1085

AGATHA VON BRAUNSCHWEIG
Princess of Hungary; b.c. 1020/5; d. 1066; m. Edward the Atheling, king of England; mother of Edgar the Exile. [Charlemagne & Others, Chart 3315, 3395]

m. Edward the Atheling; mother of St. Margaret of Scotland. [Ancestral Roots, p. 2]

In Vajay's article in the 1960s he started with the previous claims for Agatha's parentage (daughter of St. Stephen, or daughter of Bruno of Augsburg, brother of Henry II), and demonstrated that they were both extremely unlikely. He then based his analysis on the statement by Florence that Emperor Henry was the paternal uncle of Agatha. This could not have been Henry II, since Vajay
had just excluded both of his siblings as the parent, but could have been Henry III, who was Emperor at the time of the Exile's return. The problem is that Henry III was an only son of his parents. Vajay recognized, however, that Henry's mother had been married twice before, and he had three half-brothers. He then reconstructed the chronology of Gisela's marriages, and concluded that only her son Liudolf, born of her marriage to Bruno of Brunswick, could have been old enough to be Agatha's father. He therefore proposed that this was Agatha's parentage.
The strength of the theory is that it harmonzes with Florence's statement, without forcing either a priest or a King of Hungary who died without surviving children to have a daughter. The drawbacks are several-fold. First of all, Vajay had to completely rewrite the chronology of Gisela's marital history to get any of her sons old enough to be Agatha's father. In this, I think he was right in placing her marriage to Bruno first, but the chronology is still pretty tight. Next, Liudolf was not known to have had any daughters, let alone a daughter Agatha. There is no indication in this pedigree as to where some of the more unusual nomenclature -- Agatha, Christina, Margaret, David, Alexander -- might have come from.
This theory was accepted by most scholars up until a couple of years ago when a new theory was proposed. It is still the position of the Jette skeptics. [Todd A. Farmerie
Dau. of Istvan I, King of Hungary; m. edward the Atheling; mother of Margaret who m. Malcolm III, King of Scotland. [Sarah Shaw Tatoun
Dau of St. Henry II of Germany and St. Cunigunda of Luxemburg; m. Edward the Outlaw Atheling; mother of Edgar, Margaret and Christian. [Mikki McBride
Dau of Ludolphe von Brunswick, Margrave of Saxony, and Gertrude von Egisheim; m. Edwart the Outlaw Atheling fo England; mother of Mathilde, Margaret, and Edgar. [Floyd Gingrich
b. 1018, d. 13 Jun 1074; dau. of Liudolf, Mar de Saxony von Brunswick, and Gertrude von Egisheim; m. Edward Atheling 'the Exile', King of England; mother of St. Margaret Atheling who m. Malcolm III, King of Scotland. [Mark Ballard
[terrellancest-39-1450.FTW]

Book "Royal Genealogies" states that Agatha was the daughter of Henry II. This is impossible since Agatha's parents weren't married until 1153, 96 years after Agatha's husband died 1057.

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From http://www.robweir.com/genealogy/mytree/p9.htm#i264
Agatha Arpad , Princess of Hungary was born at Augsburg. She was the daughter of Saint Stephen I (?) King of Hungary and Gisela of Bavaria. Agatha Arpad , Princess of Hungary married Edward "The Exile" (?), son of King Edmund (?) II and Edith (?), circa 1043 at England. Agatha Arpad , Princess of Hungary died after 1093 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. 1
Children of Agatha Arpad , Princess of Hungary and Edward "The Exile" (?)
Christine (?)+ d. 1144Edgar 'The Atheling' (?) (living)Saint Margaret of Scotland (?)+ b. c 1045, d. 1093Citations
[S56] Burke's Peerage & Gentry - The Royal Lineage, online http://www.burkes-peerage.net/sites/common/sitepages/…

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Agatha was the wife of Edward the Exile (heir to the throne of England) and mother of Edgar Ætheling, Saint Margaret of Scotland and Cristina of England. Her antecedents are unclear, and subject to much speculation.

Life
Nothing is known of her early life, and what speculation has appeared is inextricably linked to the contentious issue of Agatha's paternity, one of the unresolved questions of medieval genealogy. She came to England with her husband and children in 1057, but she was widowed within weeks of arriving. In 1067, following the Norman conquest of England, she fled with her children to Scotland, finding refuge under Malcolm III, who would become her son-in-law. Her later fate, as well as the date of her death, are not recorded.

Medieval Sources
Agatha's origin is alluded to in numerous surviving medieval sources, but the information they provide is sometimes imprecise, often contradictory, and occasionally outright impossible. The earliest surviving source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis and Regalis prosapia Anglorum, Simeon of Durham and Ailred of Rievaulx describe Agatha as a kinswoman of "Emperor Henry" (thaes ceseres maga, filia germani imperatoris Henrici). In an earlier entry, the same Ailred of Rievaulx had called her daughter of emperor Henry, as do later sources of dubious credibility such as the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, while Matthew of Paris calls her the emperor's sister (soror Henrici imperatoris Romani). Geoffrey Gaimar in Lestoire des Engles states that she was daughter of the Hungarian king and queen (Li reis sa fille), although he places the marriage at a time when Edward is thought still to have been in Kiev, while Orderic Vitalis in Historiae Ecclesiasticae is more specific, naming her father as king Solomon (filiam Salomonis Regis Hunorum), actually a contemporary of Agatha's children. William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum states that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary (reginae sororem) and is echoed in this by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, while less precisely, Ailred says of Margaret that she was derived from English and Hungarian royal blood (de semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum extitit oriunda). Finally, Roger of Howden and the anonymous Leges Edwardi Confessoris indicate that while Edward was a guest of Kievan "king Malesclodus" he married a woman of noble birth (nobili progenio), Leges adding that the mother of St. Margaret was of Russian royal blood (ex genere et sanguine regum Rugorum).[1]

German Theories
While various sources repeat the claims that Agatha was daughter or sister of either Emperor Henry, it seems unlikely that such a sibling or daughter would have been ignored by the German chroniclers.

The description of Agatha as a blood relative of "Emperor Henry" may be applicable to a niece of either Henry II or Henry III, Holy Roman Emperors (although Florence, in Regalis prosapia Anglorum specifies Henry III). Early attempts at reconstructing the relationship focussed on the former. Georgio Pray (1764, Annales Regum Hungariae), O.F. Suhm (1777, Geschichte Dänmarks, Norwegen und Holsteins) and Istvan Katona (1779, Historia Critica Regum Hungariae) each suggested that Agatha was daughter of Henry II's brother Bruno of Augsburg (an ecclesiastic described as beatae memoriae, with no known issue), while Daniel Cornides (1778, Regum Hungariae) tried to harmonize the German and Hungarian claims, making Agatha daughter of Henry II's sister Giselle of Bavaria, wife of Stephen I of Hungary.[2] This solution remained popular among scholars through a good part of 20th century.

Although it's tempting to view St. Margaret as a granddaughter of another famous saint, Stephen of Hungary, this popular solution fails to explain why Stephen's death triggered a dynastic crisis in Hungary. If St. Stephen and Giselle were indeed Agatha's parents, her offspring should have succeeded to the Hungarian crown and the dynastic strife could have been averted. Actually, there is no indication in Hungarian sources that any of Stephen's children outlived him. Likewise, all of the solutions involving Henry II would seem to make Agatha much older than her husband, and prohibitively old at the time of the birth of her son, Edgar.

Based on a more strict translation of the Latin description used by Florence and others as well as the supposition that Henry III was the Emperor designated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, prominent genealogist Szabolcs de Vajay popularized another idea first suggested in 1939.[3]. He hypothesized that Agatha was the daughter of Henry III's elder (uterine) half-brother, Liudolf, Margrave of West Friesland. This did require a reevaluation of the chronology of the marriages and children of Gisela of Swabia, mother of both Henry III and Liudolf. The theory was endorsed in the academic mainstream for thirty years until René Jetté proposed a Kievan solution to the problem,[4] since which time opinion has been divided among several competing possibilities.

Kievan Theory
Jetté pointed out that William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum and several later chronicles unambigously state that Agatha's sister was a Queen of Hungary. From what we know about the biography of Edward the Exile, he loyally supported Andrew I of Hungary, following him from Kiev to Hungary in 1046 and staying at his court for many years. Andrew's wife and queen was Anastasia, a daughter of Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev by Ingigerd of Sweden. Following Jetté's logic, Edward's wife was another daughter of Yaroslav.

11th-century fresco representing the daughters of Yaroslav I.This theory accords with the seemingly incongruous statements of Geoffrey Gaimar and Roger of Howden that, while living in Kiev, Edward took a nativeborn wife "of noble parentage" or that his father-in-law was a "Russian king".[5]

Jetté's theory seems to be supported by an onomastic argument.[6] Among the medieval royalty, Agatha's rare Greek name is first recorded in the Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium; it was also one of the most frequent feminine names in the Kievan Rurikid dynasty.[7] After Anna of Byzantium married Yaroslav's father, he took the Christian name of the reigning emperor, Basil II, while some members of his family were named after other members of the imperial dynasty. Agatha could have been one of these.[8]

The names of Agatha's immediate descendants - Margaret, Cristina, David, Alexander - were likewise extraordinary for Anglo-Saxon Britain. They may provide a clue to Agatha's origin. The names Margaret and Cristina are today associated with Sweden, the native country of Yaroslav's wife Ingigerd.[9] The name of Margaret's son, David, obviously echoes that of Solomon, the son and heir of Andrew I.[10] Furthermore, the first Russian saint (canonized ca. 1073) was Yaroslav's brother Gleb, whose Christian name was David.

The name of Margaret's other son, Alexander, may point to a variety of traditions, both occidental and oriental: the biography of Alexander the Great was one of the most popular books in 11th-century Kiev.

One inference from the Kievan theory is that Edgar Atheling and St. Margaret were, through their mother, first cousins of Philip I of France. The connection is too notable to be omitted from contemporary sources, yet we have no indication that medieval chroniclers were aware of it. The argumentum ex silentio lead critics of the Kievan theory to search for alternative explanations.

Bulgarian Theory
One of the latest theories was proposed by Ian Mladjov.[11] Dismissing the Kievan theory as insufficiently grounded, he infers that Agatha was daughter of Gavril Radomir, Tsar of Bulgaria by his first wife, a Hungarian princess, the daughter of Duke Géza of Hungary. This hypothesis has Agatha born in Hungary after her parents divorced, her mother being pregnant when she left Bulgaria, as indicated in Byzantine sources. The argument is based primarily on the onomastic precedent provided by the fact that Gavril Radomir's own mother was also named Agatha[12], and it vindicates the intimate connection between Agatha and Hungary attested in the Medieval sources.

The article reviews the sources, the Hungarian, German, and Kievan theories for Agatha's antecedents, and looks into the contemporary onomastic repertoire, concluding that of the few contemporary Agathas, only Gavril Radomir's mother could possibly have been an ancestor of the wife of Edward the Exile. Some of the other names associated with Agatha and used to corroborate theories based in onomastics are also readily available within the Bulgarian ruling family at the time, including Mary and several Davids. Another aspect of the study is to draw attention to genealogical improbabilities posed by several marriages within the prohibited degrees of kinship, as posited by earlier theories (especially the German and Kievan ones, including the French marriage of Anne of Kiev). The article also re-examines some long-standing assumptions about the chronology of Gavril Radomir's marriage to the Hungarian princess, and concludes that its dating to the late 980s is unsupportable, and its dissolution belongs in c. 1009-1014.

This corrected chronology, the clear onomastic precedent, and the lack of problematic genealogical relationships would allow Agatha's identification as the daughter of Saint Stephen's sister, raised at the Hungarian court, and married (possibly while in exile in Kievan Rus') to Edward the Exile. It is inferred that the relative familiarity with Germany and unfamiliarity with Hungary partly distorted the depiction of Agatha in the English sources; her actual position would have been that of a daughter of the (unnamed) sister of the King of Hungary (Stephen I), himself the brother-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor (Henry II, and therefore kinsman of Henry III).