Ágota - Agatha ÁRPÁD(házi), Princess of Hungary - Record of Alternative Data After Merges

I have had a polite private query about resolving the data conflict to favour the MPs use of capitals. FARKAS Mihály László the profile's curator, is a better person to explain than I.

Again: Why don't you just respect a curators choice of profile values on a MP and silently just resolve the data conflicts to those values instead of blowing it up in a public discussion?

agree with bjorn. also neither ÁRPÁD(házi) or of wessex is correct as all that is known about her is that her name was agatha and she was a hungarian noble her parents are uncertain. there are many theories none proven

I know that there are many theories from origin of Agatha, (wife of Edward 'the Exile')

See: Curator note at profile: Edward 'the Exile', Ætheling of England

Edward's wife was Agatha. Her origin is uncertain. Other "possible wife"-s see at Profile
Unknown Profile
Mihály

It might be better to cut her parents entirely since there is no general agreement among authorities. Then, expand the About Me to explain (and link) the different theories.

e this is the problem, a big problem. Only certain people get to decided what is what in Geni! If some offers an alternate theory and can prove their theory with back up info , if it doesn't agree with certain other people no one will accept it! You want people to just accept what geni says or totally remove all info.This is why a lot of people leave , removing everything they ever put into Geni or they just don't bother to add anything more. Does that seem right to you?Oh well!

judy if you spent half the time adding profiles as you do complaining we would have a one world tree by now

Judy, I understand what you're saying. That's why I like to have public discussions when there is a question.

There is no contemporary evidence about Agatha's parents. There are five theories, and three of those are very, very logical. There is no way to say "these are the right parents". It is only someone's opinion about the different theories. I think it makes sense to say we don't know.

You might like to look at the alternative curated profile of "Edward 'the Exile' Aetheling of England" which gives Agatha of Hungary as his wife but also notes that her identity is uncertain.

I do not have strong views on her identity (despite the fact that my field of study was Anglo-Saxon England). In general I would accept the traditional view that she was a Hungarian because: (i) he was in exile in Hungary; (ii) Hungary had strong economic ties with Anglo-Saxon England because the silver used in English for coinage could not have had any other origins, so the Hungarians had a serious reason for taking a bet on the future succession; (iii) other central and eastern Europeans would not have had such reasons for such a bet; (iv) and the English had sufficient contacts with the German contenders for the relationship that they would have recorded it.

The one world tree obviously has the problem that sociological and DNA investigations find that the registered/legal fathers of 10% and 30% of children are not the actual children. I don;t see why every entry in Geni should say that the descent is questionable.

But what I do have a problem with is that the dates of Edward are estimated. We know precisely the date of his death, and we know precisely the year of his birth. As to Agatha, I'd leave the curators of the two trees to argue out how to treat her.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that she was a niece of the Emperor Henry (filia germani imperatoris Henrici). Florent of Worcester says Agatha was the daughter of a brother of Emperor Henry. William of Malmesbury says Agatha was sister of a queen of Hungary. Roger of Hoveden (late 12th century) says that Agatha was a Russian princess. Several other chroniclers say that Agatha was the daughter of a king of Hungary. A traditional theory is that she was the daughter of Henry II's brother.

Not compaining , just trying to make a point. That because one group of people says it should be one way doesn't make it true! And I have been spending a lot of time lately adding people. Never get any info in as I get merged as fast as I add profiles and then people start agueing over some of them and I could give a diddly do any of it. I just like adding to my tree. I have the info but why bother. When I can find something on diferent ones , even if they are not mine I like to try to help add to the mix. What you people do with it afterwards is up to you.I like knowing how far back I go but really more interested in the USA( that includes NAtive American) and Canadian end of the tree.I like knowing what my family did to make this country what it is, weather it was good or bad.

Private User with reference to your uncalled for comment above. I resolved the Data Conflict as it appeared in my Merge Centre on a profile that is my direct great grandmother, and whom, last time I looked - I also managed.
I logged the data that I deleted, and felt I should alert Mihalay that there was a query so he could explain his reasonings, instead of me speaking for him.

You have already made sure everyone knows that you find my eliciting of discussion ridiculous, so there is no need to keep doing so every time I post anything.
Right now it feels as though you are trying to drive me off Geni - and it's working.

'Mihaly' - sorry misspelt

Justin, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle version means "daughter of the Emperor Henry" not "niece"

Yes, you're right. I copied without proofreading.

Very generous of you, Justin, but I'm afraid we are both wrong!

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is written in Old English, not Latin, so I think you must have been working from a later Latin tranlation. I only have Dorothy Whitelock's translation into modern English - but she was one of the finest Anglo-Saxon scholars of her generation. This reads:

"But there [in Hungary] he became a distinguished man, as God granted him and a wa his proper destiny, so that he won a kinswoman of the emperor for his wife...She was called Agatha"

Well, she was a kinswoman of an Emperor.

The present copy of manuscript D also has quite lengthy passages on Edgar the Aetheling and Saint Margaret of Scotland, including a passage which looks a if it is out of a saints life in which case it can't have been added before her death in 1093, and the last line in. Whitelock makes a strong case that this copy was destined for the Scottish court; and the last page, in a late twelfth-century hand on a folio which had hitherto been blank, is about the struggle between the Kings of Scotland and the house of Moray on . The passages on the family are too long to be lines interposed in an existing manuscript, and it is very difficult to imagine a Norman abbot south of the border allowing his monks to write a history in Old English - the cost of parchment for a manuscript of this length was huge. (Forging an Anglo-Saxon charter granting the monastery lands was a different matter entirely).

I find the argument that manuscript D was commissioned for Edward the Exile's grandchildren or great-grandchildren wholly convincing, and if anyone knew or was interested in who he had married it would have been them.

Sorry this post is so long.

Sorry - "the last line in" Whitelock (para 3) was a typo. And it couldn't have been commissioned for Edward the Exile's great-grandchildren - the handwriting is too early. Probably commissioned by his children and completed after the death f Saint Margaret.

The piece I copied above is a chunk that appears throughout the internet. I'm watching for something that indicates its original source, but haven't found it yet.

Agatha's parents are a favorite topic of discussion over at soc.genealogy.medieval. The discussions are worth reading if you haven't already.

This one specifically talks about the vagaries around MS. D: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/soc.genealog...

My fundamental point in this discussion is that Agatha's parents are unknown and unknowable. There are some good theories, but no way to decisively choose among them.

One of our guiding principles on Geni has been "one person, one profile". I think it's counter-productive to have more than one profile for Edward, and intellectually questionable to choose one possible solution from among many for his wife's parents.

I'm not the curator for any of the profiles involved, so I leave it to those people to make a final "best" decision for Geni.

Agatha's origin possible is questionable but a data from the official website of British Monarchy any other sources deemed most credible.

From the official website of the British Monarchy

See:
http://www.royal.gov.uk/Home.aspx > http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/KingsandQueensofEnglan...

===KINGS OF WESSEX AND ENGLAND 802–1066===

See:

[http://www.royal.gov.uk/pdf/wessex.pdf '''Anglo Saxon Family Tree (PDF)''']

„Edward the Atheling = Agatha, dau. of STEPHEN, King of Hungary”

Justin, in principle I agree, or at least half-agree. But (at this chronological distance) it is impossible to tell whether the father's parentage in genealogical trees is correct anyway. Sociological/blood test/DNA studies seem to tell us that anywhere between 10-30% of people depending on society are not fathered by the person who thinks they are the father. Admittedly it must have been smaller in royal/aristocratic societies who nevertheless lived in cramped conditions with servants/vassals all around them where there can have been little privacy, but still.....

Secondly, genealogical studies of the medieval period tend to like to pose all possible matches where there is not evidence to the contrary. I have spent ages trying to sort out the Lowes family in Northumberland, who all seem to have produced masses of children with exactly the same names at a time when church records in the area were deeply imperfect, and putting profiles with all possibilities would make such a messy nightmare as to put anyone off Geni for life. I do not see that the different genealogical theories about Agatha have really examined the original documents and their provenance. If there is good reason from the earliest extant document to believe that the identity of Agatha as a Hungarian princess and grand-daughter of "the" emperor was originally commissioned by the children (or, at latest, grand-children) of Agatha, this has to be preferable to later theories. Of course they could have been aggrandising their descent, but this usually (though not always) takes place some generations later, not with the children. (My humble family invented their own myth to deal with the simple fact that there were no records available before 1709, and it is clealy false and clearly 19th century).

For England, where I come from, Geni accepts the results of Heraldic Vistations between 1550 and 1620, where the College of Heralds sent around people to look at genealogies of those who were taking coats of arms to which they were not necesarily entitled; some of those genealogies which were accepted must necessarily be false, because peole had the motivations to falsify them.

And Geni has (look at the ancestors of Tewdyr Mawr) Venus, daughter of Ouranos and Sea Flower, and Gaia (Earth), who is classed as "deceased" although my onions still seem to be coming up resonably well today.

The various possible descents of Agatha may be equallly logical if looked at by possible family trees. They are not eqully logical if the documents are examined in detail.

Of course one must be prepared to find some proof that one's ypothesis is wrong. Mine is,I think,quite compelling. But I am entirely prepared to say, with the Cambridge Professor whose name I forget, "I am grateful to so-and-so for proving that the theory I have taught for 30 years is quite wrong"

mark dickinson

O but here we have it, and the historians, genealogists, etc, haven't.

Look up Christina of England, Nun of Ramsey. So she was the one who was able to borrow a manuscript compiled in York (I think, rather than Worcester, where they were desperately copying down any Old English texts in the face of cultural genocide) , have the clout to have it copied, and too have extra bits added on for the eleventh century,and she sent up the existing manuscript to Scotland, to the remainng family.

I think this is very clear. I always believed that I would have been OK a a professional historian!

Great discussion! I love "the chase ..."

Yes, I'm really enjoying it too. Thanks guys. Irt's this kind of research discussion that makes Geni for me.

Side point - on the popular notion that 10-30% of kids' fathers aren't. I've seen this mentioned more than once on Geni discussions, and seem to recall reading that it is actually a popularised factoid - The real statistic being closer to 3% - but where I read that escapes me. Adam Sykes, maybe.

Justin, I'm immersed in the medieval Scots at the moment, so if I curate any of the profiles you mentioned above - please adjust them to whichever historical theory you guys decide is most compelling.

@ Sharon, I had to laugh at your fathers comment. I worked as a nursery RN and when we had to have consents signed for circumcision the rule was Mother definitely- father maybe so get Mom's signature. But I always thought it was a sad way to start out your life having to have a bucchal smear for DNA testing to prove identity.

:-) I think it's Freud who says that civilization is defined by men's belief in their paternity :-)

Mark, I think the reason we disagree is that I go further than you do and divide the various ambiguities into sub-categories than I would treat differently.

1. My opinion is that if we take into account possible lacunae in biological paternity, there is no point in doing genealogy. I don't discount the problem, but I don't take it into account unless there is a specific information that it might be a problem in a particular case. As Sharon mentioned, the information I've seen puts false paternity at about 3%, But, I think we have to keep in mind that this number is likely to be very specific to time and place.

2. Where there is a primary source, I accept it. I do the same if there is a single source or if all or most reasonably contemporary sources agree, even if it's not primary.

The problem really starts when there are no sources, just speculation.

3. When there is an academic theory based on onomastics, inheritance, consanguinity and dispensations, etc., I'm inclined to accept it.

4. Where there are competing academic theories, or if as here, there are competing sources and also competing academic theories, I don't like to accept any of them. Even in this case where a royal website endorses one particular theory, it isn't because they have inside information. Their information will necessarily rely on the work of a particular genealogist charged with telling a PR story. To me, it's not real -- it's just someone's theory.

The heart and soul of Geni is collaboration, so I'm arguing my case but of course the actual decision about how to present the relationships on Geni belongs to the curator.

re-posting as the Justin Durand just deleted irself! :-)

Today at 9:22 PM
I agree with everything until 'the decision belongs to the curator.'
I think the decision belongs to the managers.
Curators come and go on profiles and they're there to facilitate ongoing improvement and maintenance of data - but, for me, the best case scenario is that they simply enable a collaborative decision.

This is your great skill, - being able to judge your entry into research conversations at the opportune moment, in order to direct them with your own historical knowledge.

But you, yourself , seldom commit to resolutions - and I think that's because, like me - you think history is a negotiated truth - always provisional;
and Curators are positioned, not to fix it, but to allow it flow.

Sharon, I both agree and disagree enough to see that we have slightly different approaches but the same overall goal.

I start from the basic idea that the facts are not negotiable. If every manager of a profile voted to make Charlemagne a son of Genghis Khan, that would not make it so. Research is not purely democratic.

Curators have to be able to put aside their own preferences, and really listen. If the managers believe that a curator is misrepresenting the facts, or pushing the certainty too far, the curator needs to hear that.

Part of the reason we have curators is to be prevent edit wars, or at least minimize them. If the managers disagree, someone has to be able to draw a line. The conversation can continue, but the curator can lock the profile to stop the war.

On this profile we have a case where Mihály as curator thinks the evidence favors István / Stephen as Agatha's father. Mark favors the earliest Anglo-Saxon sources, which would point to a relationship to Emperor Henry, but rejects them in favor of the Hungarian relationship.

Personally, I favor the Kievan theory because of the strong role that Kiev in AS England, both as a home for refugees and in other marriages about the same time.

Other managers haven't yet weighed in.

If I were curator for this profile, I would not link Agatha to any parents. They're all too speculative, and the experts disagree. I wouldn't even with with my own opinion about Kiev, because it is too much just a personal opinion.

So when I say that the final decision belongs to the curator, I'm thinking of a dynamic where all managers play a role. Mihály has listened to the arguments and made his decision about what is most reasonable. If a significant number of the managers disagreed, he would need to re-consider. But if a majority of managers perversely preferred something truly outrageous, he could legitimately refuse to adopt their view.

History is always provisional. But so far as I can see, even when historians do fairly civilised demolition jobs on each other's theories, which is not always or often,the result is rarely negotiated. I think the Curator's job is to make some sort of judgement on the current state of debate, which may take account of majority views of managers but should not be held up by any one of them. Of course I therefore think that Sharon is right in keeping deleted data and reasons why it has been deleted.

Genealogists tend to treat the historical records a bit differently from historians. There are several possible Agatha's around who could be kinswomen of "the" emperor (if it were in Latin it could be "an" emperor, in OE not). But:

(a) it is generally agreed that the bulk of manuscript D was compiled under Ealdred Archbishop of York and Bishop of Worcester (d.1069). (It contains a poem which is very much in Ealdred's style). More historians used to think it was compiled at Worcester than at York; but there are countervailing indications (it has no, or almost none, interest in Worcester under St Wulfstan of Worcester, the last Anglo-Saxon bishop in England) It continues after Aldred's death; the hand of the existing manuscript is late eleventh century or possibly very early twelfth century.

(b) Plummer put the date of copying the existing manuscript at around 1080 (on the understandable grounds that after Wulfstan's death it could not have been done in Worcester, and before his death the scribes there were very busy recording what they could of Anglo-Saxon secular as well as religious culture), As Whitelock and others have showed, there are strong reasons for believing that it was copied, with new information about Edward the Exile and his children, afterwards: the hagiographric detail about St Margaret of Scotland would not have been appropriate for a living person.

The natural meaning of the words in manuscript D is that having become a distinguished person in Hungary he married a kinswoman of the emperor who was Hungarian. Of course he could have married a kinswoman of the emperor who was Polish, German, or Kievian, and we can find Agathas there. But this is not the natural meaning of the words: we would have something like "he became so distinguished a person in Hungary that princes elsewhere sought a marriage connection, and he married a princess of ........ Her name was Agatha"

(c) Not only did he go to England from Hungary, but so did his children Eadward the Aetheling and Saint Margaret of Scotland - and their mother. If she was from anywhere outside Hungary, one would have expected her and the children to return to her birth-court, and for them to arrive in England from there.

(d) The evidence seems to me overwhelming that the currently existing manuscript D was copied probably from York rather than Worcester (not that it really matters), and commissioned by Eadward;s children or at latest grandchildren to show the importance of their line. Of course it is always possible - if highly unlikely - that Agatha was a peasant. But if we are to choose between kinswomen of the emperor, Agatha of Hungary must win hands down.

I am glad that we male genealogists have only a 3% chance of paternal (registered) ancestry being wrong. Oddly enough, Muslim funerals seem to call the deceased son/daughter of the mother, rather than the father, on the grounds that only this is certain; despite Islam being in my opinion a highly patriarchal religion in practice.