Queenship and Sanctity: The "Lives" of Mathilda and the "Epitaph" of Adelheid (review)

Although women, not so very long ago, were assumed to be marginalized in the Middle Ages, recent scholarship has revealed that they can be found all through the sources if one looks for them. In this volume, Sean Gilsdorf makes two medieval women much more visible by translating their vitae. Mathilda and her daughter-in-law Adelheid were both queens of Ottonian Germany, who lived in the second half of the tenth century. In the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, two different "lives" of Mathilda were written—the first most likely by a nun—as well as a briefer "life" (or "epitaph") of Adelheid. Mathilda's second "life" contains many of the events of her later years, which occurred after the first "life" was written, and has a good deal of overlap with the events in Adelheid's "epitaph," so it is appropriate that all these versions appear together. This volume includes the first English translations of the three texts as well as an extensive introduction.

Unlike most saintly women, Mathilda and Adelheid were not nuns or recluses but women active in the world. Indeed, the tenth-century author of Mathilda's first "life" had to go back four hundred years, to the holy queen Radegund, to find a good model to use in describing someone who was a queen, a wife, and a mother, as well as an admirable example of sanctity. Mathilda was the wife of Henry the Fowler, first in his line to take the German throne, and had at least five children, while Adelheid married two kings—Lothar of Italy and Otto I of Germany—and also had at least five children, including a king and a queen. The two queens' sanctity was expressed particularly through their support of regular monasticism, especially Cluniac houses; indeed, Adelheid's "epitaph" was written by Abbot Odilo of Cluny. Odilo mentioned a few tomb miracles for Adelheid, but the emphasis in the "lives" was on activities which any powerful secular ruler ought to be able to emulate. The "lives" of these queens thus provide intriguing examples both of powerful medieval women and of a particularly royal form of sanctity.

This is an exemplary volume, which should certainly make these relatively overlooked queens much better known. It should immediately find a place in upper-level courses both on medieval women and on medieval Germany. Helpful maps and family trees assure the reader can keep all the people and places straight. Although the principal audience is students who do not read Latin, academic historians should also find the volume very useful. The introduction puts Mathilda and Adelheid into their political and social context as well as discussing issues of textual authorship and dating. The analysis of the role of queens in a patriarchal society and the shifting politics of their time are scholarly contributions in their own right. The endnotes and bibliography are thorough and up-to-date. The appendix includes a detailed discussion of the evidence for Mathilda's ancestry, a discussion that, while brief, raises important issues about family consciousness. In his translation, Gilsdorf has managed to retain some of the flavor of the original medieval Latin, including the alliteration, while still producing a text that is easy and enjoyable to read. Notes identify the biblical and classical authors from whom the biographers of the queens often borrowed phrases. The series of translated texts from Catholic University Press has so far brought many important works to greater prominence—of which this is one of the more impressive efforts—and one certainly hopes the series will continue.