medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

From: Jim Bugslag <[log in to unmask]>

>Having recently done some research on the cult of St Eustace in northern
France during the late 12th and early 13th centuries, my eye has been attuned
to people named after him.  Indeed, although there were not a lot of
Eustace's, the name did crop up fairly often.  What puzzles me is that so did
a female equivalent, Eustachia, which, if anything, seems to outnumber the
Eustace's.  This strikes me as curious, considering that St Eustace was a
military saint.


i'll take a whack at this.

clearly, choosing names for newby offspringings among the "nobility" was taken
to be a very serious affair, directly associated with the on-going fortunes of
The Family, at a time when The Family was *the* most important social
institution going.

naming was, as such, de facto, a very conservative practice, resistant (and
therefore slow) to change over time.

for the Chartrain (at least) in this period the custom of picking a name which
was already in the family _namengut_ was very, very strong, especially for the
firstborn male (and, perhaps, female) child.

as i have said before, in the majority of cases this meant naming the
firstborn after his paternal grandfather, the second after his father or,
perhaps, after his maternal grandfather, etc.

and it is the firstborn son who appears most often in the charters and other
surviving sources (eg., necrologies).

"Eustache" would have been an "invasion" into the namengut of virtually all
families in the Chartrain.

this would mean that it would take some kind of extraordinary circumstance for
any "foreign" name to enter the namengut --eg., in the case of Eustache, as
thanksgiving for a special intercession of the saint (say, in favor of the
knightly father in battle).


we saw that "extraordinary circumstance" coinsiding with a new entry into a
family namengut come into play in the example i mentioned previously of the
Ouraville family:

the Lord of Ouarville, Raginald, returned from the second crusade with a
precious relic which he had gotten fleeced for in the tourist traps of
Constantinople ;

he piously offered the relic to the church of St. John of Chartres (along with
the church of the _villa_) ; 

then dedicated his third son --presumably born tomorrow ninemonth after his
return-- to the church, naming him after Bishop Goslen, who also "held him at
the font".


"Goslen" then entered the _namengut_ of the Ouarvilles (for the first time
that i was able to find), but in a rather limited way, since the future cleric
Goslen would be without issue.

however, i believe that there was another "Goslen of Ouarville", the nephew of
the Goslen born around 1150, who was also destined for the Church, a younger
son of that Goslen's older brother, who became a canon of Chartres like his
uncle.

we may speculate whether the elder Goslen was the godfather to his older
brother's younger son, but clearly, for this family, at this time, "Goslen"
was the name to be given to a child destined to represent the interests of The
Family in EuropeanChruch, Inc.


now, Jim, a significant question here might be what was the *status* of the
Eustacheses you have found?

were they firstborn sons --Lords of the Manor-- and, if so, were *their* sons
(or grandsons) named Eustache?

or were they members of the clergy?

as i see it, except in extraordinary circumstances, there was a "lock" on the
name which was to be given to the firstborn --and, probably, the second as
well : Custom would dictate that that name would have to come out of the
Family Naming Tradition.

but, after that, when The Family had the luxury of a son to be given to the
Church, other considerations could --and often did-- come into play.

fwIw, i don't recall seeing an Eustache in the Chartres charters i've looked
at.

a quick look at the index to Molinier's edition of the necrologies of the
Diocese of Chartres (and elsewhere) is the fastest way i know of to get an
idea of how common a name might have been in a region --though one has to
exercise some caution when generalising and remember that those necrologies
contain entries over a very long period of time.

so, if there are quite a few "Eustaches" in the index, upon closer examination
one might discover that they all dated from after, say, 1200 and before 1300.

the question then becomes, what accounted for the popularity of the name
during this period --to the exclusion of the periods before and after?

relics being brought back from the East, for example?

(i have no idea what the chronological pattern for this particular name might
be, i'm just tossing up an hypothetical example to use up a few spare
electrons i've got on my machine.)

> PS, I hope this isn't as silly as my last posting!

probably is, but i don't recall your last, so post it again.

best from here, Prosopographically Speaking,

christopher



"Lots of useless other data points just enlarge the consciousness of the
agrieved showing how particular the pain is."  
--Burma Shave

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