Peter,
That's the problem. I have read them to well. Your are a contributant
whose posts I carefully read. Your post are often a source of learning,
an enlightment. I read and reread what I wrote the last time and your
following answer. An answer not directed to me but definitely an
answer, and a selective one if I may remark. Were I sit pondering over
the correct words you often seem to rush to counter, hence the typos.
This answer of yours is a fine example: within minutes. That's what I
call agressive.
Agressive as my post may seem to you it is not intended that way. But I
want to point out to you that you often provoke the opposide party in
the way you write. My post of yesterday was in a positive cooperative
way. I can go a long way with your remarks. And then you write
something that put the few hairs that I still have left up in a minute.
I'm not the enemy and the times of college dictate are long gone. At
the end of the day I still decide for myself what is crap, possible,
plausible, likely. Your hyper critical standards need not be my
standards or that of the group. If it's allright for you okay, that
suits me. Freedom of thinking and freedom of speech.
I might not be a scholar but that does not mean that you can send me to
the corner the way you did, writing over my head as a warning to all
other would be amateurs. I'm researching en writing articles for over
15 years now, improving myself every year and still learning. You might
start occasionly with "you might be right in this or that assumption
but have you looked it this or that way". That's the positive
cooperative smooth way in which way you get people convinced.
I said it before. I did not study Lambert of Ardres. I did not apply
scientific methods. I did not dress the hypothesis up in a bla bla
story. No fried air. It was an inspiration. Sometimes you end up like
Einstein (did you read David Bodanis E=mc2?), but moreoften not.
Therefore you can not apply scientific standards to my suggestion. I
offered you the suggestion as your seem to know what you are writing
about and because you provided an earlier answer on something that in
the present light might be looked and answered differently.
You mention that my suggestion is as weak and unlikely but do not
provide further enlightment. The hypothesis of Heather Tanner is no
alternative. I have read the reviews. Your stand is thus that the
available information fails to provide a definite answer in
reconstructing the correct missing link between the mid 10th and the
11th century.
Okay.
Lets bury the hatchets. I'm an amiable person with a big shoe size.
Hans Vogels
Peter Stewart schreef:
I suggest that you read my posts again - your aggresive and personal
response is far off the mark.
I have offered comments as directly requested by you, to the effect that
your proposal is incapable of proof on available evidence and has a notable
weakness in analytical method.
No-one had implied you were "delusional", although this could describe your
message below. My critical remarks were specifically about scholars who rely
too much on onomastics: as declared, and as clear from the beginning, you
(Hans Vogels) do not represent yourself as a scholar, and my remarks (far
from "ridicule" anyway) were clearly not directed at you personally but as a
general warning to the newsgroup.
By "ephemeral" I mean that one scholar's shining new hypothesis lacking in
evidence tends to be cast into the shade by another, or by a revision from
the original proponent, before long. I very definite set out that there is
no answer on the evidence in this case, so that your insulting challenge to
me to provide one indicates that you have not understood my posts thoroughly
enough to reply sensibly. Perhaps you will make the effort to do so.
Peter Stewart
"Birds" <h.vogels6@chello.nl> wrote in message
news:1156286646.256833.103000@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
As ephemeral is not in my normal daily language I had to look it up:
iets van één dag, kortstondig, one day fly. Oh boy oh boy, where did
I go wrong. Why was I so delusional.
My only weakness was that I took a suggestion of Stewart Baldwin and
elaborated further on it combining it with a titbit from the past. I'm
not rejecting anything. I hardly know Lambert of Ardres. All I know of
the good man is wat I read in George Duby, "Ridder, vrouw en priester"
(1987) on the subject of the Counts of Guines. Even in Duby I read a
mentioning of many faulty chronological facts. Lambert seems to have
written his Historia as an appology to his lord. Stewart mentions his
conclusion in his post that Lambert edited the past. He was aware of
other opinions and traditions on the past history. Lamberts aim would
have been to please his present master and audience and in that aim he
wrote his story. Stewart seems to have studied the work of Lambert in
detail as he mentions details that no other has brought to the
newsgroup before. My weakness seems to be that I trusted the remarks of
Stewart.
Peter calls me a cherry picker. What can I say. I can only smile at the
remark. I have to live with my familyname untill the day I die. But all
foolishness beside I have not even studied Lambert of Ardres so his
remarks are way off target. I don not know the total picture. I'm not
Heather Tanner with a 400 page book
(
http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=18&pid=11565) and a not so
good genealogical review on this group. I'm just one with a brief
moment of inspiration, hardly any transpiration. I wrote my post as a
genealogical possibility, as a possible direction for further study.
Like I wrote before "one has occainsionly to explore paths that no man
has gone before to be able to say that it was a dead end, a cul du
sac".
Heather Tanner botched the (genealogical) job. You ridiculed my
approach. Come down of your pulpit and tell us how the pieces fit
togetgether. Stop weighing the evidence on golden scales. You are the
one who seem to know all the answers. Show us commoners some
enlightment. Stop dancing with words (I'm Dutch or have you forgotten),
urging us to a hyper cautious approach. Or can you only evaluate the
probability or factual content of the evidence brought before you. That
would make you a critic, a reviewer living on the products of others.
Next time please read carefully what I wrote in its total context and
if you care to react don't cherry pick yourself on what think you can
rebuff.
Cheers Peter.
Peter Stewart schreef:
I'm not against postulating solutions, even when lacking direct evidence,
but only against the presentation of ephemeral "possibilities" as if they
were substantial genealogical scholarship. A speculation may be exactly
right, but if we have no way of establishing this it can't rise to the
level
of knowledge, and may have no more value than if it was completely wrong.
One notable weakness in the proposal made by Hans is that it depends on
taking Lambert of Ardres as authoritative on an incidental matter - the
naming of a third son of Erniculus as Eustacius - while rejecting his
account on a more important question. Ascribing an ulterior motive to him
on
the latter should not provide a license to cherry-pick information from
him
on other points that happen to fit a neat hypothesis. If a source is
generally reliable it is not absolutely so, and vice versa - but we need
some external evidence and/or internal analysis to discriminate on
specific
points, rather than just finding a way to arrange selected jigsaw pieces
together into a pattern.
Peter Stewart
"Birds" <h.vogels6@chello.nl> wrote in message
news:1156228761.498234.199410@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Thanks Peter,
Remarks inserted inbetween.
Peter Stewart schreef:
Comments interspersed:
"Birds" <h.vogels6@chello.nl> wrote in message
news:1156188964.405929.226600@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Peter,
Reading Stewarts post and your answer a thought occurred to me
regarding the Christian name Eustace.
In an earlier string (Counts of Boulogne between Adalolf and Eustace
I:
25-28 sept 2004) I put forward the question "Has't anyone approached
the matter from a onomastical viewpoint? The name Eustace [for the
counts of Boulogne] must come from someone or somewhere. It can't
just appear out of the blue". You then kind of send me off with a
noncommittal answer.
I certainly didn't mean to be noncommittal, except insofar as the
origin
of
the name Eustace in this particular family can't be known. The exchange
I
assume you mean is the following, from 28 September 2004 in the thread
'Counts of Boulogne between Adalolf and Eustace I':
Hans Vogels wrote:
"Has't anyone aproached the matter from a onomastical viewpoint? The
name
Eustace must come from someone or somewere. It can't just apear out of
the
blue."
I replied:
"Why ever not? Even if you could trace back through a line of Eustaces,
there would still have to be a first. The name was probably chosen at
some
arbitrary point, and for similar reason to Hubert, without a series of
family precedents. Both carried a similar legend, where the saint was
converted to Christianity in the course of a hunt, due to encountering
a
stag with the crucifix shining in its antlers. Medieval people were
entranced by these stories, and no doubt on occasions they were happy
to
baptise a son & heir with a quite new name in honour of such pleasing
fictions, whether saintly or otherwise - for instance, the naming of
Bohemund after a legendary giant was discussed here recently."
Point taken.
My point is that Eustace could have been chosen independently in
several
families from devotion to the legend of St Eustace. Alternatively if a
superstitious belief is held (against the evidence, by the way) that
all
transmission of names in Frankish families must have been hereditary,
Eustace might have been established in a lineage for long enough that
any
two namesakes in the same area could be related to each other in
various
ways apart from father/grandfather-son/grandson. A younger Eustace, if
it
is
insisted that he belonged to the same family as an earlier namesake,
even
a
predecessor, could have been a nephew, a cousin, etc.
True, one can warn for the most obvious conclusion but then again it
could even be straight on the mark. With a too carefull and
relativistic approach one can cut off a line of reseach to soon before
the end of the sidepath is even investigated. As it seems now we have
within the same family of the counts of Boulogne an earlier namebearer
on a generation that could well be the generation of the grandfather.
One can differ of opinion on the factual how, but even the counts of
Guines are some way or another tied up with the counts of Boulogne and
Flanders. Even Stewart Baldwin who is well known and praised for his
critical and solid work of research ventures occasionly to places where
no man has gone before to seek solutions.
Some scholars take the hereditary possession of leading names as an
unquestioned premise for working out schemes that are presented as
serious
genealogy, but which are in fact just elaborate games, puzzle solutions
presented for no real purpose apart from having a solution.
Yes. The German scholars from the past and the well known Donald
Jackson certainly seem to know their way around. Combining and adding
mentionings and persons to strings of families.
From memory the first occurrence of Eustace for a layman in a Frankish
family was the son of the 7th century abbess Sadalberga, and he was
named
after the abbot of Luxeuil who was a counsellor of her father, not for
an
ancestor (NB Heather Tanner is wrong in stating that the name Eustace
was
"unkown" in France between the abbot of Luxeuil and Count Eustace I of
Boulogne). The original Eustace was a Roman saint, probably fictitious.
His
name must have been adopted by at least one aristocratic family in
northern
Europe for some reason at some point: we know that there must have been
a
first holder of any name in any family line, so why should not the
first
person definitely belonging in a lineage - in this case Eustace I of
Boulogne who died ca 1049 - also be the first in his lineage to bear
his
particular name?
Allright, but then again from this same line of reasoning it could as
well be the Eustace, the third son of count Erniculus of Boulogne, who
was the first one of the family to bear this particular name.
I am not "noncommittal" about this - I think an assuption that the
background of names in particular lines must always go deeper than the
available evidence allows us to trace is quite unwarranted, and
conjectures
based on this premise are more for amusement than enlightenment.
Peter Stewart
Indeed a carefull approach, besides an open mind should never be
forgotten in ones own research. The historic thruth - if one ever finds
the final answer - is often stranger than fiction. With wishfull
thinking one can come a long way but it is hardly a contribution to
science. But even then one has occainsionly to explore paths that no
man has gone before to be able to say that it was a dead end, a cul du
sac.
Hans Vogels