Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

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Like Blois, Anjou grew up out of the original domains of Robert the Strong. Fulk the Red, who died in 941, and was rewarded with Anjou for his prowess in resisting the Normans, was the first hereditary Count of Anjou of whom history has any knowledge, though legends tell of earlier mythical heroes and a witch ancestress, whose taint twisted into evil the strong passions and high courage of the later representatives of the race. Though their exploits are told in a somewhat romantic form, there remains enough to enable us to form more individual impressions of the fierce, wayward Angevin lords than of most of the shadowy heroes of early feudalism. With Geoffrey Martel, great-grandson of Fulk the Red, who died in 1060, the first line of the Counts of Anjou became extinct; but his sister’s son Geoffrey the Bearded got possession of the county, and became the ancestor of the famous line that later ages than their own celebrated as the house of Plantagenet. His descendants grew in dominions and influence. Touraine they had possessed since Henry I. had transferred that county from the house of Blois to Geoffrey Martel. They now turned their eyes on Maine, the border district that separated them from the Normans. This brought about a long struggle between the Norman dukes and the Angevin counts, which was not finally ended until Henry I. of Normandy and England married his daughter, the widowed Empress Matilda, to Geoffrey the Fair, from which marriage sprang the greatest of the Angevins, Henry II. of England, Normandy and Anjou. Burgundy.