General Notes

1  NAME /Foulques/ II
1  BIRT
2  DATE 909
2  PLAC Anjou, France
FIMA p 178 "All the great territorial princes took considerable pains to e
nsure that they could read.  This is vividly demonstrated by the ima
ge of themselves and their ancestors that the counts of Anjou wished to pr
oject related by writers in their service.  One of them describes the ve
ry early count FULK, who died c.960.  The king's household was said to ha
ve laughed when they saw him chanting mass with his priests.  The count wr
ote a rejoinder in his own hand:  'An ignorant king is a crowned ass.'  T
he sovereign should realize that 'wisdom, eloquence and literacy were as e
ssential for counts as for kings'.  Thereafter Fulk was universally admir
ed because, 'although he was very well educated in the liberal arts, in t
he rules of rhetoric and the arguments of Cicero and Aristotle, he neverth
eless far surpassed all other knights in strength and courage'."
pc 19 "Under . . . FULK the Good (941-960) the region enjoyed a time of tr
anquil prosperity.  . . . Fulk the Good had three sons.  GEOFFREY, the eld
est, became count of Anjou, while the second, Guy, became bishop of Le Pu
y.  Drogo, the youngest and Fulk's favourite--he had been conceived when F
ulk was past middle age--was educated in literature and the liberal arts a
nd, through the kindness of King HUGH CAPET of France, he succeeded his br
other as bishop of Le Puy."
p 22 "As a holy man [FULK the Good] would be expected to have the gi
ft of prophecy and is credited with predicting that his descendants in t
he ninth generation would extend their power to the ends of the eart
h.  By the time the prophecy was written down, it had come true."