Talk:Charles Constantine of Vienne

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He couldn't have been the grandson of Constantine the Great, although if his father in law was Leo VI, his great-great-great-grandfather-in-law (or something like that) would be Constantine VI...is that what Settipani meant? Adam Bishop 19:39, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Adam, read carefully. I wrote: "his name refers to the founders of the empires governed by his father and grandfather, i.e., to Charlemagne and Constantine the Great." My command of the language is limited, but I'd have inferred from the sentence that Charlemagne and Constantine were the founders of the empires governed by his father Louis the Blind and grandfather Leo VI, viz., founders of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Byzantine Empire, respectively. Please modify my phrasing if it is incorrect. --Ghirla | talk 22:31, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I did not read carefully enough :) Thanks. Adam Bishop 00:30, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the argument is clever but unconvincing. Apart from one letter by Patriarch Nicholas the Mystic, witnessing that the Emperor married his daughter to a "prince who had suffered a great misfortune, cousin of Bertha [of Tuscia]", it is based solely on onomastics. IIRC Settipani argument runs as follows. Double names were exceptionally rare in early medieval Europe, so we should find a particular reason for using it in this case. As the second part - Constantine - had never been previously used by Western European monarchs (except in Scotland), Settipani assumes that the extraordinary name was intended to celebrate Charles-Constantine's descent from the reigning dynasty of Byzantium. Settipani speculates that the name was chosen by his unfortunate father to celebrate his own assumption of the imperial title in Rome and to memorialize his hopes of retaining the imperial crown for his son, named after the greatest emperors of the West and the East. --Ghirla | talk 23:04, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, there are strong arguments that the marriage of Louis and Anna never took place or, if it did, it was never consummated:

1. Chronology: Anna is known to have been born a year before her mother's death, which puts her births at ca. 896. Charles-Constantine's daughter Constance is thought to have been born ca. 920, judging by the time her children were born. So, we have to admit that Anna should have had grandchildren at the of 24, which is quite implausible given the fact that medieval women were not as precocious as the 21st century lolitas.
2. Succession was the greatest headache for Leo VI, and sending his only child to a minor barbarian prince was like saying goodbye to his own dynasty. Actually Anna wouldn't have left Constantinople before the birth of her sibling. The next child was born about 903 and was named Anna. Per medieval onomastics patterns, this clearly indicates that Anna I had been dead by that time.
3. The Byzantines were arrogant enough to frustrate matrimonial proposals of Charlemagne, so it's not clear why they chose to marry their princess to such a weak princeling as Louis the Blind, especially as they recognized the Western emperors as simple reges.
4. The first marriage of a Byzantine princess into barbarian Europe would have surely been advertized by Western chroniclers, but nobody in Europe seemed to have noticed it. Constantine VII, who in De administrando.. describes in painful detail the genealogy and family of his Frankish daughter-in-law, fails to mention his own nephew living in Europe as well.
5. The chronology is so tight that Settipani believes that the marriage took place when Anna was 12. This is kind of strange, because the Makedonioi princesses never married so early. In truth, they never married at all, probably to preclude passing succession rights to other families, except Anna Porphyrogeneta who was forced to marry aged 27 and Zoe who was forced to marry aged 50, when both were too old to produce children.
6. Many generations of historians explained the fact that Charles-COnstantine didn't inherit estates and titles of his imperial father by his being born out of wedlock.--Ghirla | talk 23:22, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

(Please note that Charles-Constantine had two children. They were Richard and Hubert, not Constance of Arles. We do not know much about these two sons of Charles-Constantine. They appear briefly in the records of the Abbey Cluny. For reference please read Constance BOUCHARD "Burgundy and Provence" in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 3, Cambridge 1999.)

Is there any other indication of who his mother may have been? Both this article and the Louis the Blind article mention only Anna as possibly being the matriarch of the family. Wasn't there any one else? --Jugbo 18:50, 15 August 2006 (UTC)