2554957644. Boleslas III King of Poland
1Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 7th Ed, 1999), line 147-25.
2Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists, line 147-25.
2554957645. Zbyslava Queen of Poland
1Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 7th Ed, 1999), line 241-8.
2Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists, line 147-25.
2554957656. William III Count of Forcalquier, Marquis of Provence
1Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD 1998, 3d ed.), line 195:31.
2554957657. Gersende of Albon Countess of Forcalquier
1Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD 1998, 3d ed.), line 195:31.
2554957668. Guigues VII "Le Gros" Count of Albon & Grenoble, sire de Vion
1Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD 1998, 3d ed.), lines 196-33.
2554957669. Petronel of Turin Countess of Albon
1Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD 1998, 3d ed.), lines 196-33.
2554957670. Roger I d'Hauteville Grand Count of Sicily
1Encyclopaedia Brittanica, http://www.brittanica.com, http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/2/0,5716,85912+1,00.html.
b. 1031, Normandy, Fr.
"Roger I
d. June 22, 1101, Mileto, Calabria [Italy] byname ROGER GUISCARD, count of Sicily from 1072. He was the last son of the second marriage of Tancred of Hauteville. Roger went to Italy in 1057 to aid his brother Robert Guiscard in his conquest of Calabria from the Byzantines (1060). They began the conquest of Sicily from various Muslim rulers in 1061 with the capture of Messina, and they completed it in 1091. The turning point of the struggle was the capture of Palermo in 1072, when Robert invested Roger as his vassal with the county of Sicily and Calabria with a limited right to govern and to tax. After Robert's death Roger acquired full right to govern from Robert's son and in 1098 received the title of apostolic legate from Pope Urban II, which gave him control of the church in Sicily. At his death, Roger had created a centralized, efficient government, where the authority of the count was unchallenged."2G.A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard - Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (Pearson Education, Ltd., Essex, England 2000), 299.
2554957671. Adelaide of Savona Countess of Sicily
1Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD 1998, 3d ed.), lines 196-31, note following.
2554957680. Gerald I Count of Geneva
1Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 7th Ed, 1999), line 133-22.
2554957682. Peter Count of Glane
1Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 7th Ed, 1999), line 133-23.
2554957700. Fernando I the "Great" King of León
1Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 7th Ed, 1999), line 113-23.
2554957701. Sancha Alfonsez Queen of León
1Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 7th Ed, 1999), line 113-23.
2554957706. Roberto Guiscard Duke of Apulia, Calabria, & Sicily
1Encyclopaedia Brittanica, http://www.brittanica.com, http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,5720+1,00.html.
b. c. 1015,, Normandy [France]
"Robert
d. July 17, 1085, near Cephalonia, Greece, Byzantine Empire byname ROBERT GUISCARD, OR ROBERT DE HAUTEVILLE, Italian ROBERTO GUISCARDO, OR ROBERTO D'ALTAVILLA, Norman adventurer who settled in Apulia, in southern Italy, about 1047 and became duke of Apulia (1059). He eventually extended Norman rule over Naples, Calabria, and Sicily and laid the foundations of the Kingdom of Sicily. Arrival in Apulia Robert was born into a family of knights. Arriving in Apulia, in southern Italy, around 1047 to join his half brother Drogo, he found that it and Campania, though they were southern Italy's most flourishing regions, were plagued by political disturbances. These regions attracted hordes of fortune-seeking Norman immigrants, who were to transform the political role of both regions in the following decades. In Campania, the Lombards of Capua were launching wars against the Byzantine dukes of Naples in order to gain possession of that important seaport. In Apulia, William ("Iron Arm") de Hauteville, Robert's eldest half brother, having successfully defeated the Byzantine Greeks who controlled that region, had been elected count of Apulia in 1042. In 1046 he had been succeeded by his brother Drogo. When Robert joined his brothers, they sent him to Calabria to attack Byzantine territory. He began his campaign by pillaging the countryside and ransoming its people. In 1053, at the head of the combined forces of Normans from Apulia and Campania, he defeated the haphazardly led forces of the Byzantines, the Lombards, and the papacy at Civitate. Because of the deaths of William and Drogo and of his third half brother, Count Humphrey, in 1057, Robert returned to Apulia to seize control from Humphrey's sons and save the region from disgregating internal conflicts. After becoming the recognized leader of the Apulian Normans, Robert resumed his campaign in Calabria. His brother Roger's arrival from Normandy enabled him to extend and solidify his conquests in Apulia. In his progression from gang leader to commander of mercenary troops to conqueror, Robert emerged as a shrewd and perspicacious political figure. In 1059 he entered into a concordat at Melfi with Pope Nicholas II. Until that time the papacy had been hostile toward the Normans, considering them to be an anarchist force that upset the political structure in southern Italy--a structure based on a balance of power between the Byzantines and the Lombards of northern Italy. The schism that took place between the Greek and Latin churches in 1054 worsened the relations between the Byzantine emperors and the papacy, and eventually the papacy realized that Norman conquests over the Byzantines could work to its advantage. Robert's plan to expel the Arabs from Sicily and restore Christianity to the island also found favour in Nicholas' eyes. This expedition into Sicily got under way in 1060, as soon as the conquest of Calabria was completed. Robert entrusted the command of the expedition to his brother Roger, but on particularly difficult occasions--e.g., the siege of Palermo in 1071--he came to his brother's aid. Until this time, Robert's relations with Roger had not always been amicable, since Roger, aware of both his own talent and Robert's dependency on him, would not settle for the subordinate role allotted him. Their differences were resolved when Robert invested Roger, after he had recognized Robert's supreme authority, with "the County of Sicily and Calabria" along with the right to govern and tax both counties. Expansion of the Duchy Robert continued to expand the small county left by Humphrey into a duchy, extending from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian sea. The capture of Bari in April 1071 resulted in the end of Byzantine rule in southern Italy. Robert turned next to the neighbouring territories of Salerno, controlled by the Lombards. Instead of fighting them, he dissolved his first marriage and in 1058 married the sister of Salerno's last Lombard prince, Gisulf II. Hostilities broke out between the two rulers, however, and Gisulf naively tried to bring about a Byzantine counteroffensive against Robert. Fearing that the Norman advances into Campania, Molise, and Abruzzi would threaten the papal dominions, Pope Gregory VII excommunicated Robert and gave Gisulf considerable military aid. The struggle came to a head when Gisulf, determined to display his power, advanced toward the prosperous city of Amalfi. Robert responded to the city's plea for help in 1073 and successfully defended it; in December 1076 he took Salerno from Gisulf and made it the capital of his duchy. Robert was now at the height of his power. During his rise he repressed with an iron hand not only the claims of Humphrey's sons but also the uprisings of towns and lords that were fretting under the restraints imposed upon them. The harshness with which Robert chose to deal with these rebels was intended to transform a heterogeneous population into a strong, sovereign state. When, in 1080, the conflict between church and state over the right to make ecclesiastical investitures had become more intense, Robert chose to reconcile himself with Gregory VII, entering into the Concordat of Ceprano, which confirmed the commitments of the earlier Council of Melfi. Even the Byzantine court drew closer to him and went as far as trying to establish a familial relationship with Robert. The Byzantine emperor Michael VII, in need of Robert's help to uphold his unstable throne, married his son, Constantine, to one of Robert's daughters, Helen. The opposition party, however, deposed Michael and confined Helen in a monastery. To guarantee Apulia against attack from the new rulers of Byzantium, Robert wanted the territories on the Adriatic coast of the Balkan Peninsula, and he began to build a large navy. Michael's expulsion and Helen's confinement reawakened his unappeased spirit of adventure and hastened his long-considered expedition. Now his goal was even more ambitious: to march to Byzantium and crown himself emperor in place of the deposed Michael. In 1083 Robert landed in Epirus with a well-trained army and immediately succeeded in defeating the Byzantines and their Venetian allies. The pope, however, suddenly recalled him to Italy to help him expel the German king Henry IV, who was marching on Rome en route to claiming southern Italy for the Holy Roman Empire. Having returned home and suppressed the revolts of the lords hostile to himself and to Pope Gregory VII, Robert moved toward Rome, defeated the pope's enemies, and escorted him to Salerno in the summer of 1084. Following this success, he returned to his campaign on the Adriatic coast. He died during the siege of Cephalonia on July 17, 1085. Achievements Physically attractive, endowed with an acute and unscrupulous intelligence, a brilliant strategist and competent statesman, Robert had begun to organize a state composed of diverse ethnic and civil groups: Latin and Germanic in Lombard territories and Greek in Byzantine domains. The new political structure was built on a monarchial-feudal framework characteristic of the time, but it was controlled by the energetic and uncompromising Robert, who tried to use his ducal power to create a powerful and prosperous state. The other base on which he built was Roman Catholicism, the religion of the conquerors and most of the conquered, which he used to reconcile the subjected peoples. An extremely religious man, Robert was distrustful of the Greek clergy because of their ties with Byzantium. On the other hand, his generosity toward the Latin church was bountiful. He endowed it with territories and clerical immunities in order to tie it firmly to the feudal system. Splendid cathedrals and Benedictine abbeys were built in the hope that they would consolidate and diffuse Latin language and culture among the heterogeneous people and tie them into a new, unified state. Robert was kept from realizing this political vision only by his death."2Anna Comnena, The Alexiad of Anna Comnena (Penguin Books, New York, 1969), 54.
"(written by Anna, daughter of Emperor Alexius I)
This Robert was a Norman by birth, of obscure origin, with an overbearing character and a thorougly villainous mind; he was a brave fighter, very cunning in his assaults on the wealth and power of great men; in achieving his aims absolutely inexorable, diverting criticism by incontrovertible argument. He was a man of immense stature, surpassing even the biggest meen; he had a ruddy complexion, fair hair, broad shoulders, eyes that all but shot out sparks of fire. In a well-built man one looks for breadth here and slimness there; in him all was admirably well-proportioned and elegant. Thus from head to foot the man was graceful (I have often heard from many witnesses that this was so). Homer remarked of Achilles that when he shouted his hearers had the impression of a multitude in uproar, but Robert's bellow, so they say, put tens of thousands to flight. With such endowments of fortune and nature and soul, he was, as you would expect, no man's slave, owing obedience to nobody in all the world. Such are men of power character, people say, even if they are of humbler origin."3G.A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard - Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (Pearson Education, Ltd., Essex, England 2000), 299.
4Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 7th Ed, 1999), line 103-24.
2554957707. Sikelgaite Princess of Salerno, Duchess of Apulia
1John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1995), 18-19.
"Sichelgaita needs some explanation. She was cast in a Wagnerian mould: in her we come face to face with the closest approximation in history to a Valkyrie. A woman of immense build and herculean physical strength, she hardly ever left her husband's side - least of all in battle, one of her favourite occupations. At such moments, charging magnificently into the fray, her long blond hair streaming out from beneath her helmet, deafening friend and foe alike with huge shouts of encouragement or imprecation, she must have looked - even if she did not altogether sound - worthy to take her place among the daughters of Wotan..."2Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD 1998, 3d ed.), line 297-32.
3Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners, line 297-32.
2554957708. Berenger II Vicompte de Gievaudun, Carlat, Milhaud & Rodene
1Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD 1998, 3d ed.), line 257-32.
2Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners, line 257-32.
2554957709. Adèle of Carlat Viscountess of Gievaudun
1Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD 1998, 3d ed.), line 257-32.
2554957710. Fulk Bertrand Count of Provence
1Roderick W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD 1998, 3d ed.), line 298:32.
2554957738. Rodrigo Diaz El Cid
1Encyclopaedia Brittanica, http://www.brittanica.com, http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/1/0,5716,84801+1,00.html.
Spanish EL CID, also called EL CAMPEADOR ("THE CHAMPION"), byname of RODRIGO, OR RUY, DÍAZ DE VIVAR, Castilian military leader and national hero. His popular name, El Cid (from Spanish Arabic as-sid, "lord"), dates from his lifetime. Early life Rodrigo Díaz' father, Diego Laínez, was a member of the minor nobility (infanzones) of Castile. But the Cid's social background was less unprivileged than later popular tradition liked to suppose, for he was directly connected on his mother's side with the great landed aristocracy, and he was brought up at the court of Ferdinand I in the household of that king's eldest son, the future Sancho II of Castile. When Sancho succeeded to the Castilian throne (1065), he nominated the 22-year-old Cid as his standard-bearer (armiger regis), or commander of the royal troops. This early promotion to important office suggests that the young Cid had already won a reputation for military prowess. In 1067 he accompanied Sancho on a campaign against the important Moorish kingdom of Saragossa (Zaragoza) and played a leading role in the negotiations that made its king, al-Muqtadir, a tributary of the Castilian crown. Ferdinand I, on his death, had partitioned his kingdoms among his various children, leaving Leon to his second son, Alfonso VI. Sancho began (1067) to make war on the latter with the aim of annexing Leon. Later legend was to make the Cid a reluctant supporter of Sancho's aggression, but it is unlikely the real Cid had any such scruples. He played a prominent part in Sancho's successful campaigns against Alfonso and so found himself in an awkward situation in 1072, when the childless Sancho was killed while besieging Zamora, leaving the dethroned Alfonso as his only possible heir. The new king appears to have done his best to win the allegiance of Sancho's most powerful supporter. Though the Cid now lost his post as armiger regis to a great magnate, Count García Ordóñez (whose bitter enemy he became), and his former influence at court naturally declined, he was allowed to remain there; and, in July 1074, probably at Alfonso's instigation, he married the king's niece Jimena, daughter of the Count de Oviedo. He thus became allied by marriage to the ancient royal dynasty of Leon. Very little is known about Jimena. The couple had one son and two daughters. The son, Diego Rodríguez, was killed in battle against the Muslim Almoravid invaders from North Africa, at Consuegra (1097). The Cid's position at court was, despite his marriage, precarious. He seems to have been thought of as the natural leader of those Castilians who were unreconciled to being ruled by a king of Leon. He certainly resented the influence exercised by the great landed nobles over Alfonso VI. Though his heroic biographers would later present the Cid as the blameless victim of unscrupulous noble enemies and of Alfonso's willingness to listen to unfounded slanders, it seems likely that the Cid's penchant for publicly humiliating powerful men may have largely contributed to his downfall. Though he was later to show himself astute and calculating as both a soldier and a politician, his conduct vis-à-vis the court suggests that resentment at his loss of influence as a result of Sancho's death may temporarily have undermined his capacity for self-control. In 1079, while on a mission to the Moorish king of Seville, he became embroiled with García Ordóñez, who was aiding the king of Granada in an invasion of the kingdom of Seville. The Cid defeated the markedly superior Granadine army at Cabra, near Seville, capturing García Ordóñez. This victory prepared the way for his downfall; and when, in 1081, he led an unauthorized military raid into the Moorish kingdom of Toledo, which was under Alfonso's protection, the king exiled the Cid from his kingdoms. Several subsequent attempts at reconciliation produced no lasting results, and after 1081 the Cid never again was able to live for long in Alfonso VI's dominions. Service to the Muslims The exile offered his services to the Muslim dynasty that ruled Saragossa and with which he had first made contact in 1065. The king of Saragossa, in northeastern Spain, al-Mu'tamin, welcomed the chance of having his vulnerable kingdom defended by so prestigious a Christian warrior. The Cid now loyally served al-Mu'tamin and his successor, al-Musta'in II, for nearly a decade. As a result of his experience he gained that understanding of the complexities of Hispano-Arabic politics and of Islamic law and custom that would later help him to conquer and hold Valencia. Meanwhile, he steadily added to his reputation as a general who had never been defeated in battle. In 1082, on behalf of al-Mu'tamin, he inflicted a decisive defeat on the Moorish king of Lérida and the latter's Christian allies, among them the count of Barcelona. In 1084 he defeated a large Christian army under King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon. He was richly rewarded for these victories by his grateful Muslim masters. In 1086 there began the great Almoravid invasion of Spain from North Africa. Alfonso VI, crushingly defeated by the invaders at Sagrajas (Oct. 23, 1086) suppressed his antagonism to the Cid and recalled from exile the Christians' best general. The Cid's presence at Alfonso's court in July 1087 is documented. But shortly afterward, he was back in Saragossa, and he was not a participant in the subsequent desperate battles against the Almoravids in the strategic regions where their attacks threatened the whole existence of Christian Spain. The Cid, for his part, now embarked on the lengthy and immensely complicated political maneuvering that was aimed at making him master of the rich Moorish kingdom of Valencia. Conquest of Valencia His first step was to eliminate the influence of the counts of Barcelona in that area. This was done when Berenguer Ramón II was humiliatingly defeated at Tébar, near Teruel (May 1090). During the next years the Cid gradually tightened his control over Valencia and its ruler, al-Qadir, now his tributary. His moment of destiny came in October 1092 when the qai (chief magistrate), Ibn Jahhaf, with Almoravid political support rebelled and killed al-Qadir. The Cid responded by closely besieging the rebel city. The siege lasted for many months; an Almoravid attempt to break it failed miserably (December 1093). In May 1094 Ibn Jahhaf at last surrendered, and the Cid finally entered Valencia as its conqueror. To facilitate his takeover he characteristically first made a pact with Ibn Jahhaf that led the latter to believe that his acts of rebellion and regicide were forgiven; but when the pact had served its purpose, the Cid arrested the former qai and ordered him to be burnt alive. The Cid now ruled Valencia directly, himself acting as chief magistrate of the Muslims as well as the Christians. Nominally he held Valencia for Alfonso VI, but in fact he was its independent ruler in all but name. The city's chief mosque was Christianized in 1096; a French bishop, Jerome, was appointed to the new see; and there was a considerable influx of Christian colonists. The Cid's princely status was emphasized when his daughter Cristina married a prince of Aragon, Ramiro, lord of Monzón, and his other daughter, María, married Ramón Berenguer III, count of Barcelona. Aftermath The great enterprise to which the Cid had devoted so much of his energies was to prove totally ephemeral. Soon after his death Valencia was besieged by the Almoravids, and Alfonso VI had to intervene in person to save it. But the king rightly judged the place indefensible unless he diverted there permanently large numbers of troops urgently needed to defend the Christian heartlands against the invaders. He evacuated the city and then ordered it to be burned. On May 5, 1102, the Almoravids occupied Valencia, which was to remain in Muslim hands until 1238. The Cid's body was taken to Castile and reburied in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, near Burgos, where it became the centre of a lively tomb cult. The Cid's biography presents special problems for the historian because he was speedily elevated to the status of national hero of Castile, and a complex heroic biography of him, in which legend played a dominant role, came into existence; the legend was magnified by the influence of the 12th-century epic poem of Castile, El cantar de mío Cid ("The Song of the Cid") and later by Pierre Corneille's tragedy Le Cid, first performed in 1637. For authentic information historians have to rely mainly on a few contemporary documents, on the Historia Roderici (a reliable, private 12th-century Latin chronicle of the Cid's life), and on a detailed eyewitness account of his conquest of Valencia by the Arab historian Ibn 'Alqamah."
"El Cid
b. c. 1043,, Vivar, near Burgos, Castile [Spain]; d. July 10, 1099, Valencia2Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 7th Ed, 1999), line 113A-23.
3Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists, line 113A-23.
4Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists, line 113A-23.
2554957739. Jimena de Oviedo
1Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD, 7th Ed, 1999), line 113A-23.