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– HOLLENDE –
The Gisonen are sometimes referred to as counts of Gudensberg, but this is a misnomer. Giso IV, a count in sections of Hessengau, is found using the the Gudensberg cognomen, which derived from a castle adjacent to Maden, seat of justice in northeast Hessengau. The castle clearly arrived to Giso IV in his marriage with Kunigunde of Bilstein, whose second husband, Henry of Thuringia, is also discovered with Gudensberg cognomen. The comital jurisdiction based at Maden passed via Kunigunde of Bilstein’s mother, who was a daughter of the house of Gröningen, the regional counts. Wernher IV of Gröningen died in 1121, the year preceding Giso’s Gudensberg documentation. After Henry of Thuringia’s death, Giso V bears the Gudensberg cognomen, but clearly this castle was associated with the Wernhers until 1121. Giso III, very probably the father of his namesake, was murdered in 1073 at his castle of Hollende further southwest in Hessengau. This castle remained a family seat at least until the mid-twelfth century, when Count Poppo II of Ziegenhain documents with the Hollende cognomen. Early in the twelfth century Mathilde, widow of Count Adalbert of Saffenberg, retired to Hollende. The annals of Rolduc state that Hollende was her propria sedes ex priore marito, from which one might wish to assume that before Adalbert she was married to a count of Hollende. This is unlikely, however, because Mathilde long outlived Giso III. Consequently we should assume that a share of the castle was part of Mathilde’s original marriage portion, and that she herself was Giso III’s daughter, although we cannot say who her previous husband was. The relationships of the earlierCounts Giso are entirely undocumented and sometimes difficult to infer and support. Giso II emerges as count, probably of western Hessengau, in 1049, and it is conceivable that his death is documented in the necrological annals of Prüm under 1062. Giso I was count in an eastern part of Lahngau in 1008. In the struggle for the throne in 1002 between the later Emperor Henry II and the Konradiner duke Hermann II of Swabia, political settlement may have resulted in some fragmentation of jurisdiction. The appearance of Giso I in Lahngau does not preclude his holding more fundamental power in Hessengau. In the tenth century a number of counts document for the general region of Hollende, and there are good reasons for believing that they are of the same family as the Gisonen. They clearly entered from eastern Saxony, probably after Emperor Otto I’s son Liudolf forfeited his honors in 954. Their introduction into Frankish Hessen was justified by their descent from a sister of King Konrad I. The name Giso was a diminutive of the name Christian, and the first documented count of the Hessian line was Thiemo, or Thietmar. There is little doubt that the family descended from Margrave Christian of Ostmark, in whose family the name Thietmar was current. Later counts in the Hollende region included a Gero – another name from the margravial family – and a second Thiemo appears early in the twelfth century. We can document the existence of two counties carried by the Gisonen and identify their seats of justice. Count Gero of Hessengau, who died in 1051, was a contemporary of Giso II. It appears that the two counties already existed at that stage. One county can be associated with a seat of justice at Stiffe. It reappears in 1107 under Count Thiemo II, who might be a younger son of Giso III. At his death this jurisdiction passed to Giso IV and then down to Wittgenstein. To the immediate south, Giso II would have held a county associated with seat of justice at Ruchesloh. This county eventually passed via Giso IV to the lords of Merenberg. Last of the line was Giso V, described as comes Hassiae, who died in 1137. Much of his inheritance (and likewise much of the Gröningen inheritance) passed via his sister Hadewig to the landgraves of Thuringia. Another sister, Irmingard, appears to marry Hartrad of Merenberg, whose descendants occasionally use a comital title which can be reconstructed as deriving from the Gisos. In the meantime this title was held by Count Godfrey of Amöneburg (fl. 1143-52), whose mother must also have been Giso V’s sister. But we should probably ascribe to Giso V a daughter as well. She would have brought the castle of Hollende to Poppo II of Ziegenhain and a comital title eventually to the house of Wittgenstein.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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