Theodore Evergates. Henry the Liberal

If the British queen Victoria (r. 1837–1901) was the grandmother of nineteenth-century European royalty, then Henry I the Liberal was the uncle of twelfth-century Western Christendom. He was the great-grandson of William the Conqueror; nephew of King Stephen and Bishop Henry of Winchester; son-in-law of King Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine; brother of French queen Adela, the counts of Blois and Sancerre, and Archbishop William of Reims; and brother-in-law of the duke of Burgundy, the counts of the Perche and Bar-sur-Aube, and the heir to the throne of Sicily. In short, Henry was at the center of the web of familial relationships that mirrored the position of his county of Champagne at the crossroads of Europe. Henry the Liberal: Count of Champagne, 1127–1181 comes as the latest in a series of distinguished publications on the county of Champagne by Theodore Evergates. Its thesis is that Count Henry “reimagined Champagne as a territorial state anchored on thirty walled towns and fortifications with their geographically defined districts administered by his provosts, bailiffs, and toll collectors” (171). In 1152 Henry had inherited from his father a patchy collection of lordships with no natural boundaries, which, as an energetic count, he transformed into a coherent and prosperous polity, centered on the count’s residence at Troyes. Henry’s father had promoted fairs at Troyes and Provins; by further encouraging them, Henry reduced his dependence on the agricultural cycle. He then shared the commercially generated revenues of the fairs with the elite and religious communities, thus securing the reputation for liberality that led to his soubriquet.

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