On 16-Oct-22 4:39 AM, Olivier wrote:
I need scholars to refute this theory
" the divorced wife of Louis V, namely a certain Adelaide of ANJOU, would in fact be Adelise (of Soissons) who would have been married 3 times and not only twice:
m1 in 984 x Louis of France (future king Louis V the Lazy), div. 986, without posterity
m2 in 986 x Guy I Count of SOISSONS + 988
m3 in 992 x Nocher Count of BAR-sur-AUBE
If you doubt the story of Richer, which is the sole source for the
marriage of Louis to anyone named Adelaide, then there is no basis left
to posit that it might have been a different lady of the same name.
There is no question of Richer having confused two women named Adelaide,
much less one from Soissons, as he is very specific about the intention
behind the marriage being to secure the position of Louis in Aquitaine
through the fortresses there and influence over the local aristocracy
that Adelaide would supposedly bring to him. Adelaide of Anjou had
undoubtedly been married beforehand to Étienne of Brioude, a leading
magnate in Aquitaine, lord of the place where Louis and Adelaide are
supposed to have been married and crowned.
3 additional information and comments about the wife of Louis V King Lazy:
1°) At his marriage in 1681/1682 with Adelaïs (laquele ?), the young Louis son of the West Frankish king Lothaire II, then aged 14, was already crowned king, although not yet effectively reigning, since his coronation took place in Compiègne at
Pentecost 979.
King Lothaire (reigned until 886), feeling his power strengthened (in the face of Hugues Capet's claims), wanted to marry his newly crowned son quickly in order to give him a royal posterity that would anchor the kingship of France permanently in the
Carolingian house.
(Source: Carl Richard Brühl, "Naissance de deux peuples: Français et Allemand: IX° & X° siècles", pages 246-247)
It is not always safe to ascribe information in this French book to
Brühl himself - in 1990 he had published a huge tome titled 'Deutschland
- Frankreich: die Geburt zweier Völker', which was adapted and heavily abridged by Olivier Guyotjeannin, translated by Gaston Duchet-Suchaux.
Brühl described the result as "an erudite non-fiction book" and hoped to
have it translated into German but died in 1997 before this could be
done. It was revised by Matthias Koch and translated by Marie-Therese
Pitner as 'Die Geburt zweier Völker: Deutsche und Franzosen' (2001).
Some details are not the same in either of these as in the original 1990
work, or consistent between the two abridged versions - for instance, in
1990 Brühl wrote that Louis was aged 13 when crowned at Pentecost in 979
but this was changed to his being 14 in 982 in the French version, which
was changed to 16 in the German translation.
In any case, Brühl explicitly doubted the story of Richer and was not convinced that such a marriage had ever taken place.
---> My comments: why would Lothair then think of marrying this 14 year old son to a woman 'Adelaide of ANJOU' who was already over 35 years old (i.e. already old for that time of the 9th century) and twice widowed; and moreover obliging him to go
outside his own kingdom in Aquitaine, rather than to a young virgin of the same age as his son and from a good house in his own kingdom of West Francia?
Richer represented the marriage plan as the idea of Lothar's wife Emma,
mother of Louis, anticipating wrongly that it would secure her son's
position in Aquitaine - so the relative age of Adelaide was hardly an
obstacle, and anyway she had offspring by each of her prior husbands so
she was was a proven child-bearer unlike a virginal teenager as a
purported alternative candidate.
2°) The marriage of the young Louis V to Adelaide (which) having quickly turned sour (as early as 982), no doubt due to the physical incapacity and general mediocrity of the 'lazy' young man (in all respects), would have necessitated, in the
hypothesis that his wife had been Adelaide of ANJOU, according to Richer, that her father King Lothaire would have been "dragged into military action in 98. The couple, however, soon separated: Lothaire would have had to intervene again to bring Louis
back to France". The affair is known only to the imaginative Richer and seems to me doubtful'.
(Source ibidem: Carl Richard Brühl, "Naissance de deux peuples : Français et Allemand : IX° & X° siècles", page 248)
I would like to add that the history of France does not relate any of these expeditions of Lothar to Aquitaine, nor any treaty of alliance in 981-982 between West Francia and Aquitaine which could have accompanied such a marriage with a diplomatic
aim and territorial expansion rather than simple inheritance and dynastic fecundity; at that time, king Lothar was entirely occupied with his rapprochement with Otto's East Francia, and not with a hypothetical rapprochement with Aquitaine.
3°) King Lothaire was close to Giselbert de SOISSONS, Count in his kingdom, who had a daughter Adelaïs (de SOISSONS) of about the same age (1 year younger) as his son Louis, and already "fit to marry" according to the customs of the time
(Source: Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, Counts of SOISSONS)"
There was no such person as "Giselbert de Soissons". Guy, count of
Soissons, was called cousin by Bruno of Roucy, bishop of Langres, whose
brother Giselbert was count of Reims. Adelaide of Soissons who married
Nocher of Bar-sur-Aube was either the daughter of Guy or his widow, and
in either event there is no evidence that her father was named
Giselbert: the recorded count of Soissons before Guy was named Waldric.
Peter Stewart
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