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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter Stewart

--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG antivirus software.
www.avg.com

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)