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Carpentier Frauds

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This page describes the frauds and fictions of Jean-Baptiste Carpentier or Le Carpentier (abt.1606-1670)), and provides background for the category Carpentier Frauds.

Contents

Histoire généalogique des Païs-Bas, ou Histoire de Cambray et du Cambresis

The published frauds occur primarily in his Histoire généalogique des Païs-Bas, ou Histoire de Cambray et du Cambresis, published in 1664 and 1668[1], but he also produced genealogies for private clients. The book traces many of the leading families of the Cambrai region in his day back to the Crusades and as part of that includes a forged charter describing the Tournament of Anchin in 1096. This charter and the existence of the tournament were disproved in the mid-nineteenth century, as described on the Tournoi d'Anchin page on French Wikipedia.[2]

Because it gives full Latin and French texts for charters and other documents his book has the appearance of a reliable source, but it has repeatedly been shown to be deficient.

  • The historian Charles D'Hozier (1640-1732) wrote "il n'y a livre au monde qui soit si plein de faussetés, d'ignorances, d'absurdités, de confusions et d'extravagances qu'il y en a de la première page à la dernière des deux volumes de cette Histoire de Cambrai." (There is not a book in the world that is so full of falsehoods, of ignorance, of absurdities, of confusions and of extravagances than there is from the first to the last page of the two volumes of that History of Cambrai.)[3]
  • Henri-Denis Mutte (1706-1774) is said to have considered Le Carpentier to be an impudent forger, whose venal pen fabricated genealogies for certain powerful families, and supported them with fabricated titles.[4]
  • Eugène Escallier demonstrated in 1852 that several of the charters relating to to the Abbey of Anchin used anachronisms or carried impossible dates for the people mentioned, and others were mentioned by no other writer. [5]
  • Félix-Victor Goethals in his Miroir des Notabilites Nobiliaires de Belgique, des Pays-Bas et du Nord de la France under the entry for the Malapert family says Carpentier's Histoire généalogique "is a very inaccurate-book and unworthy of the confidence he enjoys, we have acquired the evidence. Our wish is to restore truth throughout, without respect to persons. We particularly imposed upon ourselves the onerous task of revising with scrupulous care the misleading and deceptive work of Jean le Carpentier, defrocked canon." (p.605 translation). [6]
  • Paul Meyer showed in 1862 that Carpentier must have falsified some of the French documents he quotes as the terms and forms of words are not those of the 12th centuery.[7]
  • Carpentier also invented a daughter Sylvie for William the Conqueror [8] who appears in numerous online trees as Sylvia, but is not mentioned in any other document.[9] Through her purported marriage to Louis de Bournonville he was able to furnish Royal ancestry for many families in Cambresis.

Histoire genealogique de la tres-ancienne et tres-noble famille de Herlin

In 1667 or 1669, Carpentier published Histoire genealogique de la tres-ancienne et tres-noble famille de Herlin.[10] One Herlin researcher has said "This genealogy is more or less a fairy tale"[11] and www.familie-herlyn.de states:

Leider bleibt die Genealogie einen Beweis für die tatsächliche Existenz der in ihr beschriebenen adeligen de-Herlin-Personen schuldig. Der Verfasser hat nachweislich auch Inhaltsstellen von Urkunden falsch zitiert (gefälscht), z. B. Namen geändert oder hinzugefügt, um dadurch einen "Beleg" für die Existenz solcher Personen zu erzeugen.[12]
(Unfortunately, the genealogy fails to provide any proof of the actual existence of the noble de Herlin people described in it. The author has demonstrably misquoted (falsified) parts of the content of documents, for example, names have been changed or added in order to create "evidence" of the existence of such persons.)

La véritable origine de la très-illustre maison de Sohier

Carpentier published his La véritable origine de la très-illustre maison de Sohier in 1661.[13] This contains the first published reference to the fictional Tournament of Anchin (page 259), and the testament of Sohier le Roux, dated 1080, which has been shown to contain anachronistic elements[14], and is probably a forgery.

Conclusion

The conclusion must be that any genealogy which depends on Carpentier's works cannot be regarded as reliable unless it is verified by other sources, and it is likely that most of the medieval genealogies he published are fraudulent.

Lineages on Wikitree that are affected include:

Sources

  1. ↑ Carpentier, J-B, "Histoire généalogique des Païs-Bas, ou Histoire de Cambray et du Cambresis." 1668. Leiden: François Hacke. (Vol. I Vol. II)
  2. ↑ ‘Tournoi d’Anchin’. In Wikipédia, 7 September 2022. https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tournoi_d%27Anchin&oldid=196774389.
  3. ↑ Meyer, Paul, "Observations grammaticales sur quelques chartes fausses en langue vulgaire." In: Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes 23 (1862) 125-138. doi: 10.3406/bec.1862.445816 https://www.persee.fr/doc/bec_0373-6237_1862_num_23_1_445816
  4. ↑ E. G., "Jean-Baptiste Carpentier, historien, 1606-1670." Mémoires historiques sur l'arrondissement de Valenciennes 2 (1868) 353-361. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k55161881/f359.item
  5. ↑ Escallier, Eugène Alexis. L’Abbaye d’Anchin. 1079-1792. Lille, 1852. http://archive.org/details/bub_gb_D28-AAAAcAAJ
  6. ↑ Goethals, Félix-Victor. Miroir des notabilités nobiliaires de Belgique, des Pays-Bas et du Nord de la France. Polack-Duvivier, 1857. page 605. https://books.google.fr/books?id=225WAAAAcAAJ
  7. ↑ Meyer, Paul, "Observations grammaticales sur quelques chartes fausses en langue vulgaire." In: Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes 23 (1862) 125-138. doi: 10.3406/bec.1862.445816 https://www.persee.fr/doc/bec_0373-6237_1862_num_23_1_445816
  8. ↑ Carpentier Histoire page 302.
  9. ↑ See post to soc.medieval.genealogy on 27 Aug 2001 by Henry Sutliff citing Turton's The Plantagenet Ancestry page 268.
  10. ↑ Carpentier, J-B, "Histoire genealogique de la tres-ancienne et tres-noble famille de Herlin." 1669. Leiden. https://archive.org/embed/ned-kbn-all-00001252-001
  11. ↑ Wilmjakob review posted on archive.org 2017 https://archive.org/details/ned-kbn-all-00001252-001/page/n288/mode/2up#review-1500806987
  12. ↑ Herlyn , Folkert J. & Janssen, Hermann H., 600 years of the family Herlyn 2013. See the section Auftrag zur Erstellung einer Familien-Genealogie. Accessed 26 Nov 2022.
  13. ↑ Carpentier, J-B, "La véritable origine de la très-illustre maison de Sohier." 1661. Leiden: Hacke. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5698420j
  14. ↑ Franqueville, André. Le testament de Sohier le Roux et les questions qu'il soulève 2009. Accessed 26 Nov 2022.
    See also http://sohier.free.fr/leroux.htm

See also:





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Categories: Carpentier Frauds