The empress Matilda: queen consort, queen mother and lady of the English (review)

154 Reviews Chibnall, Marjorie, 77ze empress Matilda: queen consort, queen mother and lady ofthe English, Oxford and Cambridge Mass., Blackwell, 1993; paper; pp. xi, 227; 11 illustrations, 4 maps, 3 genealogical tables; R.R.P. AUS$39.95 [distributed in Australia by Allen & Unwin], Ortu magno, viro major, sed maxima partu Hie jacet Henricifilia, sponsa, parens The finely crafted, sexist inscription on the tomb of Matilda in Bec-Hellouin still provides today the most lucid framework for a biographer of her. Three of Dr Chibnall's chapters are entitled: 'Great by birth', 'Greater by marriage', and 'Greatest in her offspring'. The nature of the twelfth-century evidence precludes any closer acquaintance with Matilda herself than as the daughter of Henry I of England, as the wife of Henry V, the German emperor, then as the wife of Geoffrey Count of Anjou and later Duke of Normandy, andfinallyas the mother of Henry II, ruler of England and most of western France. Of course in the public acts of her menfolk, Matilda is in some way represented and Chibnall is adept at seizing sympathetically every hint of Matilda's own role. Even during the eight years in the 1140s when Matilda was in England struggling for recognition as an alternative ruler to her cousin Stephen, whose claim, after all, came through his mother, she is an elusive figure. This virago, the w o m a n of masculine spirit, is treated with sympathy and with understanding, without romanticization and without anachronism. Nothing is expected of Matilda which a twelfth-century princess was not educated to provide. Chibnall comes closest to Matilda's personality when she discusses in various parts of the book her attitude towards the Church. This is, in some ways, Chibnall's most original contribution. Matilda's consistent piety and practical interest in the major reformed monastic houses of northern France were crowned by her decision to be buried in Bec-Hellouin, against the wishes of her male kinsfolk who figure so impressively in the inscription. It is surprising that there have been many good studies of the civil war in England from Stephen's viewpoint but no professional study of Stephen's more interesting adversary. Chibnall's very English, very pragmatic study of this major European princess and empress, mother and grandmother of more kings and queens than Victoria, has triumphantly redressed the balance, put Matilda centre stage and, simply because of its Reviews 155 exemplary scholarship, uninfluenced by any adherence to transient theorizing, will retain value for anyone interested in the twelfth century and in the role of women in northern Europe in the Middle Ages. R. Ian Jack Department of History University of Sydney Copland, Robert, Poems, ed. Mary C. Erler, Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 1993; cloth; pp. x, 272; 12 illustrations; R.R.P. CAN$60.00. Robert Copland's career as poet, printer, translator, and editor places him at the heart of the emergent print culture of early-sixteenth-century England. Despite a lack of formal education, he set out to follow 'the trace of m y mayster Caxton'. His own ventures, closely associated with the more prolific workshop of Wynkyn de Worde, spanned the reign of Henry VIII. His work consistently illuminated the conjunction of elite and popular cultures facilitated by the new medium. As Erler observes, when Copland began writing, the accepted sources of literary authority were the court and the Church, and the leading poets Stephen Hawes and John Skelton. Yet for Copland, 'authorship springs directly out of the world of early printing, with its constitutive elements of commerce and technology as well as literature'. Copland wrote only a handful of longer poems. These alone would barely justify the attention accorded him by this edition. In works such as The seven sorowes that women have when theyr husbandes be deade, and The hye way to the spytell hous, Erler discerns a conjunction of medieval formulae with intimations of psychological realism. Perhaps just as important is the carnivalesque populism apparent in lyl of Braintfords testament, shaped around the subversive symbolism and bodily production of a 'homly' widow's farts. The poem rambles to a crescendo as Jyl groans, 'And lift up...