This has been relegated to a separate thread because it is not about the historical record but instead about a genealogically worthless medieval fiction: the story that Charlemagne committed incest with Gisela and
fathered a son by her.

From the 9th century onwards a vague rumour circulated that Charlemagne
had engaged in some unspecified sin of the flesh which he never
confessed, and that his soul was in torment as a result. For a
long-reigning and characterful monarch this kind of posthumous scandal,
whether malicious or just silly, is not exactly unexampled - for
instance, the persistent tittle-tattle about Queen Victoria and her
servant John Brown.

In the case of Charlemagne and Gisela the legend came to be mixed up
with a fabulous hagiography of King Pippin's purported daughter Isbergue
and her marriage to Venant - in one version Gisela was conflated with
this personage and is said to have been married after the birth of her incestuous child to Wanilo, bishop of Laon.

In several articles published by editors who should have known better,
Suzanne Martinet has proposed that this story is true as regards Gisela.
Her clinching "evidence" for this is her untenable interpretation of an
entry in the obituary of Argenteuil as meaning that Gisela was included
under the date of her husband's death having been married to Wanilo of
Laon. This entry, mentioned in the other thread, is under 8 July: "Ob.
Ganilmus episcopus, et Gisla abatissa". In Martinet's uninformed
assertion, any woman occurring after a man like this in a medieval
obituary was necessarily his wife so that abbess Gisela must have been
married to bishop Ganilmus = Wanilo. If she had only bothered to look in
the preceding month of the same obituary she would have seen an entry
that explodes her nonsensical idea: under 15 June it says "Ob. Girardus episcopus, et Adelaidis regina", where quite obviously queen Adelaide
was not the wife of bishop Girard.

The earliest explicit written account of Charlemagne's alleged liaison
with his sister appears to be in the late-13th century Karlamagnús saga,
part I chapter 36, where the angel Gabriel, no less, is said to have
foretold the birth of the siblings' son and that his name would be
Roland. This was placed after the imperial coronation of Charlemagne (at Christmas 800) despite Roland's falling in battle as an experienced
commander at Roncevaux (in 778). Plainly Charlemagne born in the late
740s and Gisela born in 757 could not have been parents of anyone who
was an accomplished warrior by the late 770s.

Peter Stewart

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