Additional comments below: there are still two more threads needed to
finish this series, but until I am able to get on with these it may be
worthwhile to say some more about the alleged relationship between
Richilde and Pope Leo IX.

On 18-Mar-23 3:04 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:
> My anticipation of the amount of work, and words, required for the topic
> turns out to be short of the mark, so I will have to break this part
> into four separate threads (I hope not more).

<snip>

> Three sources tell us that Richilde was closely related to Leo IX:
>
> In 'Flandria generosa', written in the mid-1160s, the pope (born Bruno
> of Eguisheim) is described as Richilde's uncle ("avunculus", strictly a
> mother's brother but often used also for paternal connections); however,
> this very imperfect source misnamed the bishop of Cambrai-Arras who
> supposedly excommunicated Balduin of Flanders for marrying Richilde
> because her first husband Herman had been his relative.
>
> The Anchin continuator of Sigebert of Gembloux's chronicle, writing in
> or after 1201, described Richilde as having imperial blood and being the
> sister of Leo IX. The imperial connection was presumably supposed to be
> with the Salian emperors Konrad II (died 1039), his son Heinrich III
> (died 1056) and the latter's son Heinrich IV (died 1106, outliving
> Richilde), although any common ancestry behind it must have been from a
> former imperial dynasty and may well have been nothing more than
> fanciful anyway. Taking the Eguisheim link at face value and making
> Richilde a full-sister of Leo is implausible, given the lack of any
> mention of siblinghood between two such notable individuals and
> considering that he was born in 1002 so very likely old enough to belong
> to the age-range of her parents. Making her instead a maternal
> half-sister of Leo is inadmissible, since his parents were married to
> each other from ca 995 and his father lived until ca 1038. Trying to
> reconcile the relationship parameters as merely stretched, by making
> Richilde's and Leo's mothers into sisters is unsustainable since his
> mother Heilwig appears to have been an only child as sole heiress of her
> father's countships in Eguisheim and Dagsbourg. Making one of Richilde's
> parents into a half-sibling of one or other of Leo's parents requires
> scraping the bottom of a conjectural barrel in order to vindicate an
> already-unreliable source by rough approximation. Making Richilde a
> daughter of one of Leo's brothers is perhaps less problematic, but still
> without a skerrick of clear evidence and not helping with the alleged
> imperial ancestry. Vanderkindere tried to make the mother of Konrad II
> into a sister of Leo's mother, but this could only give the imperial
> family a Richildian bloodline if she was descended from either the old
> or new Eguisheim comital dynasty rather than vice versa. However, her
> determined political orientation towards the Salian emperor Heinrich
> III, and against the interests of her own husband, does need to be taken
> into account as a possible indicator of kinship. Heinrich had proposed
> Leo for the papacy after he had served imperial policy well as bishop of
> Toul, and his family were also loyal supporters.
>
> Jacques de Guise, writing in the late-14th century, said that Leo was a
> close relative of Richilde in misrepresenting that the pope had advised
> making her son bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne. This is certainly
> misinformed, since Leo had been dead for 12½ years before Roger first
> appears as bishop in the year following the death of his predecessor.
> Elsewhere Jacques called Richilde 'neptis' of Leo IX - so not his
> sister, although a prioress at Macourt (near Condé-sur-l'Escaut close to
> Valenciennes) was allegedly their 'neptis' in common - and he visited
> her in 1049 (evidently in the last days of July or in August), arriving
> at Beaumont where he was greeted by his "neptis" Richilde and a throng
> of her "comitatus", not even mentioning Herman who was at least
> notionally the host as count of Hainaut the time. Several days later he
> stayed as her guest for one night in Mons before going on to
> Valenciennes, where he dedicated a chapel and blessed the town. Although
> some details of the itinerary before the pope's arrival in Hainaut are
> questionable, there is no reason to doubt the historicity of the visit,
> which is accepted by most historians including Karl Augustin Frech in
> his 2011 'Papstregesten' volume for Regesta Imperii.

The prioress at Macourt who was called 'neptis' to both Leo IX and
Richilde ("neptis erat tam pape quam Richildi") has not received much
attention, largely I suppose because her name and family background are
unrecorded. Karl Augustin Frech gave a misleading identification of
Macourt, wrongly connecting the place with the later Carthusian church
of Notre-Dame de Macourt at Marly, a nearby village (now a suburb) to
the south-east of Valenciennes. However, Jacques de Guise specified that
Macourt was near Condé ("iuxta Condatum") and described the insitution
of the prioress as a hospice ("xenodochium"): this was at a different
Macourt, now called Macou as noted in the MGH edition, a few kms north
of Condé and around 16 kms north-east of Valenciennes. The hospice there
was a dependency of the collegiate church at Condé (and incidentally not
within the territory of Richilde as countess or margravine of
Valenciennes). The prioress would have been appointed under the direct
influence of the seigneur of Condé-sur-l'Escaut or perhaps of
Vieux-Condé, and very probably belonged to one or other lineage (if
these were not the same at the time - we have no records for the first
half of the 11th century). The former seigneury descended subsequently
to the family of Avesnes, to which the prioress in 1049 may have been
somehow related.

The report that the pope and countess spent several days at Macou
("illuc diebus pluribus ... convenerunt"), where he dedicated the
cemetery and granted indulgences for pilgrims to the place where
according to far-fetched legend his predecessor St Calixtus had lived in
exile (in the third century!) does not specify a motivation for the
extended visit to Macou. Probably this was was in honour of the papal
saint rather than a family get-together, although of course it is
impossible to tell for certain that Leo and Richilde were not aiming at
two birds with one stone between them by staying with their alleged
'neptis'.

However, it is possible to say with confidence that Jacques de Guise
cannot have meant the prioress was niece to both Leo and Richilde, since
he did not make them into siblings. The only other way they could have a
niece in common would be for a sibling of one to have married a sibling
of the other, in which case Richilde herself could not be Leo's 'neptis'
by the same definition.

The strict use of nepos/neptis, as outlined in my earlier posting on the
topic, was for a next-to-immediate lineal or collateral relative - i.e.
an immediate relative in the family circle being a child or sibling,
then a next-to-immediate one in descent being a child's child or a
sibling's child, so that nepos/neptis should mean a grandchild or
nephew/niece. But as shown by examples given earlier, medieval usage
that reckoned consanguinity by parallel lineal degrees could sometimes
fudge collateral links and even extend 'nepos/neptis' to a relative at
least as far distant as a third cousin once removed.

The prioress at Macou in 1049 is not likely to have been a sibling's
child to Richilde, who was evidently born ca 1020: if determined to be
the heiress to Valenciennes, as seems the most plausible explanation for
Richilde's apparent co-rulership with her first husband, then she
evidently had no brother, no older sister and no offspring of either
living at that time or at any rate none that was eligible to hold an
imperial fief. A younger sister of hers could hardly have given birth to
a daughter old enough to be a prioress by 1049, although this is not an
absolute consideration. It might be argued that 'neptis' was used to
encompass both niece and grand-niece in the same passage, but Leo born
in 1002 could hardly have been uncle to Richilde and great-uncle to the
prioress, since none of his siblings is likely to have been old enough
to be her grandparent. If the term 'neptis' was used for a cousin in one
case there is no solid reason to assume it must have meant a niece in
the other.

Apart from the circumstantial evidence that Leo's mother, as a sole
heiress, was probably an only child, we know very little of his paternal
uncles and nothing of any aunt/s, so that it is possible one or more
could have been ancestral to Richilde and to the prioress of Macou.
However, it is difficult to imagine how a child of a count in Alsace
would have become ancestral to either lady, despite such unlikelihoods
occurring infrequently in medieval genealogy. Richilde's antecedents
appear to have belonged in the regions of Cambrai and Champagne as will
be discussed in further threads.

My anticipation of the amount of work, and words, required for the topic
turns out to be short of the mark, so I will have to break this part
into four separate threads (I hope not more).

So far I have managed to touch on just two of five potential leads for
Richilde's family origin - an unlikely (to my mind) blood connection
with the Ardennes lineage of her first mother-in-law, as indicated by
donations to Saint-Hubert abbey of properties that may have come into
her possession from that quarter, and a likely collateral link to the
former count of Valenciennes, Arnulf, who died in 1011/12 very probably
before Richilde was born. The latter may be one of four possible
connections that (most probably coincidentally) match the number of
Richilde's grandparents.

Each of the next three parts will be concerned in turn with another
family to which Richilde may have been related: this one specifically
with that of Pope Leo IX, who were counts of Eguisheim & Dagsbourg, and
the following two with the broader kinship of the comital family of
Rethel as well as their cadet branches and cognates and with the
castellans of Cambrai - the last two being perhaps the most plausible,
or the least implausible, prospects for her agnatic lineage.

Three sources tell us that Richilde was closely related to Leo IX:

In 'Flandria generosa', written in the mid-1160s, the pope (born Bruno
of Eguisheim) is described as Richilde's uncle ("avunculus", strictly a
mother's brother but often used also for paternal connections); however,
this very imperfect source misnamed the bishop of Cambrai-Arras who
supposedly excommunicated Balduin of Flanders for marrying Richilde
because her first husband Herman had been his relative.

The Anchin continuator of Sigebert of Gembloux's chronicle, writing in
or after 1201, described Richilde as having imperial blood and being the
sister of Leo IX. The imperial connection was presumably supposed to be
with the Salian emperors Konrad II (died 1039), his son Heinrich III
(died 1056) and the latter's son Heinrich IV (died 1106, outliving
Richilde), although any common ancestry behind it must have been from a
former imperial dynasty and may well have been nothing more than
fanciful anyway. Taking the Eguisheim link at face value and making
Richilde a full-sister of Leo is implausible, given the lack of any
mention of siblinghood between two such notable individuals and
considering that he was born in 1002 so very likely old enough to belong
to the age-range of her parents. Making her instead a maternal
half-sister of Leo is inadmissible, since his parents were married to
each other from ca 995 and his father lived until ca 1038. Trying to
reconcile the relationship parameters as merely stretched, by making
Richilde's and Leo's mothers into sisters is unsustainable since his
mother Heilwig appears to have been an only child as sole heiress of her
father's countships in Eguisheim and Dagsbourg. Making one of Richilde's
parents into a half-sibling of one or other of Leo's parents requires
scraping the bottom of a conjectural barrel in order to vindicate an
already-unreliable source by rough approximation. Making Richilde a
daughter of one of Leo's brothers is perhaps less problematic, but still
without a skerrick of clear evidence and not helping with the alleged
imperial ancestry. Vanderkindere tried to make the mother of Konrad II
into a sister of Leo's mother, but this could only give the imperial
family a Richildian bloodline if she was descended from either the old
or new Eguisheim comital dynasty rather than vice versa. However, her
determined political orientation towards the Salian emperor Heinrich
III, and against the interests of her own husband, does need to be taken
into account as a possible indicator of kinship. Heinrich had proposed
Leo for the papacy after he had served imperial policy well as bishop of
Toul, and his family were also loyal supporters.

Jacques de Guise, writing in the late-14th century, said that Leo was a
close relative of Richilde in misrepresenting that the pope had advised
making her son bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne. This is certainly
misinformed, since Leo had been dead for 12½ years before Roger first
appears as bishop in the year following the death of his predecessor.
Elsewhere Jacques called Richilde 'neptis' of Leo IX - so not his
sister, although a prioress at Macourt (near Condé-sur-l'Escaut close to
Valenciennes) was allegedly their 'neptis' in common - and he visited
her in 1049 (evidently in the last days of July or in August), arriving
at Beaumont where he was greeted by his "neptis" Richilde and a throng
of her "comitatus", not even mentioning Herman who was at least
notionally the host as count of Hainaut the time. Several days later he
stayed as her guest for one night in Mons before going on to
Valenciennes, where he dedicated a chapel and blessed the town. Although
some details of the itinerary before the pope's arrival in Hainaut are
questionable, there is no reason to doubt the historicity of the visit,
which is accepted by most historians including Karl Augustin Frech in
his 2011 'Papstregesten' volume for Regesta Imperii.

Frank Legl in his comprehensive 1998 study of the Eguisheim-Dagsbourg
comital family dismissed the alleged relationship between Richilde and
Leo. He noted that several implausible sisters of the pope were
apparently invented to account for his visits to them, by analogy with
his visiting Adalbert, count of Calw, restorer of Hirsau abbey, who was
the son of his sister (of unstated name) according to two independent
and unexceptionable sources. Legl deduced the existence of a second
sister of the pope, named Hildegard, who was probably the mother of
Richilde's contemporary Louis I, count of Mousson & advocate of
Saint-Mihiel abbey at Verdun. But there is no credible evidence that
Richilde was related to either the Calw or Mousson (Bar-le-Duc) comital
families.

I pointed out before that the mother of Richilde's first husband Herman
of Hainaut was named Mathilde by Jacques de Mayere in the 16th century,
and that the wife of his father was called Hathuidis by Sigebert of
Gembloux in the 1070s. It is unlikely that Sigebert had conflated two
generations and thought that Herman's father Reginar V was identical
with the latter's father Reginar IV whose wife (daughter of Hugo Capet)
was named Hadvisa, which could be a variant of Hathuidis. Boutemy
assumed that the names Mathilde and Hathuidis both referred to the same
woman, but that is not a necessary conclusion. It is a long-shot to
speculate that Richilde may have been Herman's step-sister, because such
an interesting fact would probably have been recorded about her, but it
is a remote possibility to be held in mind. However, I can't see a
plausible way to make it fit with a relationship to Leo IX and/or to
Heinrich III. It is also difficult to reconcile with the more plausible
background of Richilde in the Cambrai region and/or in connection with
the wider clan of comital and seigneurial families in the Champagne
region, that I will get round to later.

Peter Stewart

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