Anyone ever here of this Jewish French guy Who is Theoderic

[mord]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhir_of_Narbonne 


Makhir of Narbonne was a Babylonian-Jewish scholar, perhaps the Exilarch of the Jews of Babylon, certainly the leader of the Jewish community of Narbonne in southern Gaul at the end of the eighth century. His descendants were for many generations the nasi or leaders of that important community.

Contents

    1 Writings by Abraham ibn Daud
    2 Bnei Makhir and Carolingian dynasty
    3 See also
    4 References
        4.1 Bibliography

Writings by Abraham ibn Daud

According to a tradition preserved by Abraham ibn Daud in his Sefer ha-Qabbalah, written about 1161, Makhir was a descendant of the house of David. Ibn Daud wrote:

    Then King Charles sent to the King of Baghdad [Caliph] requesting that he dispatch one of his Jews of the seed of royalty of the House of David. He hearkened and sent him one from there, a magnate and sage, Rabbi Makhir by name. And [Charles] settled him in Narbonne, the capital city, and planted him there, and gave him a great possession there at the time he captured it from the Ishmaelites [Arabs]. And he [Makhir] took to wife a woman from among the magnates of the town; *...* and the King made him a nobleman and designed, out of love for [Makhir], good statutes for the benefit of all the Jews dwelling in the city, as is written and sealed in a Latin charter; and the seal of the King therein [bears] his name Carolus; and it is in their possession at the present time. The Prince Makhir became chieftain there. He and his descendants were close [inter-related] with the King and all his descendants.

Whatever Makhir's Babylon origins claimed by his descendants, the relation between Makhir and Charlemagne is legendary, the more famous king substituting for his father Pepin, king of the Franks, who in order to enlist the Jews of Narbonne in his efforts to keep the Ummayad Saracens at bay, granted wide-ranging powers in return for the surrender of Moorish Narbonne to him in 759. The monkish Annals of Aniane and the Chronicle of Moissac both attribute this action to the Gothic leaders of Narbonne, rising up and massacring the Saracen garrison. Pepin with his sons Carloman and Charles redeemed this pledge in 768, granting to Makhir and his heirs extensive lands, an act that called forth an unavailing protest from Pope Stephen III.[1] In 791 Charlemagne confirmed the status of the Jewish Principate and made the title of Nasi permanent.[2]

The Makhir family enjoyed for centuries many privileges and that its members bore the title of "nasi" (prince). Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Narbonne in 1165, speaks of the exalted position occupied by the descendants of Makhir, and the "Royal Letters" of 1364 [3] also record the existence of a rex Iudaeorum at Narbonne. The place of residence of the Makhir family at Narbonne was designated in official documents as "Cortada Regis Judæorum".[4] Makhir is said to have founded a Talmudic school there which vied in greatness with those of Babylonia and which attracted pupils from many distant points.
Bnei Makhir and Carolingian dynasty

Arthur Zuckerman maintains that Makhir was actually identical with Natronai ben Habibi, an exilarch deposed and exiled in a dispute between two branches of the family of Bostanai in the late eighth century.[5] Zuckerman further proposed that Makhir(/Natronai) is to be identified with a Maghario, Count of Narbonne, and in turn with an Aymeri de Narbonne, whom heroic poetry marries to Alda or Aldana, daughter of Charles Martel, and makes father of William of Gellone. This William was subject of at least six major epic poems composed before the era of the Crusades, including Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach, the most famous of the medieval Grail chroniclers. His historical counterpart, William I, Count of Toulouse led Frankish forces at the fall of Barcelona in 803. The account of the campaign in Ermold [censored]'s Latin poem dates the events according to the Jewish calendar and portrays William as an observant Jew.[2] Count William was son of a Frankish Count of Septimania named Theoderic, leading Zuckerman to conclude that Theoderic was none other than Makhir, and that the well-documented descendants of Theoderic embodied a dynasty of Franco-Judeic kings of Narbonne, representing the union of the lineage of the exilarchs with that of Martel's Carolingians. David de Pravieux branch: Some of Theoderic's descendants are most likely from the Bondesen-David family tree (Canada) that goes back, in direct patrilineal lineage, to Julien David. He was Seigneur de Pravieux and born (abt. 1195) in the Forez region in France.[6] However, this underlying chain of identifications has been shown to be flawed,[7] a negative opinion shared by other scholars,[8] while the broader suggestions of a Jewish principality in Southern France have likewise been refuted.[9]

[Ephraim Ben Noach]

I have heard a little. .. but I don't know how true the stories are...

[Zelhar]

I haven't heard of him before. Allot of these stories are mostly legends with the underlying truth being that indeed Pepin and Charlemagne were friendly to the Jews and allowed them to settle and trade and employed them at their service.

I don't believe it was possible to grant nobility to a Jew (without converting him to a Christian). This was a Christian feudal society and the only place Jews had in it is under the personal protection of the ruler.

[mord]

I haven't heard of him before. Allot of these stories are mostly legends with the underlying truth being that indeed Pepin and Charlemagne were friendly to the Jews and allowed them to settle and trade and employed them at their service.

I don't believe it was possible to grant nobility to a Jew (without converting him to a Christian). This was a Christian feudal society and the only place Jews had in it is under the personal protection of the ruler.

Here's more                      http://www.renneslechateau.nl/2009/05/24/william-of-gellone/ 




Posted on May 24, 2009   

William of Gellone, entering the Monastery of GelloneGuillem de Gellone (755 – 814) in French, also known as William of Orange or William with the Short Nose, after a legend in which a Saracen cut off part of William’s nose in battle.

William’s mother was a daughter of Charles Martel, making William a cousin of Charlemagne, at whose court he spent his youth. His father Theodoric (Thierry IV) was the Count of Autun and Toulouse and is said to have been of Merovingian descent.

Being King of Septimania. William of Gellone is one of the pivotal characters in the controversial book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and the late Richard Leigh. In the book it is claimed that the Merovingian bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, making William a Jew of Royal Blood. Their main source of information was the book A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France (1972) by the American historian Arthur Zuckermann. Zuckermann claims that William was indeed of Jewish descent. Local folklore would indicate that he was of the House of David. William was said to have respected Sabbath even during battles, had the Lion of Judea in his Coat of Arms and spoke Arab and Hebrew fluently. This carries extreme relevance in relation to Lincoln, Baigent & Leigh’s theory that the Holy Grail represents the Holy Bloodline of family descendance from the biblical King David through Jesus and Mary Magdalene into the Royal French Merovingian Dynasty.
William of Gellone, donating Charlemagne's relic of the True Cross to the Abbey of Gellone. Painted by Étienne Loys, 18th century, currently in the church of Vendémian.

William of Gellone, donating Charlemagne's relic of the True Cross to the Abbey of Gellone. Painted by Étienne Loys, 18th century, currently in the church of Vendémian.

In 790, after his father had died, Charlemage confirmed William in descending his father as the second Count of Toulouse. He took up arms against the army of the Moor King Hisham I who had proclaimed Holy War against the Christians and penetrated the Languedoc as far as Narbonne. He is most famous for defeating the Arab forces in the area around Orange on 30th April 800. After many years of fighting, the Muslims retreated back into Spain, discouraged by Willliam’s attitude of never giving up. William ended his military career reconquering the territories around Barcelona in 803. Among the many titles he gathered was ‘Count of Orange’ (the first one) and ‘Count of Razès’. The Razès, the county of which the later Rennes-le-Château (then named Rhedae) was part was founded in 785 by Charlemagne. He made William the first titular Count. It was probably William and his sons who fortified Rhedae in the eary 800s.

Abbaye de Gellone, Lodève, FranceIn 804 William founded what is now known as the Benedictine Abbey of Gellone in the French town of St. Guillem-le-Désert. He had been inspired to do so after he had found back his childhood friend, St. Benoît of Aniane, himself a vassal of Charlemagne. Initially, the Monastery was called Monastery of St. Crucis in Gellone, after a relic donated by Charlemagne containing a piece of the true cross which is still there today. In 806 William withdrew from civil and public life and entered the Monastery he had founded himself. According to Zuckermann, during this period of his life William was initiated in the ancient Jewish Kaballah and the rites of personal transmutation. He is said to have died in the Monastery on 28th May 814, before Charlemagne. That date is disputed by some scholars based on a document by Dhuoda, wife of Willam’s brother-in-law Bernhard of Barcelona. In her ‘Liber Manualis’ that she kept until 843 for the benefit of her son, she mentions all her deceased relatives. The most famous of all, William, isn’t mentioned, implying that he was alive at least until 843.

William was twice declared a saint, the last time by Pope Alexander II in 1066.
Death of William of Gellone, attributed to Étienne Loys 18th Century, currently in the church of Vendémian

Death of William of Gellone by Étienne Loys 18th Century, currently in the church of Vendémian

St. Guillem-le-Désert soon became an important place of pilgrimage. How important St. William became can be deducted from the fact that Count Raimbaut II visited St. William’s tomb before he left for the Holy Land as one of the leaders of the First Crusade in 1096.

Wolfram von Eschenbach, codex ManesseEspecially his victory in Orange made William subject of and in epic works like La Geste de Garin de Monglane, Dante’s Divina Commedia, Speculum Historiale by Vincent of Beauvais, and Willehalm, an unfinished epic romance by Wolfram von Eschenbach, better known for his most famous work Parzeval. Wolfram notably writes that the Grail castle was to be found in the Pyrenees, in the area that was owned by William of Gellone in the 9th century.

In his book Wolfram von Eschenbach und die Wirklichkeit des Grals, the Swiss scholar Werner Greub published the results of a life-long study into the works of his teacher Rudolf Steiner. Greub considered Von Eschenbach’s Parzifal as the only veritable Grail account. After long and meticulous research, Greub concluded that William of Gellone had been Von Eschenbach’s primary source of information. William was the character Wolfram had named Kyot de Provence. Von Eschenbach later dedicated his monumental work Willehalm to William of Gellone.

Some of Werner Greub’s research into the real life sites of the Grail as described by Wolfram von Eschenbach is available online in English on the Willehalm website.

Archaeologist Brigitte Gibrac-Lescure suggests that the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Rennes-le-Château might have been founded by Guilemme de Gelone in the IXth century judging from the similarities between the design of the Knight’s Stone, the Visigothic altar pillar and similar features in the Abbey of St. Guilhem-le-Désert.

The descendants of William of Gellone lost the Razès in 844 when the county was transferred to the Counts of Carcassonne.

[Ephraim Ben Noach]

Did you realize the date you posted this?

[mord]

Did you realize the date you posted this?

yesterday the second article is from 2009 it's just for reference

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

I thought none of the Medieval European leaders were friendly to Jews in any way.

[Ephraim Ben Noach]

yesterday the second article is from 2009 it's just for reference

Friday the 13th.

[Zelhar]

I thought none of the Medieval European leaders were friendly to Jews in any way.

The problem was that the Jews were completely dependent on the ruler's will to protect them from the church and the mob. Often the case was that one ruler offered Jews his protection, not necessarily out of good will as much as from desire to increase trade and commerce and a couple of generations later another ruler would reverse that policy either because of church influence or for opportunistic reason as they would extort, loot and rob Jews as a source of quick revenue windfall.