Webber's Agatha article in The Genealogist

[sba...@mindspring.com]

I received my copy of "The Genealogist" ["TG"] in the mail yesterday, which has the recently mentioned article by David Jay Webber, "The Grand Princely Family Fresco in Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, and the identity of Agatha the wife of Edward Atheling: the search continues." [TG 33 (2019): 3-19]

Agatha enthusiasts who want THE ANSWER (or a new "answer") to Agatha's parentage will be disappointed, but I was quite happy to see that the article was not another weakly done theory claiming to "solve" the problem, but was instead a well-done refutation of one of the main points that has been used in support of the Russian hypothesis that Agatha was a daughter of Iaroslav of Russia. Very briefly, Webber shows that the evidence of the fresco which has been used to "prove" that Iaroslav had a fourth daughter cannot be sustained, and if anything, shows a MALE figure, perhaps a son. This does not disprove the Russian hypothesis of Agatha's origin, but it does demolish one of the pieces of so-called "evidence" sometimes put forward in support of the hypothesis.

Personally, even when I accepted the statements about the fresco at face value, I never put any value on the argument that "the fresco shows four girls, therefore Iaroslav had four daughters, therefore the fourth one was Agatha." Even then, the first "therefore" was weak and the second one was without any sound logical basis whatsoever.

Stewart Baldwin

[Peter Stewart]

What (if anything) meets the description we were given recently of "new scholarship to the English-speaking world, based on Russian and Ukrainian sources that have not previously been referenced in English-language articles on Agatha"?

Peter Stewart

[sba...@mindspring.com]

Webber's main source is a study by Yuri A. Pelevin, with a title in Russian transliterated by the author as "Sem'ya Yarolslava Mudrogo: Freska Ketera Sofiyskogo Sobora y Kiyeve" (citing a website with an apparent broken link). This earlier study, which apparently does not mention the Agatha question, shows that the fresco has four boys to the left and three girls and a boy to the left among the (supposed) children of Iaroslav, and that the supposed "fourth daughter" is a late and faulty restoration in which a male figure (still clearly visible under the restoration) has been "restored" as female. Webber is a Lutheran minister who once served as a Rector and Professor of Theology at St. Sophia.

Stewart Baldwin

[sba...@mindspring.com]

On Saturday, March 30, 2019 at 10:51:19 AM UTC-5, sba...@mindspring.com wrote:

> Webber's main source . . .

I should have added that Webber's article has three pages of photographs of the frescos and early drawings of it.

Stewart Baldwin

[Peter Stewart]

Thanks, there is a useful and well-illustrated 2014 article about the Kiev fresco by Nadezha Nitikenko that can be downloaded here http://www.irbis-nbuv.gov.ua/cgi-bin/irbis_nbuv/cgiirbis_64.exe?I21DBN=LINK&P21DBN=UJRN&Z21ID=&S21REF=10&S21CNR=20&S21STN=1&S21FMT=ASP_meta&C21COM=S&2_S21P03=FILA=&2_S21STR=sskbru_2014_4_39.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

I should emphasise that this article by Nadezhda Nikitenko (apologies for the typos in both of her names in my earlier post) is useful for its references and illustrations, though not reliable in other respects.

Her theory that the cathedral was founded in 1011-18 has misled her, via falsely confident acceptance that Agatha does appear in the fresco, into placing her as a half-sister of Yaroslav the Wise, not daughter as according to usual the Russian hypothesis - Nikitenko has tried to revise the offspring of his father by the latter's Byzantine wife Anna to include Agatha and other daughters.

This and the early dating proposal for the frescos has not been generally accepted by Ukrainian and Russian historians: the more widely accepted dating is 1017-37, most probably in the late 1020s/early 1030s, and the multiple daughters ascribed to Anna are also not accepted by most.

Peter Stewart

[jayw...@yahoo.com]

I'm glad you find the article helpful. As the title indicates, it is not answering the question as much as it is questioning the answer, and contrary to the wishful conclusion of Norman Ingham and those who have followed him - who were convinced that the issue had been settled with Agatha's identification as a daughter of Yaroslav - my conclusion is that actually "the search continues." Some historians of Kyiv-Rus' may be upset with me, though, because books have been published in recent years that accept Ingham's argument as persuasive and build on this identification in the historical or genealogical narratives they present. Oh, well.

I do think, however, that the article comes closer to disproving the Rusian hypothesis than you seem to grant, since I think a fair takeaway from my research is that Yaroslav had only three daughters - and we already know who they were and who they married. Together with all serious scholars of the history of Saint Sophia Cathedral of whom I am aware, I reject Nikitenko's claim that the fresco portrays the family of Volodymyr the Great rather than the family of Yaroslav the Wise.

David Jay Webber

[Peter Stewart]

How odd that on 8 March you posted without signature: "I don't think that issue has been mailed out yet, but I have read the article" - and now just over three weeks later it turns out you are the author of it.

Anyway, I agree with you that serious scholars don't take Nadezhda Nikitenko's proposals seriously - apart from anything else, the Byzantine princess Anna was almost certainly dead by the date Nikitenko asserts for the consecration of St Sophia cathedral, yet she is purportedly depicted as living in the fresco allegedly painted beforehand.

Also, the alternative Rusian suggestion of Gerd Wunder has the considerable disadvantage - among others - that St Margaret of Scotland under his scenario would evidently have had a maternal half-brother, Rostislav of Tmutorokan, poisoned in 1066, whose existence somehow unknown to her biographer Turgot.

Peter Stewart

[jayw...@yahoo.com]

"How odd that on 8 March you posted without signature: 'I don't think that issue has been mailed out yet, but I have read the article' - and now just over three weeks later it turns out you are the author of it."

Well, back then the question was asked if anyone had read the article, not if anyone had written it. So, I answered the question as asked. ;-)

DJW

[sba...@mindspring.com]

On Sunday, March 31, 2019 at 2:25:48 AM UTC-5, jayw...@yahoo.com wrote:

> I do think, however, that the article comes closer to disproving the Rusian hypothesis than you seem to grant, since I think a fair takeaway from my research is that Yaroslav had only three daughters - and we already know who they were and who they married.

Just as the fresco does not show all of his known sons, it is not a forgone conclusion that it shows all of his daughters, since Agatha (or any other putative fourth daughter of Yaroslav) could have been born after the fresco was made. That leaves an opening for proponents of the Russian hypothesis (which does not include me) to explain things away, but I do agree that you have made their (already weak) case even more difficult by turning a very weak positive point into a less weak negative point.

Stewart Baldwin

[Peter Stewart]

On Monday, April 1, 2019 at 12:57:57 AM UTC+11, jayw...@yahoo.com wrote:
> "How odd that on 8 March you posted without signature: 'I don't think that issue has been mailed out yet, but I have read the article' - and now just over three weeks later it turns out you are the author of it."
>
> Well, back then the question was asked if anyone had read the article, not if anyone had written it. So, I answered the question as asked. ;-)

It's reassuring that an author takes the trouble to read his own work - from all indications, some don't.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

It's just a presumption that it shows Yaroslav's daughters at all - in the 19th century four of the female figures were labelled as St Sophia (holy wisdom) with her saintly daughters Faith, Hope and Charity.

The documented source behind the Russian hypothesis is itself so weak - from ignorance of the actual name of "Malesclodus", whether or not this is Yaroslav, who is in any case not specified to be Agatha's father and indeed is rather implied not to be - that a case built on it can hardly bear any further weakening.

It seems to me that the Brunswick and Bruno hypotheses are the only substantial contenders in the field so far, with not enough evidence either to conclude a sound preference between them or to reject them both.

Peter Stewart

[jayw...@yahoo.com]

"Agatha (or any other putative fourth daughter of Yaroslav) could have been born after the fresco was made."

Based on when the cathedral was likely built and when the fresco was likely executed, and based on when Agatha was likely married to Edward Atheling, this is extremely unlikely.

DJW

[jayw...@yahoo.com]

"It's just a presumption that it shows Yaroslav's daughters at all - in the 19th century four of the female figures were labelled as St Sophia (holy wisdom) with her saintly daughters Faith, Hope and Charity."

It's more than a presumption. It's a careful evidence-based conclusion. And the 19th-century overpainting and repurposing of the fresco, as portrayals of Sophia, Faith, Hope, and Charity, has no bearing whatsoever on our fairly confident understanding of who was really pictured in the fresco in its original form.

DJW

[Peter Stewart]

On Monday, April 1, 2019 at 2:16:07 PM UTC+11, jayw...@yahoo.com wrote:
> "It's just a presumption that it shows Yaroslav's daughters at all - in the 19th century four of the female figures were labelled as St Sophia (holy wisdom) with her saintly daughters Faith, Hope and Charity."
>
> It's more than a presumption. It's a careful evidence-based conclusion. And the 19th-century overpainting and repurposing of the fresco, as portrayals of Sophia, Faith, Hope, and Charity, has no bearing whatsoever on our fairly confident understanding of who was really pictured in the fresco in its original form.
>

My point is that the evidence wasn't clear enough to prevent a quite different assumption about the identities of female subjects in the 19th century, and the daughters of Yaroslav conclusion can't be held as absolutely certain today. A likelihood may be compelling but still basically presumptive: iconography is not an exact science.

Peter Stewart

[jayw...@yahoo.com]

"My point is that the evidence wasn't clear enough to prevent a quite different assumption about the identities of female subjects in the 19th century, and the daughters of Yaroslav conclusion can't be held as absolutely certain today. A likelihood may be compelling but still basically presumptive: iconography is not an exact science."

The evidence that we are working with today includes x-ray emmisiographic scans of the fresco in the 1980s, and restorative work that has physically "peeled back" the overlay of paint that was applied in later centuries, so that we really do have a fairly clear idea of what the surviving sections of the fresco originally looked like. The work of Sergei Vysotsky, with which many in the west are unfamiliar, has provided some key information in this respect. But, those who read my article will now be aware of his work, and of its relevance to the question of how many daughters Yaroslav the Wise probably had.

DJW

[wjhonson]

Is there any indication in the fresco, and apparent ages of the people pictured, can any assumption be made about what years, or decade even, it was created.

[jayw...@yahoo.com]

"Is there any indication in the fresco, and apparent ages of the people pictured, can any assumption be made about what years, or decade even, it was created."

Here is a pertinent paragraph from the article:

<<It has been observed that, in the eighteenth-century copy of the van Westervelt drawing, “The eldest daughter wears a shawl under her princely hat, which means that she is a married woman.” If we assume that the presence of this shawl, which was visible on this figure in 1651, represented an accurate preservation – up to that point in time – of this figure’s original appearance; and if we take into account the known or estimated dates of marriage for the three known daughters of Yaroslav, then we can conclude that this eldest shawled daughter would have been Anastasia, who is said to have married Andrew, Prince of Hungary (later King Andrew I), around 1039. This approximate date of marriage is significant, in view of Domanovsky’s conclusion that “historiographical analysis and the critical consideration of the sources of the existing theories about the dating of the cathedral allows us to suppose that the construction of the Sophia of Kyiv took place in the second half or the end of the 1020s and the beginning or first half of the 1030s.” So, Anastasia would have gotten married right around the time when the interior of the new cathedral was being ornamented with its frescoes and mosaics. And she would also still have been living in Kyiv, since her husband did not return to Hungary to claim his throne until 1046. Yaroslav’s daughter Elizabeth (still single when the fresco was painted) was married in 1042 to Harald Siggurdsson (later King Harald III Hardrada of Norway). And Yaroslav’s daughter Anna (also still single when the fresco was painted) was married in 1051 to King Henry I of France.>>

The quotation from Andriy M. Domanovsky, who examined the question of the dating of the cathedral's construction is meticulous detail, is from this online source:

http://dspace.univer.kharkov.ua/bitstream/123456789/10308/2/domanovsky.pdf

The date of the commissioning and execution of the fresco is assumed to be in close proximity to the date of the construction of the cathedral, since it is the cathedral's ktetor or "dedication" fresco.

DJW

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

The Russian hypothesis also relies on William of Malmesbury's testimony that Agatha was sister of a queen of Hungary. The problem is that said queen is not named and another hypothesis, the Polish one, has been made, with a different identification for said Hungarian queen.

[Peter Stewart]

These hypotheses are only based tendentious interpretations of on highly unsatisfactory documented evidence - in the case of William of Malmesbury, on a later historian who didn't even know the correct name of one of the exiled English princes who fetched up in Hungary, much less the name and family of the queen he mentioned. Even if we stretch plausibility far enough to allow that he used a source which we might reasonably consider reliable, he could have been thinking of a sister of Peter Orseolo's wife Tuota for all we can know. The idea that a marriageable sister of Anastasia had travelled to Hungary in order to be available as a Russian candidate for this scenario is beyond plausibility, and William of Malmesbury said nothing about a side trip to the court of Yaroslav. This hypothesis is just a patchwork of cherry-coloured scraps wishfully picked up off the floor of medieval historiography.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 12:52:24 AM UTC+11, jayw...@yahoo.com wrote:
> "My point is that the evidence wasn't clear enough to prevent a quite different assumption about the identities of female subjects in the 19th century, and the daughters of Yaroslav conclusion can't be held as absolutely certain today. A likelihood may be compelling but still basically presumptive: iconography is not an exact science."
>
> The evidence that we are working with today includes x-ray emmisiographic scans of the fresco in the 1980s, and restorative work that has physically "peeled back" the overlay of paint that was applied in later centuries, so that we really do have a fairly clear idea of what the surviving sections of the fresco originally looked like. The work of Sergei Vysotsky, with which many in the west are unfamiliar, has provided some key information in this respect. But, those who read my article will now be aware of his work, and of its relevance to the question of how many daughters Yaroslav the Wise probably had.

If we assume that the daughters of Yaroslav, all the daughters of Yaroslav, and none but daughters of Yaroslav, are depicted in the fresco.

Your post today in reply to Will Johnson neatly exemplifies the point I have been trying to make, with "If we assume that the presence of this shawl ... represented an accurate preservation ... of this figure’s original appearance...", "if we take into account the known or estimated dates of marriage for the three known daughters of Yaroslav, then we can conclude...", and "The date of the commissioning and execution of the fresco is assumed to be in close proximity to the date of the construction of the cathedral...".

There are good grounds for presuming all of these points, but definitive proof is lacking. X-ray scans may provide a lot of information, but still short of the painter's intention and the original viewers' understanding.

Peter Stewart

[jayw...@yahoo.com]

When we gather evidence for events and for identifications of persons and relationships in the middle ages, it is very often the case that there is no "definitive proof." But it is nevertheless often possible - such as is the case here - for the evidence to be amassed and pieced together in such a way as to allow us to see that it does point in a certain direction and not in another direction. There is a level of confidence possible between absolute moral certitude and total confusion and chaotic ignorance.

A clear preponderance of the evidence in this case - from contemporaneous chronicles and archaeological findings - indicates that the ktetor fresco at Saint Sophia Cathedral is a portrayal of Yaroslav the Wise and his family, as his family actually existed at the time of the commissioning of the fresco: with five living sons (a sixth already dead and a seventh not yet born), and three daughters (the three we have always known about). The documentary evidence we have about when his various children were born or were probably born, objectively leads us to expect the kind of familial configuration that we actually see in the fresco.

There is also a common character of such ktetor frescos at this time in history in the larger Byzantine world, that would lead us to have certain expectations of who would be pictured in them. When a King or Grand Duke built and dedicated a monastery, a church, or a cathedral, he would be thinking of the salvation of his soul and the salvation of the souls of his most closely loved ones. He would be thinking of his enduring dynastic legacy. All of this would feed into our expectation of who would be portrayed in the dedicatory/donor art of a royal monastery, church, or cathedral. These expectations are not arbitrary or mere guesses. There was a general pattern of how these things were done, and of what they stood for.

DJW

[Peter Stewart]

There is no need to defend points that are not in dispute - a general pattern is simply not an iron-clad rule, and we can't have any certainty from other similar frescos that in this one a beloved sister of Yaroslav, for instance of an outlying possibility, might not have been included along with the ladies of his family.

It's not a question of "absolute moral certitude" vs "total confusion and chaotic ignorance", but rather of prudence across a wide and sometimes hazy terrain between these poles.

We know precious little about the times and family of Yaroslav from sources of all kinds that were contemporary with him. Most of our knowledge has been filtered through the understanding of chroniclers, redactors and copyists in later centuries. The frescos in Kiev are highly valuable for many reasons, but providing certainty beyond educated presumption about their subjects is not within the capacity of either the images themselves or of science applied to these.

Arguing over how determinative the modern consensus may be is a waste of effort for both of us.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Ricardo Canedo]

John of Worcester also made a name mistake, he said that the Hungarian king that Eadweard and Eadmund met was Solomon, which is chronologically impossible. So, according to that logic, shouldn't dismiss his account,too? I agree with the Henry II project that we shouldn't dismiss their claims regarding Agatha, simply, based on those mistakes.

[taf]

On Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 3:24:25 AM UTC-7, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:

> John of Worcester also made a name mistake, he said that the Hungarian king
> that Eadweard and Eadmund met was Solomon, which is chronologically
> impossible. So, according to that logic, shouldn't dismiss his account,too?
> I agree with the Henry II project that we shouldn't dismiss their claims
> regarding Agatha, simply, based on those mistakes.

Not necessarily dismiss them, but we certainly don't give them a free pass.
The fact that they have obvious mistakes points to them being less proximate to the true information, and adds an extra level of scholarly speculation to any attempt at making sense of them. Not just what can be concluded from what they say, but what can be concluded from what they we think they were supposed to have said. (And any time you start correcting a source, you risk biasing the analysis, making the data fit the solution rather than the other way around.) Further, if they got the king's name wrong, exactly how confident can you be that they didn't make a mistake in reporting the precise relationship? Not as confident than had they gotten the king's name right.

The real problem is not in evaluating the ones with obvious mistakes, it is the unavoidable fact that some of the sources have made mistakes that are not obvious, but must be there because they are contradictory.

taf

[Peter Stewart]

Your question implies that an apple is much the same as an orange - logical scrutiny doesn't fully match these errors to each other.

John of Worcester was one of three scribes who worked on the chronicle now known by his name, and he was not the one primarily responsible for the section in question. Whoever this was had evidently filled in the Hungarian king's name which was most probably not given in his source, from knowing that there was one called Salomon at roughly the appropriate time. The same scribe perhaps did the same again when an ordinal number was added in "Heinrici III" making Agatha's purported imperial uncle a Salian rather than an Ottonian. In both cases an English monk of the 12th century is not unusually delinquent in getting distant European identities mixed up, and anyway these details don't add or detract greatly from an account that is of negligible value in the first place.

The error of William of Malmesbury is with the name of an English prince, which a chronicler working in England at his time might be expected to repeat correctly from sources that he had chosen for reliability and thoroughness for his purpose. If he had found no name in such sources and supplied it from his own conjecture, as apparently in the John of Worcester chronicle, then it would be strange to come out with a half-correct version. More probably he had misread an earlier text with the right name, or else wrongly expanded an abbreviation found in it. But since we know from more credible sources that Agatha was niece through her father to an emperor, we know she can't also have been sister to a queen of Hungary. So William of Malmesbury was not misapplying something he did know, like the John of Worcester scribe, but rather something he didn't.

Peter Stewart

[taf]

On Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 3:31:14 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote:

> John of Worcester was one of three scribes who worked on the chronicle now
> known by his name, and he was not the one primarily responsible for the
> section in question.

If anyone is interested in comparing scripts for themselves, the Stanford Parker 2.0 site is now fully operational with high-res scans that are free of charge (unlike the previous version, which involved a subscription service to see the high-res stuff, and the low-res was mostly unreadable).

For Chronica chronicarum see:

https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/wz774ws7198

And when you are done with that, check out the ASC, the Anglian Collection pedigrees, etc. - many (? all) of the Corpus Christi College, Cambridge medieval manuscripts.

taf

taf

[Peter Stewart]

On Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 11:25:01 AM UTC+11, taf wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 3:31:14 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
> > John of Worcester was one of three scribes who worked on the chronicle now
> > known by his name, and he was not the one primarily responsible for the
> > section in question.
>
> If anyone is interested in comparing scripts for themselves, the Stanford Parker 2.0 site is now fully operational with high-res scans that are free of charge (unlike the previous version, which involved a subscription service to see the high-res stuff, and the low-res was mostly unreadable).
>
> For Chronica chronicarum see:
>
> https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/wz774ws7198

This link is to MS 92 of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, that is a late-12th-century copy of the chronicle.

The original manuscript of John and the other two principal scribes working at Worcester in the early 12th century is MS 157 belonging to Corpus Christi, Oxford, that can be viewed here: http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collection=corpus&manuscript=ms157.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

In case anyone is interested in examining this manuscript, I should add that according to the editors of the Oxford 1995-1998 edition 'It was written at Worcester by three scribes, C1, C2 and C3, all three of whom corrected and added to the text, and transformed a fair copy into a working one. The third scribe has been plausibly identified with John of Worcester, and the date of his final writing here was presumably in or after 1140. C1 wrote to ... mid-1101 ... C2 from mid-1101 ... to ... 1128 ... and C3 from ... 1128 to the end'.

Peter Stewart

[taf]

On Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 9:10:20 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote:
> On Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at 11:25:01 AM UTC+11, taf wrote:
> > On Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 3:31:14 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote:
> >
> > > John of Worcester was one of three scribes who worked on the chronicle now
> > > known by his name, and he was not the one primarily responsible for the
> > > section in question.
> >
> > If anyone is interested in comparing scripts for themselves, the Stanford Parker 2.0 site is now fully operational with high-res scans that are free of charge (unlike the previous version, which involved a subscription service to see the high-res stuff, and the low-res was mostly unreadable).
> >
> > For Chronica chronicarum see:
> >
> > https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/wz774ws7198
>
> This link is to MS 92 of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, that is a late-12th-century copy of the chronicle.
>

Ah,I had lost track of which of the two bookmarks I had for the Chrinica was which.

taf

[Peter Stewart]

Keeping track of links to digitised manuscripts is getting to be a frequent problem for me - as is the trouble with typos such as Chrinica for that matter.

I long for (but surely won't live until) the day when every extant medieval ms is available online in high-resolution colour scans, and then an aggregated catalogue site with links and summary details comes to be produced.

Gallica is doing a slow job towards this end with Bibliothèque nationale holdings, but their priorities are all over the place and some of the most important are still not done. Ditto their print holdings - for instance, Chantelou's 'Histoire de Montmajour' edited by Du Roure, unobtainable in print for most of the world, is still not available there or anywhere else online as far as I can tell.

I've come to prefer using manuscripts wherever possible, because editors tend to take such liberties with medieval orthography that they are often creating a new version of the text rather than transcribing a reference copy and showing variants. It especially annoys me that Anglophone and Francophone editors have the habit of treating enlarged lower-case letters as capitals, and capitals that don't meet with modern convention as lower-case, as if medieval scribes didn't know the difference.

Peter Stewart