First, I don't think that the comparison of Medieval Lands with the
Hull database or Royalty for Commoners (RFC) is fair. Both Hull and
RFC belong to the "I'll believe practically anything that is written
down somewhere" school of genealogy, and well deserve the contempt
which has been heaped upon them. The Hull database lists sources
separately, not indicating which sources were used where except in a
vague way. RFC at least lists sources for individual genealogies,
making it sometimes possible to be led to a useful source, at least in
those cases where the source has not been fabricated.
In my opinion, Medieval Lands is nowhere near so bad as those two
sources. At the very least, it is more useful as a finding aid than
either of those two sources could hope to be. On the other hand,
Medieval Lands comes nowhere close to being what it claims to be.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the Introduction (taken from the
Intro.pdf file available on the site), with comments:
In this work, the families of rulers and nobility in
more than 140 geographical and political entities in
medieval Europe and western Asia are being reconstructed
from scratch. The outline tables on royal and noble
families presented in the Europäische Stammtafeln series
provide the basic informational framework.
These two sentences are in direct contradiction to each other. If the
tables from ES are being used as a "framework", then it is clear that
the genealogies are not being "reconstructed from scratch."
Medieval Lands represents a major new approach to the
presentation of royal and noble families.
This is not only false, it is a (most likely unintentional) insult to
the many quality genealogical works which have appeared using careful
citations from primary sources. While it is true that the vast
majority of genealogical publications lack adequate documentation,
there are notable exceptions. To suggest that such documentation
represents a "major new approach" is outrageous.
Secondly, there is a tendency to copy information from
previously published secondary works without adequate
verification against primary sources. This has resulted
in connections which started life as speculative being
transformed into apparent certainty, and the perpetuation
of errors.
While this is a valid criticism regarding many (in fact, too many)
sources, it also applies to Medieval Lands itself. While ES seems to
have almost "Gospel" status among some novice genealogists, it is in
fact quite weak for the early medieval period. By using ES as a
framework, the author has started out with more errors than he
realizes.
I also think that FMG bears their share of the responsibility for the
misrepresentation which has been mentioned here and elsewhere.
Looking at the FMG home page, they certainly give the appearance that
they are endorsing the work.
What Mr. Cawley does as a result of the criticisms which have been
made about his page will go a long way in determining the future of
his project. I would suggest that he temporarily set aside his
attempt to cover all of Europe for the entire Middle Ages, and try
making a more detailed study of some group of nobility that is
sufficiently limited in both time and geography that he can make
himself thoroughly familiar with the primary and secondary literature
on the topic chosen. One can learn more from the careful exploration
of a small corner of the field than from many glimpses of the larger
picture. And regardless of whether or not he takes this advice, Mr.
Cawley should at the very least completely rewrite the introduction to
more adequately reflect the current contents of the project.
Stewart Baldwin