Margherita da Trento, "Sister in Christ"

Margherita da Trento, "Sister in Christ" (burned at the stake on 1 June 1307)

Margherita da Trento--Margaret of Trent--is a shadowy figure. Not much is known about her origins or, indeed, her life. But we do know about her death. She was burned at the stake, as a heretic, on 1 June 1307.

What is also known is that she was a follower of a man known as Fra Dolcino, a radical religious reformer whose origins are as unclear as Margherita's. 

In 1300, Fra Dolcino assumed the leadership of the Apostolic Brethren (Apostilici), a religious group that had been founded by Gherardino Segarelli in 1260. Segarelli's movement was modeled on the way of life of the apostles--a life of poverty and simplicity. Segarelli set about preaching his views on the importance of penitence, fasting, and prayer. He condemned as corrupt not only the Church's wealth, but also its practices like tithes and indulgences.

A plaque memorializing Margherita da Trento,
Biello, Ponte de Maddalena*

Segarelli gained disciples for the mendicant life he espoused, and his movement spread from Lombardy. By 1287, in fact, his movement had spread so far that it was condemned by the council of Wurzburg. Segarelli and his Apostolic Brethren were also condemned by Pope Honorius IV in 1286 and Pope Nicholas IV in 1290.

Meanwhile, Segarelli had been imprisoned by the bishop of Parma in 1280 and then banished. After the papal condemnations of 1286 and 1290, Segarelli and several of his followers were imprisoned in 1294--four members of the group were burned at the stake, Segarelli condemned to perpetual imprisonment. He abjured his errors, but after relapsing (or being made to confess that he had relapsed), he was condemned for heresy, then burned at the stake on 18 July 1300.

After assuming leadership of the Apostolic Brethren following Segarelli's death, Fra Dolcino took the group in an even more rigorous direction: 

Dolcino was even more anti-hierarchical than his mentor. At the most basic level, the Dulcinites believed in the poverty and simplicity of the Christian life. “The congregation is founded on the principles of the Apostles, it follows the poverty,” began the first of Dolcino’s letters outlining his beliefs. However, [he] continued that that lifestyle should be “without any external constraints as a rule.” This idea did not just apply to the constraints set by the church; it also applied to those of society too.

The Dulcinites believed the only way to reform the church was to change society. So, aside from returning Christianity to its apostolic roots, they proposed destroying all hierarchies of power—including the feudal system and replacing it with an egalitarian society, which held all property in common. The Dulcinites justified their stance based on lines 44-47 of 'The Acts of the Apostles' which stated: “But all those who believed were together and had everything in common.” This philosophy appealed to the peasantry and dispossessed who were attracted to the idea of a redistribution of wealth.

Notably--and unlike the mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans--Dolcino welcomed women into his group of followers.

The Capture of Margherita and

Fra Dolcino 

(fresco, Antonio Ciancia da Caprile),

Church of SS. Quirico and Giulitta in Trivero, 1867

Fra Dolcino (despite his title, there is no evidence he took orders) retreated with his followers to the Trentino area, which is where he encountered Margherita, who became a member of the group. 

In a letter of 1303, Dolcino refers to himself as rector ("director," or leader), describing soror Margherita as pre ceteris sibi dilectissima, "most beloved to himself above all others." 

The identification of Margherita as "from Trento" comes from a deposition of 1304, in which one of the members of the group describes her as da Trento and claims that she had accompanied Fra Dolcino for at least a year.

Fra Dolcino and his followers withdrew into the Valsesia region of Piedmont--they established their own community in this mountainous region, but in 1305, Pope Paul declared a crusade against them. Beset by these "crusaders," Dolcino and his followers retreated further, setting up a community on Mount Zebello, in Piedmont. They managed to hold out until 23 March 1307, when they were captured.

Fra Dolcino and Margherita da Trento were taken to Biello (Piedmont), where they were both condemned by secular authorities. Margherita was burned at the stake on 1 June 1307. After being forced to witness Margherita’s death, Dolcino was then executed.

Further details about Margherita abound--though they seem to be fantasies. She is, of course, widely reported to be very beautiful and, equally to be expected, from a wealthy family that she rejected by taking up her life of poverty. Other stories claim she rejected many suitors to follow Dulcino. Years later, in a deposition taken as part of further investigations of the Dulcinians, a man referred to as "ser Boninsegna," son of dominus Oddorico da Arco, claimed Margherita was his sister (thus the name she is at times called, Margherita Boninsegna) and that she had ruined his life. (He also claimed that Margherita was still alive, married, living in Vicenza, and the mother of a fifteen-year-old child . . . )

In his treatise Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis (A Practical Investigation of Heretical Perversion, the inquisitor Bernardo Gui claimed that Margherita was Dolcino's amasia (lover), his "partner in crime and heresy," and that she was pregnant with Dolcino's child at the time she was captured--with Dolcino claiming that the holy spirit had impregnated her. 

I've linked to helpful sources above, but I will note that the most reliable and complete is Marina Benedetti's entry on Margherita da Trento in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, available via Treccani (click here).

Dated but thorough is Antonio Gallenga's A Historical Memoir of Frà Dolcino and His Times, available at the Internet Archive (click here).

*This plaque commemorating Margherita da Trento was added to the Maddalena Bridge (Biello) in 2007, placed near the site of her execution. Ironically, I have found no photo online that can be enlarged to read the plaque, and no article transcribes it--not even the article noting the very few public commemmorations of women in Biello: "The 'Forgotten' Women of Streets and Squares: Biella Is No Exception, Only 10 Bearing the Names of Women; It is Even Worse for Monuments: the Only One is the Plaque Commemorating Margherita da Trento, wife of Fra Dolcino."

Antonia Pulci, Renaissance Playwright

 Antonia Tanini Pulci (7 May, the feast of St. Domitilla)

Although an English translation of Antonia Pulci's sacre rappresentazioni (literally "holy performances," or one-act sacred plays) has sat on my bookshelf for nearly thirty years, I somehow never got around to posting an essay here about the fifteenth-century Florentine writer.

Opening images in Bartolomeo de' Libri's 
1495 edition of Antonia Pulci's 
Rappresentazione di santa Guglielma
(from the Biblioteca Europea di
Informaziow e Cultura digital library)

I was reminded of that failure a few months ago when I wrote about Guglielma of Milan, an "unofficial" saint and posthumous heretic whose religious activities were officially suppressed. But those efforts to eradicate the life and afterlife of Guglielma and her story failed.

In 1425, some 140 years after Guglielma's death in 1281, a friar living in Ferrara, Antonio Bonfadini, wrote her vita, a saint's life. This work, filled with incredible and entirely made up detail, does not seem to have been widely read--only one manuscript copy survives. 

But this vita or some version of it somehow found its way to the Florentine writer Antonia Pulci. Her sacra rappresentazione about Guglielma, The Play of Saint Guglielma (Rappresentazione di Santa Guglielma), preserved and popularized the story of Guglielma.

Antonia Tanini, later Pulci, was born around the year 1452, nearly thirty years after Bonfadini composed his life of Guglielma. She was the daughter of a Florentine merchant, Francesco d'Antonio di Giannotto Tanini, and his wife, Jacopa da Roma. The couple had seven children, including Antonia--six daughters and one son.* Francesco also had two children born out of wedlock, a son born before his marriage and a daughter born during his marriage.

Francesco Tanini's children were all well educated, Antonia and her sisters as well as her brothers. In their edition of Antonia Pulci's plays, James Wyatt Cook and Barbara Collier Cook note that Antonia received a "careful literary and religious education." Her plays demonstrate both the extent of her learning and "her mastery of several sorts of Italian verse." Later in her life, continuing to educate herself, she hired a tutor to instruct her in Latin.

Some three years after her father's death, when she was about eighteen years old, Antonia Tanini was married to Bernardo Pulci, a member of a distinguished Florentine family. Unfortunately, Bernardo's older brother bankrupted the family--while Bernardo may have been rich in literary aspirations and political patronage (he was supported by the Medicis), he was not a wealthy man. As a banker and speculator he was unable to retrieve the family's fortunes, and the couple lived in straitened circumstances. 

The title page of of Pulci's 
Rappresentazione di
Santa Domitilla:
"INCOMINCIA La rapresentatione di san-
 cta Domitilla uergine facta & compo-
 sta in uersi per mona Antonia
 dōna di Bernardo pulci lāno [l'anno]
M CCCC LXXXIII"

But as Elissa B. Weaver notes in her biographical essay on Antonia Pulci, "All of the Pulcis were writers." By 1483, Pulci herself had also begun to write, and at least three of her sacre rappresentazioni were printed in a two-volume collection of thirteen plays published in Florence in that year: Rappresentazione di Santa Domitilla, Rappresentazione di Santa Guglielma, and Rappresentazione di San Francesco. A fourth play in this collection, on Joseph, the son of Jacob, may also have been written by Pulci.** (One of her husband's plays is also printed in this anthology.)

In 1488, Bernardo Pulci died, leaving Antonia a widow. After her husband's death, Antonia Pulci became a tertiary, a "third order sister"--that is, while she continued to live in the secular world, she lived a religious life, as if she were inside a convent. 

Antonia Pulci did spend some of her time in the Dominican convent of San Vincenzo, known as Annalena, and some of the time at her mother's home. It was during this time that she sought out Francesco Dulciati to instruct her in Latin. 

In 1500, after securing the return of her dowry from the Pulci family (evidently she was entitled to the return since she and Bernardo had not had children), she seemed to have taken "more formal vows" and founded a house for Augustinian tertiaries, Santa Maria della Misericordia. She was enclosed there on 26 February 1500. It was there that she died on 26 September 1501.

Her foundation survived for three decades after Pulci's death, but it was eventually dissolved, seemingly because it was located outside the walls of the city of Florence, a somewhat dangerous location. The tertiaries moved inside the city, to the convent of San Clemente, near the friary of San Gallo, where Pulci's Latin teacher had become prior. 

Francesco Dulciati wrote a brief biography of Antonia Pulci some years after her death. In this, he attributes to Antonia Pulci a play about Joseph, the son of Jacob (likely the sacra rappresentazione on that subject in the 1483 anthology). He also says she wrote a play on the topic of the Prodigal Son and another on Saul and David. Two plays on these subjects survive in later publications and are likely Pulci's. Dulciata also claims that, after her husband's death, Antonia Pulci continued to write, but religious poetry rather than plays, including a poem on the body of Christ, a copy of which, signed by Pulci herself, he says he has in his possession.

Opening text pages in Bartolomeo de' Libri's 
1495 edition of Antonia Pulci's 
Rappresentazione di santa Guglielma
(from the Biblioteca Europea di
Informazione Cultura digital library)

I've linked to several accessible sources above, including Cook and Cook's edition of Antonia Pulci's plays. Interestingly, this 1996 edition, published as a volume in the University of Chicago's The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series, was revised. In 2010, as part of the Toronto Series of The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, a bilingual edition, with a "fresh translation" by James Wyatt Cook and edited by Elissa B. Weaver, published the "five plays securely authored by Antonia Pulci." (The earlier Cook and Cook volume had included "seemingly later plays" relying on "a tradition of attribution and internal correspondences with the plays of unquestioned provenance.") For this later volume, Saints' Lives and Bible Stories for the Stage: A Bilingual Edition, click here.

I have not addressed the performance issues of Pulci's plays in my post. For a larger discussion of convent theater, you may also enjoy Elissa B. Weaver's Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women.

*In their 1996 edition of Pulci's rappresentazioni, editors James Wyatt Cook and Barbara Collier Cook write that Francesco had five children born "in wedlock," but they list seven. (See Florentine Drama for Convent and Festival, Seven Sacred Plays, trans. James Wyatt Cook, eds. James Wyatt Cook and Barbara Collier Cook, 11). 

While Cook and Cook note that Antonia "was the daughter of a Florentine family whose fortunes as bankers were beginning to rise," Elissa B. Weaver's 2004 entry on Pulci for Italian Women Writers indicates that Antonia's father was a Florentine merchant. Because of Weaver's detailed archival work on this subject, I've followed her identification of Antonia's father as a merchant.

There has also been some confusion about the surname of Antonia's father, as noted by Weaver: 

Confusion regarding Antonia's name entered into literary history in the late nineteenth century, and from that time on she was thought to have belonged to the Giannotti family. This was the result of a misinterpretation of her father's name, undoubtedly based on a document from the period when he did not use a surname but two patronymics, the second of which was 'di Giannotto'. He appears in early tax records as Francesco d'Antonio di Giannotto in order to distinguish himself from others in his gonfalone (district of the city) named Francesco d'Antonio. When the family began to use a surname they took it from an earlier ancestor named Tanino.

Antonia Pulci's name is still noted as "Antonia Giannotti" in the  Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, for example (available here). In her biographical essay (2000), Anna Laura Saso claims that the surname Tanino "appears to be erroneous" (erronea appare). 

**On the complicated history and understanding of this collection of plays, widely attributed to the printer Antonio Miscomini, see Nerida Newbigin's "Antonia Pulci and the First Anthology of Sacre Rappresentazioni (1483?)," La Bibliofilia 118, no. 3 (2016): 337-62. There are different opinions about the date of publication of this volume, but Newbigin reasons that the volumes were likely published in 1483, and I've accepted her date of publication here.

Guglielma of Milan, Unofficial Saint and Posthumous Heretic

Guglielma of Milan, Unofficial Saint, Posthumous Heretic, and Maybe a Princess of Bohemia? (died 24 October 1281)

In the year 1260, a woman who called herself Guglielma arrived in Milan. Apparently a widow, she was accompanied by a man she called her son. In the city, she lived a life devoted to her religious faith, attracting a devoted following. She died on 24 October 1281 and was buried first in the small parish church of San Pietro all'Orto, her body moved later to the Cistercian monastery of Chiaravalle.

Fresco in the church of 
San Andrea in Brunate
( Italy), c. 1450;
Identified by Barbara Newman
as a depiction of Guglielma, 
blessing two of her followers

These are the few verifiable biographical details of Guglielma's otherwise unremarkable life. It's her afterlife that is remarkable.

Guglielma's "history," as far as her background and connections, her religious activities, and her teaching, is now known only through the testimony of her followers given during an inquisitorial investigation in 1300. 

By the time of Guglielma's death, her religious famiglia "had come to believe," to quote historian Barbara Newman's words, that Guglielma was "the Holy Spirit herself, incarnate, in the form of a woman." 

Her followers were led by the man she called her son, Andrea Saramita, and a nun, Sister Maifredo da Pirovano. Although Guglielma herself seems to have denied their claims, the layman and the nun persisted in their teaching that the Holy Spirit, in the person of Guglielma, had come to re-establish the Church. 

Further, Guglielma's son "predicted that Guglielma would effect a Second Coming on Pentecost 1300." Cleansed and renewed, the Church would then be able to save the souls of Jews, pagans, unbelievers, heretics, and "Saracens." And, since the Holy Spirit, in Guglielma, "had chosen to appear in female form," Sister Maifredo would become the new pope, a woman replacing corrupt popes like Boniface VIII.

Guglielma's followers came to the attention of the inquisition as early as 1284 and again in 1296, but it took nearly twenty years for them to be brought before an inquisition. The investigation began with the examination of Maifreda da Provano in April 1300; the formal trial began in July and ended only in December of that year, resulting in the condemnation of Andrea Saramita and Sister Maifredi as heretics. They were burned at the stake. A second nun, judged a relapsed heretic, was also burned at the stake, while others of Guglielma's followers were assessed "hefty fines" and were condemned to wearing "penitential crosses."

Brunate (Cuomo, Italy)

As for Guglielma herself, dead for twenty years? She was posthumously condemned for heresy. Her body was dug up, her bones were burned, the ashes were scattered, and every attempt was made to make Guglielma disappear--images of her were destroyed, texts written by her followers were destroyed, and the tomb at Chiaravalle where she had been buried was "dismantled."

But, 150 years later, a cycle of paintings devoted to Guglielma appeared in the church of San Andrea, in Brunate, a small village in the province of Cuomo, overlooking Lake Cuomo, some thirty miles northeast of Milan. Only one fresco remains there today, the image that Newman argues represents Guglielma and her two followers (above). 

In the surviving records of the inquisition, several of those who were examined, including Andrea Saramita, the man who arrived in Milan with Guglielma and whom she claimed as her son, said that Guglielma was the daughter of the the king of Bohemia (or maybe his sister, at least according to the testimony of one person).

If these claims are correct, and some scholars think they could be, Guglielma was the daughter of Přemysl Otakar I, king of Bohemia, and his second wife, Constance of Hungary, a woman named Blažena Vilemína. If this surmise is correct, Guglielma would be the sister of Agnes of Bohemia (d. 1282), canonized 12 November 1989. Guglielma would also be a first cousin of Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231), canonized 25 May 1235, and a cousin to Elizabeth's niece, Margaret of Hungary (d. 1270), canonized 19 November 1943. She would also be related to Hedwig of Silesia (d. 1243), canonized in 1267--Hedwig was Elizabeth of Hungary's aunt, but I haven't quite worked through her relationship to Guglielma.

But there is no surviving evidence of Guglielma's birth. In Newman's words, "The only problem with this scenario is the absence of any corroborating Bohemian documents."

Despite all efforts to eradicate Guglielma, her story did not die. In 1425, a friar living in Ferrara wrote her vita, a saint's life. This work, filled with incredible and entirely made up detail, does not seem to have been widely read (only one manuscript copy survives), but the vita or some version of it somehow found its way to the Florentine writer Antonia Pulci, whose play on Guglielma's life, The Play of Saint Guglielma (Rappresentazione di Santa Guglielma), preserved and popularized the story of Guglielma.

The most complete and accessible (for English speakers) account of Guglielma of Milan is Barbara Newman's "The Heretic Saint: Guglielma of Bohemia, Milan, and Brunate" Church History 74, no. 1 (2005): 1-38. There is much to Guglielma's afterlife that I have not detailed here, including information about Sister Maifreda, a member of the Visconti family.

If you can read Italian, I recommend Luisa Muraro's Guglielma e Maifreda Storia di un’eresia femminista (3rd edition, Milan: Libreria delle donne), an ebook available in its entirety here.

A thorough analysis of the surviving records of the inquisition is here.

For a view of the "wandering princess" motif in religious cults like the one that grew up around Guglielma, see Dávid Falvay's “'A Lady Wandering in a Faraway Land[:] The Central European Queen/Princess Motif in Italian Heretical Cults"  Annual of Medieval Studies at Central European University Budapest, 8 (2002): 157-179 (available here).

Chiesa di Sant'Andrea Apostolo,
Brunate

Adelaide of Burgundy, Empress, Regent, Saint

Adelaide of Burgundy, Empress and Regent of the Holy Roman Empire (died 16 December 999)

About the women in Adelaide of Burgundy's extended family--among them Adelaide's daughter-in-law, the Empress Theophanu, Adelaide's older daughter, Emma, queen of the Franks, and her younger daughter Mathilda, princess-abbess of Quedlinburg--historian Pauline Stafford writes, "A group of women played key roles in the last decade of the tenth century. . . ." They "ruled as regents for under-age males." They "met together . . . to debate important questions of succession and dynastic interralations." They were, "in every sense . . . a regiment of powerful women." (If only John Knox had known about this "monstrous" regiment!)

Nineteenth-century artist Abel Terral's 
entirely imagined portrait
of Adelaide of Burgundy

Chief among these powerful and influential women was Adelaide herself: queen, empress, regent of the empire, and saint.

The daughter of Rudolf II, king of Upper Burgundy, and Bertha of Swabia, Adelaide of Burgundy was born in the Frankish kingdom of Upper Burgundy (now Switzerland) in the year 931.

In the decade before Adelaide's birth, Rudolf had intervened in the politics of northern Italy, opposing Berengar I, king of Italy and emperor of the Romans. Invited by disaffected members of the nobility to intervene in the kingdom, Rudolf was himself crowned king of Italy in Pavia in 922. He defeated Berengar at the battle of Firenzuola d'Arda on 29 July 923, after which Rudolf ruled in both Upper Burgundy and in Italy (though he never became emperor).

But by 926, sentiment turned against Rudolf, and it was the turn of Hugh of Provence, Rudolf's former ally, to be invited by disaffected members of the nobility to intervene in Italian politics. Rudolf was eventually forced back to Upper Burgundy, while Hugh of Provence gained control in northern Italy. In 931, Hugh had his son, Lothair, crowned co-ruler of Italy, and to bolster his position, concluded a treaty with Rudolf--Rudolf gave up his claims in Italy, and Hugh ceded Provence to Rudolf. To secure their alliance, the two agreed to the marriage of Rudolf's daughter, Adelaide, to Hugh's son, Lothair.

But, surprise! After Rudolf's death in 937, his widow (and Adelaide's mother), Bertha, married Hugh of Provence. After her mother's remarriage, Adelaide was raised in Pavia, and on 12 December 947, when she was about fifteen years old, Adelaide of Burgundy was married to her step-brother, Lothair. She bore him a daughter, Emma, about a year later. With the death of Hugh of Provence (c. 948), Lothair became sole king of Italy, Adelaide his queen.

But just three years after their marriage, Lothair was dead (22 November 950), probably poisoned by Berengar II--the grandson of Berengar I. This Berengar had been actively seeking control of Italy for some time. He had fought against Hugh (who died in 947), and then against Lothair. After Lothair's death, Berengar assumed the title of king of Italy, named (and crowned) his son, Adalbert, as co-ruler, and aimed to consolidate his power in the territory by forcing the widowed Adelaide to marry his son.

A hair-raising account of Adelaide's situation is related by the tenth-century writer Hrotsvita of Gandersheim in her epic poem, Carmen de gestis Oddonis imperatoris (Poem of the Deeds of the Emperor Otto). In her words, Adelaide was "a woman illustrious in the comeliness of her queenly beauty and solicitous in affairs worthy of her character." She "possessed . . . pre-eminent natural abilities"--recognized by Lothair, who intended that the kingdom of Italy would be "ruled by the will of the eminent queen" after his death.

But because of their "vile treachery," a "certain faction of the populace, with perverted and hostile spirit," betrayed Lothair and Adelaide; after Lothair's death, they offered the kingdom instead to Berengar II, who had long "nursed" a "hatred" in his "baleful breast." Having seized the throne, he deprived Adelaide of her attendants and imprisoned her in Garda Castle. The indomitable young woman resisted, ultimately escaping her confinement--according to Hrostvita's account, Adelaide somehow managed to dig a "secret tunnel under the earth" (Hrostvita says this tunnel was dug "under the guidance of common prayer" and with the "support of the benevolent Christ").

However she managed it, by means of a secret tunnel or otherwise, Adelaide escaped from Berengar, avoided pursuit and recapture, and found refuge with Adalbert Atto, count of Canossa. When Berengar attempted to take Canossa by siege, Adelaide appealed to Otto, king of the Franks. 

Otto quickly saw the advantages of a marriage with Adelaide. One contemporary source indicates that Adelaide not only appealed to Otto for assistance but sent him a marriage proposal. Hrotsvita, however, attributes Otto's interest to his recognition of Adelaide's excellent qualities (and the convenient death of Otto's first wife, Edith of England): "with frequent ponderings of heart Otto remembered the distinguished Queen Adelaide, and longed to behold the queenly countenance of her whose excellence of character he already knew."

Whatever his motivation, Otto invaded northern Italy, entered Pavia, had himself crowned king of Italy, and sent for Adelaide, who left her refuge in Canossa and joined him. They were married on 23 September 951. 

Thirteenth-century sculptures
of Otto I and Adelaide,
Meissen Cathedral. 
I love his worried face!

Following her marriage, Adelaide, now queen of the Franks and queen of Italy, gave birth to two sons, who did not survive. Her third child, a daughter, was Mathilda, who would eventually become abbess of Quedlinburg. 

A third son, Otto, was born in 955. In 961, after the death of his elder step-brother, Otto was recognized as his father's heir and co-ruler. On 2 February 962, Otto was crowned emperor of the Romans as Otto I, and Adelaide herself crowned as empress. Five years later, in December 967, Adelaide's son, Otto (who would succeed his father as Otto II), was crowned co-emperor. 

During their marriage Adelaide "acted in partnership with Otto"; since he was so often on the battlefield, Adelaide's stable position in Rome seems to have made her a reliable, accessible agent able to act on her husband's behalf, though she seems also to have been able to act independently. As Edward Schoenfeld notes in his discussion of Adelaide, "decisions regarding Italy were made only with her consent," and she "exerted considerable influence on non-Italian affairs." She was greatly interested in religious issues as well: "She promoted Cluniac monasticism and strengthened the allegiance of the German church to the emperor, playing an important role in Otto I’s distribution of ecclesiastical privileges and participating in his Italian expeditions."

The extent of her influence is documented by her appearance in contemporary diplomatic records: "Adelaide is named in royal diplomata by both her husbands; during her marriage to Otto I, she intervened in 92 out of 289 extant diplomata, 29 times in Italy, 63 in Germany."

By 972, Adelaide's son, the sixteen-year-old Otto, had married the Byzantine noblewoman Theophanu. The younger Otto had not yet reached his full majority when Otto I died on 7 March 973, though his succession was uncontested, undoubtedly because of the presence of his mother, now dowager empress. She acted briefly as regent for the young couple after their accession.

While there seems to have been some conflict between Adelaide, her son, and her daughter-in-law (Adelaide "retired" to Upper Burgundy in 978), she did act as Otto's "viceroy" in Italy, and following her son's death in December 983, whatever the issues between her and Theophanu may have been, they were put aside. Adelaide supported Theophanu as she acted as regent for her son, another Otto, who at the age of three, succeeded his father as Otto III, Holy Roman emperor.

Theophanu governed as regent until her death in 991, after which the sixty-year-old Adelaide took over the role for her grandson. Four years later, Otto III reached his majority; he was crowned emperor at Rome on 21 May 996.

By contrast, check out her face!

After resigning her regency, Adelaide focused on founding a number of religious institutions, though her political role was not yet over. After the death of her brother, Conrad I, king of Burgundy, Adelheid traveled to Burgundy to shore up support for her nephew, Rudolf III. 

She died on 16 December 999 at Selz Abbey (Alsace), which she had founded in 991. She was canonized by Pope Urban II in 1097.

I've already linked to several online sources, above. In addition, you can read letters to and from Adelaide at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters (click here). There are only two letters from Adelaide, but quite a few written to her, including a number from her daughter, Emma, queen of the Franks. 

For an academic study comparing Adelaide of Burgundy and Matilda of Tuscany, I recommend Penelope Nash's Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society. (A great deal of helpful introductory material, including a detailed timeline, is available from the publisher here.)

I'll make special note, too, of the edition of Hrotsvita's Deeds of the Emperor Otto, from which I've quoted, above. The English translation is by Sister Mary Bernardine Bergman, her Ph.D. dissertation (St. Louis University, 1942) published in 1943 by the Sisters of St. Benedict of Covington, Kentucky.

By the way, over the centuries, the abbey Adelaide founded suffered from a "millenial flood" (in 1307), was rebuilt, secularized (1481), Protestant-ized (1571), re-converted to Catholicism (1684), dissolved (1692), set on fire by Austrian troops (1793), rebuilt and "recreated" (1801), restored for the "anniversary" of Adelaide's death (1899), almost destroyed in World War II, and restored again in 1958.

Detail from sculpture,
Meissen Cathedral.
She looks like she'd be so much fun!

Radegund of Thuringia, Frankish Queen and Patron Saint

Radegund of Thuringia (died 13 August 587)

Probably born between the years 518 and 520, Radegund was the daughter of Berthacar, one of three brothers who, together, ruled the Germanic kingdom of Thuringia. The name of her mother is unknown.

Radegund has left us some details of her life in two epistolary poems that survive, one addressed to her cousin, Amalfred (the poem is now sometimes referred to as De excidio Thoringiae, "The Fall of Thuringia") and one to her nephew, Artachis, written after the death of his father, Amalfred.

Radegunde of Thuringia,
from an eleventh-century 
manuscript copy of 
The Life of St. Radegund

In addition to what Radegund reveals in these carefully crafted, highly rhetorical Latin letters, three of her contemporaries wrote about the woman who would become queen of the Franks and, after her death, be recognized as a saint. 

Gregory of Tours, bishop of Tours, who knew Radegund well, mentions her in his History of the Franks, paying particular attention to her foundation of the convent of the Holy Cross. He also includes references to Radegund in his Glory of the Confessors and Glory of the Martyrs, where he focuses on details of her piety.

The poet Venantius Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers, also knew Radegund. He wrote a number of poems to her as well as her biography, the Vita Radegundis. In addition, he corresponded with her, and several of his letters to Radegund survive (though none of hers to him). Interestingly, although Fortunatus mentions Radegund's grandfather, father, and uncle by name in his life of Radegund, he is silent about her mother.

The third account of Radegund's life is by the nun Baudonivia, a member of the community of the Holy Cross at Poitiers, a convent founded by Radegund. Her De vita sancti Radegundis, addressed to the "holy ladies" of the convent and to their abbess, Dedimia, has been written at their request: "This task you have assigned me of writing the life of the Lady St. Radegund is like attempting to touch heaven with a fingertip," she begins. About Radegund's family, Baudonivia refers to the beginning of Fortunatus's Life for "an account of her royal origin and rank." Radegund is a "noble sprig" who springs from a "royal race"--but Baudonivia has nothing to say about Radegund's maternal family either.

We may know nothing of Radegund's early life, but we know it was filled with violence. In 529, her father, Berthacar. was killed by one of his brothers, Hermanfrid (Amalfred's father), and the girl and her unnamed brother were taken by their uncle to live with him and his wife, Amalaberga (who is said to have encouraged Hermanfrid to eliminate his other brother too . . . ).

But in 531, Thuringia was attacked by the Franks, and while Hermanfrid escaped (he did not live long after his defeat), Radegund was taken as a prize of war by the victorious Chlothar.* Possession of the girl was the subject of a dispute between Chlothar and his half-brother, Theuderic. In the words of Venantius Fortunatus, the "royal girl became part of the plunder of these conquerors and they began to quarrel over their captive." After the dispute threatened to become deadly, the brothers decided the girl's fate by some kind of wager or bet, and Radegund fell "to the lot of the illustrious King Clothar." 

In her own description of the fall of Thuringia, Radegund is only too aware of the fate of its women--the body of a "milk-white woman," lying unburied on the ground, a "matron . . . rapt away," her hands "bound fast," a wife whose "naked feet" walked through a pool of her husband's blood, a "tender sister," who is forced to step over the body of her brother, a mother whose child is "torn" from her arms. Radegund refers to herself as "The captive maid given to a hostile lord, her power fell / From the heights of glory to the lowest depths." She remains as the "sole survivor," the one who must shed tears for all those who have died.

But, as Fortunatus reminds his readers, Thuringia was a "barbarian nation"--Radegund describes herself as a "barbarian woman." Chlothar and the Franks, on the other hand, were Christian--indeed, Chlothar's mother, Clotilde, helped to convert her husband to Christianity. And so Thuringia's fall was to lead to Radegund's salvation. Once she had been taken back to Chlothar's court near Soissons, he arranged for his captive to be sent to Athies, in Vermandois, where she was reared in what Fortunatus describes as "a royal villa." The plan was for her to be educated there until she reached an age suitable for marriage.

Her "upbringing" thus "entrusted" to suitable guardians, the captive girl was not only instructed in the Catholic faith but also taught to read and write in Latin. She learned her lessons well, as her surviving letters demonstrate. In his Life of Radegund, Fortunatus describes Radegund's many pious acts she performed while at Athies. She also expressed her desire to become a martyr for the faith.

Perhaps that was why, when Chlothar decided to bring her back to court, she "escaped by night" from the villa, accompanied by "a few companions." Her attempted escape may also be explained by Chlothar's decision that "she should be made his queen at Soissons."

Her resistance to marrying Chlothar may have been due to her inclination to a religious life. But it may also have to do with the fact that Chlothar already had a few wives. Not that he had a few wives who had died or been otherwise eliminated--we're not talking about Henry VIII here. Rather, Chlothar was married to several women already--like his father, Chlothar practiced polygyny, and at the time he decided he would marry Radegunde, about the year 540 or a little earlier, he already had a number of wives, at least three and possibly four, but the chronology of his marriages and their dates aren't clear.  

According to one account of the king's marital situation, "At least two of Chlothar's wives, Ingund and Aregund, and possibly also Chunsinna and Radegund, were married to him at the same time," though Chlothar "may have abandoned" Ingund and Aregund before he married Radegund. Chlothar seems also to have married his brother's widow, Guntheuc, around the time of his marriage to Radegund (though Guntheuc may have died before Chlothar's marriage to Radegund). So, a little incest (Ingund and Aregund were sisters, and Guntheuc was his brother's widow) in addition to the more-than-one-wife-at-a-time thing.** (For a little of what Gregory of Tours has to say about Chlothar and his wives, click here. Gregory also notes that Chlothar tricks his mother, Clotilde, and joins in the murder of two of his nephews, Guntheuc's sons, who are in his mother's custody--a third escapes. Sheesh.)

All of this may help to explain why Radegund did not want to marry Chlothar and attempted to escape. She was compelled to do so, however, though the two had no children, and both Venantius Fortunatus and Baudonivia stress that Radegund continued to live her pious life even while she was married. Fortunatus insists that Radegund "avoided the trappings of royalty" and that, though married to a "terrestrial prince," she had not separated from the "celestial one."

And so matters remained. Although married to a king, Radegund devoted herself to the poor and the needy and lived an increasingly ascetic life. But about the year 550, Chlothar had Radegund's brother, the last surviving male in the royal Thuringian line, ambushed and murdered, and she fled the court at Soissons. 

And yet, as Fortunatus reminds his reader, "misfortune often leads to salvation." In his words, Radegund's "innocent brother was killed so that she might come to live in religion. . . . She left the king and went straight to holy Médard," who was the bishop of Noyon. Radegund "earnestly begged that she might change her garments and be consecrated to God." The bishop was "mindful of the words of the Apostle: 'Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed,'" and so "he hesitated to garb the Queen in the robe of a monacha." The bishop may have been worried about scripture, but he was also afraid of the very real wrath of Chlothar. 

Radegund seeks to enter a monastery,
from an eleventh-century 
Vie de sainte Radegonde,
Bibliothèque municipale de Poitiers

But Médard was won over by Radegund, who warned him that divine vengeance would surely be worse than her husband's. And the bishop soon found his way out of his scriptural dilemma too; rather than consecrating Radegund as a nun, he made her a deacon, a state that required neither virginity nor widowhood. And it probably did not hurt that Radegund "divested herself" of all of her "queenly" garb and paraphernalia, laying her golden bracelets, ornaments, pins, and circlets, her gems, and her costly garments at the altar and in the cells of those holy men whom she wished to persuade. As if to affirm that her new status as a deacon conformed to God's wishes, Radegund then experienced a series of visions, which are described by Baudonivia.

Although Chlothar made several attempts to reclaim his runaway queen over the next decade, he was never successful, eventually resigning himself to her loss, perhaps because of a sense of his own impending death. In the mean time, by about 552, she had begun to establish the abbey of Sainte-Marie in Poitiers, the first monastery for women in the Frankish empire. Construction was complete by 560, aided in part by donations from Chlothar.

Radegund was particularly noted by Gregory of Tours for her efforts to obtain a portion of the True Cross for her convent from the Byzantine emperor, Justinius. She was successful, and in 569, her convent was renamed when the relic arrived, now known as the abbey of Sainte-Croix.

Radegund remained at the convent for more than thirty years, until her death on 13 August 587.

In addition to the work of Venantius Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours, to which I've linked, above, I recommend the excellent essay on Radegund by Onnie Duvall at the ORB: Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies (click here). Now archived at the Wayback Machine is the Other Women's Voices entry for Radegund (click here). 

Letters written by and to Radegund are found online at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters (click here).

First published in 1994, Marcelle Thiebaux's The Writings of Medieval Women: An Anthology is still in print--it contains an excellent selection from Radegund's letters and from Baudonivia's Life, written for the nuns at Sainte-Croix. And a very good chapter, "Radegund, Queen of the Franks and Abbess of Poitiers" is in Jo Ann McNamara's Sainted Women of the Dark Ages.

*The name of the Merovingian Chlothar, king of the Franks, is spelled a number of different ways--Chlothar, Chlotar, Clotaire, even Lothar.

**So much for those who are always pining for "traditional marriage"--but who have no idea of the "traditions" that have been part of marriage . . . 

Matilda of Tuscany, "La gran contessa"

Matilda of Canossa, margravine of Tuscany (died 24 July 1115)

Far too often when I begin a post, I must note that there is very little evidence about the life of the woman I am writing about. Fortunately, that is not the case for Matilda of Canossa (or Matilda of Tuscany, as she is also known). As only one indication of the wealth of material available for her life and work, just check out Wikipedia.

Although I do not rely on Wikipedia as a source for my posts, it's not because I do not appreciate the efforts of those who contribute to "the free encyclopedia"--it's because anyone can easily access that information for herself. But I always do check to see whether there is an entry for the woman about whom I'm writing--and so today, if you click on the Wikipedia entry for Matilda, you will find a lengthy, detailed history, with an extensive bibliography, including many works on Matilda in German, Italian, and English.

Matilda of Tuscany,
from Donizo of Canossa's
Vita Mathildis

Even so, the date of this remarkably accomplished woman's birth is unknown, though it is generally placed about the year 1046. Matilda's father was Boniface III, margrave of Tuscany (and count of Brescia, Canossa, Ferrara, Florence, Lucca, Mantua, Modena, Pisa, Pistoia, Parma, Reggio, and Verona--whew!!). 

Matilda's mother was Boniface's second wife, Beatrice of Lorraine. Beatrice's maternal aunt, Gisela, was the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II, and Beatrice had been reared at the empress's court--Boniface first encountered Beatrice there in 1036, and the two were married in 1037. (It was the Emperor Conrad who had awarded Boniface with the lordship of Tuscany, in return for Boniface's support for Conrad's becoming Holy Roman emperor.)

The couple, Boniface and Beatrice, had three children: a son, Frederick, and two daughters, Beatrice and Matilda. Matilda is widely regarded as the youngest of the three, though birth order of the children isn't clear. 

Boniface had his son and heir, which might suggest that his daughters would be expected only to be prepared to fulfill a role in marital politics--but Matilda was well educated, probably under her mother's direction. Matilda's twelfth-century biographer, Donizo of Canossa, claims that the "learned Beatrice" carefully tutored "lofty Matilda, modest in mind." According to the monk, Matilda was literate in Latin, composing her own letters in that language, and fluent in both German and French. 

In his seventeenth-century account of Matilda's life, the Italian chronicler Lodovico Vedriani writes that Matilda received military training as well: she "learnt how to ride like a lancer, spear in hand, to bear a pike as a foot-soldier, and how to wield both battle-axe and sword." The historian-priest also depicts her, armed, riding at the head of her army:

Now there appeared in Lombardy at the head of her numerous squadrons the young maid Matilda, armed like a warrior, and with such bravery, that she made known to the world that courage and valour in mankind is not indeed a matter of sex, but of heart and spirit.

(However appealing these accounts are, modern historians tend to discount Vedriani's claims for Matilda's military training and activity.) 

On 7 May 1052, Matilda's father was ambushed while out hunting and killed. After Boniface's assassination, Beatrice seems to have acted as regent on behalf of her son, Frederick, but the situation is both murky and fraught--the second of couple's daughters, possibly named Beatrice, after her mother, died on 17 December 1053, and under increasing pressure to preserve her husband's lands and titles (as well as her own), the widowed Beatrice married her cousin, Godfrey III of Upper Lorraine. 

The marriage, however, had taken place without the permission of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III (who was Conrad II's son), against whom Godfrey had already rebelled. (Beatrice's first husband, Boniface, had always been a supporter of the emperor). Traveling to Florence in 1055 for a meeting with the pope, the emperor had Beatrice and her surviving daughter, Matilda, arrested--the two were taken back with him to Germany. The young Frederick, meanwhile, died within days of his mother's arrest.

But the emperor himself died suddenly in October of 1056, succeeded by his son, Henry, a minor. The boy's mother, Agnes of Poitou, was appointed to act as the boy's guardian and regent--and she rather quickly reconciled with Godfrey of Lorraine. Beatrice and Matilda were released and reunited with Godfrey, who was recognized as margrave of Tuscany. 

Following her return to Italy in 1057, Matilda largely disappears from the record for a time, though she accompanied her mother and stepfather to Rome in 1059. But in 1069, as Godfrey III of Lorraine lay dying, Matilda was married to his son, another Godfrey (he would succeed his father as Godfrey IV). 

The two were not well matched and found themselves on opposites sides of the contemporary power struggle pitting the pope against the empire--Godfrey supported the young emperor, Henry IV, while Matilda supported the pope. Godfrey and Matilda were together long enough to produce a daughter, Beatrice, who was born and died in January 1071. After the child's death, Matilda left Godfrey, and by January of the next year, she was in Mantua, with her mother.

Godfrey demanded Matilda's return, traveling to Italy and attempting to claim control of Tuscany in Matilda's right. He appealed to Pope Gregory VII for assistance in recovering his wife and promised aid if the pope would make Matilda return to him. But nothing could persuade Matilda, and by 1073, Godfrey headed back, wifeless, to Lorraine. He also failed in his promise to assist the pope. Even so, Gregory would not grant the dissolution that Matilda requested. Godfrey would be assassinated on 27 February 1076, thus solving the matter.

A sixteenth-century 
depiction of Matilda--
I love the headgear!*

In the mean time, with Godfrey distracted by conflicts and challenges in his own lands, Matilda had begun to assume power in Tuscany, under her mother's tutelage. After Godfrey's death, the two women governed together, but only briefly--after Beatrice died on 18 April 1076, Matilda of Tuscany became "the major imperial feudatory in Italy": despite the fact that, under Salic law, a woman could not inherit a title or land, "Matilda held the counties of Reggio, Modena, Mantua, Brescia, Verona, and Ferrara, as well as Tuscany." Whatever her own strength of character and abilities, it didn't hurt her cause that, without a male heir, her father's lands and titles would otherwise have gone to the emperor. Her support for the papacy and papal power made sure that did not happen. And, for good measure, Matilda made claims in her dead husband's Lorraine as well.

As the rupture between the papacy and the empire grew, Gregory VII excommunicated Henry IV--Matilda not only supported the pope but protected him, offering him safety in her stronghold, the castle of Canossa. It was there that the emperor, standing barefoot in the snow, made his penance. Two women—Matilda and Henry IV's mother-in-law, Adelaide of Turin—negotiated the terms of the reconciliation. (It was something of a family affair—Henry and Adelaide were both Matilda's second cousins.)

That wasn't the end of the conflict between pope and emperor, however--while Matilda continued to support the papacy, she also contributed to the dispute when, in 1079, she gave her lands to the pope, despite the fact that she held many of them as fiefs from the Holy Roman Empire. (She reserved the right to govern them through her lifetime.) 

In the years that followed, from 1080 until her death thirty-five years later--through the life of Gregory IV and his successors, Victor III, Urban II, and Pascal II, through the tumultuous years of Investiture Controversy, and even through a politically expedient second marriage to the young heir to the duchy of Bavaria, some twenty-five years her junior--Matilda remained firm in her support of the papal cause.

As Joan Ferrante notes, "Matilda was the major imperial feudatory in Italy, a force in imperial-papal politics, [and] a supporter of the reform papacy. . . . She offers a striking example of a woman who inherited land and power, who ruled over large territories, put down rebellions, and took part in major events."

In addition to her decades of political and military involvements, Matilda of Tuscany promoted manuscript production, encouraged and supported the development of the law and the judicial system, and patronized the building of scores of churches, monasteries, and hospitals. As Michèle K. Spike notes, Matilda's "cultural legacy is enormous" and includes some 136 "extant stone constructions," many of them "listed by UNESCO" as part of the "heritage of the world."

Before her death on 24 July 1115, Matilda of Tuscany may or may not have reconciled with Henry V, who had succeeded his father as Holy Roman Emperor in 1111, and may or may not have recognized him as her heir. Whatever she did or did not do, after Matilda's death, he took possession of all the land and titles Matilda held as margravine of Tuscany.

Matilda of Tuscany died while staying in a small castle in Reggiolo, and she was buried in the Benedictine Abbey of San Benedetto in Polirone (near Mantua), which had been founded by her grandfather. Matilda had developed and expanded the abbey and established its library, commissioning a magnificent gospel book which was her gift to the monastery. In the seventeenth century, her remains were moved to the Basilica of St. Peter (Rome) and placed within a tomb designed by Bernini.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini's tomb for Matilda,
St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City

The events of Matilda's life are so well documented and her accomplishments so many that I cannot do them justice here. A readable account of her life, as documented by Donizo of Canossa, is in Joan Ferrante's To the Glory of Her Sex, to which I have linked, above.

Paolo Gollinelli's detailed biographical essay from Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani is available online at the Treccani website (click here). And a large selection of letters to and from Matilda is available at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters (click here).

Michele Spike's Tuscan Countess: The Life and Extraordinary Times of Matilda of Canossa was published in 2004 and is readily available. The scholarship is excellent, but it's a bit too romanticized for my taste--you can access Mary Huddy's 1906 Matilda, Countess of Tuscany and Nora Duff's 1909 Matilda of Tuscany, La gran donna d'Italia via the Internet Archive.

I especially recommend Penelope Nash's Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society--it's very expensive, so maybe Interlibrary Loan?

Update, 14 December 2021: I am now mid-way through a project I had always planned for my retirement, reading the entirety of Dante's Divine Comedy (I'd read Inferno, but never Purgatorio and Paradiso). It has taken me several years to get around to this--I retired in 2014! But, having started, I am slowly making progress. And who should I meet today, in Canto XXVIII of Purgatorio? As Dante enters the Garden of Eden, he meets a singing lady, picking flowers, later identified as "Matelda" (XXXIII.119). According to the notes (I am reading the Hollander and Hollander edition), Dante's "Matelda" is probably supposed to represent Matilda of Tuscany. (Though, "in Dante studies there is practically a separate industry devoted to problems associated with ["Matelda's"] identity and significance.")

*I searched through many pages of Google images, trying to find out more about this portrait--it seems likely to have been painted by Giuseppe Rivelli as a copy of a lost portrait by Parmigianino, and it seems to be in the Museo Diocesano Francesco Gonzaga di Mantova. Here's a link.

An unidentified portrait, perhaps another copy by Rivelli, is in Musei Reali (Turin). For Liana de Girolami Cheney’s discussion of this portrait in relationship to Lavinia Fontana’s Cleopatra the Alchemist, click here and scroll to pp. 1175-1178.

The is the portrait that may--or may not--
represent Matilda of Tuscany
(links above)

In his 2008 "Altre 'Matilde di Canossa,'" Paolo Bertelli identifies this portrait as one of Matilda of Tuscany, and he argues that it is the work of Lavinia Fontana. (This is an open-access publication, allowing you to download/view the entire essay."