• General Notes

  [large-G675.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