Theutberga, Rejected Queen (died 11 November 875)
I get so tired of hearing about "traditional marriage," as if there is such a thing, in the first place--a single, unchanging, ideal form of union between one man and one woman. Anyone who waxes rhapsodic about "traditional marriage" knows absolutely nothing about its history. And even if "traditional marriage" were actually a thing, a single, unchanging institution, it is not some model to which any woman should aspire . . . This blog--now some 620 essays long--offers scores of examples of the variety, follies, and horrors of the realities of marriage and the way it has been used to women's disadvantage.
Centuries into Christian marriage (the "tradition" most of those who extol its virtues seem to assume is universal), Theutberga and Lothair II offer yet one more example of how "traditional marriage" isn't a goal to which anyone, much less anyone female, should aspire.
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| The kingdom of Lotharingia during the reign of Lothair II |
Poor Theutberga. She was the daughter of Boso the Elder, count of Turin, and his wife, a woman named Engeltrude, about whom nothing seems to be known.
Theutberga's father was a powerful Frankish nobleman, member of a dynasty that medieval historian Constance Bouchard has called "the most successful in their rise to power of any lineage of their time." In their rise, the Bosonids relied not only on military strength but "matrimonial strategies that guided their ascent to a position
of political power." Nice tradition, huh?
Such "matrimonial strategies" were mutually beneficial, at least for the men arranging them and agreeing to them. Historian Paul Heidecker explains what each party to these arrangements had to gain:
These marriage alliances clearly had a dynamic of their own. The kings looked to gain powerful allies, but those allies themselves gained in importance through the marriage connection because, temporarily at least, they were closer to the center of power, the king. If they made good use of that position, they became attractive prospects for a future marriage alliance.
To further such ends, one of Theutberga's brothers, possibly named Boso, was married to Engeltrude, the daughter of Matfried, count of Orléans, an important counselor in the court of Lothair II's father, the emperor Lothair I. Contemporary sources do indicate that Theutberga had two brothers--but the name of this one is conjectural. This alliance does not seem to have worked out well, however. As another example of "traditional marriage," Engeltrude abandoned her husband and ran off with one of his vassals, for which she was excommunicated.
Theutberga's sister, who may or may not have been named Richild, was married to Biwin (or Bouvin) of Gorze, a Frankish nobleman, their marriage documented in contemporary sources that identify Biwin's wife as Theutberga's sister. Biwin had significant relationships not only with Lothair I but with Lothair I’s father, Emperor Louis the Pious. Theutberga's niece, named Richild, possibly after her mother, was the second wife of Charles the Bald, king of West Francia, who eventually became emperor of the Carolingians. So, yay! Good one!
As for Theutberga's role in the Bosonid marital strategy. In 855, she was married to Lothair II. It would be interesting to know how old Theutberga was at the time of her marriage--I can find no certain dates for the births of any of Boso the Elder's children, though he himself seems to have been born around the year 800. The most reliable genealogical information I have been able to find is at the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, which relies on contemporary chronicles, annals, legal documents, and correspondence--the FMG suggests a date of birth between 820 and 825 for Theutberga's brother who may (or may not) have been named Boso. These dates suggest Theutberga may have been around Lothair's age when she married.
What did Lothair II hope to gain from this alliance? As the king of Lotharingia, Lothair would have secured the political and military support of Theutberga's family, in particular of her brother Hubert (or Hucbert or Hugobert), count of Valois and duke of Transjurania (or Upper Burgundy, an important Carolingian duchy).* Hubert had also seized control of the strategically located (and wealthy) Abbey of Saint-Maurice in Valais, becoming "lay abbot." (A lay abbot controled the abbey and received its the revenue, but wasn't a clergyman.) And, obviously, marriage to the king of Lotharingia, who was also the son of Lothair I, the Carolingian emperor, was certainly advantageous to Hubert. (By the way, Charlemagne (had his own hair-raising relationship to the institution). But nowhere will you find any discussion of the “strategic benefit” to Theutberga of this marriage, about which she almost certainly had no say whatsoever.
The year 855 was a significant year for both Theutberga and Lothair. It was not only the year of their marriage, but Theutberga lost her father, who died in 855. As for Lothair II--in that year, his father also died, and the younger Lothair succeeded him as king of Lotharingia. And 855 was also the year in which Lothair's first son was born--unfortunately, however, it was not Theutberga who was that boy's mother, nor was that boy Lothair's heir. Hugo was the son of Lothair's mistress or concubine, whichever word you prefer, a woman named Waldrada. As Pierre Riché notes, this was no problem, at least at first, for Lothair--who had his "advantageous marriage" even as he "kept his cherished mistress." Riché offers no opinion about how this might have affected Theutberga.
In his Histoire de Waldrade, a nineteenth-century history of Lothair’s marital mess, Alfred Auguste Ernouf claims that Lothair was "married against his inclination" (marié contre son inclination) and that he had "a profound aversion to his legitimate wife" (une aversion profonde contre sa femme légitime). Poor Theutberga--was she inclined to this marriage? Might she have had an aversion to Lothair? Who cares? Ernouf also claims noble connections for Waldrada, perhaps to pretty up Lothair's relationship with her, though such claims seems fanciful--and no evidence for these connections exist.
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| Canon tables from the beautiful Gospels of Theutberga, a manuscript likely owned by her (now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) |
Whatever Lothair's feelings about Theutberga may have been at the time of their marriage, she bore him no legitimate children--or at least not quickly enough. He hardly gave her a chance to fulfill her role as a queen, because by 857, Lothair had decided the heir he needed would never come and he had to have his marriage to Theutberga annulled.
And he not only wanted to be rid of Theutberga, he wanted to have his illegitimate son legitimized, and he wanted to be married to Waldrada, who seems to have been his mistress for some time. In her analysis of the long battle over the annulment, Rosamond McKitterick offers political reasons beyond Lothair's "attachment" to Waldrada--he had no legitimate heir and two uncles "breathing down his neck" and staring at his kingdom "with beady eyes." He needed an heir (as soon as possible, it seems) in order to "preserv[e] his inheritance."
As grounds for the annulment he sought, Lothair claimed that Theutberga had not been a virgin at the time of her marriage and that she had carried on an incestuous relationship with her brother, Hubert. This relationship began before Lothair's marriage to Theutberga, her husband asserted--despite the fact that Lothair himself had acknowledged her virginity on the morning after the two had consummated their marriage and that he had waited two years before seeking an annulment.
Lothair claimed that Hubert and Theutberga had engaged in some kind of "unnatural" act, one "that men are used to do with men"—so technically she was a virgin at the time of her marriage. Thus Lothair attempted to save face and explain away at least one of the inconsistencies in his argument for annulment. And then, eschewing logic (and the facts of reproduction), Lothair claimed that Theutberga had aborted a child she had conceived with her brother through these "unnatural" sex acts.**
And so Lothair launched himself into a process that would end only with his death. Immediately after Lothair made his claims about her, Theutberga and Hubert, who had taken up arms against Lothair after the scandalous charge of incest, fled to the court of Charles the Bald. There Theutberga sought protection and refuge. In 858, Lothair agreed to a trial by ordeal in order to settle the matter. This legal procedure involved Theutberga--or, rather, her champion--plunging a hand into boiling water. Theutberga’s representative survived this trial, thus “proving” Theutberga’s innocence.
Not having received quite the "judgment from God" that he expected, and after imprisoning Theutberga, Lothair finally got the confession that he sought when he claimed that Theutberga had admitted her sins. Two of his archbishops not only obligingly declared that his marriage was annulled, they retroactively decided he had been married to Waldrada all along.
But when the two, Archbishop Gunther of Cologne and Archbishop Theutgaud of Trier, traveled to Rome to present all this to Pope Nicholas I, he rejected their decision, de-archbishoped the both of them, and told Lothair he had to take Theutberga as his lawful wife.
But Lothair could not be forced to accept Theutberga as his wife--instead, he imprisoned her, and at some point, perhaps driven to despair, perhaps hoping to get herself out of the marriage, the imprisoned queen "confessed" her guilt to her husband's confessor, who wrote down her admissions of guilt and presented them to a council held at Aachen in 860.
At first Theutberga refused to confess to her sins but, perhaps under threat of torture, she finally made a public admission and was sentenced to penance. The bishops agreed to Lothair's separation from his wife, and Theutberga was sent off to a convent. Lothair resumed living with Waldrada, but, unfortunately for him, his obliging bishops weren't as obliging as he hoped--they did not grant him the right to remarry. And they sent the whole matter off to the scholar Hincmar, archbishop of Rheins, for his opinion.
Hincmar produced an extended treatise, On the Divorce of King Lothar and Queen Theutberga (De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae [for selections, click here]). Hincmar was asked whether a woman could still be considered a virgin if she had performed the kind of "unnatural" sex act that Theutberga and Hubert were supposed to have committed. He was also asked whether a woman could become pregnant yet still be a virgin. Real conundrums. Hincmar does not seem to have been sympathetic to Lothair: after considering the questions with which he had been presented, the scholar concluded "that with witchcraft the female vulva could attract sperm without copulation, but he did not accept that her [Theutberga's] guilt had been established as prescribed in canon law; he did however say that a man’s lover (in this case Waldrada) could by sorcery prevent the man from impregnating a woman, so he recommended the exorcism of Lothar rather than divorce from Theutberga."
Hincmar further stated that, among other things, the trial by ordeal had settled the case; that even if Theutberga were guilty of adultery, that was grounds for separation, not divorce; that, if guilty, Theutberga might be sent to a nunnery, but Lothair could not remarry as long as she were alive; that the secrecy of Theutberga's confession, if made, had been violated; that Hubert had not been examined by the bishops; and that the bishops had not condemned Lothair for his adultery with Waldrada.
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| Text page from the Gospels of Theutberga |
Undaunted, Lothair called another synod. In 862, this obliging group of bishops and archbishops agreed that there were grounds to annul his marriage on the grounds of incest, which they did. (Poor Lothair--he had cited the dangers of "incontinence" in his appeal to them and had lamented his state, living without a wife and with a concubine! His soul was in peril because he couldn't live without religiously sanctioned sex!) With this decision, Lothair married Waldrada and had her declared queen.
Still, Lothair couldn't rest. He called together another synod, this one in Metz, in 863. This group declared that Lothair had been married to Waldrada all along. Theutberga, with the support of Charles the Bald, appealed once again to the pope, still Nicholas I, who had the matter investigated. The pope ultimately decided in favor of Theutberga, had the two bishops who had earlier been involved in the synod at Aachen dismissed, removed the clerics who had made the judgment in Metz dismissed as well, and told Lothair he had to be reconciled to his queen--Theutberga, not Waldrada, to whom he had not been married.
Furious, Lothair would go to Rome and besiege the pope. That didn't work, nor did the threats he made against Theutberga's life or her own appeals to the pope to end her marriage and allow her to retire to a convent. Pope Nicholas would not relent--nothing would convince him to allow Lothair to marry Waldrada or to declare their children legitimate. He even went so far as to suggest that Theutberga's "sterility" had been caused by Lothair's adultery. Even if Theutberga were dead, Lothair would not be able to remarry.
There matters stood until Nicholas died in 867. Thinking the new pope, Adrian II, might be more amenable to him, Lothair traveled to Italy, hoping for a favorable decision. Theutberga, too, addressed the new pope, hoping he would free her from her marriage. But Adrian was not eager to issue a decision, although Lothair was confident that the pope would eventually rule in his favor.
In the end, Adrian never had to decide. On his way back to Lotharingia from Rome, Lothair II died on 9 August 869 in Piacenza. His eldest child with Waldrada, Hugo, was declared illegitimate and thus unable to inherit--the kingdom of Lotharinia was to be inherited by Lothair's brother, Louis, but ultimately it went to Charles the Bald. Since Louis was in Italy, Charles the Bald rushed off to Lotharingia and had himself "crowned and anointed" as king.
As for Theutberga. Let us hope she found peace. She retired to the Abbey of St. Glossinde in Metz. She died there on 11 November 875.
It's not clear what happened to Waldrada--she is no longer mentioned in contemporary records after Lothair's death. It is not clear what might have become of her. Because so little is known about her, it is hard to say whether her relationship to Lothair was one she consented to willingly or whether she was attached to Lothair as he was to her. What were her options? The pair seems to have had a number of children, but the fate of only one, Bertha, is well documented. She married Theobald, count of Arles, the son of Theutberga's brother, Hubert. Yikes!! Traditional marriage!
Lothair's divorce is much discussed, researched and analyzed in work by many great scholars, some of whom I have linked to here. The details and chronology of events vary significantly in their accounts, and I have done my best to produce a reasonable summary here. These sources vary in the word they use to describe the separation Lothair desires, employing both "annulment" and "divorce." In canon law, these are not the same, and I am not always sure which is technically correct at each step of Lothair's process. For an accessible version of Lothair's decade-long attempt to divorce Theutberga, "The Marriage of Lothair and Theutberga," click here. This essay appears in Encyclopedia.com, usually a reliable resource, but I can't find an author. For a longer read, see Karl Heidecker, The Divorce of Lothair II: Christian Marriage and Political Power in the Carolingian World, trans. Tanis M. Guest.
You may be interested in a podcast from History Extra: "Lothar II vs Theutberga: A Marriage Scandal that Shook the Ninth Century" (click here). If you can't listen to it at that link, search wherever you usually find your podcastss--the History Extra series is available on Apple, for instance.
For more information about the Gospels of Theutberga, illustrations from which are included here, you may wish to read Steven van Putten and Charles West's discussion of the ninth-century manuscript, "Inscribing Property, Rituals, and Royal Alliances: The ‘Theutberga Gospels’ and the Abbey of Remiremont" (click here). Although the manuscript was produced in Metz and was "traditionally" associated with the Abbey of Sainte-Glossinde, there is "only a shaky association" of this beautiful Gospel book with Theutberga, though "the book almost
certainly resided in the library of a female monastery in the later ninth century [likely the convent of Remiremont], and . . . it
likely played a role beyond that of mere treasure or memento of a powerful patron." Their best guess? Waldrada, who some scholars believe entered the convent of Remiremont at some point in the 860s . . .
The manuscript, which had been in private hands, was auctioned by Christie's in July 2015, puchased for just under almost £2 million by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). You may view the entire manuscript at the museum's website (click here).
*Hubert was also married, though I haven't been able to find out the name of his wife, the most detailed and reliable (?) source being the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy.
**Some historians suggest this may have been anal sex, others like Heidecker, a kind of sex "between the thighs."
