ANJOU, Fulk IV of

Other Events and Attributes:

• Differentiator: Fulk may have married as many as five times; there is some doubt regarding the exact number or how many he repudiated.
• Relation to Me: 29 GGF
• Name: le Réchin The nickname by which he is usually referred has no certain translation. Philologists have made numerous very different suggestions, including "quarreler", "rude", "sullen", "surly" and "heroic". He was noted to be " a man with many reprehensible, even scandalous, habits" by Orderic Vitalis.
• Royalty & Nobility: Between 1068 and 1109; Count of Anjou

Notes:

In 1096 Fulk wrote an incomplete history of Anjou and its rulers titled Fragmentum historiae Andegavensis or "History of Anjou." The authorship and authenticity of this work is disputed. Only the first part of the history, describing Fulk's ancestry, is still in existance. The second part, supposedly describing Fulk's own rule, has not been recovered. If he did write it, it is one of the first medieval works of history written by a layman.

The younger brother of count Geoffroy III "le Barbu", Fulk rebelled against his brother and captured him in 1067, and then again in 1068, when he imprisoned his brother again (not releasing him until 1096), and assumed control of the Angevin possessions. He persuaded the French king Phillipe I to accept this arrangement by ceding his paternal heritage of Gâtinais to the king. His later years were troubled by rebellion from his elder son Geoffroy (IV) Martel, who predeceased him, and Fulk was succeeded by his second son Foulques V in 1109.

Family/Spouse: MONTFORT, Bertrade of. Bertrade (daughter of DE MONTFORT, Simon I and Living) was born in 1059 in Île-de-France, France; died on 14 Feb 1117 in Fontevrault, Maine-et-Loire, Pays de la Loire, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. ANJOU, King of Jerusalem, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine Foulques V le Jeune Count of was born in 1092 in Anjou, Isère, Rhône-Alpes, France; died on 10 Nov 1143 in `Akko, Hazafon, Israel.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 30 GGF
• Royalty & Nobility: Count of Gâtinais

II + ANJOU, Ermengarde d. Ermengarde (daughter of ANJOU, Fulk III of and Living) was born in 1018 in Anjou, Isère, Rhône-Alpes, France; died on 18 Mar 1076 in Anjou, Isère, Rhône-Alpes, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 30 GGM
• Royalty & Nobility: Duchess of Burgundy
• Name: She was sometimes known as Ermengarde-Blanche.

Notes:

Married to count Geoffroy of Gâtinais, she was a widow by late 1045 or early 1046 when her mother Hildegarde departed for the Holy Land [Halphen (1906), 293 (act #169); Guillot (1972), 1: 102, n. 453; 2: 159 (act C 242)]. She then became the second wife of duke Robert I of Burgundy, probably not long afterward (since her daughter by that marriage was married in 1067), and died on the same day as her husband, 18 March 1076. As heiress of her brother Geoffroy II Martel, count of Anjou, Ermengarde carried the Angevin possessions to her sons Geoffroy III "le Barbu" and Foulques IV "le Rechin".

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 31 GGF
• Royalty & Nobility: Count of Anjou
• Name: The Black

Notes:

Celebrated as one of the first great builders of medieval castles. He constructed an estimated 100 of them, along with abbeys, across the Loire Valley in what is now France. He fought successive wars with neighbors in Brittany, Blois, Poitou and Aquitaine and traveled four times to Jerusalem on pilgrimage during the course of his life. Fulk was a natural horseman and a fearsome warrior, with a keen sense of military strategy that saw him get the better of most of his opponents. Fulk was also a devout Christian, and built, enlarged or endowed several abbeys and monasteries, such as the Abbey of Beaulieu-les-Loches, Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, Saint-Aubin, and a convent, Notre Dame de la Charité at Ronceray in Angers. Although he never learned to write, he endowed a school with revenue to provide poor students with an education. Fulk also undertook four pilgrimages to Jerusalem.

Fulk + Living. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 32 GGF
• Royalty & Nobility: Between 960 and 987; Count of Anjou

I married MEAUX, Adele of in Mar in Anjou, Isère, Rhône-Alpes, France. Adele (daughter of VERMANDOIS, Robert de and DE CHALON, Adelaide) was born in 934; died in 982. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Relation to Me: 32 GGM
• Royalty & Nobility: Countess of Chalon and Anjou