1535944

[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.

Records not imported into INDI (individual) Gramps ID I3307:

Line ignored as not understood Line 77044: 2 SOUR @S085410@
Skipped subordinate line Line 77045: 3 DATA
Skipped subordinate line Line 77046: 4 TEXT Date of Import: Aug 7, 2000