On Mon, 28 Oct 1996, Prof. Bugslag wrote:
> Last week, Dave Van Meter asked about echoes of the last emperor
> legend and its use in the construction of "once and future"
> nationalisms, prior to c.1225. Although not too much prior to this, it
> reminded me of the currency of the prophecy of St Valery during the
> reign of Philip Augustus, which I was recently reading about in
> Jacques Le Goff's marvellous new book on Saint Louis (Paris, 1996),
> pp. 79-81. St Valery apparently told Hugh the Great that his son,
> Hugh Capet, and his line would hold the realm of France 'until the
> seventh succession.' Since Philip Augustus was the seventh
> Capetian king, he was worried that the dynasty might be facing
> extinction. The solution to this was seen in the return to the line of
> Charlemagne, 'reditus ad stirpem Karoli'. In these circumstances,
> Philip Augustus advanced his own Carolingian ancestry, through his
> mother, Adele de Champagne, which was affirmed by the Gesta
> Francorum usque ad annum 1214. In 1208, Philip Augustus called a
> bastard which had just been born (and who wold become bishop of
> Noyon) Charlot, and after the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, Guillaume le
> Breton gave the victorious king the surname of 'Carolides', which
> obviously didn't stick so firmly as the perhaps even more imperial
> 'Augustus'. But the genealogical reference which succeeded was that
> affirmed by Andre de Marchiennes in his Historia succincta de gestis
> et successione regnum Francorum, in 1196, in which he emphasized
> the Carolingian ancestry of Isabelle (or Elizabeth) of Hainaut, first wife
> of Philip Augustus and mother of their eldest son, Louis, who was to
> become King Louis VIII. Isabelle descended from the penultimate
> Carolingian king, Louis IV, and from his son, Charles de Lorraine, who
> was pushed aside by Hugh Capet. When Louis VIII became king in
> 1223, the royal line had successfully returned to the line of
> Charlemagne, thus setting back the clock and putting off the
> inevitable. In all deference to the perspicacity of St Valery, it might be
> pointed out that the Capetian line did come to an end seven kings
> later with Charles IV! Promising bibliography on this cited by Le Goff
> (and unseen yet by me) includes: Karl Ferdinand Werner, "Die
> Legitimataet der Kapetinger und die Entstehung des 'Reditus regni
> Francorum ad Stirpem Karoli," in Die Welt als Geschichte (1952), pp.
> 203-25; Gabrielle M. Spiegel, "The Reditus Regni ad Stirpem Karoli
> Magni: A New Look," French Historical Studies, 1972, pp. 145-74; and
> Karl Ferdinand Werner, "Andrew von Marchiennes und die
> Geschichtsschreibung von Audouin und Marchiennes am Ende des
> 12. Jahrhunderts," Deutsches Archiv, 1952, pp. 402-63. I hope that's
> helpful, or at least interesting.
> Jim Bugslag
>
>
>
I would add to this list Elizabeth A.R. Brown, "La notion de la legitimite
et la prophetie a la cour de Philippe Auguste," La France de Philippe
Auguste. Le temps des mutations (paris, 1982), pp. 77-110.
MFH
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|