Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Did Charlemagne have a Private Life?
- 2 Bones for Historians: Putting the Body back into Biography
- 3 ‘Carriers of the Truth’: Writing the Biographies of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints
- 4 Alfred and his Biographers: Images and Imagination
- 5 Re-Reading King Æthelred the Unready
- 6 Writing the Biography of Eleventh-Century Queens
- 7 The Flemish Contribution to Biographical Writing in England in the Eleventh Century
- 8 The Conqueror's Earliest Historians and the Writing of his Biography
- 9 Secular Propaganda and Aristocratic Values: The Autobiographies of Count Fulk le Réchin of Anjou and Count William of Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine
- 10 Reading the Signs: Bernard of Clairvaux and his Miracles
- 11 Arnulf's Mentor: Geoffrey of Léves, Bishop of Chartres
- 12 The Empress Matilda as a Subject for Biography
- 13 The Gesta Stephani
- 14 Writing the Biography of Roger of Howden, King's Clerk and Chronicler
- 15 Writing a Biography in the Thirteenth Century: The Construction and Composition of the ‘History of William Marshal’
- 16 The Strange Case of the Missing Biographies: The Lives of the Plantagenet Kings of England 1154–1272
- Index
12 - The Empress Matilda as a Subject for Biography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Did Charlemagne have a Private Life?
- 2 Bones for Historians: Putting the Body back into Biography
- 3 ‘Carriers of the Truth’: Writing the Biographies of Anglo-Saxon Female Saints
- 4 Alfred and his Biographers: Images and Imagination
- 5 Re-Reading King Æthelred the Unready
- 6 Writing the Biography of Eleventh-Century Queens
- 7 The Flemish Contribution to Biographical Writing in England in the Eleventh Century
- 8 The Conqueror's Earliest Historians and the Writing of his Biography
- 9 Secular Propaganda and Aristocratic Values: The Autobiographies of Count Fulk le Réchin of Anjou and Count William of Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine
- 10 Reading the Signs: Bernard of Clairvaux and his Miracles
- 11 Arnulf's Mentor: Geoffrey of Léves, Bishop of Chartres
- 12 The Empress Matilda as a Subject for Biography
- 13 The Gesta Stephani
- 14 Writing the Biography of Roger of Howden, King's Clerk and Chronicler
- 15 Writing a Biography in the Thirteenth Century: The Construction and Composition of the ‘History of William Marshal’
- 16 The Strange Case of the Missing Biographies: The Lives of the Plantagenet Kings of England 1154–1272
- Index
Summary
‘SHE WAS UNIQUE among the women of her own age: she was both a woman and the crowned head of a western kingdom who ruled in her own right.’ ‘Bernard Reilly's description of Queen Urraca of Léon-Castilla, a slightly older contemporary of the Empress Matilda, brings out the limitations on the power of early medieval queens consort, such as Queen Emma, Queen Edith or the wives of William I and Henry I (both Matilda). The great exception was Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen first of France and then of England, but she was in addition heiress of Aquitaine. Among the formal and official sources for any western ruler, male or female, at that time the most plentiful belong to the years when power was exercised, either as ruler of the kingdom or duchy, or as regent. A number of queens were regents for young sons or absent husbands; but even so the number of acta issued in their name was relatively small.
The authority of the Empress Matilda varied greatly during her lifetime. Betrothed at the age of eight to the Emperor Henry V and married just before her twelfth birthday, she never had any estates of her own, apart from her dower lands, and these have yielded only a handful of charters of donation to religious houses. As daughter of the king of England and consort of the Emperor, she sometimes appeared to witness or confirm their charters.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250Essays in Honour of Frank Barlow, pp. 185 - 194Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006