On 14/05/2017 10:53 PM, Paulo Canedo wrote: > Ida's son Ekbert was at least a teen when he was killed before 1054 so making Ida daughter of man bon in the 1000s is a bit tight but possible. However as you indicated there are good reasons for doubting Albert's narrative. I think the assumption that Ida's son Ekbert (if he existed at all) must have been at least an active youth when he was killed is not a weighty objection - little children can be murdered. The story is that Ekbert was killed near Elstorp by his kinsman the marquis Udo - however, Udo was only count of Stade until 1056/57 when he became a marquis shortly before he died, well after the death of Pope Leo IX to whom Ida is supposed to have gone for advice following the murder of her son by "marquis" Udo. Ida was supposed to be bereft of heirs by the act, yet Albert says she had other children. He also says she was born in Swabia, whereas Liutpold of Brunswick's homeland was in Saxony. Either way she could scarcely have known her alleged maternal uncle Leo IX, who was bishop of Toul from 1026 and pope from 1049. Presumably Ida would have had spiritual advisers wherever she lived, sparing her the trouble of going to Rome in order to receive advice that, in her response to it anyway, was outside the moral teaching of the Church - it may be required to forgive a wrongdoer, but not to reward him by adopting him into the place of his victim. It seems likely to me that the Stade family had a distorted idea of how they came by some part of their inheritance, and Ida's story was Albert's very unconvincing attempt to make sense of this. Peter Stewart