Poppa of Bayeux
Appearance
Poppa of Bayeux was the Christian wife or mistress[1] (perhaps more danico)[2] of the Viking conqueror Rollo. She was the mother of William I Longsword and grandmother of Richard the Fearless, who forged the Duchy of Normandy into a great fief of medieval France.[3] Dudo of Saint-Quentin, in his panegyric of the Norman dukes, describes her as the daughter of a "Count Berengar", the dominant prince of that region, who was captured at Bayeux by Rollo in 885 or 889.[4] This has led to speculation that she was the daughter of Berengar II of Neustria. Despite the uncertainty of her parentage, she undoubtedly was a member of the Frankish aristocracy.[5] A statue of Poppa stands at the Place de Gaulle in Bayeux.
References
- ^ Stewart Baldwin, F.A.S.G., Henry Project:"Poppa"
- ^ Philip Lyndon Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage during the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (E.J. Brill, Leiden, New York, 1994), pp. 110-111
- ^ Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988), p. 89
- ^ Douglas, 'Rollo of Normandy', p. 417
- ^ Neveux, pp. 60-1