Descent from the Doges of Venice

[HWinnSadler]

Is there a descent from the Doges of Venice to the Margraves of Austria? This lineage is given on wikipedia (not the most reliable source) but it seems some reject this. What is the thought on that?

[Paulo Canedo]

Some more details would be helpful. Who was the doge, of Venice, in question? What is the supposed lineage?

[taf]

Which doge, which margrave, which Wikipedia page?

taf

[HWinnSadler]

The lineage often given is as follows. Ernest, Margrave of Austria is an ancestor of Isabella of France, mother of King Edward III of England, ancestor to many of us.

Vitale Candiano, 24th Doge of Venice
Maria Candiano
Otto Orseolo, Doge of Venice
Frozza Orseolo
Ernest, Margrave of Austria

[HWinnSadler]

That's the proposed descent, but is it accepted? I've seen people who accept it and people who reject it.

[deca...@aol.com]

On Monday, March 26, 2018 at 11:14:15 AM UTC-4, HWinnSadler wrote:
> That's the proposed descent, but is it accepted? I've seen people who accept it and people who reject it.

You've been very busy as of late on this newsgroup, my friend. Are you working on a book for publication?

[HWinnSadler]

Not currently, although I am thinking about it. I'm currently trying to resolve a number of issues with my own database.

[deca...@aol.com]

On Monday, March 26, 2018 at 1:17:29 PM UTC-4, HWinnSadler wrote:
> Not currently, although I am thinking about it. I'm currently trying to resolve a number of issues with my own database.

Well this is certainly the place to go to get some input.

[Paulo Canedo]

http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/VENICE.htm#_Toc295408196 does not list Maria as being a Candiano, although it lists her husband's uncle's wife as being one. http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/AUSTRIA.htm#_Toc482093768 lists Ernest as son of his father's first wife Glismod instead of his father's second wife Frozza. Nothing conclusive, of course.

[HWinnSadler]

I have heard that there is an article out there called "No descent from the Candiano Doges". I wonder if anyone has it or can access it.

[taf]

On Monday, March 26, 2018 at 12:07:08 PM UTC-7, HWinnSadler wrote:
> I have heard that there is an article out there called "No descent from
> the Candiano Doges". I wonder if anyone has it or can access it.

This was published in The Augustan vol. 23 p. 14, and reprinted in the book 'Complete Works of Charles Evans - Genealogy and Related Topics', Steven Edwards, ed.

taf

[John Higgins]

I have a copy of "The Complete Works of Charles Evans" including the article noted above. In it Evans confirms that the Babenbergs do NOT have a descent from the Candiano Doges of Venice. The descent fails because, as Paulo Canedo has noted earlier in this thread, Ernst von Babenberg (d. 1075) was a son of his father Adalbert's first wife Glismod - not the second wife Frioza/Friosza Orseolo. This agrees with what is shown in the Babenberg pedigree in Schwennnicke's ESNF, 1.1:84 (1998).

Oddly, the entry in the Roglo database for Adalbert "der Siegreiche" von Babenberg (d. 1055) quotes extensively from the Medlands entry for him, including the final line "Markgraf Adalbert & his first wife had two children". But then it goes ahead and assigns the two children to the SECOND wife. How stupid is that?? !!

On a side note, the Evans article also discusses the descent of the first wife Glismod from Charlemagne - in case anyone happens to be interested....

[HWinnSadler]

On Sunday, March 25, 2018 at 7:31:54 PM UTC-4, HWinnSadler wrote:
> Is there a descent from the Doges of Venice to the Margraves of Austria? This lineage is given on wikipedia (not the most reliable source) but it seems some reject this. What is the thought on that?

I would be interested in reading Mr. Evan's article.

[John Higgins]

Send me a note off-list with your email address and I can email you a copy - it's only a single page.

[John Higgins]

Check your email - it should be there.

[HWinnSadler]

I have now received it. Thank you!

[Peter Stewart]

This supposed connection of Glismod (a sister of bishop Meinwerk of Paderborn) to the Babenburgs has been debunked - it was suggested by Karl Lechner in 1963 based on a bit of vague evidence and rationalising away contradictory evidence. There is no Glismod in the appropriate Babenburg tomb at Melk, and no mention of her anywhere that would even slightly support that had been a wife of Adalbert of Austria. His marriages are not certain - by September 1041 at the latest he was married to king Peter Orseolo's sister Froiza/Frowila, who was subsequently named as his widow. She may have been the mother of Ernst, but it is usually thought that this was a prior wife whose name may have been Mathilde (variously proposed, without firm evidence, as daughter of Ratpoto count of Cham or of Udalirch count in the Schweinachgau).

Glismod married a Bavarian, by whom she had sons names Liutpold and Adalbert. These names occur in the Babenburg family, but of course were not rare - and the dates conflict with the Babenburg Liutpold in question, who died in 1043 while Glismod's two sons were both mentioned as living in imperial charters of 1053 (extant in the original) and 1054 (known only from a copy). Lechner and his followers made forced efforts to account for the 1053 mention as not brothers but father Adalbert acting on behalf of his long-deceased son Liutpold, which given the context is frankly rubbish.

It has been more plausibly suggested (by Eduard Hlawitschka) that Glismod married into the Bavarian family known as the Otakars, counts in the Chiemgau and later margraves of Styria. Her son Liutpold was famously the husband of the mysterious Ida of Elsdorf, the source of many ink rivers.

Peter Stewart

[Hans Vogels]

Op woensdag 28 maart 2018 02:55:29 UTC+2 schreef Peter Stewart:

As an alternative for Adalbert is named the Bavarian count Reting (Reding) or Otgar count in Karinthie (Kärnten), from the house of Otokar,
or count Ozis

The name Oci seems to be a synonym for Otakar.

http://www.manfred-hiebl.de/genealogie-mittelalter/babenberger_markgrafen_von_oesterreich/glismod_markgraefin_von_oesterreich_vor_1041/glismod_markgraefin_von_oesterreich_+_vor_1041.html

http://www.manfred-hiebl.de/genealogie-mittelalter/immedinger_widukind_sippe/immed_4_graf_in_westsachsen_983/immed_4_graf_in_westsachsen_+_983.html

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/soc.genealogy.medieval/xYDAB9yNVWQ

Hans Vogels

[Peter Stewart]

Thanks Hans - I wasn't paying enough attention (as shown by misspelling Babenberg) and didn't twig that the Otakar family had been suggested by Richard Hucke before Hlawitschka, indeed even before Karl Lechner muddied the waters with his Babenberg hypothesis.

This could be an typical example what tends to go awry with historians' attempts at scholarly genealogy mixed up with crude understanding of medieval onomastics - they too often fixate on "deep dives" into a limited sampling of documentation, and imagine that anyone with the same name in the same area must be closely related to, if not identical with, their own particular objects of study.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at 7:00:54 PM UTC+11, Hans Vogels wrote:

This website can be useful, but unfortunately it strips away the footnotes and sometimes necessary context from passages quoted. In this case, Hucke's proposal (in 1956, since echoed by Ingrid Heidrich, Eduard Hlawitschka and others) that Glismod's husband belonged to the Otakar family in Bavaria turns out not be be very solidly based.

Hucke dismissed the older supposition (based on a 12th-century source probably written by Ekkehard of Aura, and expounded by Johann Gebhardi in 1745) that Glismod's Bavarian husband was count Reting. Ekkehard (or perhaps someone else writing in his abbey) stated that the sons of Reting's daughter were descended through her from the Immedings, i.e. from Glismod's family. Hucke considered this misleading, but did not explain why.

He then proposed the Otakar family on the shaky basis that Glismod's daughter-in-law Ida of Elsdorf was said to have had a daughter named Akarina - Hucke interpreted this as (Ot)akarina, allegedly a shortening of a feminine form of Otakar. I think this is rather silly, not only in itself but also because it involves giving selective credit to a very silly source, Albert of Stade's ludicrous mid-13th century account of Ida's supposed offspring. Albert contradicted himself in this specific point, stating that Ida's daughter Oda was the mother of Aliarina [sic] who in turn was the mother of Burchard of Lucken,* and then stating that Burchard of Lucken's mother was Akarina [sic], daughter of Ida herself.#

Anyone giving any credit at all to Albert of Stade's garbled legend of Ida, much less cherry-picking from it, is on a hiding to nothing. The misinformation in it is chronologically, genealogically and just plain humanly ridiculous.

Peter Stewart

* Hec [Ida] nupsit Lippoldo, filio domine Glismodis, et peperit Odam sanctimonialem de Rinthelen, quam postea claustro absolvit, recompensans villam Stedethorp prope Heslinge pro filia, et tradidit regi Ruzie, cui peperit filium Warteslaw. Sed rege mortuo, Oda infinitam pecuniam in oportunis locis sepeliri fecit, et in Saxoniam rediit cum filio et parte pecunie, et sepultores occidi fecit, ne proderent. Et cuidam nubens, peperit filiam Aliarinam, matrem comitis Burchardi de Lucken

# Item Ida peperit Akarinam, matrem Burchardi de Lucken.

[Peter Stewart]

On Friday, March 30, 2018 at 2:23:47 PM UTC+11, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
> Hucke dismissed the older supposition (based on a 12th-century source probably written by Ekkehard of Aura, and expounded by Johann Gebhardi in 1745) that Glismod's Bavarian husband was count Reting. Ekkehard (or perhaps someone else writing in his abbey) stated that the sons of Reting's daughter were descended through her from the Immedings, i.e. from Glismod's family. Hucke considered this misleading, but did not explain why.

This is just a guess, but perhaps Hucke was relying on the genealogical table given by Georg Waitz in the MGH Scriptores edition here (note 10):

http://www.dmgh.de/de/fs1/object/goToPage/bsb00001094.html?pageNo=226

Waitz evidently understood the text to mean that Friderun's father Reting descended from the Immedings in the male line, but this interpretation seems less plausible to me than the alternative: Friderun's son Boto died in 1104, and the table shown means that he would have to be traced back six or more generations to Immed (killed in 954), a brother of Heinrich I's queen Mathilde.

However, Friderun's sons were born in the 1020s and her husband Hartwig died ca 1027, so this number of generations is excessive. The text does not explicitly state that Friderun descended in the male line from the Immedings, and I would read it as implying that she did not (as also interpreted by most German historians before Waitz). If her mother was Glismod, who was probably a granddaughter of the Immed killed in 954, then Boto who died in 1104 would have traced back to him through four generations.

The text states that the Immedings were the ancestors of Friderun whose father was Reting ("stemma de Saxonia Immidingorum tribus egregia ... Quorum, ut diximus, clarissimorum principum semine nobils Friderun ... a Retingo ... procreatur"), and though this could be taken to indicate that Reting was in the lineage from Friderun to her vaunted ancestors it could also be understood as adding his male line to round out her (maternal Immeding) ancestry in a conventional way with her agnatic forebears.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

By the way, this interpretation goes back further than to Gebhardi in 1745 mentioned earlier - independently of the Ida question, Glismod was taken to be the link from Friderun to her Immeding ancestry by Johann Georg von Eckhart in 1722, see here and the following page:

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=A89TAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA33

This seems to have been the settled view of German historians from then until Georg Waitz's edition of the text glossed by his table was published in 1844, and it was still maintained by many afterwards.

The Otakar speculation seems to have started with, or anyway from, August von Jaksch in the first volume of his *Geschichte Kärntens bis 1335* (1928) naming Glismod's husband as a count named "Oci" - but this is just a surmise as I haven't seen his work. The untenable speculation of Lechner connecting Glismod to the Babenbergs has unfortunately gained a very wide currency and we may be stuck with it, at least until Will comes through with comprehensive atDNA results.

Peter Stewart