Genealogical Tables: A Graphic Representation of Kinship

Summary

Portraying the structure and every individual of the kinship group in a consistent graphic representation is necessary when investigating an early medieval kinship. It's importance goes beyond that of a simple genealogical compilation to support the analysis of sources. The representation of each generation of the group can become a real ‘text’ made up of names, relations and titles: a ‘text’ that collects many of the characteristics of a group of individuals and that becomes appreciable thanks to the overall vision obtained only when drawing up the same scheme.

All the studies that previously dealt with the Hucpoldings show trees and diagrams more or less organized and reliable, whose main purpose is to reconstruct the succession of generations only in regard to the alleged comital authority over Bologna. This interpretation results in a representation that mainly favours the vertical line of father-son connections. This is further emphasized by the limited space-time depth of that approach. Following this perspective, both cognatic ties and the female component remains obscure, indeed it is completely neglected.

The following tables instead consider and add to each generation of the group the individuals that were linked to them through marriages. Broad horizontal relationships and the primary role played by women as kinship connections thus become immediately visible elements in the tables and find effective correspondence in the social configuration of the Frankish aristocratic Sippen. As long as they deal with extended kinship and cognatic ties (Tables G1–G5), the schemes portray many of the elite kinship groups active in Italy between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The aim, however, is not to prepare a ‘complete’ genealogical scheme of the Hucpoldings and each of the individuals connected with them over four centuries, but preserve the intelligibility of the representation. Instead, the tables here delineate the main parental, and therefore political and patrimonial, bonds initiated by the various members of the kinship group through time.

To facilitate the understanding of the patterns, originally a different color has been assigned to each kinship group, which, when applied to the lines of affiliation, indicate the links of men and women to each kinship.