International women's day special: an early medieval mother's advice to her son (back to solid Carolingian content again)

Happy International Women's Day

After my wild excursion into the history of post-Roman Britain, that ended up becoming a monster post that went into some at once very exciting yet uncomfortably speculative territory, I can now say we're back in more familiar territory for me. It is of course, now, International Women's day. It is thus on this day that I want to celebrate and express my gratitude towards all the amazing women in my life, past and present. 

First and foremost among them, however, would be my mother. Besides providing all the parental love one could possibly desire for the past 22 years, it suffices to say that, without her advice, encouragement and support, I would not be the historian I am now and I wouldn't be on such a successful path as I am currently on. As someone who studied Litterae Humaniores at Oxford (1986 - 1990) and has taught Latin and Greek for over thirty years, I owe to her my love of the ancient world, almost as enduring as my (obviously greater) love of the Middle Ages, and if it weren't for that a lot of my interests would be very different. I probably wouldn't be at all fixated on the Carolingians and classical reception in the Middle Ages if I hadn't been so into ancient Rome as a kid, which was very much thanks to my mother introducing me to classical mythology and history and taking me round so many ancient sites from as early as I can remember. Through all the conversations we have had, mostly on our weekend runs together, she has provided me with immeasurable intellectual stimulation, and lots of constructive criticism of my ideas from her learned and intellectually-engaged outsider's perspective. It is also thanks to her that the very idea of this blog came into being, though it would take another year for me to finally get that one going. And without her providing me with lots of informal teaching, I wouldn't be nearly as confident with my Latin.

She's not the only one who has made me the historian I am now, though. I would love to give a shout out to my Granny (on my mum's side), who studied history at Oxford (1956 - 1959) and is a published historian and translator in her own right, though sadly she was never able to have an academic career for two very specific reasons which I shall not go into. I've had many immensely enjoyable historical discussions with her, and she's been very supportive of me going down the medievalist route, which was what she would have taken herself had she been able to do a PhD, and she provides me with an exemplar of how you can remain committed to historical scholarship even if your academic career never takes off - which is the overall likelihood for me. I would also like to thank one of my closest friends (if you're reading this, you'll know who you are) who works on the period just before mine, late antiquity (though I guess we both share the fifth century AD). She's helped me embrace who I am, including all my nerdy eccentricities that do much to fuel my work, more than most people. And our historical conversations are absolutely legendary, being both stimulating and downright hilarious. The one we had back in July about when did the (Western) Roman Empire really fall, is one I always look back on with a smile and a glow of nostalgia. Her influence has also probably been a contributing factor in me making the jump from late medievalist to early medievalist, especially in embracing the fact that less really is more in terms of sources.

Meeting Dhuoda

 It is in honour of my mother and all the amazing advice she has given me, and continues to do so to this day, that I chose to write about Dhuoda and her Liber Manualis. There are so many colourful, courageous and creative women who made history, albeit in circumstances very much not of their choosing, across the period I loosely specialise in (400 - 1200 AD) which I could have chosen from - from Galla Placidia and Clotilda to Heloise, Hildegard of Bingen and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Yet I chose Dhuoda, a Frankish noblewoman from roughly the very middle of my period. I did so not because she's one of the more famous and consequential figures of this period, but because she's a rare example of an early medieval woman whose own authentic voice survives to us this day, in the form of an advice manual she wrote for her son. Its a very rich and wonderful text, as we'll soon see.

Firstly, a bit about Dhuoda's life. As is very typical with early medieval people generally, even the most well known ones (historians still argue over whether Charlemagne was born in 742 or 748), we do not know when Dhuoda was born. Most historians think she was born c.803, but that's only a rough guess. We don't actually know her family background, though its generally presumed that they were high nobility. What little we can say about childhood and upbringing is also a matter of educated guesswork. Modern scholars can't make their minds up about which part of the Frankish Empire she grew up in, and whether she spoke a Romance language or some Old High German dialect as her mother tongue - there's tentative evidence for both propositions. She definitely received some kind of literate education as a girl, but whether it was in a convent, from a private tutor or indeed from her own mother, we simply do not know. 

We do know, from Dhuoda's own testimony no less, that on 29 June 824, in the imperial palace chapel at Aachen, she married Bernard of Septimania (795 - 844). Bernard was a prominent courtier and the son of the great William of Gellone (755 - 812), duke of Toulouse, who would later be canonised as a saint by Pope Alexander II in 1066 (the year of Hastings) and become the subject of one of the earliest chivalric romances, the chanson de Guillaume (1140). In 826, her husband was appointed Count of Barcelona and military governor of the Spanish March by Emperor Louis the Pious, and Dhuoda accompanied Bernard on his early campaigns against the Muslims on the frontier. On 29 November 826, again according to Dhuoda's own writings, she gave birth to her son William - the recipient of the Liber Manualis. By 829, Bernard was becoming such a rising star on the Spanish March that Emperor Louis decided to make him the royal chamberlain at Aachen. This led to Bernard sending his wife to stay at Uzes, near Nimes, having assigned the administration of his counties of Barcelona, Toulouse and Carcasonne to his brother Guacelm, who became the new military governor of the Spanish March. Why he decided to do this, rather than taking his wife to court with him, we can only speculate about. Some use this to support the theory that Dhuoda was a native Romance speaker from what is now Southern France - it is thought that Bernard did this so that Dhuoda could use her local connections to help consolidate his political influence in Septimania (the region between the river Rhone and the Pyrenees that includes the southern French cities of Nimes and Narbonne). Others suggest something else was Bernard's mind on the basis of what happened next. 

In 830, Bernard of Septimania was accused of adultery with none other than Empress Judith, the second wife of Emperor Louis. We can only guess how Dhuoda herself felt about these rumours, but we know very well how the imperial court reacted. Thegan the Astronomer, who wrote a biography (Gesta) of Emperor Louis, believed these rumours to be malicious lies. Its quite revealing that when Bernard offered to prove his innocence in the eyes of God through trial by combat, none of his accusers came forward. The consequences of this were nonetheless explosive. Bernard of Septimania was forced to leave the imperial court and had his county of Autun, in Burgundy, confiscated. Emperor Louis' three sons (Pepin, Lothar and Louis) from his first marriage, to Ermengarde, who resented the influence of their stepmother at court anyway, were incited to rebel against their father, and the final decade of Louis' reign was filled with on and off civil wars between him and his sons. 

Almost immediately after Emperor Louis died in June 840, Dhuoda was visited again by Bernard in Uzes and become pregnant with his second child. Bernard took part in the fresh bout of civil war that followed, which I've covered in a previous post, in which he sided with Lothar and Pepin II of Aquitaine (Lothar's nephew and son of the previous Pepin), who wanted to keep the Empire united, against Lothar's brother Louis and half-brother Charles (son of Empress Judith), who wanted it to be divided up. Bernard was present at the extremely bloody and traumatic battle of Fontenoy in 841, on the losing side. As a show of good faith to his new royal master, Bernard sent William as a hostage to Charles. Dhuoda was thus caught up in the high political dramas of the ninth century Carolingian realm, It was in this context that, later on in 841, that Dhuoda sat down to write the Liber Manualis.

The Stuttgart Psalter (c.820), Wurttembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart, folio 33v. While this does not depict Dhuoda, Bernard and William, the three figures here from left to right might as well stand in for them, as no contemporary image (or indeed from any subsequent period) of any of them exists. 

The Liber Manualis

Dhuoda begins the preface of the Liber Manualis with an a brief account of her marriage to Bernard of Septimania - this itself is quite remarkable as we otherwise have barely any autobiographical writings by women (however brief) between the late Roman period (Perpetua and Egeria) and the twelfth century (Heloise). She shows a remarkable capacity for remembering precise dates - it is, after all, from her that we know when she married Bernard of Septimania and when William and his unnamed younger brother were born. 

Dhuoda then introduces the purpose of her decision to write the Liber:

But since I have been parted from you for a long time and am living, on the orders of my lord, in this city where I now rejoice in [Bernard's] struggles, I have taken the trouble, because of my love for both of you, to have this little book (its size in keeping with my intelligence) copied and sent to you. Although I am beset with many difficulties, nevertheless let this one thing happen according to the will of God, if he so wishes, that I might look upon your face once. Indeed I would wish for this, if the power [to do so] was given to me by God, but because salvation is far away from me as a sinner, I [can only] wish for it, and in this wishing my determination grows weaker.

I have heard that your father, Bernard, has commended you into the hands of the lord, King Charles [the Bald]. I urge you to do your dignified duty in this business to the best of your will. All the same, as the Scriptures say, "Seek the kingdom of God in all things and other things will then be given" (Matthew 6:33), those things which are necessary for you to enjoy your soul and body.

I don't have access to the whole text, nor can I give you a convenient summary here. Instead I'll take you through some of the highlights. In Book Ten, she provides a poem titled "Concerning your times"

You have finished now four times four years.

If my second child were to reach the same age,

I would copy out another little book for his person.

And if you were to reach the age of 36,

And if I were to see you again,

I would with more words urge upon you even stronger things.

But because the time of my end hastens towards me,

And sickness everywhere wears my body out,

I have rushed to put this book together for the use of you and your brother.

Knowing that I shall not live another twenty years.

I urge you to savour this book as though it were a pleasant drink

And honey-laced food meant for your lips.

For the date when I married your father

And the date you were born occurred on the

[same Kalends] of [different] months, as I told you above.

Know that, from the first verse of this little book,

Until its last syllable,

Everything has been designed for the purpose of your salvation.

That you may more easily follow what is written there,

Read the acrostic verses.

The little verses written above and below, and everything else,

I myself have composed for the benefit of your soul and body,

And I do not cease even now urging you to read them and keep them close to your heart.

A subsequent poem in the Liber, in the original Latin, has the first letters of each of the seventeenth stanzas spell out Versi ad Wilhelmum (verses for William): 

That you might be strong and thrive, O best of sons, 

Do not be reluctant to read the words that I have composed and sent to you and may you effortlessly discover things that please you.

The word of God is alive; look for it diligently and learn its sacred teaching,
For then your mind will be stuffed with
great joy forever.

May the immense and powerful King, be radiant and kind,
Care to cultivate your mind in all things,

Young man, and to guard and defend you
Every minute of every day.

Be humble in mind and chaste in body,
Be ready to give proper service,
Show yourself constantly kind to all people,
Both the great and the not so great.

Above all, fear and love the Lord God,
With your full heart and soul and expend all your strength,

Next fear and love your father in all things.

Do not regret continually serving,
The glorious offspring [Charles the Bald] of [that Carolingian] race,

With its line of ancestors, for he shines,

With the great.

Esteem magnates and respect those of high rank at court;
Be humble with the low;
Associate yourself with the well-intentioned; be sure not to
Submit to the proud and imprudent.

Always honour the true ministers
Of the sacred rites, the worthy bishops,
Always commit yourself simply and with outstretched hands,

To the custodians of the altars.

Frequently give assistance to widows and orphans,
Give food and drink to pilgrims;
Offer hospitality; stretch out your hands
With apparel to the naked.

Be a strong and fair judge in legal disputes;
Never take a bribe
Never oppress anyone, for the great Giver will repay you.

Be generous with gifts, but always vigilant and modest,
Make a sincere effort to get along with everyone,
Rejoice in humble things, for the image of this will
Stay with you.

There is One who weighs up everything,
A bestower who grants to each according to merit,
Assigning for [good] words and works the greatest of gifts:
The constellations of the heavenly stars.

Thus, my noble son, you should take care
And seek constantly to obtain
The great advantages [of heaven], and spurn
The fires of pitch-black wood.

Although, at sixteen, you are in the very flower
Of your youth, your delicate limbs
Age [along with you] step by step
As you proceed through life.

I long to see your face,
But the prospect seems distant to me.
Even if the power should be given to me,

Yet I still do not deserve this.

Would that you might live for Him who shaped you,

May you enter into, with gentle spirit, a fitting association
With his servants; may you with joy rise up again when your
Life is done.

My mind surely turns to thoughts of death,
But still I want you to read carefully the pages of this book,
As I have written them [for you], and keep them constantly
Foremost in your mind.

These verses, with the help of God, are now done

As you finish your sixteen years
At the start of December, on the Feast of Saint Andrew [30 November],
And the Advent of the Word.

Christine de Pizan (1364 - 1431) advises her son, Jean, before he goes to live in the Earl of Salisbury's household. British Library, Harley 4431 folio. 261v. Dhuoda was far from unique among medieval mothers in giving her son wise advice and caring for his well-being even when he was going to be absent from her for an indefinite period of time - some would say that motherly instincts never change.

Later on in the text, Dhuoda returns to talking about herself and her personal anxieties and shortcomings. She laments the frailty of her body, her slothfulness in failing to pray the seven canonical hours every day (this would become a major feature of lay piety in the later middle ages with the popularity of Books of Hours), sinning in thought and speech and taking on too many debts from Christian and Jewish creditors. Above all, she is gravely uncertain over whether she merits salvation.  She requests that William, maintain a spiritual link with her even if they can never have a physical one again:

While you see that I am [still] alive in this world, alertly attempt in your heart to exert yourself so that, not only through vigils and prayers, but also by giving charity to the poor, I might deserve, when finally seized from my body and from the chains of my sinning, to be received kindly in every way by our kind Judge.

At the end of the book, Dhuoda composes her own epitaph, in which she reflects on the transience and insignificance of the physical body, and requests that whoever looks upon her tomb pray for her soul.

Source for the text: Carolingian Civilisation: A Reader, edited and translated by Paul Edward Dutton, Toronto University Press (2009), pp 336 - 343

Thoughts and analysis

The Liber Manualis is a beautiful, intelligently written, moving and deeply humane text, that in itself is a fitting monument to its author and her intellect and personality. A lot of early twentieth scholars, no doubt motivated by sexism to at least some degree, were remarkably rude about it, especially its Latinity. But as Peter Dronke has argued in a highly sympathetic defence of Dhuoda, while her Latin style was orthodox and incorrect, both by Classical or Carolingian standards, and is often difficult to translate, that is because she was trying to express thoughts that were very much her own and which she could only express her own unique way. Unlike a lot of correspondance in this period, there is nothing that could have been ripped straight from, say, Cicero or Ambrose of Milan, and the only literary trope she really uses is that of personal unworthiness, which is to be found in just about every Carolingian writer - Einhard is full of it in his Life of Charlemagne and personal letters. Indeed, like Einhard and a number of other Carolingian authors, Dhuoda really stands out as someone who saw herself as a unique somebody and wanted to express it, which very much goes against what we've been taught to expect of early medieval people, and early medieval women in particular. 

For all that many historians may caution us that we cannot access the real thoughts and feelings of medieval people through literary texts, Dhuoda’s here, which were so complex and authentic she struggled to put them into learned Latin,  feel as real as those in any text of any age - her love and concern for her son, her sadness at being parted from him and the uncertainty of whether she’ll ever see him again and her anxiety for the fate of her soul. 

For all that Dhuoda laments her physical and spiritual weakness, things very much associated with femininity, she does manage exert a distinct kind of authority that the patriarchal society of Carolingian Francia can nonetheless afford to her, that of a mother. As Janet Nelson reminds us, Carolingian patriarchy depended on mothers as much as fathers and they were owed respect and obligations. And this is another respect in which Dhuoda nonetheless manages to stand out as a unique individual - while mothers may have advised their sons all the time in this period, none put it down into writing, nor for that matter did fathers. As Nelson points out, Dhuoda is unique among Carolingian moralists in standing on a parental platform - all the others were either celibate monks and clerics (Alcuin, Jonas of Orleans, Hincmar etc) or lay noblemen who, so far as we can tell, had no biological children of their own (Einhard and Nithard). 

The content of what Dhuoda writes reflects a wealth of not only personal wisdom but also knowledge of ancient and contemporary texts, including the Bible, the late Roman grammarian Donatus, the works of the Church Fathers like Augustine and Gregory the Great, the Rule of St Benedict, Charlemagne's General Admonition of 789 and Rabanus Maurus' treatise on Computation. This is testament to the depth and richness of learning that at least certain lay women were capable of achieving in this period.

Given her familiarity with all these texts, it is not surprising that what Dhuoda writes resonates so much with the aims and rhetoric of the Carolingian reform programme, which tried to create a moral lay elite and which concerned itself as much with inward spiritucal disposition as with outward public display of good morals - very apparent from Dhuoda's work. Indeed, her Liber Manualis is demonstrative that this reform effort didn't fall on deaf ears amongst the Carolingian aristocracy, even if the results across the board were very mixed to put it bluntly. It also shows how women could play a role in reinforcing it and not just in a family context - more than three copies of the Liber survive, more than do for a lot of later medieval moralistic texts like the Livre de Chevalerie of the fourteenth century knight Geoffroi de Charny (one of the texts I read for my undergraduate thesis). In a sense, Dhuoda wrote not just as a mother advising her son but as a public intellectual, and it does seem she had a public impact. Whether or not women in general had a Carolingian Renaissance (an inevitable play on feminist historian Joan Kelly’s famous article “did women have a Renaissance?”), and I think they did, if not quite the same as that of men, Dhuoda truly was a Carolingian Renaissance woman. 

As is clear throughout the text, Dhuoda wrote this when she was suffering from some kind of long term illness. If she lived much longer past 841, and we really don’t know if she did, her life, which had already been filled with much drama and misfortune, wasn’t going to get anymore uplifting for her. In 844, Bernard of Septimania was executed by Charles the Bald for switching sides too many times in the various civil wars and most recently having sided with Pepin II of Aquitaine in revolt against Charles the Bald. In 850, William, who managed to get awarded some of his fathers counties after his death, was judicially murdered by Charles’ partisans as part of the ongoing political turmoil in the South - ninth century Carolingian politics is depressing like that!

Dhuoda’s story is demonstrative of why the Carolingian period is so fascinating relevant to us today. It may not quite deliver what we, living in a post-Game of Thrones world, think we want from medieval history - the Carolingians want to limit violence, sex, and political corruption and scheming in favour of high mindedness  and building a better world, yet fail because various reasons and that hits too close to home and leaves a bitter taste in our mouths. Yet it does show us how intellectuals, male and female,  clerical and lay, reflected on themselves as unique individuals and on the human condition, and sought creative solutions to their own personal challenges and those facing society more generally. They remind us how deeply human and indivisible people in the medieval past really were, something that us moderns have often been minded to forget, and how they struggled and did their best to cope with a chaotic world, which is very much what we are confronted with now.