From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

In the last thread above Peter Stewart wrote that that the newsgroup is practically defunct. I Agree.

I'm not sure the low number of posts is because of the lack of interest
in the subject matter, or because the Thunderbird - Eternal September
combo is too complicated for most people who used the Google groups
interface.

The first problem is unsolvable, but for the second there might be a
remedy. I'm also part of the Dutch Medieval Genealogy group, and since a
few years (when Yahoo Groups stopped), we are using groups.io. This has
an interface which is quite comparable to the google groups one, is easy
to use, and accessible through any browser.

If you want to try it out, I created a test group: https://groups.io/g/MedievalGenealogy/

To be 100% clear, this is not an interface or access to this usenet
newsgroup, but a different platform, so messages from this newsgroup
will not be visible there.

If it would generate enough activity to make Peter continue his Richilde thread there, it will be mission accomplished.

Raf
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

Op 29/07/2024 om 18:32 schreef raf Ceustermans:

In the last thread above Peter Stewart wrote that that the newsgroup is practically defunct. I Agree.

I'm not sure the low number of posts is because of the lack of interest
in the subject matter, or because the Thunderbird - Eternal September
combo is too complicated for most people who used the Google groups interface.

The first problem is unsolvable, but for the second there might be a
remedy. I'm also part of the Dutch Medieval Genealogy group, and since a
few years (when Yahoo Groups stopped), we are using groups.io. This has
an interface which is quite comparable to the google groups one, is easy
to use, and accessible through any browser.

If you want to try it out, I created a test group: https://groups.io/g/MedievalGenealogy/

To be 100% clear, this is not an interface or access to this usenet newsgroup, but a different platform, so messages from this newsgroup
will not be visible there.

If it would generate enough activity to make Peter continue his Richilde thread there, it will be mission accomplished.

Raf

In an attempt to generate some activity in the test group, I posted a
new(?) suggestion on the Hammerstein notice, a subject that always seems
to generate controversy.
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On Mon, 29 Jul 2024 18:32:49 +0200, raf Ceustermans <raf.ceustermans@hotmail.com> wrote in soc.genealogy.medieval:

The first problem is unsolvable, but for the second there might be a
remedy. I'm also part of the Dutch Medieval Genealogy group, and since a
few years (when Yahoo Groups stopped), we are using groups.io. This has
an interface which is quite comparable to the google groups one, is easy
to use, and accessible through any browser.

Years ago, around 1997, it was possible to link usenet newsgroups to
an external independant network. I have no idea how to do that and
can't help (no expertise), but I suppose it would be possible to
set up some interface shooting to this newsgroup messages from a
mailing list and in the other direction.

I think it was something similar that was done to link mailing lists
from rootsweb to early genealogy newgroups. The soc.genealogy
hierarchy was built by people also involved with rootsweb (sold to
ancestry in about 2001) and many of them are now on facebook, so
not hard to find, but perhaps less involved in basic genealogy
research from what I can see from their posts.


Denis
--
Denis Beauregard - g|-n|-alogiste |-m|-rite (FQSG)
Les Fran|oais d'Am|-rique du Nord - http://www.francogene.com/gfan/gfan/998/ French in North America before 1722 - http://www.francogene.com/gfna/gfna/998/ Sur c|-d|-rom/DVD/USB |a 1790 - On CD-ROM/DVD/USB to 1790
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On 01-Aug-24 3:05 AM, raf Ceustermans wrote:

Op 29/07/2024 om 18:32 schreef raf Ceustermans:

In the last thread above Peter Stewart wrote that that the newsgroup
is practically defunct. I Agree.

I'm not sure the low number of posts is because of the lack of
interest in the subject matter, or because the Thunderbird - Eternal
September combo is too complicated for most people who used the Google
groups interface.

The first problem is unsolvable, but for the second there might be a
remedy. I'm also part of the Dutch Medieval Genealogy group, and since
a few years (when Yahoo Groups stopped), we are using groups.io. This
has an interface which is quite comparable to the google groups one,
is easy to use, and accessible through any browser.

If you want to try it out, I created a test group: https://groups.io/
g/MedievalGenealogy/

To be 100% clear, this is not an interface or access to this usenet
newsgroup, but a different platform, so messages from this newsgroup
will not be visible there.

If it would generate enough activity to make Peter continue his
Richilde thread there, it will be mission accomplished.

Raf

In an attempt to generate some activity in the test group, I posted a
new(?) suggestion on the Hammerstein notice, a subject that always seems
to generate controversy.

After five days there appear to be just three members of the group you
have set up, so its prospects as a successor to SGM may not be thriving.

For some reason I am still not able to communicate with your hotmail
address, hence a reply here (comments interspersed below).

You wrote:

The one subject that is guaranteed to cause controversy and

discussion is everything > surrounding the Conradines, the Hammerstein
notice and Richlind. So to check if

this group has any viability a topic on the Hammerstein notice seems

a good start.

As a reminder, in 1018 at a synod in Nijmwegen Otto von Hammerstein

and his

wife Irmgard were excommunicated because they were too closely

related. A notice > dating to c. 1023 concerning their consanguinity is preserved. It reads (https://

www.dmgh.de/mgh_const_1/index.htm#page/638/mode/1up):

Gebehard et Udo nepotes, filii duorum fratrum. Gebehard genuit

Cunonem. Udo

genuit Ottonem. Cuno genuit Cunonem. Heribertus genuit Ottonem. Item

ex alia

parte: Godefridus et Gerbirhe nepos et neptis. Godefridus genuit

Irmingardam.

Gerbirhe genuit Imiza. Imiza genuit Ottonem.

The literal meaning of this is:

"Gebhard and Udo grandsons, sons of two brothers. Gebhard fathered Cuno.
Udo fathered Otto [presumably a scribal error for Heribert]. Cuno
fathered Cuno, Heribert fathered Otto. Likewise from the other side:
Godefrid and Gerberga grandson and granddaughter. Godefrid fathered
Irmingard. Gerberga gave birth to Imiza. Imiza gave birth to Otto."

Note that the writer left out - and perhaps did not know - the exact connection of the implicit grandparent/s with Godefrid and Gerberga, who
may have been children of a sister and brother, of two sisters or of two brothers, while knowing and recording that Gebhard and Udo were sons of
two brothers.

The second part, explaining the consanguinity between Otto and

Irmgard is

straightforward, and the identification of the different people by

Hlawithschka is

mostly accepted now.

The first part of the issue has two obvious issues that has puzzled

scholars. The first > issue is that Otto is first identified as son of
Udo, and then as son of Heribert. The

usual explanation is that the first Otto should have been Heribert,

leading to a

consistent text (even if some scholars, notably Donald Jackman, do

not agree to this > correction).

The second issue with the first part is that it has actually no

relation at all to the

consanguinity of Otto and Irmgard. So why did someone bother to work

out this

family tree? Hlawitschka's suggestion was that the Cuno who is

identified as a

relative of Otto was a witness in the case, and their consanguinity

was recorded to

give extra weight to his testimony.

I can't understand why several historians have taken up Hlawitschka's implausible suggestion that Cuno's ancestry was traced because he had
been a witness in the case. A third cousin on Otto's father's side is
not likely to have been considered especially knowledgeable about relationships on his mother's side - even a super-snob could hardly be expected to know such cognatic details on the basis of a distant agnatic cousinhood. As for the younger Cuno being a witness in the first place, although this can't be ruled out as impossible there is not a skerrick
of evidence for it. Two or three witnesses were required in order to
establish illicit consanguinity between a couple, and we have no
information about who provided such evidence in the case of Otto and Irmingard. But whoever they were, their evidence must have been given
before the assembly at Nijmegen on 16 March 1018 when the pair were excommunicated for refusing to separate. There is no reason at all to
suppose that one of these witnesses gave sworn evidence again at B|+rgel
after Pentecost (25 May) that year, the occasion when Thietmar reports
that his relative Otto came as a supplicant before the emperor and the archbishop of Mainz undertaking by three oaths/sacraments to repudiate
his illicit wife ("Oddo comes predictus in presentiam inperatoris [sic]
et Ercanbaldi archipresulis supplex veniens iniustam uxorem suam tribus sacramentis amisit"). Hlawitschka drew an unwarranted connection between
the three oaths/sacraments mentioned at B|+rgel after 25 May and the two
or three unnamed witnesses at - or much more probably before - the
Nijmegen excommunication on 16 March.

The mention of three oaths/sacraments is difficult to interpret
conclusively. Timothy Reuter took this to mean that Otto himself swore a three-fold oath, presumably to the emperor, the archbishop and the
assembly of his fellow magnates, but in any case to recipients with whom
he soon felt ready to break faith under persuasion from his wife. Karl
Ubl suggested that Otto swore oaths to three bishops, but this is no
more satisfactory as an explanation since the ritual for lifting a
sentence of excommunication was performed by the penitent's bishop along
with twelve priests, not with other bishops.

An alternative meaning may be that Thietmar was talking episcopal "shop"
about this, to indicate that Otto submitted to a full year of penance -
a laymen was obliged to receive the eucharist three times in a year (at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost), so that "by three sacraments" here
could possibly refer elliptically to the annual duty of a communicant.
From late May in 1018 to Pentecost in 1019 (17 May) would have required
Otto to participate in (as opposed to merely attending) at least the
three obligatory eucharists.

While not impossible, I would like to propose an alternative, which I

think has not

been suggested before. It seems to me that the only plausible reason

to record the

consanguinity between Otto and Cuno is that Irmgard had a first

marriage to Cuno. > In this case her second marriage would not only be
tainted by her own

consanguinity with Otto, but also the consanguinity between her two

husbands. In

the eyes of the church, the consanguinity between her husbands would

be as bad as > the one between her and Otto, and so it would make sense
to record it. The text does > not say that Cuno and Otto were her
husbands, but neither does it say that Otto and > Irmgard were married,
so for the writer it was so obvious he did not see a need to

clarify this.

This seems to me to be overthinking the matter. The genealogy was
written, or at any rate copied, after the council of Seligenstadt on 12
August 1023. The writer evidently knew better and/or found more straightforward the agnatic Konradian relationships of Otto and his
third cousin Cuno than the cognatic connection to Irmingard. The degree
of consanguinity between Otto and Cuno may have been set down as the
more familiar sequence, to illustrate how far apart two people needed to
be by the Roman standard of more than 7 degrees - Otto and Irmingard
were related at this degree, whereas Otto and Cuno were one degree
further apart. The Roman computation had been superseded by the more
rigorous method applying in Germany, under which Otto and Irmengard were linked in 4 and 3 degrees respectively to their common ancestors rather
than in 7 to each other. By the time the genealogy was written Irmingard
had taken her appeal to Rome and Pope Benedict VIII had supported her -
even to the extent of withdrawing use of the pallium from the
then-archbishop of Mainz. The affinity that would have resulted from a
prior marriage of Irmingard to Otto's third cousin Cuno (which could
scarcely escape notice for more than 1000 years) would have made no
difference to the outcome, since the consanguinity was a degree closer
anyway.

Peter Stewart
--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG antivirus software.
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

raf Ceustermans wrote:

This has an interface which is quite comparable to the google groups one

Oh dear. When an online search has taken me into the middle of a Google Groups discussion I've found the discussion structure quite
incomprehensible and nothing like the neatly threaded format I'm used to
on a Usenet client.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On Tue, 6 Aug 2024 1:45:29 +0000, Peter Stewart wrote:

On 01-Aug-24 3:05 AM, raf Ceustermans wrote:

Op 29/07/2024 om 18:32 schreef raf Ceustermans:

You wrote:

The one subject that is guaranteed to cause controversy and

discussion is everything > surrounding the Conradines, the Hammerstein
notice and Richlind. So to check if

this group has any viability a topic on the Hammerstein notice seems

a good start.

As a reminder, in 1018 at a synod in Nijmwegen Otto von Hammerstein

and his

wife Irmgard were excommunicated because they were too closely

related. A notice > dating to c. 1023 concerning their consanguinity is preserved. It reads (https://

www.dmgh.de/mgh_const_1/index.htm#page/638/mode/1up):

Gebehard et Udo nepotes, filii duorum fratrum. Gebehard genuit

Cunonem. Udo

genuit Ottonem. Cuno genuit Cunonem. Heribertus genuit Ottonem. Item

ex alia

parte: Godefridus et Gerbirhe nepos et neptis. Godefridus genuit

Irmingardam.

Gerbirhe genuit Imiza. Imiza genuit Ottonem.

The literal meaning of this is:

"Gebhard and Udo grandsons, sons of two brothers. Gebhard fathered Cuno.
Udo fathered Otto [presumably a scribal error for Heribert]. Cuno
fathered Cuno, Heribert fathered Otto. Likewise from the other side:
Godefrid and Gerberga grandson and granddaughter. Godefrid fathered Irmingard. Gerberga gave birth to Imiza. Imiza gave birth to Otto."

Note that the writer left out - and perhaps did not know - the exact connection of the implicit grandparent/s with Godefrid and Gerberga, who
may have been children of a sister and brother, of two sisters or of two brothers, while knowing and recording that Gebhard and Udo were sons of
two brothers.

Yes this seems very strange for a legal document or at least an
explication of the judgement, basically 'we know they are related but
we're not quite sure exactly, but thats good enough for us!' I would
have thought any lawyer advocate even in those days would have made them
look complete fools.

The second part, explaining the consanguinity between Otto and

Irmgard is

straightforward, and the identification of the different people by

Hlawithschka is

mostly accepted now.

I assume that Godefrid is Godfrey the prisoner often called Count of
Verdun and his daughter Ermengard is the Irmgard [dc1042] who married
Otto of Hammerstein [d1036], but who are the others? From this it seems Gerberga was a cousin? of Count Godfrey and she had a daughter Imiza who married Heribert, Ottos father, so who do the experts think she was cos
there were many Gerbergas at this time. On the net Imiza is id as
Irmintrude mother of the wife of Frederick of Luxemburg [d1019], which
doesnt get us very far, and surely means that Frederick [Irmgardes
brother] and his unnamed wife were as closely related as Otto and
Irmgarde.

The names Irmgard and Imiza/Irmintrude recall those of the west frankish Carolingians, one of whom Irmintrude was the mother of Cunegunde wife of Wigeric who were the grandparents of Count Godfrey. As you say the text
doesnt say or care who Godfrey and Gerberga were grandchildren of, but
the generations are notably diffrent in that Godfreys daughter marries Gerbergas grandson.

The first part of the issue has two obvious issues that has puzzled

scholars. The first > issue is that Otto is first identified as son of
Udo, and then as son of Heribert. The

usual explanation is that the first Otto should have been Heribert,

leading to a

consistent text (even if some scholars, notably Donald Jackman, do

not agree to this > correction).

The second issue with the first part is that it has actually no

relation at all to the

consanguinity of Otto and Irmgard. So why did someone bother to work

out this

family tree? Hlawitschka's suggestion was that the Cuno who is

identified as a

relative of Otto was a witness in the case, and their consanguinity

was recorded to

give extra weight to his testimony.

I can't understand why several historians have taken up Hlawitschka's implausible suggestion that Cuno's ancestry was traced because he had
been a witness in the case. A third cousin on Otto's father's side is

snip

While not impossible, I would like to propose an alternative, which I

think has not

been suggested before. It seems to me that the only plausible reason

to record the

consanguinity between Otto and Cuno is that Irmgard had a first

marriage to Cuno. > In this case her second marriage would not only be tainted by her own

consanguinity with Otto, but also the consanguinity

Sort of along the same lines but an earlier gen, could Gerberga whose
husband isnt named, been the wife of one of these chaps on Ottos
ancestry in the first section?

On the net these Cunos seem id as Conrad [I] d982 and his son Conrad
[II] duke of Swabia [d997] 1 of whom is seen by some (I think Armin Wolf
said [II], Jackman said [I]) as the mysterious Cuno of Ohningen said [in
the later Welf genealogy] to have married the daughter of Otto the Great
called Richlint although it seems he had no such daughter. However their 'revisionist' schema seems to become enshrined on the net due to it
appearing in the revised vol 1.1 of Europaische Stammtafeln Tafel 9 by Schwennicke. Settipani also wrote on this subject in Francia 23, 1996
but I havnt read it yet.

Mike


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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On 07-Aug-24 10:45 AM, miked wrote:

On Tue, 6 Aug 2024 1:45:29 +0000, Peter Stewart wrote:

On 01-Aug-24 3:05 AM, raf Ceustermans wrote:

Op 29/07/2024 om 18:32 schreef raf Ceustermans:

You wrote:

The one subject that is guaranteed to cause controversy and

discussion is everything > surrounding the Conradines, the Hammerstein
notice and Richlind. So to check if

this group has any viability a topic on the Hammerstein notice seems

a good start.

As a reminder, in 1018 at a synod in Nijmwegen Otto von Hammerstein

and his

wife Irmgard were excommunicated because they were too closely

related. A notice > dating to c. 1023 concerning their consanguinity is
preserved. It reads (https://

www.dmgh.de/mgh_const_1/index.htm#page/638/mode/1up):

Gebehard et Udo nepotes, filii duorum fratrum. Gebehard genuit

Cunonem. Udo

genuit Ottonem. Cuno genuit Cunonem. Heribertus genuit Ottonem. Item

ex alia

parte: Godefridus et Gerbirhe nepos et neptis. Godefridus genuit

Irmingardam.

Gerbirhe genuit Imiza. Imiza genuit Ottonem.

The literal meaning of this is:

"Gebhard and Udo grandsons, sons of two brothers. Gebhard fathered Cuno.
Udo fathered Otto [presumably a scribal error for Heribert]. Cuno
fathered Cuno, Heribert fathered Otto. Likewise from the other side:
Godefrid and Gerberga grandson and granddaughter. Godefrid fathered
Irmingard. Gerberga gave birth to Imiza. Imiza gave birth to Otto."

Note that the writer left out - and perhaps did not know - the exact
connection of the implicit grandparent/s with Godefrid and Gerberga, who
may have been children of a sister and brother, of two sisters or of two
brothers, while knowing and recording that Gebhard and Udo were sons of
two brothers.

Yes this seems very strange for a legal document or at least an
explication of the judgement, basically 'we know they are related but
we're not quite sure exactly, but thats good enough for us!' I would
have thought any lawyer advocate even in those days would have made them
look complete fools.

This wasn't a legal record, but just a notice appended in two extant manuscripts to the canons of the councils of Seligenstadt (12 August
1023) and Tribur palace (1036), in a mostly 11th-century codex from
Saint-Omer and in an 11th/12th-century codex from Christina of Sweden's collection now in the Vatican - for the latter see here (folio 176v): https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.979.

The adjudication against Otto and Irmingard over their consanguinity had
been made before they were excommunicated at Nijmegen on 16 March 1018.
The legal process after that was about trying to enforce their
separation rather than about deciding whether or not this must happen.

The purpose of the genealogical notice was evidently comparing Otto's
legally established but unfamiliar 3rd degree relationship to Irmingard
with his better-known 4th degree connection to the younger Cuno - that
is, after she had taken her appeal to Rome, comparing a 3rd-degree relationship that may or may not have obtained papal permission (as it
did) with a 4th-degree one that almost certainly would have been allowed
(i.e. Otto could have married a sister of the younger Cuno, or vice
versa, according to the pope's approach, whereas going by precedent
Irmingard stood in a less clearly permissible proximity to her husband).

The hypocrisy and misogyny of the archbishops of Mainz on this score was
made clear when the incest-zealot emperor Heinrich II died in 1024 and
Konrad II was elected to succeed him. Konrad was married to his
4th-degree relative Gisela - and yet the archbishop of Mainz crowned
him, though declining to do so for his wife.

The foolishness of unsustainable strictures against marriage in the
Roman 7th degree (i.e. second cousins once removed, as were Otto and Irmingard) could only have been instituted by celibate clerics who had
never had to think about the difficulty of finding allowable wives for themselves.

The second part, explaining the consanguinity between Otto and

Irmgard is

straightforward, and the identification of the different people by

Hlawithschka is

mostly accepted now.

I assume that Godefrid is Godfrey the prisoner often called Count of
Verdun and his daughter Ermengard is the Irmgard [dc1042] who married
Otto of Hammerstein [d1036], but who are the others? From this it seems Gerberga was a cousin? of Count Godfrey and she had a daughter Imiza who married Heribert, Ottos father, so who do the experts think she was cos
there were many Gerbergas at this time. On the net Imiza is id as
Irmintrude mother of the wife of Frederick of Luxemburg [d1019], which
doesnt get us very far, and surely means that Frederick [Irmgardes
brother] and his unnamed wife were as closely related as Otto and
Irmgarde.

Yes, Irmingard was almost certainly a daughter of Godefrid the Prisoner
(this has been questioned, not at all convincingly in my view).
Godefrid's mother Odo (or Uoda) was most probably a sister of Gerberga's father, another Godefrid (count palatine in Lorraine), both children of Gerhard I of Metz (killed in battle on 22 June 910) and Oda of Saxony
(the widow of King Zwentibold). Gerberga married Megingoz (died ca
998/99), who was count in the Avelgau where they founded Vilich abbey.
Imiza's sister Adelheid, abbess of Vilich, Otto's maternal aunt, is
venerated as joint-patron saint of Bonn.

The names Irmgard and Imiza/Irmintrude recall those of the west frankish Carolingians, one of whom Irmintrude was the mother of Cunegunde wife of Wigeric who were the grandparents of Count Godfrey. As you say the text doesnt say or care who Godfrey and Gerberga were grandchildren of, but
the generations are notably diffrent in that Godfreys daughter marries Gerbergas grandson.

The first part of the issue has two obvious issues that has puzzled

scholars. The first > issue is that Otto is first identified as son of
Udo, and then as son of Heribert. The

usual explanation is that the first Otto should have been Heribert,

leading to a

consistent text (even if some scholars, notably Donald Jackman, do

not agree to this > correction).

The second issue with the first part is that it has actually no

relation at all to the

consanguinity of Otto and Irmgard. So why did someone bother to work

out this

family tree? Hlawitschka's suggestion was that the Cuno who is

identified as a

relative of Otto was a witness in the case, and their consanguinity

was recorded to

give extra weight to his testimony.

I can't understand why several historians have taken up Hlawitschka's
implausible suggestion that Cuno's ancestry was traced because he had
been a witness in the case. A third cousin on Otto's father's side is

snip

While not impossible, I would like to propose an alternative, which I

think has not

been suggested before. It seems to me that the only plausible reason

to record the

consanguinity between Otto and Cuno is that Irmgard had a first

marriage to Cuno. > In this case her second marriage would not only be
tainted by her own

consanguinity with Otto, but also the consanguinity

Sort of along the same lines but an earlier gen, could Gerberga whose
husband isnt named, been the wife of one of these chaps on Ottos
ancestry in the first section?

No, her husband Megingoz was not a Konradian. In 1893 Theodor Lindner suggested that a double consnaguinity was behind the genealogical
notice, that all four of the top-named ancestors (Gebhard Udo, Godefrid
and Gerberga) were siblings. This is not possible by any stretch of
half-blood imaginings, and the connections worked out cogently by Eduard Hlawitschka have been generally accepted.

On the net these Cunos seem id as Conrad [I] d982 and his son Conrad
[II] duke of Swabia [d997] 1 of whom is seen by some (I think Armin Wolf
said [II], Jackman said [I]) as the mysterious Cuno of Ohningen said [in
the later Welf genealogy] to have married the daughter of Otto the Great called Richlint although it seems he had no such daughter. However their 'revisionist' schema seems to become enshrined on the net due to it
appearing in the revised vol 1.1 of Europaische Stammtafeln Tafel 9 by Schwennicke. Settipani also wrote on this subject in Francia 23, 1996
but I havnt read it yet.

The problems of the Konradian genealogy are too complex for useful
discussion here. The illuminating article by Christian Settipani and Jean-Pierre Poly, Les Conradiens: un d|-bat toujours ouvert, in *Francia*
23 (1996) can be read/downloaded here: https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/fr/article/view/59670.

Peter Stewart
--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG antivirus software.
www.avg.com
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On 06-Aug-24 11:45 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:

I can't understand why several historians have taken up Hlawitschka's implausible suggestion that Cuno's ancestry was traced because he had
been a witness in the case. A third cousin on Otto's father's side is
not likely to have been considered especially knowledgeable about relationships on his mother's side - even a super-snob could hardly be expected to know such cognatic details on the basis of a distant agnatic cousinhood. As for the younger Cuno being a witness in the first place, although this can't be ruled out as impossible there is not a skerrick
of evidence for it. Two or three witnesses were required in order to establish illicit consanguinity between a couple, and we have no
information about who provided such evidence in the case of Otto and Irmingard. But whoever they were, their evidence must have been given
before the assembly at Nijmegen on 16 March 1018 when the pair were excommunicated for refusing to separate. There is no reason at all to suppose that one of these witnesses gave sworn evidence again at B|+rgel after Pentecost (25 May) that year, the occasion when Thietmar reports
that his relative Otto came as a supplicant before the emperor and the archbishop of Mainz undertaking by three oaths/sacraments to repudiate
his illicit wife ("Oddo comes predictus in presentiam inperatoris [sic]
et Ercanbaldi archipresulis supplex veniens iniustam uxorem suam tribus sacramentis amisit"). Hlawitschka drew an unwarranted connection between
the three oaths/sacraments mentioned at B|+rgel after 25 May and the two
or three unnamed witnesses at - or much more probably before - the
Nijmegen excommunication on 16 March.

The mention of three oaths/sacraments is difficult to interpret conclusively. Timothy Reuter took this to mean that Otto himself swore a three-fold oath, presumably to the emperor, the archbishop and the
assembly of his fellow magnates, but in any case to recipients with whom
he soon felt ready to break faith under persuasion from his wife. Karl
Ubl suggested that Otto swore oaths to three bishops, but this is no
more satisfactory as an explanation since the ritual for lifting a
sentence of excommunication was performed by the penitent's bishop along with twelve priests, not with other bishops.

An alternative meaning may be that Thietmar was talking episcopal "shop" about this, to indicate that Otto submitted to a full year of penance -
a laymen was obliged to receive the eucharist three times in a year (at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost), so that "by three sacraments" here
could possibly refer elliptically to the annual duty of a communicant.
From late May in 1018 to Pentecost in 1019 (17 May) would have required Otto to participate in (as opposed to merely attending) at least the
three obligatory eucharists.

On reflection this conjectural reading should be withdrawn - Karl Ubl
was almost certainly correct in assuming that Otto swore oaths to three bishops.

His excommunication was presumably already lifted before his oath became acceptable, and there was a precedent for swearing to three bishops in
the case of Godila in 1007. As a widow she was forbidden by her own
bishop, Arnulf of Halberstadt, to enter into a second marriage with her relative Hermann, and she swore to three bishops that she would comply
but then was excommunicated by Arnulf for persisting in her illicit
union. Thietmar of Merseburg, a nephew of her first husband, reported
this in his chronicle: "Et tunc [Godila] consanguineo suimet Hirimanno
nupsit, nil curans inpositum ab Arnulfo presule bannum et, quod dexteras episcoporum sibi hoc a Deo interdicencium fefellit trium. Propter hoc
est excommunicationis gladio ab antistite predicto iugulata nullamque in procreanda prole spem deinceps adipiscitur".

The last sentence of this account says that Godila was left with no hope
of future offspring, evidently meaning that while excommunicated she
could have no further children who would be considered legitimate. Otto
and Irmingard were in a different circumstance, since their marriage had already produced offspring before they were ordered to separate. Whether
or nor their son Udo should be disinherited as a bastard, despite his
having been born before their marriage was openly discredited, was a
grey area under canon law - Burchard of Worms had recently set down that
the offspring of illicit couples were to be denied inheritance ("ab haereditate repellunt"), but also that separated couples were each
permitted to enter into legal marriages ("Sane quibus conjunctio
illicita interdicitur, habebunt ineundi melioris conjugii libertatem").
This makes it unlikely that the younger Cuno's lineage was traced in the interests of the distant Konradian agnate as a potential heir to Otto's
vast allodial possessions if his offspring by Irmingard were to be disinherited, as suggested by Johannes Fried in 1995. If Otto took
another wife he could still have legitimate heirs, and since there was
no question of capital punishment for his offense that possibility was
not closed off by the time the genealogy was recorded.

Peter Stewart
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On Wed, 7 Aug 2024 1:42:09 +0000, Peter Stewart wrote:

On 07-Aug-24 10:45 AM, miked wrote:

On Tue, 6 Aug 2024 1:45:29 +0000, Peter Stewart wrote:

On 01-Aug-24 3:05 AM, raf Ceustermans wrote:

Op 29/07/2024 om 18:32 schreef raf Ceustermans:

You wrote:

The one subject that is guaranteed to cause controversy and

discussion is everything > surrounding the Conradines, the Hammerstein
notice and Richlind. So to check if

this group has any viability a topic on the Hammerstein notice seems >>> a good start.

As a reminder, in 1018 at a synod in Nijmwegen Otto von Hammerstein

and his

wife Irmgard were excommunicated because they were too closely

related. A notice > dating to c. 1023 concerning their consanguinity is
preserved. It reads (https://

www.dmgh.de/mgh_const_1/index.htm#page/638/mode/1up):

Gebehard et Udo nepotes, filii duorum fratrum. Gebehard genuit

Cunonem. Udo

genuit Ottonem. Cuno genuit Cunonem. Heribertus genuit Ottonem. Item >>> ex alia
parte: Godefridus et Gerbirhe nepos et neptis. Godefridus genuit

Irmingardam.

Gerbirhe genuit Imiza. Imiza genuit Ottonem.

The literal meaning of this is:

"Gebhard and Udo grandsons, sons of two brothers. Gebhard fathered Cuno. >>> Udo fathered Otto [presumably a scribal error for Heribert]. Cuno
fathered Cuno, Heribert fathered Otto. Likewise from the other side:
Godefrid and Gerberga grandson and granddaughter. Godefrid fathered
Irmingard. Gerberga gave birth to Imiza. Imiza gave birth to Otto."

Note that the writer left out - and perhaps did not know - the exact
connection of the implicit grandparent/s with Godefrid and Gerberga, who >>> may have been children of a sister and brother, of two sisters or of two >>> brothers, while knowing and recording that Gebhard and Udo were sons of
two brothers.

Yes this seems very strange for a legal document or at least an
explication of the judgement, basically 'we know they are related but
we're not quite sure exactly, but thats good enough for us!' I would
have thought any lawyer advocate even in those days would have made them
look complete fools.

This wasn't a legal record, but just a notice appended in two extant manuscripts to the canons of the councils of Seligenstadt (12 August
1023) and Tribur palace (1036), in a mostly 11th-century codex from Saint-Omer and in an 11th/12th-century codex from Christina of Sweden's collection now in the Vatican - for the latter see here (folio 176v): https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.979.

The adjudication against Otto and Irmingard over their consanguinity had
been made before they were excommunicated at Nijmegen on 16 March 1018.
The legal process after that was about trying to enforce their
separation rather than about deciding whether or not this must happen.

The purpose of the genealogical notice was evidently comparing Otto's
legally established but unfamiliar 3rd degree relationship to Irmingard
with his better-known 4th degree connection to the younger Cuno - that
is, after she had taken her appeal to Rome, comparing a 3rd-degree relationship that may or may not have obtained papal permission (as it
did) with a 4th-degree one that almost certainly would have been allowed (i.e. Otto could have married a sister of the younger Cuno, or vice
versa, according to the pope's approach, whereas going by precedent
Irmingard stood in a less clearly permissible proximity to her husband).

The hypocrisy and misogyny of the archbishops of Mainz on this score was
made clear when the incest-zealot emperor Heinrich II died in 1024 and
Konrad II was elected to succeed him. Konrad was married to his
4th-degree relative Gisela - and yet the archbishop of Mainz crowned
him, though declining to do so for his wife.

The foolishness of unsustainable strictures against marriage in the
Roman 7th degree (i.e. second cousins once removed, as were Otto and Irmingard) could only have been instituted by celibate clerics who had
never had to think about the difficulty of finding allowable wives for themselves.

The second part, explaining the consanguinity between Otto and

Irmgard is

straightforward, and the identification of the different people by

Hlawithschka is

mostly accepted now.

I assume that Godefrid is Godfrey the prisoner often called Count of
Verdun and his daughter Ermengard is the Irmgard [dc1042] who married
Otto of Hammerstein [d1036], but who are the others? From this it seems
Gerberga was a cousin? of Count Godfrey and she had a daughter Imiza who
married Heribert, Ottos father, so who do the experts think she was cos
there were many Gerbergas at this time. On the net Imiza is id as
Irmintrude mother of the wife of Frederick of Luxemburg [d1019], which
doesnt get us very far, and surely means that Frederick [Irmgardes
brother] and his unnamed wife were as closely related as Otto and
Irmgarde.

Yes, Irmingard was almost certainly a daughter of Godefrid the Prisoner
(this has been questioned, not at all convincingly in my view).
Godefrid's mother Odo (or Uoda) was most probably a sister of Gerberga's father, another Godefrid (count palatine in Lorraine), both children of Gerhard I of Metz (killed in battle on 22 June 910) and Oda of Saxony
(the widow of King Zwentibold). Gerberga married Megingoz (died ca
998/99), who was count in the Avelgau where they founded Vilich abbey. Imiza's sister Adelheid, abbess of Vilich, Otto's maternal aunt, is
venerated as joint-patron saint of Bonn.

The names Irmgard and Imiza/Irmintrude recall those of the west frankish
Carolingians, one of whom Irmintrude was the mother of Cunegunde wife of
Wigeric who were the grandparents of Count Godfrey. As you say the text
doesnt say or care who Godfrey and Gerberga were grandchildren of, but
the generations are notably diffrent in that Godfreys daughter marries
Gerbergas grandson.

The first part of the issue has two obvious issues that has puzzled

scholars. The first > issue is that Otto is first identified as son of
Udo, and then as son of Heribert. The

usual explanation is that the first Otto should have been Heribert,

leading to a

consistent text (even if some scholars, notably Donald Jackman, do

not agree to this > correction).

The second issue with the first part is that it has actually no

relation at all to the

consanguinity of Otto and Irmgard. So why did someone bother to work >>> out this
family tree? Hlawitschka's suggestion was that the Cuno who is

identified as a

relative of Otto was a witness in the case, and their consanguinity

was recorded to

give extra weight to his testimony.

I can't understand why several historians have taken up Hlawitschka's
implausible suggestion that Cuno's ancestry was traced because he had
been a witness in the case. A third cousin on Otto's father's side is

snip

While not impossible, I would like to propose an alternative, which I >>> think has not
been suggested before. It seems to me that the only plausible reason >>> to record the
consanguinity between Otto and Cuno is that Irmgard had a first

marriage to Cuno. > In this case her second marriage would not only be
tainted by her own

consanguinity with Otto, but also the consanguinity

Sort of along the same lines but an earlier gen, could Gerberga whose
husband isnt named, been the wife of one of these chaps on Ottos
ancestry in the first section?

No, her husband Megingoz was not a Konradian. In 1893 Theodor Lindner suggested that a double consnaguinity was behind the genealogical
notice, that all four of the top-named ancestors (Gebhard Udo, Godefrid
and Gerberga) were siblings. This is not possible by any stretch of half-blood imaginings, and the connections worked out cogently by Eduard Hlawitschka have been generally accepted.

On the net these Cunos seem id as Conrad [I] d982 and his son Conrad
[II] duke of Swabia [d997] 1 of whom is seen by some (I think Armin Wolf
said [II], Jackman said [I]) as the mysterious Cuno of Ohningen said [in
the later Welf genealogy] to have married the daughter of Otto the Great
called Richlint although it seems he had no such daughter. However their
'revisionist' schema seems to become enshrined on the net due to it
appearing in the revised vol 1.1 of Europaische Stammtafeln Tafel 9 by
Schwennicke. Settipani also wrote on this subject in Francia 23, 1996
but I havnt read it yet.

The problems of the Konradian genealogy are too complex for useful
discussion here. The illuminating article by Christian Settipani and Jean-Pierre Poly, Les Conradiens: un d|-bat toujours ouvert, in *Francia*
23 (1996) can be read/downloaded here: https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/fr/article/view/59670.

Peter Stewart

Belated thanks for this and the link to the Settipani article.

Mike
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From Newsgroup: soc.genealogy.medieval

On 8/6/2024 4:27 AM, Ian Goddard wrote:

raf Ceustermans wrote:

This has an interface which is quite comparable to the google groups one

Oh dear.-a When an online search has taken me into the middle of a Google Groups discussion I've found the discussion structure quite
incomprehensible and nothing like the neatly threaded format I'm used to
on a Usenet client.

Well, it took a few months, but I figured out how to get into this
Eternal September / Thunderbird combo. Now its time to catch up on old messages.

1) Why does it appear Narkive has nothing newer than 4 months old
archived of the group? (https://soc.genealogy.medieval.narkive.com/)

2) There was a flurry of responses to my messages bidding "RIP" to
"Eternal September", and yes, apologies for the confusion, I did not
mean the website. I meant that "Eternal September" started years ago
when the newsgroups became flooded with new users dumping crap into
Usenet when colleges came back into session that fateful year back in
1993, and that event is what the website is named after. Since the end
of google groups means the end of easy access to Usenet, the "eternal" September has definitely, officially, ended, 31 years later!

--Joe Cook
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