Nina Rowe
[See also: CAROLINGIAN DYNASTY]
Aimond, Charles. La cathédrale de Verdun: étude historique et archéologique. Nancy: Royer,
1909.
Fels, Étienne. “Verdun.” Congrès archéologique (Nancy et Verdun) 96(1933):391–418.
Grodecki, Louis. L’architecture ottonienne: au seuil de l’art roman. Paris: Colin, 1958.
Ventre, André, and Marcel Delangle. “Les fouilles de la cathédrale de Verdun.” Monuments
historiques de la France 2(1937): 9–17.
VERMANDOIS
. By the Carolingian period, the Roman civitas Vermanduorum had been split into two
parts, of which the one centered on the towns of Saint-Quentin and Péronne was alone
called the pagus Vermanduensis. Situated on the plateau that served as a source to the
Scheldt, the Oise, and the Somme, and crossed by Roman roads, it became of great
economic and strategic value. It was one of the earliest areas to develop a feudal
vocabulary (vassi and fideles used in 948 and fevum as the equivalent of beneficium by
1036/43) and to collect a money cens (pre1018–40). Saint-Quentin, named for a 3rd-
century martyr, received one of the oldest communal charters in 1080 from count Hugues
le Grand (ca. 1068–1102). Along with Lower Lorraine, it was the region of the chansons
celebrating Raoul de Cambrai and Ibert de Ribemont.
In the late 9th and early 10th centuries, Vermandois was ruled by descendants of
Charlemagne in the male line, of whom the most prominent was Count Herbert II (900–
943). He attempted to expand his holdings by conquest and by making his five-year-old
son, Hugues, archbishop of Reims. Though he was the captor of King Charles III the
Simple (r. 893–922) from 923 to 929, first at Château-Thierry and then at Péronne,
Herbert’s influence had deteriorated by the time of his death, when his sons divided his
remaining lands. Vermandois was eventually united to Valois and the two countships
passed to a collateral Capetian line by the marriage of their heiress, Adèle, to Hugues, a
younger son of King Henry I (r. 1031–60) and a brother of Philip I (r. 1060–1108).
Hugues participated in the First Crusade and died in 1102 at Tarsus on his second
expedition to the Levant.
On the death of Count Raoul le Lépreux (r. 1162–67), Vermandois/Valois passed to
the elder of his two sisters, Elizabeth (d. 1183), wife of Philippe d’Alsace, count of
Flanders. Philippe disputed her inheritance with King Philip II Augustus. The Treaty of
Boves (1185) gave the king Amiens and sixty-five castles in western Vermandois. After
Philippe’s death, the king acquired the rest by the Treaty of Arras (1192), except for
Saint-Quentin proper and Valois, which both went to Eleanor, Elizabeth’s younger sister,
reverting to the crown on her death in 1213.
R.Thomas McDonald
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1792