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From: "Peter Stewart" < >
Subject: Re: Robert II of France to Maud de Bernake (was CP Addition:..)
Date: 25 Aug 2005 17:57:24 -0700
References: <cd.2f3a270f.303f7479@aol.com> <5QrPe.10379$FA3.2923@news-server.bigpond.net.au> <1125016061.339212.21070@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>


John Ravilious wrote:

<snip>

> I will also look into the archives re: Manasses de Ramerupt and
> the issue of his Capetian (or non-Capetian) marriage.

I might have posted this or something like it before:

The alleged relationship between King Robert II and Constance, wife of
Manasser, count of Dammartin, was conjectured fairly assertively by
Joseph Depoin in 1912, largely on the ground of onomastics, and the
case was put forward again more circumspectly by Jean-Noël Mathieu in
a 1996 paper. However, it remains open to doubt for several reasons.

First, the name Constance is stated to have been uncommon at this time
in northern France, and furthermore its introduction to the Dammartin
lineage was followed in the next generation by the names Odo and Hugo,
belonging also in the royal family. Mathieu considered that Dammartin
was probably given to Manasser by Robert along with his daughter in
1023, but this line of argument is rendered nearly circular with the
suggestion that Robert might have contracted the union of his daughter
with the younger son of a minor supporter in order to take advantage of
Dammartin's strategic location on the route from Paris to Soissons
and Laon. So the king gave away Dammartin with the bride and yet gave
the bride to obtain Dammartin: even allowing for shades of grey in the
circumstances, it is hard to see why the gift of an important lordship,
elevated to comital rank, would not have achieved a consolidation of
alliances on its own, without the addition of a daughter who might have
been more profitably bestowed upon someone else of higher rank and
pre-existing power.

Since Constance of Arles had been Robert's wife for around twenty
years in 1023, it is also hard to see why her name could not have been
adopted in this interval by unrelated aristocratic families wishing to
compliment the queen as a girl's god-mother; or, since the quality of
constancy was admired without reference to her, the queen's name was
apt enough to be used independently of the royal court. So for that
matter were Odo and Hugo, which had both become fairly commonplace by
the late tenth century.

The name Constance was certainly not unexampled in previous and
contemporary generations to the north of the queen's original home in
Provence, in lesser noble families amongst which a younger son like
Manasser might have found his bride: for instance, Constance, wife of
Odo, occurs ca 980 in a charter of Cluny. Other instances of this name
during Robert's reign appear in charters at Bourges, Ainay and
Poitiers, while the masculine form Constantius remained a popular name
in Poitou throughout four centuries around the year 1000. So the
onomastics are by no means compelling for a royal connection of the
countess of Dammartin.

The only further evidences adduced by Mathieu are a single charter
given by Count Manasser in the presence of the king, the queen and
their sons in 1031, and the fact that his successor and presumed
descendant Renard was described as 'consanguineus' to King Philippe II.
However, Mathieu himself admits that the latter can be explained by
different hypotheses, while as to the former, any count might be
expected to have attended the king and witnessed charters along with
him, and there is certainly no indication of a family relationship in
the cited example.

Mathieu also remarked that, according to Glaber, Robert and Constance
had two daughters, who are both accounted for without the countess of
Dammartin. By means of a forced ingenuity, Mathieu adds that Glaber did
not specify there were _only_ two daughters.

At best the case is unproven. A charter given by Manasser and his sons
in the presence of King Robert, Queen Constance and their sons, and
another given later by Manasser's heir in the presence of their son
King Henri I do not allude to any relationship between the respective
families. NB Constance of Dammartin was evidently dead before the
latter charter, which was dated 9 August without year: this cannot have
been earlier than 1038 or later than 1059.

Peter Stewart



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