religious
borders at this early date and in this particular general region
(especially considering Hungary, which was still very much in cultural
and religious flux in the late 10th/early 11th century).
Consanguinity is obviously a more serious impediment than affinity, as
it involves cases of common blood descent. From the first half of the
8th century to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the Roman church
prohibited marriage within seven degress of kinship, except with
special dispensation. This was sometimes granted for political
reasons, and many marriages avoided the issue by hiding (or simply
being ignorant of) the degree of kinship. Quite often marriages were
dissolved because of the prohibited degrees not on the initiative of
the church, but on the initiative of the partners involved, so as to
facilitate divorce. This was the case in the dissolution of the
marriage between the French king Louis VII and Alienor of Aquitaine.
Practice varied, but I think it did so mora on an ad hoc basis, than
because of any regional or cultural differences. In the west such
differences would have been almost completely eclipsed by the
universality of the fairly interventionist Roman church.
Consanguinity and affinity were both prohibited to the seventh degree
until 1215, when the prohibited degrees were lowered to four. While
some monarchs and powerful nobles tried or even succeeded in breaking
this prohibition, we usually hear of a dispensation, a divorce, or at
the very least some scandal. (Of course we also have to take into
account the limitations of the source evidence.) This is why I view
such unions as problematic and basically unlikely, therefore
undermining (albeit not always decisively) the hypothesis that
contains them. I think Bouchard's article (cited in TPC and in one of
my previous replies) answers many of your concerns.
Let us briefly consider the Parsons hypothesis and the marriages
within the prohibited degrees of kinship it involves. These are four,
and each of them is contracted before 1215, therefore the prohibition
to the 7th degree applies at least in theory. The problem with one of
these unions is to some extent hypothetical, as it depends on the
identification of duke Konrad I of Swabia. Parsons follows Armin
Wolf, who dismisses the usual identification of Konrad I as the son of
count Udo of Wetterau. But whereas Wolf is persuasive in pointing out
the improbability that Konrad I was Udo's son, Konrad still appears to
have been intimately related to Udo's family and was probably his
grandson (see TPC 11 [2003] 41-42 and notes 135 and 137). So here we
have a marriage within probably three degrees of kinship. The
remaining marriages likewise break the consanguinity prohibition, and
in fact I appear to have mistakenly counted for the most distant
relationship instead of the closest one. Consider Agatha and Eadward
in that scenario. If we count through Agatha's line of ancestors, the
spouses are related in the 7th degree (still prohibited). However, if
we count through Eadward's line of ancestors, he and his wife are
actually related in the 5th degree. I suppose it is too late to
correct this now (by the way, the electronic edition of the article
corrects a couple of typos and also should avoid the formatting
problem that prevented characters used in the transliteration from
Greek and Cyrillic from printing correctly).
Having said that, I must reemphasize that far more problematic in
Parsons' hypothesis are the assumptions that the Kievan grand prince
Vladimir I married a daughter of duke Konrad I and that a daughter
from that union then married count Bernhard of Haldensleben. First,
we do not know which Russian prince was married to duke Konrad's
daughter, and if that was Vladimir I, it must have taken place before
his marriage to Anna of Byzantium and conversion to Christianity
(988-989), something extremely unlikely. Second, we do not know if
the Russian wife of count Bernhard (and which one of the possibly two
distinct Bernhards) of Haldesleben was a daughter of that hypothetical
marriage. Third, we do not know that the Russian wife of a count
Bernhard of Haldesleben was the daughter of Vladimir I or indeed of
any Kievan monarch. If we add all this to the problems suggested by
four marriages within the prohibited degrees of kinship, not to
mention various other circumstantial objections, we end up with a very
uncompelling argument. On the other hand, if we simply remove this
proposed descent for Agatha, three of the marriage complications
disappear, leaving only that between duke Konrad I and Richlint, both
of whom have debatable ancestry.
All of this is of course already in the article, but perhaps its
reiteration was still useful.
Best regards,
Ian Mladjov
moody...@cox.net ("Phil Moody") wrote in message news:<010c01c46f25$bf4045b0$7ce70d44@researchwq98t0>...