Judith appears, prima facie, an ideal subject for biography. Daughter of Charles the Bald, Frankish king, then Emperor, and grandson of Charlemagne; married in her teens to an aging king of Wessex; after his death going on to marry his son, her stepson, who died in turn only two years later; still in her teens, returning to Francia, and a sort of captivity by her father, from which she eloped with or was abducted by a young count, Baldwin. That elopement and subsequent attempts at marriage drew in two of the leading churchmen of the day--Hincmar of Reims and Pope Nicholas. A reluctant father finally agreed, but refused to attend. This is the stuff of ninth-century romantic drama. But the problem for would-be biographers is that the story ends there. Contemporary sources tell us nothing more about her life. Baldwin is recorded, and something of his role in the formation of the county of Flanders can be pieced together. But any role she had in this--the births of her children, for example, and relations with them, any activity as patron of churches--all pass without contemporary comment. The date of her death and place of burial are unknown.
These problems are squarely faced in this new volume of essays. This is not a straightforward biography, but “Biographical elements and legacy,” collectively crafting what its editor calls a “meta-biography” (23), though arguably only Lisa Demets’s article fulfils the strict sense of that definition. Three chapters--plus Steven Vanderputten’s excellent Introduction--deal with contemporary evidence and context: Charles West provides a careful account of what we know of her; Brigitte Meijns covers early Flanders; and Els De Paermentier deals with Judith’s better documented successors, the countesses of Flanders in the tenth to early twelfth centuries. Lisa Demets then considers the shaping and reshaping of her story in the later Middle Ages. Three final chapters update us on the important archaeological discovery in 2002-2006 of a necropolis and seven elite graves associated with St Peter’s Abbey, Ghent. Georges DeClercq revisits his earlier written source-based assessments of these graves, and particularly the question of whether one of the bodies is Judith herself. Geert Vermeiren and Marie-Anne Bru provide a detailed survey of the archaeological evidence for the necropolis and graves and their relationship to the Ottonian and earlier Carolingian churches. Isabelle De Groote, Jessica L. A. Palmer, Prudence Robert, IJk van Hattum, Maïté Rivollat, Samuel Bodé, Kasper Hobin, Frank Vanhaecke, Alexandra Burnett, Maarten Dhaenens, and Mathieu Boudin study the surviving skeletons, with particular attention to Skeleton 127, the putative body of Judith.
In the spirit of “meta-biography,” which talks to the reader about biography, there is attention throughout to transparency of method, followed through in three Appendices: a “List of Cited Charters from the Sawyer and Diplomata Belgica Databases,” the “Narrative Structure of Late Medieval Accounts of Judith’s Abduction as discussed in chapter 5” (though not all are included), and “Technical Descriptions of Methods Used for the Biomolecular and Physical Anthropological Study as discussed in chapter 7.” Chapter 7’s own meticulous discussion of the problems and uncertainties of these methods is, in itself, a welcome warning to historians who might be tempted into taking a too uncritical attitude to the findings of such study.
The Judith we know from contemporary sources is the Carolingian daughter and to a lesser extent West Saxon queen, covering her career from her marriage to Æthelwulf King of Wessex on 1 October 856, aged 12 or 13, to her third marriage to count Baldwin in December 863, aged no more than around 20. Her involvement in Carolingian high politics brought her into the sources, specifically the politics of marriage here additionally dramatised by an elopement/abduction at a time of intense debate over marriage and its definition. Her unusual position as a West Saxon ninth-century queen, in many ways directly related to that Carolingian origin, again brought her into view. Carolingian women, including daughters, are relatively well-represented in the sources. Judith is part of this pattern.
It is the “First Countess of Flanders,” Baldwin’s wife, mother of his heir Baldwin II, who is shrouded in silence. DeClercq offers explanations for that silence, specifically for the lack of any details of her death and burial, a marked contrast with subsequent countesses. His suggestion that “Judith died before there was such a thing as a Flemish historiographical tradition” (152) should be taken seriously. She died before there was a “county of Flanders” in the sense we would understand that in the eleventh or even tenth centuries. The chapter on the early development of Flanders makes clear how little we know about Flanders before the last decades of the ninth century. Judith’s son, Baldwin II, “stepped into the world of the written sources” in 888 (83), and to a large extent the emerging Flanders with him. We can make educated guesses about her life as countess, based on her better-recorded successors presented here, and on the effects of her experience before 863. West is surely correct, for example, to attribute some agency to Judith, “a former queen” (53), in her elopement and refusal to accept her father’s plans for her future. A “former queen” and Carolingian daughter might also have been an active wife. The careers of later countesses like Adela of France, a king’s daughter, or Clemence of Burgundy, from an outstanding aristocratic family, show how far the high status of a bride could affect a wife’s profile. Judith may even have been involved in the negotiation of the marriage of her son, Baldwin II, to a West Saxon princess, Ælfthryth, daughter of her stepson and brother-in-law, King Alfred. But, as West concludes, all this is “impossible to prove” (64).
We are on firmer ground with afterlives, writings and rewritings of Judith. The first surviving is in the genealogy produced for her grandson, Arnulf I, discussed in Vanderputten's Introduction. It was written in the context of his dealings with the West Frankish Lothar I, reminding the latter of their common Carolingian ancestry. Here Judith takes pride of place, at the very beginning of Arnulf’s genealogy, before her husband Baldwin. She appears again in Lothar’s genealogy, as daughter of Emperor Charles--with a contemporary cross reference in the margin, lest anyone should miss Arnulf’s point. She now heads the descent of the counts of Flanders, but still as the daughter of a Carolingian king/emperor. It would have been good to see more on the evolving genealogies of the counts. Paermentier highlights Lambert of St-Omer’s c.1120 version, with its emphasis on women--countesses and daughters--noting its reliance on earlier traditions. Judith is here again explicitly daughter of Charles the Bald, but now king of the Franks, rexFrancorum, and widow of Æthelbald, rex Anglorum. The politics of a now powerful county are presumably the context for this subtle recasting of her description.
Lambert’s Judith was still important. He gives her the fullest treatment of any woman, and includes her elopement with/abduction by Baldwin. It was that dramatic episode which took centre stage in the later medieval Flemish chronicles. Influenced by romance and the heroisation of the Carolingian period, it was told and retold in a tradition detailed by Demets. In these later vernacular versions questions of Judith’s consent became more important. Demets sees them as speaking to an urban elite remote from the dynastic concerns of the earliest counts, but still interested in marriage and its making, particularly with questions about the respective roles of family and individuals. Demets leaves the tale in the early sixteenth century. There is an obvious opportunity and need to continue it.
All these retellings rely ultimately on the narrow base of the contemporary sources. But in the early 2000s, an excavation prior to the building of an underground car park in front of St Peter’s Ghent opened a new world of possibilities. An elite necropolis associated with the Carolingian church and its Ottonian rebuilding was discovered, along with seven particularly significant graves. These latter once lay just outside the west front of the Carolingian church and their importance was recognised in the design of the new Ottonian West end. At their centre lay two parallel burials, of a man and woman. Had Judith, and her final resting place, at last been found, and where she might be expected, associated with the very church which served as the dynastic mausoleum of the early counts of Flanders?
There is no written evidence to support this, as DeClercq, revising his earlier judgement, makes clear. His careful study of the documentary evidence includes late descriptions of burials of the comital family and works back to a likely lost source of metrical epitaphs which may be as early as the late eleventh century (142). He finds no evidence for Judith’s burial here, and no good reason for St Peter’s not to have known and recorded in some way such a significant burial if it had occurred.
What, then, of the archaeological discoveries and their analyses? They are exciting in their own right, and are discussed in detail in the articles by Vermeiren and Bau and by De Groote et al. The necropolis probably paralleled those at St-Riquier and Lorsch, though smaller in size. It was used for lay elite burial. The almost 300 graves within it began perhaps as early as the eighth century and ceased around the early eleventh--about the time when St Peter’s ceased to be a comital mausoleum. Burial here marks these people out as high status, perhaps the comital elite.
But it is that significant seven which have inevitably attracted most attention. Their treatment and position in relation to the two consecutive churches marks them out. The two parallel graves are the oldest, centrally located within the Ottonian portal and on the axis of the atrium. One other may belong to this early date. Four were later and of children. The floor around the group was finished with lime mortar and red dust. They were also apparently marked with blind tombstones. The bodies, especially in the two parallel graves, have been subjected to biomolecular and physical anthropological analysis. The man was aged 40+/-10. His right arm shows evidence of strenuous physical activity--perhaps consistent with a life of fighting--but also “two relatively severe and prolonged physiological periods of stress during childhood” (191). The woman was aged 35-60, 169 cm +/- 3.72 cm. She suffered a number of pathological afflictions which may have led to pain and a discernible limp. Like all the others, she was well fed with a varied diet rich in protein. There are no signs of growth disruption during childhood, though her oral health suggests a sweet tooth and poor oral hygiene.
Is this Judith? What we can tell of that diet and development is consistent with a woman who spent some of her youth in southern England and in the Senlis area of what is now Northern France. The researchers’ brief was, however, to look for her and for precisely these areas. The researchers are clear that there are many other regions which would show a similar pattern. They stress the limits of what their evidence can tell. Their findings are, however, likely to keep the debate alive.
These essays are an attempt to approach writing a biography of people “documented in too fragmentary a way for a traditional account of their life” (45)--a collective effort, bringing together traditional approaches to biography with attention to after-life and re-writings and deploying a new inter-disciplinarity. Judith may remain elusive, but this excellent volume has methodological relevance beyond her pursuit.