Gervais, Count of Rethel

Gervais, Count of Rethel (fl. 11th century) was a French archbishop and nobleman. He was the son of Count Hugh I and his wife Melisende of Crécy. He succeeded his father as Count of Rethel.

Gervais, Count of Rethel
BornCorbeil
Died1124
Noble familyde Rethel
Spouse(s)Elisabeth of Namur
IssueMillicent or Elizabeth?
FatherHugh I, Count of Rethel
MotherMelisende of Crécy

Biography

Gervais served as an archdeacon of Rheims before being nominated as Archbishop of Rheims by the King's supporters against Raoul the Green in 1106.[1] The next year Paschall II declared him unfit, quashed his election[1] and Gervais resigned as archbishop in 1109, returning to his former role as archdeacon.[1]

Upon the death of his elder brother, Manasser, in 1115,[1] Gervais resigned from the clergy and married Elisabeth, daughter of Godfrey I, Count of Namur and in 1118 he succeeded his father as Count of Rethel.

Gervais died in 1124 and his widow Elizabeth remarried to Roger Clarembauld, Lord of Rosoi in Thierache who gave the hand of his step-daughter to Robert Marmion, Baron of Tamworth.[1]

Because Gervais' younger brother Baldwin was in the Holy Land, where he served as King of Jerusalem, he was succeeded as ruler of Rethel by his sister Matilda and her husband Odo of Vitry.[2]

Family and Issue

He was married to Elisabeth, a daughter of Godfrey I, Count of Namur. According to the Chronicle of Alberic of Trois-Fontaines they had a single daughter:-

  • Melisende de Rethel (Millicent) married to Robert Marmion (d.1181) and forebear of all three English Marmion Baronys.[3][4] Married secondly to Richard de Camville, with at least one son, Richard.

References
  1. Charles Ferrers R. Palmer (1875), History of the Baronial Family of Marmion, Lords of the Castle of Tamworth, etc. (hardback ed.), Tamworth: J. Thompson, pp. 49–50
  2. Kingship, Identity and Name-giving in the Family of Baldwin of Bourcq, Alan V. Murray, Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar, ed. Norman Housely, (Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 31.
  3. George Edward Cokayne (1893), Complete Peerage (hardback ed.), London: George Bell & Sons.
  4. Sir Leslie Stephen (1893), Sidney Lee (ed.), Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 36 (hardback ed.), London: Smith, Elder & Co
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