1/ Agatha (Dght. of Liudolf&Gertrude) von Braunschweig

Curator notes:

-1. This profile contains only her husband and one daughter as below

Saint Margaret, Queen of Scots

-2. This profile's Descendants are "PRIVAT" now.

-3. See her possible Ancestors at Edward's possible wives profiles.

-4. Agatha’s other children see under:

Agatha

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Mihály

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• Agatha von Brunswick Princess of England

born 13 July 1024? Braunschweig, Prussia

father:

• Liudolf Count of Brunswick

born about 1016 Brunswick, Germany

died 23 April 1038

mother:

• Gertrud von Egisheim Countess in Nordgau

born about 1006 Nordgau Region, Medieval States

died 21 July 1077

siblings:

Ida Countess of Brunswick born about 1023 Braunschweig, Germany

Ekbert I Margrave of Meissen born about 1031 Brunswick, Germany died 11 January 1068

spouse:

• Edward "Atheling" Prince of England (The Exile)

born 1016 Wessex, England

died 1057 London, Middlesex, England

married about 1035 London, Middlesex, England?

children:

• St. Margaret "Atheling" Queen of Scotland born about 1042/45 Wessex, England

died 16 November 1093 Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Mid-Lothian, Scotland

buried Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland

Edgar "Atheling" Prince of England born about 1036 Wessex, England died after 1126

Christina "Atheling" Princess of England born about 1044 Wessex, England

• Æthelreda Princess of England born about 1042

?*Maurice Drummond born about 1040 Hungary? died 1093 Battle of Alnwich

biographical and/or anecdotal:

notes or source:

LDS

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Agatha, wife of Edward the Exile

Her parents could be of either Russian, Hungarian or German origin, see below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha,_wife_of_Edward_the_Exile

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_the_Exile

http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/

Edward the Exile married (Kiev[1913] [1040/45])

AGATHA, daughter of --- ([1025/35]-).

Agatha is named as the wife of Edward in many sources[1914], but her origin has been the subject of lively debate for years. The early 12th century chronicles are contradictory.

The assertion by Orderic Vitalis that she was "daughter of Solomon King of the Magyars"[1915] can be dismissed as impossible chronologically.

One group of chroniclers suggest a German origin, saying that she was "the daughter of the brother of the Emperor Henry". This includes John of Worcester ("filia germani imperatoris henrici"[1916], in a passage which Humphreys speculates was written some time between 1120 and 1131 although possibly based on the earlier work of Marianus Scotus), Florence of Worcester ("daughter of the brother of Emperor Henry"[1917]), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ("the emperor's kinswoman"[1918] and, in relation to her daughter Margaret, "descended from the emperor Henry who had dominion over Rome"[1919]).

Ailred Abbot of Rievaulx records that "Edwardo", son of "regem Edmundum" [King Edmund "Ironsides"], married "filiam germani sui Henrici imperatoris…Agatha"[1920]. Matthew of Paris calls Agatha "soror Henrici imperatoris Romani" when recounting the ancestry of Henry II King of England[1921].

A second group of chroniclers propose a Russian origin, suggesting that Agatha belonged to the family of Iaroslav Grand Prince of Kiev. For William of Malmesbury, she was "sister of the [Hungarian] queen", which from a chronological point of view could only refer to Anastasia Iaroslavna, wife of King András I. In a 13th century interpolation in one copy of the Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ (written in [1130]%29 she was "ex genere et sanguine regum Rugorum"[1922].

The Chronicle of Alberic de Trois-Fontaines names "Agatham regine Hunorem sororem"[1923], the Hungarian Magyars frequently, though incorrectly, being referred to as "Huns" in many other sources. Lastly, Roger of Wendover records that "Eadwardus" married "reginæ Hungariæ sororem…Agatham"[1924]. In considering the German origin theory, the uterine half-brothers ("germani") of Emperor Heinrich III provide a likely candidate.

These half-brothers were Liudolf von Braunschweig, Markgraf in Friesland (son of Gisela of Swabia, mother of Emperor Heinrich III, by her first marriage with Bruno Graf [von Braunschweig]), and Ernst von Babenberg Duke of Swabia and his younger brother Hermann IV Duke of Swabia (sons of Gisela by her second marriage). The latter, the Babenberg brothers, born in [1014/16], were both too young to have been Agatha's father so can be dismissed.

Liudolf von Braunschweig was first proposed as Agatha's father in 1933[1925], and has been the preferred candidate for many historians since then[1926]. His birth date is estimated at [1003/05] (see BRUNSWICK) which is consistent with his having been Agatha's father.

The marriage taking place in Kiev would not exclude a German origin, as contacts were reported between Kiev and the imperial court in 1040[1927], when Russia was aiming to create a tripartite alliance with England and Germany to weaken Denmark, and also in 1043[1928], when the situation required review following the accession of King Edward "the Confessor" in England.

The major drawback to the German origin theory is the total absence of onomastic (= name related) connections between the Braunschweig family and the descendants of Edward and Agatha, although this is not of course conclusive to prove or disprove the hypothesis.

The Russian origin theory has also found considerable academic support[1929]. Edmund must have had contact with the Russian royal family during his period in Kiev, assuming it is correct, as suggested above, that he spent time there during his exile. There are numerous onomastic connections between the the extended family of Grand Prince Iaroslav and the descendants of Edward and Agatha. For example, the names of Edward and Agatha's own daughters, Margaret and Christina, were both used in the Swedish royal family, to which Grand Prince Iaroslav's wife belonged. In the next generation, among Queen Margaret's own children, the name David is one which seems only to have been used in the Kiev ruling family among all contemporary European royal dynasties.

The major problem with the Russian origin theory is the complete failure to explain the source references to Agatha's family relationship with the emperor, which it is unwise to dismiss as completely meaningless. It is of course possible that neither of these theories is correct, and that Agatha belonged to a minor German, Russian or Hungarian noble family the importance of whose family connections were exaggerated in the sources. Edward's relationship to the kings of England may, at the time of his marriage, have seemed remote and unimportant in eastern Europe, especially as England was ruled by Danish kings whose position must then have seemed secure. He may not have provided a sufficiently attractive marriage prospect for a prominent European princess.

In conclusion, therefore, there is no satisfactory way of deciding between each of the competing theories concerning Agatha's origin and it appears best to classify it as "unknown". It is unlikely that the mystery of Agatha's origin will ever be solved to the satisfaction of all.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that, after the Norman conquest, Agatha left England with her children in Summer 1067 and found refuge at the court of Malcolm King of Scotland[1930].

Florence of Worcester records that "clitone Eadgaro et matre sua Agatha duabusque sororibus suis Margareta et Christina" left England for Scotland, in a passage which deals with events in mid-1068[1931]. According to Weir, in old age, possibly after the death of her daughter Queen Margaret, she became a nun at Newcastle-upon-Tyne[1932], but the primary source on which this is based has not yet been identified.

Edward & his wife had three children:

Margaret

Christina

Edgar Ætheling

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1. ID: I28840
2. Name: Agatha Von Brunswick of England
3. Surname: Von Brunswick
4. Given Name: Agatha
5. Suffix: of England
6. Prefix: Princess
7. Sex: F
8. Birth: ABT 1018 in Braunschweig, Prussia
9. Death: 13 Jul 1024
10. Ancestral File #: 9HMF-HN
11. _UID: CCB20A5AC7BDD611BF69B385C05AEF6319A5 1
12. Change Date: 11 Sep 2002 at 01:00:00

Father: Liudolf of Brunswick b: ABT 1016 in of Brunswick, Germany

Mother: Gertrud in Nordgau b: ABT 1006 in of Nordgau Region, Medieval States

Marriage 1 Edward (Atheling) of England b: 1016 in Wessex, England

   * Married: ABT 1035 in of London, Middlesex, England

Children

  1. Has No Children Edgar (Atheling) of England b: ABT 1036 in Wessex, England

2. Has Children Margaret of Scotland Atheling b: ABT 1042/1045 in of Wessex, , England
3. Has No Children Christina (Atheling) of England b: ABT 1044 in Wessex, England
Sources:

  1. Title: #719

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Agatha was the wife of Edward the Exile (heir to the throne of England) and mother of Edgar Ætheling, Saint Margaret of Scotland and Cristina of England. Her antecedents are unclear, and subject to much speculation.

Nothing is known of her early life, and what speculation has appeared is inextricably linked to the contentious issue of Agatha's paternity, one of the unresolved questions of medieval genealogy. She came to England with her husband and children in 1057, but she was widowed within weeks of arriving. Following the Norman conquest of England, in 1067 she fled with her children to Scotland, finding refuge under her future son-in-law Malcolm III. While one modern source indicates that she spent her last years as a nun at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dying before circa 1093, Simeon of Durham carries what appears to be the last reference to her in 1070

for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha,_wife_of_Edward_the_Exile

---

Nothing is known of her early life, and what speculation has appeared is inextricably linked to the contentious issue of Agatha's paternity, one of the unresolved questions of medieval genealogy. She came to England with her husband and children in 1057, but she was widowed within weeks of arriving. Following the Norman conquest of England, in 1067 she fled with her children to Scotland, finding refuge under her future son-in-law Malcolm III. While one modern source indicates that she spent her last years as a nun at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dying before circa 1093, Simeon of Durham carries what appears to be the last reference to her in 1070.

Agatha's origin is alluded to in numerous surviving medieval sources, but the information they provide is sometimes imprecise, often contradictory, and occasionally outright impossible. The earliest surviving source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis and Regalis prosapia Anglorum, Simeon of Durham and Ailred of Rievaulx describe Agatha as a kinswoman of "Emperor Henry" (thaes ceseres maga, filia germani imperatoris Henrici). In an earlier entry, the same Ailred of Rievaulx had called her daughter of emperor Henry, as do later sources of dubious credibility such as the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, while Matthew of Paris calls her the emperor's sister (soror Henrici imperatoris Romani). Geoffrey Gaimar in Lestoire des Engles states that she was daughter of the Hungarian king and queen (Li reis sa fille), although he places the marriage at a time when Edward is thought still to have been in Kiev, while Orderic Vitalis in Historiae Ecclesiasticae is more specific, naming her father as king Solomon (filiam Salomonis Regis Hunorum), actually a contemporary of Agatha's children. William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum states that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary (reginae sororem) and is echoed in this by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, while less precisely, Ailred says of Margaret that she was derived from English and Hungarian royal blood (de semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum extitit oriunda). Finally, Roger of Howden and the anonymous Leges Edwardi Confessoris indicate that while Edward was a guest of Kievan "king Malesclodus" he married a woman of noble birth (nobili progenio), Leges adding that the mother of St. Margaret was of Rus royal blood (ex genere et sanguine regum Rugorum).

While various sources repeat the claims that Agatha was daughter or sister of either Emperor Henry, it seems unlikely that such a sibling or daughter would have been ignored by the German chroniclers.

The description of Agatha as a blood relative of "Emperor Henry" may be applicable to a niece of either Henry II or Henry III, Holy Roman Emperors (although Florence, in Regalis prosapia Anglorum specifies Henry III). Early attempts at reconstructing the relationship focussed on the former. Georgio Pray (1764, Annales Regum Hungariae), O.F. Suhm (1777, Geschichte Dänmarks, Norwegen und Holsteins) and Istvan Katona (1779, Historia Critica Regum Hungariae) each suggested that Agatha was daughter of Henry II's brother Bruno of Augsburg (an ecclesiastic described as beatae memoriae, with no known issue), while Daniel Cornides (1778, Regum Hungariae) tried to harmonize the German and Hungarian claims, making Agatha daughter of Henry II's sister Giselle of Bavaria, wife of Stephen I of Hungary. This solution remained popular among scholars through a good part of twentieth century.

As tempting as it may be to thus view St. Margaret as a granddaughter of another famous saint, Stephen of Hungary, this popular solution fails to explain why Stephen's death triggered a dynastic crisis in Hungary. If St. Stephen and Giselle were indeed Agatha's parents, her offspring might have succeeded to the Hungarian crown and the dynastic strife that followed Stephen's death could have been averted. Actually, there is no indication in Hungarian sources that any of Stephen's children outlived him. Likewise, all of the solutions involving Henry II would seem to make Agatha much older than her husband, and prohibitively old at the time of the birth of her son, Edgar.

Based on a more strict translation of the Latin description used by Florence and others as well as the supposition that Henry III was the Emperor designated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, genealogist Szabolcs de Vajay popularized another idea first suggested in 1939. In that year, Joszef Herzog published an analysis suggesting that Agatha was daughter of one of the half-brothers of Henry III, born to his mother Gisela of Swabia by one of her earlier marriages to Ernest I of Swabia and Bruno of Brunswick, probably the former based on more favorable chronology. De Vajay reevaluated the chronology of the marriages and children of Gisela and concluded that Agatha was the daughter of Henry III's elder (uterine) half-brother, Liudolf, Margrave of Frisia. This theory saw broad acceptance for thirty years until René Jetté resurrected a Kievan solution to the problem, since which time opinion has been divided among several competing possibilities.

Jetté pointed out that William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum and several later chronicles unambiguously state that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary. From what we know about the biography of Edward the Exile, he loyally supported Andrew I of Hungary, following him from Kiev to Hungary in 1046 and staying at his court for many years. Andrew's wife and queen was Anastasia, a daughter of Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev by Ingigerd of Sweden. Following Jetté's logic, Edward's wife was another daughter of Yaroslav.

This theory accords with the seemingly incongruous statements of Geoffrey Gaimar and Roger of Howden that, while living in Kiev, Edward took a nativeborn wife "of noble parentage" or that his father-in-law was a "Rus king".

Jetté's theory seems to be supported by an onomastic argument. Among the medieval royalty, Agatha's rare Greek name is first recorded in the Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium; it was also one of the most frequent feminine names in the Kievan Rurikid dynasty. After Anna of Byzantium married Yaroslav's father, he took the Christian name of the reigning emperor, Basil II, while some members of his family were named after other members of the imperial dynasty. Agatha could have been one of these.

The names of Agatha's immediate descendants — Margaret, Cristina, David, Alexander — were likewise extraordinary for Anglo-Saxon Britain. They may provide a clue to Agatha's origin. The names Margaret and Cristina are today associated with Sweden, the native country of Yaroslav's wife Ingigerd. The name of Margaret's son, David, obviously echoes that of Solomon, the son and heir of Andrew I. Furthermore, the first saint of the Rus (canonized ca. 1073) was Yaroslav's brother Gleb, whose Christian name was David.

One inference from the Kievan theory is that Edgar Atheling and St. Margaret were, through their mother, first cousins of Philip I of France. The connection is too notable to be omitted from contemporary sources, yet we have no indication that medieval chroniclers were aware of it. The argumentum ex silentio leads critics of the Kievan theory to search for alternative explanations.

In response to the recent flurry of activity on the subject, Ian Mladjov reevaluated the question and presented a completely novel solution. He dismissed each of the prior theories in turn as insufficiently grounded and incompatible given the historical record, and further suggested that many of the proposed solutions would have resulted in later marriages that fell within the prohibited degrees of kinship. He argued that the documentary testimony of Agatha's origins is tainted or late, and concurred with Humphreys' evaluation that the names of the children and grandchildren of Agatha, so central to prior reevaluations, may have had non-family origins (for example, Pope Alexander II played a critical role in the marriage of Malcolm and Margaret). However, he then focused in on the name of Agatha as being critical to determining her origin. He concluded that of the few contemporary Agathas, only one could possibly have been an ancestor of the wife of Edward the Exile, Agatha, wife of Samuel of Bulgaria. Some of the other names associated with Agatha and used to corroborate theories based in onomastics are also readily available within the Bulgarian ruling family at the time, including Mary and several Davids. Mladjov inferred that Agatha was daughter of Gavril Radomir, Tsar of Bulgaria, Agatha's son, by his first wife, a Hungarian princess thought to have been the daughter of Duke Géza of Hungary. This hypothesis has Agatha born in Hungary after her parents divorced, her mother being pregnant when she left Bulgaria, and naming her daughter after the mother of the prince who had expelled her. Traditional dates of this divorce would seem to preclude the suggested relationship, but the article re-examined some long-standing assumptions about the chronology of Gavril Radomir's marriage to the Hungarian princess, and concludes that its dating to the late 980s is unsupportable, and its dissolution belongs in c. 1009–1014. The argument is based almost exclusively on the onomastic precedent but is said to vindicate the intimate connection between Agatha and Hungary attested in the Medieval sources. Mladjov speculates further that the medieval testimony could largely be harmonized were one to posit that Agatha's mother was the same Hungarian princess who married Samuel Aba of Hungary, his family fleeing to Kiev after his downfall, thereby allowing a Russian marriage for Agatha.

This solution fails to conform with any of the relationships appearing in the primary record. It is inferred that the relative familiarity with Germany and unfamiliarity with Hungary partly distorted the depiction of Agatha in the English sources; her actual position would have been that of a daughter of the (unnamed) sister of the King of Hungary (Stephen I), himself the brother-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor (Henry II, and therefore kinsman of Henry III).

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Agatha, wife of Edward the Exile

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Agatha was the wife of Edward the Exile (heir to the throne of England) and mother of Edgar Ætheling, Saint Margaret of Scotland and Cristina of England. Her antecedents are unclear, and subject to much speculation.

Contents [hide]

1 Life

2 Origin

2.1 Medieval sources

2.2 German and Hungarian theories

2.3 Kievan theory

2.4 Bulgarian theory

3 Notes and references

[edit] Life

Nothing is known of her early life, and what speculation has appeared is inextricably linked to the contentious issue of Agatha's paternity, one of the unresolved questions of medieval genealogy. She came to England with her husband and children in 1057, but she was widowed within weeks of arriving. Following the Norman conquest of England, in 1067 she fled with her children to Scotland, finding refuge under her future son-in-law Malcolm III. While one modern source indicates that she spent her last years as a nun at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dying before circa 1093 [1], Simeon of Durham [1] carries what appears to be the last reference to her in 1070.[2]

[edit] Origin

[edit] Medieval sources

Agatha's origin is alluded to in numerous surviving medieval sources, but the information they provide is sometimes imprecise, often contradictory, and occasionally outright impossible. The earliest surviving source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis and Regalis prosapia Anglorum, Simeon of Durham and Ailred of Rievaulx describe Agatha as a kinswoman of "Emperor Henry" (thaes ceseres maga, filia germani imperatoris Henrici). In an earlier entry, the same Ailred of Rievaulx had called her daughter of emperor Henry, as do later sources of dubious credibility such as the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, while Matthew of Paris calls her the emperor's sister (soror Henrici imperatoris Romani). Geoffrey Gaimar in Lestoire des Engles states that she was daughter of the Hungarian king and queen (Li reis sa fille), although he places the marriage at a time when Edward is thought still to have been in Kiev, while Orderic Vitalis in Historiae Ecclesiasticae is more specific, naming her father as king Solomon (filiam Salomonis Regis Hunorum), actually a contemporary of Agatha's children. William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum states that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary (reginae sororem) and is echoed in this by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, while less precisely, Ailred says of Margaret that she was derived from English and Hungarian royal blood (de semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum extitit oriunda). Finally, Roger of Howden and the anonymous Leges Edwardi Confessoris indicate that while Edward was a guest of Kievan "king Malesclodus" he married a woman of noble birth (nobili progenio), Leges adding that the mother of St. Margaret was of Rus royal blood (ex genere et sanguine regum Rugorum).[3]

[edit] German and Hungarian theories

While various sources repeat the claims that Agatha was daughter or sister of either Emperor Henry, it seems unlikely that such a sibling or daughter would have been ignored by the German chroniclers.[4]

The description of Agatha as a blood relative of "Emperor Henry" may be applicable to a niece of either Henry II or Henry III, Holy Roman Emperors (although Florence, in Regalis prosapia Anglorum specifies Henry III). Early attempts at reconstructing the relationship focussed on the former. Georgio Pray (1764, Annales Regum Hungariae), O.F. Suhm (1777, Geschichte Dänmarks, Norwegen und Holsteins) and Istvan Katona (1779, Historia Critica Regum Hungariae) each suggested that Agatha was daughter of Henry II's brother Bruno of Augsburg (an ecclesiastic described as beatae memoriae, with no known issue), while Daniel Cornides (1778, Regum Hungariae) tried to harmonize the German and Hungarian claims, making Agatha daughter of Henry II's sister Giselle of Bavaria, wife of Stephen I of Hungary.[5] This solution remained popular among scholars through a good part of twentieth century.[6]

See tree at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha,_wife_of_Edward_the_Exile

As tempting as it may be to thus view St. Margaret as a granddaughter of another famous saint, Stephen of Hungary, this popular solution fails to explain why Stephen's death triggered a dynastic crisis in Hungary. If St. Stephen and Giselle were indeed Agatha's parents, her offspring might have succeeded to the Hungarian crown and the dynastic strife that followed Stephen's death could have been averted. Actually, there is no indication in Hungarian sources that any of Stephen's children outlived him. Likewise, all of the solutions involving Henry II would seem to make Agatha much older than her husband, and prohibitively old at the time of the birth of her son, Edgar.

Based on a more strict translation of the Latin description used by Florence and others as well as the supposition that Henry III was the Emperor designated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, genealogist Szabolcs de Vajay popularized another idea first suggested in 1939. In that year, Joszef Herzog published an analysis suggesting that Agatha was daughter of one of the half-brothers of Henry III, born to his mother Gisela of Swabia by one of her earlier marriages to Ernest I of Swabia and Bruno of Brunswick, probably the former based on more favorable chronology.[7] De Vajay reevaluated the chronology of the marriages and children of Gisela and concluded that Agatha was the daughter of Henry III's elder (uterine) half-brother, Liudolf, Margrave of Frisia.[8] This theory saw broad acceptance for thirty years [9] until René Jetté resurrected a Kievan solution to the problem,[10] since which time opinion has been divided among several competing possibilities.[11]

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Nun at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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Agatha was the wife of Edward the Exile (heir to the throne of England) and mother of Edgar Ætheling, Saint Margaret of Scotland and Cristina of England. Her antecedents are unclear, and subject to much speculation.

Life

Nothing is known of her early life, and what speculation has appeared is inextricably linked to the contentious issue of Agatha's paternity, one of the unresolved questions of medieval genealogy. She came to England with her husband and children in 1057, but she was widowed shortly after her arrival. Following the Norman conquest of England, in 1067 she fled with her children to Scotland, finding refuge under her future son-in-law Malcolm III. While one modern source indicates that she spent her last years as a nun at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dying before circa 1093 [1], Simeon of Durham [1] carries what appears to be the last reference to her in 1070. [2]

Origin

Medieval sources

Agatha's origin is alluded to in numerous surviving medieval sources, but the information they provide is sometimes imprecise, often contradictory, and occasionally outright impossible. The earliest surviving source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis and Regalis prosapia Anglorum, Simeon of Durham and Ailred of Rievaulx describe Agatha as a kinswoman of "Emperor Henry" (thaes ceseres maga, filia germani imperatoris Henrici). In an earlier entry, the same Ailred of Rievaulx had called her daughter of emperor Henry, as do later sources of dubious credibility such as the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, while Matthew of Paris calls her the emperor's sister (soror Henrici imperatoris Romani). Geoffrey Gaimar in Lestoire des Engles states that she was daughter of the Hungarian king and queen (Li reis sa fille), although he places the marriage at a time when Edward is thought still to have been in Kiev, while Orderic Vitalis in Historiae Ecclesiasticae is more specific, naming her father as king Solomon (filiam Salomonis Regis Hunorum), actually a contemporary of Agatha's children. William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum states that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary (reginae sororem) and is echoed in this by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, while less precisely, Ailred says of Margaret that she was derived from English and Hungarian royal blood (de semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum extitit oriunda). Finally, Roger of Howden and the anonymous Leges Edwardi Confessoris indicate that while Edward was a guest of Kievan "king Malesclodus" he married a woman of noble birth (nobili progenio), Leges adding that the mother of St. Margaret was of Rus royal blood (ex genere et sanguine regum Rugorum).[3]

German and Hungarian theories

While various sources repeat the claims that Agatha was daughter or sister of either Emperor Henry, it seems unlikely that such a sibling or daughter would have been ignored by the German chroniclers.[4]

The description of Agatha as a blood relative of "Emperor Henry" may be applicable to a niece of either Henry II or Henry III, Holy Roman Emperors (although Florence, in Regalis prosapia Anglorum specifies Henry III). Early attempts at reconstructing the relationship focused on the former. Georgio Pray 1764, Annales Regum Hungariae), O.F. Suhm (1777, Geschichte Dänmarks, Norwegen und Holsteins) and Istvan Katona (1779, Historia Critica Regum Hungariae) each suggested that Agatha was daughter of Henry II's brother Bruno of Augsburg (an ecclesiastic described as beatae memoriae, with no known issue), while Daniel Cornides (1778, Regum Hungariae) tried to harmonise the German and Hungarian claims, making Agatha daughter of Henry II's sister Giselle of Bavaria, wife of Stephen I of Hungary.[5] This solution remained popular among scholars through a good part of twentieth century.[6]

As tempting as it may be to thus view St. Margaret as a granddaughter of another famous saint, Stephen of Hungary, this popular solution fails to explain why Stephen's death triggered a dynastic crisis in Hungary. If St. Stephen and Giselle were indeed Agatha's parents, her offspring might have succeeded to the Hungarian crown and the dynastic strife that followed Stephen's death could have been averted. Actually, there is no indication in Hungarian sources that any of Stephen's children outlived him. Likewise, all of the solutions involving Henry II would seem to make Agatha much older than her husband, and prohibitively old at the time of the birth of her son, Edgar.

Based on a more strict translation of the Latin description used by Florence and others as well as the supposition that Henry III was the Emperor designated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, genealogist Szabolcs de Vajay popularised another idea first suggested in 1939. In that year, Joszef Herzog published an analysis suggesting that Agatha was daughter of one of the half-brothers of Henry III, born to his mother Gisela of Swabia by one of her earlier marriages to Ernest I of Swabia and Bruno of Brunswick, probably the former based on more favourable chronology.[7] De Vajay reevaluated the chronology of the marriages and children of Gisela and concluded that Agatha was the daughter of Henry III's elder (uterine) half-brother, Liudolf, Margrave of Frisia.[8] This theory saw broad acceptance for thirty years [9] until René Jetté resurrected a Kievan solution to the problem,[10] since which time opinion has been divided among several competing possibilities.[11]

Kievan theory

Jetté pointed out that William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum and several later chronicles unambiguously state that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary. From what we know about the biography of Edward the Exile, he loyally supported Andrew I of Hungary, following him from Kiev to Hungary in 1046 and staying at his court for many years. Andrew's wife and queen was Anastasia, a daughter of Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev by Ingigerd of Sweden. Following Jetté's logic, Edward's wife was another daughter of Yaroslav.

This theory accords with the seemingly incongruous statements of Geoffrey Gaimar and Roger of Howden that, while living in Kiev, Edward took a nativeborn wife "of noble parentage" or that his father-in-law was a "Rus king".[12]

Jetté's theory seems to be supported by an onomastic argument.[13] Among the medieval royalty, Agatha's rare Greek name is first recorded in the Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium; it was also one of the most frequent feminine names in the Kievan Rurikid dynasty.[14] After Anna of Byzantium married Yaroslav's father, he took the Christian name of the reigning emperor, Basil II, while some members of his family were named after other members of the imperial dynasty. Agatha could have been one of these.[15]

The names of Agatha's immediate descendants—Margaret, Cristina, David, Alexander—were likewise extraordinary for Anglo-Saxon Britain. They may provide a clue to Agatha's origin. The names Margaret and Cristina are today associated with Sweden, the native country of Yaroslav's wife Ingigerd.[16] The name of Margaret's son, David, obviously echoes that of Solomon, the son and heir of Andrew I.[17] Furthermore, the first saint of the Rus (canonized ca. 1073) was Yaroslav's brother Gleb, whose Christian name was David.

The name of Margaret's other son, Alexander, may point to a variety of traditions, both occidental and oriental: the biography of Alexander the Great was one of the most popular books in eleventh-century Kiev.

One inference from the Kievan theory is that Edgar Atheling and St. Margaret were, through their mother, first cousins of Philip I of France. The connection is too notable to be omitted from contemporary sources, yet we have no indication that medieval chroniclers were aware of it. The argumentum ex silentio leads critics of the Kievan theory to search for alternative explanations.

Bulgarian theory

In response to the recent flurry of activity on the subject, Ian Mladjov reevaluated the question and presented a completely novel solution.[18] He dismissed each of the prior theories in turn as insufficiently grounded and incompatible given the historical record, and further suggested that many of the proposed solutions would have resulted in later marriages that fell within the prohibited degrees of kinship. He argued that the documentary testimony of Agatha's origins is tainted or late, and concurred with Humphreys' evaluation that the names of the children and grandchildren of Agatha, so central to prior reevaluations, may have had non-family origins (for example, Pope Alexander II played a critical role in the marriage of Malcolm and Margaret). However, he then focused in on the name of Agatha as being critical to determining her origin. He concluded that of the few contemporary Agathas, only one could possibly have been an ancestor of the wife of Edward the Exile, Agatha,[19] wife of Samuel of Bulgaria. Some of the other names associated with Agatha and used to corroborate theories based in onomastics are also readily available within the Bulgarian ruling family at the time, including Mary and several Davids. Mladjov inferred that Agatha was daughter of Gavril Radomir, Tsar of Bulgaria, Agatha's son, by his first wife, a Hungarian princess thought to have been the daughter of Duke Géza of Hungary. This hypothesis has Agatha born in Hungary after her parents divorced, her mother being pregnant when she left Bulgaria, and naming her daughter after the mother of the prince who had expelled her. Traditional dates of this divorce would seem to preclude the suggested relationship, but the article re-examined some long-standing assumptions about the chronology of Gavril Radomir's marriage to the Hungarian princess, and concludes that its dating to the late 980s is unsupportable, and its dissolution belongs in c. 1009-1014. The argument is based almost exclusively on the onomastic precedent but is said to vindicate the intimate connection between Agatha and Hungary attested in the Medieval sources. Mladjov speculates further that the medieval testimony could largely be harmonized were one to posit that Agatha's mother was the same Hungarian princess who married Samuel Aba of Hungary, his family fleeing to Kiev after his downfall, thereby allowing a Russian marriage for Agatha.

This solution fails to conform with any of the relationships appearing in the primary record. It is inferred that the relative familiarity with Germany and unfamiliarity with Hungary partly distorted the depiction of Agatha in the English sources; her actual position would have been that of a daughter of the (unnamed) sister of the King of Hungary (Stephen I), himself the brother-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor (Henry II, and therefore kinsman of Henry III).

Other theories

In 2002, in an article meant to refute the Kievan hypothesis, John Carmi Parsons suggested yet another possible origin. He made Agatha daughter of a documented count Cristinus (explaining the name Christina for Agatha's daughter) by Oda of Haldensleben, hypothesized to be maternal granddaughter of Vladimir I of Kiev by a German wife, kinswoman to Emperor Henry III. He also floated the possibility that Edward may have married twice, suggesting that the contradictory primary record may in part reflect the confusion between two distinct wives.[20] Recently, one additional theory has appeared. John P. Ravilious has proposed that she was daughter of Mieszko II Lambert of Poland by his German wife, making her kinswoman of both Emperors Henry, as well as sister of a Hungarian queen, the wife of Béla I.[21]

Notes and references

  1. ^ Historia Regum, vol.II, pp.190-192

2. ^ Foundations(Journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy), vol.1, no.4, July 2004, pps.302-303, ISSN 1479-5078
3. ^ René Jetté. "Is the Mystery of the Origins of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?", in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (October 1996), pp. 417-432; Gabriel Ronay, The lost King of England : the East European adventures of Edward the Exile, Woodbridge, Suffolk ; Wolfeboro, N.H., USA : Boydell Press, 1989, ISBN 0-85115-541-3, pp. 109-121.
4. ^ Edward Augustus Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest: its causes and its results, Third Edition, Revised, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1877, pp. 668-673.
5. ^ Ronay, The lost King of England, pp. 109-121.
6. ^ e.g. Sandor Fest, "The sons of Edmund Ironside Anglo-Saxon King at the Court of St. Stephen", in Archivum Europae Centro-Orientalis vol. 4 (1938), pp. 115-145; G. Andrews Moriarty, "Agatha, wife of the Atheling Eadward", in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 106 (1952), pp. 52-60; Gregory Lauder-Frost, "Agatha-The Ancestry Dispute", in The Scottish Genealogist, Vol. 49, No.3 (September 2002), pp. 71-72.
7. ^ Jozsef Herzog, "Skóciai Szent Margit származásának kérdése" [The problem of St Margaret of Scotland's Scottish origins], in Turul vol. 53 (1939), pp. 1-42; Marcellus D. R. von Redlich, "The Parentage of Agatha, Wife of Prince Edward the Exile", National Genealogical Society Quarterly, vol. 28 (1940), pp. 105-109; G. Andrews Moriarty, "Agatha, wife of the Atheling Eadward", in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 106 (1952), pp. 52-60; Szabolcs de Vajay. "Agatha, Mother St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland", in Duquesne Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1962), pp. 71-80.
8. ^ Szabolcs de Vajay. "Agatha, Mother St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland", in Duquesne Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1962), pp. 71-80.
9. ^ e.g. Ronay, The lost King of England; Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots fo Sixty Colonists who came to New England between 1623 and 1650, sixth edition, Walter Lee Sheppard, ed., p. 3.
10. ^ René Jetté, "Is the Mystery of the Origins of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?", in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (October 1996): 417-432.
11. ^ David Faris and Douglas Richardson supported the Liudolf connection, "The Origin of Agatha-The Debate Continues: The Parents of Agatha, Wife of Edward The Exile" in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 152, (April 1998). Norman Ingham supported Jetté in two articles: "A Slavist's View of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, as a Possible Daughter of Yaroslav the Wise" in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 152 (1998), pp. 216-23; "Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudryi Been Found?" in Russian History, vol. 25 (1998 [pub. 1999]), pp. 231-70. Gregory Lauder-Frost, summarized numerous early sources and the various theories: "Agatha-The Ancestry Dispute", in The Scottish Genealogist, Vol. 49, No.3 (September 2002), pp. 71-72. He follows Moriarty in discounting the Herzog/de Vajay theories, both leaning towards Saint Stephen as her father.
12. ^ It has been suggested that Agatha is one of four or five Yaroslav's daughters represented next to him in the famous eleventh-century fresco in the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. It is known that Yaroslav's other daughters married Henry I of France and Harald III of Norway. At the time of their marriages, both Harald and Andrew were, just like Edward, the landless pretenders to foreign thrones, who found shelter and support in distant but powerful Kiev.
13. ^ Pointedly criticized by John Carmi Parsons in his article "Edward the Aetheling's Wife, Agatha", in The Plantagenet Connection, Summer/Winter 2002, pp. 31-54. Donald C. Jackman, "A Greco-Roman Onomastic Fund", in Onomastique et Parente dans l'Occident medieval, Prosographica et Genealogica, Vol. 3 (2000), pp. 14-56, shows several genealogical groupings of individuals in Germany at this time, including Agatha, with seemingly Eastern names. He indicates several possible sources (e.g. the marriages of Emperor Otto II and of Vladimir I of Kiev, and the supposed marriage of Emperor Louis the Blind, to Byzantine brides) for the introduction of these names into the western European dynasties.
15. ^ According to one theory, Agatha was not a daughter but sister of Yaroslav. Indeed, the last wife of Yaroslav's father, Vladimir I, seems to have been a German princess, who could have been described as "filia germani imperatoris Henrici". It is generally accepted that their daughter Dobronega married Casimir I of Poland about the same year when Edward is thought to have married Agatha (judging by the date when their eldest child was born). If Agatha was Yaroslav's sister (rather than daughter as Jette thought), she would still have close ties to the Hungarian royal family. For instance, one of Yaroslav's sisters was the wife of Ladislas the Bald, a paternal uncle of Andrew I.
16. ^ It has been argued that Ingigerd's original Christian name was Margaret. Whatever the truth, the names Margaret and Cristina were not explicitly recorded in Sweden before the twelfth century. For details, see: Ф.Б. Успенский. Скандинавы-Варяги-Русь: Историко-филологические очерки. Moscow, 2002. Pages 60-61.
17. ^ Andrew's second son was actually named David. Current scholarship traces these names to the famous oration of Ilarion of Kiev, in which he likened Vladimir (i.e., grandfather of Andrew's wife) to the victorious David and Yaroslav (i.e., Andrew's father-in-law) to the wise Solomon. The comparison became so popular that later historians assigned to Yaroslav the sobriquet "Wise".
18. ^ Mladjov, Ian. "Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile", in The Plantagenet Connection, vol. 11, Summer/Winter 2003, pp. 1-85. See also a summary in "The Bulgarian Descent of HM Simeon II", in Sega: April 13, 2002 and here.
19. ^ Her father was a Dyrrachian notable, Ioannes Khrysilios.
20. ^ Parsons, "Edward the Aetheling's Wife, Agatha", pp 52-54.
21. ^ John P. Ravilious, "The Ancestry of Agatha, Mother of St. Margaret of Scotland", The Scottish Genealogist, vol. 56, pp. 70-84.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha,_wife_of_Edward_the_Exile

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha,_wife_of_Edward_the_Exile

Life

Nothing is known of her early life, and what speculation has appeared is inextricably linked to the contentious issue of Agatha's paternity, one of the unresolved questions of medieval genealogy. She came to England with her husband and children in 1057, but she was widowed shortly after her arrival. Following the Norman conquest of England, in 1067 she fled with her children to Scotland, finding refuge under her future son-in-law Malcolm III. While one modern source indicates that she spent her last years as a nun at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dying before circa 1093 [1], Simeon of Durham [2] carries what appears to be the last reference to her in 1070. [3]

[edit] Origin

[edit] Medieval sources

Agatha's origin is alluded to in numerous surviving medieval sources, but the information they provide is sometimes imprecise, often contradictory, and occasionally outright impossible. The earliest surviving source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis and Regalis prosapia Anglorum, Simeon of Durham and Ailred of Rievaulx describe Agatha as a kinswoman of "Emperor Henry" (thaes ceseres maga, filia germani imperatoris Henrici). In an earlier entry, the same Ailred of Rievaulx had called her daughter of emperor Henry, as do later sources of dubious credibility such as the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, while Matthew of Paris calls her the emperor's sister (soror Henrici imperatoris Romani). Geoffrey Gaimar in Lestoire des Engles states that she was daughter of the Hungarian king and queen (Li reis sa fille), although he places the marriage at a time when Edward is thought still to have been in Kiev, while Orderic Vitalis in Historiae Ecclesiasticae is more specific, naming her father as king Solomon (filiam Salomonis Regis Hunorum), actually a contemporary of Agatha's children. William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum states that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary (reginae sororem) and is echoed in this by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, while less precisely, Ailred says of Margaret that she was derived from English and Hungarian royal blood (de semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum extitit oriunda). Finally, Roger of Howden and the anonymous Leges Edwardi Confessoris indicate that while Edward was a guest of Kievan "king Malesclodus" he married a woman of noble birth (nobili progenio), Leges adding that the mother of St. Margaret was of Rus royal blood (ex genere et sanguine regum Rugorum).[4]

[edit] German and Hungarian theories

While various sources repeat the claims that Agatha was daughter or sister of either Emperor Henry, it seems unlikely that such a sibling or daughter would have been ignored by the German chroniclers.[5]

The description of Agatha as a blood relative of "Emperor Henry" may be applicable to a niece of either Henry II or Henry III, Holy Roman Emperors (although Florence, in Regalis prosapia Anglorum specifies Henry III). Early attempts at reconstructing the relationship focused on the former. Georgio Pray 1764, Annales Regum Hungariae), O.F. Suhm (1777, Geschichte Dänmarks, Norwegen und Holsteins) and Istvan Katona (1779, Historia Critica Regum Hungariae) each suggested that Agatha was daughter of Henry II's brother Bruno of Augsburg (an ecclesiastic described as beatae memoriae, with no known issue), while Daniel Cornides (1778, Regum Hungariae) tried to harmonise the German and Hungarian claims, making Agatha daughter of Henry II's sister Giselle of Bavaria, wife of Stephen I of Hungary.[6] This solution remained popular among scholars through a good part of twentieth century.[7]

     Henry II

Duke of Bavaria Gisela of Burgundy

                         l

Henry II

Emperor Bruno of Augsburg Gisela x St. Stephen

                                                          l

St. Emeric
As tempting as it may be to thus view St. Margaret as a granddaughter of another famous saint, Stephen of Hungary, this popular solution fails to explain why Stephen's death triggered a dynastic crisis in Hungary. If St. Stephen and Giselle were indeed Agatha's parents, her offspring might have succeeded to the Hungarian crown and the dynastic strife that followed Stephen's death could have been averted. Actually, there is no indication in Hungarian sources that any of Stephen's children outlived him. Likewise, all of the solutions involving Henry II would seem to make Agatha much older than her husband, and prohibitively old at the time of the birth of her son, Edgar.

Based on a more strict translation of the Latin description used by Florence and others as well as the supposition that Henry III was the Emperor designated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, genealogist Szabolcs de Vajay popularised another idea first suggested in 1939. In that year, Joszef Herzog published an analysis suggesting that Agatha was daughter of one of the half-brothers of Henry III, born to his mother Gisela of Swabia by one of her earlier marriages to Ernest I of Swabia and Bruno of Brunswick, probably the former based on more favourable chronology.[8] De Vajay reevaluated the chronology of the marriages and children of Gisela and concluded that Agatha was the daughter of Henry III's elder (uterine) half-brother, Liudolf, Margrave of Frisia.[9] This theory saw broad acceptance for thirty years [10] until René Jetté resurrected a Kievan solution to the problem,[11] since which time opinion has been divided among several competing possibilities.[12]

(see the web-page for genealogy)

[edit] Kievan theory

Jetté pointed out that William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum and several later chronicles unambiguously state that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary. From what we know about the biography of Edward the Exile, he loyally supported Andrew I of Hungary, following him from Kiev to Hungary in 1046 and staying at his court for many years. Andrew's wife and queen was Anastasia, a daughter of Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev by Ingigerd of Sweden. Following Jetté's logic, Edward's wife was another daughter of Yaroslav.

11th-century fresco representing the daughters of Yaroslav I.This theory accords with the seemingly incongruous statements of Geoffrey Gaimar and Roger of Howden that, while living in Kiev, Edward took a nativeborn wife "of noble parentage" or that his father-in-law was a "Rus king".[13]

Jetté's theory seems to be supported by an onomastic argument.[14] Among the medieval royalty, Agatha's rare Greek name is first recorded in the Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium; it was also one of the most frequent feminine names in the Kievan Rurikid dynasty.[15] After Anna of Byzantium married Yaroslav's father, he took the Christian name of the reigning emperor, Basil II, while some members of his family were named after other members of the imperial dynasty. Agatha could have been one of these.[16]

The names of Agatha's immediate descendants—Margaret, Cristina, David, Alexander—were likewise extraordinary for Anglo-Saxon Britain. They may provide a clue to Agatha's origin. The names Margaret and Cristina are today associated with Sweden, the native country of Yaroslav's wife Ingigerd.[17] The name of Margaret's son, David, obviously echoes that of Solomon, the son and heir of Andrew I.[18] Furthermore, the first saint of the Rus (canonized ca. 1073) was Yaroslav's brother Gleb, whose Christian name was David.

             (see the web-page for genealogy)

The name of Margaret's other son, Alexander, may point to a variety of traditions, both occidental and oriental: the biography of Alexander the Great was one of the most popular books in eleventh-century Kiev.

One inference from the Kievan theory is that Edgar Atheling and St. Margaret were, through their mother, first cousins of Philip I of France. The connection is too notable to be omitted from contemporary sources, yet we have no indication that medieval chroniclers were aware of it. The argumentum ex silentio leads critics of the Kievan theory to search for alternative explanations.

[edit] Bulgarian theory

In response to the recent flurry of activity on the subject, Ian Mladjov reevaluated the question and presented a completely novel solution.[19] He dismissed each of the prior theories in turn as insufficiently grounded and incompatible given the historical record, and further suggested that many of the proposed solutions would have resulted in later marriages that fell within the prohibited degrees of kinship. He argued that the documentary testimony of Agatha's origins is tainted or late, and concurred with Humphreys' evaluation that the names of the children and grandchildren of Agatha, so central to prior reevaluations, may have had non-family origins (for example, Pope Alexander II played a critical role in the marriage of Malcolm and Margaret). However, he then focused in on the name of Agatha as being critical to determining her origin. He concluded that of the few contemporary Agathas, only one could possibly have been an ancestor of the wife of Edward the Exile, Agatha,[20] wife of Samuel of Bulgaria. Some of the other names associated with Agatha and used to corroborate theories based in onomastics are also readily available within the Bulgarian ruling family at the time, including Mary and several Davids. Mladjov inferred that Agatha was daughter of Gavril Radomir, Tsar of Bulgaria, Agatha's son, by his first wife, a Hungarian princess thought to have been the daughter of Duke Géza of Hungary. This hypothesis has Agatha born in Hungary after her parents divorced, her mother being pregnant when she left Bulgaria, and naming her daughter after the mother of the prince who had expelled her. Traditional dates of this divorce would seem to preclude the suggested relationship, but the article re-examined some long-standing assumptions about the chronology of Gavril Radomir's marriage to the Hungarian princess, and concludes that its dating to the late 980s is unsupportable, and its dissolution belongs in c. 1009-1014. The argument is based almost exclusively on the onomastic precedent but is said to vindicate the intimate connection between Agatha and Hungary attested in the Medieval sources. Mladjov speculates further that the medieval testimony could largely be harmonized were one to posit that Agatha's mother was the same Hungarian princess who married Samuel Aba of Hungary, his family fleeing to Kiev after his downfall, thereby allowing a Russian marriage for Agatha.

          (see the web-page for genealogy)

This solution fails to conform with any of the relationships appearing in the primary record. It is inferred that the relative familiarity with Germany and unfamiliarity with Hungary partly distorted the depiction of Agatha in the English sources; her actual position would have been that of a daughter of the (unnamed) sister of the King of Hungary (Stephen I), himself the brother-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor (Henry II, and therefore kinsman of Henry III).

[edit] Other theories

In 2002, in an article meant not only to refute the Kievan hypothesis, but also to broaden the consideration of possible alternatives beyond the competing German Imperial and Kievan reconstructions, John Carmi Parsons presented an novel theory. He pointed out that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle represents the earliest surviving testimony, and argues that it was probably well informed in reporting an Imperial kinship. He proposed that Agatha might be daughter of a documented German Count Cristinus (explaining the name Christina for Agatha's daughter) by Oda of Haldensleben, hypothesized to be maternal granddaughter of Vladimir I of Kiev by a German kinswoman of Emperor Henry III. Parsons also noted that Edward could have married twice, with the contradictory primary record in part reflecting confusion between distinct wives.[21] Recently, a Polish hypothesis has appeared. John P. Ravilious has proposed that Agathe was daughter of Mieszko II Lambert of Poland by his German wife, making her kinswoman of both Emperors Henry, as well as sister of a Hungarian queen, the wife of Béla I.[22]

[edit] Notes and references

^ Complete Genealogy of the House of Rurik

^ Historia Regum, vol.II, pp.190-192

^ Foundations(Journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy), vol.1, no.4, July 2004, pps.302-303, ISSN 1479-5078

^ René Jetté. "Is the Mystery of the Origins of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?", in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (October 1996), pp. 417-432; Gabriel Ronay, The lost King of England : the East European adventures of Edward the Exile, Woodbridge, Suffolk ; Wolfeboro, N.H., USA : Boydell Press, 1989, ISBN 0-85115-541-3, pp. 109-121.

^ Edward Augustus Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest: its causes and its results, Third Edition, Revised, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1877, pp. 668-673.

^ Ronay, The lost King of England, pp. 109-121.

^ e.g. Sandor Fest, "The sons of Edmund Ironside Anglo-Saxon King at the Court of St. Stephen", in Archivum Europae Centro-Orientalis vol. 4 (1938), pp. 115-145; G. Andrews Moriarty, "Agatha, wife of the Atheling Eadward", in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 106 (1952), pp. 52-60; Gregory Lauder-Frost, "Agatha-The Ancestry Dispute", in The Scottish Genealogist, Vol. 49, No.3 (September 2002), pp. 71-72.

^ Jozsef Herzog, "Skóciai Szent Margit származásának kérdése" [The problem of St Margaret of Scotland's Scottish origins], in Turul vol. 53 (1939), pp. 1-42; Marcellus D. R. von Redlich, "The Parentage of Agatha, Wife of Prince Edward the Exile", National Genealogical Society Quarterly, vol. 28 (1940), pp. 105-109; G. Andrews Moriarty, "Agatha, wife of the Atheling Eadward", in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 106 (1952), pp. 52-60; Szabolcs de Vajay. "Agatha, Mother St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland", in Duquesne Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1962), pp. 71-80.

^ Szabolcs de Vajay. "Agatha, Mother St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland", in Duquesne Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1962), pp. 71-80.

^ e.g. Ronay, The lost King of England; Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots fo Sixty Colonists who came to New England between 1623 and 1650, sixth edition, Walter Lee Sheppard, ed., p. 3.

^ René Jetté, "Is the Mystery of the Origins of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?", in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (October 1996): 417-432.

^ David Faris and Douglas Richardson supported the Liudolf connection, "The Origin of Agatha-The Debate Continues: The Parents of Agatha, Wife of Edward The Exile" in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 152, (April 1998). Norman Ingham supported Jetté in two articles: "A Slavist's View of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, as a Possible Daughter of Yaroslav the Wise" in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 152 (1998), pp. 216-23; "Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudryi Been Found?" in Russian History, vol. 25 (1998 [pub. 1999]), pp. 231-70. Gregory Lauder-Frost, summarized numerous early sources and the various theories: "Agatha-The Ancestry Dispute", in The Scottish Genealogist, Vol. 49, No.3 (September 2002), pp. 71-72. He follows Moriarty in discounting the Herzog/de Vajay theories, both leaning towards Saint Stephen as her father.

^ It has been suggested that Agatha is one of four or five Yaroslav's daughters represented next to him in the famous eleventh-century fresco in the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. It is known that Yaroslav's other daughters married Henry I of France and Harald III of Norway. At the time of their marriages, both Harald and Andrew were, just like Edward, the landless pretenders to foreign thrones, who found shelter and support in distant but powerful Kiev.

^ Pointedly criticized by John Carmi Parsons in his article "Edward the Aetheling's Wife, Agatha", in The Plantagenet Connection, Summer/Winter 2002, pp. 31-54. Donald C. Jackman, "A Greco-Roman Onomastic Fund", in Onomastique et Parente dans l'Occident medieval, Prosographica et Genealogica, Vol. 3 (2000), pp. 14-56, shows several genealogical groupings of individuals in Germany at this time, including Agatha, with seemingly Eastern names. He indicates several possible sources (e.g. the marriages of Emperor Otto II and of Vladimir I of Kiev, and the supposed marriage of Emperor Louis the Blind, to Byzantine brides) for the introduction of these names into the western European dynasties.

^ According to one theory, Agatha was not a daughter but sister of Yaroslav. Indeed, the last wife of Yaroslav's father, Vladimir I, seems to have been a German princess, who could have been described as "filia germani imperatoris Henrici". It is generally accepted that their daughter Dobronega married Casimir I of Poland about the same year when Edward is thought to have married Agatha (judging by the date when their eldest child was born). If Agatha was Yaroslav's sister (rather than daughter as Jette thought), she would still have close ties to the Hungarian royal family. For instance, one of Yaroslav's sisters was the wife of Ladislas the Bald, a paternal uncle of Andrew I.

^ It has been argued that Ingigerd's original Christian name was Margaret. Whatever the truth, the names Margaret and Cristina were not explicitly recorded in Sweden before the twelfth century. For details, see: Ф.Б. Успенский. Скандинавы-Варяги-Русь: Историко-филологические очерки. Moscow, 2002. Pages 60-61.

^ Andrew's second son was actually named David. Current scholarship traces these names to the famous oration of Ilarion of Kiev, in which he likened Vladimir (i.e., grandfather of Andrew's wife) to the victorious David and Yaroslav (i.e., Andrew's father-in-law) to the wise Solomon. The comparison became so popular that later historians assigned to Yaroslav the sobriquet "Wise".

^ Mladjov, Ian. "Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile", in The Plantagenet Connection, vol. 11, Summer/Winter 2003, pp. 1-85. See also a summary in "The Bulgarian Descent of HM Simeon II", in Sega: April 13, 2002 and here.

^ Her father was a Dyrrachian notable, Ioannes Khrysilios.

^ Parsons, "Edward the Aetheling's Wife, Agatha", pp 52-54.

^ John P. Ravilious, "The Ancestry of Agatha, Mother of St. Margaret of Scotland", The Scottish Genealogist, vol. 56, pp. 70-84.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha,_wife_of_Edward_the_Exile"

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Princess of Hungary; b.c. 1020/5; d. 1066; m. Edward the Atheling, king of England; mother of Edgar the Exile. [Charlemagne & Others, Chart 3315, 3395]

m. Edward the Atheling; mother of St. Margaret of Scotland. [Ancestral Roots, p. 2]

In Vajay's article in the 1960s he started with the previous claims for Agatha's parentage (daughter of St. Stephen, or daughter of Bruno of Augsburg, brother of Henry II), and demonstrated that they were both extremely unlikely. He then based his analysis on the statement by Florence that Emperor Henry was the paternal uncle of Agatha. This could not have been Henry II, since Vajay had just excluded both of his siblings as the parent, but could have been Henry III, who was Emperor at the time of the Exile's return. The problem is that Henry III was an only son of his parents. Vajay recognized, however, that Henry's mother had been married twice before, and he had three half-brothers. He then reconstructed the chronology of Gisela's marriages, and concluded that only her son Liudolf, born of her marriage to Bruno of Brunswick, could have been old enough to be Agatha's father. He therefore proposed that this was Agatha's parentage.

The strength of the theory is that it harmonzes with Florence's statement, without forcing either a priest or a King of Hungary who died without surviving children to have a daughter. The drawbacks are several-fold. First of all, Vajay had to completely rewrite the chronology of Gisela's marital history to get any of her sons old enough to be Agatha's father. In this, I think he was right in placing her marriage to Bruno first, but the chronology is still pretty tight. Next, Liudolf was not known to have had any daughters, let alone a daughter Agatha. There is no indication in this pedigree as to where some of the more unusual nomenclature -- Agatha, Christina, Margaret, David, Alexander -- might have come from.

This theory was accepted by most scholars up until a couple of years ago when a new theory was proposed. It is still the position of the Jette skeptics. Todd A. Farmerie

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Hedwig of Hungary (1)

F, #106661

Last Edited=12 May 2008

Hedwig of Hungary was the daughter of St. Stephen I Arpád, King of Hungary and Gisela of Germany. (1) She married Eppo, Count of Nellenburg. (2) She married Edmund (?), son of Edmund II 'Ironside', King of England and Ealdgyth (?). (1)

Forrás / Source:

http://www.thepeerage.com/p10667.htm#i106661

(I. István és Gizella) Házasságukból több gyermekük született, név szerint Imre (Henrik), Ottó, Bernát, Ágota, Hedvig ismert.

Forrás / Source:

http://vmek.niif.hu/01900/01992/html/index680.html

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha%2C_wife_of_Edward_the_Exile

Agatha was the wife of Edward the Exile (heir to the throne of England) and mother of Edgar Ætheling, Saint Margaret of Scotland and Cristina of England. Her antecedents are unclear, and subject to much speculation.Contents [hide]

1 Life

2 Medieval sources

3 German theories

4 Kievan theory

4.1 Daughter of Yaroslav the Wise

5 Bulgarian theory

6 Notes and references

[edit]

Life

Nothing is known of her early life, and what speculation has appeared is inextricably linked to the contentious issue of Agatha's paternity, one of the unresolved questions of medieval genealogy. She came to England with her husband and children in 1057, but she was widowed within weeks of arriving. In 1067, following the Norman conquest of England, she fled with her children to Scotland, finding refuge under Malcolm III, who would become her son-in-law. One source gives her last years as a nun at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dying before circa 1093 [1]. However Symeon of Durham [1] carries what appears to be the last reference to her in 1070.[2]

[edit]

Medieval sources

Agatha's origin is alluded to in numerous surviving medieval sources, but the information they provide is sometimes imprecise, often contradictory, and occasionally outright impossible. The earliest surviving source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis and Regalis prosapia Anglorum, Simeon of Durham and Ailred of Rievaulx describe Agatha as a kinswoman of "Emperor Henry" (thaes ceseres maga, filia germani imperatoris Henrici). In an earlier entry, the same Ailred of Rievaulx had called her daughter of emperor Henry, as do later sources of dubious credibility such as the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, while Matthew of Paris calls her the emperor's sister (soror Henrici imperatoris Romani). Geoffrey Gaimar in Lestoire des Engles states that she was daughter of the Hungarian king and queen (Li reis sa fille), although he places the marriage at a time when Edward is thought still to have been in Kiev, while Orderic Vitalis in Historiae Ecclesiasticae is more specific, naming her father as king Solomon (filiam Salomonis Regis Hunorum), actually a contemporary of Agatha's children. William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum states that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary (reginae sororem) and is echoed in this by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, while less precisely, Ailred says of Margaret that she was derived from English and Hungarian royal blood (de semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum extitit oriunda). Finally, Roger of Howden and the anonymous Leges Edwardi Confessoris indicate that while Edward was a guest of Kievan "king Malesclodus" he married a woman of noble birth (nobili progenio), Leges adding that the mother of St. Margaret was of Russian royal blood (ex genere et sanguine regum Rugorum).[3]

[edit]

German theories

While various sources repeat the claims that Agatha was daughter or sister of either Emperor Henry, it seems unlikely that such a sibling or daughter would have been ignored by the German chroniclers.

The description of Agatha as a blood relative of "Emperor Henry" may be applicable to a niece of either Henry II or Henry III, Holy Roman Emperors (although Florence, in Regalis prosapia Anglorum specifies Henry III). Early attempts at reconstructing the relationship focussed on the former. Georgio Pray (1764, Annales Regum Hungariae), O.F. Suhm (1777, Geschichte Dänmarks, Norwegen und Holsteins) and Istvan Katona (1779, Historia Critica Regum Hungariae) each suggested that Agatha was daughter of Henry II's brother Bruno of Augsburg (an ecclesiastic described as beatae memoriae, with no known issue), while Daniel Cornides (1778, Regum Hungariae) tried to harmonize the German and Hungarian claims, making Agatha daughter of Henry II's sister Giselle of Bavaria, wife of Stephen I of Hungary.[4] This solution remained popular among scholars through a good part of 20th century.

Although it's tempting to view St. Margaret as a granddaughter of another famous saint, Stephen of Hungary, this popular solution fails to explain why Stephen's death triggered a dynastic crisis in Hungary. If St. Stephen and Giselle were indeed Agatha's parents, her offspring should have succeeded to the Hungarian crown and the dynastic strife could have been averted. Actually, there is no indication in Hungarian sources that any of Stephen's children outlived him. Likewise, all of the solutions involving Henry II would seem to make Agatha much older than her husband, and prohibitively old at the time of the birth of her son, Edgar.

Based on a more strict translation of the Latin description used by Florence and others as well as the supposition that Henry III was the Emperor designated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, genealogist Szabolcs de Vajay popularized another idea first suggested in 1939.[5]. He hypothesized that Agatha was the daughter of Henry III's elder (uterine) half-brother, Liudolf, Margrave of West Friesland. This did require a reevaluation of the chronology of the marriages and children of Gisela of Swabia, mother of both Henry III and Liudolf. The theory saw broad acceptance for thirty years [6] until René Jetté proposed a Kievan solution to the problem,[7] since which time opinion has been divided among several competing possibilities.[8]

[edit]

Kievan theory

[edit]

Daughter of Yaroslav the Wise

Jetté pointed out that William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum and several later chronicles unambigously state that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary. From what we know about the biography of Edward the Exile, he loyally supported Andrew I of Hungary, following him from Kiev to Hungary in 1046 and staying at his court for many years. Andrew's wife and queen was Anastasia, a daughter of Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev by Ingigerd of Sweden. Following Jetté's logic, Edward's wife was another daughter of Yaroslav.

11th-century fresco representing the daughters of Yaroslav I.

This theory accords with the seemingly incongruous statements of Geoffrey Gaimar and Roger of Howden that, while living in Kiev, Edward took a nativeborn wife "of noble parentage" or that his father-in-law was a "Russian king".[9]

Jetté's theory seems to be supported by an onomastic argument.[10] Among the medieval royalty, Agatha's rare Greek name is first recorded in the Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium; it was also one of the most frequent feminine names in the Kievan Rurikid dynasty.[11] After Anna of Byzantium married Yaroslav's father, he took the Christian name of the reigning emperor, Basil II, while some members of his family were named after other members of the imperial dynasty. Agatha could have been one of these.[12]

The names of Agatha's immediate descendants — Margaret, Cristina, David, Alexander — were likewise extraordinary for Anglo-Saxon Britain. They may provide a clue to Agatha's origin. The names Margaret and Cristina are today associated with Sweden, the native country of Yaroslav's wife Ingigerd.[13] The name of Margaret's son, David, obviously echoes that of Solomon, the son and heir of Andrew I.[14] Furthermore, the first Russian saint (canonized ca. 1073) was Yaroslav's brother Gleb, whose Christian name was David.

The name of Margaret's other son, Alexander, may point to a variety of traditions, both occidental and oriental: the biography of Alexander the Great was one of the most popular books in 11th-century Kiev.

One inference from the Kievan theory is that Edgar Atheling and St. Margaret were, through their mother, first cousins of Philip I of France. The connection is too notable to be omitted from contemporary sources, yet we have no indication that medieval chroniclers were aware of it. The argumentum ex silentio lead critics of the Kievan theory to search for alternative explanations.

[edit]

Bulgarian theory

One of the latest theories was proposed by Ian Mladjov.[15] Dismissing the Kievan theory as insufficiently grounded, he infers that Agatha was daughter of Gavril Radomir, Tsar of Bulgaria by his first wife, a Hungarian princess (named Marguerite by some sources), the daughter of Duke Géza of Hungary. This hypothesis has Agatha born in Hungary after her parents divorced, her mother being pregnant when she left Bulgaria, as indicated in Byzantine sources. The argument is based primarily on the onomastic precedent provided by the fact that Gavril Radomir's own mother was also named Agatha,[16] and it vindicates the intimate connection between Agatha and Hungary attested in the Medieval sources.

The article reviews the sources, the Hungarian, German, and Kievan theories for Agatha's antecedents, and looks into the contemporary onomastic repertoire, concluding that of the few contemporary Agathas, only Gavril Radomir's mother could possibly have been an ancestor of the wife of Edward the Exile. Some of the other names associated with Agatha and used to corroborate theories based in onomastics are also readily available within the Bulgarian ruling family at the time, including Mary and several Davids. Another aspect of the study is to draw attention to genealogical improbabilities posed by several marriages within the prohibited degrees of kinship, as posited by earlier theories (especially the German and Kievan ones, including the French marriage of Anne of Kiev). The article also re-examines some long-standing assumptions about the chronology of Gavril Radomir's marriage to the Hungarian princess, and concludes that its dating to the late 980s is unsupportable, and its dissolution belongs in c. 1009–1014.

This corrected chronology, the clear onomastic precedent, and the lack of problematic genealogical relationships would allow Agatha's identification as the daughter of Saint Stephen's sister Marguerite, raised at the Hungarian court, and married (possibly while in exile in Kievan Rus') to Edward the Exile. It is inferred that the relative familiarity with Germany and unfamiliarity with Hungary partly distorted the depiction of Agatha in the English sources; her actual position would have been that of a daughter of the (unnamed) sister of the King of Hungary (Stephen I), himself the brother-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor (Henry II, and therefore kinsman of Henry III).

[edit]

Notes and references

^ Historia Regum, vol.II, pp.190-192

^ Foundations (Journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy), vol.1, no.4, July 2004, pps.302-303, ISSN 1479-5078

^ René Jetté. "Is the Mystery of the Origins of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?", in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (October 1996), pp. 417-432; Gabriel Ronay, The lost King of England : the East European adventures of Edward the Exile, Woodbridge, Suffolk ; Wolfeboro, N.H., USA : Boydell Press, 1989, ISBN 0-85115-541-3, pp. 109-121.

^ Ronay, The lost King of England, pp. 109-121.

^ Jozsef Herzog, "Skóciai Szent Margit származásának kérdése" [The problem of St Margaret of Scotland's Scottish origins], in Turul vol. 53 (1939), pp. 1-42; Szabolcs de Vajay. "Agatha, Mother St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland", in Duquesne Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1962), pp. 71-80.

^ e.g. Ronay, The lost King of England; Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots fo Sixty Colonists who came to New England between 1623 and 1650, 6th edition, Walter Lee Sheppard, ed., p. 3.

^ René Jetté, "Is the Mystery of the Origins of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?", in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (October 1996): 417-432.

^ David Faris and Douglas Richardson supported the Liudolf connection, "The Origin of Agatha-The Debate Continues: The Parents of Agatha, Wife of Edward The Exile" in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 152, (April 1998). Norman Ingham supported Jetté in two articles: "A Slavist's View of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, as a Possible Daughter of Yaroslav the Wise" in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 152 (1998), pp. 216-23; "Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudryi Been Found?" in Russian History, vol. 25 (1998 [pub. 1999]), pp. 231-70. Scottish genealogist and antiquarian, Gregory Lauder-Frost, summarised numerous early sources and the various theories: "Agatha-The Ancestry Dispute", in The Scottish Genealogist, Vol. 49, No.3 (September 2002), pp. 71-72. He discounts de Vajay's theories and leans towards Saint Stephen as her father.

^ It has been suggested that Agatha is one of four or five Yaroslav's daughters represented next to him in the famous 11th-century fresco in the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. It is known that Yaroslav's other daughters married Henri I of France and Harald III of Norway. At the time of their marriages, both Harald and Andrew were — just like Edward — the landless pretenders to foreign thrones, who found shelter and support in distant but powerful Kiev.

^ Pointedly criticized by John Carmi Parsons in his article "Edward the Aetheling's Wife, Agatha", in The Plantagenet Connection, Summer/Winter 2002, pp. 31-54. Donald C. Jackman, "A Greco-Roman Onomastic Fund", in Onomastique et Parente dans l'Occident medieval, Prosographica et Genealogica, Vol. 3 (2000), pp. 14-56, shows several genealogical groupings of individuals in Germany at this time, including Agatha, with seemingly Eastern names. He indicates several possible sources (e.g. the marriages of Emperor Otto II and of Vladimir I of Kiev, and the supposed marriage of Emperor Louis the Blind, to Byzantine brides) for the introduction of these names into the western European dynasties.

^ According to one theory, Agatha was not a daughter but sister of Yaroslav. Indeed, the last wife of Yaroslav's father, Vladimir I, seems to have been a German princess, who could have been described as "filia germani imperatoris Henrici". It is generally accepted that their daughter Dobronega married Casimir I of Poland about the same year when Edward is thought to have married Agatha (judging by the date when their eldest child was born). If Agatha was Yaroslav's sister (rather than daughter as Jette thought), she would still have close ties to the Hungarian royal family. For instance, one of Yaroslav's sisters was the wife of Ladislas the Bald, a paternal uncle of Andrew I.

^ It has been argued that Ingigerd's original Christian name was Margaret. Whatever the truth, the names Margaret and Cristina were not explicitly recorded in Sweden before the 12th century. For details, see: Ф.Б. Успенский. Скандинавы - Варяги - Русь: Историко-филологические очерки. Moscow, 2002. Pages 60-61.

^ Andrew's second son was actually named David. Current scholarship traces these names to the famous oration of Ilarion of Kiev, in which he likened Vladimir (i.e., grandfather of Andrew's wife) to the victorious David and Yaroslav (i.e., Andrew's father-in-law) to the wise Solomon. The comparison became so popular that later historians assigned to Yaroslav the sobriquet "Wise".

^ Mladjov, Ian. "Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile", in The Plantagenet Connection, vol. 11, Summer/Winter 2003, pp. 1-85. See also a summary in "The Bulgarian Descent of HM Simeon II", in Sega: April 13, 2002 and here.

^ Her father was a Dyrrachian notable, Ioannes Khrysilios.

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Agatha was the wife of Edward the Exile (heir to the throne of England) and mother of Edgar Ætheling, Saint Margaret of Scotland and Cristina of England. Her antecedents are unclear, and subject to much speculation.

---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha,_wife_of_Edward_the_Exile

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Agatha was the wife of Edward the Exile (heir to the throne of England) and mother of Edgar Ætheling, Saint Margaret of Scotland and Cristina of England. Her antecedents are unclear, and subject to much speculation.

Contents [hide]

1 Life

2 Origin

2.1 Medieval sources

2.2 German and Hungarian theories

2.3 Kievan theory

2.4 Bulgarian theory

2.5 Other theories

3 Notes and references

[edit] Life

Nothing is known of her early life, and what speculation has appeared is inextricably linked to the contentious issue of Agatha's paternity, one of the unresolved questions of medieval genealogy. She came to England with her husband and children in 1057, but she was widowed shortly after her arrival. Following the Norman conquest of England, in 1067 she fled with her children to Scotland, finding refuge under her future son-in-law Malcolm III. While one modern source indicates that she spent her last years as a nun at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dying before circa 1093 [1], Simeon of Durham [2] carries what appears to be the last reference to her in 1070. [3]

[edit] Origin

[edit] Medieval sources

Agatha's origin is alluded to in numerous surviving medieval sources, but the information they provide is sometimes imprecise, often contradictory, and occasionally outright impossible. The earliest surviving source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis and Regalis prosapia Anglorum, Simeon of Durham and Ailred of Rievaulx describe Agatha as a kinswoman of "Emperor Henry" (thaes ceseres maga, filia germani imperatoris Henrici). In an earlier entry, the same Ailred of Rievaulx had called her daughter of emperor Henry, as do later sources of dubious credibility such as the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, while Matthew of Paris calls her the emperor's sister (soror Henrici imperatoris Romani). Geoffrey Gaimar in Lestoire des Engles states that she was daughter of the Hungarian king and queen (Li reis sa fille), although he places the marriage at a time when Edward is thought still to have been in Kiev, while Orderic Vitalis in Historiae Ecclesiasticae is more specific, naming her father as king Solomon (filiam Salomonis Regis Hunorum), actually a contemporary of Agatha's children. William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum states that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary (reginae sororem) and is echoed in this by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, while less precisely, Ailred says of Margaret that she was derived from English and Hungarian royal blood (de semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum extitit oriunda). Finally, Roger of Howden and the anonymous Leges Edwardi Confessoris indicate that while Edward was a guest of Kievan "king Malesclodus" he married a woman of noble birth (nobili progenio), Leges adding that the mother of St. Margaret was of Rus royal blood (ex genere et sanguine regum Rugorum).[4]

[edit] German and Hungarian theories

While various sources repeat the claims that Agatha was daughter or sister of either Emperor Henry, it seems unlikely that such a sibling or daughter would have been ignored by the German chroniclers.[5]

The description of Agatha as a blood relative of "Emperor Henry" may be applicable to a niece of either Henry II or Henry III, Holy Roman Emperors (although Florence, in Regalis prosapia Anglorum specifies Henry III). Early attempts at reconstructing the relationship focused on the former. Georgio Pray 1764, Annales Regum Hungariae), O.F. Suhm (1777, Geschichte Dänmarks, Norwegen und Holsteins) and Istvan Katona (1779, Historia Critica Regum Hungariae) each suggested that Agatha was daughter of Henry II's brother Bruno of Augsburg (an ecclesiastic described as beatae memoriae, with no known issue), while Daniel Cornides (1778, Regum Hungariae) tried to harmonise the German and Hungarian claims, making Agatha daughter of Henry II's sister Giselle of Bavaria, wife of Stephen I of Hungary.[6] This solution remained popular among scholars through a good part of twentieth century.[7]

     Henry II

Duke of Bavaria Gisela of

Burgundy

Henry II

Emperor Bruno of

Augsburg Gisela St. Stephen

of Hungary

                     St. Emeric

As tempting as it may be to thus view St. Margaret as a granddaughter of another famous saint, Stephen of Hungary, this popular solution fails to explain why Stephen's death triggered a dynastic crisis in Hungary. If St. Stephen and Giselle were indeed Agatha's parents, her offspring might have succeeded to the Hungarian crown and the dynastic strife that followed Stephen's death could have been averted. Actually, there is no indication in Hungarian sources that any of Stephen's children outlived him. Likewise, all of the solutions involving Henry II would seem to make Agatha much older than her husband, and prohibitively old at the time of the birth of her son, Edgar.

Based on a more strict translation of the Latin description used by Florence and others as well as the supposition that Henry III was the Emperor designated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, genealogist Szabolcs de Vajay popularised another idea first suggested in 1939. In that year, Joszef Herzog published an analysis suggesting that Agatha was daughter of one of the half-brothers of Henry III, born to his mother Gisela of Swabia by one of her earlier marriages to Ernest I of Swabia and Bruno of Brunswick, probably the former based on more favourable chronology.[8] De Vajay reevaluated the chronology of the marriages and children of Gisela and concluded that Agatha was the daughter of Henry III's elder (uterine) half-brother, Liudolf, Margrave of Frisia.[9] This theory saw broad acceptance for thirty years [10] until René Jetté resurrected a Kievan solution to the problem,[11] since which time opinion has been divided among several competing possibilities.[12]

Ernest I

of Swabia Gisela

of Swabia

           Bruno of

Brunswick Conrad II

Emperor

Ernest II

of Swabia Herman IV

of Swabia Liudolf

of Frisia Henry III

Emperor

                           Judith

of Swabia Solomon

of Hungary

[edit] Kievan theory

Jetté pointed out that William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum and several later chronicles unambiguously state that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary. From what we know about the biography of Edward the Exile, he loyally supported Andrew I of Hungary, following him from Kiev to Hungary in 1046 and staying at his court for many years. Andrew's wife and queen was Anastasia, a daughter of Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev by Ingigerd of Sweden. Following Jetté's logic, Edward's wife was another daughter of Yaroslav.

11th-century fresco representing the daughters of Yaroslav I.This theory accords with the seemingly incongruous statements of Geoffrey Gaimar and Roger of Howden that, while living in Kiev, Edward took a nativeborn wife "of noble parentage" or that his father-in-law was a "Rus king".[13]

Jetté's theory seems to be supported by an onomastic argument.[14] Among the medieval royalty, Agatha's rare Greek name is first recorded in the Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium; it was also one of the most frequent feminine names in the Kievan Rurikid dynasty.[15] After Anna of Byzantium married Yaroslav's father, he took the Christian name of the reigning emperor, Basil II, while some members of his family were named after other members of the imperial dynasty. Agatha could have been one of these.[16]

The names of Agatha's immediate descendants—Margaret, Cristina, David, Alexander—were likewise extraordinary for Anglo-Saxon Britain. They may provide a clue to Agatha's origin. The names Margaret and Cristina are today associated with Sweden, the native country of Yaroslav's wife Ingigerd.[17] The name of Margaret's son, David, obviously echoes that of Solomon, the son and heir of Andrew I.[18] Furthermore, the first saint of the Rus (canonized ca. 1073) was Yaroslav's brother Gleb, whose Christian name was David.

   Alexander     Leo VI             Romanos I

Constantine VII Helena
Lekapene Agatha

               Romanos II   Agatha

St. Vladimir Anna
Porphyrogeneta

St. Boris

"Roman" St. Gleb

"David" Yaroslav I Ingigerd

of Sweden

Harald III

of Norway Elizabeth Anastasia Andrew I

of Hungary Anna Henry I

of France Vladimir

of Novgorad unknown

wife

           Adelaide   Solomon

of Hungary David

The name of Margaret's other son, Alexander, may point to a variety of traditions, both occidental and oriental: the biography of Alexander the Great was one of the most popular books in eleventh-century Kiev.

One inference from the Kievan theory is that Edgar Atheling and St. Margaret were, through their mother, first cousins of Philip I of France. The connection is too notable to be omitted from contemporary sources, yet we have no indication that medieval chroniclers were aware of it. The argumentum ex silentio leads critics of the Kievan theory to search for alternative explanations.

[edit] Bulgarian theory

In response to the recent flurry of activity on the subject, Ian Mladjov reevaluated the question and presented a completely novel solution.[19] He dismissed each of the prior theories in turn as insufficiently grounded and incompatible given the historical record, and further suggested that many of the proposed solutions would have resulted in later marriages that fell within the prohibited degrees of kinship. He argued that the documentary testimony of Agatha's origins is tainted or late, and concurred with Humphreys' evaluation that the names of the children and grandchildren of Agatha, so central to prior reevaluations, may have had non-family origins (for example, Pope Alexander II played a critical role in the marriage of Malcolm and Margaret). However, he then focused in on the name of Agatha as being critical to determining her origin. He concluded that of the few contemporary Agathas, only one could possibly have been an ancestor of the wife of Edward the Exile, Agatha,[20] wife of Samuel of Bulgaria. Some of the other names associated with Agatha and used to corroborate theories based in onomastics are also readily available within the Bulgarian ruling family at the time, including Mary and several Davids. Mladjov inferred that Agatha was daughter of Gavril Radomir, Tsar of Bulgaria, Agatha's son, by his first wife, a Hungarian princess thought to have been the daughter of Duke Géza of Hungary. This hypothesis has Agatha born in Hungary after her parents divorced, her mother being pregnant when she left Bulgaria, and naming her daughter after the mother of the prince who had expelled her. Traditional dates of this divorce would seem to preclude the suggested relationship, but the article re-examined some long-standing assumptions about the chronology of Gavril Radomir's marriage to the Hungarian princess, and concludes that its dating to the late 980s is unsupportable, and its dissolution belongs in c. 1009-1014. The argument is based almost exclusively on the onomastic precedent but is said to vindicate the intimate connection between Agatha and Hungary attested in the Medieval sources. Mladjov speculates further that the medieval testimony could largely be harmonized were one to posit that Agatha's mother was the same Hungarian princess who married Samuel Aba of Hungary, his family fleeing to Kiev after his downfall, thereby allowing a Russian marriage for Agatha.

             Comita

Nikola Ripsimia

of Armenia

Aron Moses David Samuil

of Bulgaria Agatha

Ivan

Vladislav Marija Theodora

Kosara Miroslava Gavril

Radomir Hungarian

princess

                                           Peter Delyan

This solution fails to conform with any of the relationships appearing in the primary record. It is inferred that the relative familiarity with Germany and unfamiliarity with Hungary partly distorted the depiction of Agatha in the English sources; her actual position would have been that of a daughter of the (unnamed) sister of the King of Hungary (Stephen I), himself the brother-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor (Henry II, and therefore kinsman of Henry III).

[edit] Other theories

In 2002, in an article meant not only to refute the Kievan hypothesis, but also to broaden the consideration of possible alternatives beyond the competing German Imperial and Kievan reconstructions, John Carmi Parsons presented an novel theory. He pointed out that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle represents the earliest surviving testimony, and argues that it was probably well informed in reporting an Imperial kinship. He proposed that Agatha might be daughter of a documented German Count Cristinus (explaining the name Christina for Agatha's daughter) by Oda of Haldensleben, hypothesized to be maternal granddaughter of Vladimir I of Kiev by a German kinswoman of Emperor Henry III. Parsons also noted that Edward could have married twice, with the contradictory primary record in part reflecting confusion between distinct wives.[21] Recently, a Polish hypothesis has appeared. John P. Ravilious has proposed that Agathe was daughter of Mieszko II Lambert of Poland by his German wife, making her kinswoman of both Emperors Henry, as well as sister of a Hungarian queen, the wife of Béla I.[22]

[edit] Notes and references

1.^ Complete Genealogy of the House of Rurik

2.^ Historia Regum, vol.II, pp.190-192

3.^ Foundations(Journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy), vol.1, no.4, July 2004, pps.302-303, ISSN 1479-5078

4.^ René Jetté. "Is the Mystery of the Origins of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?", in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (October 1996), pp. 417-432; Gabriel Ronay, The lost King of England : the East European adventures of Edward the Exile, Woodbridge, Suffolk ; Wolfeboro, N.H., USA : Boydell Press, 1989, ISBN 0-85115-541-3, pp. 109-121.

5.^ Edward Augustus Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest: its causes and its results, Third Edition, Revised, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1877, pp. 668-673.

6.^ Ronay, The lost King of England, pp. 109-121.

7.^ e.g. Sandor Fest, "The sons of Edmund Ironside Anglo-Saxon King at the Court of St. Stephen", in Archivum Europae Centro-Orientalis vol. 4 (1938), pp. 115-145; G. Andrews Moriarty, "Agatha, wife of the Atheling Eadward", in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 106 (1952), pp. 52-60; Gregory Lauder-Frost, "Agatha-The Ancestry Dispute", in The Scottish Genealogist, Vol. 49, No.3 (September 2002), pp. 71-72.

8.^ Jozsef Herzog, "Skóciai Szent Margit származásának kérdése" [The problem of St Margaret of Scotland's Scottish origins], in Turul vol. 53 (1939), pp. 1-42; Marcellus D. R. von Redlich, "The Parentage of Agatha, Wife of Prince Edward the Exile", National Genealogical Society Quarterly, vol. 28 (1940), pp. 105-109; G. Andrews Moriarty, "Agatha, wife of the Atheling Eadward", in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 106 (1952), pp. 52-60; Szabolcs de Vajay. "Agatha, Mother St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland", in Duquesne Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1962), pp. 71-80.

9.^ Szabolcs de Vajay. "Agatha, Mother St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland", in Duquesne Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1962), pp. 71-80.

10.^ e.g. Ronay, The lost King of England; Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots fo Sixty Colonists who came to New England between 1623 and 1650, sixth edition, Walter Lee Sheppard, ed., p. 3.

11.^ René Jetté, "Is the Mystery of the Origins of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?", in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (October 1996): 417-432.

12.^ David Faris and Douglas Richardson supported the Liudolf connection, "The Origin of Agatha-The Debate Continues: The Parents of Agatha, Wife of Edward The Exile" in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 152, (April 1998). Norman Ingham supported Jetté in two articles: "A Slavist's View of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, as a Possible Daughter of Yaroslav the Wise" in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 152 (1998), pp. 216-23; "Has a Missing Daughter of Iaroslav Mudryi Been Found?" in Russian History, vol. 25 (1998 [pub. 1999]), pp. 231-70. Gregory Lauder-Frost, summarized numerous early sources and the various theories: "Agatha-The Ancestry Dispute", in The Scottish Genealogist, Vol. 49, No.3 (September 2002), pp. 71-72. He follows Moriarty in discounting the Herzog/de Vajay theories, both leaning towards Saint Stephen as her father.

13.^ It has been suggested that Agatha is one of four or five Yaroslav's daughters represented next to him in the famous eleventh-century fresco in the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. It is known that Yaroslav's other daughters married Henry I of France and Harald III of Norway. At the time of their marriages, both Harald and Andrew were, just like Edward, the landless pretenders to foreign thrones, who found shelter and support in distant but powerful Kiev.

14.^ Pointedly criticized by John Carmi Parsons in his article "Edward the Aetheling's Wife, Agatha", in The Plantagenet Connection, Summer/Winter 2002, pp. 31-54. Donald C. Jackman, "A Greco-Roman Onomastic Fund", in Onomastique et Parente dans l'Occident medieval, Prosographica et Genealogica, Vol. 3 (2000), pp. 14-56, shows several genealogical groupings of individuals in Germany at this time, including Agatha, with seemingly Eastern names. He indicates several possible sources (e.g. the marriages of Emperor Otto II and of Vladimir I of Kiev, and the supposed marriage of Emperor Louis the Blind, to Byzantine brides) for the introduction of these names into the western European dynasties.

16.^ According to one theory, Agatha was not a daughter but sister of Yaro

14. ^ А.Ф. Литвина, Ф.Б. Успенский. Выбор имени у русских князей в X-XVI вв.: Династическая история сквозь призму антропонимики. Moscow: Indrik, 2006. ISBN 5-85759-339-5. Page 463.

^ А.Ф. Литвина, Ф.Б. Успенский. Выбор имени у русских князей в X-XVI вв.: Династическая история сквозь призму антропонимики. Moscow: Indrik, 2006. ISBN 5-85759-339-5. Page 463.

^ А.Ф. Литвина, Ф.Б. Успенский. Выбор имени у русских князей в X-XVI вв.: Династическая история сквозь призму антропонимики. Moscow: Indrik, 2006. ISBN 5-85759-339-5. Page 463.

15.^ А.Ф. Литвина, Ф.Б. Успенский. Выбор имени у русских князей в X-XVI вв.: Династическая история сквозь призму антропонимики. Moscow: Indrik, 2006. ISBN 5-85759-339-5. Page 463.