Queen of the Conqueror: The Life of Matilda, Wife of William I (3 page)

Although it was later to become a thriving center of commerce and culture, in the early eleventh century Flanders was a primitive place. The landscape to the west was dominated by swamps and was barely habitable. The east, which was densely wooded, was comparatively more civilized and had a higher number of inhabitants. But in contrast to neighboring Normandy, there were no bustling urban centers, and the towns that did exist were small, with rudimentary buildings. Language also presented a problem. There was no uniformity, with some areas speaking a Germanic dialect and others French. It was only gradually that Flemish was adopted as the national language. It seems the populace, too, retained a certain primitivism. In 900, for example, Archbishop Fulk of Rheims scorned the inhabitants as being “of barbarous … savagery and language.”
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Indeed, the Flemish soon became the butt of jokes among the more civilized nations, such as England and France, where they were derided for their crudity and backwardness. Their reputation had improved little by the late twelfth century, when Richard of Devizes advised a young man who was due to travel to England that he should
expect nothing but ignorance and boorishness from Cornishmen, “as we in France consider our Flemings.”
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Flanders was also a notoriously lawless area, where violence and uprisings were commonplace. “Daily homicides and spilling of human blood had troubled the peace and quiet of the entire area,” claimed the twelfth-century
Life of St. Arnulf
. “Thus a great number of nobles, through the force of their prayers, convinced the bishop of the lord to visit the places where this atrocious cruelty especially raged and to instruct the docile and bloody spirit of the Flemings in the interest of peace and concord.”
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Nevertheless, under the stewardship of Count Baldwin IV (988–1035), Flanders began to show signs of improvement. Its salvation was trade. The textile industry became particularly successful, thanks to imports of wool from England and Spain. Matilda’s father, Baldwin V, commissioned the building of new roads and canals to stimulate the growth of trade both within and outside Flanders. Before long, he had amassed more wealth than any of his predecessors. This dramatically improved standards of living among his subjects, particularly within the major urban centers. Handsome stone houses replaced the ramshackle wooden dwellings of former days, and the citizens also benefited from the dazzling array of exotic goods that arrived into the principality from far-flung corners of the globe.

By the time of Baldwin V’s reign, then, Flanders was enjoying increasing wealth. Given the new count’s overweening pride and ambition, it is likely that he would have built magnificent residences for his family. There are very few contemporary descriptions of the buildings and palaces that Matilda would have known, but a detailed account by the twelfth-century chronicler Lambert of Ardres of the castle there gives a sense of a typical stately residence of the principality. The castle was built of wood and stood atop a large mound, towering over the rest of the town. Its rooms were structured according to a strict hierarchy:

The first storey was on the surface of the ground, where were cellars and granaries, and great boxes, tuns, casks, and other domestic utensils. In the storey above were the dwelling and common living-rooms of the residents, in which were the larders, the rooms of the bakers and butlers, and the great chamber in which the lord and his wife slept. Adjoining this was a private room, the dormitory of the waiting maids and children. In the inner part of the great chamber was a certain private room, where at early dawn or in the evening or during sickness or at time of blood-letting, or for warming the maids and weaned children, they used to have a fire … In the upper storey of the house were garret rooms, in which on the one side the sons (when they wished it), on the other side the daughters (because they were obliged), 5 of the lord of the house used to sleep. In this storey also the watchmen and servants appointed to keep the house took their sleep at some time or other. High up on the east side of the house, in a convenient place, was the chapel, which was made like unto the tabernacle of Solomon in its ceiling and painting. There were stairs and passages from storey to storey, from the house into the kitchen, from room to room, and again from the house into the loggia, where they used to sit in conversation for recreation, and again from the loggia into the oratory.
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This castle belonged to the lord of Ardres, so it is likely that, as the daughter of the count of Flanders, Matilda would have known even greater luxury.

As well as encouraging the commercial development of his principality, Matilda’s father also capitalized upon Flanders’s immense strategic importance. Its situation enabled the counts to hold the balance of power between the kings of France to the south, the dukes of Normandy to the west, and the German rulers to the east. This made Flanders a power to be reckoned with in medieval Europe. Baldwin V made the most of this advantage by negotiating favorable treaty terms and arranging prestigious marriages for each of his children. Keenly aware of his family’s distinguished pedigree, he took every opportunity to enhance his own prestige, and became known as “prince of the fatherland” in Flemish texts.
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The eleventh-century chronicler William of Poitiers was apparently in some awe of Baldwin V, describing him as “a man of great power who
towered above the rest” and “this wisest of men.” According to his account, “Counts, marquises, dukes, even archbishops of the highest dignity were struck dumb with admiration whenever the duty of their office earned them the presence of this distinguished guest … Kings too revered and stood in awe of his greatness.”
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William of Malmesbury, whose
Gesta Regum Anglorum
(
The Deeds of the Kings of the English
) was completed in around 1125, was no less impressed, but he paints a rather more benevolent picture of “a man admirable alike for loyalty and wisdom, grey-haired yet with the vigour of youth, and of exalted position as husband of the king’s sister.”
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The growth of Flanders’s status, and that of Baldwin, ensured that Matilda enjoyed a privileged upbringing. Most of her childhood was spent at the comital palace in Bruges, which was by now the foremost city in the principality, Baldwin V having rebuilt and “greatly beautified” it as an expression of his dynasty’s growing status. Bruges was immensely rich, having evolved into a thriving center of commerce.
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This lent it a cosmopolitan atmosphere, with traders from across the globe converging upon the city. One contemporary visitor observed that it “enjoys very great fame for the number of its merchants and for its affluence in all things upon which mankind places the greatest value.”
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Matilda and her family also regularly stayed at Lille, Ghent, Thérouanne, and the coastal town of St.-Omer, where her father’s court met on “special days” such as religious festivals.
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Matilda’s upbringing was superintended by her mother. As such, she had a powerful female role model from her very earliest days. Even though women were assigned the inferior role in marriage, politics, and society in general, Adela’s relationship with Count Baldwin was a marriage of equals. Not for her the traditional duties of a consort, which were confined to producing heirs and leading a godly life. Instead she played an active part in the government of Flanders, and her name appears in more than half of the charters that were issued during her husband’s reign. In many of these she was styled as the “sister of the king of France,” an indication of the same pride in her ancestry that she would pass on to her daughter. Few of her peers enjoyed such prominence in the political life of their kingdoms, and it is rare to find a consort’s name on more than a handful of legal documents: Adela’s contemporaries
were obviously aware of her connections. The biography of Queen Emma of England, who was well acquainted with Adela, claimed that her name meant “most noble,” and it was careful to describe her as the “daughter of Robert, king of the French.”
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It was by no means unusual that Adela should supervise Matilda’s education. The role of the mother was seen as paramount in this respect throughout the medieval period. A ninth-century account praised King Alfred’s mother, Osburgh, “a religious woman, noble by birth and nature,” who gave her two sons a book of Saxon poetry, saying, “Whichever of you shall the soonest learn this volume shall have it for his own.” When Alfred triumphs over his brother, his mother “smiles with satisfaction.”
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Mothers were expected to attain a high standard of learning themselves so that they might pass this on to their offspring. Despite being rarely praised by contemporary sources, it was in fact common at this time for wives to exceed their husbands in intellect. The early eleventh century was one of the most enlightened periods in the education of women, when it was taken every bit as seriously as—and often more seriously than—that of their male counterparts. Daughters were encouraged to spend their leisure time cultivating their knowledge through reading, while sons would undertake more active pursuits such as hunting and training for warfare. Royal women, in particular, tended to be better educated than men. Even though many others were taught little else but how to read the psalter and sign their name, this was more than most laymen were capable of.

The relative enlightenment of the period is proved by comparing it with the later Middle Ages, when the entire emphasis of a woman’s education seemed to be upon how she might best serve her future husband. The influential fourteenth-century manual
The Book of the Knight of the Tower
advocated submissiveness and modesty in young girls in preparation for marriage, and said that women’s learning should be limited “to the virtuous things of scripture, wherefore they may better see and know their salvation.”
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In a similar vein, in the following century, Bartholomew Granville urged the importance of serenity in appearance to the well-bred woman’s character. She should carry herself erect but with her eyes cast down, and she should be “mannerly in clothing, sober in moving, wary
in speaking, chaste in looking, honest in bearing, sad in going, shamefast among the people.” Even the inspirational Venetian writer and poet Christine de Pisan (born in 1365), whose works challenged contemporary stereotypes of male dominance, advocated such pursuits as spinning, sewing, and embroidery for girls in order to keep their minds from wandering to sinful subjects.

Adela’s ambitions extended far beyond such limited pursuits. She herself had received an excellent education, and was determined to pass the same on to her daughter. She inherited her love of learning from her father, Robert the Pious, who was recognized as a “literate man” by Pope Gregory VII. She had been betrothed to Baldwin as a child and had been raised and educated at the Flemish court. This included receiving instruction from the monks of St. Peter’s in Ghent, and Adela may later have sent her own children there for lessons.

That Matilda was praised for her learning is a testament to her mother’s efforts.
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She was almost certainly fluent in Latin, which was widely spoken at the Flemish court, and she later passed this knowledge on to her own daughters. It is unlikely that she was similarly well versed in writing, however, for this pursuit tended to be confined to those in religious orders. Aristocratic laywomen often used a clerk to write their letters, and given that her signature was a cross (albeit in an elaborate Jerusalem style), it is possible that Matilda did the same.

One of the most important elements of Matilda’s education was religious instruction. This was one sphere in which women enjoyed equality with, and in some cases superiority over, men. The new monastic movement that swept across Europe between the sixth and the tenth centuries was spearheaded by women, notably those drawn from royal and noble families. It is estimated that some fifty religious houses in England appointed their first abbess from a royal family.
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These women were not simply retreating; by playing such an active role in the foundation of new abbeys, they were helping to create potent symbols of royal power. As active religious patrons, they were able to utilize—and expand—the considerable landed wealth at their disposal. Their role was therefore just as much political as it was religious.

Even so, the women who were involved in the monastic movement were motivated by a genuine religious fervor. For example, Saxon
women played an important role in converting their male kin to Christianity. The eighth-century chronicler known as the Venerable Bede cited several examples of this evangelizing spirit, such as Bertha, wife of the Kentish king Aethelred, and her daughter Aethelburh, who in 625 married and converted King Edwin of Northumbria. This chimed with the teachings of St. Paul, who urged upon women the duty to influence their “unbelieving husbands.”
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At the same time, though, it jarred with the traditional Christian ethos that wives should be meek and passive. Matilda’s later history would suggest that she was more inclined to follow the former example.

But in the sphere of religion, she had a role model closer to hand. Her mother Adela was instrumental in Baldwin V’s reform of the church in Flanders. She was also responsible for the founding of several colleges, including Aire, Lille, and Harelbeke, as well as the abbeys of Messines and Ename—something that inspired her daughter a great deal. Pope Gregory VII recognized Adela’s influence in ecclesiastical matters and wrote to implore that she use this to promote clerical celibacy.
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And while the active role that Adela played in the religious life of the principality lent her considerable political power, it seems her piety was sincere—so much so that she later became a nun herself.