Authority and Gender - Women Chroniclers

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Authority and Gender in Medieval

and Renaissance Chronicles

Edited by

Juliana Dresvina and Nicholas Sparks


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PERSPICAX INGENIUM MIHI COLLATUM EST : STRATEGIES OFAUTHORITY

IN CHRONICLESWRITTEN BYWOMEN

GRAEMEDUNPHY

The world of the medieval chronicle was a male preserve. Not onlywere the overwhelming majority of the authors and primary readers men,but the interests and perspectives are recognizably traditional maleinterests and perspectives, while women, when they appear at all, areconstructed from within a male paradigm. Of course, much the sameobservation could be made of other medieval literary genres. Its particularpoignancy in the case of chronicles has to do with the crucial degree ofauthority which these texts enjoyed. This goes far beyond the intellectualauthority of the historian whose erudition in mastering the vastness of theavailable data on past events commands respect. As repositories ofhistorical narrative, chronicles might appear to be fundamentally constativetexts, but recent work on their agenda, transmission and reception hashighlighted what we might regard as a strongly performative dynamic.They record legal precedents, legitimate dynasties, take sides in conflicts,consolidate or question the structures of society, and define group andnational identities. They not only tell the past: they shape the way thepresent is conceived and processed. In short, they have to do with theexercise of power.

The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle covers some 2500chroniclers or anonymous chronicles, of which only fifteen can be saidwith any degree of probability to have been written by women.1 On closer

1 Graeme Dunphy, ‘Women chroniclers and chronicles for women’, inEMC , pp.1521-4. For general studies of women as historians see for example Natalie ZemonDavid, ‘Gender and Genre: Women as Historical Writers, 1400 –1820’, in Beyondtheir Sex: Learned Women of the European Past , ed. Patricia H. Labalme (NewYork UP, 1984), 153-82; Historikerinnen: Eine biobibliographische Spurensucheim deutschen Sprachraum, ed. Hiram Kümper (Kassel: Archiv der deutschenFrauenbewegung, 2009); Bonnie G. Smith,The Gender of History: Men, Women


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inspection we find that up to eight of these are generically so borderlinethat by some definitions they might not be regarded as chronicles at all.2

The Renaissance period adds further names to the repertoire, but does notreally change the pattern: the proportion of chronicles by female authors islow even by medieval standards, and becomes lower still the more weinsist on conceptualizing the chronicle genre in a traditional way. We maysuspect that the reason for this is connected to the particular authorityattached to these texts in a society which strongly tended to excludewomen from positions of authority. It can therefore be instructive toexplore which strategies women chroniclers used to lend authority to theirwriting. For the purpose of the present study, I understand authority tomean both authorization, the right to speak and be heard, andauthoritativeness, the intellectual credibility of the author and therefore ofthe text as a citable witness. In the following discussion, five women willserve as examples.

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (ca. 935 – post-973) is the earliest attestedfemale poet from any of the Germanic language groups, although she

and Historical Practice (Cambridge MA & London: Harvard UP, 1998); CharlotteWoodford, ‘Women as Historians: The Case of Early Modern Convents’,German Life and Letters, 52 (1999), 271-80; K. J. P. Lowe, Nun’s Chronicles and ConventCulture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (CUP, 2003); AnneWinston-Allen,Convent Chronicles, Women Writing about Women and Reform inthe Late Middle Ages (Pennsylvania: State UP, 2004); Jane Chance,The LiterarySubversions of Medieval Women (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Janet L.Nelson, The Frankish World: 750–900 (London: Hambledon, 1996), esp. thechapter ‘Gender and Genre in Women Historians of the Early Middle Ages’;Albrecht Classen,The Power of a Woman’s Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007).2 The term “chronicle” has undergone a significant broadening in the scholarshipof recent years. By a “traditional” nineteenth- and twentieth-century definition, achronicle was a survey of world history – or at least of a significant chunk of it –with a strong focus on establishing chronology, probably with more narrative thana volume of annals, but with more retrospective distance and more breadth ofscope than ahistoria. Since the 1990s the tendency has been to see chronicle as theumbrella term, with annals,historiae and all kinds of hybrid and borderline formsbeing seen as types of chronicles. Since female historians tended to be writing withan agenda which involved them personally with their material, their works aremore likely to be classed as generically borderline on the older, narrowerdefinition. On the history of the term, see Graeme Dunphy, ‘Chronicles(Terminology)’ inEMC , pp. 274-82. Also David Dumville, ‘What is a Chronicle?’,in The Medieval Chronicle II , ed. Erik Kooper (Amsterdam and New York:Rodopi, 2002), 1-27.


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Strategies of Authority in Chronicles Written by Women168

never wrote in her native Low German.3 Conrad Celtis, who discoveredthe manuscript of her chronicle in 1493/4, celebrated her as a “German

Sappho”. She was almost certainly of high birth, as the GandersheimAbbey was an imperial foundation originally for daughters of the court.This house of secular canonesses in Lower Saxony had been founded in852 to allow unmarried women of the highest circles of Carolingiansociety to live comfortably and in relative independence, without takingvows or forgoing the right to return later to court life or to marry. As acanoness in such a well-endowed secular house, Hrotsvit would have hadthe leisure to pursue learning and literary activity for its own sake, andalthough the ethos of the abbey was religious, the link to the intellectualcircles of the court was not lost.

Hrotsvit was, for her period, a relatively prolific writer. She composedin total some eight saints’ lives, six dramas intended to provide a Christianalternative to the classical comedies of Terence, and two historical works:a life of the current Emperor, Otto I, and a foundation history of herconvent, the Primordia coenobii Gandeshemensis. The dramas are hermost original works, and probably those by which she is best known tomodern readers, but the two historical texts deserve more attention thanthey have had in the past.

The abbey chronicle appears to be Hrotsvit’s final work, writtensometime before the death of Otto in 973. It was composed at theprompting of the abbess, possibly to support the abbey’s claims in adispute with the episcopal see of Hildesheim. Fashioned in a literary formreminiscent of an epic, it begins with the foundation of the house in 852,and the surviving text, some 594 lines, carries down to the year 919; weassume that in the original text Hrotsvit continued the story to the date ofwriting, but the transmission of thePrimordia is the poorest of any of herworks, and the end is missing. Like many foundation histories, it mixeslegendary material with usable historical data, but the legendary motifs arenot so frequent that the value of the text as a historical source might be

3 Text edition is Helene Homeyer, Hrotsvithae opera (Munich etc.: Schöningh,1970). Homeyer also published a German translation, Hrotsvitha vonGandersheim: Werke in deutscher Übertragung, (Munich etc.: Schöningh, 1973).The other available translation reproduces the verse form but in consequence is notaccurate enough to be citable when the exact wording is important: Hrotsvit vonGandersheim, Sämtliche Dichtungen, tr. Otto Baumhauer, Jacob Bendixen,Theodor and Gottfried Pfund, intro. Bert Nagel, (Munich: Winkler, 1966). Forgeneral information on Hrotsvit see above all Bert Nagel, Hrotsvit vonGandersheim (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1965); also Barbara Schmid, ‘Hrotsvit ofGandersheim’,EMC , pp. 813-4.


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compromised. Indeed if we leave aside passages which are obviously notto be read as historical, the entire text contains only one relatively minor

factual error, and it was regarded by contemporaries as reliable enough tobe used as the main source for a rather more functional history composedearly in the following century. In content, it is therefore a fairly standardrepresentative of the genre, and more reliable than many.

As the earliest known female chronicler of medieval Europe, Hrotsvitwas breaking new ground. How did she deal with the question ofauthority? ThePrimordia itself tells us little about its poet. It opens withonly the very briefest of prologues:

Ecce meae supplex humilis devotio mentisGliscit, felicis primordia GandeshemensisPandere coenobii, quod cura non pigritantiConstruxere duces Saxonum iure potentes,Liudulfus magnus clarus quoque filius eiusOddo, qui coeptum perfecit opus memoratum.4

Behold the servile devotion of my lowly mind is stirred to tell thebeginnings of the fortunate monastery of Gandersheim, which the justlypowerful Dukes of Saxony built with unresting care, the great renownedLiudolf, and of his son Otto, who completed the famous work which hadbeen begun.

Thus the poem itself does not even name its author, and the only testimonyto the process of composition is this brief reference to an inner compulsionto write.

However, towards the end of her life, Hrotsvit arranged her collectedworks in three “books”, containing thelegendae, the dramas and thehistorical works respectively, with a verse praefatio and at least onededicatory epistle to each. This in itself testifies to a startling degree ofauthorial awareness: it is difficult to think of any other tenth-century writeranywhere who in the presentation of a completeoeuvre raised the unifyingfeature of authorship above a diversity of genre in quite this way. Theaccompanying texts in this, Hrotsvit’s final rearrangement of her life’swork, contain rather more in the way of reflection on the difficulties ofauthorship. The specific problem of the presumption of a woman writingin serious male genres is addressed in the so-calledEpistola eiusdem adquosdam sapientes huius libri fautores (Letter to the learned patrons)which precedes the dramas in Book 2:

4 Homeyer, Hrotsvithae opera, p. 450. All translations of Hrotsvit are mine.


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quia, cum philosophicis adprime studiis enutriti | et scientia longeexcellentius sitis perfecti, | mei opusculum vilis mulierculae | vestraadmiratione dignum duxistis | et largitorem in me operantis gratiae |fraterno affectu gratulantes laudastis, | arbitrantes mihi inesse aliquantulamscientiam artium, | quarum subtilitas longe praeterit mei muliebreingenium.5

For you, having been nourished above all on philosophical study (thequadrivium) and more excellently perfected in knowledge (sc. ofliterature), have thought this work by me, a worthless little woman, to beworthy of your admiration, and while congratulating with brotherlyaffection have praised Him who gave the grace at work within me, judgingthat I possess some little knowledge of the arts, the subtlety of which farexceeds my womanly nature.

While this wording clearly demonstrates confidence that as a womanand an author she has been accepted by the small circle of her friends andpatrons, it also shows how keenly she is aware that this acceptance is indefiance of the prejudice of gender. As a woman – the diminutivemuliercula is deliberately self-effacing – she is by naturevilis, “cheap” or“of slight value”, and heringenium – “condition”, “nature”, “character” or“spirit” – ought not to be marked by literary genius. If in fact she has such

talents, they are to be understood as wonders of the Grace of God. Asimilar theme may be found in the praefatio to Book 2, which is linkedthematically with the epistle: here she writes about the triumph of menover women as one of the givens of her world.

In keeping with this note of defensiveness, Hrotsvit repeatedly resortsto the standard modesty topoi, which form the bulk of the praefatio toBook 1 and echo throughout the other prefaces and letters: confessions ofinadequacy and poor erudition, apologies for expected errors, requests forcorrection from the reader, pleas for forbearance, and assurances that she

is acting in good faith. Speaking of the dangers of using apocryphalmaterial, she explains that when she first began to write, she did notunderstand how controversial the act was, but now she may as well finishin the hope that some scraps of truth are preserved in her poems. In theconventions of medieval writing, these set-pieces were almost obligatoryeven for male authors, but in Hrotsvit’s verse they have a particularfrequency and urgency, not because she fears she is less competent than amale writer, but because she has greater reason to be wary of the derision

5 Homeyer, Hrotsvithae opera, p. 235. Homeyer glosses philosophicis studiis with“das Studium der im Quadrivium zusammengefaßten Wissensgebiete” andscientia with “Kenntnis besonders der für literarische Tätigkeit wichtigen Fächer”.


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of the jealous. However if we wish to know the reality of her self-assessment, we find it clearly voiced a few lines further down in the

‘Letter to the learned patrons’:Unde non denego praestante gratia creatoris per dynamin me artes scire, |quia sum animal capax disciplinae, | sed per energian fateor omninonescire. | Perspicax quoque ingenium divinitus mihi collatum esseagnosco...6

For this reason I cannot deny that by the most excellent grace of the creatorI have a potential for knowledge of the arts, for I am a creature with acapacity for learning, though I confess that in reality I know nothing. I alsorecognize that the Godhead has endowed me with a sharp mind ...

The play on the words per dynamin and per energia is a learned joke:the reference is to Aristotle’s philosophy of potentiality and actuality, buttransferred to Hrotsvit’s feigned ignorance this learned vocabulary negatesthe protestation of ignorance even as it is spoken, rendering all the morecredible the assertion of her intellectual merits: she has been endowed witha perspicax ingenium, a sharp mind. These words are a bold acknowledgementof her own intelligence, and though the statement is immediately linked toa further modesty topos – the sentence continues with the regret that sinceher teachers ceased to instruct her, her laziness has hindered her continuedlearning – this only serves as a new motivation for writing: that her naturalfaculties might not be wasted:

... et largitor ingenii | tanto amplius in me iure laudaretur, | quantomuliebris sensus tardior esse creditur.

… and the Giver of talent might justly be praised through me more highly,the more limited the female intellect is believed to be.

This head-on confrontation with the issues of gender and the authorityof a poet is backed up by two further legitimation strategies. The first mayseem obvious but is worth stating nevertheless: as a daughter of thenobility Hrotsvit can call upon her connections. Though her precise socialstanding is not attested, it is clear that her friend and patron was theAbbess Gerberg II, a niece of Otto I. In the unlikely event that a woman ofhumble birth had been admitted to Gandersheim, she would hardly havebecome Gerberg’s special protégée. But even if Hrotsvit had no standingof her own, through Gerberg she is associated with the House of Saxony,

6 Homeyer, Hrotsvithae opera, p. 236.


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and it was Gerberg who gave the commission to write the life of her uncle.Indeed, the epistle to Otto II suggests that the order came from the

Emperor himself:in monstrando tuis quantum plus pareo iussis (showinghow closely I follow your commands).7 It is therefore certain that at leastthe Gesta Ottonis, if not Hrotsvit’s entire life’s work, was intended to bepresented at court, and would have been received by the Emperor with apredisposition of good will. Any writer would take courage from such aconstellation, and Hrotsvit’s prefaces and epistles repeatedly remind thereader of the dignitaries whose favour she enjoys.

Some significance might be attached to the fact that the life of Otto andthe Primordia are poetic works. All Hrotsvit’sopera were written in acompetent Latin verse laced with sometimes elaborate figures of speech.While the choice of verse was not uncommon for saints’ lives or drama, itwas highly unusual in the historical writing of this period. I have shownelsewhere that only about seven percent of medieval chronicles are inverse. Furthermore, apart from isolated exceptions, the verse form appearsin this kind of writing only from the eleventh century, and thenpredominantly in the vernacular.8 The rise of the late-medieval versechronicle in Germany, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere can be seenas a compensation for the lack of sophistication which was felt to beinherent in the use of the common tongue, although it has also beenunderstood as a relocating of historiography in the tradition of the courtlyromance. Hrotsvit, writing in the tenth century, is well before thesedevelopments, but her innovative choice can be explained by the same twofactors: it may be that, having begun by writing in other forms in whichverse was thought appropriate, she simply transferred the use of versefrom there to her history writing; but at the same time, it is possible thatthe choice of the more demanding linguistic form was a way ofcompensating gender bias. It is an obvious and demonstrative way ofbeing “better than the boys”.

Finally, an unusual and highly innovative form of authorial legitimationis to be found in a play on the poet’s own name which we find in thepreface to Book 2. As a personal name, Hrotsvit is an early form ofRoswita, a name from the Germanic heroic tradition derived ultimatelyfrom Proto-Germanic *hr ō þiz, “honour” and*swinþa, “strong”. The tenth-century Low German forms of these words,hr ō th–swī th (affected by theIngvaeonic nasal-spirant law), were still similar enough to the currentnorthern form of the name that Hrotsvit would easily have recognized the

7 Homeyer, Hrotsvithae opera, p. 388.8 Graeme Dunphy, ‘Verse and Prose’,EMC , pp. 1473-6.


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derivation. Developing the semantics rather imaginatively from “honour”,which in the medieval sense implied positive acclaim bestowed by others,

to “proclamation” (both involve speaking out), Hrotsvit understood thename to mean “she who speaks with a strong voice”, allowing her to styleherself Clamor Validus Gandeshemensis, the Clarion Voice of Gandersheim.This explanation of the name may not be supported by modern research onhistorical linguistics, but it is perfectly in keeping with the medievaltradition of hermeneutical etymologizing, in which the “truth” of anetymology did not lie in anything as dead and dusty as attestable historicalcognates or deducible regular sound shifts, but rather in the insight whichthe hypothesis about the signifier could provide to the nature of the thingsignified, and to its place in the divine economy.9 If Hrotsvit’s name couldbe etymologized as “clear, strong, resounding voice”, then that was whatshe was, by God’s command.

Anna Komnene (1083–1153) is unique among the female chroniclersof the Middle Ages in that her birth status gave her vast authority insociety, and a freedom to operate independently of the sort which womenseldom enjoyed.10 As the eldest child of Alexios I Komnenos, she wasborn with a strong claim on the Byzantine imperial throne, and only a fewweeks after her birth she was betrothed to the nine-year-old son of the

deposed Michael VII, Konstantinos Doukas, whom Alexios had madenominal co-emperor in order to safeguard the legitimacy of his seizure ofpower. Thus together Anna and Konstantinos were heirs to both rivalclaimants on the imperial dignity, and Anna was brought up in theexpectancy that she would one day succeed her father. These hopes were

9 Friedrich Ohly, ‘On the spiritual sense of the word in the Middle Ages’, in Ohly,Sensus Spiritualis: Studies in Medieval Significs and the Philology of Culture,translated from German by Kenneth Northcott (Chicago UP, 2005): “It would befoolish to deride such an etymology as unscientific if it helped the people of itstime to arrive at a deeper signification of the meaning of the word, since it wasprecisely the task of etymology at that time to illuminate the spiritual meaning ofthe word. Our modern etymology would have appeared questionable to the MiddleAges, because it is bogged down in the literal meaning of the word and does notgive any explanation of the meaning of the world or of life. The spiritual meaningof the word with its universe of signification, and its scope of signification,contains an interpretation of meaning that derives from the Christian spirit and isthus a guide to life”, p. 18.10 Text edition: Dieter R. Reinsch, Annae Comnenae Alexias (Berlin and NY: deGruyter, 2001). English translation: Anna Komene,The Alexiad , tr. E.R.A. Sewter(1969, revised edition Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics 2009). I am indebted tomy colleague Stephan Albrecht (Mainz) for his generous advice on the Byzantinebackground.


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dashed with the birth of her brother John in 1087, and the death ofKonstantinos around 1095. In 1097 she was married instead to Alexios’

general and favourite, the 35-year-oldκαῖ σαρ Nikephoros Bryennios theYounger. However, Anna never relinquished an ambition to be Empress,and was encouraged in this by her mother, the Empress Eirene. In 1118they twice plotted unsuccessfully to usurp John, first by trying to persuadeAlexios on his deathbed to name Bryennios rather than John as hissuccessor, and then by attempting to stage a coup before the newlyenthroned John had a grip on power. They were thwarted by Bryennioshimself, whose conscience would not allow him to conspire in an act oftreason. Anna spent much of the rest of her long life in retirement in a

convent founded by her mother. It was there that in 1137 she nursed thedying Bryennios, and subsequently wrote a chronicle of the periodinspired by his writings.

Anna’sἈλεξιάς (Alexiad) is the most significant medieval Greek workin any genre by a woman, and at over five hundred pages in the criticaledition it is by far the most ambitious of the works discussed here. Thisencomiastic history, centred on the life of Anna’s father and with itsheroic-sounding title echoing Homer’s Iliad , is a highly sophisticatedliterary undertaking written mostly in a classicizing Greek. It is arranged

in a prologue and fifteen books, the first two of which tell of campaignsduring Alexios’ youth almost as a preamble, while the remaining thirteenbooks contain an account of his reign. Although strongly focussed on hissuccesses, its scope is much wider than a purely biographical work, givingan account of incursions of the Seljuk Turks into Asia Minor, and theravages of Norman Crusaders, whom Anna callsΚελτοί (Celts), in theMediterranean. For much of the political history of the period, Anna is oneof our most important sources.

Her prologue begins with an almost lyrical meditation on the nature of

time, the force which wipes away important and unimportant things, andof historical writing, the finest bulwark against time’s irresistible flow.Then she continues:

ταῦτα δὲ διεγωκυ ῖ α ἐγὼ Ἄ ννα, θυγάτηρ µὲ ν τῶ ν βασιλέων Ἀλεξίου κα ὶ Εἰ ρήνης , πορφύρας τιθήνηµά τε καὶ γέννηµα , οὐ γραµµάτων οὐκ ἄµοιρος ,ἀλλ ὰ κα ὶ τὸ ἑλληνίζειν ἐς ἄκρον ἐσπουδακυ ῖ α καὶ ῥητορικ ῆς οὐκ ἀµελετήτως ἔχουσα καὶ τὰς ἀριστοτελικ ὰς τέχνας εὖ ἀ ναλεξαµένη κα ὶ τοὺς Πλάτωνος διαλόγους καὶ τὸ ν νοῦ ν ἀπὸ τ ῆς τετρακτύος τῶ ν

µαθηµάτων πυκάσασα (δεῖ γὰρ ἐξορχε ῖ σθαι ταῦτα , καὶ οὐ περιαυτολογία τὸ πρᾶγµα , ὅσα ἡ φύσις καὶ ἡ περ ὶ τὰς ἐπιστ ήµας σπουδ ὴ δέδωκε καὶ ὁ


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Θεὸς ἄ νωθεν ἐπεβράβευσε καὶ ὁ καιρὸς συνεισήνεγκε ) βούλοµαι διὰ τ ῆσδέ µου τ ῆς γραφ ῆς τὰς πράξεις ἀφηγήσασθαι τοὐµοῦ πατρὸς... 11

I, Anna, daughter of the Emperor Alexios and the Empress Eirene, bornand bred in the purple, not without some acquaintance with literature –having devoted the most earnest study to the Greek language, in fact, andbeing not unpractised in rhetoric and having read thoroughly the works ofAristotle and the dialogues of Plato, and having fortified my mind with thetetrakus [i.e. the quadrivium] of sciences (these things must be divulged,and it is not boasting to recall what Nature and my own zeal for knowledgehave given me, nor what God has apportioned to me from above and whathas been contributed by circumstance); I desire now by means of mywritings to give an account of my father’s deeds...

This manifesto of self-confidence would be remarkable for anymedieval writer, let alone for a woman, and clearly has the tone of onewho has been raised to command. The source of authority here is in thefirst instance Anna’s belief in her own persona – the daughter of anEmperor does not need to apologize for letting her voice be heard. ThePorphyra (Purple Chamber) was the birthing pavilion of the Great Palacein Constantinople, the walls of which were lined with porphyry. Any childfathered by the emperor was entitled to the honorific designationΠορφυρογέννητος or Πορφυρογέννητη .12 Anna leads with the claim to beporphyrogenite, a distinction which only a reigning Empress could trump.Her parentage remains a primary theme throughout the work, inevitablyperhaps given the nature of her project.

It is interesting that in the opening lines Anna cites both her parents inequal measure. Although the Alexiad is strongly focussed on her father, forthe prevailing norms of the historiographical tradition require thecentrality of the ruling monarch, it nevertheless has been argued that infact Anna is in some ways more interested in the female line, not leastbecause, a generation earlier, Eirene’s parentage was far moredistinguished than that of Alexios.13 Anna and Eirene were both strong

11 Reinsch, Annae Comnenae Alexias, pp. 5-6. Translation from Sewter, Alexiad , p.3.12 Gilbert Dagron, ‘Nés dans la pourpre’,Travaux et mémoires du Centre derecherche sur l'histoire et la civilisation de Byzance, 12 (1994), 105-42.13 On this, see various articles in Anna Komnene and Her Times, ed. ThaliaGouma-Peterson (New York and London: Garland, 2000), especially Barbara Hill,‘Actions Speak Louder than Words: Anna Komnene’s Attempted Usurpation’, 45-62, and Thalia Gouma-Peterson, ‘Gender and Power: Passages to the Maternal inAnna Komnene’s Alexiad ’, 107-24.


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figures, and it is notable that Anna, who never took her husband’s familyname, Bryennios, sometimes appears in contemporary documents with her

father’s surname, Komnene, but sometimes with her mother’s, as AnnaDoukaina. Eirene for her part had favoured her daughter Anna over herson John, to the extent of conspiring in Anna’s attempted usurpation of thethrone. Anna and Eirene shared a view which a misogynistic Byzantinesociety generally would have found anathema, namely, that a woman ofroyal birth carried within her as much innate stature as a man when it cameto the legitimacy of dynastic succession. Alexios’s mother Anna Dalassenealso appears in the Alexiad as a powerful matriarch, ἡ µήτηρ τῶ ν Κοµνηνῶ ν,14 who in a dramatic scene in Hagia Sophia guaranteed the

safety of her dynasty. Anna certainly found in her mother and hergrandmother powerful models for her own career, and it was from themthat she derived much of the confidence she required both as an actor onthe political stage and later as a writer. After all, the commission to write ahistory of Alexios had come initially from Eirene.

To this claim to social authority Anna adds a second claim, one ofintellectual authority, and unlike Hrotsvit, she gives no hint whatsoever ofeven a pro-forma modesty. Her education in the advanced disciplines ofthe quadrivium, she tells us, was impressive, and it is interesting that she

makes reference in particular to her knowledge of the pre-Christian Greekclassics: she might also have mentioned Homer, to whom she alludesmany times in her text.15 Her intellectual capacities, she is not embarrassedto boast, are attributable to a combination of the fine education she wasgiven, her own hard work, and the native wit endowed to her by God. Thisis no idle claim, for already by this stage, only ten lines into the work, shehas shown unmistakably that her command of the skills of language andrhetoric are formidable.16

In the second section of her prologue, Anna addresses a question of

credibility which might be tricky for any historian who stands too close tothe subject she or he records. Ultimately the authority of the historian isderived from the confidence of the reader that the historical record will bereliable, so while Anna’s status as an imperial princess may counterbalanceany doubts the reader might have about the reliability of a woman writer, it

14 Reinsch, Annae Comnenae Alexias, p. 65.15 Maria Tziatzi-Papagianni, ‘Über Zitate und Anspielungen in der Alexias AnnaKomnenes sowie Anklänge derselben in den späteren Geschichtsschreibern’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift,97 (2004), 167-86.16 On the awareness of classical learning in medieval Byzantium, see AnthonyKaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium: the transformations of Greek identity andthe reception of the classical tradition (CUP, 2007).


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also raises a new question mark: can a daughter have the critical distanceto write about the reign of her father?

ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ἐκείνου πράξεις προελομένη συγγράφειν δέδοικα τὸ ὑφορμοῦν τὲ καὶ ὑποτρέχον, μή ποτε λογίσαιτό τις τὰ τοῦ ἐμοῦ πατρὸς συγγράφουσαν τὰ ἑαυτῆς ἐπαινεῖν, καὶ ψεῦδος ἅπαν δόξῃ τὸ τῆς ἱστορίας πρᾶγμα καὶ ἐγκώμιον ἄντικρυς, εἴ τι τῶν ἐκείνου θαυμάζοιμι. 17

Now that I have decided to write the story of his life, I am fearful ofwagging and suspicious tongues: someone might conclude that incomposing the history of my father I am glorifying myself; the history,wherever I express admiration for any act of his, may seem wholly falseand mere panegyric.

This is a perfectly valid fear, if she seriously wants the reader to believe she is a neutral reporter. Most historians in the Middle Ages wrotewith an agenda, and Anna is no exception: as even a casual readingsuggests, and scholarly studies have confirmed, the Alexiad certainly doeshave a propagandistic element which goes beyond building her father’sreputation to undergird the legitimacy of the entire dynasty which herepresents. Nor is there anything particularly reprehensible about this,

provided it is not achieved through outright falsehood. But Annaapparently has an ambition to be read as one of the great Byzantinehistorians, and would like to be known for her fairness and neutrality. Thisrequires a conscious distancing of her critical perspective from her

personal affinities, as Anna now expounds in words adapted from Polybios( Histories I.14.7), the Hellenic historian of the second century BC.

ὅταν γάρ τις τὸ τῆς ἱστορίας ἦθος ἀναλαμβάνῃ, ἐπιλαθέσθαι χρὴ εὐνοίας καὶ μίσους καὶ πολλάκις κοσμεῖν τοὺς ἐχθροὺς τοῖς μεγίστοις ἐπαίνοις,ὅταν αἱ πράξεις ἀπαιτῶσι τοῦτο, πολλάκις δὲ ἐλέγχειν τοὺς ἀνανγκαιοτάτους, ὅταν αἱ τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων ἁμαρτίαι τοῦθ’ ὑποδεικνύωσι. 18

Whenever one assumes the role of historian, friendship and enmities haveto be forgotten; often one has to bestow on adversaries the highestcommendation, where their deeds merit it; often, too, one’s nearestrelatives have to be censured, as and when their behaviour deserves it.

17 Reinsch, Annae Comnenae Alexias , p. 6. Translation from Sewter, Alexiad , p. 4.18 Reinsch, Annae Comnenae Alexias , p. 7. Translation from Sewter, Alexiad , p. 4.


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In the passage Anna cites here, Polybios is seeking the historian’spurpose in the practical benefit which judicious historical writing can

provide for future generations. Anna does not name Polybios, but aneducated reader could have been expected to recognize the source. Byplacing herself in his intellectual tradition she hopes to guard againstpossible criticism of her judgments.

One further claim is made at this point to emphasize her reliability:Anna is basing her account, she says, on eyewitness testimony,τὰ πράγµατα µαρτυραµένη , for the participants in the events she describeswere the fathers and grandfathers of men still alive. In fact, her proximityto these eyewitnesses is even closer than this rhetorical formulation

suggests, as she lived through many of the events herself. Interestingly,though, she does not present herself as a witness, but instead emphasizesthe process of interviewing those in a position to know. While this mayseem an obvious procedure to the modern reader, it was not in factcommon for medieval chroniclers to assert the superiority of oraltestimony or use it in more than a sporadic and haphazard way. Althoughreferences to this as a source of historical knowledge do gradually increasein frequency from the eleventh century onwards in the works of suchchroniclers as Otto of Freising, Thietmar of Merseburg and Peter of Zittau,it was not until the radically innovative French chronicle of Jean Froissartin the fourteenth century that a scientific methodology of gathering andevaluating a multiplicity of testimonies was developed.19 Yet, we knowthat Anna, writing in a convent in Constantinople, received distinguishedguests and grilled them for information for her project. In this she wasahead of her time, and her claim that this procedure adds authority to herhistory is more than the pro-forma topos which it might at first appear.

Christine de Pizan (1364–1430) was, after Hrotsvit, the only medievalwoman of whom we can say she was an accomplished writer in a

multiplicity of genres whoalso wrote history.20

She was born in Venice,19 Peter Ainsworth, ‘Contemporary and ‘Eyewitness’ History’, in Historiographyin the Middle Ages, ed. Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 249-76.20 There is a not inconsiderable body of scholarly literature on Christine. See forexample Marie-Joséphine Pinet, Christine de Pisan 1364-1430: Étudebiographique et littéraire (Paris, 1927, reprinted Geneva: Slatkine, 1974); EnidMcLeod, The Order of the Rose: The Life and Ideas of Christine de Pizan (London: Chatto & Windus, 1976); Charity Cannon Willard,Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works (New York: Persea, 1984); Maureen Quilligan,The Allegoryof Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames (Ithaca & London:Cornell UP, 1991); Kate Langdon Forhan,The Political Theory of Christine de


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but lived in Paris, where she produced forty one quite diverse vernacularworks, often in the service of the French court. Europe’s first professional

female writer, she took up the pen out of the need to support her childrenafter their father’s death, and she wrote with an erudition and a literarybrilliance which most male writers of the period would have envied. She iscertainly best known for her Livre de la Cité des Dames(1405), whichtoday is celebrated as the first feminist work of European literature, but itis often forgotten that she twice acted as a historian, with great success.Her biography of King Charles V of France (1404), Le Livre des faits etbonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V ,21 is an imaginatively structuredaccount which completely breaks the mould of the contemporary traditionof historical writing. Rather than arranging events chronologically, sheapproached the task thematically, constructing the work in three mainsections on Charles’ courage, chivalry and wisdom, and gathering theepisodes which illustrate the point at hand. It is certainly a work of greaterudition, as is clear from her use of such sources as theGrandesChroniques de France, the Chronique Normande du XIV siècle, BernardGui, Vincent de Beauvais, and many others, as well as a series ofimportant eyewitness interviews, which since Froissart had become anessential element of any serious historical work on events within livingmemory. But equally it is marked by a creativity of form and a level ofinsight into the personality of her subject which make it one of the greathistorical texts of its period. Then towards the end of her life Christinecomposed a poem on the wars of Joan of Arc (1429), Dictié en l’honneurde la Pucelle or Le Dictié de Jehanne d’Arc, which even more stronglysubordinates chronology to a thematic presentation.22

Christine stands apart from the other authors discussed here in that sheactively challenged the gender stereotypes which Hrotsvit in principleaccepted and Anna Komnene simply ignored. The challenge began in herearly poemEpistre au Dieu d’Amours (1399) with her first criticism of the

Pizan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); Francoise Autrand:Christine de Pizan: Une femme en politique (Paris: Fayard, 2009).21 Text edition: Christine de Pisan, Le Livre des Fais et Bonnes Meurs du Sage RoyCharles V , ed. Suzanne Solente (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1936;reprint 1977). There is no published translation, though part of the prologueappears in English in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Kevin Brownlee,TheSelected Writings of Christine de Pizan (New York and London: Norton, 1997),113-5.22 Text edition with English translation: Christine de Pisan, Ditié de Jehanne d’arc,eds Angus J. Kennedy and Kenneth Varty (Oxford: Society for the Study ofMedieval Languages and Literature, 1977).


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thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun for its representationsof women, which were crudely misogynistic even by the standards of the

time. In the subsequent furious uproar, the so-calledQuerelle de la Rose(1400 –1402), she was attacked by the Provost of Lille, Jean de Montreuil,and defended by Jean Gerson, the chancellor of the University of Paris,and the quarrel ran on through a number of publications, lyrics and oftenvitriolic letters, taking in an ever widening circle of participants all theway to the Queen.23 In this exchange Christine debated the merits anddemerits of received perceptions, spoke of the pain of women who feltthemselves wronged by these calumnies, and postulated how different theworld’s literature would be if it had been written by women. Thisestablished Christine’s reputation as a writer and as an intellectual capableof holding her own in debates with men, it won her both friends andenemies among the humanists of Paris, but above all it established herprovocative position on gender, and led to the publication in 1405 of herCité des Dames, in which the heroic women of the past build an allegoricalcity, behind the walls of which women are safe from defamatory judgments against their sex.

If the subject of the quarrel was the moral hypocrisy of Jean de Meun’swork, which advocates licentiousness for men while pillorying thesupposed immorality of women, one senses that the real source of outragewas that it should have been a woman who exercised criticism of arenowned male author. Christine was obviously sensitive to this challengefrom the beginning, for in fact it was she who first touched on it, noting ina letter to Jean de Montreuil that he should not think she was onlydefending women because as a woman herself she had a vested interest.Nevertheless, her gender was relevant in the positive sense that when sheclaimed women could be virtuous she spoke from experience; thereforeshe asked him not to think her arrogant for writing as a woman. However,it was the royal secretary Gontier Col who turned this against her inpatronising letter which assumed that as a woman she could not havethought these things herself and must be writing as a cover for others.Christine’s answer ignored this, except to say that she did not take it as areproach if she was reminded that she was female, and that even a littlemouse can upset a great lion. The nastiest onslaught then came from Col’sbrother Pierre, a canon of Paris, who spoke of the foolish conceit of awoman’s mouth condemning “a man of such high understanding”. Herresponse to this was remarkably mild: she asked why he attacked her so

23 Text edition of all the documents of the debate, with French translations of theLatin epistles: Eric Hicks, Le débat sur le Roman de la Rose: Christine de Pizan, Jean Gerson, Jean de Montreuil, Gontier et Pierre Col (Paris: Champion, 1977).


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personally when he did not similarly attack Gerson. Generally she avoidedbeing drawn into a discussion of the relevance of her own gender, and she

made no attacksad hominem herself, instead steering the debate alwaysback onto the more abstract matters of literary criticism and genderpolitics which she wished to debate. This debate she won, simply by thesovereign, spirited, scholarly manner in which she presented her case.

One might therefore say that when she came to writing the Livre desFais in 1404, the strategies of authority were already in place. Turningnow to history, the first Frenchwoman ever to do so, she knows that shehas already attracted and withstood all the derision which Hrotsvitanticipated. At the beginning of this work, she does not need to justify orexcuse her presumption as a woman for undertaking such a lofty projectbecause the reader knows she has already fought this battle. As a result,there is not much in the prologue to compare with the legitimationstrategies seen in some of the other chronicles discussed here. There is, ofcourse, a set-piece prayer for divine guidance, God being always a usefulally:

Sire Dieux, euvre mes levres, enlumine ma pensée, et mon entendementesclaires à celle fin que m’ignorance n’encombre mes sens à expliquer leschose conceues en ma memoire, et soit mon commencement, moyen et fin

à la louenge de toy, souveraine puissance et digneté incirconscriptible, àsens humain non comprenable!24

Lord God, open my lips, illuminate my thoughts, and give light to myunderstanding, that my ignorance should not hinder my mind in explainingthe things conceived in my memory, and let my beginning, middle and endpraise you, sovereign power and uncircumscribable dignity, incomprehensibleto human wit!

And there is a relatively modest modesty topos:

pour ce, moy Cristine de Pizan, femme soubz les tenebres d’ignorance auregart de cler entendment, mais douée de deon de Dieu et nature en tantcomme desir se peut estendre en amour d’estude, suivant le stille despremierains et devanciers, noz ediffieurs en meurs redevables, à present,par grace de Dieu et ….25

so that I, Christine de Pizan, a woman wandering in the darkness ofignorance when it comes to clear understanding, but endowed with the giftof God and nature insofar as desire can turn into love of study, following

24 Solente, Livre des Fais, p. 4. All translations of Christine are mine.25 Solente, Livre des Fais, p. 5.


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the manner of our predecessors and earlier writers, our teachers in mattersof morals, now by the Grace of God...

But there is no direct discussion of gender and no insistence on herqualifications, only these minimal set-pieces. If these seem ratherunderplayed, this is partly because of the level-headed common-senseapproach which Christine took to conflict, displayed already in hercontribution to the rose controversy. But it is also partly because herlegitimation as a writer had already been defended elsewhere.

However, there was also a second reason why Christine may havebegun this task with confidence, namely that it had been commissioned bythe highest authority. We have already seen the important legitimizingforce of a commission: Hrotsvit also had the encouragement of her abbessand Anna Komnene saw herself fulfilling her mother’s wish that the Alexiad be written by a family member. But Christine, contractedprofessionally for a fee by royal command, is in a different league in thisrespect. It seems that Philip of Burgundy, the brother of the late Charles Vand regent during the infirmity of his son, decided that an official historyof Charles’s reign would be of political value, and casting around for ascholar to undertake the task, he chose Christine over all the great maleliterati in Paris. The obvious choice would have been one of the scholarsof the abbey of Saint-Denis, where Charles was buried, for the abbey’shistorians had been the official royal chroniclers since the abbacy of Sugerin the twelfth century. But Philip wanted a more personal account ofCharles than what he already had in the annals of the chancellery. Possiblyhe had been impressed by Christine’s lyric poetry: we know he hadreceived a copy of her Mutacion de Fortune a short time before.Undoubtedly he wanted someone who would use the vernacular in asophisticated but natural way. But he was taking a risk, for Christine hadnever written anything like this before. One might wonder if she had been

recommended by the Queen, who had been observing theQuerelle, or ifPhilip himself wanted to make a statement of support, for this commissioncould not have gone unnoticed in Gontier Col’s offices. At any rate, ifPhilip chose Christine over all the authors in France, the question of whyshe of all people is writing is not one she needs to address. This iscertainly the reason why Christine devotes the entire second chapter ofPart I to an unusually detailed account of the day she was invited to theLouvre to receive Philip’s instructions.

One has the impression, then, that Christine began her work on the

Livre des Faiswith a sense that the issue of her gender as a writer hadceased to be immediately controversial. This changed. On 27th April 1404,the day before she completed work on Part I of her book, Philip died


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unexpectedly, leaving her bereft of the patron whose choice no-one woulddare challenge. Shortly after this, she seems to have received critical

feedback on the current version of her manuscript. It is not known wherethis criticism came from, but if she had submitted the draft of Part I andthe beginning of Part II for approval at court, perhaps to ensure that shestill had a commission, it could easily have received attention from thecircles of the same royal secretary with whom she had already crossedswords. At any rate, it is not hard to imagine why a conservative readermight have found fault, since her approach to the work, structured aroundthe personality traits of the deceased king, must have flown in the face ofexpectations. As a result, chapters 18 and 21 of Book II are devoted to justifying her work against adverse opinion, and here among a wholeseries of other issues on which she has to defend her methodology, thereproach that a mere woman should have the audacity to write historyagain raises its ugly head.

In II.18 Christine responds to the charge that she has been undulyflattering to the current king by insisting she has only written what hersources told her, and indeed, that she believes the praise to be understatedbecause she knows there is more she has not been told. And at this pointshe complains in passing that some of those from whom she soughtinformation:

... par adventure pour ce que il leur sembloit non apertenir à ma petitefaculté qui femme suis, enregistrer les noms de si haultes personnes, nem’en daignoient tenir regne...26

... perhaps because they thought it inappropriate for someone of my limitedability, being a woman, to record the names of such high persons, wouldnot deign to tell me what they knew...

Clearly, Christine has been made painfully aware of the prejudice against awoman historian when it impinged on her access to the historian’s rawdata. At this point, she does not attempt to disarm the prejudice, shemerely notes it.

However in II.21 she tackles it head-on. Here she is dealing withcriticism specifically of the opening of Part II, in which she spokegenerally of the nature of chivalry, provoking indignation thatcesteignorant femme should have the presumption to instruct male readers onsuch matters.

26 Solente, Livre des Fais, p. 181-2.


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Auxquelz je respons ce que meismes autrefois ay dit, qui sert ad ce propos,ce que Hugues de Saint Victour dit: ‹ Le sages homs aprent volentiers;poson que un enfent lui moustrast, il ne regarde mie à la personne, quiparle, mais à la doctrine qu’il donne; se elle est bonne, il la retient, semauvaise est, il la delaisse. › Pareillement puis dire en ceste part; et quantad ce que femme suis oser parler d’armes, il est escript que es anciensaages, comme autrefois ay dit, une sage femme de Grece nommée Minervetrouva l’art et science de faire armeures de fer et d’acier, et tous lesharnois, que on seult porter en bataille, fu par lui premierement trouvé; sin’y a nulle force qui que donne la dottrine, mais que bonne et salutairesoit.27

To them I respond as I have done before, which will serve here again, withthe words of Hugh of St Victor: “The wise man should enjoy learning;even if a child instructs him, he does not look at the person speaking, but atthe instruction he gives; if it is good, he accepts it, if it is bad, he rejects it.”I can say the same thing in this case. And as for the fact that as a woman Idare to speak of arms, it is written that in ancient times, as I have saidelsewhere, a wise Greek woman named Minerva discovered the art andscience of making arms from iron and steel, and all the armour which oneshould wear in battle was first invented by her; therefore it is not importantwho gives the teaching, but only that it is good and salutary.

Hugh was a twelfth-century Parisian theologian and philosopher whowould have been held in the highest esteem by Christine’s critics, andciting him here, as she had four years earlier in L’Epistre Othéa, is a clevermove. To this she adds information on Minerva which was a standard partof the medieval repertoire of classical lore. With such authorities cited,even a woman can write what she knows.

Christine’s second piece of what might be termed historical writingwas her poem on Joan of Arc. This was her final work; she had in factretired from writing around 1418 when, together with the rest of the court,

she was forced to leave Paris, the city having fallen to the Burgundians,but she broke her silence with this final piece published in 1429, the yearbefore her death. It is the first of many French works in praise of the pucelle, and the only one of any importance composed while Joan was stillalive. Noting the call in strophe VII for the story to beescript, à qui quedisplace, / En mainte cronique et hystoire! (written, no matter whom itdisplease, in many a chronicle and history) we will certainly place it in thehistoriographical tradition, but it can in no sense stand alongside the Livredes Fais as a factual account. Snippets of report flash stroboscopically

before the reader’s eye amidst longer passages of panegyric and prophecy,27 Solente, Livre des Fais, p. 190-1.


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medieval town for a quarter of a century previously, but it was only withthe assumption of the Dominican habit in 1394, with a new patron and a

new energy, that a substantial community of women were settled inadequate accommodation. Twenty-seven women took their vows on theday of the consecration of the house, and within two years they had grownto a body of seventy-two sisters living behind locked doors in a closedsociety, enjoying considerable financial security thanks to influentialbenefactors, and living according to the strictest observance of the rule.

Sister Bartolomea was twelve years old when she joined CorpusDomini in 1394, and she remained within its walls until her death in 1440.A daughter of a respectable Venetian family with a strong sense ofreligious calling, she found the fresh piety of the new communityinspirational and in her writings she painted an idealizing picture of theircommunal life. Around 1415 she began work on theCronaca del Corpus Domini and in parallel the Necrologia del Corpus Domini, which shecontinued to 1436. The chronicle is arranged in eighteen chapters, ofwhich the first eleven recount the history of the sisters as far as thedifficulties they encountered in the Papal Schism. The remainder of thework almost loses sight of Corpus Domini as it turns to the macro-political, narrating in a highly partisan manner the events of the Schismand the life of Pope Gregory XII. This latter section is interesting as itgoes far beyond the material we might expect a Dominican woman tocover, and it is possibly to be explained by the fact that Gregory, bornAngelo Correr, was a Venetian who may well have been known toRiccoboni or others of the sisters.

Riccoboni introduces her work with a brief but bold showcasing of heridentity and her intentions:

Mi, sour Bortolamia Richobon, abiando uno grandissimo desiderio descriver le grandissime maraviglie che ‘l nostro clementissimo signor Dio

ha adoperado in questo sacratissimo monestier, facto a reverentia del suosancto nome ora el fa anni 20 (ma per vederme insufficiente ho pugnadocom mi medema, perché a tal opera bisogneria persone dotte e savie), pernon far tanta resistentia al Spirito sancto, me ho deliberado a scriver aquesta intentione, acciò che le sorelle che vegnerà da può de noi siano benedificate et abiano causa de laudar el Signor de tanti beni et infiamarse aben viver et seguitar el bon principio. Or come saverò me sforzerò de dirtutta la verità de quello ch’ò visto et habudo, e se io non componesse comodoveria, priego li lectori me perdona.30

30 Casella and Pozzi, Lettere Spirituali, p. 258. Translation from Bornstein, p. 25.


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I, Sister Bartolomea Riccoboni, had the greatest desire to write of thewondrous marvels that our most clement Lord God has performed in thismost blessed convent, built in reverence for his holy name some twentyyears ago. However, I wrestled within myself at the thought of myinadequacy, since such an undertaking would require wise and learnedpersons. Rather than continue to resist the Holy Spirit, I have decided towrite with this goal in mind: in order that those sisters who follow after usmay be properly edified, and that they may have reason to praise the Lordfor so many good things and be inspired to live well and follow through onthis good beginning. I shall strive to do my best to recount the full truth ofwhat I have seen and heard, and if I do not write as I ought to, I beg myreaders to pardon me.

In some ways this prologue shows obvious conventional traits. Themodesty topos and appeal for divine guidance are standard rhetoricalelements. While one can imagine that this secludedreligieuse might havebeen genuinely daunted by the task she had undertaken, the sovereignmanner in which she subsequently handles the material in the body of thework testifies that she is more than competent. The prologue also betrays atone which suggests that any apprehension is mixed with confidence asshe rises to the challenge. The predominance of first-person verb formswhich translate into English with an authorial “I” is striking, and theserecur, though far less frequently, throughout the course of the chronicle.Riccoboni’s perception that the task requires a “wise and learned” authorraises the stakes and makes it seem all the more remarkable when sheundertakes to “do her best”. The conscious equating of her own activitywith intellectual authority, albeit couched in the topos of inadequacy, is asstriking as the claim to have conceived and initiated the project on her ownauthority – without patron, commission or human prompting – motivatedprimarily by her own “greatest desire”:me ho deliberado, I have decided!

This must be seen in the context of the spirituality which is evident in

the chronicle as the essence of life at Corpus Domini. The sisters reportvisions, revelations and epiphanies with a regularity which puts them on apar with the everyday communication between a group leader and histeam: every decision is a decision by God. In the first chapter of the work,for example, the first founder of the earlier Benedictine settlement, SisterLucia Tiepolo, is inspired to establish a convent in Venice when she seesthe Lord Jesus “in the form of a man tied to the column, all wounded andbloody, with the crown of thorns on his head” and receives instructionsfrom him. Chapter by chapter Riccoboni records how the authority for the

building of the community was given step by step in visions to the sisters,and the male representatives of the church hierarchy were inclined toaccept these instructions if not immediately then at least when the stream


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of complementary visions became impossible to ignore. Thus Riccobonidoes not need a commission from a superior: if she feels moved to

undertake this work, this must be a command from the Holy Spirit, and itwould be disobedience to refuse. This of course was a daring argument ina world where every heretic claimed visionary authority and theinstruments of church discipline were not readily inclined to acceptpurported theophanies at face value. It is however entirely in keeping withthe movements of female spirituality in the fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies, and as the primary readership was within the convent, we mayassume that the sisters at least would have accepted this assumption.

The strong sense of harmony and unity of purpose which characterizesthe sisterhood and permeates the chronicle is also a source of authority.Riccoboni entitles her workuna breve cronica del sanctissimo monestierdel Corpo di Cristo de Veniexia, de le sorelle dell’ordene de missier san Domenico, focusing on the sisters as a group, and at no point does shesound detached from the history she records. She is at one with thecommunity, and the authority of the community is the authority of her text.The community however derives its authority not only from the visions ofthe sisters but equally from the patronage of two father figures, whoseindulgence and approval the chronicle is in large part dedicated tocharting. The reader senses the assumption that these two great men wouldbe pleased with the devoted offering of a Sister Bartolomea.

The first of these men is the diplomat and poet Giovanni Dominici,longstanding confessor to the convent, who had been involved in thenegotiations leading to its re-establishment as a Dominican house, andfollowed its progress benevolently for the rest of his life. A long entry inRiccoboni’s necrology describes his rise from lector in the Dominicanchurch of San Zanipolo in Venice (appointed in 1388) to Cardinal underGregory XII (1408), and ultimately to papal ambassador in mattersconcerning the schism and the Hussites; it was in this function that hetravelled to Buda, where he died in 1419. Riccoboni styles him “OurReverend Father” and depicts the sisters’ filial affection so vividly that thereader can scarcely imagine the convent without this central figure. In onememorable episode, he became aware of the excessive self-abuse occurringin the convent in the name of piety, and required that the instruments offlagellation be surrendered to him. Apparently he was shocked by thearray of items with which he was presented. He thus appears both as thefigure who encourages and facilitates strict observance, and as the onewho protects the sisters from their own zeal. His five-year exile fromVenice, a punishment for bringing the popular flagellant movement of the Bianchi battuti to the city in 1399 in defiance of the municipal authorities,


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is presented as an unbearable loss for the sisters, as are his later absenceson papal missions. Riccoboni pointedly places the wordscrucifige eum in

the mouths of those townspeople who spoke against him at the 1399hearing, thus raising Dominici to animitatio Christi. This almosthagiographical language may have contributed to Dominici’s beatificationin 1832.

The second revered male in the chronicle was the Pope himself. It is noco-incidence that Giovanni Dominici’s first action on behalf of the sistersas recounted in chapter III of the chronicle was to visit the Papal court atPerugia to seek approval from Boniface IX. From the beginning, aconnection between Corpus Domini and the “Holy Father” is established,which then takes on its full significance when the Venetian Gregory XIIascends the Roman throne. Although unlike Dominici he is not placed indirect relationship with the convent, one suspects that he is knownpersonally to some of the sisters, and that conversely he would haveknown through Dominici of their adoration, which he must have valued ashe manoeuvred for position against the Avignon Antipope, Benedict XIII.Gregory too is the recipient of lavish filial affection. His visit to theVenice area is celebrated and the political tensions which prevented hisvisiting the city itself are lamented, and ultimately he too achieves saintlystatus when the same words,crucifige eum, are placed in the mouths of hisopponents.

However, the simplicity of the sisters’ loyalty was challenged as theWestern Schism reached its climax and a third rival Pope, Alexander V,was elected in 1409 by the Council of Pisa in an ill-conceived attempt toend the Schism by replacing both of the existing claimants. The city ofVenice declared for Alexander, and the sisters of Corpus Domini werenow divided between a faction which obeyed the instructions of the citygovernment and one which remained loyal to Gregory. BartolomeaRiccoboni belonged to the latter. This is the only place in the chroniclewhere we are allowed a glimpse of any kind of disunity among the sisters,and the chronicler makes great efforts to show the depths of mutual respectbetween the two sides in a situation which all found painful. Theresolution of the problem with the early death of Alexander is seen as auniversally accepted happy ending, and the succession of John XXIII as anew Pisan Antipope is quietly ignored. Thus the convent weathers thestorm of the schism without breach to its harmony, and returns tounanimous devotion to Gregory in the end.

These two father figures,el nostro venerando padre and el sancto padre, watch Christ-like over the convent as Jesus himself watches overthe Church, but the solidarity of love among the sisters even when division


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is forced upon them contrasts starkly with the bitter feuds withinChristendom at large. Thus Riccoboni does not speak on her own, but

derives her authority from a perfect holy community under unquestionedmale leadership, leaving the legitimacy of the female author withoutquestion. The protection of a spiritual pater familias lends status to theconvent which is thus less dependent on other factors, and its voice is freeto speak.

Helene Kottanner (ca. 1400 – after 1470) was, like Anna Komnene, aparticipant in political events who later recorded these events forposterity.31 She was, however, a retainer rather than a member of the royalcircles. She was born in Sopron (Ödenburg) to a family of the lower

Austrian nobility, and married into patrician society; this might be seen asmarrying down, but her first husband Peter Szekeles was mayor of Sopron,and her second marriage, to Johann Kottanner, took her into the wealthiestcircles of Viennese society. Though herself a wife and mother, she was by1436 in the service of the Queen, Elizabeth of Luxembourg, as was herhusband. Since Kottanner was not of sufficiently high birth to be a lady- 31 Text edition: Karl Mollay, Die Denkwürdigkeiten der Helene Kottannerin(1439-1440) (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1971). English translation:Maya Bijvoet Williamson,The Memoirs of Helene Kottanner (Cambridge: D. S.Brewer, 1998). Recent studies include: Andreas Rüther: ‘Königsmacher undKammerfrau im weiblichen Blick: Der Kampf um die ungarische Krone(1439/40) in der Wahrnehmung von Helene Kottaner,’ in:Fürstin und Fürst.Familienbeziehungen und Handlungsmöglichkeiten von hochadeligen Frauen im Mittelalter, ed. Jörg Rogge (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 2004), pp. 225-47; BarbaraSchmid, ‘Raumkonzepte und Inszenierung von Räumen in Helene KottannersBericht von der Geburt und Krönung des Königs Ladislaus Postumus (1440–1457)’, in Ausmessen-Darstellen-Inszenieren: Raumkonzepte und die Wiedergabevon Räumen in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. Ursula Kundert, BarbaraSchmid, Regula Schmid (Zürich: Chronos, 2007), pp. 113-38; Barbara Schmid‘Ein Augenzeugenbericht im Dienst politischer Werbung. Helene Kottanner,Kammerfrau am Hof König Albrechts II., und ihre Schrift von der Geburt undKrönung Ladislaus’ Postumus’, in Barbara Schmid,Schreiben für Status und Herrschaft. Deutsche Autobiographik in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Zürich: Chronos, 2006), pp. 132-40; Sabine Schmolinsky, ‘Zwischen politischerFunktion und Rolle der «virgo docta»: Weibliche Selbstzeugnisse im 15.Jahrhundert’,Fifteenth Century Studies, 24 (1998), 63-73; Horst Wenzel, ‘ZweiFrauen rauben eine Krone: Die denkwürdigen Erfahrungen der Helene Kottannerin(1439–1440) am Hof der Königin Elisabeth von Ungarn (1409–1442)’, in DerKörper der Königin. Geschlecht und Herrschaft in der höfischen Welt seit 1500, ed. Regina Schulte (Frankfurt: Campus 2002), pp. 27-48; H. Sahm, ‘Lizenz zumStehlen. Helene Kottanners Denkwürdigkeiten (um 1450)’,Euphorion, 104 (2010),295-316; Barbara Schmid, ‘Kottanner, Helene’,EMC, pp. 978-9.


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Graeme Dunphy 193

Helene Kottanner’s Denkwürdigkeiten (Memoirs) is an intense ego-document which provides at once a history of this brief transitional period

and a personal report of her own involvement. It is less than anautobiography, for it tells us nothing of her life before or after the twelvemonths May 1439 to May 1440, yet it is certainly more than a chroniclewith elements of first-person narration. The colloquial style with itselements of orality has led some commentators to see the author as anilliterate dictating to an amanuensis, but others have pointed to rhetoricalsimilarities to the slightly laterUngarische Chronik of Jakob Unrest,which might suggest familiarity with the chronicle as a genre. More recentscholarship has uncovered evidence of literary sophistication, for examplein the selection and balance of the episodes, or in the use of heraldry.Despite its easy accessibility, the text is carefully planned and skilfullywritten: the passage describing the theft of the crown will make themodern reader think of a thriller, with its vivid portrayal of theapprehension before the event, the fear when soldiers are heard movingoutside, and the silent prayers for deliverance; the author is clearly an ablestoryteller.

The Denkwürdigkeiten are our only historical source for events withinthe Queen’s household during this period, and necessitated a radicalrewriting of the history books when they were discovered in 1834. Prior tothis, the account in theChronica Hungarorum of János Thuróczy had beengenerally accepted; but read in the light of Kottanner’s text, it is clearlypartisan in favour of the Polish faction, and in fact changed the order ofevents to suggest that Władysław was crowned before LadislausPostumus. The Denkwürdigkeiten have been important in exposing suchlittle fictions. But the Denkwürdigkeiten are partisan in their own way, andon one occasion we catch Kottanner herself in a deliberate fiction. Herdescription of the coronation states that not only the crown but also the orband sceptre were used. However other sources reveal, and earlier passagesof her own text imply, that these were left in the vault at Visegrád andtherefore cannot have been available in Székesfehérvár. As she cannotpossibly have been mistaken about this, it is clearly a fraudulent attempt toincrease the legitimacy of Ladislaus, which leaves us guessing where elseshe might have exaggerated.

In this work we look in vain for the set-piece strategies of authority-building which we have seen in other texts. There is no prologue, at leastin the surviving text, and therefore no preliminary explanations orapologies, no defensive arguments, nothing self-praising and nothing self-effacing, and almost frustratingly, no statement of intent. Instead, after a


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title added to the front of the manuscript by a far later hand, the textplunges straight into the action:

Do von Cristi gepurd ergangen warn fierzehenhundert vnd dar nach in demNewn vnd Dreissigisten iar zu den Ostern vnd phingsten, Vnnd do der edelfurst Albrecht erwelt was zu dem heiligen Römischen Kung vndvormaligen kron zu Vngern auch enphangen het […] sandt sein gnad herwider auf Wienn vnd man prachte im sein Jüngste tochter, frawnElyzabethen mit irm hofgesind hin ab gen Prespurg, das geschach, Do wasIch, Helene Kottannerin auch da …33

When in the year of Christ 1439 at Easter and Pentecost, the noble LordAlbrecht was elected Holy Roman King after having previously receivedthe crown of Hungary […] his Grace sent to Vienna that they should bringhis youngest daughter Lady Elizabeth with her retinue to join him inBratislava, which was done, and I Helene Kottanner was also there …

Thus when the name of the author first appears, some one hundred andtwenty words into the text, she is already an actorin media res. As theopening pages recount events leading up to Albrecht’s death, the authorialpresence is limited to a repeated “we went”, “we were” and “I was there”.The almost casual reference to having watched Albrecht’s men lock the

crown away in the Visegrád vault may have a particular function in thelogic of the later narrative, but otherwise these early references serve thesole purpose of accustoming the reader to the idea of the narrator’s activepresence in the sequence of events preparatory to the central role she willassume when the Queen’s household is plunged into crisis. The way inwhich this is gradually introduced shows some considerable sense of thedramatic, a drama which only highlights the claim to eyewitness testimony.

This of course is why Kottanner does not need any of the set-piecemoves. Her chronicle is relatively modest: she is not claiming to have

studied sources or evaluated them, nor is she attempting a vast undertakingwhich others more erudite might have done better. Rather, as she limitsherself to what she knows, her eyewitness status makes her plausible evenas a woman, and indeed, in places she gives vital testimony which only awoman could give: being present at labour and child-birth, among themost intimate moments of a strictly female realm, meant being able totestify that the baby who guaranteed succession really had been born to theQueen, a matter of immense importance for the male world of politicalpower. The fact that with Elizabeth’s death she is the only surviving

witness to many parts of the story makes her testimony indispensable. No33 Mollay, Denkwürdigkeiten, p. 9.


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reader can wonder why she is so presumptuous as to place herself amongthe historians when she has an important tale which nobody else could tell.

In a sense, Kottanner is playing a similar role in her writing to that whichshe played in the events she recounts: she is active because, being in theright place at the right time, she is the only person in a position to do whatis necessary.

As the narrative accelerates, this factor becomes stronger and stronger.Gradually she is transformed from simply being “there” to being the doer,the shaper, the mover. With her growing involvement in the course ofevents, her stature as a narrator also grows. Who could doubt that thewoman who held up an infant king’s head to receive a crown is entitled toreport, and to be believed? Only once does she momentarily feel the needto give evidence of the truth of her account. After the break-in at thetreasure vault, the conspirators had to clear their traces very carefully sothat the removal of the crown would not be noticed. The easiest way todispose of the files which had been used to open the locks was to depositthem in the ladies’ latrines. At this point Kottanner pauses, as thoughrealising that the whole tale is so extraordinary as to need confirmation,and assures the reader that anyone who does not believe her is welcome toexplore the sewage pit, where the files still lie as proof. But this is hardly aserious challenge. Helene Kottanner is not a writer who fears her veracitywill be contested. After all, she quite indubitably really was “there”.

So far we have considered authority only from the perspective of thetext: how does the writer give legitimacy to the writing? In the case ofHelene Kottanner, however, one might wonder whether the process is thereverse: whether the purpose of the writing is to lend authority to thewriter. The beloved Queen was deceased, and nothing is known ofKottanner’s continued relationship to the young King or his sister, butwith a new regent it is certain that she no longer had influence on theaffairs of state, and her closeness to Elizabeth may well have meant thatthere was no place for her at court at all; at any rate, Aeneas SylviusPiccolomini, the humanist and later Pope who was tutor to the youngLadislaus, did not know her. It is a bitter thing to move out of thelimelight. The Denkwürdigkeiten are of course a monument to Elizabeth,but also to Kottanner herself. They stake a claim to recognition of herstory, which, whether or not it became exaggerated in the telling, was aworthy tale. In presenting her text, the author demands the respect ofcourtly society.

Indeed, this claim to status may have had quite material implications.There has been much speculation about the circumstances of writing, orthe agenda of the work. The answer may lie in the text itself, in the climax


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Graeme Dunphy 197

but gender assumptions added a significant additional challenge. Some ofthese women were clearly less worried about this than others. It apparently

never crossed the mind of Anna Komnene that her right to speak need beasserted; in her entire adult life there had only ever been three men whohad wielded more power than she did herself. Her only concern is thatsome might think she has not done the job well, and certainly this worrydid weigh upon her at least a little. Helene Kottanner does not even engagemuch with this concern, possibly because she is writing for the singlepurpose of reminding the King of the promise of elevation, and is notthinking of critical readers in future generations; nevertheless there aresigns that it is at the back of her mind. By contrast, Hrotsvit of Gandersheimand Bartolomea Riccoboni are obviously strongly conscious of thelimitations which their society believed to be inherent in their sex, andseek so to locate themselves within the framework of social expectationsthat their writings are acceptable offerings despite these limitations.Between these positions we find the proto-feminist Christine de Pizan,who is acutely aware of the limitations placed on women and stridentlycalls these limitations into question.

Christine is the only outright radical of the five, but for medievalwomen, showing the audacity to partake in serious writing was alwaysimplicitly radical. Most of these women are unique for their period. OnlyRiccoboni belongs to a recognizable type: the late-medieval conventchronicler who writes the history of the sisters might as easily have beenrepresented by, say, the Portuguese Margarida Pinheiro (b. 1461) of theDominican convent of Jesus de Aveiro in Lisbon, who focussed on thepresence in her convent of the saintly princess Joana,35 or by Marie vanOss (ca. 1430–1507), Abbess of the Birgittine abbey of Maria Troon inDendermonde (modern Belgium), whose Dutch-language chronicle wasrediscovered in the 1990s,36 or of course by the Dominican mystics likeAnna von Munzingen (fl. 1316–1327)37 or Christine Ebner (1277–1356)38,

35 Text edition: António Gomes da Rocha Madahil,Crónica da Fundação domosteiro de Jesus de Aveiro e Memorial da Infanta santa Joana fillha del rey dom Alfonso V (Aveiro, 1939). Maria João Branco, ‘Pinheiro, Margarida’,EMC, p.1218.36 Text edition: Ulla Sander-Olsen, “Kroniek van Abdis Maria van Oss, MariaTroon, Dendermonde”,Gedenkschriften van de Oudheidkundige Kring van het Land van Dendermonde, 21 (2002), 250-332. Graeme Dunphy, ‘Marie van Oss’,EMC , p. 1080.37 Text edition: J. König, ‘Die Chronik der Anna von Munzingen’,Freiburger Diözesans-Archiv, 13 (1880), 129-93. Graeme Dunphy, ‘Anna von Munzingen’,EMC, p. 45; Hiram Kümper, ‘Sisterbooks’,EMC, pp. 1364-7.


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whose chronicles are histories of the dreams and epiphanies of the sistersover the generations, or a little later by Jeanne de Jussie (1503-61), the

Genevan Poor Clare who records how she watched in dismay as her cityadopted the Protestant Reformation in 1535.39 But Riccoboni does standout within this group for the degree to which she goes outwith her owncommunity to tackle the great power struggles within Christendom.

These, then, are five exceptional women who challenged a convention,entered an implicitly male sphere of writing, and excelled in it. All five ofthem exude a confidence, modesty topoi notwithstanding, that they aregood at what they do. Yet at the same time, all five show signs ofdefensiveness at the prospect of unfair criticism. Here we have to distinguishbetween a defensiveness because of possible rejection of themselves aswriters and a defensiveness because of possible rejection of their writings.These are not unrelated, for despite Christine’s plea that critics shoulddistinguish between the personne qui parle and thedoctrine qu’il donne, itis clear that any reader hostile to a female authorship who comes to suchwritings with an expectation of their shortcomings will somehow manageto find this expectation confirmed. In the struggle for acceptance as acommunicator, both personne and doctrine are burdened by gender issues.But the strategies of defence are different.

The strategies for defending the credibility of the text itself are thesame tried and tested strategies used also by male chroniclers: Anna’sdiscussion of the nature of objectivity and intellectual bias, Kottanner’sfiles in the privy, the claim of eyewitness testimony which was developingas a method throughout the period, and indeed the claim to be aneyewitness oneself, which to some extent all five women were. Beyondthis, of course, there is the simple proof of the pudding: if the writing isgood, the unprejudiced reader will know this. Hrotsvit composed ameticulously structured piece of verse at a time when historians did notaspire to verse; Anna and Christine are also highly sophisticated in theiruse of language and organization of material; Riccoboni and especiallyKottanner have the gift of compelling narration; and as recent work hasshown, Kottanner has hidden depths. Anyone who will separate personne from doctrine will be convinced by these texts.

38 Text edition: Karl Schroeder, Der Nonne von Engelthal Büchlein von derGenaden Uberlast (Stuttgart: Litterarischer Verein, 1871). Margarete Weinhandl, Deutsches Nonnenleben: Das Leben der Schwestern zu Töss und der Nonne vonEngeltal. Büchlein von der Gnaden Überlast (Munich: Recht, 1921).39 Text edition: Jeanne de Jussie,Petite chronique, ed. Helmut Feld (Mainz: vonZabern, 1996). Carrie Klaus, ‘Architecture and Sexual Identity: Jeanne de Jussie’sNarrative of the Reformation of Geneva’,Feminist Studies, 29 (2003), 279-97.


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The strategies for defending the person, however, for minimizing theimpact of the fact that a woman is writing, are far more complex, and

reflect entire systems of authorial self-construction. Hrotsvit’s presentationof her complete works in a single manuscript framed by an apparatus ofletters and praefationesis a clear testimony to a desire to present not onlythe text but also the author to a reading public. Hrotsvit, perhaps becauseshe is so early, is the only one of these five writers who seems to accept ingeneral that women are less adept at writing than men, seeing herself as anexception requiring special pleading. This almost ostentatious parading ofher identity in a century where the majority of texts were anonymous canbe thought of as a defence: if a weakness cannot be hidden, it is a goodidea to lead with it. Anna and Christine are also strongly aware of theirown relationship to their public, and in the case of Kottanner, it is possibleto interpret the entire project as a foregrounding of the author. This mustbe seen in the context of a tradition in which many chronicles wereanonymous, and when authors did name themselves they frequently did soin the third person. All five women discussed here refer to themselves as“I”.

A modesty topos is in itself not necessarily particularly significant, asthis was a set-piece in most forms of learned writing. In the case ofChristine it is obviously mere formality, and this may or may not belikewise true of Riccoboni. In the case of Hrotsvit, however, it isdeveloped into a running motif throughout the praefationes which isclearly far more than a lip-service to convention. A modesty topos, evenwhen it is no more than a rhetorical figure, serves to disarm criticism byvoicing it in advance, and to defuse any hint of authorial complacency.Combining it with a statement of the author’s erudition is cunning.Couched in the language of modesty, a claim to intellectual competence isimmune to charges of arrogance. Hrotsvit is supreme here, and her use ofAristotelian learning to underscore her professed lack of learning isendearing, but Christine also puts a claim to be gifted in the same sentenceas a protestation of ignorance. Anna, on the other hand, has nocompunction about leading with her academiccurriculum vitae with nopretence of modesty whatsoever, and strategically uses the allusion toPolybios to place herself in the intellectual tradition of the great Hellenichistorians of old.

The appeal to religion is a recurring feature. All except for Kottannerhave prologues with prayers for divine guidance linked with the implicit orexplicit suggestion that by doing the best they can as women they glorifyGod. Hrotsvit, Christine and Anna all speak of their talents as gifts of Godand Hrotsvit goes further, stating that to fail to use this talent to the full


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would be disobedient to the giver of talents. Like the modesty topos, theprologue prayer is a set-piece in medieval writing, and should not be

invested with undue significance unless it is used in a striking way.However when it is specifically linked to the issue of female authorship, ithas become a conscious strategy. Hrotsvit’s etymologizing of her ownname is also connected with divine gifts, for in the tenth centuryetymology still had a mystic significance which it had largely lost by thefourteenth. Of course, Hrotsvit and Riccoboni were both in religiousorders, so a legitimation derived from religion is particularly cogent forthem. In the case of Riccoboni, the spiritual dimension is presentthroughout the work, with dreams and visions guiding the sisters at everystage. It is almost surprising that she does not speak of an angeliccommand to write; but she certainly does give the impression that herwriting is part of a larger project steered by the Almighty.

Name-dropping can b

Authority and Gender - Women Chroniclers

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