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Person Info

• Name: Constance
• Sex: F


Parents:

Family:
Marriage:

• Manasser Count Of Dammartin .^m1
  
• Manasser Count Of Dammartin Death: 15 Dec 1037 in Etain

Children:

1. Eudes Count Of Dammartin Death: Abt 1061
2. Adelaide
3. Eustachie

Bibliography

Sources with Information about marriage to Manasser Count Of Dammartin

names:

[Ref: Moriarty Plantagenet p231],

child:

[Ref: ES III.4 #676, Mathieu Dammartin p60]

Sources with Inaccurate marriage information

child:

Hugh Count of Dammartin (#10846) [Ref: ES III.4 #676]

Research Notes:
doubtfully attributed child of Robert II [Ref: HenryII rober102 5/29/2012]

probably Countess of Dammartin [Ref: Moriarty Plantagenet p231]

Constance (de France?) [Ref: Mathieu Dammartin p60]

(de Dammartin) [Ref: ES III.4 #676]

The alleged relationship between King Robert II and Constance, wife of Manasser, count of Dammartin, was conjectured fairly assertively by Joseph Depoin in 1912, largely on the ground of onomastics, and the case was put forward again more circumspectly by Jean-Noel Mathieu in a 1996 paper. However, it remains open to doubt for several reasons.
First, the name Constance is stated to have been uncommon at this time in northern France, and furthermore its introduction to the Dammartin lineage was followed in the next generation by the names Odo and Hugo, belonging also in the royal family. Mathieu considered that Dammartin was probably given to Manasser by Robert along with his daughter in 1023, but this line of argument is rendered nearly circular with the suggestion that Robert might have contracted the union of his daughter with the younger son of a minor supporter in order to take advantage of Dammartin's strategic location on the route from Paris to Soissons and Laon. So the king gave away Dammartin with the bride and yet gave the bride to obtain Dammartin: even allowing for shades of grey in the circumstances, it is hard to see why the gift of an important lordship, elevated to comital rank, would not have achieved a consolidation of alliances on its own, without the addition of a daughter who might have been more profitably bestowed upon someone else of higher rank and pre-existing power.
Since Constance of Arles had been Robert's wife for around twenty years in 1023, it is also hard to see why her name could not have been adopted in this interval by unrelated aristocratic families wishing to compliment the queen as a girl's god-mother; or, since the quality of constancy was admired without reference to her, the queen's name was apt enough to be used independently of the royal court. So for that matter were Odo and Hugo, which had both become fairly commonplace by the late tenth century.
The name Constance was certainly not unexampled in previous and contemporary generations to the north of the queen's original home in Provence, in lesser noble families amongst which a younger son like Manasser might have found his bride: for instance, Constance, wife of Odo, occurs ca 980 in a charter of Cluny. Other instances of this name during Robert's reign appear in charters at Bourges, Ainay and Poitiers, while the masculine form Constantius remained a popular name in Poitou throughout four centuries around the year 1000. So the onomastics are by no means compelling for a royal connection of the countess of Dammartin.
The only further evidences adduced by Mathieu are a single charter given by Count Manasser in the presence of the king, the queen and their sons in 1031, and the fact that his successor and presumed descendant Renard was described as 'consanguineus' to King Philippe II. However, Mathieu himself admits that the latter can be explained by different hypotheses, while as to the former, any count might be expected to have attended the king and witnessed charters along with him, and there is certainly no indication of a family relationship in the cited example.
Mathieu also remarked that, according to Glaber, Robert and Constance had two daughters, who are both accounted for without the countess of Dammartin. By means of a forced ingenuity, Mathieu adds that Glaber did not specify there were _only_ two daughters.
At best the case is unproven. A charter given by Manasser and his sons in the presence of King Robert, Queen Constance and their sons, and another given later by Manasser's heir in the presence of their son King Henri I do not allude to any relationship between the respective families. NB Constance of Dammartin was evidently dead before the latter charter, which was dated 9 August without year: this cannot have been earlier than 1038 or later than 1059. [Ref: Peter Stewart SGM 8/25/2005-205724]

thought to have been the second daughter of Robert II the Pious, king of the Franks by his third wife Constance de Provence, but this is not certain [Ref: Peter Stewart SGM 5/19/2002-215131]

The argument is that Dammartin passed from the crown to Manasses, that Constance is a very rare name at the time, practically unknown in the north, except for the queen, and that Manasses named his eldest son Hugh, which while not as rare points to the possibility of a connection with the Capetians. Against this is the statement of Raoul Glaber, who assigns Robert and Constance just two (unnamed) daughters, and we already know of Adelaide and Alvais, but I am assured by Christian Settipani that Glaber is not to be trusted on such a detail anyhow. [Ref: Todd Farmerie SGM 5/19/2002-234113]



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