Monday, September 10, 2007

Seeking Eleanor's "Ladies"

I posed this question back in 2005 with little response - so I will ask again:
I am seeking information of Florine de Bourgogne - specifically the woman who is listed as accompanying Eleanor of Aquitaine on the Second Crusade.

My problem is - I can find no trace of her historically as a "living" person at the time in any of the medieval genealogies / lineages.

Just about every book I have read on Eleanor of Aquitaine lists five "great noble ladies" who accompanied her on the Second Crusade. They are variously listed as: Mamille of Roucy, Sybilla of Flanders / Anjou, Faydida of Toulouse, Florine de Bourgogne and Torquiri de Bouillon.

The first three, Mamille, Sybilla and Faydida, are actual "historical" women of the time. I can detail their parentage and lives (to an extent). Of the other two women, Florine and Torquri, I can find no trace of their extistance. Are they just figments of one author's imagination, which the rest of us have taken for granted - and transposed into our own research. So is this a simple mistake that is being revisisted by scholars time and again. Which probably makes me just as guilty as the next.

Florine de Bourgogne did exist - but died aged 14yo in 1097AD. Had this Florine's date of death been a misprint, she would have been aged 65yo at the time of the Second Crusade, and would hardly have constituted as a "contemporary" of Eleanor and her "amazons".

Similarly, I would also like any information on Torqueri of Bouillon - another woman who does not seen to have "historically" existed. I have scoured the genealogies of both Bouillon / Lorraine and Bourgogne / Burgundy to no avail. Any thoughts - suggestions?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Amy Kelly made it up? I love her book, but she's not the best historian. And shame on everyone for copying her without checking. Sybilla of Flanders definitely didn't go on the Second Crusade, but at least she did eventually get to the Holy Land.
Mamille seems to have died long before the second crusade too. Only Faydide seems to have actually been in a position to travel with Eleanor, and even she would have parted from Eleanor by April 1148.