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From: John Carmi Parsons< >
Subject: Re: Agatha of Hungary (or not of Hungary)
Date: 24 Nov 1998 03:45:03 -0800
Several points come to mind in reading Kelly's comments. First and most
compelling (to me, anyway) is whether we can rely on 11th-century English
reports about what Agatha's parentage was *thought* to be. One confused
chronicler could have touched off the whole confused train of thought,
with other chroniclers merely repeating what the first confused fellow had
written. Remember, there IS evidence that the short-lived twin brother of
Agatha's husband HAD married an Hungarian king's daughter, and an English
chronicler might well have conflated the two wives. Vajay's system at least
fits the imperial kingship criterion--and an English chronicler might well
have got just that sort of FAMILY connection right, yet still muff an exact
geographical origin for Agatha.
I'm not sure what bearing Byzantine names have on any argument because no
such names occur among Agatha's immediate descendants. Most of St
Margaret's children bore Anglo-Saxon names (her son Alexander is known to have
been named to honor the pope, and David is of course Biblical.)
John Parsons
On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Don Stone wrote:
> This is certainly true for published discussions of Agatha's parentage
> [i.e., that she was NOT Hungarian].
> However, Prof. David H. Kelley recently made the following comments to
> me on the matter of Agatha's parentage:
>
> Even if one accepts Yaroslav, which I think is a reasonable explanation,
> one still should have some sort of Hungarian wife, because it seems to
> me that the evidence from Britain is awfully strong in favor of actual
> Hungarian lineage (which, of course, Vajay's explanation doesn't supply,
> and neither does the new one, but there's no reason that Yaroslav
> couldn't have had half a dozen other wives).
>
> Kelley goes on to point out that Byzantine names were used in the
> Hungarian family as well as in the Russian family.
>
> -- Don Stone
>
>
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