between the Briennes and the emergent house of Joinville. In various
ways, the two dynasties provide a pertinent counterpoint to each other, as
we shall see over the course of the next few chapters.^7 Like so many of
their contemporaries, the Engelberts quickly proved perfectly capable of
alternately endowing, protecting, pressurizing and plundering religious
establishments. It is noteworthy that the only charter we have that was
actually issued by a Count Engelbert is one in which he recalls the
impious depredations of his predecessor, also called Count Engelbert,
against the nearby, highly prestigious abbey of Montier-en-Der.^8 The
Briennes’relationship with this monastery was to prove pivotal in the
family’s early history. Already, by the twelfth century, it was the counts’
habitual burial place, and hence it could be concluded that they were
advocatiof the abbey.^9
The family really emerges from the mist in the time of Walter I, thefirst
count of Brienne whom we know to have definitely borne that title.
Certainly, from Walter onwards, there was a Brienne‘genealogical tri-
umph’, comparable to the much better-known one achieved by the con-
temporary Capetian kings of France. For more than 300 years–or, quite
possibly, for more than 400–the Briennes kept on producing priceless
male heirs, and so preserved their title and land within their own grasp.
The senior line of the dynasty would outlast both their suzerains, the
counts of Champagne of the house of Blois, and even the Capetians in the
direct line,finally dying out in the mid-1360s.
The bulk of this chapter will focus thematically on the rest of the early
Briennes, in the century and a half that elapsed between Walter I’s
accession and the death of his great-grandson in 1191. Starting with
Walter, there was a succession offive generations of counts of Brienne–
father to son, each time–alternating the names of‘Walter’and‘Erard’
(and this stretches beyond the purview of this chapter, into the early
1200s). To give the framework for the period currently under consider-
ation: Walter I was count of Brienne from around the 1040s through to
the late 1080s; Erard I from then onwards, until sometime in the early to
mid-1120s; Walter II, who succeeded as a minor, was count until 1158;
and,finally, Erard II was count for more than thirty years, until his death
on the Third Crusade.^10
(^7) ‘Catalogue’, no. 5;The Cartulary of Montier-en-Der, no. 36; Alberic of Trois-Fontaines,
Chronica, ed. P. Scheffer-Boichorst, inMGH,SS, xxiii, 790.
(^8) ‘Catalogue’, no. 3. However, Bouchard has revised the boundaries for the date of this
9 charter, to 996–1026, inThe Cartulary of Montier-en-Der, no. 41.
10 See‘Catalogue’, nos. 35–6.
For the contentious dates in this list, see‘Catalogue’, no. 35;The Cartulary of Montier-en-
Der, nos. 54, 57, 108; and Roserot,Dictionnaire, i, 109, 243.
12 ‘Between Bar-sur-Aube and Rosnay’(c. 950–1191)