Ingelger OF ANGERS ( -888)

Individual Events and Attributes

Marriage

Individual Note

Ingelger (or Ingelgarius) (died 888) was a Frankish nobleman, who stands at the head of the Plantagenet dynasty. Later generations of his family believed he was the son of Tertullus (Tertulle) and Petronilla.[1]

Around 877 he inherited his father Tertullus's lands in accordance with the Capitulary of Quierzy which Charles the Bald had issued. His father's holdings from the king included Château-Landon in beneficium, and he was a casatus in the Gâtinais and Francia. Contemporary records refer to Ingelger as a miles optimus, a great military man.[2]

Later family tradition makes his mother a relative of Hugh the Abbot,[3] an influential counselor of both Louis II and Louis III of France, from whom he received preferment. By Louis II Ingelger was appointed viscount of Orléans, which city was under the rule of its bishops at the time.[2] At Orléans Ingelger made a matrimonial alliance with one of the leading families of Neustria, the lords of Amboise. He married Adelais, whose maternal uncles were Adalard, Archbishop of Tours, and Raino, Bishop of Angers. Later Ingelger was appointed prefect (military commander) at Tours, then ruled by Adalard.[2]

At some point Ingelger was appointed Count of Anjou, at a time when the county stretched only as far west as the Mayenne River. Later sources credit his appointment to his defence of the region from Vikings,[4] but modern scholars have been more likely to see it as a result of his wife's influential relatives.[2] He was buried in the church of Saint-Martin at Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe. He was succeeded by his son Fulk the Red.[4]

NOTES:

1 The anonymous twelfth-century Gesta Consulum Andegavorum names his father as Tertullus nobilem dux, but both the name Tertullus and the title dux are unusual. Another twelfth-century source, the Chronicon Turonensis (c.1180) records that Ingelger was nepos Hugonis ducis Burgundiæ, a nephew of Hugh, Duke of Burgundy—chronologically stretched. Modern scholars are divided as to the historicity of Tertullus and Petronilla.

2 a b c d Bernard S. Bachrach (1993), Fulk Nerra, the Neo-Roman Consul, 987–1040: A Political Biography of the Angevin Count (Berkely: University of California Press, ISBN 0 520 07996 5), 4–5.

3 This man is distinct from abbot Hugh, son of Charlemagne, but the two are frequently confused, resulting in some 19th century sources erroneously naming Petronilla as granddaughter of Charlemagne.

4 a b Anjou: Chapter 1. Comtes d'Anjou at Foundation for Medieval Genealogy: Medieval Lands Project.

SOURCES:

Halphen, Louis and René Poupardin. Chroniques des Comtes d'Anjou et des Seigneurs d'Amboise. Steve Lane, trans. Paris: Picard, 1913. Part of Medieval Sourcebook.

The Legendary Ancestry of Fulko Rufus Contains a well thought-out and referenced discussion of Ingelger's probable ancestry.

Fulk Nerra, the Neo-Roman Consul 987-1040: A Political Biography of the Angevin Count by Bernard S. Bachrach¹

Sources