everything we know about a certain filiation, because nothing else survives
to make the point. This, however, is one case in which additional evidence
would make Poull's interpretation more convincing.
Stepmother/stepchild relationships were common in the Middle Ages & there
are easily provable cases in which stepchildren or children-in-law referred
to a father's second wife or a mother-in-law as "mother." Edward I's wife
Eleanor of Castile, for example, called Eleanor of Provence "sa mere et la
nostre" in at least one instance [P.R.O., S.C. 1/30/44 (Blanquefort, 17 Jan.
1287], & Edward II often called his stepmother Margaret of France his
"mother." The document cited by Poull could well fall into this polite mode
of address or reference to a stepmother.
Regards
John P.
From: "Peter Stewart" <p_m_stewart@msn.com
To: GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: Louvain-Ponthieu link?
Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 06:21:49 GMT
""John Parsons"" <carmi47@msn.com> wrote in message
news:BAY7-F11438E54D0B77F0E10C8D6B2390@phx.gbl...
snip
According to _Genealogia ducum Brabantiae heredum Franciae_, ed. G.
Waitz
(MGH SS 23) p. 390, & _Chronica Albrici monachi Trium Fontium_, ed. P.
Scheffer-Boichorst (MGH SS 23) p. 871, Count Henry III of Louvain &
Gertrude of Flanders had 4 daus. Neither chronicler names any of the
four, & the only information given about any of them is that one was a
great-grandmother of Empress Beatrice of Burgundy, second wife of
Frederick Barbarossa. Based on this statement, that dau. has been
identified as follows:
1. Adelaide d. ca 1159 m. Duke Simon of Lorraine (her stepbrother).
If Georges Poull was correct in his revised views on the parentage of Duke
Simon I, then a different solution would have to be found - in _La Maison
ducale de Lorraine devenue La Maison impériale et royale d'Autriche, de
Hongrie et de Bohême_ (Nancy, 1991) he gave Simon as the eldest son of Duke
Thierry II not by his first wife, Hedwig of Formbach, but from his second
marriage, to Gertrude of Flanders, citing a charter of 11 April 1126 naming
his father Thierry and his mother Gertrude. Consequently Simon would have
been a uterine half-brother of the daughters Gertrude had from her first
marriage, so that his wife could not have been one of them.
Poull considered that Simon's wife Duchess Adelaide was a maternal
half-sibling of Emperor Lothar II von Supplinburg - daughter of her
father-in-law Thierry's first wife Hedwig of Formbach - rather than Simon
himself being this lady's son as had been thought previously.
Have you ruled this out, and if so can you tell us the reasons?
Peter Stewart