Talk:Pagus of Hasbania

I tend to think the "Counts of" sections should be deleted

These sections are not about Hesbaye, but about later entities, but the connections are not really sure. Of course they can be mentioned and linked to, but while this article is so poorly cited and incomplete, and indeed while this field is still so speculative, I think they just distract from what is really known and confuse readers.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Should the article name change to "Hesbaye (History)"?

I have worked on this article for some time but did not start it. I have tried to write it based on the existing title, but it remains a "gorilla in the room" that there really was no county of Hesbaye. That seems to have been a belief of whoever made the original, but this is not how scholars see it. Trying to write this way twists the article and makes it difficult. Are there any watchers of this page who would have a concern with a name change?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:34, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Certainly not "Hesbaye (History)", maybe "History of Hesbaye". But I don't think that's the best description of its contents. It is very difficult to follow as it stands, but it is purely a history of public authority and lordship in the Hesbaye in the early Middle Ages. Srnec (talk) 23:46, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: yes. My thinking is that "freeing" the article from having to be about "counts" means it can be rebuilt as a more general and straightforward history. I am basically suggesting the original article should probably not have existed, and trying to stick to the original theme has made it hard to write a straightforward regional history, which is what I propose to make out of it. The region was important during the medieval period though, so various secular jurisdictions would still be central to such a history. I suppose the question is whether anyone really either likes what I have made of this, or has some better alternative vision. My own opinion is that there is decent raw material in the article, but it needs restructuring. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

It definitely feels "raw". Perhaps Hesbaye in the Early Middle Ages if you feel it must be retitled. Srnec (talk) 22:41, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: well, I do feel that trying to stick to the title has made it difficult. I have felt compelled to constantly try to stick to a theme of lordships connected to the territory. On a detail though: I don't see why you are thinking the name should be so long and specific? The term Hesbaye / Haspengouw / Hasbania was not used before the middle ages, and not used much after except perhaps by the church, so if we just specify the article is about history then it is "clear enough"? That would keep it away from modern usage by geologists, conservationists, and tourism promoters?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:06, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: this is another slow cooker. Any new thoughts? To me it seems better to name it a history article than a "medieval history" article, but then the wording is awkward still. It strikes me that it is the history of a pagus, and that in theory it should be possible to do a pagus history just like we do county histories. Problem is that people confuse the two. This is a big pagus which may never have been one county, and so handling the two together is not working. (Ewig thought it might for a while have been had a single Merovingian Duke.) Looking at the previous discussion:

• I should have said we have no Roman records for it. Many of the pagi of this part of Europe, probably all, had some sort of Roman era roots.
• I also can't say the concept ended in 1500 or so. For example it continued in discussions of church jurisdictions. Indeed the modern geographical and touristic meanings stem directly from the old meaning.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:22, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

The problem with a history of a pagus article is that there aren't any pagi today. They are all historical. So a "history of" article is redundant. But if we keep in mind the modern geographical and touristic meanings, then what we have here is not a well-rounded history and is very incomplete. I'm not sure why you object to specifying a time period. Perhaps it should be merged with Hesbaye. Srnec (talk) 18:28, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: in case you are still interested, I continue to think about this, but also some similar cases. They don't all need the same solutions:

• County of Hainaut is defined by a pagus and is automatically historical. Easy case.
• Counts of Liège is another case where there is more to say about the pagus than the counts. Unlike Hesbaye, there is very little to say about either. For now I will probably just add some discussion about the pagus to the existing article. Maybe it should be renamed to Pagus of Liège. County of Liège might be a compromise.
• Pagus of Brabant is one I just created. This solution is the Dutch and French WP approach, and English WP was already partly based on that. This case involves splitting up by periods, because before 1083 there is no simple Brabant concept apart from the Pagus.

I am currently thinking that this article should be Pagus of Hesbaye or (out of your proposals) History of Hesbaye. Concerning your challenges above:

• I did not originally make the article and probably would have kept it together with Hesbaye for longer. However, I see no big reason to merge it back in now. Even with some trimming I think there is enough material to justify a stand alone article, and restructuring should also aim to make further expansion possible. If we merge it to the Hesbaye article, the historical discussion would be quite dominant.
• I am not opposed to period-based articles, as per the new Brabant article I just made. There is no clear break point between periods in this case though, because the pagus remained a pagus and never became a political entity like Brabant. I think "historical" (or perhaps ancien regime) versus contemporary is the obvious fuzzy break point in this case.
• I see no point having Hesbaye in the Early Middle Ages because there is not much to write about the period after the Early Middle Ages, and what little there is, needs the background from the Early period.

What do you think about Pagus of Hesbaye?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:56, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I feel like we are talking past one another. What do you mean by "there is not much to write about the period after the Early Middle Ages"? If that is the case, then why do we have an article at Hesbaye and this article? Why oppose a merge and just keep it all in one place? (Pagus of Hesbaye is okay, I guess.) Srnec (talk) 16:03, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: Sorry for being confusing and thanks for the feedback.

• There is clearly a modern topic as shown by the article Hesbaye but it is clearly very different from a history article. The geographical meaning has stuck around from beginning to end, and so the modern region is something that can be talked about in terms of tourism, economics, agriculture and so on. So that is fine but it could be overwhelmed by a medieval story about pagi and counts.
• The way I see it you proposed either a merger (one article), or else breaking up the topic into three periods (Early Medieval, and Contemporary, and, by implication, there is a period in between). In answer to that I am saying I feel two articles is better than one or three, and fuzzy periodization is better than an over-strict periodization.

All comments welcome and I'll keep thinking as I work on the other regions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:35, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Just looked again at the Hesbaye article. Certainly the current short non-history part would not be hurt by merging with a better version of this article. So one article is an option.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:46, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

UPDATE. I will start with a rename and overhaul, and we can consider potential merges at a later stage. Also potentially controversial, although most of the text was by me, is that I think this will involve a lot of shortening. I think the discussions about the Meerssen treaty and different speculations about the 4 counties should be trimmed a lot. Anyone who finds the material useful for other articles or on other Wikipedias can of course still find it in the article history.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:44, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Useful source?

• Suttor Marc, « Le rôle d'un fleuve comme limite ou frontière au Moyen Âge. La Meuse, de Sedan à Maastricht », Le Moyen Age, 2010/2 (Tome CXVI), p. 335-366. DOI : 10.3917/rma.162.0335. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-le-moyen-age-2010-2-page-335.htm

--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:37, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Edits

User:Andrew Lancaster. Andrew. I though you just told me that my reading of the term pagus was wrong, based on the Wikipedia article. The article describes the Roman use which you said was incorrect. Also, gau is stated to be the equivalent of the English shire, which in turn is said to equivalent to county. Also, there were some other corrections related to Warner of Grez which you deleted. Did you mean to do that? Dr. Grampinator (talk) 19:43, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

No that was a mistake. I did not notice the Grez bit and I've changed that back. The links to pagus and gau are to articles which should be able to cover the terms as used here. If they are not, then the best practice thing to do would be to improve those articles and not delete the links.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:16, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Well, there's the Catch 22. I can't fix the pagus and gau articles since I don't know what they mean in this context. But, just a suggestion, the name of the article is not "pagus or gau of Hasbania". And (personal opinion), I don't like terms in a title to be hyperlinked, but that's just me.

I'm clearly a chorus of one here in that I'm having trouble figuring out what's going on, and part of it is inconsistencies. For example, is it pagus of Hasbania or Pagus of Hasbania? An alternative name is identified as Haspinga, and then there is a County of Haspinga. Is the pagus of Hasbania different from the County of Haspinga, given the identification of the latter as an alternative of the former. The first paragraph identifies Hesbaye as the modern name, and then the second paragraph begins by referring to Hasbania as Hesbaye. The article Hesbaye also refers to the region as the pagus of Hesbaye.

The first paragraph says "Unlike many smaller pagi, Hasbania did not correspond to a single county, but contained several." This seems to imply that many of the smaller pagi were in fact counties. There does not appear to be an English word corresponding to pagus. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 22:53, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

You don't have to be the one to fix the pagus or gau article. I am just saying that we should edit so as to allow that to happen in future. It is just the standard Wikipedia method: "no deadline" etc. I don't think anyone is proposing article titles with hyphens or links? If I understand you correctly, part of your confusion is coming from the way in which one article can be covering several overlapping concepts. This does not seem unusual to me, but the question is whether the confusion is coming from the way the articles are written - in which case then indeed we'll need to identify why.

• "Haspingau" (instead of "Hasbania") is a term which starts to appear later in the period, and in a limited way. Verhulst claims that it has a different meaning, only referring to part of Hasbania, but I have not seen this creating a wide agreement. In one famous case it is used to refer to a county. In other cases it just seems to be an alternative new name. (More generally the suffix gau was being added to other names. Earlier documents for example always mentioned Hennau and Masao, not Hennegau and Maasgau.)
• The treaty of Meerssen in 870 says there were 4 counties in the pagus Hasbania. I think there is great uncertainty and little consensus about what happened next.
• However, there are a small number of references to a county which was apparently called Hasbania (or Haspengouw), most notably the one in 1040 when a royal charter says it was being taken over by the bishop. Places described as being in that county are Jemappe-sur-Meuse and Donceel. The most common hypothesis is still (as in Vanderkindere) that there was a county of this name in this area between Geer and Meuse. Baerten argues that it became the advocacy of Hasbania. http://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1962_num_40_4_2438
• Historically, historians sometimes assumed pagi all contained one county each unless there was a record which specifically said otherwise (as in Brabant and Hasbania). It is probably still widely assumed if we go back to 870, but it is a dangerous assumption to make in subsequent centuries, even in a small pagus like Liugas.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:35, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Again, I'm not making changes, just suggestions.

• The first line of the article should be "The pagus of Hasbania" reflecting the title of the article.
• Should "pagus" be capitalized, italicized? Should Hasbania be italicized? Why is the current Hesbaye not being used? Why not use Haspengouw, and shouldn't that be italizicized?
• Gao in the first line seems incorrect. Groẞgau is used later. It seems like gao denotes a single "county" but I'm not sure since the definitions in the linked articles are incorrect. The first line implies that pagus and gau are synonymous, but elsewhere is says otherwise.
• Shouldn't the reference to "Pagus of Brabant" be "pagus of Bracbant" by the same convention.
• The second paragraph starts "The Hesbaye was a core agricultural territory..." If so, why are we using the term Hasbania?
• The paragraph concludes by saying that Liège waslocated in Hasbania. This contradicts the dicussions in Pagus of Liugas. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 19:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

No problem. My proposals:

• It says The pagus or gau of Hasbania, so that covers what you propose already and adds an alternative term. Do you see a problem with that?
• I think pagus should be italicised as a Latin term, but not capitalized? Haspengouw is also a term which can be mentioned in this article of course. The Dutch speaking part is smaller than the French speaking part and the French name is slightly better known.
• The first line says gau, not gao. I don't see a problem here either. A grossgau is a type of gau, and pagus and gau are more or less synonomous. Where does it say otherwise? A grossgau is just a modern term for a big gau that would have several smaller districts (whether gaus or counties) in it.
• Brabant is a better known spelling than Bracbant. Why use the C?
• Hesbaye is a modern name of the same region, and the passage you mention is talking about the region as a geographical entity (that still exists) so it seems acceptable to use the modern term in such cases?
• Where is there a discussion which says Liège was not in Hasbania?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:22, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

User:Andrew Lancaster. Andrew. I'm sure you are getting tired of this conversation, and part of the problem is it occurring in two different articles. For example, you say above: "pagus and gau are more or less synonomous". In the Liugas discussion you say: "The word pagus was also at least sometimes equivalent to a gau." These are not the same thing. You also refer to gaus as counties above, and elsewhere say that isn't the case. I think that all of this could be solved if there was a concise definition of what these terms mean, because I think the meaning may change with the context.

For example, my understanding on the subject of Liege is this (from the Wikipedia articles unless otherwise noted):

• Liege is not part of Liugas
• Sigehard was count in Hainaut and Liugas
• The county of Sigarhard (sp.) included Wandre (Liege) and Esneux in the pagus of Liège
• The bishop's seat moved from the Roman capital at Tongeren to a new base at Liège, both of which were located in Hasbania.
• Sigehard is not identified as a count in Hasbania.
• There are no counts of Liège (your quote).

It seems to me that these 6 bullets are contradictory. Not all of them can be true.

I'm not going to keep pointing these things out, as I clearly don't understand what's going on. Here's an example of one exchange:

• "Counties on the other hand generally can not be assumed to be territorial" (your quote)
• A county by definition is territorial (my response)
• No, I think this is what confuses people (your response).

I was relying on the Wikipedia definition and you were apparently using another definition that I am not aware of. I can't argue a point if I don't understand the definitions, so I am done here. For the record, I think that the introduction of the concept of pagus into the subject matter is a big deal. You've stated that it is well accepted with current historians, and I guess I have to go with that. I have seen nothing to change my original feeling that a pagus is just a bunch of counties and is redundant with "region." If nothing else, I hope you can appreciate that the material being presented is in no way crystal clear. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 23:24, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

"For example, you say above: "pagus and gau are more or less synonomous". In the Liugas discussion you say: "The word pagus was also at least sometimes equivalent to a gau." These are not the same thing. You also refer to gaus as counties above, and elsewhere say that isn't the case. I think that all of this could be solved if there was a concise definition of what these terms mean, because I think the meaning may change with the context." The two sentences you compare are both deliberately written to be inexact, but I don't see how they disagree with each other. I can't think of a case where gau and pagus are contrasted, but I also don't know of any source which would justify us simply inventing a simpler definition and equating the two terms. Keep in mind that for this period, historians themselves are uncertain. And secondly, things like this were changing over time, and different between regions.

I don't see how the 6 bullets are contradictory. There is one obvious seeming contradiction which is that your third bullet uses Vanderkindere's old terminology, "pagus of Liège" which we can better convert to avoid confusion. But we know he means the pagus called Liugas. (But where did you find that terminology? Is it still in our articles somewhere?) Was there any other contradiction than this?

A pagus in later medieval periods is just a region, and so we don't see the word often used in those periods. In the treaty of Meerssen in 870 though, the pagi are widely believed to have been used to define administrative districts. I suppose that in some ways your difficulties require a more technical article about counties and pagi, but that is a challenge I don't feel up to doing in a rush. :) Nonn did not help you but perhaps this article by Michel Margue can help us? https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_2011_num_89_2_8120 See for example the long footnote 7, which refers to the history of the literature:

Depuis le dernier quart du xixe siècle, un net progrès fut réalisé dans l’analyse de la terminologie relative au pagi et Gaue en Lotharingie : entre les deux interprétations extrêmes d’un tissu homogène et généralisé de circonscriptions administratives aux frontières clairement établies d’une part ou d’une terminologie purement topographique se référant à des paysages/régions historiques d’autre part s’établit une vue plus nuancée plaidant pour une analyse au cas par cas, selon le contexte de rédaction, le cadre institutionnel et l’espace géographique. Cette avancée est due à des études régionales et locales, d’ordre institutionnel et linguistique-toponymiques. Voir Manfred Van Rey, Die Lütticher Gaue Condroz und Ardennen im Frühmittelalter. Untersuchungen zur Pfarrorganisation, Bonn, 1977 (Rheinisches Archiv, 102); Arlette Laret-Kayser & Christian Dupont, « À propos des comtés post-carolingiens: les exemples d’Ivoix et de Bastogne », dans Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, t. 57, 1979, p. 805-823 ; Manfred Van Rey, « Les divisions politiques et ecclésiastiques de l’ancien diocèse de Liège au Haut Moyen Âge », dans Le Moyen Âge, t. 87, 1981, p. 165-206; Ulrich Nonn, Pagus und comitatus in Niederlothringen. Untersuchungen zur politischen Raumgliederung im früheren Mittelalter, Bonn, 1983 (Bonner Historische Forschungen, 49); [and so on]

The article discusses how the term county changed and varied between regions, periods and specific circumstances.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:05, 5 May 2021 (UTC)