Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son by Dhuoda

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Handbook for William:
A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son
Dhuoda
ninth century, reprinted U. of Nebraska Press, 1991

"Dhuoda is, then, widely read in such Christian texts as were available in monastic libraries of her period and as Alcuin had chosen as basic to the education of lay nobles in the palace school as Aachen. How many of these works were at hand as she gathered the material for her handbook for William is unclear from the text because she quotes loosely, frequently from memory. Despite the breadth of her Christian erudition, however, Dhuoda seems to know only grammatical texts from among pagan classical authors. As Riche has argued, the general shape of her literary background accurately reflects the education typical of the palace schools for nobility under Charlemagne and his successor." page xvi
"The central point of Dhuoda's argument is that all right social behavior is modeled on the worship of God - hardly a novel notion, but one Dhuoda develops in her own way. According to her, the Father's authority in Trinity is mirrored in the earthly patriarchy of the lineage, not of the kingdom. Worship of God comes first, then obedience to Bernard of Septimania - Dhuoda's husband and William's father. Only afterward should her son consider his obligation to Charles the Bald, his king and lord, and only after that his respect for the priestly class. God the Father and earthly fathers stand as analogues, the ordering functions in Dhuoda's and -she hopes- William's worlds. The author asserts that in her times such an understanding of right order has fallen prey to the ambitions generated by the contest for empire. Many forget, she points out, that the father comes before the king. Ironically, perhaps, young William here heeded his mother's admonition in a way contrary to her purposes when he rebelled against Charles the Bald for his father's sake and so was killed. Dhuoda means instead that if the clear lines of obligation she describes are maintained, there can be no conflict such as the war between Lothar, Louis the German, and Charles the Bald" pages xviii-xix
"Dhuoda's examination of this preeminent scriptural instance of father-son and king-subject inversion suggests that she saw relations among her own people as utterly disordered. When she proposes rigid adherence to paternal interests as the solution to this disastrous situation, she effectively offers a radical solution. Her theory has simple, compelling implications. If everyone obeys his father and if the father obeys his lord and if both attend to the priestly advice, the many antagonistic forces among the central-ninth-century nobility will be locked into a neatly hierarchical and fully configuration. The sons of Louis the Pious will keep peace according to their late father's dispensation; Bernard of Septimania will serve Charles the Bald and ensure the future of his son William among the king's counselors; and David and Absalom will not again come to grief.
Dhuoda never asserts exclusive patriarchal allegiance is a reality but only proposes an ideal. Her urgency that William obey first his father, then his earthly lord, and then the priesthood grows from the violence of her historical circumstances. Dhuoda's essay on the family and the nobility is thus normative, not descriptive. Although the lives of Frankish nobles were frequently disrupted, the years in which Dhuoda wrote were, for people like herself, exceptional in their destructiveness. Everything that William's mother wrote to her son is colored by this circumstance." page xxii-xxiii
"There is no question that the world of Dhuoda was one in which women's direct political and economic power was less than it had been before Charlemagne's time, under the Merovingian dynasty. The significance of Dhuoda's commentary on family structures concerns the way in which contemporary women perceived their status among their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Handbook for William is evidence that ninth-century Frankish women retained powerful influence within their families." page xxv
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last updated Nov 20, 1998