Hi all -- I can't speak to the more modern stuff, but I am very leery of using this for Late Antiquity (what the author calls the Dark Ages) and the Middle Ages. It's not so much that he's wrong, but what he's done is often a bit misleading and *not right*. I think the basic problem is that he's tried to do what a lot of folks do -- force a more modern idea of a boundaried kingdom on a geographical area, and then try to make a list of rulers that fit a preconceived notion of what a kingdom (or duchy) was like. Then, you try to create some kind of coherent dynasty, generally based on rights of primogeniture that did not exist among Germanic people at the time.

I'm probably saying more than is necessary, but this is stuff I'm pretty comfortable with. I'd better be! This rigidity often gets in the way of good scholarship.

By the way -- as an interesting aside, for those of you who have been keeping up with the Oda von Haldesleben front, a couple of things I have no way of proving (no documentary sources in the manner of land transactions, necrologies, etc to hand -- probably not in this country) have popped into my head. Otto is what is known as a "leading name" in the (most likely) Frankish family we call the Liudolfinger (Liudolfings). We know that they held lands in what became Saxony (then around the Saxon and Northern marches. Oda's father was Theoderic, Count of the Northern March (not strictly an inherited position at this time, but often held by successive members of a family). Some (mostly genealogical) sources call him Count of Saxony -- making little sense, because if anybody's claiming connected, heritable lands and titles in "Saxony", it's the Liudolfinger. But -- Oda is the feminine form of Otto -- a Liudolfinger leading name. My guess, based on very little evidence, is that Oda was a peripheral member of the Liudolfinger -- a distant cousin of Otto the Great (I say distant, because I don't think Theoderic is a name found much among the L's, but he could have married a female liudolfing, and it would have been normal to give a leading name to strengthen the impression of connection to this really important family). So, via marriage, Mieszko I may have been trying to ameliorate relations with the Ottonians (by the late tenth c. the name more commonly used for the Liudolfinger). Or, I could be totally off base. Still, I think it explains why Miesko would kidnap a nun.

Thanks for putting up with my mad rantings --

Jules

Regards,

Julie Hofmann Kemp 253-638-1944 206-310-3461