Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward The Exile

RECONSIDERING AGATHA,
WIFE OF EADWARD THE EXILE
Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile1

By Ian S. R. Mladjov
The antecedents of Agatha, wife of Eadward the Exile and

ancestress of Scottish and English monarchs since the twelfth
century and their countless descendants in Europe and America,
have been the subject of much dispute.2 Over the last half cen-
tury alone, Agatha has been identified as a Hungarian, a German,
and most recently a Russian princess.3 However, none of these
1
I wish to thank my advisor, Professor John Fine (University of Michi-
gan) for reading and commenting on a draft of this article, as well as
Professors H.D. Cameron (University of Michigan) and Anthony Kal-
dellis (The Ohio State University), Mr. Kenneth Finton, Col. Charles
Hansen, and Mr. Hal Bradley.
2
In this article I am using the modern standard vernacular forms for the
names of most individuals (e.g., Heinrich and Henry, István and
Stephen), and standardized Anglo-Saxon forms for the names of pre-
Conquest Anglo-Saxons (e.g., Eadward instead of Edward, Eadgyth
instead of Edith). Names in non-Latin alphabets are rendered as
closely as possible to the original orthography.
3
I am using the terms “Hungarian,” “German,” “Russian,” etc, loosely,
as modern national sentiment does not correspond in relevance or in-
tensity to medieval self-perceptions. For example, Russian medieval
history is also the history of early Ukraine, and the labels employed by
me are convenient and non-exclusive. The most important works relat-
ing to Agatha’s background published since 1950 are the following: G
Andrews Moriarty, “Agatha, Wife of the Atheling Eadward,” The
New England Historical and Genealogical Register 106 (1952): 52-60;
Szabolcs de Vajay, “Agatha, Mother of Saint Margaret Queen of Scot-
Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 1

identifications is entirely convincing. The present paper reevalu-

ates the disparate testimony of the primary sources and the solu-
tions proposed by modern scholars before proposing a new the-
ory about Agatha’s ancestry.
After his conquest of England in 1016, the Danish King Cnut

(1016–1035) sent the infant sons of his recently-deceased Anglo-
Saxon opponent Eadmund II Ironside to Sweden with the object
of having them eliminated while in exile. The princes (athelings)
Eadmund and Eadward were not murdered by the Swedish king
who helped them to make their escape when the danger from
Cnut became imminent. After a stay in Russia, the athelings set-
tled in Hungary. In 1054, the childless English king Eadward III
the Confessor (1042–1066) decided to make the surviving athel-
ing, Eadward, his heir, and summoned him from Hungary. In
1057, Eadward the Exile returned to England with a wife named
land,” Duquesne Review, 7 (1962): 71-80; Szabolcs de Vajay,

“Mathilde, reine de France inconnue: Contribution à l’histoire politique
et sociale du royaume de France au XIe siècle,” Journal des Savants
(1971): 241-260; Gabriel Ronay, The Lost King of England: The East
European Adventures of Edward the Exile, Woodbridge 1989; René
Jetté, “Is the Mystery of the Origin of Agatha, Wife of Edward the
Exile Finally Solved?” The New England Historical and Genealogical
Register 150 (1996): 417-432; Norman W Ingham, “A Slavist’s View
of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile,” The New England Historical
and Genealogical Register 152 (1998): 217-223; David Faris and
Douglas Richardson, “The Parents of Agatha, Wife of Edward the
Exile,” The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 152
(1998): 224-235; Norman W Ingham, “Has a Missing Daughter of
Iaroslav Mudryi Been Found?” Russian History/Histoire Russe 25/3
(1998): 231-270; Janko Pavsic, “Agatha: The Onomastic Evidence,”
The Plantagenet Connection (Summer 2001): 56-100; John Carmi
Parsons, “Edward the Aetheling’s Wife Agatha,” The Plantagenet
Connection (Summer 2002): 31-54; William Humphreys, “Agatha,
Mother of St. Margaret: The Slavic versus Salian solutions – a critical
overview,” Foundations 1 (2003): 31-43.

Agatha and their three children ⎯ Eadgar, Margaret, and Chris-

tina, but died before even getting a chance of meeting the king.
In 1066, after the deaths of Eadward III and his brother-in-law
Harold II, Eadgar was proclaimed king, but before he could be
crowned the English nobles and bishops capitulated to Duke
Guillaume II the Bastard of Normandy, who had crossed the
Narrow Sea to became King William I the Conqueror of England
(1066–1087). After an unsuccessful revolt, Eadgar II and his
mother and sisters set sail with the intention of returning to Hun-
gary by 1068, but were blown off course to Scotland. There
Eadgar’s sister Margaret proved more successful, marrying King
Malcolm III of Scotland (1058–1093) and became not only a
saint, but also the ancestress of the later rulers of Scotland and
England.4
PRIMARY SOURCES
There are a number of primary sources offering testimony

about Agatha and her antecedents, but none of these is contem-
porary. Agatha died in or soon after 1068 and the first sources to
speak of her were not written until the end of that century. As
Norman Ingham has argued, we can limit our enquiry to those
sources that were written in the late eleventh and in the twelfth
century.5 Unfortunately, the sources offer testimonies that are
neither definite nor easily reconcilable and we must agree with
G. Andrews Moriarty, who branded them “vague, erroneous, and
apparently conflicting.”6 The following is a brief presentation of
the several relevant testimonials about Agatha and her origins.7
Most of these source extracts were already conveniently pre-
4
For a detailed account of the career of Eadward the Exile, see Ronay.
5
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 241.
6
Moriarty, 52.
7
The most detailed presentation and discussion to date may be that in
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav.”

sented in the articles on Agatha by René Jetté and Janko Pavsic,8

but their testimony is so important that it should be repeated.
1. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 1057, states that

Eadward Atheling came to England together with his wife
Agatha, a kinswoman of the emperor (thæs caseres maga to
wife). Sub anno 1067, the chronicle adds that Agatha’s “kin goes
to the emperor Heinrich, who had dominion over Rome” (cynn
gæð to Heinrice casere, þe hæfde anwald ofer Rome).9
2. In his Chronicon ex Chronicis compiled from earlier

sources, “Florence” of Worcester (died 1118) wrote, sub anno
1017, that the sons of King Eadmund II were exiled by King
Cnut to Sweden with the object of eliminating them. But the
Swedish king did not comply and they found refuge in Hungary,
where they were received by King Salamon. There Eadmund
died soon after, and Eadward married Agatha, the daughter of a
germanus of the Emperor Heinrich III (Eadwardus vero
Agatham, filiam germani imperatoris Henrici III in matrimonium
accepit).10 This version finds its ways into later sources, includ-
ing, for example, the 14th-century Chronicle of Man (sub anno
1000).11
3. Simeon of Durham (died 1130) states that Agatha’s daugh-

ter Margaret came from royal and imperial blood and was related
to both the English kings and to a Roman emperor Heinrich
8
Jetté, 428-431; Pavsic, 92-94.
9
B. Thorpe, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in Rerum Britannicarum
Medii Aevi Scriptores 23 (London, 1861), 1:328, 340, translation in
2:159, 171-172; cf. Moriarty, 55.
10
B. Thorpe, ed., Florentii Wigorniensis Monachi Chronicon ex
Chronicis (London, 1848), 1:181; cf. Moriarty, 55-56.
11
P.A. Munch, ed., Chronica regum Manniae et insularum, in Manx
Society 22 (Douglas 1874), 1:1.

(quas patri suo Eadwardo, tanquam haeredi, rex Angliae suus

patruus prius dederat; quem etiam ipse Romanus imperator
Henricus).12
4. In his De Gestis Regnum Anglorum, William of Malmes-

bury (died 1143), also stated that the Athelings were exiled to
Sweden and then found refuge in Hungary, where the elder son
Eadwin (recte Eadmund) died, while the younger son Eadward
married Agatha, the queen’s sister (minor Agatham reginae so-
rorem in matrimonium accepit).13
5. Orderic Vitalis wrote his Ecclesiastic History of England

and Normandy between 1124 and 1142. He repeats the familiar
story that the athelings had been to Sweden and then to Hungary,
and that Eadmund died soon after. However, Orderic has Ead-
ward marry the daughter of the Hungarian king Salamon (exsul
coniugem accepit cum regno filiam Salomonis regis Hunorum)
and himself became king of Hungary (Eduardus vero Dei nutu
filiam regis in matrimonium accepit, et super Hunos regnavit).14
6. Geoffrey Gaimar’s rhymed Estoire des Engleis from about

1140 states similarly that Eadward (whom he calls Eadgar) mar-
ried the elder daughter of an unnamed king of Hungary and that,
as the king had no son, he transferred the succession to his son-
in-law (4687-8: li reis i est e la raine / a ki Hungrie estait acline;
4639-40: li reis sa fille a Edgar donat / veaux sa gent cil
12
H. Hinde ed., Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera et Collectanea (London,
1868), 1: 258.
13
W. Stubbs, Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi De Gestis Regum
Anglorum, in Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 90 (London,
1887), 1:218; Moriarty, 56.
14
Ordericus Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica, in Migne Patrologia Latina,
188: col. 95C, 620C.

l’epusat; 4643-4: puis k’il n’ad fiz de li hair fist / pur sa aine fille
k’il prist).15
7. In 1147/53 Abbot Ælred of Rievaulx, who had been

brought up at the court of Agatha’s grandson King David of
Scotland, states explicitly that King David’s mother Margaret
sprang from the blood of the English and Hungarian royal houses
(715B: religiosa regina Margareta, huius regis mater, quae de
semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum exstitit oriunda).16 Else-
where in the same work, Ælred also connects Agatha with the
German royal house and identifies her as the daughter of a ger-
manus of Emperor Heinrich (733D: filiam germani sui Henrici
imperatoris in matrimonium iunxit; 734B: Agatha germani sui
filia). This is confirmed by Ælred in his life of Eadward III the
Confessor, where Eadward’s wife is described as the relative
(cognata) of the emperor of the Romans (744C: Imperator Ro-
manus, cuius cognatam regis nepos filius Edmundi ferei lateris
… uxorem duxit).17
8. Sub anno 1017 the Chronicle of Melrose, after recounting

the usual story of the athelings’ exile to Sweden and then Hun-
gary, states that they were received by King Salamon and that
Eadward “took to wife Agatha, the daughter of the German em-
peror, Henry.”18
15
T.D. Hardy and C.T. Martin, eds., Lestoire des engles solum la trans-
lation Maistre Geffrei Gaimar, in Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi
Scriptores 91 (London, 1888), 1: 194.
16
Aelredus Rievallensis, Genealogia regum Anglorum, in J.-P. Migne
Patrologia Latina (Paris, 1855), 195: cols. 711-738.
17
Aelredus Rievallensis, Vita sancti Edwardi regis, in J.-P. Migne,
Patrologia Latina (Paris, 1855), 195: cols. 737-790.
18
Chronicle of Melrose, sub anno 1017, in J. Stevenson, trans., The
Church Historians of England (London, 1856), 4/1: 108.

9. Writing about 1050, Adam of Bremen states that Eadmund

II’s sons were condemned to exile in Russia sub anno 1016
(Emund, vir bellicosus, in gratiam victoris veneno sublatus est;
filii eius in Ruzziam exilio sunt dampnati).19
10. Writing about 1201, Roger of Howden followed the tradi-

tion found in the Leges Edovardi Confessoris. According to this
tradition, Eadward the Exile fled from England to Russia from
fear of Cnut, where he was received by King Malesclodus. There
Eadward married a woman of noble descent who gave birth to
Eadgar, Margaret and Christiana [sic!] (qui de nobili progenie
ibidem duxit uxorem de qua natus est ei Aedgardus Adeling, et
Margareta quae fuit postea regina Scotiae et Christiana soror
eius).20
11. The so-called Leges Edovardi Confessoris were originally

written in the 1130s, but the extant text of the relevant passage is
apparently augmented by an interpolation inserted sometime be-
tween 1200 and 1210 and consequently not reflected by Roger of
Howden.21 Here it is stated that, fearing Cnut, Eadward the Exile
fled from England to Russia. There, he was received by a king
named Malesclotus and there he married a noblewoman by
whom he had Eadgar Atheling, Margaret, and Christina. More-
over, here we are told that Margaret was of double royal descent,
English and British on her father’s side and Russian on her
mother’s side:
19
Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, in
J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina 146 (Paris, 1884), col. 537.
20
W. Stubbs, ed., Chronica Rogeri de Hovedene, in Rerum Britannica-
rum Medii Aevi Scriptores 51 (London, 1868–1871), vol. 2: 236.
21
Ronay, 117, citing F. Lieberman, “Über die Leges Edwardi Confes-
soris,” in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1896–1912), 1: 664; cf.
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 252-253.

Qui de nobili progenie ibidem duxit uxorem

de qua natus est ei Edgarus Ethelinge et Marga-
reta qui fuit postea Regina Scotiae et Christina
soror eius. Fuit autem Margareta praedicta
generosa valde et optima, scilicet ex parte patris
ex nobili genere et sanguine regum Anglorum, et
Britonum, ex parte vero matris ex genere et san-
guine regum Rugorum, sanctissimis anteces-
soribus.22
As can be seen from the excerpts from the sources presented

above, the record provides very contradictory and seemingly ir-
reconcilable testimony about the antecedents of Agatha. The di-
vergent traditions can be divided into three general groups by the
way they describe Agatha’s antecedents. Agatha’s antecedents
are associated with Germany by four sources, with Hungary by
another four, and with Russia by two.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (c.1100), “Florence” of Worces-
ter (before 1118), Simeon of Durham (before 1130), and the
Chronicle of Melrose (c.1136) associate Agatha’s origins with
the German royal house. Moriarty identified the first two as part
of a Worcester tradition, inspired by Bishop Ealdred, who served
as ambassador to Emperor Heinrich III in 1054, and who visited
Hungary in 1058 en route to Jerusalem.23
Ælred of Rievaulx (in 1147/53), Geoffrey Gaimar (c.1140),
William of Malmesbury (by 1143), and Orderic Vitalis (by 1142)
associate Agatha with Hungary. According to Moriarty, the first
two belong to a northern tradition emanating from Agatha’s
Scottish grandchildren.24 Moriarty placed the testimonies of Wil-
liam of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis in the Worcester tradi-
22
Cf. Ronay, 115-117, 184, citing F. Liebermann, 664-666; cf. Ingham,
“Daughter of Iaroslav,” 253-255.
23
Moriarty, 55-56.
24
Moriarty, 55, 57-58.

tion but, since they associate Agatha’s antecedents with Hun-

gary, it is probably safe to say only that William and Orderic
were partly influenced by that tradition.25
Finally, Roger of Howden (by 1201) and the extant text of his
source, the Leges Edovardi Confessoris (from c.1200–1210) ap-
pear to place Agatha’s marriage to Edward the Exile in Russia.
An additional early source, Adam of Bremen (in c.1050), con-
firms that the athelings spent part of their exile in Russia, but has
nothing to say of a Russian bride.
MODERN INTERPRETATIONS
Not surprisingly, modern studies have followed the contradic-

tory indications of the sources to a number of contradictory con-
clusions. In the late 1930s the two most popular views were al-
ready expounded by Sandor Fest, who argued that Agatha was
the daughter of King István I (Saint Stephen, 997–1038) of Hun-
gary, and by Joseph Hertzog, who concluded that she was the
daughter of a half-brother of Emperor Heinrich III the Black
(1039–1056) of Germany.26 During the last half-century, the de-
bate has become more intense and the arguments more detailed.
For the present, I will provide a summary of the most important
modern hypotheses and the way they address each other. I will
return to the detailed analysis of the evidence and scholarly com-
mentary on it later.
Moriarty’s 1952 article agreed with Fest that Agatha was the
daughter of King István I of Hungary and his wife Gisela of Ba-
varia, sister of Emperor Heinrich II the Saint (1002–1024).
25
Moriarty, 56-57.
26
S. Fest, The Sons of Edmund Ironside Anglo-Saxon King at the Court
of St. István, Budapest 1938; J. Hertzog, “Skóciai Szent Margit Szar-
mazásának Kerdése,” Turul (1939); the latter is summarized in English
by Baron von Redlich in The National Genealogical Society Quarterly
28 (1940): 105-109.

Moriarty reached his conclusion after a detailed survey of the

sources, but limited the enquiry to the two options presented in
the 1930s. Moriarty did not accept Hertzog’s thesis that Agatha’s
father must have been a half-brother of Emperor Heinrich III for
two main reasons. Firstly, Moriarty pointed out that “Florence”
of Worcester’s term germanus may not mean strictly ‘brother’
but ‘kinsman’.27 Secondly, Moriarty found that of the three half-
brothers of Emperor Heinrich III (sons of Gisela of Swabia from
her first two marriages), Ernst II of Swabia died young and un-
married, Hermann IV of Swabia died childless, and Ludolf of
Brunswick would not likely have produced a daughter old
enough to be Agatha.28 Having practically eliminated this op-
tion, the author found the remaining alternative far more con-
vincing, because as daughter of King István I of Hungary and
Gisela of Bavaria, Agatha would indeed descend from both the
Hungarian and German royal houses, reconciling much of the
seemingly conflicting evidence.29
Moriarty’s solution has the benefit of agreeing closely with
the oldest and perhaps best informed sources — the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, “Florence” of Worcester, Ælred of Rievaulx, Simeon
of Durham. Some of the other sources can be considered recon-
cilable to this scenario, if we consider the possibility that they
could have become confused in their details — William of
27
Moriarty, 56, 59.
28
Moriarty, 59; it is now accepted that Hermann IV of Swabia left at
least three children by his wife Adelheid of Susa, and through his two
sons became the ancestor of the counts of Kastl-Habsberg and of Sulz-
bach respectively: W.K. von Isenburg, Stammtafeln zur Geschichte der
Europäischen Staaten 1 (Marburg 1965): 9; A. Thiele, Erzählende ge-
nealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, 1/1 (Frankfurt,
1991): 22.
29
Moriarty, 59-60; his view (or that of his predecessor, Fest) has re-
mained influential and is still cited, e.g., by G. Vég, Magyarország
királyai és királynői (Budapest, 1990), 17, where István I is given the
children Imre, Ottó, Bernát, Hedvig, and Ágota.

Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, Geoffrey Gaimar, the Chronicle of

Melrose. Finally, the two sources suggesting a Russian origin for
Agatha are not discussed by Moriarty, who only comments that
the athelings’ stay in Russia must have been very brief and ap-
pears to be familiar only with the relevant reference in Adam of
Bremen.30
Szabolcs de Vajay’s 1962 article on Agatha similarly used the
process of elimination to achieve a result diametrically opposite
to that of Moriarty.31 According to de Vajay, Agatha was the
daughter of Count Ludolf of Brunswick, whom he identified as
the eldest half-brother of Emperor Heinrich III, conforming to
one interpretation of “Florence” of Worcester’s phrase filia ger-
mani imperatoris Henrici.32 De Vajay dismissed Moriarty’s con-
clusion by pointing out that István I of Hungary apparently left
no surviving children and, if he did, they would have been in-
volved in the struggles over the Hungarian throne after his death
in 1038. Having contradicted the sources that associate Agatha’s
origins with Hungary, de Vajay attempted to account for them by
pointing out that through his marriage to Emperor Heinrich III’s
daughter Judith in 1063, King Salamon of Hungary (1063–1074)
would have become a German Agatha’s relative.33 In a follow-up
article from 1971, Vajay attempted to strengthen his case by cit-
ing references to attested nieces of Heinrich III that he found to
be comparable to Agatha’s description as the filia germani im-
peratoris by “Florence.”34
30
Moriarty, 53.
31
Vajay, “Agatha.”
32
Vajay, “Agatha,” 73, putting Ludolf’s birth in 1009; many genealo-
gists disagree, putting Gisela’s marriage to Ludolf’s father Count
Bruno of Brunswick in 1015–1016, between her marriages to Duke
Ernst I of Swabia and to Emperor Conrad II of Germany — e.g.,
Moriarty, 58; Isenburg, 1:4; D. Schwennicke, Europäische Stammtafeln
1 (Marburg, 1980): 4, 10, 11; Thiele, 22.
33
Vajay, “Agatha,” 74.
34
Vajay, “Mathilde.”

De Vajay’s interpretation agrees perfectly with the testimo-

nies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “Florence” of Worcester,
Simeon of Durham, and possibly, if we allow for some corrup-
tion, with that of the Chronicle of Melrose. It contradicts Wil-
liam of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, Geoffrey Gaimar, and,
most disturbingly, with part of Ælred of Rievaulx’s testimony.
Having been raised at the Scottish royal court, Ælred was in per-
haps the best position to acquire accurate knowledge about the
origins of Agatha through her descendants.35 Moreover, de Va-
jay’s insistence on a “strict” interpretation of the term germanus
is also problematic. With time, the term had acquired a wider
meaning (in part because of its role as a modifier in expressions
such as “cousin german”), but in the strictest and original sense,
germanus refers to a full brother, therefore contradicting the very
solution de Vajay adopted on the basis of this term. Therefore,
even for de Vajay, germanus cannot be interpreted in its strictest
sense.
Gabriel Ronay, in his 1989 book on Eadward the Exile, de-
voted two sections to Agatha’s origins.36 Ronay allowed the term
germanus to not necessarily mean brother, but considered it lim-
ited to blood relations.37 Like de Vajay, Ronay excluded King
István I of Hungary as a possible father of Agatha on the grounds
of chronology and because any surviving children of the king
would have been likely to get involved in the struggles over the
succession beginning in 1038.38 Ronay likewise pointed out
Agatha’s connection to the Hungarian royal house could simply
have resulted from the marriage of Judith of Germany to King
Salamon of Hungary.39 Ronay also agreed with de Vajay that
Eadward the Exile’s marriage to Agatha took place in Russia,
35
Moriarty, 57-58.
36
Ronay, 109-121.
37
Ronay, 111.
38
Ronay, 111-112.
39
Ronay, 119.

but anticipated the conclusion that she was a Russian princess by

explaining that connection through her husband’s kinship to
Jaroslav’s wife, Ingegerd of Sweden.40
In his 1996 article, the late René Jetté, working with the
sources about the athelings’ Russian exile that were highlighted
by Ronay, concluded that Agatha was the daughter of Grand
Prince Jaroslav I Vladimirovič the Wise of Kiev (1019–1054).41
This interpretation is based on the assumption that the Eadward
the Exile’s marriage in Russia was to a Russian princess, as indi-
cated by the explicit testimony of the extant text of the Leges
Edovardi Confessoris that Agatha was “of the kin and blood of
the kings of the Russians” (ex genere et sanguine regum
Rugorum). Jetté pointed out the chronological unlikelihood that
Agatha could have been a daughter of contemporary Hungarian
and German rulers, or the niece of any of the German emperors
named Heinrich.42 The author further stressed the improbability
that a German princess could have been named Agatha, while
noting the attestations of that name in the Russian and related
Byzantine reigning houses. Jetté extended the onomastic argu-
ment to account for the introduction of other previously unat-
tested names (Alexander, Christina, David, Margaret) into the
Anglo-Saxon and Scottish royal houses from Russia and Scandi-
navia.43
Jetté’s solution is in possible agreement with Roger of How-
den and the Leges Edovardi Confessoris, at least the latter ex-
plicitly making Eadward the Exile’s wife a member of the Rus-
40
Ronay, 115-116, 117-118.
41
Jetté, 424; in fact this possibility was already suggested by G.W.S.
Barrow, Kingship and Unity / Scotland 1000–1306 (London, 1981), 29.
Before the reign of Vsevolod III Jur’evič Bignest (1176–1212) the sen-
ior Russian rulers were simply styled “prince of Kiev,” and the title
“grand prince” is here used retrospectively: A. Poppe, Harvard Ukrain-
ian Studies III-IV (1979–1980), 684-689.
42
Jetté, 421-422.
43
Jetté 425-426.

sian royal family. Having identified Agatha as a daughter of

Jaroslav I of Kiev, Jetté made his solution agree with one more
source, William of Malmesbury, who described her as the sister
of the Hungarian queen — Anastasija, wife of King András I of
Hungary (1046–1061) and securely attested as daughter of Jaro-
slav I of Kiev.44 Having achieved this, Jetté could at least partly
explain away a second set of contradictions: once certain writers
mistook the Hungarian king András for his son Salamon, the sis-
ter of András’ Russian queen would in turn be mistaken for a
sister of Salamon’s German queen and be identified as a German
princess herself.45 However, it must be noted that neither Roger
of Howden nor the Leges Edovardi Confessoris names Eadward
the Exile’s wife Agatha or explicitly makes her a daughter of
Jaroslav I.
Jetté’s proposal was vigorously opposed by the 1998 article
of David Faris and Douglas Richardson, who defended de Va-
jay’s solution. Faris and Richardson offered strong objections to
Jetté’s arguments and appropriately pointed out a number of
points on which his interpretation of the evidence was over-
stretched.46 Most importantly, Faris and Richardson noted that
the onomastic arguments presented by Jetté about the names
found in Agatha’s family rest on the occurrence of the name in
royal genealogies generations after the fact.47 The identification
of Agatha as the German widow of Jaroslav I’s eldest son
Vladimir of Novgorod by Gerd Wunder allowed Faris and
Richardson to further develop the Ronay and de Vajay argument
44
Jetté, 420; Hungarian kings named András are also often known by
the alternate form Endre.
45
Jetté, 423.
46
Unfortunately Faris and Richardson’s rather cavalier and dismissive
attitude towards Jetté’s work (and in particular their insistence that any
viable source on so convoluted and disputed an issue must state
Agatha’s origins clearly) do little to enhance their otherwise excellent
article.
47
Faris and Richardson, 229-230.

by offering a reasonable explanation for Agatha’s location in

Russia when Edward the Exile married her.48 Finally, Faris and
Richardson support their argument against the theory advanced
by Jetté by noting that if Agatha were the daughter of Jaroslav I
of Kiev, her marriage to Edward the Exile would be a marriage
between first cousins, accepting Ronay’s identification of Ead-
ward’s mother as a Swedish princess.49 This would not make the
union impossible, but it would have required a papal dispensa-
tion.50 Of course, the absence of evidence is not evidence of ab-
sence.
In the Spring and Fall of 1998, Norman Ingham published
two articles in defense of Jetté’s proposal.51 In the first of these
works, Ingham devoted special attention to the evidence for the
adoption into the Russian royal family of Greek Christian names
following the conversion of Grand Prince Vladimir I Svja-
toslavič (980–1015) to Christianity. Ingham pointed out that, by
at least 1100, the rare and significant names Agatha (Agafija),
Marina (related to Margaret), and Christina (Krestina), were
found in the Russian Litany of All Saints.52 This lent some addi-
tional plausibility to Jetté’s derivation of previously unused
names in the Anglo-Saxon and Scottish royal houses from for-
eign (in this case Russian) sources. The author also drew atten-
tion to the fact that representations of Jaroslav I the Wise and his
family in the Kievan cathedral of Saint Sophia include five
daughters, rather than the three known by name from the
48
G. Wunder, “Die letzten Prinzen des angelsächsischen König-
shauses,” Genealogisches Jahrbuch 15 (1975): 84-85; Faris and
Richardson, 233.
49
Ronay, 24 and 53.
50
Faris and Rishardson, 234-235, giving credit to A.B.W. MacEwen
for pointing out the consanguinity.
51
Ingham, “Slavist’s View” in The New England Historical and Ge-
nealogical Register 152, and “Daughter of Iaroslav” in Russian His-
tory/Histoire Russe 25/3.
52
Ingham, “Slavist’s View,” 220-223.

sources.53 Therefore, Ingham concluded that there is place for

Agatha in Jaroslav I’s family as far as both progeny and onomas-
tics are concerned.
In his second 1998 article — one of the most detailed investi-
gations of the relevant sources to date — Ingham noted that in
most of the sources Agatha’s origins are associated with either
Hungary or Germany and considered the two variants as mutu-
ally exclusive.54 After a detailed investigation of its several oc-
currences, Ingham dismissed the description of Agatha as the
filia germani imperatoris as “a stock phrase tracing back to some
one vague and unreliable source,” primarily, it seems, on account
of inconsistencies — some of them within a single source (e.g.,
Ælred of Rievaulx).55 The author criticized de Vajay’s theory for
accepting the filia germani imperatoris identification without
sufficient corroborative evidence and pointed out the distinct
ways in which Agatha’s would-be sisters (in de Vajay’s sce-
nario) were identified in the sources.56 Ingham proceeded to
question de Vajay and Ronay’s reconstruction of Agatha’s career
and considered it particularly damning that Agatha’s Scottish
grandchildren do not seem to have related information about her
German origins.57 Ingham discussed various difficulties involv-
ing Wunder’s (and Faris and Richardson’s) identification of
Agatha as the German widow of Jaroslav I’s son Vladimir for
lack of proof and simplicity. But most importantly, Ingham
found chronology too tight for that scenario to work, as Agatha
would have had to marry Eadward the Exile no earlier than 1053
53
Ingham, “Slavist’s View,” 223.
54
55
56
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 258-259; as he pointed out,
Agatha’s would-be sisters are not described as filia germani impera-
toris, but as neptis Henrici imperatoris and filia fratris imperatoris
Henrici III, respectively. De Vajay (“Mathilde,” 246, 255-256) had
intended these examples as parallels in the descriptions.
57

and produce all their three surviving children before 1057.

Moreover, Ingham points out that the diplomatic effect of a mar-
riage between an English atheling and Jaroslav I’s widowed
daughter-in-law would not have been particularly great.58
Ingham went on to characterize Jetté’s conclusions as a logi-
cal extension of the most recent scholarship relating to the sub-
ject and as an “almost inevitable deduction.”59 Ingham found that
chronology and precedent (Jaroslav I marrying his daughter An-
astasija to another exiled prince, András of Hungary) also sup-
ported Jetté’s identification of Agatha as a daughter of the
Kievan grand prince.60 Ingham also conceded that Jetté’s and his
own arguments based on onomastic evidence came from later
examples, but reaffirmed the probability of these conclusions as
undiminished and as possible reflections of a preexisting but un-
attested pattern. For Ingham, what made the onomastic case par-
ticularly strong was the fact that here the argument is not based
on one individual, but on a whole group of individuals receiving
names that could find possible derivation in Russian and Greek
practice, but not in the German one.61 Ingham went on to dismiss
the consanguinity problem cited by Faris and Richardson against
Jetté’s identification of Agatha as a daughter of Jaroslav I by
pointing out that Eadward the Exile’s mother Ealdgyth has not
been proven to be the daughter of King Olof III of Sweden.62
Finally, Ingham argued that what made the identification of
Agatha as a daughter of Jaroslav I most convincing, was the rela-
tionship between the families of King András I of Hungary and
58
59
60
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 266; for András and Levente’s exile
to Russia, see M.K. Jurasov, “Russko-vengerskie otnošenija vtoroj treti
XIv.,” Mir istorii (March 2002), an online journal at www.historia.ru.
61
62

Eadward the Exile — two princes married to sisters, with chil-

dren who were first cousins.63
In 2001 Janko Pavsic published in English an article focusing
on the onomastic evidence for Agatha’s genealogical connec-
tions.64 Pavsic provided a very interesting discussion but perhaps
placed too much faith in onomastics when he assumed that the
names of Agatha’s Scottish grandchildren must have come from
her family.65 The author also sought to justify names on the basis
of ancestors who may be too remote, especially when tracing
possible connections between various bearers of the name
Agatha.66 At the same time Pavsic dismissed alternative explana-
tions for the introduction of the names Alexander, David, and
Mary into the onomastic repertoire of the Scottish royal family a
little too readily.67 He was more convincing in pointing out that
Cnut’s sister Astrid already bore the Christian name Margaret in
the early eleventh century, a fact that had been hitherto unno-
ticed in this discussion.68 But exactly how this Margaret may
63
64
Pavsic, “Agatha: the Onomastic Evidence,” which originally ap-
peared in French as “Agafja ou Agatha?” in Mémoires de la Société
généalogique canadienne-fançaise 51-4 (Winter 2000): 287-308 and
was translated into English for The Plantagenet Connection by John
Carmi Parsons.
65
Pavsic, 57, discussing in particular the names Alexander, David, and
Mary.
66
Pavsic, 58, discussing Agatha’s Kievan scenario great-niece Agafija
(daughter of Vladimir II Monomah); but also see 76-78 for some later
western Agathas in Lorraine and Savoy. These occur late enough to be
possibly explained through increased cultural interchange between East
and West in Crusader times.
67
Pavsic, 62, 64, 66.
68
Pavsic, 65-66; Astrid was married to the son of a Russian grand
prince according to a gloss to Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgen-
sis Ecclesiae Pontificium, in Migne, Patrologia Latina 146, col. 537,

have served as a precedent for the name given to Agatha’s

daughter in any scenario remains unclear.
Pavsic drew attention to a consanguinity problem, which
would remove the apparent advantage of the German hypothesis
over the Russian one. Faris and Richardson had already noted
the consanguinity problem posed by the marriage between Earl
Henry of Northumbria and Ada de Warenne, who would have
been descendants of the sisters (in Jetté’s scenario) Agatha and
Anna of France.69 Pavsic discussed a similar problem with de
Vajay’s scenario, noting that the marriage between King Henry I
of England’s daughter Matilda and Emperor Heinrich V (1105–
1125) would have been just as much in violation of church can-
ons as that between Henry of Northumbria and Ada de
Warenne.70 While the old maxim that rules are made to be bro-
ken may have been taken to heart by many a medieval monarch
or noble when it came to marriage, this observation makes both
Jetté and de Vajay’s scenarios equally problematic. For Pavsic,
the absence of German names in the Scottish royal onomastic
repertoire and the appearance of (possibly) Russian/Greek ones
decided the issue in favor of Jetté’s hypothesis.71 But this is only
warranted as long as we may accept that the new names in the
Scottish royal family really originated with Agatha’s Russian
descent. That remains far from proven.
John Carmi Parsons’ 2002 article on Agatha is in some ways
a reaction to Pavsic’s emphasis on onomastic evidence. Parsons
argued against reading too much into the occurrence of a new
name and assuming that it must have been conferred to honor an
Schol. 40: Knut sororem suam Estred filio Regis de Ruzzia dedit in
matrimonium (sic!).
69
Faris and Richardson, 234-235; cf. Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,”
269 n. 97 tried to explain this away.
70
Pavsic, 69; cf. Faris and Richardson, 235, n. 29, who note but do not
discuss the problem.
71
Pavsic, 79-80.

ancestor. While Parsons admitted that women’s names can mi-

grate in and out of aristocratic families, he correctly pointed out
that they cannot maintain themselves unsupported over a gap of
several generations, defending his point with examples from
British practice and detailed studies of onomastics.72 Parsons’
consequent criticism of Pavsic’s attempts to connect the names
Agatha, Margaret, Alexander, David, and Mary in Scotland and
Western Europe to very distant and often alleged eastern “prece-
dents” is justified.73 Especially apt is the observation that, like
Jetté and Ingham before him, Pavsic had failed to provide viable
precedent for the claims he bases on onomastics, even while rec-
ognizing this weakness in his work.74 Parsons proceeded to pro-
vide relatively uncontroversial explanations for the novel names
involved.75 He also expressed doubts that the representations of
Jaroslav I’s daughters in Saint Sophia can be seen as reliable cir-
cumstantial evidence in favor of Jetté’s Agatha, and noted the
unlikelihood of such a close connection between the royal
houses of France and Scotland escaping contemporary notice.76
The author expressed surprise that Jaroslav I would confer his
daughter on a “landless wanderer” like Eadward the Exile, al-
72
Parsons, 32-36; for women’s onomastics, see in particular C.B. Bou-
chard, “Patterns of Women’s Names in Royal Lineages, Ninth-
Eleventh Centuries,” Medieval Prosopography (1988), 1-32.
73
Parsons, 36-38.
74
Parsons, 39, discussing the names Alexander, David, and Christina.
75
Parsons, 50-51: Mary after the growing importance of the Virgin’s
cult; David on Biblical grounds (just like the brothers Salamon and
Dávid of Hungary); Alexander possibly after contemporary clerics (al-
though Pope Alexander II cannot be summarily excluded because of his
role in the Norman Conquest and his death before the birth of Malcolm
III and Margaret’s son Alexander, contra Pavsic, 63).
76
Parsons, 41-43.

though this is exactly what the Kievan grand prince did in marry-
ing Anastasija to András of Hungary.77
Parsons proceeded to argue that the earliest descriptions of
Eadward the Exile’s wife (in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub
anno 1057, written circa 1100) as the emperor’s relative (thæs
caseres maga) and (by “Florence” of Worcester, writing before
1117) as the filia germani imperatoris Henrici should alone be
considered as viable testimony. The author found this early tes-
timony related to the fact that Eadward the Exile’s return was
negotiated with the emperor instead of the king of Hungary, with
King Henry I of England’s marriage to Agatha’s granddaughter
Edith-Matilda of Scotland, and their daughter Matilda’s marriage
to Emperor Heinrich V in 1108.78 But, while noting that this set-
ting would have been naturally conducive to emphasizing the
imperial links in Edith-Matilda’s background, Parsons failed to
notice that it would have been equally natural to overemphasize
them. These early statements may not have been entirely un-
prejudiced, given their chronological and political setting.
Parsons’ consideration of the various Hungarian queens who
may have been the sister of William of Malmesbury’s Agatha is
worthwhile, but he quickly abandoned this line of enquiry after
noting a number of possible candidates besides Anastasija of
Kiev.79 Parsons expressed doubts in the quality of the testimo-
nies of Roger of Howden and the Leges Edovardi Confessoris,
seeing them as both late and questionable.80 Nevertheless, tenta-
tively allowing for a partly Russian descent and a marriage in
77
Parsons, 42; this oversight in Parsons may have something to do with
his assumption that Anastasija Jaroslavna only married András I of
Hungary after the latter’s accession in 1146. In fact, the two had al-
ready been married as early as 1138–1140, when their eldest daughter
Adelheid was born: compare Schwennicke 2:154.
78
Parsons, 43-44.
79
Parsons, 46-47.
80
Parsons, 48-49.

Russia for Agatha, Parsons proposed a possible variant geneal-

ogy which combines German and Kievan royal descent.81 This
very ingenious hypothesis has certain advantages, satisfying the
earliest sources describing Agatha as the kinswoman of the em-
peror, and providing a precedent for the unexpected name Chris-
tina in her postulated grandfather. However, this hypothesis fails
to convincingly explain the equally unexpected name Agatha,82
and to provide a more likely explanation for Agatha’s alleged
marriage to Eadward in Russia than that of Faris and Richard-
son.83 Moreover, it rests on a number of unlikely assumptions,
including at least one case of marriage within four forbidden de-
grees of kinship and the union of a Swabian princess to the po-
lygamous Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kiev as a concubine.84
William Humphreys’ 2003 article provided a critical over-
view of the Agatha problem and concluded that the balance of
the evidence is in favor of the Kievan ancestry rather than the
German one. Although Humphreys generally applauded Parsons’
analysis and critique of the usage of onomastics, he noted that
the absence of German names and the presence of (possibly)
Russian or Greek-derived ones among Agatha and her descen-
dants is significant.85 Humphreys also carried out a simple statis-
tical analysis to narrow down the most likely date for Agatha’s
birth to about 1023/1030.86 Although this is an entirely reason-
able conclusion, we should be weary of accepting it a priori and
using it as a given in any argument. Humphreys again raised the
legitimate question how did a German countess end up in Russia
81
Parsons, 52-54.
82
Which may have been more difficult to introduce ex nihilo in West-
ern Europe than Christina.
83
Without which there is virtually no need to postulate Kievan descent
at all.
84
The various problems with this and other proposed genealogies will
be discussed below.
85
Humphreys, 33, 35.
86
Humphreys, 34.

and became a tool of international diplomacy there, expressing

understandable dissatisfaction with the explanations provided
this far.87 The author concluded that the most viable source of
the transmission of information about Agatha and her origins
was Christina, who would have been too young at the time of her
departure from Hungary to remember her mother’s exact antece-
dents. This led Humphreys to conclude that William of Malmes-
bury’s reginae sororem is the least complicated identification,
the one most likely to be remembered by Christina, and therefore
most accurate tradition.88 This leads to the rather unlikely infer-
ence that Christina received virtually no further information from
her mother about her antecedents after 1057 and could not re-
member the names or connections of her grandparents and aunt.
Assuming William of Malmesbury to be correct, Humphreys
settled tentatively for the fully compatible identification of
Agatha as a sister of Anastasija Jaroslavna, the wife of the Hun-
garian King András I. Essentially, this is a conclusion compati-
ble with those of Jetté and Ingham, but with an almost exclusive
emphasis on William of Malmesbury as the transmitter of the
most reliable tradition.
The very different modern views advanced this far about
Agatha’s origins may be summarized as follows:
(1) Agatha was the daughter of King István I of Hungary by
Gisela of Bavaria, the sister of the German emperor Heinrich II,
and consequently the kinswoman of his cousin Heinrich III. This
view, defended by Moriarty, has been dismissed for various
problems including chronology and implications involving the
succession to István I, but it reconciles the two predominant
identifications of Agatha in the sources, connecting her with the
German and Hungarian royal houses. From the point of view of
onomastics, this would also be an unlikely option, although
87
Humphreys, 35.
88
Humphreys, 39-40.

Hungary was still experiencing some Orthodox influence in Ist-

ván I’s lifetime.
(2) Agatha was the daughter of Count Ludolf of Brunswick,
the half brother of Emperor Heinrich III; she had married a son
(Vladimir of Novgorod?) of Grand Prince Jaroslav I of Kiev and
upon his death married the refugee prince Eadward the Exile in
Russia. This view reflects the gradual development of the argu-
ments advanced by de Vajay, Ronay, and Faris and Richardson.
Apart from the fact that there is no positive evidence for the exis-
tence of such a princess, the chronology and career necessitated
by this interpretation are problematic. A German Agatha would
be even more unexpected than a Hungarian one when it comes to
onomastics. As far as the sources are concerned, the oft-
encountered imperial connection is here vindicated, and a con-
nection to Hungary is made possible through the marriage of
Emperor Heinrich III’s daughter Judith to King Salamon of
Hungary in 1063. Russia is involved in this scenario as the loca-
tion where the union took place and as Agatha’s host-country
during her first marriage.
(3) Agatha was the daughter of Grand Prince Jaroslav I of
Kiev; like her sister Anastasija — married to King András I of
Hungary — she was given in marriage to a refugee prince, Ead-
ward the Exile; through her sister’s marriage to the king of Hun-
gary, Agatha and her children were relatives of the Hungarian
royal family and could naturally seek refuge in Hungary in 1066;
through her nephew Salamon’s marriage to Judith of Germany in
1063, Agatha would have become a relative of the German em-
peror Heinrich III, whose importance could have easily obscured
Agatha’s connections to both Russia and Hungary in British
eyes. This view is the one proposed by Jetté and defended by
Ingham, Pavsic, and — albeit more tentatively — by Hum-
phreys. Chronologically and onomastically it is possible and has
certain advantages over the other two, but the resulting connec-
tion to Hungary and Germany is perhaps too tenuous.

(4) Agatha was the daughter of Count Cristinus by Oda

daughter of Count Bernard of Haldensleben by a daughter of
Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kiev by a daughter of Duke Konrad I
of Swabia by Richlint daughter of Duke Ludolf of Swabia son of
King Otto I the Great of Germany. Through Otto I and through
Richlint’s granddaughter Gisela of Swabia, Agatha would then
be a relative of the German emperors. This is the scenario pro-
posed by Parsons. The most attractive part of this hypothesis is
identifying a precedent for the unexpected name of Agatha’s
daughter Christina. One might even see this Agatha’s Kievan
grandmother as another Agatha, though the name is not attested
in the Kievan onomastic repertoire this early. Chronologically
this reconstruction works, but a number of the relationships are
speculative or outright unlikely, while the geography involved is
no more convincing than that of the scenario defended by de Va-
jay, Ronay, and Faris and Richardson.
All four scenarios outlined above are based on excellent
scholarship and on remarkably contradictory sources. This alone
makes the controversy over Agatha’s origins impossible to re-
solve — at least not conclusively or to universal satisfaction. All
of the above theories share the postulation of an unattested
princely woman with an unusual name requiring explanation.
While conjuring up princesses merely on the basis of some of
their alleged genealogical connections is virtually unavoidable,
the unique name that must be assigned to the resulting woman
must be credibly justified. It is likewise unavoidable to accept
some of the medieval testimonies and discard others, though
there is little agreement on which source is potentially most ac-
curate. Earliest and best-informed are not always the same thing,
but may be considered as a starting point, provided that the other
testimonies find an explanation. Before proposing another possi-
ble alternative, I will briefly explore all the possibilities sug-
gested by the source evidence.

POSSIBLE IDENTIFICATIONS OF AGATHA’S

ANTECEDENTS RECONSIDERED
1. Agatha as a Russian princess (see Stemma 1):
Eadward the Exile’s wife is directly identified as a Russian

princess in only one source, the Leges Edovardi Confessoris, the
relevant extant copy dating to the early 13th century. However,
this testimony is very problematic. The Leges had already been
used by Roger of Howden as his source about 1193–1201, and in
his text we are only told that Eadward the Exile fled to Russia
after his father’s death, was received and honored by King
Malesclodus (Grand Prince Jaroslav I), and took “a wife of noble
descent,” by whom he begot Eadgar, Margaret, and Christina.
The London version the Leges, which dates to 1200–1210, con-
tains the same text followed by what appears (and is universally
agreed) to be a later interpolation, which consists of an excursus
on Margaret that describes her mother as the “kin and blood of
the kings of Russians.”89
Before relying on these sources, we must consider their his-
torical accuracy. Even though a Russian period in Eadward’s
long exile can be considered certain (it is attested by Adam of
Bremen), it is striking that the Leges Edovardi Confessoris and
Roger of Howden relate only this Russian exile, without a word
about Sweden or Hungary, and they consider it the immediate
destination of Eadward after his father’s death. Another unset-
tling omission is the lack of any mention of Eadward’s brother
Eadmund, who features prominently enough in many of the other
sources. Even though these omissions could be explained away,
they cast a shadow on the quality of the source. Secondly, it is
surprising that Roger of Howden, who appears to reflect an ear-
89
These sources are cited above, with the Latin reproduced in extenso.
For detailed commentary, see Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 252-
257.

lier stage in this textual tradition, describes Eadward’s wife

merely as “of noble descent” (de nobilis progenie).90 While this
does not necessarily preclude Eadward’s wife being from royal
descent, it is curious why the source substituted “noble” for the
more natural and more important “royal,” especially considering
the explicit royal status of Malesclodus.91 It is clear that Agatha’s
description as “kin and blood of the kings of the Russians” is a
later inference inserted into the original text of the Leges after it
was copied by Roger of Howden, occasioned by the insertion of
the excursus on Agatha’s daughter Margaret.92 Given the limited
information about Agatha (who remains unnamed) in the original
text, her description as belonging to the Russian royal family
cannot safely be regarded as anything more than a florid elabora-
tion. Not only does this tradition fail to reliably make Agatha a
member of the Russian royal family, but even in the later in-
stance it fails to name her as the daughter of Malesclodus (Jaro-
slav).
In fact, the strongest evidence to date that Agatha might have
been a Kievan princess is indirect, and comes from William of
Malmesbury. This author is unique in describing Agatha as the
sister of the queen (reginae sororem) of Hungary. For reasons
that will become apparent, the most likely queen of Hungary
with whose sister Agatha could be possibly identified is András
I’s wife Anastasija, a daughter of Jaroslav I of Kiev. This is the
single most attractive part of the Russian scenario for Agatha’s
origins, but it is in effect based on a single source — and not
90
Cf. Faris and Richardson, 226.
91
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 254 insists that “noble” does not
indicate anything less than “royal.” But his example (“noble race and
blood of the kings of the English and the British”) mentions kings in-
dependently, and, while “noble” can describe kings, it does not in itself
make nobles kings. Did the author feel that the Russian royal family
was insufficiently known and needed to be explicitly qualified as no-
ble? Cf. the misgivings of Parsons, 48.
92
Cf. Parsons, 48.

even the earliest one. This is not to say that Jetté’s conclusion is
incorrect, but rather that it is not compelling.
Accepting Russian origins for Agatha causes a number of
problems. The resulting link between Agatha and the Hungarian
royal family could be described as kinship in the broad sense,
since Agatha would have been the sister of Anastasija and thus
the sister-in-law of András I and the aunt of Salamon. Another
broadly interpreted kinship would connect Agatha with the Ger-
man emperor Heinrich III through his daughter Judith’s marriage
to Agatha’s nephew Salamon. Yet, the several sources making
Agatha a Hungarian princess (sometimes specifically a king’s
daughter) suggest a considerably stronger connection than that
allowed by Jetté’s scenario. While it is easy to understand Anas-
tasija’s departure for Hungary, it is not clear why Agatha and her
husband did not remain in Russia, where Eadward would have
been in a considerably better position to return to England
through the Baltic and Scandinavia.
Another puzzling element is the lack of any indication in the
sources that Agatha was the sister of Queen Anna Jaroslavna of
France. Even if we suppose that for some reason Agatha was
closer to the family of her sister Anastasija, the friendly French
court should have been mentioned as a natural intermediate des-
tination en route to Hungary in 1068. But it was not.93 There is
also no indication that marriages between the respective descen-
dants of Anna and Agatha required papal dispensations because
of consanguinity, judging by the marriages of King David of
Scotland’s son Henry of Northumbria to Isabella de Warenne in
1139 and of King Henry II of England’s son and co-ruler Henry
93
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 269-270 n. 99, cites the offer of the
castle of Montreuil to the former Eadgar II by King Philippe I of France
as possible circumstantial evidence that Eadgar’s mother Agatha was
indeed the sister of Philippe’s mother Anna: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
sub anno 1074. But such a relationship is not stated, and, if it existed,
appears to have been forgotten less than 30 years later; cf. Parsons, 43.

to Margaret of France in 1170.94 Significantly, Adam of Bremen,

who noted the athelings’ exile in Russia, mentions that King
Harald III Hardrada of Norway, King András I of Hungary and
the king of France all married daughters of the same rex Ruziae,
but fails to identify Eadward the Exile as the husband of a fourth
daughter.95
Jetté, Ingham, and Pavsic sought corroborative evidence for
their identification of Agatha as a Russian princess in the ono-
mastic repertoire of the royal houses involved. The name of
Agatha is extremely rare in Western Europe and unexpected in
the German and Hungarian royal houses this early. On the other
hand, there are at least four women named Agafija born into the
ruling house of Russia before the 13th century. However, a
daughter of Jaroslav I of Kiev would have belonged to the sixth
Rurikid generation, while the four attested Russian Agathas are
found in the eight, tenth, and eleventh generations. The earliest
of these was a daughter of Grand Prince Vladimir II Monomah
(1113–1125) of Kiev, who married her cousin Prince Vsevo-
lodko of Gorodno in 1116.96 Ingham cited evidence that the
name Agafija was already attested in the Russian litanies by the
twelfth century, but the actual usage of the name among early
94
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 269 n. 97 tries to explain this away
by pointing out that the contemporary sources had already forgotten
Agatha’s Russian origin; yet the Leges Edovardi Confessoris dated to
the 1130s!; for the degrees of kinship see C.B. Bouchard, “Consanguin-
ity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” Specu-
lum 56 (1981): 268-287; at this time there were prohibitions against
both consanguinity and affinity extending to the seventh degree.
95
Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificium, in
Migne, Patrologia Latina 146, col. 567 (and Schol. 63): Haroldus, a
Graecia regressus, filiam regis Ruziae uxorem accepit. Alteram tulit
Andreas, rex Ungrorum, de qua genitus est Salomon. Terciam duxit
rex Francorum Heinricus, quae peperit ei Philippum.
96
N. de Baumgarten, Généalogies et mariages occidentaux des Ru-
rikides Russes du Xe au XIIIe siècle (Rome 1927), 22, V 15.

eleventh century Rurikids remains unproven.97 Although later

practice may reflect earlier patterns, these examples do not con-
stitute a compelling precedent.
Jetté pointed out that the name Agatha may have been intro-
duced into the Russian royal house through the marriage of Anna
of Byzantium to Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kiev. In fact, this is
a very weak argument. The introduction of Greek names into the
Russian royal family should indeed be traced to Vladimir I’s
conversion to Byzantine Christianity, but the notion that the an-
tecedents of childless Anna herself affected future naming pat-
terns is unlikely. The Byzantine imperial family included at least
two princesses named Agathē in the tenth century — one was the
daughter of Emperor Rōmanos I Lakapēnos (920–944) and mar-
ried Rōmanos Argyros; the other a daughter of Kōnstantinos VII
Porphyrogennētos (913–920 and 945–959) by Rōmanos I’s
daughter Helenē.98 The second of these Agathas was indeed the
aunt of Vladimir I’s wife Anna, but that in itself is no compelling
reason to conclude that Anna’s stepson Jaroslav I would have
named one of his daughters after his spurned stepmother Anna’s
obscure and long-dead relative.99
Other onomastic arguments brought forth in support of a Rus-
sian origin for Agatha include some of the names of Agatha’s
children and grandchildren. For example, Jetté argued that the
novel occurrence of the name Alexander in Scotland was con-
nected to the Byzantine emperor Alexandros (912–913), who
was the brother of Anna’s great-grandfather.100 But that ephem-
eral ruler left behind a singularly unsavory reputation that cannot
97
Ingham, “Slavist’s View:” 220.
98
For Agathē daughter of Rōmanos I: Theophanes Continuatus,
Chronographia, E. Bekker, ed. (Bonn, 1838), 399; for Agathē daughter
of Kōnstantinos VII: ibid., 459, 471; she was relegated to a nunnery by
her brother Rōmanos II (959–963) together with all of her sisters.
99
Contra Jetté, 425 and Pavsic, 61.
100
Jetté, 425.

be expected to serve as precedent for naming any real or imag-

ined descendants after him.101 Faris and Richardson correctly
identified a more plausible precedent for the name of Agatha’s
grandson King Alexander I of Scotland in the person of Pope
Alexander II (1061–1073), who had dealings with the Scottish
church at the time of Margaret’s marriage to King Malcolm
III.102 Pavsic opposed this proposal on the grounds that Pope
Alexander II was already dead by the time the Scottish prince
Alexander was born and because the pope had supported the
Norman Conquest of England.103 This is a logical objection, but
one cannot treat it as fact; we simply do not know what addi-
tional reasons Malcolm III may have had for naming his son
Alexander, nor whether his relations with the papacy were ever
strained and for how long.
Faris and Richardson have already demonstrated that Jetté’s
attempt to derive a Scandinavian (and therefore Rurikid?) con-
nection for the names of Agatha’s daughters Margaret and Chris-
tina is based on occurrences two generations after Agatha’s life-
time.104 Ingham attempted to bolster Jetté’s case by drawing at-
tention to the attestation of the names Krestina and Marina (often
corresponding to Margaret) in the same late eleventh or early
twelfth century litany that contained the name Agafija.105 Yet,
the only two Marinas found among the Rurikids before the thir-
teenth century belong to the eight and twelfth generations, the
earlier one being another daughter of Vladimir II of Kiev.106
101
Jetté draws attention to Emperor Alexandros on page 425 n. 8; P.
Karlin-Hayter, “The Emperor Alexander’s Bad Name,” Speculum 44
(1969): 583-596 offers a reinterpretation of Alexandros’ reign, but the
negative contemporary attitude towards the emperor are clearly re-
flected in the Byzantine chronicles.
102
Faris and Richardson, 229-230.
103
Pavsic, 62.
104
Faris and Richardson, 229.
105
Ingham, “Slavist’s View,” 220-221.
106
Baumgarten, 22, V 12; this Marina died in 1146.

Once again clear precedent remains notably elusive, although

Pavsic has noted that one of King Cnut’s sisters bore the Chris-
tian name Margaret.107 A Christina is even more difficult to find,
except for the Scandinavian wife of Vladimir II’s son Mstislav I
Vladimirovič the Great (1125–1132) of Kiev.
Another onomastic argument is based on the occurrence of
the name David for the first time in British royal practice in the
person of Agatha’s grandson King David I of Scotland. Ingham
sees a plausible precedent for this name in one of the two broth-
ers of Jaroslav I of Kiev murdered in 1015 and who quickly at-
tained sainthood in the Russian Orthodox Church.108 But, the
martyred brother saints were generally remembered by their
“folk” names Boris and Gleb rather than their baptismal names
Roman and David. While the name David had been rarely used,
it was already closely associated with monarchs. Many Byzan-
tine emperors and, later, Charlemagne (768–814), Simeon I of
Bulgaria (893–927) and Otto I of Germany (936–973) — all
107
Pavsic, 65-66.
108
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 268; there are a number of discus-
sions of Boris and Gleb; recently A. Poppe (“Der Kampf um die Kiever
Thronfolge nach dem 15 July 1015,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen
Geschichte, Beiträge zur 7. Internationalen Konferenz zur Geschichte
des Kiever und des Moskauer Reiches (Wiesbaden and Berlin, 1995),
275-296) argued on the basis of Boris’ baptismal name Roman that
Boris and Gleb were in fact the sons of Vladimir I by Anna of Byzan-
tium; this is highly unlikely—the Russian Primary Chronicle, sub an-
nis mundi 6486-6488 (=978-980), states clearly that Boris and Gleb
were the sons of Vladimir I by “a Bulgarian woman,” which is corrobo-
rated by the Bulgarian name Boris; moreover, the emphasis the Russian
sources placed on Vladimir’s Byzantine marriage, and the fact that the
maligned Svjatopolk I and not the eventually victorious Jaroslav I was
blamed for Boris and Gleb’s death make it unlikely that the martyred
brothers were the sons of Anna of Byzantium and that this information
was suppressed in Jaroslav’s favor — if anything, he seems to be por-
trayed as their avenger.

three dubbed “the Great” — were likened to David, in stressing

the divine justification of their rule.109 King András I of Hungary
and his wife Anastasija of Kiev indeed named one of their sons
Dávid — possibly after the Anastasija’s martyred uncle — but
they had already named the other Salamon without a discernable
precedent other than the Old Testament.110 The Biblical prece-
dent in András I and Anastasija’s choice is more convincing than
the memory of the queen’s long dead half-uncle. Here too we
have no clear connection between Agatha and Kievan Russia.
Before leaving this excursus on onomastics, it is important to
make a general observation. As Parsons has argued, onomastics
may only be used cautiously in genealogical research and we
should not stake too much on them. We cannot expect names
from non-paternal ancestors to appear after a gap of several gen-
erations except by coincidence.111 We can, however, draw some
meaningful implications from onomastics. Agatha’s grandchil-
dren, upon whose names (David, Alexander, Mary) so much of
this line of argument depends, are therefore already perhaps
marginal to the argument. In fact, the only name which may be
considered fully viable for deriving genealogical references may
be that of Agatha herself. This automatically makes the genea-
logical hypotheses put forth or defended by de Vajay, Ronay,
Faris and Richardson, and Parsons onomastically unlikely. How-
ever, the situation is not substantially better with the theory pro-
posed or defended by Jetté, Ingham, Pavsic, and Humphreys.
Here we are asked to believe that Agatha was named after the
long dead and tonsured aunt of her spurned step-grandmother or
that she must have been Kievan because by the end of her cen-
tury the name Agafija is attested in the Russian Litany of All
109
H. Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire (Oxford, 1957), 72; I. Bog-
danov, Simeon Veliki (Sofia, 1974), 103; B. Arnold, Medieval Germany
(Toronto, 1997), 114, 137.
110
Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 268 n. 95.
111
Parsons, 36.

Saints, and two generations later we do find a homonymous

princess in the Kievan family. This may be an improvement on
the “German” situation, but it is no precedent. We shall return to
onomastics later.
Ingham stated that most of the sources would be vindicated if
only we substitute Hungary with Russia.112 Ingham — and
Ronay before him — regarded Gardimbre, where the athelings
found the king and queen of Hungary according to Geoffrey
Gaimar, to point to Russia.113 But the connection between Gar-
dimbre and either Gorodišče or the Viking term for Russia
Gárðaríki is not readily apparent. Nor is it a foregone conclusion
that the original form of Gardimbre was not a Hungarian place
name, because many Hungarian toponyms have Slavic antece-
dents (e.g., Esztergom, Visegrád, Zsitvatő). Moreover Gaimar
explicitly states that the athelings arrived in Hungary (Hungerie)
after crossing Russia (Russie); even if he got Gardimbre wrong,
the following episodes are set in Hungary. Ingham’s approach
can be reversed ⎯ and perhaps with more justification. Although
a Russian stage in Eadward’s exile is both attested and logical
and although I find the identification of Malesclodus with Jaro-
slav I of Kiev plausible, the terra Rugorum, quam nos vocamus
Russeia could be opened to interpretation.114 The identification
of terra Rugorum with Russeia is possibly secondary and must
be considered at least potentially suspect. The first term is remi-
niscent of a title born by the Hungarian crown-prince, the Dux
Ruizorum.115 It is therefore even remotely possible that Ead-
112
113
Ronay, 50-54; Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 238-240.
114
For Malesclodus as Jaroslav, especially Ingham, “Daughter of Iaro-
slav,” 254-255 n. 60.
115
G. Györffy, King Saint Stephen of Hungary (1991), 168, translates it
as “leader of the Russians” and surmises that like the Byzantine em-
peror, the Hungarian king had a Varangian/Russian bodyguard; cf. F.

ward’s stay in Hungary was associated with this jurisdiction and

that later writers in England mistakenly identified it with the
Russian stage of Eadward’s exile.116
Furthermore, until Parsons finally made this observation in
2002, no one appears to have considered the possibility that in
Russia Eadward had married a noble or royal woman other than
Agatha and that the incomplete (to say the least) tradition surviv-
ing in Roger of Howden and the Leges Edovardi Confessoris
conflated this first wife with Agatha, assigning the latter’s chil-
dren to the former.117 Depending on the identity of such a possi-
ble first wife, one might even be able to justify William of
Malmesbury’s testimony, although its isolation would remain an
anomaly.118
It can be concluded that the case for Agatha’s Kievan origins
remains chronologically and genealogically possible, and poten-
tially fits well with the isolated testimony of William of
Malmesbury and with the somewhat suspect information con-
tained in the Leges Edovardi Confessoris and in Roger of How-
den. The circumstantial evidence in favor of this interpretation
proves to be ambivalent and offers no clear precedents that
would increase the viability of Jetté and Ingham’s claims. Jaro-
slav may have had five daughters, but that does not mean that
one of them was Eadward’s wife Agatha. Nor does the potential
usage of the name Agatha in newly Orthodox Russia mean that it
was actually used in this particular family this early. On the other
Hervay, ed. in The Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle (Budapest, 1969),

165 n. 300.
116
The mistake is relatively easy to make even in modern Hungarian:
oroz (“guardian”) as opposed to orosz (“Russian”).
117
Cf. Parsons, 52.
118
Although Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 257, scoffs at the idea
that Eadward could have married the daughter of a mere boyar, many
an exile of even more exalted status has done worse; granted, the future
András I of Hungary was also an exile and was given Jaroslav I’s
daughter Anastasija in marriage.

hand, making Agatha a daughter of Jaroslav I of Kiev poses cer-

tain problems involving her marriage and travels as well as those
of her descendants. Finally, though it may well have been the
case, we should use some caution in pressing the assumption that
Agatha was indeed the woman Eadward married in Russia, and
even that a marriage really took place there.
2. Agatha as a princess related to the German ruler (see

Stemmata 2-4):
That Agatha was a “kinswoman of the emperor” (Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle) basically agrees with her being a “daughter of
the germanus of the emperor” (“Florence” of Worcester, one of
Ælred of Rievaulx’ accounts, and Simeon of Durham).119 The
Chronicle of Melrose’s identification of Agatha as “the daughter
of the German emperor Henry,” may be considered an erroneous
interpolation of the same tradition.120 Leaving aside the unlikely
occurrence of the name Agatha in the German imperial families,
neither Heinrich II, nor Heinrich III has an attested daughter
named Agatha, and it is agreed that Heinrich II died childless.
Any unattested daughter of Heinrich III (born 1017 and first
married 1036) would have been too young to be identified with
Agatha.121 So, if Agatha was connected intimately with the royal
house of Germany, she would have to be a kinswoman of the
emperor.
Agatha is considered unlikely to have been a daughter of
Heinrich II’s brother Bruno, who was bishop of Augsburg
(1006–1029), or of his bastard half-brother Arnold, who was
119
Although Parsons, 53 and n. 30, makes a point that maga signified a
far more remote degree of kinship than filia germani.
120
Perhaps reading “of the German emperor” for “of the germanus of
the emperor.”
121
Cf. Jetté, 421.

archbishop of Ravenna (1014–1018).122 She is also unlikely to

have been a daughter of Heinrich II’s sister Gisela and King Ist-
ván I of Hungary, because he died without surviving children
and, if there had been any, they would be expected to be in-
volved in the subsequent struggle over the Hungarian throne.
Moreover, a daughter of that marriage may be expected to be
10–15 years older than Eadward the Exile, which would not be
the most likely scenario.123 Therefore, it is difficult to identify
Agatha as a close blood relative of Emperor Heinrich II.
If a German princess connected to the imperial family, then
Agatha must be sought among the relatives of Emperor Heinrich
III, as recognized by de Vajay, Ronay, and Faris and Richardson.
Emperor Konrad II (1024–1039) had no sons other than Heinrich
III, and the latter’s sisters, Beatrix and Mathilde, died young and
unmarried in the mid-1030s.124 However, Heinrich III’s mother,
Gisela of Swabia, had three sons from her previous two mar-
riages to Count Bruno of Brunswick and Duke Ernst I of Swabia
(the order of these marriages is uncertain). Of these, Ernst II and
Hermann IV of Swabia were born in 1014 and 1015, respec-
tively, and were too young to beget Agatha.125 Emperor Heinrich
III’s remaining half-brother Ludolf of Brunswick may have been
older than the others — but this is not universally accepted —
and could possibly be identified as Agatha’s father. Ludolf left
sons Bruno and Ekbert and daughters Ida and perhaps
Mathilde.126 The addition of Agatha to these children would be
possible — she could have been born as early as 1030 — but that
122
Cf. Jetté, 422, Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 259-260.
123
Cf. Ronay, 111-112; although, for example, both Count Geoffroi V
of Anjou and his son King Henry II of England married women—
Matilda of England and Aliénor of Aquitaine, respectively—that were
about 10 years older than them.
124
Cf. Moriarty, 58.
125
Cf. Moriarty, 58.
126
For the daughters, see de Vajay, “Mathilde.”

cannot be considered proven. Nevertheless, it remains a likely

scenario, if Agatha were a German princess.
In order to reconcile this with the rest of the evidence we
would need to assume that this daughter of the count of Bruns-
wick assumed the name Agafija upon her marriage to Jaroslav
I’s son Vladimir of Novgorod, and retained it after her second
marriage to Edward the Exile and during their stay in Hungary,
England, and Scotland. But just how likely is this?
As Ingham has already noted, it is difficult to see the diplo-
matic advantage Jaroslav I of Kiev would have had in marrying
the exiled Anglo-Saxon atheling to his widowed daughter-in-
law. Even if he did so, would Agatha readily desert her son(s) by
Vladimir Jaroslavič in Russia and move to Hungary with her
new husband?127 And why would Eadward the Exile — whose
connections to Jaroslav I would have been infinitely closer than
those to András I of Hungary in this scenario — go to Hungary
at all? Russia, and especially Novgorod, with its easy access to
the Baltic and its well-established contacts with Scandinavia,
was in a relatively good position to serve as a starting point for a
potential return to England; Hungary was not. Germany too, es-
pecially Brunswick, would have been far more advantageous and
more natural as a home for de Vajay’s Agatha and her husband.
Additional problems posed by this scenario arise. A number
of Agatha’s children and grandchildren bore names that broke
with precedent in British royal onomastics, but were clearly not
imported from Germany.128 Moreover, if Agatha were the Ger-
man widow of Vladimir Jaroslavič of Novgorod, then she could
127
Schwennicke, 2 (Marburg, 1984): 128 lists Rostislav, who was born
about 1045 and died in 1067, leaving three sons; Ingham, “Daughter of
Iaroslav,” 264 n. 86, estimates his birth to have been closer to 1040.
There may have been a second son named Jaropolk, see Ingham,
“Daughter of Iaroslav,” 263 n. 83.
128
Cf. Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 261; Pavsic, 79; Humphreys,
33.

have married Eadward the Exile no earlier than 1053. Ronay

stressed the probable camaraderie between Eadward and his
Hungarian host András I, in part on the basis of their common
experiences as exiles. Yet Eadward is supposed to have followed
András I to Hungary (who had married Anastasija Jaroslavna
before 1040) as early as 1046.129 This obliterates much of the
parallelism between András I and his alleged comrade-in-arms
and we must deal with the further complication of Eadward trav-
eling from Russia to Hungary in 1046, back to Russia where he
married in 1053, and again to Hungary before 1057, begetting
three surviving children in the meantime.130
Finally, the German hypothesis proposed by de Vajay exces-
sively minimizes Hungary’s role in Agatha’s life. It is worth not-
ing that, while Agatha’s connections to the German royal house
are almost always stated vaguely, her connections to the Hungar-
ian royal house are expressed far more directly, even if the
sources contradict themselves. The persistent Hungarian associa-
tions cannot be convincingly dismissed by noting that the mar-
riage of Heinrich III’s daughter Judith to King Salamon of Hun-
gary made Agatha a relative of the Hungarian royal house. Even
if the twice-widowed Agatha still had lands conferred on her
dead husband in Hungary, her choice of Hungary as a place of
refuge in 1068 probably requires a closer connection.131 A Ger-
man Agatha would surely have found it easier and safer to settle
in her native Brunswick than in the distant land of a distant rela-
tion by marriage. Clearly, while the scenario promoted by de
Vajay, Ronay, and Faris and Richardson is genealogically possi-
ble, it is by no means compelling. (Stemma 2)
129
Schwennicke, 2: 154 shows that András I and Anastasija’s daughter
Adelheid must have been born by about 1040 to marry Duke Vratislav
II of Bohemia in 1057 and bear children shortly afterwards.
130
Cf. Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 264-265.
131
For Agatha’s plan to flee to Hungary in 1068 see especially Ronay,
163-164.

A new German background for Agatha has been proposed by

Parsons. It is very ingenious, but, as already noted, fraught with
problems. Parsons makes Agatha the daughter of a Count Cris-
tinus by Oda of Haldesleben. The name of her postulated father
would nicely explain that of her younger surviving daughter
Christina. Oda of Haldesleben was in turn the daughter of Count
Bernhard by an unnamed daughter of Grand Prince Vladimir I of
Kiev.132 It is possible to suggest that, given the availability of
Greek Christian names to Kievan royalty since Vladimir’s con-
version in 988, this unnamed princess may also have been named
Agatha. That would explain how her German granddaughter
came to bear this otherwise unexpected name. But here the bril-
liance of Parsons’ solution ends. Parsons identified the mother of
the unnamed Kievan princess with an unnamed daughter of
Duke Konrad I of Swabia, and accepted circa 980 as the date of
this marriage. If that is correct, then we would have the very
unlikely situation of a Catholic duke sending his daughter as a
wife of a then polygamous pagan ruler. Moreover, Parsons ar-
rived at that scenario by accepting Armin Wolf’s attractive but
unproven identification of Count Kuno of Öhningen with Duke
Konrad I of Swabia. Schwennicke identified Vladimir’s last wife
as the daughter of Count Kuno, but that marriage began no ear-
lier than 1011, far too late for Agatha to be Vladimir’s great-
granddaughter.133 This makes Agatha’s Kievan antecedents very
questionable, and affects her connection to the German imperial
family, a point central to Parsons’ thesis. But it is not even cer-
tain that the daughter of Count Kuno of Öhningen married
132
The source for Count Bernhard of Haldesleben (margrave of Nord-
mark) marrying an unnamed daughter of Grand Prince Vladimir I of
Kiev is Eccardus, Origines serenissimae familiae Anhaltinae, 406, ac-
cording to de Baumgarten “Généalogies russes,” 8; for the two counts
named Bernhard, see Thiele, 218; the Russian wife’s supposedly royal
origin is unproven.
133
Schwennicke, 2:128.

Vladimir I rather than one of his sons: her husband is identified

merely as rex Rugorum.134
The imperial connections of Vladimir I’s last wife are also
unproven. To begin with, the identification of Count Kuno and
Duke Konrad I of Swabia cannot be taken for granted.135 More-
over, Duke Konrad’s wife Richlint is not universally accepted
among the children of Duke Ludolf the son of Emperor Otto I,
and in fact the sources make her the daughter of Otto I him-
self.136 That a daughter of Ludolf could have borne the name
Richlint with good reason may be accepted, since Ludolf had
married Ida, daughter of Duke Hermann I of Swabia by
Reginlindis of Sülichgau. We can be certain that Richlint and
Reginlindis are but two renderings of the same German name.
But if Richlint were the daughter of Duke Ludolf and Ida, she
would have married, in Duke Konrad I, either her first cousin
once removed or her second cousin, in both cases within the for-
bidden fourth degree of kinship.137 Parsons’ solution makes
134
A. Wolf, “Wer war Kuno ‘von Öhningen’?”, Deutsches Archiv für
Erforschung des Mittelalters 36 (1980), 27, quoting the Genealogia
Welforum cap. 4 p. 76; de Baumgarten, “Généalogies russes,” 8 was
unwilling to identify this last marriage of Vladimir I with the one be-
tween the daughter of Kuno of Öhningen and a Russian prince because
he thought she would have been too young for Vladimir.
135
For the identification of Count Kuno with Duke Konrad, and some
of the other relationships accepted by Parsons, see A. Wolf, 25-83; this
identification is not universally accepted: see discussion at
http://mitglied.lycos.de/genealogie_franken/konradiner_schwae-
bische_linie/konrad_herzog_von_schwaben_997.html and Josef
Heinzelmann’s “Spanheimer – Späne, Schachwappen und Konradiner-
erbe,” on Karl-Heinz Schreiber’s http://www.genealogie-mittelalter.de.
136
Wolf, 27-29, quoting the Genealogia Welforum cap. 4 p. 76 at 27;
cf. Thiele, 12, who accepts Richlint as the daughter of Otto I without
making her the daughter of Duke Ludolf instead.
137
Even if, as Wolf argued, Duke Konrad I was not the son of Count
Udo of Wetterau (d. 949), Heinzelmann seems to be correct in asserting

Agatha and her husband Eadward the Exile distant cousins. Al-
though Parsons claimed they were distant enough to avoid com-
plications of consanguinity, they are not.138 In fact, his scheme
involves at least four marriages within the forbidden degrees of
kinship as defined between the ninth and thirteenth centuries.139
The first of these, between Duke Konrad I and Richlint, has al-
ready been noted above. But Eadward the Exile and Agatha
would have been related in the forbidden seventh degree, as
would have been Emperor Heinrich V and Matilda of England.
And Earl Henry of Northumberland and Ada de Warenne would
have been related in both the forbidden fourth and seventh de-
grees according to this scheme. Clearly, there are many serious
problems with Parson’s proposed identification of Agatha’s an-
tecedents, and it cannot be readily accepted. (Stemma 3)
Before leaving the possibility that Agatha were a German
princess or noblewoman, we should follow up the suggestion of
Parsons that she may have been related to one of King Péter of
Hungary’s two queens, Tuta of Formbach and Judith of
Schweinfurt.140 Both of these were, in fact, distant relatives to
the German emperors. The House of Formbach counted as one
of its ancestors Kunigunde, daughter of Duke Berthold of Bava-
ria (938–947). The House of Schweinfurt was descended from
Margrave Berthold, the younger son of Duke Arnulf the Bad of
Bavaria (907–937) and therefore the nephew of Duke Ber-
that he and his brothers were Count Udo’s close relatives and probably
grandchildren. If Wolf’s identification of Richlint with a daughter of
Otto I’s son Ludolf is correct, and if her husband Kuno of Öhningen is
identical with Duke Konrad I of Swabia, Richlint and Konrad would
have been direct descendants of the brothers Hermann I and Udo, re-
spectively.
138
Parsons, 53 n. 31.
139
See C.B. Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the
Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” Speculum 56 (1981): 268-287.
140
Parsons, 46.

thold.141 Arnulf’s daughter Judith established the connection be-

tween the Bavarian Luitpoldings and the Saxon Liudolfings
when she married King Otto I’s brother Heinrich, making him
Duke Heinrich I of Bavaria (947–955). Their grandson became
Emperor Heinrich II, whose successors were descendants of
King Otto I’s daughter Liudgard. Thus, both Tuta of Formbach
and Judith of Schweinfurt were distantly related to Emperor
Heinrich III and his family. We could therefore postulate an
Agatha sister of either Tuta or Judith and account for both Wil-
liam of Malmesbury’s idiosyncratic description of her as reginae
sororem and for the sources making her the relation of an em-
peror. But political considerations eliminate both Tuta and Judith
as a likely sister of Agatha. Judith never really became queen of
Hungary, since she married Péter after the death of her husband
Duke Břetislav I of Bohemia in 1055, almost a decade after Péter
had lost his kingdom. More importantly, it is virtually impossible
that Agatha would have been the sister-in-law of the very mon-
arch her host András I toppled in 1046. Needless to add, the
name Agatha would have been utterly out of place in early elev-
enth century Formbach and Schweinfurt. So, although both Tuta
of Formbach and Judith of Schweinfurt were related to the Ger-
man emperors of their day, Agatha should not be sought among
their sisters. (Stemma 4)
3. Agatha as a princess related to the king of Hungary:
Agatha is connected with Hungary by many sources, but they

are plagued by contradictions and impossibilities. William of
Malmesbury makes Agatha the sister of the Hungarian queen,
Orderic Vitalis and Geoffrey Gaimar make her the daughter and
heiress of the Hungarian king, and Ælred of Rievaulx has her
descended from the royal house of Hungary. William of
Malmesbury’s testimony must be treated apart from the others. If
141
Isenburg, 1:8; Thiele, 109, 111; Schwennicke, 1:88 and 16:37.

correct, it should allow us to identify Agatha’s origins, and we

may expect them to be non-Hungarian. But the author does not
identify the king whose queen was supposed to be Agatha’s sis-
ter.
King István I’s wife Gisela of Bavaria may safely be ex-
cluded from consideration. Her father Duke Heinrich II the
Quarrelsome had died in 995, and if Agatha were his daughter,
she would have been no less than 20 years her husband’s sen-
ior.142 We have seen above that a sister of either wife of King
Péter Orseolo (1038–1041 and 1044–1046) cannot readily be
identified with Agatha. A sister of Péter could have been the
right age, but would also be an unlikely candidate for Agatha,
considering that Péter was the sworn enemy of András I, under
whom Agatha and her husband settled in Hungary.143 Péter’s
rival Sámuel Aba (1044–1046) was the husband of a sister of
King István I, and Agatha would have been too young to be yet
another one of István’s sisters, born by 997. King András I
(1046–1061) was married to Anastasija Jaroslavna of Kiev. Here
at last we have a possible match, and Agatha may be identified
with an unnamed (but at least pictorially attested) daughter of
Jaroslav I of Kiev. No later king of Hungary and his queen’s sis-
ter need be seriously considered, as Eadward the Exile died in
1057, during the reign of András I. One could suggest that
Agatha was the sister of the queen of Hungary in 1068 (when she
planned her escape there), but this would be impossible. Sala-
mon (1063–1074) was married to Judith, daughter of Heinrich III
of Germany, who, being born in 1017, could not have been
Agatha’s father. Therefore, if William of Malmesbury’s descrip-
tion of Agatha is correct, we must identify her with a daughter of
Jaroslav I, as argued by Jetté and Ingham. However, William of
142
Cf. Moriarty, 59, and Ronay, 112.
143
Péter Orseolo was the son of the Venetian Doge Otto Orseolo by
Mária sister of King István I; Péter had a sister Froissa who was born
c.1015 and died 1071: Schwennicke, 2:153.

Malmesbury’s testimony stands in isolation and in contradiction

with a number of other sources associating Agatha more closely
with the Hungarian royal house, as well as Germany.
The other sources connecting Agatha with Hungary make her
a member of the Hungarian royal family. For Orderic Vitalis and
Geoffrey Gaimar, Agatha was the daughter of a sonless Hungar-
ian king, who married her to Eadward the Exile and made him
his heir. This fairy-tale scenario is easily shown to be incorrect,
if for no other reason, because Eadward never became king of
Hungary. Moreover, it would be difficult to find a daughter of a
Hungarian king whom Eadward could have married. A daughter
of István I and Gisela of Bavaria would have been perhaps as
many as 10–15 years older than Eadward and could hardly have
remained unmarried and out of politics during the troubled pe-
riod 1038–1046. As noted above, de Vajay correctly dismissed
that scenario, although Moriarty had not seen any problems with
it. Given king Péter’s hostility to Eadward the Exile’s host An-
drás I, we need not be concerned here with any of his (unat-
tested) daughters. No daughter of Sámuel Aba is attested, though
his opposition to Péter might have made his family possible al-
lies of András I. Any daughter of András I, who married Anasta-
sija of Kiev no earlier than 1038, would probably have been too
young to identify with Agatha.144 We can once again end the en-
quiry with this reign, as Eadward the Exile died in 1057. Conse-
quently, we can agree that Agatha was probably not the daughter
of a Hungarian king, except possibly Sámuel Aba, of whom we
know so little. Making Agatha the daughter or even eldest
daughter of the Hungarian king in some texts may be a conse-
144
Cf. Jetté, 421; a daughter of András I, if born as early as 1038, could
just possibly fit the bill (by a stretch), and could perhaps be corrobo-
rated by Geoffrey Gaimar, who claims that Eadward married the
daughter of his Hungarian host; in the event of an early marriage, such
a daughter could have momentarily made Eadward the heir designate to
the Hungarian crown until the birth of Salamon in 1052.

quence of the natural inclination of our sources to exalt and glo-

rify, simplifying a vaguer and less impressive but more accurate
description of her origins. Just as the thirteenth-century transmit-
ter of the Leges Edovardi Confessoris concluded that the wife
Eadward the Exile married in Russia was not merely of noble
birth but indeed of royal descent, Orderic Vitalis and Geoffrey
Gaimar may have exaggerated or simplified Agatha’s position.
Before proceeding further, it is worth noting that the identity
of the Hungarian king who received Eadward and Agatha is con-
fused in the sources. “Florence” of Worcester and Orderic Vitalis
identify him as Salamon. But Salamon became king only in
1063, and — even though he had been crowned co-ruler by his
father in 1058 — cannot, under any circumstances, be equated
with Eadward and Agatha’s host. Moriarty explained the contra-
diction with Bishop Ealdred of Worcester visiting Hungary en
route to Jerusalem in 1058 and witnessing or hearing about
Salamon’s coronation as co-ruler.145 As Worcester materials
were apparently consulted by a number of subsequent authors,
their erroneous introduction of Salamon in the narrative becomes
understandable. Ingham offered the alternative that Salamon’s
name was introduced as a consequence of Agatha’s desire to flee
to Salamon’s Hungary in 1068.146 Both alternatives require
source contamination and it is difficult to decide which is more
likely.
As we have seen, Ælred of Rievaulx describes Agatha’s
daughter Margaret as descended “from the royal seed of the Eng-
lish and the Hungarians.” Elsewhere, Ælred had also identified
Agatha as the daughter of a germanus of an emperor Henry. This
forces us to reconsider Agatha’s Hungarian connections. Can we
expect Ælred to be unaware of this seeming contradiction and,
more importantly, can we expect him to err when stating that
Agatha was of Hungarian descent? Ingham saw these contradic-
145
Moriarty, 56; Ronay, 48.
146

tions as damning, but they cannot be dismissed so lightly. Al-

though Ælred, writing in 1147/1153, is a relatively late source,
the abbot had once been raised at the Scottish court. In his writ-
ings, Ælred refers to things he learned from Agatha’s grandson,
King David I of Scotland himself.147 It would be surprising if
these things did not include what Ælred had to relate about the
origins of the sainted Queen Margaret and — consequently —
her mother Agatha. This makes Ælred perhaps the most impor-
tant of our sources, and the contradiction he left behind needs to
be explained, not dismissed along with everything it involves.148
But is it a contradiction? Can Agatha be of Hungarian descent
and still be a kinswoman of a German emperor? As we have
seen, the two most natural ways of reconciling these statements
are inapplicable. Agatha was too young to be the daughter of
István I and Heinrich II’s sister Gisela, and she was too old to be
the daughter of Salamon and Heinrich III’s daughter Judith. If
Ælred’s statements are to be substantiated, we must look for a
less direct relationship. It is noteworthy that almost all sources
connecting Agatha with the German ruler note that she was the
daughter of his germanus.149 This Latin term is usually taken to
mean brother or blood-relation, but it could be applied even
more broadly to relations by marriage.150 If we accept a broader
usage of the term, it would be possible to make Agatha a mem-
147
Cf. Moriarty, 57.
148
Which is exactly what Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 252 does: “It
is not as though [Ælred] knew how Agatha could be both a Hungarian
and related to a Holy Roman Emperor at the same time.”
149
The one exception is the English translation of the Chronicle of
Melrose, which has “daughter of the German emperor,” but perhaps
mistranslating the commonly found filia germani imperatoris. If the
former were the case, we would rather expect Germanorum or a similar
form (“Florence” uses Teutonicorum).
150
For the meaning of germanus in the context of the Agatha contro-
versy, see Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 249 and n. 50 and 260-261
and n. 77.

ber of the Hungarian royal house and a relation of the German

emperors through the marriages of István I and Salamon. More-
over, considering the relative importance of Germany and rela-
tive unimportance of Hungary for eleventh- and twelfth-century
England and Scotland, it is likely that the German connections of
Agatha would be overstated. We may therefore expect her con-
nection to Hungary, even if poorly transmitted by the sources, to
have been closer. If neither the Russian nor the German hypothe-
ses for Agatha’s origins can be considered entirely viable, I be-
lieve that we should consider a novel variation of Hungarian an-
tecedents for the princess. This variation is built on equally cir-
cumstantial evidence, but one that would fit well with much of
the source testimony connecting Agatha with the Hungarian and
German royal houses.
A SOUTHERN AGATHA? (see Stemma 5)
Taking advantage of my work in Byzantine and Balkan me-

dieval history and genealogy, I believe I have discovered a plau-
sible option for Agatha’s origins. Although it is unlikely to per-
suade those who are wedded to the preexisting proposals and
perhaps those who are unable to consult the Byzantine sources, I
believe the circumstantial evidence I have uncovered will allow
the identification of Agatha as a princess of the Hungarian royal
house and therefore related, albeit distantly, to the German em-
perors of her time. The number and quality of the sources that
will be vindicated by this solution argues in its favor, and con-
clusions based on considerations such as onomastics are more
tenable here than the ones discussed above. Given the relative
unfamiliarity with the sources involved, I will deal with them in
greater detail.
As a starting point, we may take the occurrence of the rare
name Agatha in the period immediately preceding the known
career of Eadward the Exile’s wife. As we have seen, there were
two princesses named Agathē in mid-tenth century Byzantium,

but neither of these is a likely ancestor of our Agatha. There re-

mains one royal Agatha who lived at the right time and is known
to have had descendants. The daughter of the Byzantine gover-
nor (prōteuōn) of Durazzo, this Agathē had married the Bulgar-
ian regent and later emperor Samuil (997–1014) in the late tenth
century and gave birth to several children, including Samuil’s
ephemeral successor Gavril Radomir (1014–1015).151 Our main
source for the Bulgarian imperial family of the time is the early
twelfth-century recension of the Compendium Historiarum of
Iōannēs Skylitzēs by Bishop Mikhaēl of Devol.152 According to
151
On the character of Samuil’s state, see J.V.A. Fine Jr, The Early Me-
dieval Balkans (Ann Arbor, 1983), 191-192; N. Adontz, “Samuel
l’Arménien roi des Bulgares,” Académie Royale de Belgique: Classe des
Lettres: Mémoires, 2nd series, 39 (1938), 1-63, attempted to show on the
basis of a problematic Armenian source and an inscription set up by
Samuil in 993/994 (commemorating his parents Nikola and Ripsimija
and his brother David) that Samuil and his only brother were originally
Armenian mercenaries in the service of Byzantium. This is expressly
contradicted by all the Byzantine sources — where Samuil is one of four
brothers, sons of a Bulgarian count (e.g., Skylitzēs, 255-256) — and,
more importantly, by an inscription set up by Ivan Vladislav (1015–
1018) to commemorate his repairs at the fortress of Bitola in 1015/1016.
This text, unknown to Adontz, not only identifies Ivan Vladislav as the
“autocrat of the Bulgarians,” but explicitly states that he was “a Bulgar-
ian by blood” and went on, in a now very damaged but convincingly re-
stored section, to specify that that he was the “g[randson of the] pious
[Nikola and Ripsimija], son of Aaron the [brother of the auto]crat em-
peror Samuil:” J. Zaimov and V. Zaimova, Bitolski nadpis na Ivan
Vladislav samodăržec bălgarski (Sofia, 1970), with English summary
and translation at 149-160. A partial Armenian descent for Samuil and
his brothers is nevertheless likely through their mother Ripsimija (Hrip-
simē), whose name is typically Armenian, and who may have originated
in a community of Armenian Paulicians resettled in the Balkans for stra-
tegic purposes by the Byzantine emperors.
152
B. Prokić, ed., Die Zusätze in der Handschrift des Johannes Sky-
litzes Codex Vindobonensis historiae graecae LXXIV: Ein Beitrag zur

him, Agathē’s son Gavril Radomir had been married to a daugh-

ter of the Hungarian king, whom he repudiated while she was
with child. The short passage may be cited in full:
His son Gavril, who was also called Radomir, suc-

ceeded to the rule of the Bulgarians. He excelled his fa-
ther in prowess and strength but lagged far behind him in
wisdom and intelligence. He was the son of Samuil by
Agathē, the daughter of Iōannēs Khrysēlios, the governor
of Durazzo. He began reigning on the 15th of October, in
the 13th Indiction. But he did not complete even one year
and was killed, when he was going hunting, by Aaron’s
son Ivan, also called Vladislav, whom he had saved from
death when he had been about to perish. Radomir, who
was married to the daughter of the king of Hungary, be-
gan loathing her for reasons unknown to me and sent her
away, when she was pregnant by him. And he married Ei-
rēnē, a beautiful captive from Larissa.153
Geschichte des sog. westbulgarischen Reiches, Diss. (Munich, 1906);

this manuscript contains the recensions of Bishop Mikhaēl of Devol,
who corrects a number of errors in the original and supplements the
information on the end of the First Bulgarian Empire; the Skylitzēs
passages here are cited from Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, J.
Thurn, ed., in Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 5 (Berlin, 1973).
153
Skylitzēs, 349-350: paralambanei de tēn arkhēn tōn Boulgarōn ho
hyios autou Gabriēl ho kai Rodomiros, rōmē men kai iskhyï tou patros
hyperekhōn, phronēsei de kai dianoia pollō leipomenos, tekhtheis tō
Samouēl ex Agathēs tēs thygatros Iōannou tou Khrysēliou tou en Dyr-
rakhiō prōteuontos. ērxe de kata tēn pentekaidekatēn tou Oktōbriou
mēnos, indiktiōnos triskaidekatēs. kai mēd’ holon apoplērōsas eniau-
ton sphattetai, eis kynēgesion exelthōn, para Iōannou tou kai Bladisth-
labou tou hyiou Aarōn, hon autos thnēskein mellonta tou thanatou ape-
lytrōsato. eikhe de gynaika ho Rodomēros tēn thygatera tou kralē
Oungrias, ouk oid’ hois tisi logois emisēse tautēn kai apediōxen, enky-
mona ēdē ex autou genomenē. ēgageto de Eirēnēn tēn panōraian
aikhmalōtistheisan en Larissē.

The interpretation of this passage has been complicated by

several assumptions of the influential Bulgarian historian Vasil
Zlatarski that should be discarded. Zlatarski identified the Hun-
garian princess as a daughter of King István I and dated the mar-
riage to after 1000, because Mikhaēl of Devol had stated that she
was the daughter of the king (kralēs) of Hungary.154 This view
relies on Mikhaēl of Devol faithfully transmitting the contempo-
rary title of the ruler of Hungary, rather than automatically ap-
plying the title applicable in his own day, which is actually more
likely. If so, the Hungarian princess would more likely have been
the daughter of István I’s father Duke Géza (972–997), which is
the view preferred by most scholars.155 Since both István I and
Gavril Radomir were probably born in about 975, it is more
likely that the latter married a younger daughter of Duke Géza
than an older daughter of King István.156
Szabolcs de Vajay, followed by Detlev Schwennicke, dated
the marriage of the Hungarian princess to Gavril Radomir to
986–988. De Vajay was correct in criticizing Zlatarski’s ration-
ale for dating the Hungarian marriage to after 1000, but his ar-
154
V. Zlatarski, Istorija na bălgarskata dăržava prez sredinte vekove
(Sofia, 1927), I/2, 710 n. 3.
155
E.g., G. Féher, “Vlijanie na bălgarskata cărkva v Madžarsko,”
Sbornik Vasil Zlataski (Sofia, 1925), 485-498, at 490; J. Andreev,
“Gavril Radomir,” in Koj koj e v srednovekovna Bălgarija (Sofia,
1999): 66-67.
156
For 975 as the date of István I’s birth, see Vég, 17 and compare the
discussions by de Vajay, “Grossfürst Geysa von Ungarn, Familie und
Verwandtschaft,” Südost-Forschungen 21 (1962): 45-101, at 47-48 and
76-77 n. 21, and Györffy, King Saint István of Hungary, 47; two of
Gavril Radomir’s sisters married in the late 990s and could not have
been born much earlier than 975, although de Vajay, “Grossfürst
Geyza,” 75 n. 14, estimates that Gavril Radomir should have been born
in circa 970 to be older than his wife, whom he estimates to have been
born circa 973 on the assumption of a marriage and divorce in 986–
988, which is impossible.

gument that the identification of Eirēnē as a captive from Larissa

indicates that her marriage to Gavril Radomir occurred soon af-
ter the city’s fall to the Bulgarians in 986 is not persuasive. Nor
is his estimate that Eirēnē’s first children were born by 990.157
For all we know, Eirēnē may have been a toddler in 986. We can
produce an estimate for the date of her marriage from the detail
that, when Ivan Vladislav (the son of Samuil’s brother Aaron)
murdered Gavril Radomir and Eirēnē in 1015, he blinded only
their eldest son.158 This means that one of the sons of Eirēnē was
old enough to be considered a threat by the usurper, but that his
siblings were not. Given the minority of his siblings and medie-
val conceptions of majority, Eirēnē’s eldest son is unlikely to
have been older than fifteen in 1015. Consequently, we can con-
clude that Eirēnē began to bear Gavril Radomir’s children circa
1000 or later, which is consistent with two of Gavril Radomir’s
sisters marrying in the late 990s. There is absolutely no reason to
assume that the Hungarian princess was divorced in or about
988. In fact, such an early date seems to be firmly excluded.159
At first glance this might appear to confirm, on different
grounds, Zlatarski’s 1000–1001 date for Gavril Radomir’s Hun-
157
De Vajay, “Grossfürst Geysa,” 74-75, n. 14; Schwennicke, 2:153,
168; note that the latter’s usually excellent tables are fraught with vari-
ous errors due to recourse to limited investigation or recourse to out-
dated materials, especially when it comes to Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia,
Zeta.
158
Skylitzēs, 359: kai dyo thygateras Radomērou tou hyiou tou
Samouēl kai pente hyious, hōn ho heis pepērōto tous ophthalmous para
tou Iōannou lōbētheis, hote ton Radomēron ton hyion Samouēl syn tē
autou gynaiki kai Bladimēron ton toutou gambron aneilen.
159
Cf., Fine, 195-196, who dates Radomir’s Hungarian marriage to
c.997–1004, between Samuil’s expansion into the western Balkans and
the date when he thinks Hungary rejoined the Byzantine camp; but the
evidence suggests that the latter occurred about a decade later than
Fine’s conjecture.

garian marriage.160 This dating would allow a subsequent mar-

riage to Eirēnē of Larissa and the production of four or five sons
and two daughters by her.161 However, Györffy has proposed
that the Bulgaro-Byzantine conflict in 1001 actually brought
about an alliance between Bulgaria and Hungary, something vir-
tually impossible, if Gavril Radomir had just discarded István I’s
sister.162 Györffy thought the Bulgarian-Hungarian political and
matrimonial alliance ended in about 1009, when István I gave
one of his sisters in marriage to Ottone Orseolo, Doge of Ven-
ice.163 But although Venice had close ties to Byzantium and rec-
ognized Byzantine suzerainty, it was a virtually independent
player without any conflict with Bulgaria. War between Bulgaria
and Hungary broke out only in 1014/1015, and I think Gavril
Radomir’s repudiation of István I’s sister cannot be dissociated
from that event.164
A passage by Mikhaēl of Devol describing the revolt of
Gavril Radomir’s son Petăr Deljan against Byzantine rule in
1040 states that Deljan was born to Radomir “by the daughter of
the Hungarian king, whom, having come to hate her, he sent
160
V. Zlatarski, Istorija na bălgarskata dăržava prez srednite vekove, II
(Sofia, 1934), 48, believed that Gavril Radomir was married to the
Hungarian princess only in 1000–1001, and that the subsequent war
between Bulgaria and Byzantium caused Hungary to break off its alli-
ance with Bulgaria.
161
The number of the sons is uncertain because the five sons of Gavril
Radomir captured by the Byzantines in 1018 (Skylitzēs, 359) may have
included Petăr Deljan, who was born by the Hungarian princess.
162
Györffy, King Saint Stephen of Hungary, 143.
163
164
I. Mladjov, “Trans-Danubian Bulgaria: Reality and Fiction,” Byzan-
tine Studies/Etudes Byzantines n.s. 3 (1998) (2000): 85-128, at 114; G.
Györffy, “Formation d’états au IXe siècle suivant les ‹‹Gesta Hunga-
rorum›› du Notaire Anonyme,” Nouvelles études historiques (Budapest,
1965): 27-53, at 49-50; L. Veszprémy, ed., The Deeds of the Hungari-
ans, 103 n. 5.

away while his father was still living.”165 Gavril Radomir had
contracted his Hungarian marriage as part of his father’s foreign
policy and if he divorced his wife before his father’s death (Oc-
tober 1014), he must have done so towards the very end of his
father’s life, when Samuel appears to have been failing in health
and to have become increasingly dependent on his son. Com-
bined with the date of the Bulgaro-Hungarian conflict, this al-
lows us to conclude that Radomir divorced István I’s sister and
married Eirēnē of Larissa probably in early 1014.
Dating Gavril Radomir’s repudiation of his Hungarian wife to
1014 creates an apparent problem, because, as we have seen,
Eirēnē had produced her eldest son by Gavril Radomir in circa
1000 or shortly afterward. Györffy already anticipated this prob-
lem by suggesting that Eirēnē had originally been Gavril Ra-
domir’s mistress or concubine.166 This is certainly likely, consid-
ering the stark contrast between Eirēnē’s status and the uni-
formly aristocratic marriages of Gavril Radomir’s sisters and
cousins. Moreover, an illegitimate son of Samuil is attested in
1018, and Gavril Radomir may have followed his father’s exam-
ple.167 It is reasonable to conclude that Gavril Radomir rashly
repudiated his Hungarian wife and replaced her with his long-
time mistress only when Samuil became increasingly incapaci-
tated at the very end of his life.
The importance of this lengthy excursus into medieval
Byzantino-Bulgarian history lies in the identity of the child with
whom the anonymous Hungarian princess was pregnant when
she was repudiated by Gavril Radomir. Zlatarski assumed that
the child of Gavril Radomir and his repudiated wife was Petăr
Deljan, who led the major anti-Byzantine revolt in western Bul-
165
Skylitzēs, 409: kai hyion heauton ephēmize Radomērou tou hyiou
tou Samouēl, tekhthenta autō apo tēs thygatros tou kralē Oungrias hēn
eti zōntos autou Samouēl misēsas ediōxe.
166
167
Skylitzēs, 359: nothogenē hyion tou Samouēl.

garia in 1040–1041.168 Deljan is indeed described as the son of

Gavril Radomir by the Hungarian princess, and the source’s em-
phatic statement that the revolt’s outbreak was located near the
Hungarian frontier may have influenced Zlatarski’s conclu-
sion.169 However, here we need to abandon Zlatarski’s interpreta-
tion once again. If Deljan had been the child that the Hungarian
princess took back to Hungary in her womb, he is unlikely to
have returned to Bulgaria during his father’s reign, so that he
could be captured by the Byzantines in 1018 and live as a slave
(doulos) of a Constantinopolitan notable before escaping and
revolting in 1040.170 I think it is far more probable that Deljan
was born some time before the divorce and, as a son, was kept in
Bulgaria by his father, though perhaps not given preferential
treatment.171 This would have made it possible for him to have
been captured by the Byzantines along with the other members
of the Bulgarian imperial family in 1018.172 If my interpretation
is correct, the Hungarian princess returned home in early 1014
and afterwards gave birth to another child, who had nothing to
do with the subsequent history of Bulgaria.
Given the common practice of papponymy in the medieval
Balkans and Byzantium, it is entirely possible that on her return
home the Hungarian princess gave birth to a daughter, whom she
may have named Agatha in honor of her (kindly?) mother-in-
law. Although the case is circumstantial, I cannot think of any
168
Zlatarski I/2, 47-48; Andreev, 66.
169
Skylitzēs, 409.
170
For Deljan’s status in Constantinople, see Skylitzēs, 409. On the
scenario suggested here, according to which the Hungarian princess
was repudiated in 1014, this would be not only unlikely but impossible.
Zlatarski, as noted above, thought the divorce took place in 1001, but
Deljan’s return to Bulgaria on his father’s accession in 1014 would still
be highly unlikely.
171
Cf. Fine, 196, who also thinks that the expelled Hungarian princess
left her son Petăr Deljan behind.
172
Skylitzēs, 359.

better explanation for the unexpected occurrence of the name

Agatha on the pages of central and western European history.
This daughter would have had her father’s Greek and Bulgarian
blood, explaining her rare name, and would have been raised by
her Hungarian mother at the court of King István I. For all pur-
poses, Agatha would have been a member of the Hungarian
royal house; if her father was not completely forgotten, he was
long gone (murdered in 1015) as was his distant empire (con-
quered by the Byzantines in 1018). In this hypothesis, Agatha’s
mother was a half-sister of both István I and Duke Vazul, who
was the father of the future King András I. Moreover, as the
niece of István I and his wife Gisela of Bavaria, Agatha would
have been a kinswoman, albeit in a broad sense, of Emperor
Heinrich II and of his successors Konrad II and Heinrich III. As
in other scenarios, this distant kinship would have been rein-
forced by the marriage of Agatha’s cousin Salamon to Heinrich
III’s daughter Judith. (Stemma 5)
A possible objection to identifying Agatha as István I’s niece
is that as such she would have been dangerously prominent in
the events following 1038. This is possible, but does not neces-
sarily follow. Agatha’s mother would have become Orthodox on
her marriage to Gavril Radomir and may have remained so, per-
haps passing her faith to her daughter, especially considering the
name Agatha. This could have marginalized their positions in the
Catholic-dominated court, and we should not assume that Gisela
of Bavaria was willing to share power with a sister-in-law.173
However, it is also possible that Agatha’s mother remarried and
continued to play a political role. A likely candidate for her hus-
band is none other than Sámuel Aba, who was elected king in
173
The civil wars in Hungary that followed the death of István I in
1038 are blamed by the chroniclers on the widowed Queen Gisela and
her desire to appoint her own nominees to the detriment of the dead
king’s cousins and intended heirs: e.g., L. Veszprémy, ed., Simon of
Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, 105-107.

1041 in opposition to Gisela of Bavaria’s protégé Péter Orseolo.

We know that Sámuel Aba was married to a sister of István I,
and the only argument against identifying her with the wife of
Gavril Radomir is the latter’s placement as one of István I’s
older sisters by de Vajay.174 De Vajay estimated that Gavril Ra-
domir’s wife was born in about 973, and Sámuel Aba’s wife in
about 995.175 However, as we have seen, de Vajay’s dating is
based on an erroneous inference about Gavril Radomir’s mar-
riage, and cannot be maintained. I think we could easily identify
the wives of Gavril Radomir and Sámuel Aba as a single daugh-
ter of Duke Géza, who was born by his second wife Adelajda of
Poland in about 990 or a little earlier. Let us consider the impli-
cations of this identification.
Duke Géza’s daughter would have been married to Gavril
Radomir sometime after 1001, would have given birth to Petăr
Deljan in Bulgaria, and would have been sent away by her hus-
band while pregnant, presumably with Agatha, by 1014. She
would have returned to Hungary and given birth to her child in
1014 or 1015. Gavril Radomir’s murder in 1015 would have re-
moved any remaining impediment to remarriage, and the prin-
cess would have remarried, before circa 1020 to Sámuel Aba.176
This second union produced several children, including one
174
De Vajay, “Grossfürst Geysa,” 46, 48-49, 68-69. Sámuel Aba is
described as the sororium sancti Regis Stephani by the chronicles; so-
rorius is inherently vague, meaning “sister’s,” and Schwennicke, 2:153
interpreted it as “sister’s son;” however, as the chronicles emphasize
that the Hungarian notables failed to find anyone of royal descent (de
regali genere) to proclaim king, he must have been related by marriage
and not by blood to István I: Simon of Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, 110-
111, The Hungarian Illustrated Chronicle, 108.
175
De Vajay, “Grossfürst Geysa,” 68-69.
176
De Vajay, “Grossfürst Geysa,” estimates the date of her marriage to
Sámuel Aba as 1010, but their son Péter was born (again, by estimate)
in 1020.

named Péter, who was killed in battle in 1074.177 It is possible to

draw inferences from the two new names associated with Géza’s
daughter. Péter may have been named in memory of the son she
had been forced to leave behind in Bulgaria in 1014, and whom
she must have presumed dead or lost after 1018.178 The Christian
name of the princess’ second husband may also be significant.
At this time many Hungarian nobles were still heathen and Aba
may have converted to Christianity with the express purpose of
marrying his king’s sister.179 If so, Agatha may have chosen
Sámuel as his Christian name both on Biblical grounds and to
commemorate her late father-in-law, who must have been some
support against her first husband.
Agatha’s proposed stepfather Sámuel Aba came to the throne
at the head of a reaction against Péter Orseolo and his pro-
German policies in 1041. The new king punished Péter’s hench-
men and those responsible for the blinding of Duke Vazul and
the exiling of his sons Levente, András, and Béla, although they
remained in exile throughout his reign.180 But the exiled king
Péter appealed to Emperor Heinrich III for support and various
Hungarian notables became discontent with Sámuel Aba’s
heavy-handed rule. Defeated by Heinrich III in 1044, Sámuel
Aba was murdered during his retreat from the battlefield. His
wife and family fled to Russia, returning to Hungary in the reti-
177
De Vajay, “Grossfürst Geysa,” 70.
178
Unlike most of the other members of the Bulgarian imperial family,
Petăr Deljan was not given favored treatment by the Byzantine gov-
ernment, and is described as the slave (doulos) of an inhabitant of Con-
stantinople: Skylitzēs, 409.
179
In the royal family itself, King András I’s brother Levente (d. 1047)
was the last male to die a heathen. The usage of a double name for
Sámuel Aba implies a conversion after Aba had reached maturity.
180
The Hungarian Illustrated Chronicle, 108; this implies that the
families of Sámuel Aba and András I were at least potential allies in the
years following 1038.

nue of András I two years later.181 Péter’s second reign proved

no more to the taste of the Hungarians than his first, and a coun-
cil of dissidents summoned the exiled dukes Levente and András
from Russia in 1046.182 Combined with a heathen uprising, the
dukes’ return brought about Péter’s second defeat and exile.
The implications for Agatha’s life are striking. She would
have fled to Russia with her mother and half-brothers in 1044,
and she would have come back to Hungary with them in 1046. In
Kiev she would have joined her first cousin András, already mar-
ried to Jaroslav I’s daughter Anastasija. She would have made a
sensible match for Eadward the Exile (perhaps only one year her
junior), as the kinswoman of his friend and later patron András
and as the distant relative (through marriage) of their host Jaro-
slav I. 1044 is also a compatible date for Eadward’s marriage to
Agatha on the basis of estimates involving the age of their
daughter Margaret at the time of her marriage to Malcolm III of
Scotland.183 This would allow plenty of time for the birth of three
surviving children before 1057.184 One might wonder whether
this date would not be a little late for Agatha and Eadward’s
marriage, but it is not anomalous, especially given their secon-
dary status as partial outsiders. Furthermore, we have no proof
that this was the first marriage for either one of them.
The explanation of the name Agatha provided by this hy-
pothesis is very straightforward and infinitely more likely than
any of the previous proposals. Agatha would have been named
after her paternal grandmother, providing a blood connection, the
181
De Vajay, “Grossfürst Geysa,” 69-70.
182
The Hungarian Illustrated Chronicle, 111.
183
Valerie Wall, “Queen Margaret of Scotland (1070–1093): Burying
the Past, Enshrining the Future,” in Queenship in Medieval Europe,
A.J. Duggan, ed. (Woodbridge 1997) 30, estimates that Margaret was
about 22 in 1067, putting her birth in 1045.
184
Cf. Ingham, “Daughter of Iaroslav,” 264; Jetté, 420; de Vajay
“Agatha,” 72; Moriarty, 54.

clear presence of a precedent, and a suitable religious setting. If

one should desire further onomastic support, we could now eas-
ily cite several possible precedents for Agatha’s grandson being
named David. In addition to the common presentation of David
as a model for monarchs in medieval sources, we can point to the
son of András I of Hungary in a younger generation and, perhaps
more significantly, to the uncle of Agatha’s father. This David,
an older brother of Samuil, had reputedly resigned the regency
over part of Bulgaria and was murdered in 976 or 977 by ban-
dits, quickly attaining sainthood, at least within the Bulgarian
Orthodox church.185 Samuil’s last autocephalous patriarch in
Ohrid was also named David, and he may well have had some-
thing to say against Gavril Radomir repudiating his wife.186 The
name Mary could also theoretically be connected to Bulgarian
precedent — the wives of Ivan Vladislav (1015–1018) and his
predecessors Boris I (852–889) and Petăr I (927–969) were all
named Marija. Pavsic was aware of some of these onomastic
“precedents,” but he did not do much with them.187 Nevertheless,
I am inclined to agree with Parsons that names are unlikely to
have been transmitted from a maternal line after a gap of more
than two generations. What is of unquestionable significance is
the name of Agatha herself.
Let us consider how the presently proposed identification of
Agatha agrees with our sources. The earliest source, the 1057
entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from circa 1100 describes
Agatha as the emperor’s relative (thaes caseres maga), and the
term employed is general enough to cover the relationship be-
tween Agatha and her uncle’s and cousin’s German relations.
“Florence” of Worcester’s filia germani imperatoris would ide-
ally require a closer, blood, relationship, but as we have seen a
strict interpretation of the term germanus cannot be maintained
185
Zlatarski, I/2, 646-647 and 646 n. 1
186
P. Pavlov, “David,” in Koj koj e v srednovekovna Bălgarija, 84-85.
187
Pavsic, 56, 64-66.

even for de Vajay’s theory. Moreover, as a later source, it is

more likely to obscure the original tradition. The strict value of a
term which is in any case out of place cannot be used to argue
against the present hypothesis. Orderic Vitalis and Geoffrey Gai-
mar made Agatha the daughter and heiress of the Hungarian
king. While Agatha was not a daughter and heiress of Eadward
the Exile’s host King András I, she was a stepdaughter of King
Sámuel Aba. One might even consider the possibility that the
name Sámuel may have contributed to Orderic Vitalis confusing
the name of Eadward’s Hungarian host with Salamon. William
of Malmesbury’s identification of Agatha as reginae sororem is
more difficult to reconcile. Without placing too much faith in
this idiosyncratic testimony, it is possible to see some garbled
reflection of a more detailed account that explained that Agatha
was the daughter of the sister of King István I. The present hy-
pothesis means that Abbot Ælred of Rievaulx need not be ac-
cused of unwittingly contradicting himself in stating that Agatha
was both a relative of the emperor and had Hungarian blood. On
the contrary, as a recipient of King David I’s knowledge about
his antecedents, Ælred may have been the best informed of our
sources. Finally, even the original text of the Leges Edovardi
Confessoris (preserved by Roger of Howden) can be substanti-
ated, in describing Agatha as a noblewoman that Eadward mar-
ried at the Russian court, but not a Russian princes herself.
The present scenario makes the circumstances that led Agatha
to Russia to marry Eadward, and to seek refuge in Hungary in-
stead of either Russia or Germany in 1068, far more understand-
able than any of the hypotheses proposed previously. Agatha was
not a German noblewoman who abandoned her sons by a Rus-
sian prince to marry an English exile and settle in Hungary, Eng-
land, and then try to go to Hungary again. Nor was she an unno-
ticed sister of the Kievan-born queen of France, who preferred
the court of a brother-in-law to that of her father. She was simply
a member of the Hungarian royal house following her family in
exile, joining natural allies against a common enemy back home.

Emperor Heinrich III’s prevention of the return of Eadward the

Exile to England in 1054–1056 also becomes more understand-
able in the present scenario. Ronay found himself at pains to ex-
plain why the emperor would be opposed to the promotion of his
nephew by marriage in the English succession.188 But Agatha
was not only not Heinrich III’s niece, she was intimately linked
to his enemies. She was the stepdaughter of Sámuel Aba, whom
Heinrich III had once faced on the battlefield, and the cousin of
András I, who had likewise fought against the Germans and top-
pled Heinrich III’s protégé. As András I’s dependant, Agatha’s
husband had also waged war against the emperor. Heinrich III’s
death in 1056 becomes an understandable prerequisite for Ead-
ward the Exile’s return to England through Germany in 1057.
Although I stressed that Agatha’s connections with Bulgaria
can be expected to have been minimal and therefore naturally not
reflected in the sources, it is worthwhile to point out some con-
nections between the Bulgarian imperial house and Hungary af-
ter Byzantium’s conquest of Bulgaria in 1018. Consider Sky-
litzēs’ statement that Petăr Deljan—who, according to the theory
proposed here, would have been Agatha’s older brother — pro-
claimed himself Bulgarian emperor and rebelled against Byzan-
tium in the part of Bulgaria adjoining the lands of the king of
Hungary.189 It is unlikely that this detail is simply descriptive.
Rather, one may suggest that the chronicler implies that Deljan
was seeking support from his relatives in Hungary. But he does
not seem to have received Hungarian assistance, which is per-
haps easily explainable because in 1040 the ruler of Hungary
was Péter Orseolo, who could have perceived Deljan as a poten-
tial rival, being another nephew of István I.
Another member of the Bulgarian imperial house who can be
connected with Hungary was Ivan Vladislav’s son Presian. The
early career of this prince offers an uncanny parallel to that of
188
Ronay, 133-135.
189
Skylitzēs, 409.

Agatha’s son Eadgar, because both were proclaimed rulers of

their countries in the face of foreign aggression and both had to
capitulate before even being crowned. Upon his surrender, the
ephemeral Presian II (1018) joined his relatives in Constantin-
ople, receiving the title of magister from the Byzantine emperor
Basileios II (963 and 976–1025) and later served as the com-
mander (stratēgos) of the Asiatic theme Boukellarion. In 1029
Presian was accused of conspiring to marry Basileios’ niece
Theodōra and usurp the throne of her sister Zōē’s husband Rō-
manos III Argyros (1028–1034). As a result of this plot, Presian
was blinded and tonsured, and his mother Marija was deprived
of her honorary status at court.190 Sometime after 1030, Presian
found his way to Hungary, where he died thirty years later.191
The actions of both Petăr II Deljan and Presian II demonstrate
the continuation of ties to the Hungarian royal family and the
expectation of Hungarian support. This would have been most
likely if there were still members of the Hungarian royal family
who were related to the Bulgarian princes. Such a role could
only have been played by Agatha and her mother.192
190
For Presian’s career in Byzantium, see Skylitzēs, 359, 372, 376,
384.
191
Presian was buried in what is now eastern Slovakia in anno mundi
6569 (=1060/1061): V. Tkadičik, “Cyrilskỳ nàpis v Michalovcich,”
Slavia 2 (1983): 113-123; on Presian see P. Pavlov, “Presian,” in Koj
koj e v srednovekovna Bălgarija, 319-320.
192
Schwennicke, 2: 153, identifies András I of Hungary’s mother (wife
of István I’s first cousin Vazul) as Katun, a possible daughter of Samuil
of Bulgaria. This is highly unlikely. The name “Katun” is related to
the title xātun, given to the wives of khans by Turks and Mongols (G.
Györffy, “Török női méltóságnevek amagyar kútfőkben,” Magyar
Nyelv (1953): 109-111), and is therefore hardly appropriate for a
daughter of Samuil of Bulgaria. Moreover, the source on which this
interpretation is based actually refers to Vazul’s wife as “some girl
from the clan of Tatun/Tatóny:” The Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle:
113.

The identification of Agatha’s origins proposed here explains

most logically Eadward the Exile’s settling in Hungary and
Agatha’s unfulfilled desire to return there in 1068, before being
blown off course to Scotland. It also best explains why Agatha
and Eadward did not settle in Russia or Germany, either of
which would have been a more logical choice if Eadward was
hoping to return to England, and why Agatha did not attempt to
go there in 1068. Agatha’s rare name, the odd absence of refer-
ences to her sister as the queen of France in the Russian scenario,
and the lack of complications over consanguinity at the mar-
riages of Agatha descendants also become easily understandable.
Although based on circumstantial evidence — though by no
means more speculative than earlier hypotheses — the theory
that Agatha was the daughter of Gavril Radomir of Bulgaria by a
sister of István I of Hungary resolves many of the contradictory
statements about Agatha’s antecedents and their implications.
The present identification makes Agatha the homonymous
granddaughter of the Greek-born Bulgarian empress Agathē, the
niece of one Hungarian king (István I), the stepdaughter of an-
other (Sámuel Aba) and the first cousin of two others (András I
and Béla I), as well as the cousin by marriage of the German
emperor (Heinrich III) and of the grand prince of Kiev (Jaroslav
I). In 1054, King Eadward the Confessor first sought the return
from exile of his nephew Eadward and his family. Now, nine and
a half centuries later, has the mystery of the origin of Eadward
the Exile’s wife Agatha been finally resolved? Due to the nature
of the evidence, even if correct, this very plausible solution will
always remain a hypothesis.

STEMMA 1
The Russian (Jetté et alii) scenario, simplified:
Part 1
Mikhaēl III †867 Eudokia Basileios I †886
Byzantine emperor Ingerina Byzantine emperor
Leōn VI †912 Rōmanos I †948 Alexandros †913

Byzantine emperor Byzantine emperor Byzantine emperor
= Zōē Karbōnopsina = Theodōra †923
Kōnstantinos VII †959 Helenē Agathē

Byzantine emperor †961 = Rōmanos Argyros
Rōmanos II †963 Agathē

Byzantine emperor nun
= Theophanō †969»
Anna Vladimir I †1015 Rogneda of Polock

†1011 Gr prince of Kiev †1002
Jaroslav I †1054
Gr prince of Kiev
= Ingegerd of Sweden
†1050
Agafija †1068» Anastasija †1074» Anna †1075/89

= Eadward the Exile = András I †1060 = Henri I †1060
†1057 King of Hungary King of France

Part 2
Jaroslav I †1054
Gr prince of Kiev
= Ingegerd of Sweden
†1050
Agafija †1068» Anastasija †1074» Anna †1075/89

= Eadward the Exile = András I †1060 = Henri I †1060
†1057 King of Hungary King of France
Margaret †1093 Hugues †1102 Philippe I †1108

= Malcolm III †1093 Count of Vermandois King of France
King of Scotland = Adélaïde of Vermandois = Bertha of Holland
†1121/23 †1093
Edith Matilda †1118 David I †1153 Élisabeth †1131 Louis VI †1137

= Henry I †1135 King of Scotland = William de Warenne King of France
King of England = Matilda of Huntingdon Earl of Surrey = Adélaïde of Savoy
†1130/31 †1138 †1154
Matilda †1167 Henry †1152 Ada

= Geoffroi V †1151 Earl of Northumbria †1178
Count of Anjou
4 degrees of kinship!
Henry II †1189 Louis VII †1180

King of England King of France
= Aliénor of Aquitaine = Constanza of Castile
†1204 5 degrees of kinship! †1160
Henry †1183 Marguerite

Associate king †1197
Note that this scenario involves two cases of marriage within

the prohibited seven degrees of kinship.

STEMMA 2
The German (de Vajay et alii) scenario, simplified
Part 1
Bruno †1016/17 Gisela †1043 Konrad II †1039
Count of Brunswick of Swabia German emperor
Jaroslav I †1054 Liudolf †1038 Heinrich III †1056

Gr prince of Kiev Count of Bruswick German emperor
= Ingegerd of Sweden = Gertrud of Egisheim = Agnès of Poitiers
†1050 †1077 †1077
Vladimir †1052 Agatha Eadward the Exile

Prince of Novgorod †1068» †1057
Rostislav †1065 Margaret †1093 Heinrich IV †1106

Prince of Tmutorokan = Malcolm III †1093 German emperor
King of Scotland = Berthe of Savoy
†1087
Edith Matilda †1118

= Henry I †1135
King of England
Geoffroi V †1151 Matilda Heinrich V †1125 Agnes †1143

Count of Anjou †1167 German emperor = Friedrich I †1105
Duke of Swabia
Henry II †1189 Friedrich II †1147

King of England Duke of Swabia
= Aliénor of Aquitaine = Judith of Bavaria
†1204 †1132

Part 2
Geoffroi V †1151 Matilda Heinrich V †1125 Agnes †1143
Count of Anjou †1167 German emperor = Friedrich I †1105
Duke of Swabia
Friedrich II †1147
Duke of Swabia
= Judith of Bavaria
†1132
Henry II †1189 Friedrich I †1190

King of England German emperor
= Aliénor of Aquitaine = Béatrice I of Burgundy
†1204 †1184
Matilda †1189 Philipp †1208

= Heinrich the Lion †1195 King of Germany
Duke of Bavaria and Saxony = Eirēnē of Byzantium
†1208
Otto IV †1218 Beatrix

German emperor †1212
John †1216 5 degrees of affinity! Heinrich VI †1197

King of England German emperor
= Isabelle of Angoulême = Costanza of Sicily
†1246 5 degrees of affinity! †1198
Elizabeth Friedrich II
†1241 German emperor
†1250
Note that this scenario contains at least one marriage within

the prohibited seven degrees of kinship, and at least two affinity
problems.

STEMMA 3
The German (Parsons) scenario, simplified
Part 1
Gebhard †910 Ælfleda Eadward I †924 Eadgifu
Duke of Lorraine of Wiltshire King of England of Kent
Udo †949 Hermann I †949 Eadgyth †947 Eadmund I †946

Count in Wetterau Duke of Swabia = Otto I †973 King of England
= F of Vermandois = Reginlindis German emperor = Ælfgifu †944
Gebhard †938 Ida Liudolf †957

†986 Duke of Swabia
Eadgar I †975
King of England
Konrad I †997 Richlint 3 degrees = Ælfrida of Devon
Duke of Swabia or Judith? †1002
Hermann II †1003 Rogneda Vladimir I †1015 F

Duke of Swabia of Polock Gr prince of Kiev
= Gerberge of Arelate
Æthelred II †1016
King of England
= Ælfgifu †1002
Gisela †1043 Jaroslav I †1054 F
= Konrad II †1039 Gr prince of Kiev = Bernhard count
German emperor = Ingegerd †1050 of Haldensleben
Heinrich III †1056 Anna †1075/89 Oda Eadmund II †1016

German emperor = Henri I †1060 = Cristinus King of England
= Agnès of Poitiers King of France count c.1000 = Ealdgyth
†1077
Agatha Eadward the Exile

†1068» †1057

Part 2
Heinrich III †1056 Anna †1075/89 Agatha Eadward

German emperor = Henri I †1060 †1068» †1057
= Agnès †1077 King of France
Margaret †1093
= Malcolm III †1093
Élisabeth †1131 King of Scotland
= William de
Warenne
Earl of Surrey
Heinrich IV †1006 David I †1153
German emperor King of Scotland
= Berthe of Savoy = Matilda of Huntingdon
†1087 †1130/31
Ada Henry †1152

†1178 Earl of Northumbria
6 degrees of kinship! Edith Matilda †1118

= Henry I †1135
King of England
Heinrich V †1125 Matilda

German emperor †1167
Note that this scenario involves at least four cases of marriage

within the prohibited seven degrees of kinship.

STEMMA 4
The relations of Formbach and Schweinfurt, simplified
Part 1 (Formbach)
Otto I †912 Luitpold †907
Duke of Saxony Margrave of Bavaria
= Hedwig of Friesland = Kunigunde
†903
Heinrich I †936 Arnulf †937 Berthold †947

King of Germany Duke of Bavaria Duke of Bavaria
= Mathilde of Westphalia = Judith of Sülichgau = Biletrud
†968
Otto I †973 Heinrich I †955 Judith Kunigunde

German emperor Duke of Bavaria †978 = Udalrich I †970»
= Eadgyth of England Count in Schweinachgau
†947
Heinrich II †995 Berthold †1005»

Liudgard †953 Duke of Bavaria Count in Schweinachgau
= Konrad †955 = Giselle of Arelate =F
Duke of Lorraine †1006
Thiemo I †1050
Otto †1004 Count of Formbach
Duke of Carinthia Heinrich II †1024 Gisela †1060? =F
= Judith of Bavaria German emperor = István I †1038
= Kunigunde King of Hungary
of Luxemburg
Heinrich †995
Count of Speyer Heinrich †«1030
= Adelheid of Alsace Count of Formbach
= Himiltrud
Konrad II †1039
German emperor
= Gisela of Swabia Agatha †1068» Tuta †1046
†1043 = Eadward the Exile = Péter †1059
†1057 King of Hungary
Heinrich III †1056

German emperor

Part 2 (Schweinfurt)
Otto I †912 Luitpold †907
Duke of Saxony Margrave of Bavaria
= Hedwig of Friesland = Kunigunde
†903
Heinrich I †936 Arnulf †937

King of Germany Duke of Bavaria
= Mathilde of Westphalia = Judith of Sülichgau
†968
Otto I †973 Heinrich I †955 Judith Heinrich †954»

German emperor Duke of Bavaria †978 Count in Bavaria
= Eadgyth of England =F
†947 Berthold †980
Margrave of Nordgau
= Eilika of Walbeck
Liudgard †953
= Konrad †955
Duke of Lorraine
Heinrich II †995
Duke of Bavaria
Otto †1004 Judith = Giselle of Arelate
Duke of Carinthia †1006 Heinrich †1013
Margrave of Schweinfurt
= Gerberge of Kinziggau
Heinrich †995 Heinrich II †1024 Gisela †1060?

Count of Speyer German emperor = István I †1038
= Adelheid of Alsace = Kunigunde King of Hungary
of Luxemburg
Konrad II †1039
German emperor
= Gisela of Swabia Agatha †1068» Judith †1058
†1043 = Eadward the Exile = Břetislav I †1055
†1057 Duke of Bohemia
= Péter †1059
Heinrich III †1056 King of Hungary
German emperor

STEMMA 5 Agatha’s connections in the present proposal

Heinrich I †936
King of Germany
= Mathilde of Westphalia
†968
Otto I †973 Heinrich I †955

German emperor Duke of Bavaria
= Eadgyth of England = Judith of Bavaria
†947 †978
Liudgard †953 Heinrich II †995 Sarolta Géza

= Konrad †955 Duke of Bavaria of Transylvania Duke of Hungary
Duke of Lorraine = Giselle of Arelate †988» †997
†1006
Otto †1004 Heinrich II †1024 Gisela István I

Duke of Carinthia German emperor †1060? King of Hungary
= Judith of Bavaria = Kunigunde of Luxemburg †1038
†1032
Heinrich †995 Imre

Count of Speyer Dux Ruizorum
= Adelheid of Alsace †1031
Konrad II †1039
German emperor
= Gisela of Swabia
†1043
Heinrich III †1056 Levente András I †1060 Béla I †1063

German emperor †1047 King of Hungary King of Hungary
= Agnès of Poitiers = Anastasija of Kiev = Ryksa of Poland
†1077 †1074» †1059»
Judith Salamon Dávid Adelheid †1062

†1094 King of Hungary †«1060 = Vratislav II †1092
†1087 Duke/King of Bohemia

Taksony †972 Iōannēs Nikola †«976

Duke of Hungary Khrysēlios Count
=F =F = Ripsimija
Géza Adelajda Mihály Agathē Samuil David

Duke of Hungary of Poland Duke Bulgarian emperor Count
†997 †997» †977 †1014 †976
Maria Sámuel Aba F Gavril Radomir Vazul †1037

= Ottone Orseolo King of Hungary †1044» Bulgarian emperor Duke
Doge of Venice †1044 †1015 = F de Tátony?
†1031
Péter †1059 Péter Petăr II Deljan

King of Hungary †1074 Bulgarian emperor
= Tuta †1046 †1041
= Judith †1058
Agatha †1068»
= Eadward the Exile
†1057
Margaret †1093 Eadgar II †1126» Christina †1086»

= Malcolm III †1093 King of England Nun
King of Scotland

STEMMA 6 The Bulgarian imperial family 1000–1100

Nikola †«976
Count
= Ripsimija
David †976/77 Mojsej †976/77 Aaron †987 Samuil †1014

Count Count Count Bulgarian emperor
=F
MM Ivan Vladislav †1018

†987 Bulgarian emperor
= Marija †1029»
Presian II †1060/61 Alusian †1041» Aaron †1059» Trojan

Bulgarian emperor Bulgarian emperor Governor of Vaspurakan, =F
Governor of Boukellarion Governor of Theodosioupolis Iberia, Edessa Kontostephanina
= F (Armenian) =F
F (Anna?) †«1067 Basileios †1068» Samouēl †1071» Maria †1081»

= Rōmanos IV Diogenēs Governor of Edessa Governor of Armenia = Andronikos Doukas
Byzantine emperor =F Prōtobestiarios †1077
†1072 Dalassēnē
Kōnstantinos †1069 Theodōros †1055/56 Radomiros †1097»? Eirēnē †1123

= Theodōra Komnēnē Governor of Taron Proedros, Duke = Alexios I Komnēnos
sister of Alexios I = F (mistress) Byzantine emperor
†1118
Arōn Theodōros
†1107» †1107»
Radomir M Ekaterina †1059» F 4F

†1018» (1097»?) †1018» = Isaakios I Komnē- = Rōmanos Kourk- †1018»
nos ouas
Byzantine emperor
NOTE: This table is included to correct several errors in

Schwennicke, 2:168. The corrections are mostly based on
Zlatarski, Istorija na bălgarskata dăržava prez srednite vekove
1/2 and 2 (with genealogies on pages 863 and 535, respectively).

Nikola †«976
Count
= Ripsimija
David †976/77 Mojsej †976/77 Aaron †987 Samuil †1014

Count Count Count Bulgarian emperor
=F = Agathē of Durazzo
dau. of Iōannēs Khrysēlios
F of Hungary Gavril Radomir Eirēnē of Larissa

dau. of Géza Bulgarian emperor †1015
†1044» †1015
Petăr II Deljan Agatha †1068» 4/5 M 1/2 F

Bulgarian emperor = Eadward the Exile †1018» †1018»
†1041 †1057
Teodora Kosara †1016» Miroslava †1016» 2F M

= Jovan Vladimir = Ašot Taronitēs †1018» †1018»
Prince of Zeta Governor of Durazzo (bastard)
†1016 †1016»
F
= Stefan Vojislav
Prince of Zeta
†1043
Note that it is uncertain
whether the five sons and
Mihailo I †1081 two daughters of Gavril Ra-
King of Zeta
= F (Neda?)
domir captured by the By-
zantines in 1018 included
Petăr III Petăr Deljan and the future
(Konstantin Bodin) wife of Stefan Vojislav
Bulgarian Emperor
King of Zeta
†1101

Excursus
Recognizing Agatha as a daughter of Gavril Radomir (1014–

1015) of Bulgaria by his Hungarian wife creates a new link be-
tween the royal genealogies of Byzantium and Eastern Europe
on the one hand and those of Western Europe on the other. This
also happens to constitute a second source of descent from the
rulers descended from Count Nikola to the most recent monarch
of Bulgaria, King Simeon II (1943–1946). The following table
presents the descent of King Simeon II from Count Nikola
through several lines and it also serves to illustrate many of the
royal and noble families that are descended from Agatha. It
should be stressed that a number of lines that separated from the
ones represented only to rejoin them later, have not been traced
in any detail. The sources of the major ones are indicated (the
Habsburgs of Austria, Bourbons of Spain and the Two Sicilies,
etc), as are those of their family members who married into the
represented lines. These tables may also be useful for estimates
of generation length over what is in effect a random sequence of
two or more family lines. A substantial portion of the genealogi-
cal sequence is taken up by the Plantagenets from Geoffroi V,
Count of Anjou, to the Castilian and Portuguese connections of
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. The Plantagenet descent con-
tinues, of course, in the remaining lines represented here until the
present.

Nikola †«976
Bulgarian count
= Ripsimija †«991
Aaron †987 Æthelred II †1016 Samuil †1014

Bulgarian count King of England Bulgarian emperor
Summer/Winter 2003
=F = Ælfgigu †1002 = Agathē of Durazzo
Ivan Vladislav †1018 Eadmund II †1016 Gavril Radomir †1015

Bulgarian emperor King of Englnad Bulgarian emperor
= Marija †1029» = Ealdgyth = F †1044» of Hungary
Trojan †1018» Eadward the Exile Agatha

= Kontostephanina c1016–1057 c1014–1068»
The Plantagenet Connection

Maria †1081» Eadgar II †1126» Margaret †1093

= Andronikos Doukas King of England = Malcolm III †1093
†1077 King of Scotland
Page
78
Eirēnē †1123 Edith Matilda †1118
= Alexios I Komnēnos †1118 = Henry I †1135
Byzantine emperor King of Englnad
Theodōra †1120» Matilda †1167

= Kōnstantinos Angelos = Geoffroi V †1151
†1166 Count of Anjou
Summer/Winter 2003
Andronikos †1185» Henry II †1189
= Euphrosynē †1185 King of England
Kastamonitissa = Aliénor †1206
of Aquitaine
Alexios III †1211» Isaakios II †1204 Eleanor John †1216

Byzantine emperor Byzantine emperor †1214 King of England
= Euphrosynē †1211 = F †«1184 = Alfonso VIII †1214 = Isabelle †1246
Kamatēra King of Castile of Angoulême
Eirēnē Eirēnē Berenguela †1244 Blanca

†1203» †1208 Queen of Castile †1252
= Alexios = Philipp †1208 = Alfonso IX †1230 = Louis VIII †1226

†1201/04 King of Germany King of León King of France
Page
Anjou, Artois
79
Theodōra Elisabeth Fernando III †1252 Louis IX †1270
†1216» (Beatrix) King of Castile King of France
= Andronikos †1246» †1235 = Marguerite †1295
Palaiologos of Provence
Mikhaēl VIII †1282 Alfonso X †1284 Philippe III †1285 Henry III †1272
Byzantine emperor King of Castile Bourbons King of France King of England
Summer/Winter 2003
= Theodōra †1303 = Yolanda †1300 = Isabel †1271 = Aliénor †1291
Palaiologina of Aragón of Aragón of Provence
Andronikos II †1332 Sancho IV †1296 Philippe IV †1314 Edward I †1307 Edmund †1296
Byzantine emperor King of Castile Valois King of France King of England Earl of Lancaster
= Iolanda (Eirēnē) †1317 = María †1321 = Juana I †1305 = Leonor †1290 = Blanche †1302
of Montferrat de Molina Queen of Navarre of Castile of Artois
Teodoro I †1338 Fernando IV †1312 Isabelle Edward II †1327 Henry †1345

Marquis of Montferrat King of Castile †1358 King of England Earl of Lancaster
= Argentina Spinola = Constança †1313 = Maud †1317/22
of Genoa of Portugal of Chaworth

Iolanda Alfonso XI †1350 Edward III †1377 Henry †1361

†1342 King of Castile King of England Duke of Lancaster
= Aimone †1343 = (1) Leonor †1351 = Philippe †1369 = Isabel †1356
Count of Savoy de Guzmán of Hainault de Beaumont
= (2) Maria †1357
of Portugal
Page
80
Amedeo VI †1383 (1) Sancho †1374 (1) Enrique II †1379 (2) Pedro I †1369
Count of Savoy Count of Albuquerque King of Castile King of Castile
= Bonne †1402 = Beatriz †1374 = Juana †1381 = María †1361
of Bourbon of Portugal of Peñafiel de Padilla
(2) (1)
Amedeo VII †1391 Juan I †1390 Constanza John †1399 Blanche †1369
Summer/Winter 2003
Count of Savoy King of Castile †1394 Duke of Lancaster Duchess of Lancaster
= Bonne †1435 = Leonor †1382
of Berry of Aragón
Amedeo VIII †1451 Leonor Fernando I Enrique III Catherine Philippa

Duke of Savoy (Urraca) King of Aragón King of Castile †1418 †1415
= Marie †1422 †1435 †1416 †1406 = João I †1433
of Burgundy King of Portugal
Juan II †1479
Luigi †1465 King of Aragón Leonor Duarte João †1442
Duke of Savoy = Juana †1468 †1445 King of Portugal Duke of Béja
= Anne †1462 Henriquez †1438 = Isabel †1465
of Cyprus of Bragança

Filippo II †1497 Leonor

Duke of Savoy †1467 Juan II Isabel Fernando Beatriz
= Claudine †1513 = Friedrich III †1493 King of Castile †1496 Duke of Viseu †1506
of Penthièvre German emperor †1454 †1470
Page
81
Maximilian I †1519 Fernando II & V Isabel I
German emperor King of Aragón Queen of Castile
= Marie †1482 †1516 †1504
of Burgundy
Summer/Winter 2003
Felipe I Juana María Manuel I
King of Castile Queen of Castile †1517 King of Portugal
†1506 †1555 †1521
Carlo III Beatriz Carlos I (Karl V) Isabel Ferdinand I †1564

Duke of Savoy †1538 King of Spain †1539 German emperor
†1553 German emperor = Anna †1547
†1558 of Bohemia
Emanuele Filiberto †1580 Felipe II †1598 Karl II †1590

Duke of Savoy King of Spain & Portugal Habsburg Duke of Styria
= Marguerite †1574 = (3) Élisabeth †1568 (Austria) = Maria †1608

of France of France of Bavaria
= (4) Anna †1580

of Austria
Carlo Emanuele I (3) Catalina (4) Felipe III †1621 Margarete
Page
Duke of Savoy †1597 King of Spain †1611 Habsburg
†1630 & Portugal (Austria)
82
Savoy, Sardinia
Tommaso Francesco †1656 Felipe IV †1665 Ana
Prince of Carignan King of Spain †1666
= Marie †1692 = Élisabeth †1644 = Louis XIII †1643
of Bourbon-Condé of France King of France
Summer/Winter 2003
(1) (2)
Emanuele Filiberto †1709 Maria Teresa Louis XIV Françoise Philippe I †1701
Prince of Carignan †1683 King of France of Montespan Duke of Orléans
= Maria Caterina †1722 †1715 †1707 = Karlotte †1722
of Modena of Pfalz-Simmern
Vittorio Amedeo I †1741 Louis †1711 Françoise-Marie Philippe II

Prince of Carignan Dauphin of Viennois †1749 Duke of Orléans
= Vittoria †1766 = Maria Anna †1690 †1723
of Sardinia of Bavaria
Luigi Vittorio †1778 Louis †1712 Felipe V †1746 Louis †1752

Prince of Carignan Duke of Burgundy King of Spain Duke of Orléans

= Christine †1778 = Marie Adélaïde †1712 = Elisabetta †1766 = Augusta †1726
of Rothenburg of Savoy of Parma of Bade-Bade
Louis XV †1774 Louis-Philippe I †1785

King of France Duke of Orléans
Page
= Marija †1768 Bourbon = Louise †1759
Leszczyńska (Spain) of Bourbon-Conti
(Two Sicilies)
83
Vittorio Amedeo II †1780 Louis †1765 Élisabeth Filippo
Prince of Carignan Dauphin of Viennois †1759 Duke of Parma
= Josephine †1797 = Josepha †1767 †1765
of Lambesc of Saxony
Summer/Winter 2003
Carlo Emanuele †1800 Charles X †1836 Ferdinando †1802 Louis-Philippe II †1793
Prince of Carignan King of France Duke of Parma Duke of Orléans
= Maria †1851 = Maria Teresa †1805 = Maria Amalia †1804 = Adélaïde †1821
of Curland of Sardinia of Austria of Penthièvre
Luigi I †1803
King of Etruria
= María Luisa †1824
of Spain
Carlo Alberto †1849 Charles-Ferdinand †1820 Louis-Philippe I †1850
King of Sardinia Duke of Berry King of the French
= Maria Teresa †1855 = Carolina †1870 = Maria Amalia †1866
of Tuscany of the Two Sicilies of the Two Sicilies
Carlo Luigi †1883
King of Etruria

= Teresa †1879
of Sardinia
Vittorio Emanuele II †1878 Ferdinando †1855
King of Italy Duke of Genova
= Adelheid †1855 = Elisabeth †1912
of Austria of Saxony
Louise Carlo III
†1864 Duke of Parma
Page
†1854
84
Umberto I Margherita Roberto I †1907 Clémentine
King of Italy †1926 Duke of Parma †1907
†1900 = Maria Pia †1882 = August †1881
of the Two Sicilies of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Summer/Winter 2003
Vittorio Emanuele III †1947 Maria Luisa Ferdinand I
King of Italy †1899 King of the Bulgarians
= Jelena †1952 †1918
of Montenegro
Giovanna Boris III

†2000 King of the Bulgarians
†1943
Simeon II

King of the Bulgarians
= Margarita
Gomez-Acebo y Cejuela
Page
85

Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward The Exile

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Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward The Exile

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RECONSIDERING AGATHA,

WIFE OF EADWARD THE EXILE

Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile1

The antecedents of Agatha, wife of Eadward the Exile and

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 1

identifications is entirely convincing. The present paper reevalu-

After his conquest of England in 1016, the Danish King Cnut

land,” Duquesne Review, 7 (1962): 71-80; Szabolcs de Vajay,

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 2

Agatha and their three children ⎯ Eadgar, Margaret, and Chris-

There are a number of primary sources offering testimony

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 3

sented in the articles on Agatha by René Jetté and Janko Pavsic,8

1. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 1057, states that

2. In his Chronicon ex Chronicis compiled from earlier

3. Simeon of Durham (died 1130) states that Agatha’s daugh-

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 4

(quas patri suo Eadwardo, tanquam haeredi, rex Angliae suus

4. In his De Gestis Regnum Anglorum, William of Malmes-

5. Orderic Vitalis wrote his Ecclesiastic History of England

6. Geoffrey Gaimar’s rhymed Estoire des Engleis from about

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 5

7. In 1147/53 Abbot Ælred of Rievaulx, who had been

8. Sub anno 1017 the Chronicle of Melrose, after recounting

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 6

9. Writing about 1050, Adam of Bremen states that Eadmund

10. Writing about 1201, Roger of Howden followed the tradi-

11. The so-called Leges Edovardi Confessoris were originally

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 7

Qui de nobili progenie ibidem duxit uxorem

As can be seen from the excerpts from the sources presented

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 8

tion but, since they associate Agatha’s antecedents with Hun-

Not surprisingly, modern studies have followed the contradic-

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 9

Moriarty reached his conclusion after a detailed survey of the

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 10

Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, Geoffrey Gaimar, the Chronicle of

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 11

De Vajay’s interpretation agrees perfectly with the testimo-

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 12

but anticipated the conclusion that she was a Russian princess by

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 13

sian royal family. Having identified Agatha as a daughter of

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 14

by offering a reasonable explanation for Agatha’s location in

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 15

sources.53 Therefore, Ingham concluded that there is place for

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 16

and produce all their three surviving children before 1057.

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 17

Eadward the Exile — two princes married to sisters, with chil-

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 18

have served as a precedent for the name given to Agatha’s

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 19

ancestor. While Parsons admitted that women’s names can mi-

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 20

Summer/Winter 2003 The Plantagenet Connection Page 21

Russia for Agatha, Parsons proposed a possible variant geneal-