Gender and Historiography Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford
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Gender and historiography Studies in the earlier middle ages in honour of Pauline Stafford Edited by Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds and Susan M. Johns Professor Pauline Stafford Gender and historiography Studies in the earlier middle ages in honour of Pauline Stafford Gender and historiography Studies in the earlier middle ages in honour of Pauline Stafford Edited by Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds and Susan M. Johns LONDON INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH Published by UNIVERSITY OF LONDON SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU First published in print in 2012. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY- NCND 4.0) license. More information regarding CC licenses is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Available to download free at http://www.humanities-digital-library.org ISBN 978 1 909646 46 9 (PDF edition) ISBN 978 1 905165 79 7 (hardback edition) Contents List of contributors ix List of abbreviations xi List of figures xiii Introduction 1 1. Fatherhood in late Lombard Italy Ross Balzaretti 9 2. Anger, emotion and a biography of William the Conqueror David Bates 21 3. ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s)’ or ‘Old English Royal Annals’? Nicholas Brooks 35 4. The tale of Queen Ælfthryth in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum Kirsten A. Fenton 49 5. Women, children and the profits of war John Gillingham 61 6. Charters, ritual and late tenth-century English kingship Charles Insley 75 7. Nest of Deheubarth: reading female power in the historiography of Wales Susan M. Johns 91 8. Carolingian rulers and marriage in the age of Louis the Pious and his sons Sylvie Joye 101 9. The cult of King Edward the Martyr during the reign of King Æthelred the Unready Simon Keynes 115 vii Gender and historiography 10. Consors regni: a problem of gender? The consortium between Amalasuntha and Theodahad in 534 Cristina La Rocca 127 11. ‘Public’ aspects of lordly women’s domestic activities in France, c.1050–1200 Kimberly A. LoPrete 145 12. Property rights in Anglo-Saxon wills: a synoptic view Julie Mumby 159 13. ‘Hunnish scenes’/Frankish scenes: a case of history that stands still? Janet L. Nelson 175 14. Assembly government and assembly law Susan Reynolds 191 Professor Pauline Stafford’s publications in chronological order, excluding reviews 201 Index 205 viii List of contributors Ross Balzaretti Associate Professor, University of Nottingham David Bates Professorial Fellow, University of St. Andrews, Hon. Fellow, Institute of Historical Research Nicholas Brooks Professor Emeritus, University of Birmingham Kirsten Fenton Teaching Fellow, University of St. Andrews John Gillingham Emeritus Professor, London School of Economics Charles Insley Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester Susan M. Johns Lecturer, University of Bangor Sylvie Joye Maître de Conférences, Centre d’Études et de Recherche en Histoire Culturelle, Université de Reims Simon Keynes Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo- Saxon, University of Cambridge Maria Cristina La Rocca Professore ordinario, University of Padua Kimberley LoPrete Director of MA in Medieval Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway Julie Mumby Teaching Fellow, University of St. Andrews Janet L. Nelson Emeritus Professor, King’s College London, Hon. Fellow, Institute of Historical Research Susan Reynolds Emeritus Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Hon. Fellow, Institute of Historical Research ix List of abbreviations ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. D. Whitelock and others (1961) ASE Anglo-Saxon England BL British Library EETS Early English Text Society EHD English Historical Documents EHR English Historical Review EME Early Medieval Europe FSI Fonti per la storia d’Italia G&H Gender & History JWH Journal of Women’s History MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica MGH AA Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi MGH Capit. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Capitularia, ed. A. Boretius (2 vols., Hanover, 1883–97) MGH Conc. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Concilia (1893–) MGH Epp. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae MGH Leges Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Leges Nationum Germanicarum MGH SRG Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: from the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (60 vols., Oxford, 2004) or <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view> P&P Past & Present PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne and others (Paris, 1844–1903) RS Rolls Series xi Gender and historiography S + number P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (1968) and the number given to the charter there or in <http://www.esawyer.org.uk> Settimane Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto, 1954–) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society xii List of figures 10.1. Consular diptych of Rufus Gennadius Probus Orestes (530), ivory. Portraits of Athalaric (top left) and Amalasuntha (top right). (Victoria and Albert Museum no. 139-1866.) 142 12.1 Wulfgyth and her relatives. 169 xiii Introduction Pauline Stafford was born and bred (as Pauline Johnson) in Leeds, Yorkshire, and it can truly be said that she embodies – metaphorically speaking – such quintessential Yorkshire virtues as playing a straight bat. She and Bill and their children are never happier than when walking in the Dales, and, happily too for their friends, sharing that enthusiasm with all who visit them. Pauline’s schooling was in Yorkshire, and much of her career has been spent there. Her professional associations and influence, by contrast, have taken her far and wide, in the UK and internationally, in North America and in continental Europe; and her family formed strong and lasting affection for the French countryside where they spent summer holidays. Pauline was a bright grammar-school girl whose parents not only gave her a moral compass but encouraged her in the direction of higher education. Though the school steered her towards sciences, Pauline chose humanities, and among them, history. She went up to Oxford with an Exhibition at Lady Margaret Hall in 1964. She started work on medieval history and took to it immediately, asking, after a term on book III of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, if she could learn Old English, which she did with Anne Hudson, then a fellow of the college. This went so well that the LMH tutors got the faculty to add Old English to the language options on the syllabus: Pauline’s first contribution to the study of the early middle ages. Some of her medieval history she did with Susan Reynolds. Pauline recalls vividly two of the papers on which Susan tutored her: the compulsory political ideas, and Stubbs’ Charters. Not only were these formative intellectual experiences: over the years, Pauline and Susan have become steadfast friends and Pauline has given her former tutor much good advice and information on some of Susan’s ventures into Anglo-Saxon history. R. H. C. Davies taught Pauline on early medieval Europe and – no compromiser he – gave her Carolingian capitularies and Gregory the Great’s letters to read in Latin originals. Her special subject was manorial economy and estate management, with Trevor Aston. In hindsight, it’s clear that she learnt a whole range of ways of approaching medieval history, and that her writings are monument to far-sighted teachers as well as products of her own independent thought. At the end of her third year, Pauline married a fellow history student, William Stafford. Both of them had received first- class degrees and both went straight on to research. Bill has remained ever since both colleague and life-partner. 1 Gender and historiography Pauline’s doctoral thesis, on the reign of Æthelred the Unready, was supervised by Pierre Chaplais, a distinguished scholar of palaeography and diplomatic whose interests ranged from the medieval history of his native France to the documents of Anglo-Saxon England. Pauline’s skilful decoding of charters is a tribute to that highly original scholar. Her doctoral thesis was examined by Henry Loyn and Karl Leyser, both eminently qualified to appreciate the author’s freshness and breadth of thinking. Karl, in particular, was impressed by Pauline’s writing on royal succession and women, and on parallels with Ottonian Germany. The thesis, though never published, has been the source of many developments in the historiography of the later Anglo-Saxon period, for it opened invigorating perspectives on the workings and economic underpinnings of royal power. Her two earliest papers were part of this re-envisioning, and ‘Sons and mothers’ was singled out in a review by none other than Georges Duby, who noted the originality and significance of Pauline’s approach to earlier medieval politics through the activities of women within the royal family. This and other early papers repay, still, any amount of re-reading. Over the intervening decades, Pauline has since produced a remarkably coherent body of work in two main research areas: Anglo-Saxon history, and the history of medieval women and gender – and, since overlaps are considerable, on both at once (see the list of her publications in the present volume). Her many books and papers on regional history, and on power and its legitimation and representation in later Anglo-Saxon England, have brought her wide recognition, in the UK, and beyond the UK wherever British history is cultivated. Already quite early in her career, her work on women’s and gender history brought her wide international admiration. Queens, Concubines and Dowagers (1983) changed the face of this field. Since then, Pauline has published widely on medieval women, families, queens and queenship, women’s religious patronage, and the political significance of convents and of abbesses. Queen Emma and Queen Edith (1997), a pathbreaking study of queenly action in the eleventh century, completed thanks to a British Academy research readership (1994–6), was hailed as a model of biographical writing, and, at the same time, a dissection of power.