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Maternal Kin in Early Medieval Germany. A Reply Author(s): K. Leyser Source: Past & Present, No. 49 (Nov., 1970), pp. 126-134 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/650211 Accessed: 05/11/2009 05:13
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DEBATE MATERNAL KIN IN EARLY MEDIEVAL GERMANY A REPLY

EDMUND BURKE ONCE WROTE: A VERY GREATPART OF THE MISCHIEFS

that vex the world arisesfrom words". ProfessorBulloughmight have bornethis in mind when he choseto maketwo passages of my articleon the German aristocracy fromthe ninthto the earlytwelfth century the quarry of his observations on carly medieval social groupings.* In doing so he broke,as it were, iIltothe middleof a discussion,an attemptto weigh and qualifythe strikinglyoriginal analysisof earlymedievalaristocratic familystructures, the workof Karl Schmid. The noble kins of the Carolingian and post-Carolingianworld had a fluidityand presentto the historianan oddly horizontal ratherthan verticalaspect,very differentfrom the later dynastiesof counts, castellansand, by the twelfth cexltury,even knights,whoseemergence in NorthernFrance,for example,Georges Duby has so well set out.1 In the aristocratic clansof the eighthand ninth centuriesfiliationand agnaticlineagesseeminglydid not yet form the backbeneof family cohesion. Kinsmengatheredround and sought to stand as near as possible to their most successful relatives,bishopsand counts,on whicheverside, so that the centre of gravityand even the senseof identityof these largefamiliescould shift, sometimes withinvery few generations. Some of this fluidity canbe explained by the importance of maternal relatives anddescent. They rankedas high as and even higherthan paternal kin, if they were thought to be nobler and had better things to offer. The biographers of greatmen occasionally appear to reflecttheseattitudes when they recordedonly the maternal ancestryof their hero. To give an unused example:the biographerof Bishop Bernwardof
* D. A. Bullough, "Early Medieval Social Groupings: lthe Terminology of Kinship", Past arzd Presetzt) no. 45 (Nov., I969), pp. 3-I8. For my article see Past and Present,no. 4I (Dec., I968), pp. 25-53. 1 C;.Duby, "Structuresfamilialesaristocratiques en France du XIe siecle en rapport avec les structures de l'etat", in L'Europeaux IXe-XIe siAcles,24ux origines des Stats nationaux, ed. T. Manteuffel et A. Gieysztor (Institut d'Histoire de l'AcademiePolonaisedes Sciences, I968), pp. 57 ff. and "Structures de parente et noblesse, France du Nord Xe-XIIe siecles" DIiscellanea AXlediaevalia ?n memoriaan 3t. F. Niermeyer (Groningen, I967), pp. I49 ff
gTarsaw)

MATERNALKIN IN EARLY MEDIEVALGERMANY

l27

Hildesheimbegan his work thus: "The gifted young Beraward sprangfrom the noble blood of our people, the daughterof Count andhe wasplacedin the careof Osdag,ourbishop, Adalbero Palatine 2 laterbishopof Utrecht". unclethe deaconFolkmar, by his maternal Nothing was said about Bernward'sfather. The two exalted the author wanted his readersto associate forbearswith whcMm and BishopFolkmar in Saxony wereOttoI's countpalatine Bernward and they couldbe reachedonly throughhis mother. Karl Schmid, kin, drew of maternal the frequentpre-eminence when he explained and Theganhad to say aboutthe ancestry to whatEinhard attentioIl the short-livedbut most importantof Charlemagne's of Hildegard, blood of Louisthe Pious.3 Onlyher mother's wivesandthe Inother relations,the Suabianducal family were mentionedand extolled. Now ProfessorBulloughobjectsto the use of the term cognatio to It was the way in maternal denote, in this case Hildegard's which Karl Schmid had used it and it seemed to me that it was in the wider dfficult to be alwayssurewhenthe wordwas employed to or "alrin"andwhenit wasusedin contrast senseof just C'kinship" descentgroup.> a patrilineal agnatio, for the lightit mayor maynot throwon The questionis important quite another problem, which seems to have escaped Professor only five weeksafterliis Bullough. In one of his earliestdiplomata, and at Aachen,OttoI settledthe endowment solemnenthronization at Quedlinnewlyfoundednunnery of his family's governance secular 936). He laiddownthatif someoneof his own burg(I 3 September, generalio(line) came to be king after him then the abbey and its but inmateswereto be underhis lordshipand protection(defensio), if the peoplewereto elect someoneelse as theirkingthen at leastthe advocacyover the house was to remainwith the most powerful on the This pronouncement member of the Ottoniancognatio.6 Thang.tnar, Vita Bernwardi Episcopi, ch. I (Monumenta Germaniae
kin.4

Historica [hereafter MGH] Scriptorum tomus [hereafter SS] iv, p. 758). Bernward was entrusted to the care of Bishop Otwin (954-8i) rather than Bishop Osdag, his successor. This part of the vita was retouched or put together in the twelfth century but many of its ingredients, including the gerlealogy,rest on good and early authority. See K. Algermissen(ed.) Bernvon Hildesheim(Hildesheim, I960), pp. I7 f., 20, 21 and ward and Godehard n. 6. s K. Schinid, "Zur Problematikvon Familie, Sippe und Geschlecht, Haus des ffir die Geschichte und Dynastie beim mittelalterlichenAdel", Zeitschrift cv (I957), pp. II, 23 f. Oberrheins, pp. 5 ff. 4 Bullough, art. cit., o K. Schrnid,art. cit., pp. 22 ff. Konigeund Kaiser, i (Hanover, I879-84) der deutsche 6 MGH., Die Urkunden [hereafterDD O I.] no. I, p. 90 and K. Schmid, <'DieThronfolge Ottos des Germanistische fiXrRechtsgeschichte, Grossen", Zeitschriftder Savigny-Stiftung Abteilung, Lxi (I964), pp. I26-36.

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succession made in Otto I's name so always been called in evidence for shortly after his elevation has the elective character of the German kingship at its very beginning and if cogrzatio was used here as a blanket substitute for generaliothen Otto I can indeed be to have felt uncertain about detected his family's chances to become or to continue as the stirps regia, the royal stock. On the other hand if cognatiowas employed here in contrast to and rneantblood relations through females, mothers and getlercztio daughters,then it is ternptirlg to think that Otto I perhaps saw the future of his house diSere1ltly. His diploma for Quedlinburg despite its "ifs" hinted that only when the Ottonian generatio, the male line, failed would the people elect someone else, leaving the advocacy as of right to descendants of daughters or of Queen Mathilda's, Henry I's wife's sisters. We must return to Hildegard. Professor Bullough seems to ule to havebeen rushing his fences when he asserts sweepingly that my discussionof her maternal kin, my besideswhich he does not specify, argument o1l this and much else In his paper in Pasl and Presenthe rested on mistaken termillology.7 did not in fact broachthe argument atall but in a later review article he claims more boldly that my comments were "to some extent vitiated by a misunderstandingof the termscognatio and agnatio and of the concepts of paternal and maternal kin".8 This is of course nonsense for even if I had used the wrong word when speaking of HildegardXs maternal descent it was still her maternal descent I talked about. My suggestion was that Einhardand Thegan did not necessarilywish to laud her Suabian maternal ancestry at the expense of her Frankish father Gerold.9 What prompted them to do this was perhaps the wish to banish the harassing memory of the savage treatment meted out to Hildegard's maternal kin by Carlmann, Charleinagne's uncle, 2t Cannstatt in 746.Professor Bullough calls this "interesti1lg"and then falls on back his own explanationfor Einhard's and Thegan's exclusive interest ill thequeen's descent from the Suabian pri1lcesthrough her mother. To him Hildegard's father was a homonosus whose Alemannic noblewoman raised him.l? Be that as itmarriageto the may it cannot
7 Bullough, art. cit., 8 D. A. Bullough,

p. 5. 4'Europae Pater: Charlemagne and light of recentscholarship", achievementin the Eng.Hist. Rev., lxxxv (I970), his 9 p. 79, n. 2. Leyser, art. cit., p. 35. Einhard called Hildegard "de gente Suaborum praecipuae nobilitatis feminam", a Vita Caroli Magni, ch. I8 (MGH. woman of distinguished Suabian nobility: Scriptores rerum germanicarumin usum scholarum [hereafter SRG], Hanoverand Leipzig, I9I I), p. 22. his Vita For Thegan v. Hludowici imperatoris, ch. 2 (MGH. SS. ii, pp. 590 f.) arldbelow, 10 Bullough, loc. cit. and The Age of p. I32. Charlemagne may (London, I965), p. 45. It well be askedwhat bearingthe terminologyof kinshiphas on this reasoning.

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be proved, if only because it was after all Hildegard's own, much greater match which really made the Geroldings. The older Gerold however had rights of his own in Suabia unconnected with his wife's. His family belonged to a group of nobles from one of the heartlands of the Carolingian ruling strata, the Mainz, Worms arld Lorsch region.ll There is at least one other, small piece of evidence for the idea that Einhard and Thegan wanted to propitiate the memory of the killings. It comes from an earlier layer of Carolingian famlly Mettenses priores of c. 805. Here the treacherous history, the Annales seizure of the Suabian lords is likened to the miraculous and their execution glossed over and concealed.l2 and "cognatic" for maternal kin? If I have But what of cognatio sinned I have at least done so in good company for IlOtonly Karl Schmid and other German scholars but also Guy Fourquin in his au MoyenAge have interpreet Feodalite recent synthesis Seigneurie ted and used the terms in this way.l3 Professor Bullough reasons as follows. After a badly mistaken account of the classical Roman agnaliohe cites three later Roman legal texts of the second and third centuries, Gaius, Ulpian and Modestinus, and two passages from Isidore of Seville where the words agnatus, cognatus and a;/7inis are explained.l4 Then he seeks to show, with a libera1 scattering of "semantic shifts", how their meanings varied and changed during the early Middle Ages. For this scholars will be in his debt, yet before he has proceeded very far on his journey and we may ask whether he states categorically that this part of it was really necessary cognatiocould never mean "maternal kin" in contrast to agnatio, descendantsthrough the male line.15 Now of the original definitions, Professor Bullough's startillg point, the orle that really mattered
11M. Mitterauer, Karolingische Markgrafen im Siidosten (Archiv fur osterreichische Geschichte, cxxiii, Vienna, I963), p. I0 and K. F. Werner "Bedeutende Adelsfamilien im Reich Karls des Grossen", Karl der Grosse Lebenswerk und tIachleben,i, ed. H. Beumann (Dusseldorf, I965), p. III who ducalfarnily,the Agilolfings,who would even relatethe Gerolds to the Bavarian are now thought to have been of Frankishorigin by some scholars(ibid.,n. I00). priores,a. 746, ed. B. de Simson (SRG. Hanover and 12 Annales Mettenses Leipzig, I905), p. 37. On the problems of this work and its intent v. im Mittelalter Vorzeitund Geschichtsquellen Wattenbach-Levison,Deutschlands I953), ii, p. 260 ff. snd O. G. Oexle, "lDieKarolingerund Karolinger (NVeimar, die Stadt des heiligen Arnulf", FruhmittelalterlicheStudien, i, ed. K. Hauck (Berlin, rg67), pp. 276 ff. 13 Schmid, above, n. 3 and "Die Thronfolge . . .", p. I32, and H. Planitz 2nd edn. K. A. Eckhardt (Graz-Colognc, I96I) Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, p. 54, independent of Schmid and G. Fourquin, Seigneurieet Feodalitdaa MoyenAge (Paris, I970), pp. 54 f. 4 Bullough, "EarlyMedieval Social Groupings",p. 7.
5Ibid.,p.g.

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comes frore Isidoreof Seville'sEtymologiae, IX, Vi., which however owed muchto Gaius. Isidore'sencyclopaedia was the general work of reference for the educatedaIld,whatis perhapsas important, for the half-educated tlwoughout the Carolingian and post-Carolingian West. Its normative influenceover writersin searchof clarityand authorityin a world usuallythreatened by disorderand too much autonomy, cannotbe gainsaid. This is what,according to Professor Bullough,Isidore in his Etymologiae had to say about agnati and cognati:
agnati are so called because they are added to the farnily when sons [al. children]are otherwise (sic)lacking. . . cog7Xati are so called because they are linked by the tie of blood relationship. 16

These quotationsare incomplete and Professor Buliough has withheldfromhis readers animportant partof Isidore's (andGaius's) definitions of agnati and cognati. "They",the agzaati, Isidoresaid,
are reckonedto be the first in a family becausethey arise through persons of the male sex, lilre a brother born of the same fadler, or a brother's son or gralldson;it is the same with a paternaluncle.

Of cognati Isidorewrote:
They are placed behind the agnati becausethey arise [the relationshipcomes about] through persons of the female sex; they are not agnates but only by naturallaw blood relations.l7

Does the femaleses excludemothers? Nor is this all. Sometime between842 and 846 tIrabanusAlaurus,abbotof Fulda (822-842) and archbishop of Mainz (847-856),compiledan encyclopaedia in twenty-twobooks. As a writerand teacherhe did much to propagatethe knowledge storedin the Etymologiae on new soil for he sent a copyof his worknot onlyto Louisthe German but alsoto a former fellow-studellt,now blshop of Halberstadt amongstthe neophyte East Saxons. Hrabanuswanted his presentsto be of use, as he
17 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum LibriXX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford,I9II), IX, Vi. I, 2: "Qui [the agalati] ideo prius in gente agnoscuntur

'-sIbid.

quia veniunt per virilis sexus personas, veluti frater eodem patre natus, vel fratrisfilius neposve ex eo; item patruus". Of cognati:"Qui inde post agnatos habentur, quia per feminini sexus personasveniunt, nec sunt agnati, sed aSias naturaliiure cognati". For Isidore's influenceon medieval descriptionsof age v. A. Hofmeister, "Puern Iuvenis,Senex. Zum Verstandnisder mittelalterlichen Altersbezeichnungen",Papsttumund Kaisertum,ed. A. Brackmann(Munich I926), pp. 287 ff. For the relevant passages in Gaius's Institutessee F. de Zulueta, TheInstitutes of GaEus, 1. I56 (Oxford, I946), i, p. 50 esp.: "at hi qui per feminini sexus personas cognatione coniunguntur, non sunt agnati, sed alias naturali iure cognati": "Those connected through persons of the female sex are not agnates, but cognates related only by natural law" (Op. Cit., p. 5I) followed by examples.

MATERNALKIN IN EARLY MEDIEVALGERMANY

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himself wrote in the letters which accompaniedthem. A chapter on naturis the appellations of kinship duly found its place in his de rerum and here Isidore's definitions were simply repeated.l8 The question is how they applied or what they meant to peoples with partly bilateral modes of descent such as the German stems east of the Rhine were. Now it is true of course that under Isidore's explzmationscognalio also embraced kinship through the female sex on the father's side, like the descendants of a paternal aunt or of a sister and if Professor Bullough had conEned himself to pointing this out his fault-finding would have been less captious than it is.l9 Yet it is also clear that in a society much given to the cult of noble wives' ancestry, and in which fortunes could be owed to mothers as Inuc:has to fathers, was heavily weighted on the maternal side. There it cognatio included not only descendants but also forbears and therefore more senior blood relations, especially such important personages as a mother's brothers and indeed her whole kin, whereas on the paternal side the most important roles and key positions necessarily belonged to members of the agnalio. Already Marc Bloch has drawn attention to the close bonds between nephews and maternal uncles in ckansons of Hildesheim's degesteand in medieval German epics.20 BernwardL careerwas shaped by his mother's brother Bishop Folkmar and so was Anno of Cologne's whose maternal uncle, a canlDnof Bamberg, virtually abducted him to a clerical life.2l Thietmar of Merseburg canRotregale his readers enough with the doings of his mother's kin, Sigebert of the counts of Stade. A good example comes also iErom Gembloux's Life of BishopDietrichof Mets. Sigebert praised his subject's nobility no less than his devoutness both imparted to him by his exalted cognatiand afYines, the foremost me:z of Lotharingia and Germany east of the Rhine. Sigebert was not slow in telling his readers who these cognatiand their affinity vvere. Dietrich's mother Amalrada was the sister of Queen Mathilda, the wife of was Archbishop Brun of Cologne, Henry I. One of the primates
Universo,vii, 4 (Migne, PatrotogiaeLatinae, cxi. Louis the Germanand Bishop Hemmo of Halberstadt v. EpistolaeKaroliniAevi, iii (MGH. Berlin, I899), pp. 470 f., no. 36 snd der Lateinischen pp. 472 f., no. 37. On Hrabanussee M. Manitius, Geschichte Literaturdes Mittelalters(Munich, I9II), i, pp. 288 ff. and P. Lehmann, "Zu zum zwolfhundertHrabans geistiger Bedeutung", St. Bonifatius, Gedenkgabe jahrigen Todestag(Fulda, I954), pp. 473 ff. 19 Conversely of course for these descendantstheir mother's kin was again cognatio. p. I37 and n. I. 20 M. Bloch, Feudal Society(London, I96I), ch. I (MGH. SS. xi, p. 467 f.). Coloniensis, 21 Vita Annonisarchiepiscopi
col. 18 Hrabanus Maurus, De For the letters to I89).

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Mathilda's and Henry'sson so that Sigebertcould rightlyspeakof Dietrich's"imperial consanguinity". The other,not mentionedby name, was Archbishop Robertcf Trier, the queen'sbrother. Her uncles, includingReginbern, a renownedvictor againstthe Danes, were not forgottenthough Sigebertmistookthem for brothers.22 In Thegan'sfamousand not quiteaccurate genealogy of Hildegard:
Duke GottEried begat Huoching, Huoching begat Nebi, Nebi begat Imma,

it is the lastlinkin the chain,her motherImma,that mustbe heeded here.23 The Suabian princes, including those who became the victims of Carlmann's wrath, were her maternalkin, they were cognatio. Isidore'sand Hraban's "quiaper feminirli sexus personas veniunt",that is the cognaticrelatiorlship arisesthroughpersonsof the femalesex, cannotbe ignored. There is no need to inspecteverysoldierat Professor Bullough's paradeof learning. He goes astraywhen he definesthe classical Romanagnatio exclusilrely by the legal powersof the palerfamilias, the head of the family, as if all agnationceased betweenbrothers when their paterfamilia3 died.24 On p. I6 he discusses a use of cognalio in a ninth-centurySt. Gallen charterwhere it evidently stoodfor agnatio, peopleof agnaticdescent,thoughwhen I say so in the case of Hildegundis, abbessof Geseke,I am, according to him, "confusing the issue". Hildegundis moreover was not, as Professor Bulloughcalls her, a "Rhinelandabbess".25 Geseke,her house, lay in Westfalia which in the tenth centurywas very much part of Saxorsy. Her ancestress Wicburga had made her gifts "secundum legem Saxonlcam", according to Saxonlaw,and the Lex Saxonum of So2/3 had much to say about Westfaliancustom in the matterof dowerand property acquired by a man and his wife togetherduring theirmarriage, and does not Professor Bulloughhimselfremindus26 that the circleof kinsmenvariednot only frompeopleto peoplebut His article endson a noteof tartadmonition: "inthosefew
locally.27

22 Sigebert of Gembloux, Vita Deoderici I., ch. I (MGH. SS. iv, p. 464). Dietrich died in 984 and his L%ewas written c. eighty years later. Sigebert took the passage about Reginbert from Widukind of Corvey's Res Gestae Sanconicae, i. 3I (ed. H. E. Lohrnannand P. Hirsch, SRG., Hanover, I935, p. 44). Dietrich attached himself to Archbishop Brun, his cousin on the mother's side, who broughtabout his advancement. 23 Thegan, op. cit., ch. 2: "Gotefridusdux genuit Huochingum, Huochingus genuit Nebi; Nebe genuit Immam- Imma vero genuit Hiltigardam. . .". 24 Art. cit., p. 6 and see W. W. Buckland, A Textbook of RomanLaw, 3rd edn. (Cambridge,I963), p. I05. 25 Bullough, art. cit., p. 5. 26 Ibid., p. I5@ 27 DD O I no. I58 (ed. cit., p. 239) of 26 October, 952 and Lex Saxonum, chaps., xlvii, xlviii, v. Leges SaDconum et Lex Thuringorum, ed. C. v. Schwerin (MGH. Fontes Iuris Germsnici antiqlii . . . separatim editi, Hanover and Leipzig, I 9 I 8), pp. 29 f.

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aspectsof medievalhistorywhereprecisionis possiblewe shouldbe precise".28 How preciseare ProfessorBullough'ssemarltic shifts? How precise indeed can they be? When kinship itself was so fluidand oftenexpressed in a welterof blendingor ambiguous terms thereis a contradiction even here. As againstthis vaguenessand its vernacular background, what Isidorehad to say aboutagnatio and cognatio and otherrelationships was definiteand clear. There remainsthe questionwhetherand how the learningand teachingof the churchhelped to move early medievalaristocratic societytowardsa morepatrilineal complexion aTld attitude. It is not one that can be answered here but it would be rash to assumethat it was only the interestof hereditary officeholders,counts, castellans and advocates west and east of the Rhine whichled to a moremarked stresson lineage. The Isidorian tables of kinshipinformed bishopsandinfluential abbots,anxious to prevent uncanonical marriages, but these againbecameharder to avoidwhen in the courseof the tenth and the firsthalf of the eleventhcenturya relatively small number of royal and princely families, already connected by marriage ties iIl the past,emerged and ruledin most of western and central Europe. When the Salian king, Henry III, wantedto marryAgnesof Poitouin I043) Abbot Siegfriedof Gorze wrote a letter to his like-mindedcolleague,Poppo of Stavelot,expoundingthe sinfulnessand dangersof this match. It was accompaniedby a familytree and contained a detailedaccountof the bride and bridegroom's descentand consanguinity. Since meetingPoppo earlier in the yearthe abbotof Gorzehadmadefurtherinquiries into this cognatio and, it may be said in passing,the contexthere points to a set of relationships whollyon the distaffside.29 It remains truehowever thatthe development of a morerestricted, "dynastic" kind of familyin the Reichwas not as whole-hearted as in the Test and it is even possiblethat for all its size, wealthand organized strengththe later Ottonian and Salianchurchdid little to advance the process. Its institutions with theirexpanding resources and superiormanagement providedshelterand supportmainlyfor the kindreds of the nobilityin all theirIocaldiversity andnuancesof standingand power. The many new proprietary sanctuaries were as a rulemeantto servethe lay andreligious members of the founders' kin. The cathedralswith their large clerical communities,the risingnumberof collegiatechurchesnearand aboutthem and the
28 Bullough, art. cit., p. I8. 29 For the text of the letter v. W. v. Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kawserweitn sth edn. (Leipzig, I885), ii, pp. 7I4 ff.

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reviving older mollasteriescould and did accommodatewhole families of nobles as prelates,fratres(brethren)or vassals. At Aschaffenburg, (diocese of Mainz) founded sometime before 974, it was laid down after an ugly feud that no more than three members of a cognatio, (here "a kindred") within the sixth degree of proximity, should be admitted and that sons should not become canons together with their fathers.30 A very large kin, promoted in or through the church, benefited from the careerof Archbishop Anno of Cologne, a reformer and nepotist on a truly regal scale.31 Anno, like Wolfgang of Regensburg came from comparatively modest Suabian steck. Some aristocraticfamilies can be recognized by their clerical and monastic dignitaries far more easily than by any of their members in lay estate. The two brothers, Bishops Franco and Burchardof 57orms, Archbishop Heribert of Cologne and his brother Bishop Henry of Wurzburg, the Immedings at Hamburg and Paderborn and Gero, later Archbishop of Magdeburg (IOI2-23) who followed his maternal uncle into the imperial chapel, may serve as examples.32 The church in Germany could help to palliate the effects of partible inheritance customs, it could not end them.

Magdalen College, Oxford

K.Leyser

30 For Archbishop Willigis's settlement of the feud and ordinance for Aschaffenburgv. Mainzer Urkundenbuch, i. ed. M. Stimming (Darmstadt I932), no. 2I95 pp. I34 ff. and K. H. Rexroth,"Der Stiftsscholaster Herwardvon Aschaffenburg und das Schulrecht von 976", IOOO 3rahreStift und Stadt Aschaffenburg -Aschaf5fenburger 3fahrbuch, 4 (Aschaffenburg, I957), pp. 205 ff. 31 For a compendious survey of Anno's relations and their careers v. F. W. Oediger, Die Regestender Erzbischofe uon Koln im Mittelalter(Publikationen der Gesellschaft fur rheinische Geschichtskundexxi, Bonn, I954-6I), i, no. 839. 32 J. Fleckenstein,Die Hofkapelle der deutschen Konige(Schriften der MGH. I61ii, Stuttgart, I966), ii, pp. 87 ff., II3 f., I8I. The Immedings cannot easily be separatedfrom the so-called stirps Widfakindi, the posterity of the eighthcentury Saxon duke, Widukind. For a list of its clerical dignitaries v. K. Schmid, "Die NachfahrenWidukinds",Deutsches Archivfur Erforschung des Alittelalters, xx (I964), p. 36 f. The eleventh-century Immedings are not included but see p. 38, n. I30 where perhaps Bishop Immad of Paderborn (I05I-76) could be added. The most prominentlay figureof this family group in the tenth century was a woman, Queen Mathilda. For other important clerksin ArchbishopHeribert'skin v. Oediger,op. cit., no. 562.