Guy of Soissons

[Paulo Canedo]

I've seen Count Guy of Soissons being listed either as a son of Heribert II of Vermandois or of Heribert's son Adalbert of Vermandois. I've also seen a completely different claim that he was son of Walderic of Soissons. Can anyone in the newsgroup clarify me on the matter please.

[Peter Stewart]

Guido was formerly thought to have been a younger son of Heribert II of Vermandois - but the main piece of evidence adduced for this was a forged charter of Lothaire IV, who in reality was a maternal half-brother of Heribert's daughter-in-law Gerberga, the wife of Adalbert I of Vermandois. Gerberga and Adalbert were the parents of Heribert III and of Liudolf, bishop of Noyon. However, in the false charter Liudolf is misrepresented as deceased at a time when he must have been still living, and as a brother of his father Adalebert as well as a Guy. The last was identified by historians as the count of Soissons because a count named Guy occurs along with Adalbert in another false charter of Lothaire, ostensibly dated 26 May 974, for Saint-Thierry de Reims.

Two further specious 'proofs' for the alleged Vermandois connection of Guy were the account by Melchior Regnault in 1633 that he had been shown a manuscript of Sainte-Croix d'Offémont (a Celestine priory near Soissons founded in 1329) stating this, and a charter of Adalbert I of Vermandois for Mont Saint-Quentin subscribed by a count named Guy who is not stated to be anyone's son or brother.

The actual parentage of Guy of Soissons is unknown. He was reportedly called cousin by Bruno of Roucy, bishop of Langres, speaking at the council of Verzy - Bruno's father Renaud was evidently a Norman invader, and if so his mother is more likely to have been the link in this connection: she was a maternal half-sister of Lothaire IV, a daughter his mother Gerberga of Saxony by her first husband Giselbert of Lorraine. It is possible that an unknown sister of Alberada was married to Walderic of Soissons and that they were Guy's parents, but this is only conjecture.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

Not all people agree that Renaud was viking or norman and some have suggested that he was a member of the Soissons dinasty where the name Renaud is known to have appeard. What do you think.

[joe...@gmail.com]

Peter thank you for that good post. I was wondering if there is a good discussion anywhere on forged charters. I am wondering about the ultimate reason for there widespread use. And also how they went through with the forgery. Did someone sneak them into an Abbey at night into the official records and then rely on nobody noticing that they were not written in a hand of anyone who was official there. Where they created Thirty or forty years after the facts they speak of or hundreds of years generally. Where they created primarily to make illegitimate claims on land property and rights or to show family connections for reasons of prestige only. I am also curious given how frequent they seem to be how they are identified in modern times aside from finding logical inconsistencies or historical impossibilities inside them.
Thank you

[Peter Stewart]

On 6/23/2017 11:25 PM, joe...@gmail.com wrote:
> Peter thank you for that good post. I was wondering if there is a good discussion anywhere on forged charters. I am wondering about the ultimate reason for there widespread use. And also how they went through with the forgery. Did someone sneak them into an Abbey at night into the official records and then rely on nobody noticing that they were not written in a hand of anyone who was official there. Where they created Thirty or forty years after the facts they speak of or hundreds of years generally. Where they created primarily to make illegitimate claims on land property and rights or to show family connections for reasons of prestige only. I am also curious given how frequent they seem to be how they are identified in modern times aside from finding logical inconsistencies or historical impossibilities inside them.

There is an immense literature on forged charters - mostly in specific
journal articles rather than in collected papers, though a few
congresses have been devoted to the subject. Monumenta Germaniae
Historica have run some, but I don't know of any in Britain.

There are different types of diplomatic forgeries, for various purposes,
so that there can be no straightforward answers across the board. In
general terms, these were usually produced in abbeys for their own ends,
and the purpose was not always nefarious. Disputes arose between houses,
or with bishops and others, over rights to property, the election of
abbots, immunity from outside authority, etc. Faking documents to back
up a position was sometimes done dishonestly, sometimes not. The abbot
may have genuinely believed in his case but lacked proof, for instance,
so he might have had it created (or in his view re-created). Sometimes
pseudo-original charters (of varying accuracy) were drawn up as
replacements for originals that had been lost or damaged.

Sometimes documents were forged or falsified close to the time of the
alleged grant or event in question, sometimes much later. Sometimes an
authentic charter was augmented or interpolated to fit the purpose, and
sometimes the document was invented from scratch.

Some false or even wholly forged charters can provide good evidence for
genealogical connections, as of course the same knowledge could be held
independently and the utterers (I mean the abbots, priors, etc, not just
the scribes) wanted their evidence to be credible. As time passed, they
were perhaps less likely to be concerned - or capable - in this regard.

At some times and in some places forgeries are notoriously frequent.
They are usually identified from mistakes in form and language - by
anachronisms, for example, or simply by inconsistencies with genuine
evidence.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 11:23:42 PM UTC+10, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> Not all people agree that Renaud was viking or norman and some have suggested that he > was a member of the Soissons dinasty where the name Renaud is known to have appeard. > What do you think.

As I wrote in my earlier post, I think that Renaud of Roucy was evidently a Norman, but this is not certain.

Philippe Lauer attributed his name not to baptism as Renaud but to a Norse original, Rögnvald. However, the two are not necessarily incompatible since a Norseman might well take a Frankish name roughly similar to his own on converting to Christianity.

Maximilien Melleville proposed in 1859 that Ragenold the Viking leader was the same as Renaud the lord of Roucy who became count of Reims: the only significant problem with this is a chronological gap, a silence about him in the narrative sources for 19 or so years. Flodoard mentions the Viking a few times in the 920s when he was raiding along the Seine from a fortress by the river, in 923 ("Ragenoldus, princeps Nordmannorum"), in 924 when he was devastating the lands of Hugo Magnus, duke of the Franks, because he had not yet been given possessions of his own within Francia ("Ragenoldus cum suis Nordmannis, quia nondum possessionem intra Gallias acceperat"). He made a pact with Hugo in the same year and went off to pillage in Burgundy instead ("Ragenoldo de sua terra securitatem paciscuntur; et Ragenoldus cum suis Normannis in Burgundiam proficiscitur"). By the end of that year (described at the start of 925 by Flodoard) he was pursued by Hugo's brother-in-law Rodulf, by then king of the Franks, with a force including soldiers from Reims.

After that, nothing is heard of him until early in 944 when Flodoard tells us that King Louis IV gave the castrum of Montigny near Soissons (which had belonged to Heribert II of Vermandois) to a Ragenold, whom he names without qualification ("Ludowicus rex ... revertitur in Franciam. Castrum quoddam vocabulo Montiniacum, in pago Suessonico situm ... Ragenoldo dederat"). The upshot was a good deal of strife back and forth with Heribert's followers until 945 when King Louis raised a force of Vikings to ravage Vermandois "Ludowicus, collecto secum Nortmannorum exercitu, Viromandinsem pagum depraedatur").

Hugo Magnus won a victory over the Vikings, expelling them from his lands, and promptly sent hostages to Reims so that Ragenold would meet with him on the king's behalf ("Hugo denique dux proeliatus cum Nordmannis, qui fines suos ingressi fuerant, eos non modica caede fudit et a terminis suis ejecit; post haec Remis ad regem mittit, dans obsides, ut Ragenoldus ex parte regis ad colloquium sibi occurrat").

From this time on there is a consistent record of a Renaud as count at Reims and also erecting a castrum at Roucy from which his presumed descendants took their title — in this context he is described as a count of Louis IV in 948 ("quandam munitionem, quam Ragenoldus, comes Ludowici, super Axonam fluvium, in loco qui dicitur Rauciacus, aedificabat").

In 1907 Henri de Roussen de Florival (in an École nationale des chartes dissertation that I have not seen) rejected the identification of Renaud the count of Roucy with the Norman leader. Without knowing his detailed rationale for this, I don't see any compelling reason to suppose that Flodoard was writing about two different men rather than giving the highlights, as seen from Reims, of the prolonged pacifying and settling of an ambitious Viking chieftain who had been baptised as Renaud.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 6/24/2017 9:21 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:

> On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 11:23:42 PM UTC+10, Paulo Canedo wrote:
>
> Not all people agree that Renaud was viking or norman and some have
suggested that he
> was a member of the Soissons dinasty where the name Renaud is known
to have appeard.
> What do you think.

I forgot to respond on the dynastic name point - the first Renaud to
appear as count of Soissons was the viscount of Troyes who died in 1057,
more than half a century after Guy's death. This Renaud (who had a son
named Guy) was probably a brother of Guy archbishop of Reims and Nocher
II count of Bar-sur-Aube, who were descended from a Norman settler in
France named Achard (a contemporary of Renaud of Roucy). Nocher's
daughter Adela had successive husbands named Renaud/Renard - this name,
like Guy, was too common to warrant linking it as a dynastic inheritance
with Renaud of Roucy and Guy of Soissons.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

The thing is I've heard that there was a 10th century count of Soissons named Renaud that is chronlogically vague and may have been either the father or son of Walderic of Soissons. Are those people historical or not.

[Peter Stewart]

Do you think this is some sort of help desk where you sit back and do
none of the work? I have heard that the moon is made of cheese, but I
wouldn't propose it as a talking point on an internet newsgroup without
any kind of reference.

The first recorded count of Soissons was Walderic, who subscribeed an
undated charter of Geoffroy Grisegonelle, count of Anjou, for
Saint-Aubin abbey. This has been dated to 19 June 966 based on an entry
in the annals of the abbey, but the year of this is problematic and it
should probably be 963 instead of 966.

"I've heard that" the editors of Gallia Christiana identified a count of
Soissons named Berald, not Renaud, allegedly occurring in 957, but the
documentation for this has disappeared if it ever existed.

There is no documentation for the parentage of Guy, so reported rumour
is of no use there either.

Peter Stewart

[The Hoorn]

Speaking of forgeries, take a good look at page 1 of Joseph Bain's work. Specifically, King Malcolm's charter of 1065. The fine print was quite interesting: https://books.google.com/books?id=J7Q6AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:rUM4p4R_2iMC&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipj5OY59fUAhWDVT4KHWhvDtEQ6wEIMDAC#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Peter Stewart]

On 6/25/2017 10:18 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
>
> The first recorded count of Soissons was Walderic

Actually the first was Heric (aka Eiric), in the 9th century - but as
far as "I've heard" no-one has (yet...) tried to fix him in dynastic
succession with Walderic and/or Guy.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 6/25/2017 10:18 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
>
> On 6/25/2017 2:13 AM, Paulo Canedo wrote:

> Do you think this is some sort of help desk where you sit back and do
> none of the work? I have heard that the moon is made of cheese, but I
> wouldn't propose it as a talking point on an internet newsgroup
> without any kind of reference.
>
> The first recorded count of Soissons was Walderic, who subscribeed an
> undated charter of Geoffroy Grisegonelle, count of Anjou, for
> Saint-Aubin abbey. This has been dated to 19 June 966 based on an
> entry in the annals of the abbey, but the year of this is problematic
> and it should probably be 963 instead of 966.
>
> "I've heard that" the editors of Gallia Christiana identified a count
> of Soissons named Berald, not Renaud, allegedly occurring in 957, but
> the documentation for this has disappeared if it ever existed.
>
> There is no documentation for the parentage of Guy, so reported rumour
> is of no use there either.

I think this gossip heard about "a 10th century count of Soissons named
Renaud" perhaps came directly or indirectly from Jan Dhondt in *Études
sur la naissance des principautés territoriales en France* (1948). He
thought that the first count of Soissons was a Reinoldus living in the
first half of the 10th century. From the inadequate citation (at least
he tried to give one...) it appears that Dhondt had this man mixed up
with Berald who allegedly occurred in 957. (By the way, this came
originally from an unpublished manuscript of André Duchesne, but the
date 957 is troubling and no-one else seems ever to have viewed the same
document).

The source Dhondt relied on, apart from his confused and indirect
reference to Duchesne, was a letter written ca 1020 (dated 1019/30 by
its editor) from Othelbold, abbot of Saint-Bavon at Ghent to Ogiva,
countess of Flanders. In the timeframe of emperor Otto I (962-973, not
the first half of the 10th century) he mentioned "reinnoldus comes
suessionis". However, from the context most historians have identified
this as a reference to Renaud of Roucy, who died in 967.

So that only takes us in a full circle, unless I have found the wrong
source for the hearsay we are left to work out for ourselves.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 6/25/2017 3:43 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
> On 6/25/2017 10:18 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 6/25/2017 2:13 AM, Paulo Canedo wrote:

>> Do you think this is some sort of help desk where you sit back and do
>> none of the work? I have heard that the moon is made of cheese, but I
>> wouldn't propose it as a talking point on an internet newsgroup
>> without any kind of reference.
>>
>> The first recorded count of Soissons was Walderic, who subscribeed an
>> undated charter of Geoffroy Grisegonelle, count of Anjou, for
>> Saint-Aubin abbey. This has been dated to 19 June 966 based on an
>> entry in the annals of the abbey, but the year of this is problematic
>> and it should probably be 963 instead of 966.
>>
>> "I've heard that" the editors of Gallia Christiana identified a count
>> of Soissons named Berald, not Renaud, allegedly occurring in 957, but
>> the documentation for this has disappeared if it ever existed.
>>
>> There is no documentation for the parentage of Guy, so reported
>> rumour is of no use there either.
>
> I think this gossip heard about "a 10th century count of Soissons
> named Renaud" perhaps came directly or indirectly from Jan Dhondt in
> *Études sur la naissance des principautés territoriales en France*
> (1948). He thought that the first count of Soissons was a Reinoldus
> living in the first half of the 10th century. From the inadequate
> citation (at least he tried to give one...) it appears that Dhondt had
> this man mixed up with Berald who allegedly occurred in 957. (By the
> way, this came originally from an unpublished manuscript of André
> Duchesne, but the date 957 is troubling and no-one else seems ever to
> have viewed the same document).

Duchesne wrote that a count named Berald was mentioned in an undated
document regarding the destruction of Saint-Crépin de Soissons in 957.
However, the abbey was destroyed in 948, and again in 1047. Michel Bur
[in *La formation du comté de Champagne* (1977)] suggested that Duchesne
had most probably confused a mention of Beraud, bishop of Soissons, who
was present on the occasion in 1047.

Bur went on to identify the count Renaud mentioned in Othelbold's letter
(see my earlier post) as perhaps Renaud of Roucy or more probably his
namesake father - this was an arbitrary supposition on Bur's part. He
further speculated that his elder Renaud was also father of Walderic of
Soissons, who was related to the counts of Anjou. The evidence for these
claims is extremely dubious, and Bur's interpretation of it was not
justified by any substantial argument.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

Mr.Stewart don't you think it is possible that instead of Renaud of Roucy being the same as the viking Ragenold given the chronological gap of about 20 years he could have been his son as Chaume proposed.

[Peter Stewart]

On 6/25/2017 10:49 PM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> Mr.Stewart don't you think it is possible that instead of Renaud of Roucy being the same as the viking Ragenold given the chronological gap of about 20 years he could have been his son as Chaume proposed.

It's possible a second Renaud was his son, or for that matter his nephew
or his grandson - but Occam's razor applies, a gap of two decades years
being not unusual in the sparse records of the time there is no
requirement to double the dramatis personae with two different namesakes
when a single person is equally plausible. As I said before, Flodoard
mentioned Ragenold in in 925 and next in 944: but he named him after
this 19 years without qualification, as if he was a familiar personage,
not implying that he was a different man from the Ragenold of 925 and
earlier.

Chaume (and thankyou for naming a source) is one of the most irritating
historians, endlessly confident in his sometimes quite absurd ideas.
Unfortunately he has had many enthusiastic followers, who have continued
his silly game of relating any individual to everyone else with the same
name. Onomastics can be useful, but Chaume got carried away and a lot of
French scholarship in the later 20th century went with him. Now at last
the more sensible are starting to ask "What were we thinking?".

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

Mr.Stewart I must say I'm not professional genealogist I'm a young interested in genealogy an amateur I like to see genealogical websites and then I make my own ideas from what I see and I come to this newsgroup mainly when I have doubts. Sorry I didn't say the exact sources before I will try to do better in the future.

[Peter Stewart]

On 6/26/2017 7:42 AM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> Mr.Stewart I must say I'm not professional genealogist I'm a young interested in genealogy an amateur I like to see genealogical websites and then I make my own ideas from what I see and I come to this newsgroup mainly when I have doubts. Sorry I didn't say the exact sources before I will try to do better in the future.
>

Thank you, Paulo - I'm also not a professional genealogist, just an
interested amateur (and by the way one who is happy to be called Peter
rather than Mr Stewart).

Coming here with doubts is fulfilling the purpose of the newsgroup. But
you can only have doubts about information you have found, and when
asking about it others are helped by knowing where you came across it.

The alternative is that they must scout around themselves to find a
likely source, since otherwise refuting it leaves open the possibility
that the same information will come back here again (with or without
citation) from someone else as if it may be a new aspect of the question.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

Mr.Stewart I think that the report of cousin comes from the acts of the council of Reims in 991 where among other relatives Bruno mentions his consobrinus Count Guy. The Henry II Project mentioned that that Count Guy may have been Bruno's nephew Count Guy of Macon. If that suposition is correct then I think there is no evidence to Bruno and Guy of Soissons being related. I think that problem with the identification with Guy of Macon is that for a nephew the term nepos would have been much better than consobrinus. What do you think?

[Peter Stewart]

I think a few things:

1. It is better not to address newsgroup posts and questions just to one
individual - everyone is equally free to express their opinions here.

2. It is better to give a link when repeating information allegedly
found online - I am not going to search the Henry Project for a mention
that you say is there, when you could very easily provide a link to it
and save others this trouble.

3. It is hard to see how Stewart Baldwin could make such an implausible
suggestion as you claim. The context and timing of Bruno's statement at
the council of Saint-Basle de Verzy (better not to confuse it with other
councils of Reims) make it plain enough that he was not talking about
his nephew whom you call "Count Guy of Macon": first, this Guy could
have been no more than a teenager at the time (June 991) and he does not
occur with the title count until 997 (and anyway he may or may not ever
have been count of Macon); and secondly, the count Guy named as Bruno's
cousin was clearly an adult active in the political affairs of the day,
almost certainly as count of Soissons, in league with Bruno and his
brother Gislebert. I don't see any case for identifying him as someone
else, but if you do then it would be a courtesy to explain it when
asking for the opinion of others.

If you are not prepared to take a little more trouble over your posts,
then I will stop reading them.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

I'm not lying please go to the Henry II Project page of Ermentrude de Roucy to the commentary and there after the second table showing relationships you will find the suggestion that Country Guy was Count Guy of Macon. I did not say I agreed with it I just mentioned it since it was relevant. In a related matter isn't it well documented that Bruno's nephew Guy was jount Count of Macon with his father Otte Guillaume like the Henry II Project says in the same place?

[Peter Stewart]

On 04-Jul-17 6:15 PM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> I'm not lying please go to the Henry II Project page of Ermentrude de Roucy to the commentary and there after the second table showing relationships you will find the suggestion that Country Guy was Count Guy of Macon. I did not say I agreed with it I just mentioned it since it was relevant. In a related matter isn't it well documented that Bruno's nephew Guy was jount Count of Macon with his father Otte Guillaume like the Henry II Project says in the same place?

The notion that you were lying never entered my head. I thought you
might have misinterpreted whatever you had read on the Henry Project page.

However, as you related accurately, it says "The count Guy who appears
as a consobrinus of bishop Bruno may be Otte-Guillaume's and
Ermentrude's son, then (joint) count of Mâcon". Thank you for pointing
this out - it is a most uncharacteristic lapse, I think.

This Guy's father Otte-Guillaume was count of Macon from the time he
married its widowed countess, Bruno's sister Ermentrude. However, her
first husband Alberic II of Macon, did not die before the 970s, probably
as late as 980/81. Even at the earliest, 971, his widow's child by her
second marriage could not have been born until ca 973, making him at
most 19 years old in June 991 when Bruno spoke of his 'consobrinus' who
was in the thick of political action.

Bruno's nephew Guy may not have been the eldest child of his mother's
second marriage anyway. He occurs with both his parents in a charter
dated 2 September 994 - they are titled count and countess respectively,
whereas he has no title at all. In June 991 Bruno had spoken of his
cousin, not nephew, as "count Guy". It is clear from the context that
this was the Guy imprisoned by Charles of Laon when he took Soissons.
The young Guy, who was later co-count (perhaps of Macon and/or of
Escuens) under his father's countship, was not at all likely to have
been involved in high affairs around the archdiocese of Reims by the
summer of 991, with or without a comital title.

The younger Guy occurs with the title count (though not invariably) from
March 997 onwards. It is not possible to make neat assignments of every
count around that time to a particular centre of authority, and this is
especially difficult with an associate count like Guy, who died before
his father.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 04-Jul-17 8:46 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
> On 04-Jul-17 6:15 PM, Paulo Canedo wrote:

> The notion that you were lying never entered my head. I thought you
> might have misinterpreted whatever you had read on the Henry Project
> page.
>
> However, as you related accurately, it says "The count Guy who appears
> as a consobrinus of bishop Bruno may be Otte-Guillaume's and
> Ermentrude's son, then (joint) count of Mâcon". Thank you for pointing
> this out - it is a most uncharacteristic lapse, I think.

It is also somewhat at odds with the remarks about the birthdate of
Otte-Guillaume on his Henry Project page, here:
http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/otwil000.htm.

If it is 'plausible enough' that Otte-Guillaume was born in the late
950s then it is rather implausible that he had a son taken prisoner as a
count before the council of Verzy in June 991. Otte-Guillaume would have
to have married Ermentrude by ca 971 for this chronology to work, so
that he would have been aged only ca 13-15 when their son Guy was born.

It is not certain when Ermentrude was free to marry Otte-Guillaume, that
depends on when her first husband Alberic of Macon died. He evidently
subscribed a charter as count dated at Macon on Tuesday 4 November 973,
though this highly likely identification is not absolutely certain since
his name occurs without a title in the oldest copy and only as 'count'
in an 18th-century cartulary version. Otte-Guillaume does not occur as
count until 981/82, and this is usually taken to indicate that he
married Ermentrude not long before then. If so, their son Guy could have
been only a child in 991.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

About Aubry's death date the charter of 981 could not be from that year but earlier because the years of reign of Lothaire in which the charter is dated were not all counted from his conoration.

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-17 8:58 AM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> About Aubry's death date the charter of 981 could not be from that year but earlier because the years of reign of Lothaire in which the charter is dated were not all counted from his conoration.

If only it was that easy ...

Lothar IV was crowned at Reims on 12 November 954, and that is usually
the date for counting his regnal years. However, it is not invariably
so, as proven for instance by some charters of Alberic II, and it is
quite possible that Lothar had been crowned as associate king to his
father, perhaps in 951 or 952 from some charter evidence, possibly even
as early as 945 or 946 from some other.

The last definite charters of Alberic II can be fairly securely dated to
14 January 971. These charters (for Tournus and for Cluny) all specify
that the day was a Saturday, which fits 971 but no other plausible year.
However, they also state that it was in the 20th year of Lothar, which
does not fit with reckoning from November 954 since 14 January in the
20th year after that, 974, was a Wednesday. Constance Bouchard repeated
an unacceptable suggestion of Barthélemy Rameau that 974 was the correct
year, but of course people everywhere knew the weekday better than the
correct regnal year even when this was invariably fixed.

These charters of Saturday 14 January can be definitely ascribed to
Alberic II because they were subscribed also by his wife Ermentrude, who
later carried the countship of Mâcon to her second husband, Otte
Guillaume. Maurice Chaume tried to deny that the same Ermentrude married
both men, but this is one of his many nonsense sprees.

Also occurring in the same charters is a Letald who is assumed to have
been Alberic II's and probably Ermentrude's son as he subscribed next
after her. Alberic's father was named Letald, and Ermentrude had a
nephew of this name in the Roucy family who may have been named after
his older cousin (if her father Ragenold was a Norman convert, they were
presumably short of Christian names in the family background). We don't
know what became of Letald, though he may have become a cleric as
another charter is subscribed after Ermentrude by a subdeacon Letald
whose name occurs before an archdeacon. Szabolcs de Vajay arbitrarily
asserted that Letald was the same person as an archbishop of Besançon
(demoted to bishop by Vajay) occurring in a charter dated 993. This
charter is unpublished, but from the extract given in the first edition
of Gallia Christiana it does not help to identify the mysterious archbishop.

In the two Tournus charters dated on Saturday 14 January another Alberic
also subscribed after Letald. This is where things get complicated. It
is assumed that he was Letald's brother, that is a second son of Alberic
II and probably Ermentrude. We also do not know what became of this
presumably younger Alberic. Vajay, playing his habitual facile game with
onomastics, asserted that he was the man who became the last abbot of
Saint-Paul de Besançon before it was reconstituted under the authority
of a dean. This is rubbish - if Vajay had bothered to read his source a
bit further he would have found that the abbot Alberic did not come into
the abbacy until after November 1041 and was apparently dead by March
1044. In other words, if he had been the scion of a great feudal family
subscribing in 971 he would have waited until he was around 80+ to
achieve a very minor abbacy before quickly dropping dead.

Chaume, however, took a more sensible line of conjecture by making the
younger Alberic into his father's successor as count of Mâcon. He
ascribed the occurrences of a count Alberic after 971 to his Alberic
III, and there is not enough evidence to prove or disprove this
possibility. These last of these occurrences is in a charter dated in
the 28th year of Lothar, where land on the westward boundary of a
vineyard in Mâcon was said to belong in part to count Alberic ("aliquid
de hereditate ipsius, que est sita in pago Matisconense, in villa Lanco:
hoc est vineam ubi Arembertus residet, et terminatur de tribus partibus
via publica, a sero terra Sancti Romani et Alberici, comitis ... Data
per manum Teotmari, sacerdotis, anno XXVIII regnante Lothario rege").

If this dating is correct and the count Alberic was living at the time,
as one would assume, then it is not very likely to have been Alberic II
because Otte Guillaume occurs as count of Mâcon in a charter for Cluny
of the same regnal year ("donamus Deo et sanctis apostolis ejus Petro et
Paulo, ad locum Cluniacum, aliquid ex rebus ipsius, que conjacent in
comitatu Matisconensi ... S. Vuilelmi, comitis ... anno XXVIII regnante
Lotthario rege"). It is hard to credit that Alberic II and Otte
Guillaume would both have been count in Mâcon within the same year,
since Ermentrude was certainly of childbearing age at the time and the
urgency of her remarrying to a much younger man after the death of her
first husband is not obvious.

We don't have enough evidence to resolve this problem definitively. If
the count Alberic charter in Lothar's 28th year must be earlier than
981, then why not also Otte Guillaume's? The latter was apparently born
ca 960 or within a few years before that, so that 981 would seem a
plausible year for his first marriage. Ten years, or five for that
matter, would seem an implausibly long time for Ermentrude to wait
between husbands, and it does not seem likely that Alberic II died very
long before she married Otte Guillaume even if this was in the late
970s. So the circumstantial case for Chaume's Alberic III is not exactly
watertight.

You can of course pay your money and take your choice - I would advise
against chosing Vajay almost always and Chaume usually, but some people
will never settle for "I don't know".

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-17 10:11 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
> We don't have enough evidence to resolve this problem definitively. If
> the count Alberic charter in Lothar's 28th year must be earlier than
> 981, then why not also Otte Guillaume's? The latter was apparently
> born ca 960 or within a few years before that, so that 981 would seem
> a plausible year for his first marriage. Ten years, or five for that
> matter, would seem an implausibly long time for Ermentrude to wait
> between husbands, and it does not seem likely that Alberic II died
> very long before she married Otte Guillaume even if this was in the
> late 970s. So the circumstantial case for Chaume's Alberic III is not
> exactly watertight.

In this context I should have added that a count Alberic died on 10
September according to the obituary of Mâcon cathedral - this may have
been Alberic I (who died between 1 September 936 & 21 September 942), or
Alberic II perhaps as late as ca 980, or possibly Chaume's Alberic III.
If it was Alberic II then it is even less likely that he and Otte
Guillaume were both married to Ermentrude within a regnal year ending on
11 November. It would be highly irregular for a widow, especially one of
childbearing age, to marry a second husband within 2 months of her first
husband's death.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-17 10:11 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>

> On 06-Jul-17 8:58 AM, Paulo Canedo wrote:

There are a few questionable statements on the Henry Project page for
Alberic II, here:
http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/aubry002.htm.

Firstly, Letald and Alberic are described in red type as "Supposed sons
(no good evidence)" - considering that Stewart Baldwin says he had not
seen the Tournus charters at the time, I don't know how he came to this
conclusion. The appearance of their subscriptions between those of count
Alberic II and his wife Ermentrude is actually fairly good evidence that
they were probably his sons if not also hers, see here (pp 285 and 286),
https://archive.org/stream/histoiredelabba00chifgoog#page/n568/mode/2up.
Perhaps the names may have been in different columns in the originals,
though their prominence above others would still be fairly good evidence
of their close connection to Alberic II even if they did not have the
names of his father and himself respectively.

Secondly, these two Tournus charters are dated Saturday 14 January, not
just the Cluny charter of the same date (which is subscribed by a Letald
after Ermentrude, but not by Alberic).

Thirdly, the one Tournus charter (not two) in which Letald occurs as a
subdeacon is not dated 14 January 971, but only to the reign of Lothar,
see here, p 118:
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=A4oPbZ7x_84C&pg=RA1-PA118 (the two
14 January charters are printed on pp 116-117). This charter with
subdeacon Letald could have been issued years after 971. It is probable
that he was too old to be Ermentrude's son as stated, but not certain -
subdeacons were normally aged 22 or more, but there were many
exceptions. Bishops were more regularly aged 30 or more, so if this
Letald is to be identified with the Letald who in 993 was described as
'dudum' (not long since) archbishop of Besançon he was presumably born
by 963. Although I doubt that these were one and the same man, it is not
impossible for Ermentrude to have had a son who was only a few years
younger than her second husband. However, this does stretch her
childbearing career to around 30+ years, since her last known child by
Otte Guillaume appears to have been born in the mid-990s.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

About Ermentrude's nephew Lietaud I believe you are talking about Lietaud de Marle well there is no proof he and his brothers Ebles and Eudes were sons of her brother Giselbert and a recent theory by Jean Noel Mathieu in the work La Sucession au comte de Roucy aux evirons dd l'an mil proposes that they were instead sons of a daughter of Ermentrude and Aubry in order to explain both the sucession to Roucy and the name Lietaud. He also proposes that their father was Ebles brother of Guillaume V de Poitiers in order to explain the names Ebles and Eudes and the sucession to the Blois' lands of Rumigny and Coucy by Eudes and Lietaud respectively.

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-17 7:24 PM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> About Ermentrude's nephew Lietaud I believe you are talking about Lietaud de Marle well there is no proof he and his brothers Ebles and Eudes were sons of her brother Giselbert and a recent theory by Jean Noel Mathieu in the work La Sucession au comte de Roucy aux evirons dd l'an mil proposes that they were instead sons of a daughter of Ermentrude and Aubry in order to explain both the sucession to Roucy and the name Lietaud. He also proposes that their father was Ebles brother of Guillaume V de Poitiers in order to explain the names Ebles and Eudes and the sucession to the Blois' lands of Rumigny and Coucy by Eudes and Lietaud respectively.

Proof shmoof - if you are going to follow such a farrago of onomastic
junk as this doodling from Mathieu then I don't know why you would be
concerned about proof.

The idea that everyone must be descended from someone else with the same
given name is patent rubbish. We KNOW that some Franks were named after
godparents, and that knowledge means that ALL bets are off - if even one
name could come without a bloodline provenance then ANY name could.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

What I'm trying to say is that since the name Lietaud is extremely rare a connection is likely.

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-17 10:29 PM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> What I'm trying to say is that since the name Lietaud is extremely rare a connection is likely.

And what I am trying to say is that it does not have to be a blood
connection. Names were not magic talismans jealously guarded as agnatic
family heirlooms. Once the supposed rule allows a single exception, it
falls to pieces. You need other evidence to indicate whether you are
dealing with an observance of the rule or an exception to it. Onomastics
alone are practically worthless. Circumstantial evidence needs to be
more substantial than "The Rubic's cube can be solved this way...", that
is characteristic of Mathieu and his ilk.

The sad joke is that these people like to tell each other their critics
don't know enough to realise the beautiful truth of their inane theory.
The late Szabolcs de Vajay, who never even bothered to learn basic
Latin, was a suitable mentor for these ninnies.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

But in this onomastics is supported by sucession to certain territories so it is not alone, right?

[Peter Stewart]

No it is not - do you seriously suppose that in a feudal system, riven
with contentious politics including dissensions within families, the
only people enfeoffed by an overlord were his own relatives? And that
inheritance was so secure as to give certainty for continued control of
any territory by the same lineage? The onomasticists argue in an
ever-tightening circle - names prove descent because descent provides
the names that prove descent.

You might care to give some thought to the disruption caused by Norman
intruders in Neustria, for one instance. Then consider the rapid and
widespread proliferation of names such as William at certain times. Do
you imagine that some rampant stud of this name put himself about with
other men's wives and insisted on giving his name to hundreds of his own
bastards? Or consider the quickly proliferating female name Beatrix,
given to a daughter of Alberic II, that (despite the self-serving
nonsense of Constance Bouchard and her followers) was not a hypocorism
for Carolingian descendants named Berta, but originally taken in
reverence for the Roman martyr Viatrix. The cult of saints was a source
of new names, that was documented as such for males and females,
throughout Christendom.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 06-Jul-17 7:24 PM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> About Ermentrude's nephew Lietaud I believe you are talking about Lietaud de Marle well there is no proof he and his brothers Ebles and Eudes were sons of her brother Giselbert and a recent theory by Jean Noel Mathieu in the work La Sucession au comte de Roucy aux evirons dd l'an mil proposes that they were instead sons of a daughter of Ermentrude and Aubry in order to explain both the sucession to Roucy and the name Lietaud. He also proposes that their father was Ebles brother of Guillaume V de Poitiers in order to explain the names Ebles and Eudes and the sucession to the Blois' lands of Rumigny and Coucy by Eudes and Lietaud respectively.

Further to this conjectural folly of Mathieu, it is notable that he and
others almost always have recourse to the most famous bearer of a name
whenever they want to play their novelty puzzle games.

In this case, Ebles was the name of a bastard who became count of
Poitou, and of a legitimate uncle of his who was a famous abbot and
royal archchancellor, and of a son of count Ebles who was an abbot and
bishop. The name occurred only one more time in the family as far as we
know, for a younger brother of Guillaume V who was made by Mathieu into
his link to the Roucy family despite his occurring in Poitou after he
must have been fathering his supposed offspring elsewhere (a different
connection between these families had been suggested by Père Anselme).
Ebles was not exactly the leading name of the Poitevin dynasty - but
then, they did not seem to value these highly anyway: the first counts
in the line were named Gerard and Ramnulf, but their names vanished
completely in favour of the regnal name Guillaume taken by all but one
of the dukes of Aquitaine descended from count Ebles (their baptismal
names varied occasionally, including a Eudes, a Pierre and a Gui
Geoffroy but never an Ebles, Gerard or Ramnulf. Rum, when the last three
should have been proudly repeated and passed on through daughters
according to the rule of the onomastics brigade.

If as little was known about the Carolingians or Capetians as about most
feudal lineages, and busy-bodies such as Mathieu set about
reconstructing their genealogies based on onomastics and territorial
possession, the results would be laughably different from the known
facts. I suppose we would have a DFA line proposed from Philip of
Macedon by now, in order to explain the name Philippe for kings of France.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

I think the name Philip come from his mother Anne of Kiev because in Kiev that was a popular name due to the Greek Culture.

[Peter Stewart]

On 07-Jul-17 7:14 PM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> I think the name Philip come from his mother Anne of Kiev because in Kiev that was a popular name due to the Greek Culture.

Then I suggest you think again - where do you find anyone named Philip
in her father's or her mother's family?

The streets of Kiev and Constantinople might have been lined with
Philips (though there weren't, in either case) without tying this name
in any way to Anne herself, her ancestors or descendants.

And how do you know that Greek culture was 'popular' in 11th century
Kiev? I doubt that the average man in the street knew the first thing
about it, but since in any case he didn't leave a record of his likes or
dislikes I wonder how you come by this knowledge.

Again I suggest that you take a little more trouble over public
postings, instead of throwing out vapid and ill-considered one-liners.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

This is a case not of family onomastics but of cultural onomastics. I found this in Wikipedia whose source is pages 94 to 97 of either Reimagning Europe: Kievan Rus' in the Medieval World or Ties of Kinship: Genealogy and Dynastic Marriage in Kyivan Rus' I cannot pinpoit which exactly they are both of Christian Raffensperger and the quote is only to him.

[Peter Stewart]

On 07-Jul-17 9:42 PM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> This is a case not of family onomastics but of cultural onomastics. I found this in Wikipedia whose source is pages 94 to 97 of either Reimagning Europe: Kievan Rus' in the Medieval World or Ties of Kinship: Genealogy and Dynastic Marriage in Kyivan Rus' I cannot pinpoit which exactly they are both of Christian Raffensperger and the quote is only to him.

You did not give any indication that you were quoting from Wikipedia or
indirectly from Raffensperger - either way, they can know nothing more
than you or I about what names were 'popular' in Kievan circles beneath
princely rank in the 11th century. There is not a single person named
Philip mentioned in the Russian primary chronicle apart from the saint,
and just one passing reference to his feast day so hardly a massive
endorsement of his popularity.

The quotation you are referring to now is from *Reimagining Europe*, pp
94-97:

"The choice of the name Philip is intriguing. Dunbabin posits several
explanations, but the thread in the most convincing ones is the
influence of the queen, Anna Iaroslavna. Philip was not a common name in
the West. It was known as a saint's name, and would become important in
France later in the Middle Ages, but in the Byzantine tradition Philip
was known as the Christianizer of Scythia, the area (and name) the
Byzantines identified with Rus' . Anna's grandfather was Vladimir, the
Christianizer of Rus' , and Anna was a member of the first Rusian
generation to be raised Christian. In multiple East Slavic menologies
St. Philip is listed under both October 11 and November 14.
Unfortunately, Philip's birth date is unknown, but it is believed that
he was born between the May 19, 1051, marriage of Henry and Anna and May
23, 1052, which would logically exclude either of the saints' days as
listed in the Orthodox calendar. However, Juan Mateos in 'Le typicon de
la grande église' records another day for a St. Philip, a variant of
Philémon, on February 14. This day would fit quite well into the
suggested range of birth dates and occurs in a likely window after the
marriage of Henry and Anna, making it a probable suggestion. Apart from
the evidence of the birth date, which cannot be confirmed, it remains a
possibility that Anna's knowledge of the name Philip informed her
suggestion of a name for her firstborn son ... There is also the
intriguing possibility that the name was chosen through maternal
influence due to the early medieval practice of choosing a name from the
higher-ranking lineage. This is dismissed by Dunbabin
because it is unlikely that the Capetians would have viewed the
Riurikids as a higher- ranking lineage, and in the very few early
medieval examples of that practice the names referred to the Carolingian
dynasty and none other. Some historians have given as one motive of
Henry's marriage to Anna a quest for the “exotic,” and so perhaps the
choice of a name from Anna's part of Europe would be simply a part of
that urge. Imperial pretensions may also have given Henry the idea of
the name - a Roman emperor named Philip the Arabian (244- 249) was
widely known in the Middle Ages and was rumored to have been the first
Christian emperor ... It cannot be conclusively proven that Anna
Iaroslavna dictated the choice of the name Philip to her husband, but
the anecdotal evidence suggests that it is a strong possibility that she
influenced the naming process. This theory is buttressed by the naming
conventions of other Rusian women in the royal families of Europe."

You can find Jean Dunbabin's article here:

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/2865492.

Perhaps your local library has a subscription so you can download it
free. She did not know any more than Raffensperger about why Anna's son
was named Philippe. No-one does, except that it was not from ancestry
and not at all likely to have been a bow to 'popular culture' in his
mother's homeland. Henri I was an odd character, but devoted to his wife
he was not. It is most unlikely that she had any say in the naming of
her son.

By the by, I don't think Philippe was born after 23 May 1052 - this
depends on his age at his coronation as associate king at Pentecost in
1059, that was on 23 May, and from memory he was not yet aged 7.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 07-Jul-17 10:32 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
> By the by, I don't think Philippe was born after 23 May 1052 - this
> depends on his age at his coronation as associate king at Pentecost in
> 1059, that was on 23 May, and from memory he was not yet aged 7.

When I wrote "I don't think" I was being very precise.

And when I do think, I think Philippe WAS born after 23 May 1052, for
the reason given.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

As happens all too often, I thought wrong - two independent sources tell
us that Philippe was aged 7 when he was crowned on 23 May 1059, so
Raffensperger was right about this.

Peter Stewart

[Stewart Baldwin]

On 7/6/2017 7:40 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
> ... Circumstantial evidence needs to be more substantial than "The

> Rubic's cube can be solved this way...", that is characteristic of

> Mathieu and his ilk. ...

I'm not sure that Rubik's Cube is a very good analogy. :-) If someone
tells me that they have solved Rubik's Cube, all I have to do to decide
whether or not it is correct is look at the cube. This is definitely
not the case with these endless conjectures on the relationships of
early medieval individuals. Mathieu's "solution" to the ancestry of
Ebles of Roucy is not obviously false (in the sense that it has no
obvious fatal contradictions with the known evidence). The problem is
that it is also not obviously true, and one could probably come up with
dozens of other conjectures that were also not obviously false.

In principle, I have no objection to the use of onomastics (or other
circumstantial evidence) to provide conjectures that might be used as
"working hypotheses" to spur further discussion and research, provided
that the uncertain nature is clearly stated. In practice, too many
proposers of these conjectures seem to form an emotional attachment to
their theories, regarding them as some sort of child that needs to be
protected from outside criticism. This is made worse by too many
researchers (including some who should know better) who will take a
recent conjecture (often the most recently published alternative) and
treat it as if it were definitive, using it as a further basis for the
"house of cards" that sometimes results.

One "thought experiment" which has occurred to me (unfortunately not
possible in practice) would be to take a dozen or so scholars of the
"onomastics" school, lock them in a large hotel suite for a couple of
months with plenty of provisions (but no outside access to information),
give them copies of 90% of the primary sources relevant to a group of
families which they have never studied before, and ask them to
reconstruct the genealogical relationships of those families as well as
they can with the available information, clearly labeling those which
are only conjectures. After that, you would use the 10% that you didn't
give them to see how well their conjectures worked. I'm guessing that
they wouldn't do all that well (but of course), that is only a
conjecture. I have no actual proof.

Stewart Baldwin

[Peter Stewart]

You can "solve" a Rubic's cube by switching the colours on the squares
that don't otherwise align. That should be seen as cheating, but the
onomastics school often don't even realise that they are doing it.

The test you propose is similar to my suggestion that they would come up
with results laughably different from known facts if the evidence was
artificially reduced. They could start with the succession in Mâcon,
passing from Alberic (II or III) to Otte Guillaume. The latter had no
hereditary claim, and no proximate ancestor named either Otto or
William, as far as we know. So how did he come by his name and
territorial power according to the onomastics theorists? Oops, somehow
the colours on the cube squares would need to be rearranged.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 08-Jul-17 1:05 AM, Stewart Baldwin wrote:
> On 7/6/2017 7:40 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>> ... Circumstantial evidence needs to be more substantial than "The
>> Rubic's cube can be solved this way...", that is characteristic of
>> Mathieu and his ilk. ...
>
> I'm not sure that Rubik's Cube is a very good analogy. :-) If
> someone tells me that they have solved Rubik's Cube, all I have to do
> to decide whether or not it is correct is look at the cube. This is
> definitely not the case with these endless conjectures on the
> relationships of early medieval individuals. Mathieu's "solution" to
> the ancestry of Ebles of Roucy is not obviously false (in the sense
> that it has no obvious fatal contradictions with the known evidence).
> The problem is that it is also not obviously true, and one could
> probably come up with dozens of other conjectures that were also not
> obviously false.

It does have some significant problems with the known evidence, that
Mathieu did not properly address:

Ebles of Poitou, whom he made into the father of Ebles of Roucy and his
brothers Eudes and Letald, is known only from a single charter
subscription for Saint-Cyprien de Poitiers in the reign of Robert II
("S. Willelmi comitis, Eboli fratris sui. Rotberto rege"). The absence
of Hugo Capet in the regnal dating indicates that this was in Robert's
sole reign after his father's death in October 996.

But what was William's bother Ebles doing in Poitou after 996, when his
very young namesake son was either already count of Roucy or soon to be?
Ebles of Roucy, according to Mathieu, was the man who became archbishop
of Reims in 1021/22 - this is explicit in the source from which Eudes le
Fort is known to have been his brother ("Odo Fortis, frater domini Ebali
archiepiscopi"). If Ebles was old enough to be consecrated as archbishop
of Reims by 1022 then he was born ca 990, not after October 996. Why he
was named after a barely-known cadet of the Poitevin dynasty and not
Guillaume after his reigning uncle, or his paternal grandfather or
great-grandfather, and why this far grander name was not given to any of
three brothers or their known descendants, remain unspoken mysteries in
Mathieu's conjecture. Never is Ebles of Roucy said to have hailed from
Poitou, as one would expect given his unusual background for a prelate
in Reims.

Ebles as archbishop was notorious for using Church possessions as his
own property. For instance, his brother Eudes engaged in strife over
this that engulfed Villers-Franqueux belonging to Saint-Thierry de Reims
(Bibliothèque Carnegie, ms 85 fol 3r: "Sed domnum Oebalum partem iuris
quod ecclesia nostra semper tenuerat quadam occasione in suum proprium
usum certum esse convertisse. Orto namque bello inter Rainardum de Monte
Acuto et Odonem fortem de Roceio ville interiacentes inter Montem Acutum
et civitatem Remorum mira depopulatione vastabantur. Inter quas Villare
Francorum quia abbas et monachi tutari non poterant intolerabili
confusione premebatur").

Mathieu cited this without giving the text. As far as we know,
Saint-Pierre de Rumigny might have been taken by Ebles and given to his
brother Eudes le Fort. The evidence that Eudes ever held it mentions its
hereditary transmission only from his time to that of Nicholas II ("a
tempore Odonis, qui fortis dicebatur, ad tempus usque Nicholai filii
Nicholai").

The circumstantial evidence does not support Mathieu's hypothesis,
though you would hardly glean this from his work. This is what I would
call unwittingly switching the colours on the squares of a Rubic's cube.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 08-Jul-17 10:27 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
> The circumstantial evidence does not support Mathieu's hypothesis,
> though you would hardly glean this from his work. This is what I would
> call unwittingly switching the colours on the squares of a Rubic's cube.

As opposed to my unwittingly switching the spelling of Rubik's name...

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

Who was Nicholas II?

[Peter Stewart]

Seigneur of Rumigny, son of Nicholas I who was the son of Eudes le
Fort's niece Havide, a daughter of Ebles, count of Roucy & then
archbishop of Reims.

By the way, some historians persist in questioning whether the same man
was really count of Roucy & archbishop of Reims. I don't see any good
reason to doubt this: we have a letter from Fulbert of Chartres to the
bishop of Senlis allaying his reservations about taking part in the
consecration of Ebles, on the ground that he had been elected archbishop
as a layman; and we have an explicit statement from Alberic of
Troisfontaines that this was one and the same man. His wife, Beatrix of
Hainaut, was still living when Ebles was consecrated, but going by the
conventional genealogy (that Mathieu vainly sought to overturn) they
were third cousins, so that consanguinity provided a ready excuse for
ending their marriage. Ebles as count of Roucy had been also viscount of
Reims, well placed to take his opportunity to become archbishop after
Arnulf the Traitor (a Carolingian bastard) died in 1021, and of course
he got to fry much bigger fish as metropolitan of the province.

Incidentally, Eudes II of Blois had been his overlord, as count of
Reims, until Ebles as the new archbishop bought the countship from him
in 1023. Possession of Saint-Pierre de Rumigny could have been part of
their deal for all we know - there is certainly no evidence to make
Eudes of Blois into a cousin of Ebles' father, in order for one of his
brothers to inherit Rumigny, as Mathieu tried to do. The name Eudes was
very common, and not by any means a reliable badge of cousinship between
two namesakes.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

If we follow Mathieu's genealogy we should note that Ebles and Beatrix would be even closer cousins that is second degree that if we accept that Hugh Capet's wife Adelaide was as traditionally believed a daughter of Guillaume III de Aquitaine that I know you're a bit skeptical of.

[Peter Stewart]

On 09-Jul-17 1:47 AM, Paulo Canedo wrote:
> If we follow Mathieu's genealogy we should note that Ebles and Beatrix would be even closer cousins that is second degree that if we accept that Hugh Capet's wife Adelaide was as traditionally believed a daughter of Guillaume III de Aquitaine that I know you're a bit skeptical of.

Yes, I would say more than a bit - I seriously doubt it.

For one thing, if the 'traditional' belief is true then the
onomasticists and others need to rethink their ideas of tight family
solidarity and piety that were supposedly advertised through naming
patterns.

Why did her putative brother Guillaume IV (Fier-à-bras) refuse to accept
her husband Hugo Capet as king, instead chasing his army to the Loire?
Why is there no acknowledgement of any family relationship in charters
involving the Capetian king and the Poitevin duke of Aquitaine over the
following generations? Why did the legitimist Carolingian heir subscribe
a charter of Guillaume V (le Grand)? Why is there no acknowledgement of
relationship between the Capetians and the Norman dukes - or of the
rapid assimilation of pagan blood for that matter - if Adelaide was
really a granddaughter of Rollo as the 'traditional' view holds?

Peter Stewart

[Stewart Baldwin]

On 7/7/2017 6:26 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:

> You can "solve" a Rubic's cube by switching the colours on the squares
> that don't otherwise align. That should be seen as cheating, but the
> onomastics school often don't even realise that they are doing it.

"Cheating" on a Rubik's Cube by "switching the colors" can be done in
two ways. One would be to peel off the colored stickers and put them
back so the colors match. I know of nobody who has ever had the
patience to do this for all of the necessary stickers, and I am pretty
sure that it would result in mangling the stickers enough that the
cheater would be easily exposed. The other way, which is rather easy,
is simply to disassemble the cube and then reassemble it with the colors
aligned. If you reassemble it at random instead, there is only one
chance in twelve that it can be solved without disassembling it again.
I used to do this with my own cube and then leave it out so I could
watch the frustration of those who thought that they knew how to solve
it, but didn't know about that little trick. (Warning: After
disassembling and then reassembling your Rubik's Cube several dozen
times, it won't work as well as it used to. Trust me on that one.)
However, I do not see how someone could "cheat" on Rubik's Cube without
even realizing it, so your analogy still has its problems. :-)

Human nature being what it is, the self-deception that occurs with
respect to genealogists and their own pet theories is not too hard to
understand. What is more difficult to understand (and more frustrating)
is the large number of genealogists (including far too many in the
onomastics school) who will not criticize a theory (at least not in
print) without coming up with an alternate version of their own which is
just as bad. The publication process is probably partly responsible for
this. A simple paragraph stating that "the theory of X regarding Y is
nonsense because of Z" is probably not regarded as being of sufficient
interest (or length) to publish. So the person who wants to criticize
the theory in print is faced with two options, (a) come up with some
theory that is closely enough related to make the insertion of the
criticizing paragraph relevant (the less careful approach), or (b) wait
until writing an article or book where the criticism will be relevant
(the more careful, but also much slower, approach). The problem is that
by the time (b) happens, the sloppier researchers will have repeated the
theory a zillion times.

Stewart Baldwin

[Peter Stewart]

On 09-Jul-17 12:07 PM, Stewart Baldwin wrote:
> On 7/7/2017 6:26 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
>> You can "solve" a Rubic's cube by switching the colours on the
>> squares that don't otherwise align. That should be seen as cheating,
>> but the onomastics school often don't even realise that they are
>> doing it.
>
> "Cheating" on a Rubik's Cube by "switching the colors" can be done in
> two ways. One would be to peel off the colored stickers and put them
> back so the colors match. I know of nobody who has ever had the
> patience to do this for all of the necessary stickers, and I am pretty
> sure that it would result in mangling the stickers enough that the
> cheater would be easily exposed. The other way, which is rather easy,
> is simply to disassemble the cube and then reassemble it with the
> colors aligned. If you reassemble it at random instead, there is only
> one chance in twelve that it can be solved without disassembling it
> again. I used to do this with my own cube and then leave it out so I
> could watch the frustration of those who thought that they knew how to
> solve it, but didn't know about that little trick. (Warning: After
> disassembling and then reassembling your Rubik's Cube several dozen
> times, it won't work as well as it used to. Trust me on that one.)
> However, I do not see how someone could "cheat" on Rubik's Cube
> without even realizing it, so your analogy still has its problems. :-)

Not many analogies are perfect, but in this case I suppose they do it in
their sleep as they apparently do most of their research.

>
> Human nature being what it is, the self-deception that occurs with
> respect to genealogists and their own pet theories is not too hard to
> understand. What is more difficult to understand (and more
> frustrating) is the large number of genealogists (including far too
> many in the onomastics school) who will not criticize a theory (at
> least not in print) without coming up with an alternate version of
> their own which is just as bad. The publication process is probably
> partly responsible for this. A simple paragraph stating that "the
> theory of X regarding Y is nonsense because of Z" is probably not
> regarded as being of sufficient interest (or length) to publish. So
> the person who wants to criticize the theory in print is faced with
> two options, (a) come up with some theory that is closely enough
> related to make the insertion of the criticizing paragraph relevant
> (the less careful approach), or (b) wait until writing an article or
> book where the criticism will be relevant (the more careful, but also
> much slower, approach). The problem is that by the time (b) happens,
> the sloppier researchers will have repeated the theory a zillion times.

Yes, this is a problem - bit since we now have the Internet, publishing
in print is less necessary than it was. I don't expect that many
historians researching from now on will be foolish enough not to use
Google as part at least of their rough initial efforts. If their input
(or the algorithms) should fail to come up with criticism in a forum
such as this, or if they are precious enough to insist on print, they
will be the losers when others eventually point out whatever they have
missed.

I have gotten to the point of having so little respect for the minions
of Maurice Chaume, Karl Ferdinand Werner and Szabolcs de Vajay that I no
longer care what they tell each other in their articles and books. The
subject has been set back enough by their enthusiastic silliness,
without wasting time trying to counter each new piece of nonsense in print.

Peter Stewart

[Paulo Canedo]

It is known from Aelred of Riveaux that Edward the Confessor grandson of Richard I of Normandy and Henry I of France grandson of Adelaide were close relatives and the only possible way is that they were 3rd cousins with a common descent from Rollo that is if we accept that his grandmother Adelaide was daughter of Guillaume III de Aquitaine and maternal granddaugher of Rollo.

[taf]

On Sunday, July 9, 2017 at 7:56:50 AM UTC-7, Paulo Canedo wrote:

> It is known from Aelred of Riveaux that Edward the Confessor grandson of
> Richard I of Normandy and Henry I of France grandson of Adelaide were close
> relatives and the only possible way is that they were 3rd cousins with a
> common descent from Rollo that is if we accept that his grandmother Adelaide
> was daughter of Guillaume III de Aquitaine and maternal granddaugher of
> Rollo.

This is sort of begging the question, isn't it? A relationship between Edward the Confessor and Henry of France would be consistent with Constance being daughter of William of Aquitaine and granddaughter of Rollo, but if Constance is not daughter of William, then you have this whole quadrant of the pedigree that is completely unknown, so how can you say there is no possible way for there to be such a relationship when we know absolutely nothing about what would be back there were it not William and Rollo.

Of course, this assumes that Aelred was accurate, which is a separate issue.

taf

[Paulo Canedo]

It is Adelaide not Constance and what I'm saying is that Aelred's statement is a piece of evidence for Adelaide being daughter of William.

[Peter Stewart]

That is a simple slip, Constance having been a major (and grotesque)
part of Henri's life as his mother whereas Adelaide as his grandmother
was not. Todd's point stands, and can't be tossed aside by wishful
compiling of *possible* but not probable evidence.

I think it highly unlikely that we would not hear from anyone of a
double connection in a political settlement with the Poitevin family
when Hugo Capet married a cousin of Richard I of Normandy, after Hugo's
sister Emma had married Richard in 960 around the time Hugo himself
became duke of the Franks and overlord of Poitou (Flodoard: "Otho et
Hugo filii Hugonis ... Quorum Hugonem rex ducem constituit, addito illi
pago Pictavensi ad terram quam pater ipsius tenuerat").

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 10-Jul-17 9:20 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
>
> On 10-Jul-17 1:55 AM, Paulo Canedo wrote:

> That is a simple slip, Constance having been a major (and grotesque)
> part of Henri's life as his mother whereas Adelaide as his grandmother
> was not. Todd's point stands, and can't be tossed aside by wishful
> compiling of *possible* but not probable evidence.
>
> I think it highly unlikely that we would not hear from anyone of a
> double connection in a political settlement with the Poitevin family
> when Hugo Capet married a cousin of Richard I of Normandy, after
> Hugo's sister Emma had married Richard in 960 around the time Hugo
> himself became duke of the Franks and overlord of Poitou (Flodoard:
> "Otho et Hugo filii Hugonis ... Quorum Hugonem rex ducem constituit,
> addito illi pago Pictavensi ad terram quam pater ipsius tenuerat").

I forgot to add that since Edward the Confessor's mother was named Emma,
like (and probably after) her father's former wife who was Henri's
great-aunt, Aelred might have thought there was a blood connection.

He did not have access to all the genealogical resources we can check,
and the peculiar arrangements of the Norman ruling family were perhaps
not well-known at Rievaulx.

Even today some historians try to make Hugo Capet's sister Emma into the
mother of her namesake and other daughters of Richard I.

Peter Stewart

[Stewart Baldwin]

On 7/9/2017 6:33 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:

> Even today some historians try to make Hugo Capet's sister Emma into
> the mother of her namesake and other daughters of Richard I.

Indeed, the scholars who believe that onomastics rules all seem to avoid
mentioning the fairly rapid decline of Scandinavian names among the
Normans in general, much more quickly than what could be reasonably
explained by marriage to French wives. The obvious explanation for this
is that the Normans realized that their best chance of long-term
survival of the French hostility to Vikings was to "blend in" as much as
possible, and their use of native names for many of their children seems
to be part of a conscious strategy to do so. I know of no evidence that
the Normans ever claimed that Emma of Normandy was a daughter of
Richard's Capetian queen, but I doubt that they would have complained if
others assumed this based on her name.

Stewart Baldwin

[Peter Stewart]

It was reportedly customary with Normans at that time for a deceased
wife's name to be used for a daughter of the next wife - I have never
tried to verify this, as naming practices are not a primary interest of
mine.

We don't even know the Norse name of Rollo's son William Longsword, who
was presumably given one despite the claim that he was born to a
Christian mother. It was surely not a coincidence that the first three
Norman rulers after conversion in 912 had the Christian names Robert,
William and Richard - Robert, taken by Rollo for himself, was the name
of the Frankish marquis in Neustria who became king a decade later and
probably stood as baptismal sponsor; William was the name of the duke of
Aquitaine, and Richard was the name of the duke of Burgundy. Ambitious
much? It did not take them long to assume the title of duke for themselves.

On the other hand we are told the Norse name (variously given as Elborg
or Gerloc) of William's apparently much younger sister who was baptised
Adela and married to a Poitevin ruler, either Ebles or his son Guillaume
III depending on whether you believe Ademar of Chabannes or Dudo of St
Quentin (both rather unreliable). This murky history can be taken only
with peril as part of the background to Aelred of Rievaulx's vague
statement in the 1160s that Henri I was a close blood relative
("sanguinis propinquitate vicinus") to Edward the Confessor.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 10-Jul-17 11:36 AM, Stewart Baldwin wrote:
> On 7/9/2017 6:33 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:
>
>> Even today some historians try to make Hugo Capet's sister Emma into
>> the mother of her namesake and other daughters of Richard I.
>
> Indeed, the scholars who believe that onomastics rules all seem to
> avoid mentioning the fairly rapid decline of Scandinavian names among
> the Normans in general, much more quickly than what could be
> reasonably explained by marriage to French wives. The obvious
> explanation for this is that the Normans realized that their best
> chance of long-term survival of the French hostility to Vikings was to
> "blend in" as much as possible, and their use of native names for many
> of their children seems to be part of a conscious strategy to do so.
> I know of no evidence that the Normans ever claimed that Emma of
> Normandy was a daughter of Richard's Capetian queen, but I doubt that
> they would have complained if others assumed this based on her name.

It skipped my mind to mention this:

Katherine Keats-Rohan proposed that Richard I's daughters Emma, Matilda
and Beatrice were daughters of Hugo Capet's sister Emma - this was in
'Poppa of Bayeux and her family', *The American Genealogist* 72 (1997),
and (with Havise instead of Beatrice) in 'Poppa "de Bayeux" et sa
famille, *Onomastique et parenté dans l'Occident médiéval* (Oxford,
2000). The last is, of course, the suitably-titled publication in which
Jean-Noël Mathieu expounded his half-baked ideas about the ancestry of
Ebles of Roucy and his brothers.

Peter Stewart

[Hans Vogels]

This topic becomes quite interesting. The information and argumentation of Peter and Stewart (on his website) are easy to follow. Reading back and forth I noticed something that could have a bearing on the discussion.

In the charter of 971 a "son" Letald signs after his probable parents. But is this a realistic assumption. I'm in the assumption that to testify one had to be at least 12 years of age. That would mean that Letald had to born in/before 959. In 961 his proposed father Alberic II mentioned his deceased parents. No mentioning of a wife with a name. If the wife was dead she would probably have been mentioned to in 961. One might assume that the wife was still living in that year.

A boy becomes a man at 14 years, the minimum age according to Medieval Canon Law to marry. Is the age of 14 years not usually the moment that we might see a testifier use a personal seal to sign? If so one might conclude that Letald was at born in/before 957.

That could mean that Alberic II was married in the fifties to a previous wife and in/before 971 to Ermentrude.

Count Alberic II of Mâcon last certain act can be securely dated to 14 January 971. Say that he died leaving a widow Ermentrude and minor heirs from his first wife: Letald and Alberic between 7 and 14, old enough to be mentioned and with daughters (at least a Beatrix) being too young. The last mentioning of a Count Alberic could be regarded as being the "son" being old enough to function as a count.

In the feudal world of early France a count would have been someone who was able to carry and wield the weapons when summoned by his overlord. That would mean that Alberic (III) would have been minimal 14 years in 981 and would give him a birth year of 967 or earlier. Ermentrude could have been his mother.

Alberic (III) - in this hypothesis - seems to have died young, probably after his only and last mentioning. Who were his heirs?

With allodial goods that would mean his living mother, the wife of his father. If his mother remarried shortly after 971 Otte-Guillaume, he would as the husband of the countess-widow become the de facto Count of Macon, for the lifetime of Ermentrude his wife.

When Ermentrude died in/after 1002 the Countship of Macon stayed in the possession of her son and heir Guy.

Hans Vogels

e Ermentrude
> > married both men, but this is one of his many nonsense sprees.
> >
> > Also occurring in the same charters is a Letald who is assumed to have
> > been Alberic II's and probably Ermentrude's son as he subscribed next
> > after her. Alberic's father was named Letald, and Ermentrude had a
> > nephew of this name in the Roucy family who may have been named after
> > his older cousin (if her father Ragenold was a Norman convert, they
> > were presumably short of Christian names in the family background). We
> > don't know what became of Letald, though he may have become a cleric
> > as another charter is subscribed after Ermentrude by a subdeacon
> > Letald whose name occurs before an archdeacon. Szabolcs de Vajay
> > arbitrarily asserted that Letald was the same person as an archbishop
> > of Besançon (demoted to bishop by Vajay) occurring in a charter dated
> > 993. This charter is unpublished, but from the extract given in the
> > first edition of Gallia Christiana it does not help to identify the
> > mysterious archbishop.
> >
> > In the two Tournus charters dated on Saturday 14 January another
> > Alberic also subscribed after Letald. This is where things get
> > complicated. It is assumed that he was Letald's brother, that is a
> > second son of Alberic II and probably Ermentrude. We also do not know
> > what became of this presumably younger Alberic. Vajay, playing his
> > habitual facile game with onomastics, asserted that he was the man who
> > became the last abbot of Saint-Paul de Besançon before it was
> > reconstituted under the authority of a dean. This is rubbish - if
> > Vajay had bothered to read his source a bit further he would have
> > found that the abbot Alberic did not come into the abbacy until after
> > November 1041 and was apparently dead by March 1044. In other words,
> > if he had been the scion of a great feudal family subscribing in 971
> > he would have waited until he was around 80+ to achieve a very minor
> > abbacy before quickly dropping dead.
>
> There are a few questionable statements on the Henry Project page for
> Alberic II, here:
> http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/aubry002.htm.
>
> Firstly, Letald and Alberic are described in red type as "Supposed sons
> (no good evidence)" - considering that Stewart Baldwin says he had not
> seen the Tournus charters at the time, I don't know how he came to this
> conclusion. The appearance of their subscriptions between those of count
> Alberic II and his wife Ermentrude is actually fairly good evidence that
> they were probably his sons if not also hers, see here (pp 285 and 286),
> https://archive.org/stream/histoiredelabba00chifgoog#page/n568/mode/2up.
> Perhaps the names may have been in different columns in the originals,
> though their prominence above others would still be fairly good evidence
> of their close connection to Alberic II even if they did not have the
> names of his father and himself respectively.
>
> Secondly, these two Tournus charters are dated Saturday 14 January, not
> just the Cluny charter of the same date (which is subscribed by a Letald
> after Ermentrude, but not by Alberic).
>
> Thirdly, the one Tournus charter (not two) in which Letald occurs as a
> subdeacon is not dated 14 January 971, but only to the reign of Lothar,
> see here, p 118:
> https://books.google.com.au/books?id=A4oPbZ7x_84C&pg=RA1-PA118 (the two
> 14 January charters are printed on pp 116-117). This charter with
> subdeacon Letald could have been issued years after 971. It is probable
> that he was too old to be Ermentrude's son as stated, but not certain -
> subdeacons were normally aged 22 or more, but there were many
> exceptions. Bishops were more regularly aged 30 or more, so if this
> Letald is to be identified with the Letald who in 993 was described as
> 'dudum' (not long since) archbishop of Besançon he was presumably born
> by 963. Although I doubt that these were one and the same man, it is not
> impossible for Ermentrude to have had a son who was only a few years
> younger than her second husband. However, this does stretch her
> childbearing career to around 30+ years, since her last known child by
> Otte Guillaume appears to have been born in the mid-990s.
>
> Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 11-Jul-17 6:53 AM, Hans Vogels wrote:
> This topic becomes quite interesting. The information and argumentation of Peter and Stewart (on his website) are easy to follow. Reading back and forth I noticed something that could have a bearing on the discussion.
>
> In the charter of 971 a "son" Letald signs after his probable parents. But is this a realistic assumption. I'm in the assumption that to testify one had to be at least 12 years of age. That would mean that Letald had to born in/before 959. In 961 his proposed father Alberic II mentioned his deceased parents. No mentioning of a wife with a name. If the wife was dead she would probably have been mentioned to in 961. One might assume that the wife was still living in that year.
>
> A boy becomes a man at 14 years, the minimum age according to Medieval Canon Law to marry. Is the age of 14 years not usually the moment that we might see a testifier use a personal seal to sign? If so one might conclude that Letald was at born in/before 957.
>
> That could mean that Alberic II was married in the fifties to a previous wife and in/before 971 to Ermentrude.
>
> Count Alberic II of Mâcon last certain act can be securely dated to 14 January 971. Say that he died leaving a widow Ermentrude and minor heirs from his first wife: Letald and Alberic between 7 and 14, old enough to be mentioned and with daughters (at least a Beatrix) being too young. The last mentioning of a Count Alberic could be regarded as being the "son" being old enough to function as a count.
>
> In the feudal world of early France a count would have been someone who was able to carry and wield the weapons when summoned by his overlord. That would mean that Alberic (III) would have been minimal 14 years in 981 and would give him a birth year of 967 or earlier. Ermentrude could have been his mother.
>
> Alberic (III) - in this hypothesis - seems to have died young, probably after his only and last mentioning. Who were his heirs?
>
> With allodial goods that would mean his living mother, the wife of his father. If his mother remarried shortly after 971 Otte-Guillaume, he would as the husband of the countess-widow become the de facto Count of Macon, for the lifetime of Ermentrude his wife.
>
> When Ermentrude died in/after 1002 the Countship of Macon stayed in the possession of her son and heir Guy.

I'm afraid this is not safe reasoning - the only assumption that can
usually be made about anyone subscribing a charter is that the person
was alive at the time. Even this is not certain, as charters were
sometimes subscribed after their ostensible date. Children were
sometimes much younger than 12, for instance sometimes explicitly
mentioned as being in their cradle when subscribing. (In these
circumstances the parchment was held to the child's hand.)

Whatever became of any sons of Alberic II, Otte Guillaume as count of
Mâcon was effectively cutting out a legitimate heir since Alberic had a
daughter Beatrix whose descendants were the second family of counts of
Anjou.

The usurpation in this case was not while Otte Guillaume was count as
husband of Alberic's widow, but when she died and he still held on to
Mâcon. Ermentrude died in 1102/04, unfortunately for Alberic's heirs at
a time when Otte Guillaume was contending with Robert II over the
dukedom of Burgundy and evidently not in a mood to let go of Mâcon.

Peter Stewart