Hubert de Beaumont-au-Maine

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Hubert II de Beaumont-au-Maine, also known as Hubert de Sainte-Suzanne, was a French Viscount of Beaumont and Maine, and later of Vendôme, who in the 11th century held the French territories of Beaumont, Fresnay and Sainte-Suzanne.

Moved by the cause of the count of Anjou and Maine, he played a significant role in the battle between his landowners and William the Conqueror. Despite a siege lasting four years (1083-1086), the city of Sainte-Suzanne, which Hubert II defended, is remembered today as the only castle that William the Conqueror himself never succeeded in taking.

[edit] Genealogy

The Beaumont family, later Beaumont-Brienne, dominated this part of Maine from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. One source: "A Bishop and His World Before the Gregorian Reform: Hubert of Angers, 1006-1047," Steven Fanning, 1988.

[edit] Family

Hubert, son of Raoul V de Beaumont and Emma de Montreveau, can almost certainly trace his name to his mother's uncle Hubert, who was a bishop at Angers, a man who doted on his niece and her family. He was called by many titles interchangeably, including Viscount of Sainte-Suzanne, of Lude, of Maine, of Manceaux, and of Mans. During the lifetime of his father's second wife Cana, he claimed to be her son, and always referred to her as "Viscountess"; he defined his own life as he pleased.

Born around 1047, Viscount Hubert married Ermengarde de Nevers on December 6, 1067. She was the daughter of William I of Nevers (1029 - 1083), count of Nevers, and Ermengarde de Tonnerre. She appears with her husband in several historical accounts, notably at the confirmation of the chapel of Saint-Aubin du Lude, around 1090, and at the donation of Saint-Flaceau to the abbey of Saint-Vincent.

With her daughter Godeheult, the future abbess of the abbey at Étival, Ermengarde frequently visited various convents. One Easter, having gone to Cellières, she gave the priest, Henri de Champeaux, the right to hunt in her forest; later on, at Christmas, she also gave the priest at Cheffes, Geoffroy de Nantes, permission to use her woods. An account exists, dated December 28th, 1135, of a Viscountess Ermengarde, wife of Gautier Hait, Viscount of Mollan; Dom Guilloreau suggests this to be the very same Viscountess of Maine, remarried late in life, and still living despite being at least 90 years old. This account seems somewhat unbelievable and requires further proof to support it.

Hubert had five children:

1. Raoul, (eldest son?).
2. Herbert or Hubert, (1062) cited with his brothers and mother in 1090, and again in 1095, as well as in other, less precise accounts.
3. Guillaume (1061), also mentioned twice.
4. Denis, who only appears once in the written record.
5. Godeheult (1063), a nun at Cluny, who visited the Benedictines with her mother, who sang the Alleluia verses in the priory at Cheffes with one of the monks, not to mention, as noted above, a devout leader at the Ronceray abbey in Angers.