Talk:County of Hainaut

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mOST IMPORTANT CITY CHARLEROI, NOT POSSIBLE? FOUNDED IN 1666 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.243.167.12 (talk) 12:34, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Country or County
Give me a break, Andrew. I know you don't accept any of my changes to "your articles," but now you're saying that pagus means "country"? Your comment on reversing my edit: "no, pagus can be translated as a country, but not county" directly contradicts everything you have written on the subject. If you enter "Pagus of Hainaut" into Wikipedia, it takes you to "County of Hainaut". The redirect was created by you. I'm sure you will offer some citation that no one else has heard of, like Ulrich Noon (a high school teacher, by the way), to justify the change, but the third paragraph of the article has been rendered nonsensical. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 16:28, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I think my edit summary is correct. I don't understand your problem with the "pagus" concept, but I'd like to help. Pagus is literally a word for country, the forerunner of Spanish pais, and French pays, whereas counties between the 9th and 12th centuries were not often geographically defined in any way. For about 200 years counties were defined by, and named after, their counts. Could you give an example of me saying something "opposite" to this? I think this has to be the article for both the county and the pagus of Hainaut, because it would not make sense to split them. In this case the pagus name came back as a county name. Although the borders were quite different, the connection between the two is hopefully easily enough to explain. But if this is not being explained well, please help me understand why?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:46, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I think you are just making this up. What you are saying is not supported by either Wikipedia article on pagus or country, and in fact the latter says just the opposite. When I pointed out that the former doesn't support your definition, you simply said that I should fix it myself. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 19:36, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
 * what do you claim I am making up? Please explain. Are you seriously still claiming that counties are the same thing as pagi? Over the long period you've been making these remarks, have you ever looked at any of the sources I cite? Do you have alternative sources you can cite? This is a relatively basic issue. I have tweaked the wording on Country but to be honest I think you also aren't really understanding the wordings of those articles either, which don't seem to be completely wrong to me on this point. A pagus was always a relatively compact geographical entity or country (people did not think in terms of large nation state countries), and many of the pagi known to the Romans and Carolingians still exist under their old names (Hesbaye, Condroz etc). Counties, in contrast, changed over time according to what was happening in politics and the private contests between families to control lands.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:08, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
 * We clearly don't speak the same language. Didn't you just change the Country article to emphasize my point? I have never claimed that pagi are the same as counties. I have always contended that a pagi was a territory. Interestingly, if you look at the history of the article pagus, you added the following:

"These geographical units were used to define political territories in the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, but then gradually came to be seen as geographical descriptions of countries or shires, without any necessary political or administrative meaning."

That same day, I changed the word "countries" to "counties" based on our previous exchanges, and you did not dispute it. Our edits were later changed to:

"These geographical units were used to describe territories in the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, without any necessary political or administrative meaning."

I'll not belabor the point any longer, but I still think that the use of "country" in this context is wrong. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 22:22, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
 * There were periods and regions when the jurisdictions of some counts corresponded to some pagi, but counties were changing: political, administrative, even private property in a way. Pagi, the countries of Europe, were small relatively fixed natural regions. They are often literally visible area with specific types of soils, a specific river watershed, etc.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:18, 18 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but I just don't believe it, and I don't think you do either. If you really think that "Pagi, the countries of Europe" is correct, why did your edit to country not say so? Ditto on pagus. The article Germanic peoples has a different interpretation, as does Gau. It would be nice to get a common view of this. I'm not sure that any of this matters in the grand scheme of things, but I have seen nothing that contradicts the view that a pagus is a territory that roughly corresponds to a county. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 16:10, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

if I understand correctly you are complaining about 2 things, not 1?
 * (1) Your older concern is that you think pagus and county should be considered as equivalent terms. I've given you sources in previous discussions (e.g. Nonn) to show this certainly isn't true in any general way. In Lotharingia, this might have been true in Carolingian times, but not afterwards. (It is true that as new territorial counties were stuck together in 12th century, they were often approximately of a similar size to the typical old Carolingian county, and occasionally even used an old pagus name, but they were not called pagi. Pagi are geographical not political and although they are older than the counties many of them still exist today! It was common to see pagus and county mentioned in one sentence!)
 * (2) This new case is about the translation "country" for the word "pagus". It is correct, but I can accept that readers anachronistically think that countries have always been very big things like nation states, so to avoid confusion I will remove this translation, but we can't change it to "county" because that is wrong.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:36, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand me. I'm not complaining, just curious about the differing interpretations. As to (1), I don't believe I've ever said that. I don't have an opinion, just a belief and it is stated in my last sentence above, as amended below:

A pagus is a territory that may roughly correspond to a county.

I am not an expert on this subject, you are. I am, however, good at noticing contradictions of which there are many on this subject. I wish you would translate your Talk comments to the articles. As to (2), I'm not going to say any more about it. BTW, I fixed your ping for the permanent record (the Dr is Dr. for future reference). Dr. Grampinator (talk) 19:05, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, sorry about the typo. FWIW, yes, a pagus is a territory that may roughly correspond to a county (in certain times and places). But remember, most of the articles where we work together relate to the well-known Lotharingian counties of the ancien regime, and in Lotharingia the famous "ancien regime" counties almost all only begin to appear in records in the 12th century, or late 11th. The period of Carolingian counts who were governments, at least sometimes, of pagi, was back in the 9th century, and it is not a period where we can talk about the later famous counties.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:22, 18 August 2021 (UTC)