Eberhard of Sulichgau

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

Eberhard of Sulichgau has been mentioned in this newsgroup. However, I must admit that I haven't found any evidence of his existence. As Peter Stewart has mentioned him in https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/RkfNSc6HhEM/t4thjtz90BUJ, I hope he could provide me such evidence. BTW, other than the obvious onomastic argument, what's the evidence connecting him to Eberhard of Friuli? Also, why do most online genealogies make him son of Hunroch, instead of Adalhard?

[joseph cook]

On Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 4:31:37 PM UTC-4, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> Eberhard of Sulichgau has been mentioned in this newsgroup. However, I must admit that I haven't found any evidence of his existence. As Peter Stewart has mentioned him in https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/RkfNSc6HhEM/t4thjtz90BUJ, I hope he could provide me such evidence. BTW, other than the obvious onomastic argument, what's the evidence connecting him to Eberhard of Friuli? Also, why do most online genealogies make him son of Hunroch, instead of Adalhard?

Can you save us some time and let us know what sources regarding the Unruochings you have already referenced?

If there is any evidence whatsoever (or even a reason to suspect) that Eberhard of Friuli and Eberhard who was graf in the Sülichgau are related, I have never seen it.

--Joe C

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-20 6:31 AM, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> Eberhard of Sulichgau has been mentioned in this newsgroup. However, I must admit that I haven't found any evidence of his existence. As Peter Stewart has mentioned him in https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/RkfNSc6HhEM/t4thjtz90BUJ, I hope he could provide me such evidence. BTW, other than the obvious onomastic argument, what's the evidence connecting him to Eberhard of Friuli? Also, why do most online genealogies make him son of Hunroch, instead of Adalhard?
>

The evidence for his existence is in an original charter of Emperor
Arnulf dated 25 August 888: "in pago Hattinhunta et Sulihgouua in
comitatibus Perengarii et Eparhardi ...".

The onomastic rationale is not negligible in this case: the names
Berengar and Eberhard are found together in the Unruoching family, most
notably Eberhard of Friuli who married Louis I's daughter Gisela and
their son Emperor Berengar I. However, some historians identify the
Eberhard (Eparhardus) above with other countships apart from the
Sülichgau, which can complicate genealogical speculation about him.

I'm not sure what you mean about "most online genealogies" - I don't
ahve the energy or will to goking, but assume you are finding that these
make Eberhard of the Sülichgau a nephew of Berengar I and that most
place him as son of Berengar I's elder brother Unruoch, marquis in
Friuli (died 1 July 8). I don't consider this at all likely: Unruoch had
only a single recorded child, a daughter who became a nun at San
Salvatore/Santa Giulia in Brescia from where she was kidnapped by a
youth who (happily for her vow of chastity) died on their wedding night.
An adult son of Unruoch would surely have figured in the sources since
he would have been a factor in Italian politics as presumably marquis in
Friuli rather than just a count in the Sülichgau.

Perhaps your online references are worried by the title of Berengar I's
younger brother Adalhard as abbot of Cysoing into supposing that he had
no legitimate offspring. If so, this is mistaken: Adalhard was a lay
abbot and had perhaps five sons by his wife Suaneburg - though none of
them is certainly his.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-20 9:47 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
> I'm not sure what you mean about "most online genealogies" - I don't
> ahve the energy or will to goking

I don't have the energy or will to go looking - evidently my fingers
didn't "ahve" the vigour to "goking" much at all.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

First, what connects Eberhard of Sulichgau with the name Berengar?
Second, a quick Google search shows, at least, dozens of sites showing Eberhard of Sulichgau's father as Hunroch. Wikipedia is one of them, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruoch_III_of_Friuli. Thanks for showing that is almost certainly wrong.

[Peter Stewart]

The contiguous countships in northern Bertoldsbaar as in Arnulf's 888
charter, and both names occurring in a necrology from Reichenau compiled
ca 896/900.

> Second, a quick Google search shows, at least, dozens of sites showing Eberhard of Sulichgau's father as Hunroch. Wikipedia is one of them, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruoch_III_of_Friuli. Thanks for showing that is almost certainly wrong.

But of course this doesn't make it necessarily right to place Eberhard
as son of Adalhard - we have only probability to go by for this, and
some historians have made different conjectures.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

I just looked at the Wikipedia page linked in your post - it is
predictably worthless.

There is no evidence at all that Eberhard was the (unknown) husband of
Charles the Bald's granddaughter Ermentrude - and, following the
hyperlink, she was not the daughter of Louis the Stammerer's first wife
Ansgarde (who was not "of Burgundy" in any meaningful sense, just the
daughter of a count who was missus there). The only direct source we
have for Ermentrude - a genealogy compiled in the 950s by the priest
Witger - specifies that she was daughter of Louis by his second wife
Adelais ("Hlodovicus rex genuit ... Irmintrudim ex Adelheidi regina").

Peter Stewart

[zglorgy]

Hi all
I Can t find any information about suanebourg.

Can we establish a link to a known family?
Have we any Idea about her ancestors?

Thx

Jl

[zglorgy]

Hi again
By the way.
Have we any idea if who were the parents of umroch (IV?) (859/924)

Thx

[Peter Stewart]

No - she is named in a charter of Adalhard dated 31 October most
probably in 854, "ego Adalhart ... uxor mea Swanaburc"; her family is
unknown.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

I'm not sure that such a person can be clearly identified - from memory
this may have been an attempt to explain the place-name Urach as derived
from Unruoch, inserting a man of this name into the lineage of counts of
Achalm and then arbitrarily placing him into the Unruoching family.

Where do you find an Unruoch with these dates? It is helpful to provide
some context when asking for information - this is not a help desk where
staff are primed and ready for whatever might be cryptically asked.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

"Most probably in 854" is not fully sustainable, and certainly too early
for a son of Eberhard and Gisela to occur with a wife - this year was
deduced by Hansmartin Decker-Hauff, who was far from the most reliable
authority, and the charter might have been written in 865 or 871. The
regnal year of Louis the German is stated in it as "anno Ludowici regis
XVIII, Alamannorum V", which is not correctly reconcilable with any
Wednesday 31 October while Grimald was abbot of St Gall (from 26
December 843 until he died on 13 June 872).

Peter Stewart

[zglorgy]

Hi Peter



No sources for that. That's why i asked.The french Wikipedia give Umroch IV as sonb of Umroch III

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unroch_III_de_Frioul

I was , very genuinly thought , it was.... somewhat real

Sorry

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-20 7:24 PM, zglorgy wrote:
> Hi Peter
>
>
>
> No sources for that. That's why i asked.The french Wikipedia give Umroch IV as sonb of Umroch III
>
> https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unroch_III_de_Frioul
>
> I was , very genuinly thought , it was.... somewhat real
>
> Sorry

The Wikipedia link above is just what I meant by providing context when
asking a question - now that I can see where "Unruoch IV" was found, it
is easy to tell that this is fictitious - there was no such person as
"Unroch IV de Frioul (859-924), comte de Frioul".

The name Unruoch is rare, found mainly in the lineage beginning with a
man of this name (known for convenience as Unruoch I) who was a count in
Alemannia last recorded in 811. He may have been the same as or more
probably the father of an Unruoch (II) who occurs as count of Ternois in
817 and died as a monk of Saint-Bertin after 844/before 853. This man
was father of Eberhard, marquis of Friuli (died 16 December most
probably in 865), who married Louis I's daughter (Charles the Bald's
full sister) Gisela. Their second son was Unruoch (III), also marquis of
Friuli, who had only one documented child - the kidnapped nun mentioned
upthread.

There was no Unruoch IV recorded in this family. The name occurred once
in the Supponid family, a count Unruoch last recorded on 12 May 890
whose father was Suppo III, archminister and count or duke of Spoleto
(died 878/79). His mother, Suppo III's wife, may have been a daughter of
Unruoch (II) above, count of Ternois, whose wife was Ingeltrud of
unknown family.

It is sensible that Wikipedia pages come under questioning here, but
please take the small trouble to reference these when asking about
information found in them.

Peter Stewart

[zglorgy]

Many thanks for Your Ansewer PEter

And sorry for not having Quoted my questions


Your help is always a pleasure

[sba...@mindspring.com]

Although not immediately relevant to the case Eberhard of Sulichgau, the early men of the name Unruoch are discussed on the Henry Project page of Hunroch/Unruoch (father of Eberhard of Friuli):

https://fasg.org/projects/henryproject/data/hunro000.htm

Stewart Baldwin

[Peter Stewart]

Thanks for this. The only basis I can find for an Unruoch "IV" with a
terminal date of 924 is a charter of Burkhard II, duke of Swabia, dated
at Zurich on 6 January 924, in which an Unruoch - evidently a count or
perhaps a lesser vassal of Burkhard - occurs as the fourth subscription
following the duke himself and two bishops: "Purchardus divina annnente
gratia dux Alamannorum ... Actum in Turego presentibus episcopis,
comitibus aliisque nostris fidelibus, quorum nomina hic notantur. Signum
Purchardi ducis ... Signum Notingi episcopi. Signum Waltoni episcopi.
Signum Vuodalrich, Kerolt, Liuto, Unruoch ...".

This comparatively minor individual can hardly be identified as the heir
of the marquises of Friuli closely related to emperors. He has been
proposed as ancestor of the counts of Achalm and possibly descended from
either Berengar or Eberhard who were named as counts in the
Hattenhuntare and Sülichgau ("in pago Hattinhunta et Sulihgouua") by
Arnulf (then king, later emperor) on 25 August 888 as quoted upthread.

Given that both of these counts were recorded in an obituary compiled by
900, the Unruoch occurring in Zurich in January 924 was perhaps a
grandson of one or other, but if so more probably through an unrecorded
daughter than in male line.

Eberhard has been speculatively identified as the father of Burkhard
II's wife and widow Reginlind, who subsequently married his Konradian
successor as duke, Hermann I.

Peter Stewart

[zglorgy]

I am very grateful for so many new informations

Jl

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

http://www.manfred-hiebl.de/genealogie-mittelalter/unruochinger/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_nach_899/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_+_nach_889.html has a good account of this. It quotes the same charter of Emperor Arnulf as Peter. It presents yet another theory, that he was son of Liuto von Reinhau and Judith, daughter of Eberhard of Friuli and Gisela. Judith is not documented to have married but several marriages have been conjectured for her, read https://fasg.org/projects/henryproject/data/eberh000.htm.

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

sábado, 11 de Julho de 2020 às 13:12:22 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> http://www.manfred-hiebl.de/genealogie-mittelalter/unruochinger/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_nach_899/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_+_nach_889.html has a good account of this. It quotes the same charter of Emperor Arnulf as Peter. It presents yet another theory, that he was son of Liuto von Reinhau and Judith, daughter of Eberhard of Friuli and Gisela. Judith is not documented to have married but several marriages have been conjectured for her, read https://fasg.org/projects/henryproject/data/eberh000.htm.

BTW, according to the same page, the identification of Eberhard's son Adalhard with the husband of Suaneburg is false. It was one of Decker-Hauff's bad conjectures.

[Peter Stewart]

"False" is going too far - the identification of the Adalhard who
donated the church of St Verena in Strasbourg with the son of Eberhard
of Friuli and Gisela depends on the dating and witnesses in a charter
for St Gall that may have been interpolated, conflated with an earlier
document or deliberately forged.

Hansmartin Decker-Hauff was not the first to link Adalhard of Burc (i.e.
Strasboug) from his widespread possessions with the Unruoching family;
he argued about the date of the St Gall charter, changing this from 843
to 854, but the first of these is the more implausible while neither can
be considered secure enough to exclude a later year when Grimald was
still abbot of St Gall and 31 October fell on a Wednesday.

Decker-Hauff was discredited for falsifying source material, and apart
from this some of his conjectures failed to take real evidence into
proper account. The identification of Adalhard of Burc is not
established to be one of his mistakes, but even if it is wrong it
doesn't change the point that Eberhard's and Gisela's son Adalhard was a
lay abbot and may have had legitimate offspring, possibly the late-9th
century counts Berengar and Eberhard discussed upthread.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

Thanks for the explanation, Peter.
Regardless, does placing Judith, wife of Arnulf of Bavaria, as daughter of Eberhard of Sulichgau have any more evidence than the onomastic argument of her having had children named Eberhard, Louis and Gisela, that could place her anywhere among Eberhard's descendants?
BTW, I am interested in this because conclusively establishing a descent of Judith of Bavaria from Eberhard and Gisela would increase the number of Charlemagne descents in Central and Eastern Europe.

[Peter Stewart]

Where are you getting the information that Arnulf of Bavaria had a
daughter named Gisela?

I don't recall off the top of my head where this conjectured parentage
of Judith and marriage to Arnulf originated - can you let us know where
you found it? His family has been the subject of more genealogical
speculation and debate than most, and my life would be taken over if I
devoted enough time to keep up with it all constantly.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

I'm not sure where the supposed daughter Gisela comes from, but the
conjectured parentage of Judith and her marriage to Arnulf of Bavaria
was made popular (though not first proposed) by Franz Tyroller in 1951 -
Kurt Reindel in 1953 (*Die bayerischen Luitpoldinger*) disparaged this
as a presumption and Tyroller took offense. He returned to the argument
in 1955, asserting that it explained the names Eberhard, Hermann,
Ludwig, and Judith (NB not Gisela) for Arnulf's children and the Italian
campaigns of Arnulf and Heinrich I.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

Sorry, I misremebered. As shown in https://fasg.org/projects/henryproject/data/beren001.htm, the name of Arnulf's wife is, actually, unknown and she had children named Eberhard, Louis and Judith.

[Peter Stewart]

Well, it was a significant lapse of memory on your part because the
absence of the name Gisela in the next few generations descended from
the wife of Arnulf is a problem for connecting her to the family of
Louis I's daughter Gisela.

Medieval nobility were extremely keen (even more than some SGM
participants) on descent from royalty, and neglecting to pass on the
name of a Carolingian princess whose hereditary prestige had allowed a
family member (Berengar I, allegedly grand-uncle of Arnulf's wife) to
become emperor would be odd. Child mortality might account for one or
even two generations without the name, but hardly more unless they were
fatally careless parents who by bizarre luck managed to bring up only
Eberhards, Ludwigs and Judiths to adulthood.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

The name Louis/Ludwig was even more important than Gisela in establishing descent from royalty, though.
Regardless, the combination of those 3 names does suggest a descent of Arnulf's wife from Eberhard and Gisela, IMO, though the exact descent cannot be established.

[Peter Stewart]

I wouldn't get too carried away by three common names occurring together
in one family - the name Ludwig didn't stick for long, or come to the
fore, and doesn't occur at all in the only line of descendants where the
name Gisela does appear, though after four generations (Schweinfurt).

Berengar, the name of the sole Unruoching emperor, does not appear in
descendant families, whether proven or speculative.

Gisela occurs in wives of Arnulf's descendants rather than in his
agnatic line, and abyway became common in the German aristocracy along
with Ludwig, Eberhard and Judith.

Co-incidences happen, and need to be more unaccountable than a
convergence of these particularly frequent names in order to be at all
compelling.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

We also have non-onomastic evidence. Men named Eberhard and Bérengar were in Southern Germany. A marriage of Arnulf of Bavaria to a daughter of one of them would make sense.

[Peter Stewart]

I'm not sure what you mean by "non-onomastic evidence" when you follow
this by noting names. There were men named Eberhard and Berengar in the
Konradian family too, and a Ludwig in the Welf family from where the
name Judith had come into the Carolingian line.

Since daughters could carry names into families that had not used them
before, as could godparents, there are no observable rules for
transmission that can pinpoint the agnatic family of a wife just by the
names of her children without direct supporting evidence from
inheritance of property or titles and territorial power.

Presumably the Unruochings got these names from somehwere apart from a
direct line to Adam and Eve - who didn't have any of them among their
children. Why shouldn't the same names have gone into other families
independently of the Unruochings?

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

Maybe I should have worded my reply better.
Regardless, your original reply in this thread said that the joint appearance of the names Eberhard and Bérengar wasn't negligible. Aren't your replies contradictory?

[Peter Stewart]

No - "not negligible" means just what it says. It would be negligible if
there was nothing else to indicate a plausible connection apart from
these two names, just as the argument of Tyroller was based on the
negligible evidence of three names (plus Hermann for good measure) with
no support except for his tendentious suggestion about a motive behind
the Italian campaigns of two Bavarian dukes.

In the case of Berengar and Eberhard, they occur together as counts in
an original charter dated 888 held in the abbey archive at St Gall, the
recipient some time earlier of a significant donation from Adalhard of
Burc (Strasbourg) recorded in another original (or pseudo-original) St
Gall charter. The royal charter naming Berengar and Eberhard refers to
Dusslingen in their joint pagus (in pago Hattinhunta et Sulihgouua in
comitatibus Perengarii et Eparhardi villa quae dicitur Tuzzilinga).
Dusslingen is not far east of Strasbourg. Adalhard of Burc held
possessions in Francia and Germany on a scale that suggests he was
probably (i.e. not certainly) identical to the lay abbot of Cysoing, son
of Eberhard and Emperor Louis I's daughter Gisela.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

Back in 2001, you were far more supportive of this connection in https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/RkfNSc6HhEM/3F_vkr0Fv4sJ. Have you changed your mind?
Regardless, you said in the same thread that Eberhard of Sulichgau's wife was named Gisela. Were you wrong?
Regardless, why did Adalhard hold Cysoing, despite the fact that it was from his family's powerbase in Northern Italy, Switzerland and Southern Germany?

[Peter Stewart]

I should have thought it fairly obvious that in 2001 I was following
Tyroller, and now I'm more doubtful about his assertions. Do you really
need me to tell you this? Posts to SGM are not affadavits that must be
repeated verbatim - mistakes, false confidence and all - two decades later.

> Regardless, you said in the same thread that Eberhard of Sulichgau's wife was named Gisela. Were you wrong?

I don't know or care enough to find out - Gisela is just a name and if
nothing more was said about her it may as well have been Tammy-Faye for
all the genealogical import this has.

> Regardless, why did Adalhard hold Cysoing, despite the fact that it was from his family's powerbase in Northern Italy, Switzerland and Southern Germany?

Cysoing was the "house abbey" of the Unruochings, whose power base
extended to the east and south as their political fortunes rose - not an
uncommon history.

The lay abbacy was inherited from Louis I's son-in-law Eberhard by the
latter's son Rodolf according to Flodoard. I'm not sure from memory how
(or even if) Adalhard came to hold it - my opinion without sources from
2001 or today should be of less value to you than it is to me, and that
is very little on this point. I don't have the energy just now to pursue
the question.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 14-Jul-20 10:04 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:

> Cysoing was the "house abbey" of the Unruochings, whose power base
> extended to the east and south as their political fortunes rose - not an
> uncommon history.
>
> The lay abbacy was inherited from Louis I's son-in-law Eberhard by the
> latter's son Rodolf according to Flodoard. I'm not sure from memory how
> (or even if) Adalhard came to hold it

Flodoard did not say exactly what is attributed to him in my post -
rather he said that after his father Eberhard's death Saint-Calixte
abbey at Cysoing came to Rodolf by hereditary right ("Evrardus marchio
sancti Calisti pape et martyris venerabile corpus a Romana sede
impetraverit atque in eius honore monasterium in predio suo
constituerit. Quod predium post eius obitum ad filium ipsius Rodulfum
abbatem hereditario iure devenerit").

In Eberhard's testament Cysoing was left to his third son Adalhard
("Tertius Adalardus volumus ut habeat curtem nostram in Cisonio"), not
to his fourth son Rodolf who evidently obtained the lay abbacy after
Adalhard.

However, Rodolf's succession makes it appear likely that his elder
brother Adalhard did not have sons of his own.

This leaves the question of Adalhard of Burc, the dating of his gift to
St Gall, and his possible paternity of the counts Eberhard and Berengar
occurring in 888 more open that I had realised.

Gerd Tellenbach in 1956 noted that Adalhard did not receive any property
in Alemannia from the 863/64 testament of Eberhard and Gisela, while
adding that the Unruoching family may have been connected to the
Adalhard who was count in the Breisgau and Bertoldsbaar in the 8th
century. Michael Borgolte in 1986 thought that the counts Eberhard and
Berengar occurring in the Bertoldsbaar in 888 probably belonged to the
Unruoching family but did not speculate further.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-20 6:31 AM, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> Eberhard of Sulichgau has been mentioned in this newsgroup. However, I must admit that I haven't found any evidence of his existence. As Peter Stewart has mentioned him in https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/RkfNSc6HhEM/t4thjtz90BUJ, I hope he could provide me such evidence. BTW, other than the obvious onomastic argument, what's the evidence connecting him to Eberhard of Friuli? Also, why do most online genealogies make him son of Hunroch, instead of Adalhard?
>

Going back to the start of this thread, having established that in 888
there was a count named Eberhard in the Sülichgau, I think it is
reasonable to connect him to the Unruoching family but probably not as a
descendant of Louis I's daughter Gisela and her husband Eberhard of Friuli.

Obviously (I hope) this contradicts earlier posts of mine. I don't
expect to be still around 19 years from now, but in case John Schmeeckle
is able to report what I have to say in future please don't waste his
time asking if I have changed my mind - especially if I merely say now
that something is likely and say then that it is unproven, as with the
Gislebert of the Maasgau/Reginar Long-neck question.

Eberhard of Friuli and Gisela's third son, Adalhard, evidently died
without legitimate issue, whether or not he was married. Their fourth
son, Rodolf, also evidently died without children, as had their
firstborn son Eberhard who died in infancy. Their eldest son, Unruoch,
had a daughter who became a nun and - presumably because she was his
only child and therefore potentially his heiress - was abducted to be
forcibly married to the nephew of an ambitious bishop. People did not go
to this trouble generally in order to link themselves with a mighty
family only as targets of their righteous vengeance, and anyway Unruoch
had no recorded sons who could have been his heirs.

The only remaining son of Eberhard and Gisela was Emperor Berengar I,
who had two daughters. The younger became an abbess and was left
unmolested by kidnappers. The elder married Adalbert, marquis of Ivrea,
and carried the throne-right of her father to her offspring.

Consequently, by simple process of elimination there is nowhere left in
this line of decent to place Eberhard of the Sülichgau plausibly as an
agnatic Unruoching. There is also no reason to suppose he was descended
through a daughter of a marquis of Friuli - the only candidates on
record would be Engeltrude and Judith (neither known to have
descendants: the speculative marriage for Judith that I previously
accepted is improbable in my changed opinion, and anyway would not at
all clearly give rise to a pair of counts in the Bertoldsbaar), Gisela
who became a nun and Heilwig who had offspring by Hucbald of Ostrevant
(ancestor of the counts of Valois) and possibly also by Roger of Laon
(whose descendants - not in Germany - were more probably by a prior wife).

Since there is nowhere to place Eberhard of the Sülichgau convincingly
as a descendant of Gisela, there is also no sound basis to speculate
that Arnulf of Bavaria's adventures in Italy had anything to do with
throne-right there through his wife as a daughter of Eberhard, whether
or not her name was Judith (that is also unproven). There are sources,
that misled Franz Tyroller, giving false and/or confused information
about Arnulf - for instance, Bonizo of Sutri writing in the late-11th
century calling him "king" while misstating that Otto I had expelled him
from Bavaria after a victory over the Hungarians (evidently the battle
of Lechfeld, which took place nearly 20 years after Arnulf's death), and
annals compiled at Salzburg claiming that the Italians accepted his son
Eberhard as their ruler after Arnulf had handed over Bavaria to him. We
don't know for certain why Arnulf and his son-in-law Heinrich set their
sights on Italy, but attempting to usurp the direct hereditary right of
Emperor Berengar I's elder daughter on behalf of her alleged first
cousin once removed is not a sustainable hypothesis.

It remains plausible, however, that Eberhard of the Sülichgau and
Berengar his fellow count in the northern Bertoldsbaar belonged to the
Unruoching family, and may have been sons or otherwise closely related
to Adalhard of Burc (Strasbourg).

There is little definite evidence for the early generations of the
Unruoching family - some historians make the father of Eberhard of
Friuli into the son of another Unruoch who was a count in Alemannia in
the first decades of the 9th century, while others make these into a
single long-lived person who was count in the Ternois and died by 853.
Some presume that an earlier Berengar, count of Toulouse, and Eberhard,
marquis of Barcelona, were sons of the first Unruoch and paternal uncles
of Eberhard of Friuli, but anyway neither of them is known to have left
descendants.

We have only the sketchiest information for the origin of the first
Unruoch. He had a nephew named Alpgar who was missus in Dalmatia in 817
and may have been count of Tortona and/or a count in Carinthia. He was
most probably the man who named his father as Autgar. Eduard Hlawitschka
in 1960 considered that as Autgar was an Alemannian he could not be the
brother of Unruoch and was perhaps his brother-in-law, but Michael
Mitterauer in 1963 pointed out that most families attaining power in
Alemannia during the 8th century were of Frankish origin, like the
Unruochings. The Carolingians were related through Charlemagne's mother
to an Autgar who married a sister of Charibert of Laon.

We don't know when the names Adalhard, Eberhard and Berengar came into
the Unruoching family, or if the same names were also used in the family
descended from Unruoch's Alemannian nephew Alpgar who for all we know
may have been the father, uncle or cousin of Adalhard of Burc and
grandfather or other antecedent of Eberhard of the Sülichgau.

If I change my mind over the next 19 years, I will do my best to signal
this to John Schmeeckle.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 14-Jul-20 10:04 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:

> On 14-Jul-20 2:45 AM, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:

>> Regardless, you said in the same thread that Eberhard of Sulichgau's
>> wife was named Gisela. Were you wrong?
>
> I don't know or care enough to find out - Gisela is just a name and if
> nothing more was said about her it may as well have been Tammy-Faye for
> all the genealogical import this has.

The name Gisela for a wife ascribed (without a skerrick of proof) to the
Eberhard who was count in the Sülichgau in 888 has come about through a
chain of speculation.

Reginlind who was the double-duchess of Swabia in the early 10th century
was daughter of a lady of unknown family named Gisela. A reasonable case
can be made (and has been most recently by Eduard Hlawitschka) that this
Gisela may have been a grand-daughter of Eberhard of Friuli and Louis
I's daughter Gisela, and if so perhaps she was the daughter of their son
Unruoch kidnapped from her convent in Brescia in 886/87 in order to be
married to a nephew of the bishop of Vercelli.

A Gisela was evidently married to Waltfred, count of Verona, a supporter
of Berengar I of Friuli who at one stage reportedly followed him as
marquis there. Hlawitschka gilded the lily of his argument by suggesting
that Waltfred was the bishop's nephew for whom Unruoch's daughter was
abducted, disregarding that the source for the story says this
delinquent died on his wedding night leaving his bride still a virgin.

The same source does not specify that she returned to the cloister, and
for all we know she may have preferred to try a second marriage with
Waltfred hoping that he would last through a honeymoon.

Anyway, Gisela the mother of Reginlind has been conjecturally attached
to various men as her unrecorded husband - and somehow this has shifted
to making her the daughter of Unruoch of Friuli and with Waltfred of
Verona the parent of a namesake who married Eberhard the subject of this
thread, as here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalhard_von_Burc and
here:
http://www.manfred-hiebl.de/genealogie-mittelalter/unruochinger/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_nach_899/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_+_nach_889.html.

Needless to say - I hope - these are not at all well-founded. We have no
explicit evidence for any offspring of Waltfred of Verona, whether or
not his wife was named Gisela and/or a daughter of Unruoch of Friuli.
The names Waltfred and Gisela precede the name of Reginlind in a
confraternity book, leading to Hlawitschka's suggestion outlined above.
Beyond that, all is guesswork.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

The "somehow" of the shift from a Gisela wife of Waltfred of Verona as
the putative mother of Reginlind to a Gisela daughter of Waltfred and
Gisela as her mother appears to be a cumulative speculation based on
unsupported statements by Hansmartin Decker-Hauff and Emil Kimpen.

In 1955 he gave Eberhard of the Sülichgau an unrecorded marriage ca 885
to a Gisela by whom he had Reginlind - he did not explain this or
identify Gisela at the time, but in 1957 he asserted that she appears to
have had influential relatives in Lombardy ("scheint in der Lombardei
einflußreiche Verwandte gehabt zu haben").

Also in 1955 Emil Kimpen had tried to establish that Reginlind's mother
Gisela (married off by him to three men, none of whom was either
Eberhard of the Sülichgau or Waltfred of Verona) was the daughter of
Unruoch, son of Eberhard of Friuli by Louis I's daughter Gisela. Others
plausibly linked the younger Gisela as wife of Waltfred, so a namesake
daughter by him came to be invented for this lady. This illusory third
Gisela was then made into a wife of Eberhard of the Sülichgau in order
not to let go of his alleged (though implausible) paternity of Reginlind
as well as that duchess' supposed influential maternal relatives in
Lombardy.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

Judith's conjectured marriage to Heinrich of Neustria was proposed in order to explain the apparent Carolingian descent of the Hedwig, his apparent daughter. However, as discussed in https://fasg.org/projects/henryproject/data/hedwi002.htm, such a marriage can be ruled out for chronological reasons. However, I don't think we can rule out the possibility that Eberhard of Sulichgau was her son by a marriage to Liuto of Reinhau, as conjectured in http://www.manfred-hiebl.de/genealogie-mittelalter/unruochinger/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_nach_899/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_+_nach_889.html.

[Peter Stewart]

On 23-Jul-20 6:59 AM, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> A quarta-feira, 15 de julho de 2020 à(s) 02:01:54 UTC+1, pss...@optusnet.com.au escreveu:

> Judith's conjectured marriage to Heinrich of Neustria was proposed in order to explain the apparent Carolingian descent of the Hedwig, his apparent daughter. However, as discussed in https://fasg.org/projects/henryproject/data/hedwi002.htm, such a marriage can be ruled out for chronological reasons. However, I don't think we can rule out the possibility that Eberhard of Sulichgau was her son by a marriage to Liuto of Reinhau, as conjectured in http://www.manfred-hiebl.de/genealogie-mittelalter/unruochinger/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_nach_899/eberhard_graf_im_suelichgau_+_nach_889.html.

We can't rule out most published speculations - otherwise the editors of
the journals where these appeared would probably have done the ruling
out for us, and we would not be troubled by them in the first place.

This Liuto advocate of Rheinau (not Reinhau) conjecture for an
unrecorded husband of Judith of Friuli comes from several articles by
Heinz Bühler, who made Eberhard of the Sülichgau into the ancestor of
the counts of Nellenburg and his presumed brother Berengar of the
Hattenhuntare into the ancestor of no less than Kuno of Öhningen,
husband of Richlint whom he made the descendant of Eberhard's and
Berengar's purported sister Gisela: if this scheme - or even a component
of it - had been generally accepted, an ocean of ink would have been
saved by now.

Permutations that seem consistent with sketchy evidence are ten-a-penny,
and a compulsion to match wits against the unknown to come up with novel
ones in the way of Heinz Bühler is not worth any more than that to the
study of medieval genealogy.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

Who did Bühler conjecture Kuno of Öhningen to be? I suppose he didn't consider him to be the same as Konrad of Swabia, as the identification only became mainstream in the 80s.

[Peter Stewart]

Bühler built a skyscraper of cards with a few very odd non-structural
cantilevers, like the unsightly eyecatchers of some modern cities.

His identifications don't all stick within the dates that have been
generally recognised for the people in question.

According to his scheme Berengar of the Hattenhuntare may have had three
sons, including the Unruoch of 924 mentioned upthread whose two putative
brothers were Liuto, count in the Zürich- & Alpgau and Berengar, count
in the Thurgau. One of the latter two men was supposed to have fathered
a daughter, whose name may have been Liutgard, married by Bühler to
Konrad, count in the Ufgau & Ortenau - this couple in his hyperextended
fantasy were the parents of Berengar, abbot of Murbach, and Kuno of
Öhningen.

I don't think this amounts to even a penny-worth of conjecture. I
suppose it kept Bühler off the streets, where he might have got up to
more harmful mischief, but apart from that it was a waste of his effort.

Peter Stewart