GEN-MEDIEVAL-L ArchivesArchiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2008-03 > 1204937584
From: "M.Sjostrom" <>
Subject: Sir Paunettus,kinsman to Edward the Black Prince: Clue to ancestry of Paonet deRuet?
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008 16:53:04 -0800 (PST)
About the term of 'being kinsman'...
I have now and then observed two slightly different
traditions (even simultaneously at work) in using
1. Kinship within four degrees from a common
ancestor, whether cognatic or agnatic...
2. Recognized patrilineal kinship, even if more
remote than four degrees.
I have thought that they came to late-medieval western
European thinking from two different backgrounds, both
however important to that knightly society:
1. The designation by the church that one's kin
within four degrees are consanguineous in the sense of
making it forbidden to marry without papal
dispensation. People outside those degrees would then
not be proper kin, because they are not consanguineous
in ecclesiastical count. Not incestuous.
2. The tribal emphasis on male line. This predates
all influence of christian church. Only very few
tribal societies have been based on some other form of
kinship than purely male line, whereas most tribal
societies around the world I have looked at, have been
emphasizing agnatic line.
Of course, a portion of those agnatic lineages were
fabricated or imagined, within tribe, but even the
effort put to such fiction-creating shows its
significance as a basis of relations within tribe.
In this specific question of mgr de Roet, possibly a
very remote kinsman (via Hainaut lineage) of queen
Philippa, I can see some possibilities of the latter
view being the basis of that one mention in
contemporary document. It thus were the 'imagined'
agnatic lineage common with Philippa, mother of Black
Prince, which were reason there. And if this
speculation is correct, then it means that
contemporaries knew the Roets being an agnatic cadet
branch of the old dynasty of Hainaut.
Looking for last minute shopping deals?
Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping