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Dhuoda
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Dhuoda was the wife of Bernard of Septimania and the author of the Liber Manualis.
Life
Dhuoda's parentage is unknown, but her education and her connections indicate that her family was wealthy. She married Bernard, Duke of Septimania, at Aachen on the 24th of June, 824. Bernard was the son of William of Gellone, Charlemagne's cousin, who was later named the patron saint of knights. Bernard was the godson of King Louis the Pious.
Their first son, William, was born on the 29 November, 826, and the second, Bernard, on 22 March, 841.
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Encyclopedia
Dhuoda was the wife of Bernard of Septimania and the author of the Liber Manualis.
Life
Dhuoda's parentage is unknown, but her education and her connections indicate that her family was wealthy. She married Bernard, Duke of Septimania, at Aachen on the 24th of June, 824. Bernard was the son of William of Gellone, Charlemagne's cousin, who was later named the patron saint of knights. Bernard was the godson of King Louis the Pious.
Their first son, William, was born on the 29 November, 826, and the second, Bernard, on 22 March, 841. In the interim, the couple probably lived apart most of the time: she in Uzes in Southern France, and he at court in Aachen. One scholar has suggested that a daughter was born in 844, as one chronicler reports the marriage of William's sister.
What little we know of her life comes from her book, the Liber Manualis, or Manual, which Dhuoda wrote for her elder son, William, between 841 and 843. It was a work written when Dhuoda had been separated from both her husband and her two sons, the victim of the conflicting ambitions of Charlemagne's descendants. William had been sent as a hostage to the court of Charles the Bald in order to secure the loyalty of his father; Bernard was taken from her before his baptism and was sent to Aquitaine in order to keep him safe. We have no evidence that Dhuoda ever saw either of her children again; indeed, because of references she makes to her ill-health, it is quite possible that she died shortly after she completed her work.
Her husband, Bernard, was condemned for rebellion and executed in 844. Of her sons, William was killed in 850, Bernard in 885.
Liber Manualis
The Liber Manualis consists of seventy-three chapters as well as an introduction, invocation, and prologue. The book is full of practical moral directives aimed to help guide her sons through life. It is an invaluable document both for the general history of the Frankish era, but also for the history of education and the standards of education which could be attained by women even within the prescriptive bounds of early medieval society. It contains numerous quotations from and allusions to the Bible, and some references to secular writers, though some of the references are incorrect and the Latin is not overly-polished.
The work is known from a manuscript of the seventeenth century in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and from fragments of a manuscript of the Carolingian epoch, found in the library of Nîmes.
Bibliography
The Liber manualis (full title: Liber manualis Dhuodane quem ad filium suum transmisit Wilhelmum) has been edited and translated:
- Thiebaux, Marcelle (ed. and tr.). Dhuoda. Handbook for her warrior son. Cambridge Medieval Classics 8. Cambridge, 1998. (English translation)
- Riché, Pierre (ed.), Bernard de Vregille and Claude Mondésert (trs.), Dhuoda: Manuel pour mon Fils. Sources Chrétiennes 225. Paris, 1975.(French translation)
- Bondurand, Édouard (ed. and tr.). Le Manuel de Dhuoda. Paris: Picard, 1887. French translation.
- Mabillon, Jacques (ed.). PL 106.109–118. Partial edition, available from
- Neel, Carol (tr.). Handbook for William. A Carolingian woman’s counsel for her son. Regents Studies in Medieval Culture. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
- Thiebaux, Marcelle (tr.). The Writings of Medieval Women. New York, 1987. 65–79. Selective translation into English.
A selection of secondary literature in English and French:
- Cherewatuk, Karen. "Speculum Matris: Duoda’s Manual." Florilegium 10 (1988-91): 49-64.
- Claussen, Martin A. "God and Man in Dhuoda’s Liber Manualis." SCH 27 (1990): 43-52.
- Claussen, Martin A. "Fathers of Power and Mothers of Authority: Dhuoda and the Liber Manualis. French Historical Studies 19 (1996): 785-809.
- Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1984.
- Durrens, Janine. Dhuoda, duchesse de Septimanie. Clairsud, 2003.
- Godard, Jocelyne. Dhuoda. La Carolingienne. Le Sémaphore, 1997.
- Marchand, James. "The Frankish Mother: Dhuoda." In Medieval Woman Writers, ed. Katharina M. Wilson. Athens, 1984. 1–29. Includes selective translation of the Liber Manualis.
- Nelson, Janet L. "Dhuoda." In Lay intellectuals in the Carolingian world, ed. Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson. Cambridge, 2007. 106-20.
- Stofferahn, Steven A. "The many faces in Dhuoda's mirror: The Liber Manualis and a century of scholarship." Magistra. A journal of women's spirituality in history 4.2 (Winter 1998): 89-134.
External links
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