• General Notes

  [SUSANNA KEENE.FTW]
  
  Burke calls him Great Duke of Russia. Snorri Sturlasson call
  him Prince of
  Holmgarth and shows his children as Holti-Nimble, Vissivald,
  Ellisif.
  
  Donald Lines Jacobus (1883-1970), the "Founder of
  Scientific
  Genealogy in America" wrote an article in The American
  Genealogist (TAG)
  9:13-15 entitled "The House of Rurik."  I quote:  "To correct
  the many
  errors that have appeared in print, and to aid those who follow
  the pastime
  of tracing "royal ancestry," the following condensed account of
  the early
  Rurikides is here printed.  It is based in large part on
  "Genealogies et
  Mariages Occidentaux des Rurikides Russes du Xe au XIIIe
  Siecle," published
  at Rome in 1927 as Vol. IX, No. 1, of *Orientalia Christiana.*
  The author,
  N. de Baumgarten, is probably the best living authority on
  early Russian
  history, and every statement made on the fourteen genealogical
  tables of
  his monograph is fully supported by the citation of
  contemporary documents
  and chronicles."
  
  I am not attacking Jacobus, who is a giant among
  genealogists and
  certainly needs no defenders.  Neither am I disagreeing with
  Alexander
  Agamov, in Moscow, who has pointed out that there is no
  credible evidence
  that Rurik was ever "Prince of Kiev" and progenitor of the line
  beginning
  with Igor, Grand Prince of Kiev, who married Olga. I hope
  Alexander Agamov
  is reading this.  Some historians and genealogists, Russians in
  particular,
  have taken sharp issue with the theory that the Kievan Rus was
  founded by
  a "Dane" rather than a "Slav"----and the evidence for "The
  Varangian
  Theory" seems fragmentary and inconclusive, at best.
  
  G. Andrews Moriarty and Walter L. Sheppard in TAG
  28:91-95 also
  quote the N. de Baumgarten material as authoritative
  [specifically
  "Orientalia Christiana, No. 119, N. de Baumgarten, "Aux
  Origines de la
  Russie," p. 79.  Both Jacobus and Moriarty/Sheppard headline
  their charts
  with "Rurik (d. 879) Grand Prince of Kiev."  Jacobus probably
  did not read
  10th to 13th century Russian. But--- some of us may.
  
  For anyone who might conceivably have access to the
  original, 1927,
  N. de Baumgarten source---is it provable that, "every statement
  made on the
  fourteen genealogical tables of his monograph is fully
  supported by the
  citation of contemporary documents and chronicles?"
  
  Or, is it possible that Jacobus and the other experts
  simply
  trusted in N. de Baumgarten's scholarship and
  professionalism---and did not
  really check out the facts themselves. The Editor of a journal,
  such as
  TAG, certainly cannot check out every fact and document
  himself. But, in
  this particular case, Jacobus gives the N. de Baumgarten
  material his
  personal imprimatur, as cited above [TAG 9:13, Paragraph 2]
  
  So----has N. de Baumgarten in his "Orientalia
  Christiana"---dealing
  with "The House of Rurik"---been totally discredited by
  subsequent rigorous
  scholarship---or does his judgment still seem credible to some
  serious
  scholars----or are there alternate explanations?
  
  This is an intriguing question of interest to many
  folks who are
  descended from Anne of Kiev (c. 1024-c.1066) [Anna Yaroslavna]
  who married
  Henry I, King of France.

Details of Yaroslav I Vladimirovich the's family with Ingigerd (Anna) Olafsdottir of Sweden