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From: "Stewart, Peter" <>
Subject: RE: Which Agatha? == and her sister, Anna?
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 10:08:59 +1100


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Todd A. Farmerie [mailto:]
> Sent: Sunday, 10 December 2000 17:27
> To:
> Subject: Re: Which Agatha? == and her sister, Anna?
>
>
> "Stewart, Peter" wrote:
> >
> > Constance Bouchard in her article _Consanguinity and Noble
> > Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries_ in
> > *Speculum* 56.2 (1981) writes that "First-cousin marriages
> > were unknown" in this period, yet other experts including
> > Jean-Pierre Poly and Thierry Stasser postulate such a
> > marriage for no less a luminary than Raimon III (Pons I),
> > count of Toulouse around 950, for instance.
>
> This is, as you indicate, speculation. The Counts of Toulouse
> have yet to recover from having at least one count returned to
> the pedigree, after an absence of some time. I suspect (in fact,
> I know) we have not seen the last word on the identity of the
> Toulouse wives during this period. However, if it is a first
> cousin marriage you are looking for at this time, there are
> numerous spanish examples.

I haven't studied Iberian pedigrees, and take it you are referring to
solidly-evidenced unions here - in which case the practice in Toulouse may
well heve been influenced by what southwestern neighbours could get away
with, I suppose.

In a posting of 5 December I wrote: "In 1309 Clement V gave a dispensation
for the union of Jaime, heir to the throne of Aragon, and Leonor of Castile
who were related in the second & third degrees through one connection and in
the third & fourth through another. Jeronimo Zurita comments on this in his
*Anales de la Corona de Aragón*. Apparently the pope stated that he did not
know of any instance where the Church had permitted a marriage in such close
degree before, and that he was allowing it in order to bring peace to the
two kingdoms. (Leonor's grandmother St Isabel, queen consort of Portugal,
was Jaime's paternal aunt.)"

Was Clement wrong? Or did these earlier first-cousin marriages in Spain all
take place without clerical sanction?

Peter Stewart

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