Medieval France
. Name of five counts of Champagne and several counts of Blois. The Thibaudian counts of Blois-Champagne ranked among the leading princely families of northern France from the 10th through the 13th century. Thibaut le Vieux, viscount of Tours, founded the dynasty, and his son Thibaut le Tricheur, count of Blois, Chartres, and Tours (r. 940-ca. 977) gave it a territorial base. The proximity of their lands to the Capetian domain, however, often strained relations with the royal house, especially after Eudes II (r. 996–1037) acquired lands in Champagne and Berry that threatened to encircle the royal domain. Although Blois-Chartres remained the Thibaudian heartland until 1152, the counts were drawn eastward after the loss of Tours (1044) and the acquisition of additional counties in Champagne by Thibaut III (I of Champagne; r. 1037–89).
Thibaut IV (II of Champagne, r. 1102–52) shifted the center of the dynasty to Champagne, which passed to his eldest son, Henri I (r. 1152–81); younger sons held Blois-Chartres and Sancerre as fiefs from the count of Champagne. In the second half of the 12th century, the Thibaudians became intimately tied to the royal family. Henri and his brother Thibaut (V of Blois; r. 1152–91) married Louis VII’s daughters by Eleanor of Aquitaine, while the king married their sister Adèle (of Champagne; queen 1160–79).
Thibaut also served as royal seneschal (1154–91). The youngest brother, Guillaume, rose quickly in the church as bishop of Chartres (1165–68), then archbishop of Sens (1168–75) and Reims (1175–1202). Another sister married the count of Bar-le-Duc and introduced the name Thibaut into that lineage.
The Thibaudians almost redrew the political map of France under Eudes II; they nearly established a royal dynasty in England when Stephen of Blois became king (1135–54) with the aid of his brother Henry, bishop of Winchester (r. 1129–71); and they might have dominated the Capetians into the 13th century had it not been for Philip II’s resistance. Thibaudian influence waned in the 13th century. Although Champagne remained an important and prosperous county under Thibaut III, Thibaut IV, and Thibaut V, it came under direct royal control with the marriage of its last heiress, Jeanne, to the future Philip IV (1284). Since the counts of Blois had already ended in their male line in 1218, only Sancerre survived as a minor lordship until the 15th century. The name Thibaut was never adopted by the royal family, and it failed to survive in the comital lineages of Sancerre and Bar-le-Duc.
Theodore Evergates
[See also: CHAMPAGNE; THIBAUT DE CHAMPAGNE]
Arbois de Jubainville, Henri d’. Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne. 6 vols. Paris: Durand, 1859–66.
Bur, Michel. La formation du comté de Champagne, v. 950–v. 1150. Nancy: Mémoires des Annales de l’Est, 1977.
Davis, Ralph H.C. King Stephen, 1135–54. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
Dunbabin, Jean. France in the Making, 843–1180. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
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