William X of Aquitaine - a Duke on-line (part 2)

The top result, as we saw in the preceding post, was Wikipedia.  Google, however, provides us with many other results, and the next set of nine are what I'll go through here, to see what quality of information we might find and if I can use it for my own genealogy.

First up, the one thing that struck me as immediately peculiar is that out of the remaining nine results, six of them are from genealogy-oriented websites.  When researching any given ancestor, it is of course gratifying that others have already paved the way, and these publishers may have important information.  It is naturally of great significance that we here differentiate between self-published material, and that which has been published by a reputable publisher.  This is because in the latter case, anything written will have gone through an editorial process and it will have been reviewed, most likely by others who are considered experts in the field.  This doesn't mean that anything published (or printed) is correct - just look at the vast majority of newspapers out there!  It DOES mean that there is a greater level of rigour employed to generate the text than what we can expect from someone who self-publishes.  This blog is self-published and as such, why should you listen to me?  Well, that's up to you, and you are free to make up your own mind.  To help you decide let me remind you of its purpose:  to apply academic rigour to your genealogy hobby, ensuring that the information you're presenting to your family, and if you're on-line, to the world, is as accurate as we can make it with the available resources.  With this in mind, let's continue to investigate the Google search-results (in no particular order):

1. Fabpedigree.com William X (V; VIII) `le Jeune' (Duke) of AQUITAINE, provides us with the same information we got from Wikipedia regarding William's birth and death dates and parents.  He has been given a second wife, Emma of Limoges, which was not mentioned at Wikipedia.  The children listed are those considered by Wikipedia to be legitimate.  Sadly, there are no references at all attached to William's record, and so the site's data cannot be given credence.  More so as the author herself suggests that the website should not be taken as authoritative.  There is, however, a very handy list of other websites she has consulted available here.

2. languedoc-france.info has an article entitled The Counts of Toulouse, the Dukes of Aquitaine and the Kings of England which is very entertaining.  The main purpose of the site appears to present information pertaining to the Languedoc region of France.  Clearly some effort has gone into compiling the page, but again there are no references to sources or source material.  The parentage is the same as elsewhere, and so are William's birth- and death-dates.  The three legitimate children are listed.

3., 4., and 5. are all home-spun genealogy websites.  3) robweir.com William X (?) Duke of Aquitaine cites the Wikipedia article, listing the usual parentage, date, and spouse.  Only one child is listed, this being Eleanor.  4) familypedia.wikia.com William X of Aquitaine (1099-1137) is the first divergent source on William's birth date: confusingly, both 1098 and 1099 are given on one and the same page, two wives are given, and the usual three children.  The date of his death is also different from what we've become used to.  Here, it is the 2nd of April 1137, whereas elsewhere we have been told he died on the 9th of April.  5) royalist.info William X, Duke of Aquitaine (f. of Eleanor of Aquitaine) > Biography once more repeats the same information that we have already come across, although on the matter of the death date, some uncertainty has been indicated by the omission of the day of the month.  The three children are listed, and one of the two purported wives.  There are no source references, but helpful links to three books on Eleanor of Aquitaine are provided - we just don't know if these were used in the creation of the page.

6. The last of the genealogy pages is geni.com: Guillaume X 'le Toulousain' ou 'le Saint' d'Aquitaine, X Duc d'Aquitaine VIII Comte de Poitou (1099 - 1137).  As many of you may be aware, Geni relies, like Wikipedia, on the general public to enter information.  This is a very powerful method to get content.  The manager of William X's profile has certainly done a sterling job at entering a vast quantity of information, some of which has been copied straight off of other websites.  We'll come across these later, but can note that the Wikipedia articles appear - apparently many times over and in several languages, each time adding nothing new - and the text from languedoc-france, as under point 2, above has been copied in.  A long text in Spanish is present, but with no indication where it's from.  The highlight are two lists of publications which I imagine have been culled from some other website, one of which provides full text citations of the source as it pertains to William.  I'll add these to the list of things to follow up at the end of this post.  The Geni page for William X, however, appears to be in support of quantity over quality.  It almost looks as if chunks of text have been copied in for no apparent reason other than to lend weight to the data presented without the actual content of the text having received any sort of review, critical or otherwise.

7. Rather disturbingly, at some stage during his life, William X travelled in time and opened up his own Facebook page.  He hasn't been very active since: About William X, Duke of Aquitaine.  The page represents a straight copy of the Wikipedia article, re-formatted for Facebook.  It adds nothing, although apparently William has at least 52 people who like him, which must be nice.

8. An author of historical fiction has a particular interest in Eleanor, and a blog entry which discusses the relationship between William X and his daughter:  William X, Duke of Aquitaine by Christy English.  Interestingly, the author states that William never married again after his first wife died, a statement clearly in opposition to some of the other on-line sources so far reviewed.

9.  Last, but certainly not least, comes the Encyclopædia Britannica's article, available here:  William X.  The content is mostly available and the article is short, but the one thing that makes this stand miles above the other sources so far reviewed is that here we have a thoroughly researched secondary source, published by a reputable publisher.  Unfortunately, the website is a subscription service and the whole article will forever be a mystery to me, including any references which may have been provided.  Nevertheless, enough is visible to provide us with the following data:  William X, born 1099, died 9 April 1137 at Santiago de Compostela, Spain.  Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony, son of William IX, and father of Eleanor of Aquitaine.  This largely matches what most of the other sites have told us and can provide us with a good working hypothesis.

It seems, then, that out of the ten results provided by Google upon searching for the term "William X Aquitaine" provide us with ten largely unreferenced articles written mostly by enthusiasts and hobbyists.  For want of a better term, I think I'll start to consider on-line genealogies and biographies "Tertiary Sources," meaning that they rely on and cite Secondary Sources (technically creating another secondary source) rather than Primary Sources, which are ultimately what we need to arrive at and evaluate.  Of course, a Secondary Source can equally well be electronic as printed: the distinction between Tertiary and Secondary lies in that Tertiary Sources cite only, or mostly, Secondary Sources, whereas Secondary Sources rely on Primary Sources to draw their conclusions and use other Secondary Sources to assist in arguing the point but not as a foundation for the argument proper.

The continued referencing on-line to the same Tertiary Sources, notably Wikipedia, creates a truth based on what can only be referred to as insufficient research.  This is not to overly criticise Wikipedia - many articles are excellent, very well written and even properly referenced, thus providing a good starting point for further research.  But, and I cannot stress this enough, Wikipedia themselves state that the information presented there should be independently verified before being cited.  For more on this, see: A caution before citing Wikipedia.

Where does that leave the budding medieval genealogist?  The journey continues.  Before googling William we had only a name.  Now we have a theory, dates, spouses, and issue to investigate further.  We also have a list of alternative websites used to create the ones we have already seen, and most notably some books (hopefully reputable Secondary Sources) that we can follow up and consider:

* Hunt, W. (1905) The Political History of England, vol. 2.  Longmans, Green, and Co.
* Seward, D. (1986) Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen.  Dorset Press.
* Costain, T. B. (1962) A History of the Plantagenets, vol. 1. Doubleday & Co.
* Gillingham, J. G. (1978) Richard the Lionheart.  Times Books.
* Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopaedia

The remaining four books cited are listed here.  Their titles are so generic that it is impossible to pinpoint exactly which book was intended by the person citing it:

* Kings & Queens of Great Britain
* Eleanor of Aquitaine
* Kings & Queens of Europe
* Medieval Queens

What's next then?  In the next instalment of my quest for the facts around William X of Aquitaine we'll take a look at some of the websites that didn't appear on the first page of the search, but which are purported sources to those that did.  Perhaps then we will be lucky enough to find more Secondary Sources, or perhaps even some primary ones!

William X of Aquitaine - a Duke on-line (part 1)

It is hardly a surprise that I chose to begin my research by typing the words "William X Aquitaine" into Google.  Even less surprising is that the first record that came up on that search was the English-language Wikipedia article on William X.  Much has been said about the reliability of Wikipedia, and as an academic, I would never cite or rely on the information presented there.  As I am writing this as a hobbyist and not as an academic, however, I clicked the link to see what well-meaning netizens consider themselves to know about William X.

The article is pleasantly presented, and gives a brief and informative introduction to William X's life, including a significantly later painting and a photograph of a coin issued under his reign.  We are provided with dates, b. 1099 and d. 1137 (9th April), and basic biographical details:  son of William IX of Aquitaine and his wife Philippa of Toulouse, married to Aenor de Châtellerault, and was father of three children, Eleanor, Queen of France and later England, Petronilla who married  the Duke of Vermandois, and William Aigret who is said to have died young.  Possible natural (illegitimate) sons are also mentioned:  William and Joscelin.  So far so good.  Taking a closer look at the article, however, it is highly noticeable that only two sources are mentioned, neither of which has been properly referenced in the text.  The 'Talk' page, a space for Wikipedia editors and contributors to discuss the article, adds little, although a promising primary source is given for William's birth date: The Chronicle of Saint-Maxent for the year 1099 lists this event.  The other sources mentioned are:

* Parsons, J. (2002) Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady. Palgrave Macmillan.
* Chibnall, M. (1956) (trans.) John of Salisbury's Memoirs of the Papal Court. Nelson.

Should we believe the Wikipedia article?  The short answer is a resounding "No": there is no convincing evidence that any of the materials presented there are accurate or that they should be included in your family history.  If one feels brave, the alternative language articles may provide more information than the English version.  There are articles in another 18 languages (at the time of writing), some with more detail than the English, and some only a sentence or two long.  I find it interesting to note that many of them reference other books, some even in their own languages.  There is also a number of references to other websites which we will approach in a later post.  To the list of cited literature, we can therefore add:

* Pernaud, R. (1965) Eleanor of Aquitaine.  Coward-McCann.
* Weir, A. (1999) Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life. Ballantine Books.
* Alphen, L. (1980/3) "La Francia: Luigi VI e Luigi VII (1108-1180)" in Il trionfo del papato e lo sviluppo comunale.  Storia del mondo medievale, vol. 5, Garzanti, pp. 705-739.
* Paden, F. (2007) Troubadour Poems from the South of France. D. S. Brewer.
* Marchegay, P., & Mabille, É. (1869) Chroniques des églises d'Anjou.  Jules Renouard.
* Santiago, C. D., (13 Jul 2010) "Un estudio revela la auténtica personalidad de Don Gaiferos" in elCorreoGallego.es, retrieved 7 November 2013.

In addition to these, a reference to a Portuguese journal published by a local genealogical society has proven too difficult to source: Raízes e Memórias, vol. 10, p. 21, Instituto Português de Genealogia.

Pernaud's 1965 volume has been cited in both Polish and Italian, Weir's in both English and a Korean translation.  It is notable that the most recent of these volumes is Paden's, whose main topic is medieval poetry rather than history.  This is not a bad crop, however, and it provides us with possible threads to follow to verify if the Wikipedia article is indeed correct.  As with any referencing, the facts in the article ought to have citations against them, and out of the 19 different versions on Wikipeda of the William of Aquitaine article, only one, the Galego version, achieved this on four occasions.

To prove (or disprove) the data we have gathered so far, the next step will be to follow up on the leads in the cited texts.  First, however, it may be possible to gather further threads from the Google search that led us to the Wikipedia article.

Here's the Wikipedia article:  William X, Duke of Aquitaine

Learning Journey

We all have to start somewhere, myself included.  I have researched my family history for over 15 years now, and it is the one interest I keep coming back to.  Like so many others, I have been fortunate enough to be able to trace several lines back through the centuries to the period in European history usually referred to as the "Medieval" period.  This is both a blessing and a curse.  Of course, it is thoroughly exciting to learn that you might be descended from kings, noblemen, knights and princesses (and a couple of Saints!) but I have learned the hard way that the skill set required is very different from that used for modern genealogy.  There are no censuses, there are no ministerial books neatly listing your ancestors one after the other, there are no probate records, wills, or birth or death records.  What, then, are we to do?

Research, is the short answer to the question (perhaps somewhat obviously given that I am currently doing a doctorate in a historical, but unrelated, area).  This is not an easy thing to do, especially when navigating a treacherous and much debated territory such as medieval genealogy.  Much of the available material is in Latin, or requires other language skills.  The vast majority of the original source material is held in the bowels of University and National libraries throughout Europe and her colonies, although accessibility is getting increasingly better with the advent of digital resource departments.  If we are lucky enough to get our hands on an original document, digital or otherwise, we are faced with palaeographical challenges - how do we read the handwriting in a language we do not necessarily speak?  And how do we interpret it?  Finally, how do we approach the secondary material, the academic debate, and the decision we will ultimately have to take on whether a specific individual ought to be included in the old family tree or not?

These are all challenges to be overcome and I hope to do so and document what I learn in this blog.  A quick search on Amazon has revealed only one book on the topic, apparently out of print.  So I shall start from the beginning, pick an individual and guide you through my research process.  Wherever possible I will try to use original materials, secondary works if relevant, and any academic discussion that pertains to the topic.  The main focus is of course to establish genealogical links, or to prune the tree of those that are dubious and difficult to prove.  Nevertheless, I imagine that historians or those with a general interest in the medieval period may find bits of information useful to them too.

Who to pick, then, from the leafy tree in front of me?  Which one of all these ancestors will provide the best example and be intriguing enough to research in-depth?  How about William X of Aquitaine?  I call him this at the moment as that's the label I have assigned to the parent of Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of King John of England, a couple from whom undoubtedly millions alive today descended.  More of him in the next post.