The ''Historia pontificum et comitum Engolismensium'' ("History of the Bishops and Counts of Angoulême") is an anonymous genealogical history of the Taillefer dynasty of the

Counts Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility.L. G. Pine, Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty'' ...

and

Bishops A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

Angoulême Angoulême (; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''Engoulaeme''; oc, Engoleime) is a communes of France, commune, the Prefectures of France, prefecture of the Charente Departments of France, department, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of southwestern Franc ...

written around 1160.

Georges Duby Georges Duby (7 October 1919 – 3 December 1996) was a French historian who specialised in the social and economic history of the Middle Ages. He ranks among the most influential medieval historians of the twentieth century and was one of Franc ...

, Jane Dunnett, trans., ''Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 116. It presents its subject family as a

lineage Lineage may refer to: Science * Lineage (anthropology), a group that can demonstrate its common descent from an apical ancestor or a direct line of descent from an ancestor * Lineage (evolution), a temporal sequence of individuals, populati ...

, concentrating on

agnatic Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritanc ...

descent from its founder, William (Guillaume) Taillefer. It records the legend that Taillefer died defending his lands from the

Normans The Normans (Norman language, Norman: ''Normaunds''; french: Normands; la, Nortmanni/Normanni) were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norsemen, Norse Viking settlers and indigenous West Fran ...

with a magic sword. For events before 1030 it depends heavily on

Adhemar of Chabannes Adhemar is both a given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: Given name * Adhemar of Salerno (died 861), prince * Adhemar of Capua (died after 1000), prince * Adhémar de Chabannes (988-1034), French monk and historian * Adhema ...

, but thereafter is an independent source. It provides a precise record of the "succession of counts and bishops, of their genealogy, their fights and their alliances".Jean Burias
Review of Jacques Boussard, ed. (1957)
in ''Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes'', 116 (1958): 237–39. The text was first published, from one manuscript, by Father

Philippe Labbe Philippe Labbe ( la, Philippus Labbeus; 10 July 1607 – 16 or 17 March 1667) was a French Jesuit writer on historical, geographical and philological questions. Born in Bourges, he entered the Society of Jesus on 28 September 1623, ...

in 1657. Further fragments were discovered and edited by Dom Martin Bouquet and his collaborators before, in 1858, Eusèbe Castaigne published and edited the full text based, not on the manuscripts, but on Labbe and Bouquet et al. A fourteenth-century manuscript from the Angoumois was brought back from the

Vatican Archives , seal = Seal of the Vatican Secret Archives.svg , seal_width = 200 , seal_caption = Former seal of the Vatican Apostolic Archive , logo = , formed = , jurisdiction = , headquarters = Cortile del Belvedere, Vatican City , coordinates ...

by George de Manteyer, and formed the basis for the first

critical edition Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...

, published by Jacques Boussard in 1957, as an extension of the doctoral thesis he defended in 1956 for the Faculty of Letters of the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

. Boussard speculates that the author was a canon of the cathedral of Angoulême, perhaps the one in charge of the archives or the library, and certainly a contemporary of the last persons he mentions.

Editions

, ed. "Historia pontificum et comitum Engolismensium". ''Nova Bibliotheca manuscriptorum'', vol. II, 249–64. Paris, 1657. * Jacques Boussard, ed. ''Historia pontificum et comitum Engolismensium''. Paris: Librairie d'Argences, 1957.

Notes

{{Reflist 12th-century Latin books Genealogy publications