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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2005-08 > 1123396051
From: "Peter Stewart" < >
Subject: Re: Henry of Poitou, Abbot of Peterborough 1127-
Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2005 06:27:31 GMT
References: <1e.4a9d180c.3023ad22@aol.com> <1123200317.130180.322710@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <1123201219.480115.182770@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <42f3e964@news.ColoState.EDU>
"Todd A. Farmerie" < > wrote in message
news: ...
> Peter Stewart wrote:
>> Richardson wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>>King Henry I and Count Guillaume of Poitou were both descended from
>>>the Dukes of Normandy and from the French kings. I assume Henry of
>>>Poitou shared both of these connections as well. Can anyone identify
>>>Henry of Poitou's parentage?
>>
>> From memory, he was an illegitimate son of Duke William the Troubadour
>> (paternal grandfather of Alienor of Aquitaine) by his mistress Mauberge
>> (aka Dangerosse, the wife of Aimery, viscount of Chtellerault and
>> maternal grandmother of Alienor).
>
> I have a chart that shows him as legitimate son of William. I don't trust
> this chart as far as I can throw it, but since Peter was going from
> memory, can anyone confirm his account.
According to Alfred Richard, the attribution of Henri de Poitou, a prior of
Cluny who became the wayward abbot of Saint-Jean d'Angly and Peterborough,
as a third son of William the Troubadour was an error of Jean Besly in
_Histoire des comtes de Poictou et ducs de Guyenne_ (Paris, 1647), p. 127.
Richard showed that this man must have been a good deal older than William's
children born after 1094, citing first a charter of Cluny dated 1100
witnessed by "domno Heynrico priore", and the list in _Gallia christiana_
showing only one prior at the abbey in the 12th century named Henry. Richard
suggested that the origin of Besly's mistake was a passage in William of
Tyre about a purported brother of Raimond of Antioch - in book 14, chapter
20: "Interseritur etiam pactis quod si domini Raimundi frater Henricus
nomine in partes descenderet Antiochenas, dominus patriarcha fideliter
elaboraret quomodo puelle matrem, domini Boamundi viduam, cum duabus urbibus
maritimis et earum finibus haberet uxorem" (It was also added to the
stipulations that if the lord Raimond's brother named Henry should come down
to Antioch, the lord patriarch would sincerely try to bring about that he
would have as wife the girl's mother, lord Bohemund's widow, along with two
port cities and their countryside). The widow in question was Raimond's
prospective mother-in-law Alix of Rethel, daughter of King Balduin II - the
supposed brother Henry is unidentified, but these events took place in the
mid-1130s and the partiarch was hardly referring to a discredited abbot in
France who had died some years before then (in January 1131).
Of William the Troubadour's four daughters apart from Agnes, nothing is
known for certain. However, Alienor of Aquitaine apparently referred to
another Agnes - known as "de Barbezieux", abbess of Notre-Dame at Saintes -
as her "aunt", and Richard thought this might have been one of them. He
doesn't give a reference, and without some firmer evidence it seems
implausible to me.
I can't find any evidence to link Henri "de Poitou" as a nephew of William
the Troubadour's mother Audiardis of Burgundy, as Richard claimed. The name
was certainly current in her family, but none of her half-siblings settled
in Poitou and if a nephew had followed her there he would more probably have
become known as "Henry the Burgundian" anyway.
Peter Stewart
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