MAASGAU Giselbert

Abt 0825 - Aft 0877  (> 53 years)

• Name	MAASGAU Giselbert
  Birth	Abt 0825
  Gender	Male
  Death	Aft 0877	Lotharingia
  Notes	Giselbert was a 9th-century count in the region which is now Belgium. He married a daughter of Emperor Lothar I. [1] Giselbert is mentioned in an agreement dated 14 June 877, and so he died after this date. [2] Research Notes There are various records of a Count Giselbert living in Lower Lotharingia in the time of Charles the Bald and his half-brother, Emperor Lothar, in the 9th century. His wife was a daughter of Lothar, whom he abducted, but her name is not known. According to Stewart Baldwin: "most scholars would identify at least the count of Masau, the son-in-law of Lothair, and the count of Darnau as the same individual". Ancestry and regional associations His ancestry is unknown and second names were not normally standard in this period. There are common suggestions that he might have Norse ancestry because his apparent son's name, used many times in the family, looks like Ragnar. However Ragnachar was also an old Frankish name.[3] There are two references in old records which connect him to areas where he held the power of a count. (In this period it generally is safer to call him Count "in" these places, not Count "of", implying a formal connection between the title and the place.) 1. Most commonly he is referred to as a Count associated with the Maasgau, Maasland, or Maasau (which are sometimes seen as having slightly different meanings, but all refer the Maas Valley north of, and sometimes including, Maastricht.[4]). However the actual document refers to him as a count of (or in) Mansuaria, or of the Mansuari ("Gislebertus comes Mansuariorum").[5] This name is often associated with the Maas valley but there has not been perfect consensus that Mansuaria or the land of the Mansuari, whoever they were, were necessarily close to the Maas. (It makes more sense as a variant of the other words when we consider that Maasau is probably the older term. See Nonn, Pagus und Comitatus.) Gorissen proposed it was an old name for some type of territory at the end of the old "via Mansuarisca" in the Ardennes, which ends near Maastricht.[6] A very early 714 charter shows there was a "pago Mosariorum" which included Susteren, which is in the Maasgau, but a 741/2 charter "in pago Hasbaniensę et Masuarinsę" concerning the area between Diest and Hasselt, very far from the Maas, and apparently indicating that this term could be applied quite far from the river Maas/Meuse (unlike apparently in the 870 treaty of Meerssen), and might be much bigger, at least at some point in time, overlapping with the later Haspengau, and Maasgau.[7] 2. Count Giselbert of Darnau, a gau which later became part of the county of Namur, appears in a document of count Ansfrid on 5 October 863 ["... in pago Darnau, in marca vel villa Sodoia, quae sita est super fluvium Geldiun, in comitatu Giselberti; ..." Chronicon Laureshamense, MGH SS 21: 370]. Stewart Baldwin also notes later records for a Count Gilbert which may or may not refer to the same person: He may have been the Giselbert who was mentioned in the Capitulary of Quierzy (11 June 877) ["Si versus Mosam perrexerit, sint cum eo Franco episcopus, Iohannes episcopus, Arnulfus comes, Gislebertus, Letardus, Matfridus, Widricus, Gotbertus, Adalbertus, Ingelgerus, Rainerus, una cum praedictis." MGH Leg 1: 539], and he was possibly also the count Giselbert at whose request the emperor Charles "the Fat" granted to a certain Théodon (a vassal of Giselbert) property at Oneux in Condroz and the usage of the forest of Hulsina on 6 September 885 [see Parisot (1898), 480, n. 1; Vanderkindere (1902), 1: 265, n. 5]. Probable descendants His most important role in genealogy is as the probable father to Reginar "Longneck", the founder of a major dynasty and ancestor of many modern people. But it should be noted that this relationship is uncertain. (It is likely there was some type of relationship.) Stewart Baldwin summarizes the case as follows: "This suggested father-son relationship between Giselbert and Regnier (along with the grandfather-grandson relationship between Lothair and Regnier) has appeared on numerous occasions, sometimes stated with some sort of qualification, sometimes given as established fact [e.g., Parisot (1898), 540; Vanderkindere (1902), 2: 197, 265; Knetsch (1917), 11-12; Sproemberg (1941), 8; Bernard (1957), 1, 20; Brandenburg (1964), 85-6; Werner (1967), 449-450; Hlawitschka (1968), 176, n. 161]. There is no direct evidence to support this affiliation. There are three main reasons for suggesting this connection: Regnier named his (apparently) eldest son Giselbert. According to the historian Widukind, Regnier's son Giselbert was of noble origin, born of an old family ["Erat autem Isilberhtus nobili genere ac familia antiqua natus." Widukind, Res gestae Saxonicae, i, 30, MGH SS 3: 430]. Regnier is called a vir consularis et nobilis by Richer ["... Ragenerus, vir consularis et nobilis cognomento Collo-longus, ..." Richer i, 34, MGH SS 3: 579], and his son Giselbert is called clarissimo genere inclitus [ibid., i, 35], and similar statements are made by the eleventh century Norman historian Dudo ["Raginere dux, milesque asperrime, regumque et ducum atque comitum superbo satus sanguine, ..." Dudo, ii, 10 (p. 151)]. Giselbert had possessions in the same area that was later dominated by Regnier and his descendants. Although this scenario is plausible enough, it is difficult to accept with the high degree of confidence which seems to be generally implied. In addition to the lack of direct evidence, the following considerations might cause one to hesitate. There is an individual roughly one generation before Regnier who seems to be related, i.e., the same-named lay-abbot of Echternach from 864 to 870 (see below). Based on the available evidence, a scenario in which the two Regniers were father and son is difficult to rule out. Duke Giselbert was married in 929, 83 years after his supposed grandfather carried off the daughter of Lothair I in 846. This seems to leave enough room for another generation, so that even if duke Giselbert was a descendant of the older Giselbert and Lothair's daughter, he might not have been their paternal grandson. Nothing is known about the ancestry of Regnier's wife Alberada, the mother of duke Giselbert. In the absence of such knowledge, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that Giselbert was named after someone in his mother's family." Sources ↑ Cawley, Charles. Medieval Lands: A prosopography of medieval European noble and royal families. Hosted online by the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy (FMG), accessed 2023, Graven van Maasgau. ↑ Karoli II Imp. Conventus Carisiacensis, MGH LL 1, p. 537. ↑ See Gregory of Tours for the story of the noble-blooded king Ragnachar, killed by his relative Clovis I. ↑ See Gysseling for a list of related terms: [1] ↑ "Gislebertus comes Mansuariorum" Nithard iii, 2, MGH SS 2: 663 ↑ P. Gorissen "Maasgouw, Haspengouw, Mansuarië" Revue belge de Philologie et d'Histoire Année 1964 42-2 pp. 383-398 link ↑ Eugen Ewig (1969) thinks it might have originally been a large Merovingian "ducatus", defining the "core" of what had been the old Roman civitas of Tongeren ("Die Stellung Ribuariens in der Verfassungsgeschichte des Merowingerreichs ".) Stewart Baldwin, Henry III project profile of his supposed son: http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/regin001.htm Charles, Cawley. MEDLANDS profile: http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/LOTHARINGIAN%20(LOWER)%20NOBILITY.htm#_Toc479586671 Genealogics. Giselbert Count in Maasgau, born c810. Died after 877. Husband of Irmingard (born c826). Married before 846 in Aquitane. Father of Reginar I, Duke of Lorraine. Note: Giselbert was born c828, becoming graf im Massgaue in 840. He died after 14 Jul 877, though one source gives it as 892. Source: Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Fürstliche Häuser. 1961 Giselbert on English Wikipedia Rubincam, Milton. The House of Brabant, Ancestry of Philippa of Hainault, Wife of Edward III, The American Genealogist (1949) Vol. 25, Page 224
  Person ID	I58404	Freeman-Smith
  Last Modified	27 Jan 2026

  
  

  Family	CAROLINGIAN Unknown,   b. 0830, Lorraine, Alsace, France d. 20 Mar 0850, Moselle, Lorraine, France (Age ~ 19 years)
  Children	1. REGINAR Reginar,   b. Abt 0850, Lotharingia, Holy Roman Empire d. Bef 15 Jan 0916, Meerssen, Lotharingia, Holy Roman Empire (Age < 66 years)  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
  Family ID	F26042	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	27 Jan 2026