FATHERS OF POWER AND MOTHERS AUTHORITY : DHUODA AND THE LIBER MANUALIS *

 

 

Martin A. Claussen

 

 

 

When the Carolingian mayor of the palace, Pippin III the Short, deposed the last Merovingian king in 751 and had himself elected and anointed to succeed him, he completed the long ascent of his family to preeminence in Francia and eventually in Europe, a preeminence that would last, in one way or another, for more than two centuries(1). Much has been written about the ultimate political consequences of the Carolingian empire, but one of the great legacies it left the West was the general renewal of learning that the Carolingian kings and emperors sponsored(2). Beginning with Pippin's reign, and through those of his descendants, Charlemagne (+814), Louis the Pious (+840), and his great-grandson Charles the Bald (+877), Carolingian kings favored, scholars with enormous patronage in their efforts to renew their kingdoms spiritually and intellectually. Although their larger goals might have outstripped their resources, their efforts to produce a moral reform of the peoples under their governance bore some fruit, and it was in fact to this end that the kings themselves, as well as many of the intellectuals of the period, worked(3). This moral concern is perhaps the most striking characteristic of the Carolingian Renaissance and serves to separate it from other renewals of learning in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. This concern took many forms-royal capitularies, episcopal statutes, liturgical renewal(4) - but among the most interesting were the production of specula for the laity, literary "mirrors" that sought to bring Christian ideals of ethical behavior to the sometimes unruly Frankish nobility(5). Many of the most famous Carolingian clerics-Alcuin of York and Paulinus of Aquileia, Smaragdus of St. Mihiel and Jonas of Orleans - wrote these instructions for various lay men and women(6). All rely, to varying degrees, on the general renewal of learning, especially Christian learning, that began in the reign of Pippin and continued at least through the reign of Charles the Bald. Because of this, these "mirrors" share a number of common characteristics : there is a ready appeal to the authority of church fathers such as Augustine and Isidore, a regular examination of biblical precedents and precepts for proper action (often taken from one of the new editions of the Bible prepared during the late eighth and ninth centuries (7), and generally a return to the more classicizing grammar typical of the high culture of the period.

 

Unique among these texts is the work of Dhuoda, wife of Bernard, count of Septimania(8). Written in the town of Uzes, where her husband had some sort of center of power, between November 841 and February 843(9), Dhuoda addressed her handbook (she calls it a manualis[10]) to her teenage son William, who had been given over to Charles the Bald as a pledge of his father's continuing loyalty to Charles's newly established regime(11).Several things characterize Dhuoda's book : first, it is one of the rare early medieval works we have by a lay person(12). Second, it belongs to a precious number of surviving texts written by a Carolingian woman, and the only one of these belonging to the speculum genre(13). Third, probably most apparent to evebn casual modern readers is not only the immediacy and emotion with which Dhuoda writes, but the claims she stakes to having a great authority over William's life. This makes her work, I believe, of interest not just to students of the past, be they linguists, historians, or theologians, but also to those interested in the question of how women read and write(14). But Dhuoda does not simply assert or demand authority. Rather, she approaches the question in a much more typically Carolingian way - through a dialogue with normative texts drawn from the Christian past(15). Dhuoda, by her own reading and personal interpretation of two specific texts the Bible and the Rule of St. Benedict(16) - makes an argument regarding power, authority, and society that turns traditional medieval notions on their head and sheds surprising new light both on her own authorial voice and her personal claims to authority(17).

 

Because of the Bible's overwhelming importance to Carolingian society, scripture is perhaps the place to begin any investigation of Dhuoda's use of earlier Christian sources(18). Since she generally seems to be citing from memory, it is difficult to determine exactly what biblical text she used(19) ; often her text seems to be based on Alcuin's revisions of the Vulgate, which had been published a half century before she began writing, but almost as often, her citations come from some other, "unreformed" version(20). More interesting than the text itself is how she uses it. Not surprisingly, given their role in daily prayer during the early Middle Ages, the psalms take pride of place in sheer number of citations and allusions(21). Almost a third of her references-roughly two hundred out of six hundred forty-are to the psalter ; but she is often simply using its language to make other, more personal points. A typical example occurs in the first chapter of book 5, when Dhuoda is explaining to William that her outlook on the world is based on the word quasi -"as though". She argues that we must always remember that spiritual things are greater and more noble than material. Those who forget this important point live "as though" in a dream. According to Dhuoda, the great error people make is to confuse the quasi reality of our mundane world with the full being of the spiritual realm. As she elegiacally puts it, for those who make this mistake, "there remains nothing during their funeral chants but quasi"(22). She links this quasi to the famous admonition in Ecclesiastes that all is vanity, and ends the paragraph with verses from Psalm 75(23) : "Behold you have quasi entangled and joined with chains to the sleep of vanity. Why ?  Because, as the psalmist says, the foolish of heart were confused, those who have mounted their horses have become sluggish, and awakening from their sleep, they have found nothing in their hands, they have followed a path that cannot be retraced"(24). Dhuoda concludes that those who have lived evilly will indeed have a heavy and unbroken sleep, as they languish in hell for all eternity.

 

The five phrases that follow the introduction ut ait psalmista - "as the psalmist says" - with their hints of synonymous parallelism and distichal rhythm, do indeed sound as if they were taken from the psalter. But in fact Dhuoda has rearranged, edited, and added to the biblical text. The appropriate verses of Psalm 75 read (from the Vulgate translation of the Septuagint, which Dhuoda generally prefers) :

 

6a the foolish of heart were confused

6b they sleep their sleep of death, and all the men

7a have found no wealth in their hands.

7b On account of your rebuke, O God of Jacob

7c those who have mounted their horses have become sluggish.

 

The text from the Liber manualis and the psalm actually have little in common. In the psalm, the foolish of heart - in this case, the Assyrian army - have been stupefied by some great deed of Yahweh. Dhuoda, on the other hand, is using the language of the psalm to describe not an individual event, but rather a way of life. It is not God's intervention in history that has brought about the sleepiness of the men she describes ; rather, it is the result of their regular confusion of this-worldly appearances with reality that has resulted in the dulling of their minds and their eventual descent into hell. What probably caused Dhuoda to make the connection between the verses from Ecclesiastes and those of Psalm 75 is the phrase : dormitaverunt qui ascenderunt equos. These soporific equestrians, whose style of fighting so resembles the Frankish aristocracy's own preference, have made the same mistake that Dhuoda excoriates, a mistake that she elsewhere holds to be typical of those who exercise secular power(25). Thus Dhuoda equates the mounted fighters of the Assyrians, whose senses were overcome by a manifestation of Yahweh's eternal power, with the warriors of her own time and class who, ignoring the benefits of both revelation and sacred history, blind themselves to the reality of eternity and privilege the here and now over everything else. She concludes that when they awaken - that is, when they die - they will realize their mistake, albeit too late for repentance:  they will already have chosen a path that cannot be retrod.

 

Dhuoda's use of this text exemplifies just how deeply the Bible, and especially the Psalms, has structured her thought and the way she expressed herself. Gregory the Great said the text that is read must be transformed into the reader's very self(26). This is the ethical part of the reading process, where simple lectio is altered by meditatio into a useful store of information, upon which the reader can draw to direct her own life. What Dhuoda does with these verses from Psalm 75 (and with most of her other borrowings from the psalms and indeed from scripture in general) is clearly the fruit of meditatio on the psalms, the part of the Bible she no doubt knew best, not only from reading them, but from praying them dail(27). Because she shares in this particular ethic of reading - quite different from our own interest in citing texts and authors correctly and accurately - Dhuoda has little concern with maintaining the integrity of her original source : thus she not only re-arranges it better to suit her needs, but she even adds to it(28). Were it not for our modern editor's careful italicizing of words in passages taken from Scripture, it would be difficult to detect which were Dhuoda's own invention and which were from the Bible. The way and rhythm of the psalms, as much as their content, have so left their mark, that even her two bold additions, expurgefacti a somno and transierunt inrevocabili gressu, strike us as psalmic(29).

 

Dhuoda also reads the Bible in ways that might strike us as opportunistic. For instance, much of book 3 is filled with examples, drawn from the historical books of the Hebrew Bible, of behavior Dhuoda deems proper. Her purpose here is to illustrate, through scriptural models, that bad things happen to people who neither honor nor obey their fathers or their lords. Fortunately for Dhuoda, the post-Davidic history of the kingdom of Israel is filled with such behavior, and she dutifully trots out many of these exempla, from the infamous (such as Absalom), to the relatively obscure (like Ahitofel[30]). In these passages, Dhuoda uses biblical and sacred history in a way that can be described as Augustinian(31). Augustine, of course, was almost obsessed about the effects of sin on the world, and particularly on the human will. He dealt with this question a number of times, and though his thought changed as he matured, a crucial point remained the same that historical truths could only be believed and never known(32). Because of this, the veracity and reliability of the individual historian becomes crucial. Given Augustine's generally pessimistic understanding of human nature, the only authors who in his view deserve our credibility are those who wrote the Bible, because they alone were able to overcome the dulling effect sin has on the will and were able to write a true and credible narrative(33). But for Augustine we face a second problem, beyond mere authorial credibility, in trying to discover the past. According to him, we can only understand a historical narrative - any historical narrative - if we have had analogous experiences, and we must recall these experiences before we can comprehend the narrative we are being told(34). Augustine writes : 

 

I could not understand the narrator if I did not remember generically the individual things of which he speaks, even though I then hear them for the first time connected together in one tale. He who, for instance, describes to me some mountain stripped of timber and clothed with olive trees, describes it to one who remembers the species of mountains and of timber and of olive trees. If I had forgotten these, I would not know what he was talking about, and therefore could not imagine that narrative(35). 

 

If we must have experienced trees to understand a narrative that involves trees, it follows that we must have some experience of treachery to understand one that involves treachery. One upshot of this hermeneutic is to take as the measure of all narratives, whether scriptural or not, one's own history, and this is clearly what Dhuoda does. The Franks (among other Germanic peoples of the early Middle Ages) had been cast by their own historians into the role of the new chosen people, the new Israel(36). Dhuoda continues this historiographic tradition by linking the history of Francia from the time of Louis the Pious with the post-Davidic history of Israel(37). But there is more than mere recapitulation going on here. The rebellions that David and the later Israelite kings faced were, for Dhuoda, just the same as those which plagued Francia during the years she was writing(38). Given her Augustinian understanding of history, Dhuoda proves the reliability of the scriptural narrative by indicating over and over again that the same events that unfolded in ancient days are happening again. For Dhuoda, littera gestam docet indeed, but while the litterae are drawn from the Bible, the gestae which they teach are unfolding before her very eyes(39).

 

Thus, even before they occurred, Dhuoda had a matrix with which to understand the troubles that Louis the Pious faced from 830 on(40). 

 

The Carolingian mayors and kings had always faced rivals and opposition, organized or not, but generally they had enough support from the rest of the aristocracy to remain secure in their position(41). This changed radically during the last decade or so of Louis the Pious's reign. For all sorts of reasons, the aristocratic alliances that had propelled the Carolingians to power in the eighth century began to disintegrate in the late 820s, and the empire began to fragment(42). This was at least in part due to the unfortunate event that four of Louis's sons survived to adulthood - a problem earlier Carolingians did not have to face and three of them eventually inherited various kingdoms of their own within the larger empire. While he was alive, Louis was able to provide some degree of centralizing force to the empire, but confusion broke out upon his death in 840. While each of the sons, along with their friends and supporters, vied for territory and ascendancy, others, such as Dhuoda's husband, Bernard of Septimania, took the opportunity to try to increase their own power and prestige(43). Dhuoda was able to understand these wars in a way that gave them more significance than simply the manifestations of royal and aristocratic ambition. The Franks, the new chosen people, must simply replay the history of the earlier chosen people. Ironically then, the rebellions of Louis's reign and the fraternal wars that followed his death in 840 proved that God had indeed chosen the Franks, because their story mirrored the biblical one so precisely. Perhaps Dhuoda's sense of parallelism is clearest in the seventh chapter of book 3.

 

Let not your fate be like Achitofel's or like Aman's, bad and arrogant men whose counsels were worthless and who, when they gave bad advice to their lord, fell headlong in both spirit and body to their deaths. For I wish, my son, that you take pleasure in fighting [...] as did such men as Doeg the Edomite and the humble Mardochai. Achitofel offered Absalom the bad counsel that he should rebel against his father David-and Achitofel did so in order to win the son's favor [...] But Chusai and Doeg, a strong man who firmly held his ground against another determined man, remained unshakable in their counsel [...] Mardochai, praying for God's help to liberate himself and his people, gave the same king good counsel, the evidence of loyalty, in order to free and vindicate himself [...] By God's providence, one man merits salvation with his people. Another, a proud man, goes away empty along with all his house(44). 

 

Thus William's possible fates are explicitly compared to several famous personages from the Hebrew Bible ; and yet, amid all this historical narrative, Dhuoda never loses sight of the true realities of which she speaks. Despite the coming and going of kingdoms, what matters is salvation, a point she drives home when she contrasts the unus cum populo, who is saved, with the alter cum domo, who is damned. The things that matter, as she will explain most clearly in 5.1, are cosmic realities, not the quasities of temporal rule. What Dhuoda really accomplishes here is a reconciliation and an equating of the mutable face of existential reality with the unchanging eternal order(45). She has discovered a mechanism whereby the apparent happenstance events of Francia in the 830s and early 840s may be subordinated to, reconciled with, and thus made to resemble, the truer events described in the Bible. Dhuoda's use of Scripture, then, informs and structures both her language and her understanding of the political events of the day. But it also enables her to transcend, at least in a fashion, history and to contemplate instead the unchanging realities of eternity. Thus Dhuoda approaches the Bible in a particular way :  the very words of the text, which themselves can be manipulated to serve various ethical ends, also serve as a prophecy to help foretell, and then to correctly interpret, the happenings of her own day. Scripture presents the only true and believable narrative, but its veracity can only be experienced by understanding analogous contemporary situations. Clearly, by our standards, Dhuoda is a very liberal reader, who uses the Bible to come to her own conclusions. This hermeneutic, which certainly was not limited to Dhuoda but rather characterizes most Carolingian biblical interpretation, allows Dhuoda to use other texts to build her own arguments regarding her role in William's life.

 

The Rule of Benedict is another of the Carolingian reform texts par excellence(46). Dhuoda cites or alludes to the rule a dozen times, and among the lay writers of the early Middle Ages, this is extraordinary(47).  After all, the Rule was a professional text of a sort, of great interest to monks and nuns, and even bishops and priests, but probably little read outside these circles(48). But Dhuoda's family, at least the family into which she married, had a long association with both monasticism and the Rule(49). Her father-in-law was count William, who entered and probably founded the monastery of Gellone in the early years of the ninth century(50). William's vita very early on migrated into the middle of the biography of Benedict of Aniane, the great Carolingian monastic reformer, and there came to rest between chapters 30 and 31(51) ; and by 822 Gellone came under the direct control of Aniane(52). Finally, as the genealogy now stands, it seems that Dhuoda's grandson was that William who endowed the monastery of Cluny in 909, an act which would later earn him the appellation of Pious(53). 

 

Thus, the family had a long connection with monasticism in general and with reform monasticism in particular, and it is not unlikely that Dhuoda had access to Benedict's rule, whether from Aniane or Gellone, or from some other source. Moreover, she knew it well enough to cite it in the same way as she cites the Bible : in a dozen references to the rule she cites it verbatim only once or twice. The rest of the time, she draws language, thought, and image from Benedict, but not actual quotation. A typical example is her teaching on reverence in prayer(54). She begins with that classic definition from Isidore, that prayer, oratio, is the mouth's reason, oris ratio(55). And reverence she defines as the seeking after a rem venerabilem with the inmost heart and a reasonable disposition of mind(56). This phrase, according to Riche, echoes the Rule of Benedict 7.51, where Benedict writes that the seventh step of humility is when one recognizes with the inmost heart that one is inferior to all others(57). If Dhuoda's phrase here - cum intimo cordis [...] affectu really is an allusion to the seventh chapter of the Rule, it is of the sort that points to a regular reading of the rule, a reading which, like that of the psalms, structures her very language and thought(58). After this loose quotation, she launches into her longest single allusion drawn from Benedict, comparing praying to God with supplicating a powerful lord - a homo terrenis potentior(59). She says that if we seek something from such a figure, we must approach him humbly, not with pride, complacency, or murmuring. This analysis she applies to God, when she tells her son that he should approach him in the same way, humble and penitent, asking quietly and in short phrases for his needs. The parallels with Benedict's rule, this time chapter 20, are striking : Dhuoda uses the same sequence of images and ideas as Benedict, but it is clear that she does not have the text in front of her. Rather, although clearly indebted to his rule, she has made its thought, language, and image her own. Grasping the source and individualizing the underlying images, she has personalized the expression(60). And it is somehow fitting that the image she has taken from Benedict is that of approaching a worldly lord and a powerful man, one not unlike her own husband.

 

Here, the Rule has given Dhuoda a metaphor that proves useful when she is outlining her spirituality of prayer, but she approaches Benedict in much the same way she approaches the Bible : it is a mine for texts, but these texts must be the subject of much meditatio before they can be used correctly. Some of Benedict's most basic ideas, such as his teachings on humility, have clearly and deeply influenced her own spirituality(61). However, she applies the same exegetical stance that characterizes her use of Scripture to her use of the Rule as well. Augustine held that analogous experiences were necessary to understand and interpret a narrative. Dhuoda brings her experiences - of war, betrayal, and treachery, as well as of love and caring - to her reading of the Rule. The result is her use of "Benedictine" language to establish, once and for all, her authority in her son's life. Although Dhuoda has assimilated at least parts of the Rule of Benedict and made them her own, so much so that she draws on both its language and its imagery, what she rejects from the Rule is especially significant. Cenobitic monasticism was characterized from its origins by a special emphasis on the virtue of obedience(62). Whereas the heroes of the desert, the hermits, fought demons with their bodies and their souls, the cenobites endured instead a daily sacrifice of will, to their brothers or sisters in the monastery, to their abbot or abbess, and to their rule. Benedict changes the focus of this general sacrifice of the will and makes obedience to an abbot the paramount virtue for his monks(63). Using the structures of the Roman familia as the basis for his new monastic community, he transforms the older paterfamilias into the new Christian abbas. Thus Benedict's rule should offer Dhuoda the perfect model for what we usually take to be her conception of the strongly patriarchal family(64). However, Dhuoda's picture of the paternal role is more complex and problematic than the traditional model allows.

 

In this "monastic model of family" the role of the abbot should obviously belong to the father-in this case, to Bernard. But Dhuoda captures this role for herself, this in spite of her constant protestations of weakness, sinfulness, and unworthiness, and she accomplishes this capture through her use of biblical and monastic texts. Her regular disclaimers, which consistently attribute her incapacity to her human, not her female nature, are balanced by equally regular assertions of authorial power. She not only explicitly compares (and equates) herself to Moses, she puts in her own mouth the words of authors whose authority in the Carolingian world was unquestionable(65). In the very first paragraphs, she explains to William that the book is a lesson from her to him, but that if it bears fruit in William's life, that will be the doing of God(66). She adds : "What more can I say, O my son, except that [.. .]in this undertaking I have battled with zeal for the good work, and preserving the faith, I have happily finished the course(67)." She is clearly alluding to,Paul's famous phrase from 2 Timothy 4.7 : "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith(68)." She is like Paul and can use his words to describe her own situation. Elsewhere, she uses Paul's words to describe her own pedagogy and her own sufferings(69). 

 

Such bold declarations notwithstanding, Dhuoda, who was writing the book to help William achieve both spiritual and temporal success, here is acting well within the accepted parameters for Carolingian women in educating her son(70). But very quickly, she also begins to claim a rather extraordinary authority, far beyond what tradition allotted the mother, for both herself and her manual. As early as the Prologue, she tells William that even when he acquires many other books, he should still turn to hers often, because in it he will discover all that he needs to know(71). In fact, he will be fully able to understand the little book only with God's help(72). According to Dhuoda, the manual is in fact like the Bible. Like Scripture, it has everything necessary for salvation and success, and like Scripture, it can be completely understood only with divine assistance(73).

 

Throughout the text, she endows herself with more and more authority as she concurrently reduces William to a position of increasing dependence. This process again begins in the very prologue of the book. She writes that although she is : "weak in understanding, unworthy though living among worthy women, nevertheless, I am your mother", and hence she has a certain claim on William's time(74). She then embarks upon a provocative analogy : just as children become absorbed in their games of dice and women in examining their faces in a mirror, so should William be absorbed in the reading of her book. At the very outset of the text, she reduces William to what a Frankish warrior would consider an inferior status : he is a small child gaming or a vain woman preening. She makes clear to him that although he may now be at court, among the powerful and famous of the world, William is still a child and dependent on her. Later, in the first chapter of book 1, she states that God must be loved and praised, both by the higher powers and human creatures. But immediately, she begs forgiveness for such audacity in undertaking to talk about God. Do not, she says : "condemn or reprove me for taking on such a task, a task that daunted patriarchs and prophets, for I am even weaker than they(75)." But her prose belies her protestations of unworthiness. She says that she is "weak and born among the lowest of people" and that Scripture itself says that the heavens cannot contain God(76). With these things in mind, she asks, "What could I, who am unlearned, say to you?  We read in Genesis that when Moses  [...] wished to look upon the face of God : " he simply asked. Dhuoda first asserts her inability to discuss theology, and then she goes ahead and does it with nary a pause. She in words proclaims her weakness while in fact she simply does what she claims is impossible. Thus, while she stresses both her personal incapacity and the incommensurability of God and concludes therefore that she should be able to say nothing, nevertheless she will end up saying quite a lot : the first two books of the text are strictly theological, and her theological musings continue throughout the whole work. Just as Moses and all the patriarchs constantly were aware of their own sinfulness and inability to talk about God, and yet were forced to for the good of their people, so too with Dhuoda : although theology is impossible, it must be done, in her case, for her son's good. And in Moses, who was told by God that he could not see his face and live, she finds a sort of backhanded model for herself. No one can see God and live, she concludes, although like Moses her "senses are burning(77)."  She equates her desires, if not her abilities and personal holiness, with that great partiarch. And since, as she makes clear, no one can accomplish what she wants to do, she is really their equal.

 

The second chapter of book 1 moves to an even more overt assertion of Dhuoda's authority. She says she seeks God and calls on his help without ceasing, and to explain what this means, she uses an analogy. She says that she is like that "insistent little bitch, scrambling under the master's table with the male puppies", who is able to grab and devour whatever crumbs that fall(78). The puppies, she explains later, are the priests, and the crumbs are pulcrum et lucidum dignumque et abtum [...] sermonem(79)." Thus, positioning herself with the clergy in their duty to pass on godly words, not only does she give her work a sort of ecclesiastical standing, she says, quite bluntly and clearly, that God"" in accord with his ancient mercy, has opened my understanding, and given me discernment(80)". In other words, God has directly intervened - as he did with the writers of the Bible of old - and given her a special grace to complete her task of educating William by writing her book. Dhuoda thus endows herself with both a quasi-scriptural and a quasi-sacerdotal authority - an authority given to her by God and an authority she exercises because of her love of William. Her authority comes not only from her natural rights as mother, not only from the divine intervention she has discerned in her life: it also comes from the monastic ideal of correctio - the duty of an individual to rectify the behavior of another(81). Dhuoda explains such a duty quite clearly and makes clear to her son that he too must exercise this authority.

 

Be mindful [...] of Elias and the rest. For a certain author says : "I sin with all sinners if I do not correct them when I see them sinning" and another says : "Lift not up the horn to the sinner(82)." Whatever is passed over in lesser persons is demanded of those who are greater [...] So it is among kings and dukes, and also among bishops and other prelates who live badly or vainly and who not only perish for their own injustices, but cause others to fall headlong by allowing their wrongdoings. Such is described in these words : "in doing and consenting, they accumulated equal punishment." [...] My son, if you love justice and do not allow evil men to do evil deeds, you will be able to say confidently with the Psalmist : "I have hated the unjust, and have loved your law.(83)" 

 

Dhuoda corrects lest she be damned, and she urges William to act in the same way. Where does this idea come from ? The likely source, at least in Dhuoda's case, is from the second chapter of Rule of Benedict :   "Let the abbot always remember that at the fearful judgment of God, not only his teachings but also his disciples' obedience will come under scrutiny. The abbot must, therefore, be aware that the shepherd will bear the blame wherever the father of the household [paterfamilias] finds that the sheep have yielded no profit(84)." Dhuoda herself has taken the role of abbot in William's life and education, and as in the Rule, she sees herself responsible for William's salvation and uses her authority to that end.

 

Thus Dhuoda begins to arrogate to herself the authority of an abbot. What then of her vaunted respect for her husband Bernard, and her king, Charles the Bald(85) ? In a monastic model of family, the role of the abbot should go to Bernard, just as in the monastic model of empire, it would go to Charles. It is true that Dhuoda speaks often, and reverently, of father and fathers and of their important role in society, but there is ambiguity here, ambiguity that is hidden in the modern editions of the text. Pater and patres - these words can refer to Bernard, certainly, and to other fathers, but they can also refer to God, on the one hand, and the patriarchs, on the other(86). In fact, Dhuoda's understanding of fatherhood is only partially biological. She instead looks at the exemplary Father, that is God, as the model of how other, more earthly, fathers should be, just as she looks at the exemplary King, again God, to see how kings should act. And though in the end Charles comes out acceptably, Bernard is definitely found wanting.

 

The prelude to what becomes a systematic attack on Bernard occurs in 1.5, a chapter on how God should be loved. Toward the end, she breaks off in an aside, and says that there are those in this world who act as if everything were under their own power, who say : "this thing-everything-is mine" and "this kingdom is mine", but they ignore the words of Scripture, which say that all power belongs to God(87). And then she says that unlike those people, she is different : "I think about those things which I have heard read.(88)" She notes that some of William's own relatives have made this mistake - they were in saeculo quasi potentes, but they are not now : they are dead. And unlike them, although again she protests her inadequacy, she also has her insight : she writes : "I see those things which are to come - aspicio ventura(89). As to those who don't see what is to come, for Dhuoda, they are worse than Nebuchadnezzar, a man incredulus pessimusque, for even he eventually figured out the real source of power(90).

 

A more damaging attack on paternal authority comes later. At the end of book 2, she begins to constrict the power of fathers, biological or regnal, by commanding William, after his daily round of prayers, to : "go out in the name of the highest God to do the earthly service that awaits you, or whatever your lord and father [domnus et genitor] Bernard or your lord [senior] Charles commands you to do, if God so allows(91). In other words, both of William's earthly superiors, his dominus Bernard and his senior Charles, have a claim on his services, as a fighter or a counselor. But William's service to them is limited : he can only do what is permitted. As scholars have noted for some time, Dhuoda believes that William owed different levels of allegiance to different people(92). To God, however, William owes his full and complete obedience ;  Bernard he must serve only if it does not conflict with his duty to God ; and Charles is, in a fashion, his tertiary lord(93). The earthly service that Dhuoda so wishes William to distinguish himself in can only be completed if it falls into the category of what is permissible.

 

It is in book 3, which on first reading does indeed seem to be a paean to Bernard, that Dhuoda begins a thoroughgoing attack on patriarchal authority(94). In 3.1, she consistently describes the relationship between William and Bernard, and between all sons and fathers, as one based on honor: in the first paragraph of chapter 1 alone, she mentions honor five times. William is bound to honor his father, and she concludes : "in every matter, be obedient to the interests of your father, and listen to his judgments.(95)" Typically, she looks to a scriptural example for the disobedient son, and, drawing on Absalom, she notes how he came to a bad end. Her reading of the moral of this story : "lacking an earthly kingdom, he did not come to the highest kingdom promised him(96)". Absalom, for Dhuoda, was not able to be saved, not only because of his treachery but also because he had lost the earthly means God had given him for his salvation-his succeeding David as king of Israel. Absalom, by his disobedience to his father, had crippled his own ability to reach heaven. And Dhuoda urges that William heed this lesson. Like Absalom, William must work out his salvation in the world, as a warrior and an aristocrat. What imperils his status here imperils his status in the hereafter, and hence, he must remain obedient and loyal. But we also must note that Absalom was disloyal to an honorable father : David was God's chosen king, and as Dhuoda points out, David even treated the defeated Saul andJonathan with great respect(97).

 

At the end of this chapter comes the most startling trope in the whole book. So far, she has commanded William to be obedient and honor his father for the good of his salvation. And now, at the end of the chapter, she explains exactly who his father is. "Therefore, my son William, hear me admonishing you, listen to and observe the teachings of your father, and do not ignore the sayings of the holy fathers(98)."  She is paraphrasing the first line, the most famous line, of the Rule of Benedict -"Listen O son to the teachings of your master" - but Dhuoda is putting this phrase into her own mouth(99). The obvious question we along with William must ask is, who is the father ? It is clear that at this moment Dhuoda has claimed herself as William's father. She is the one to whom William should listen, it is to her teachings that he must give ear. Who else has been teaching him, not just through the previous books, but for many more to come ? As far as we can tell, Bernard spent little time at Uzes, and, since he probably would not have brought a child with him on his various campaigns in the late 820s and 830s, it is most likely that Dhuoda educated her own son(100). The only teachings that William could possibly listen to and observe are those of his mother. Here we see on the part of Dhuoda not an assertion of patriarchal power and privilege, but rather a claim on filial piety. Dhuoda has constructed herself as William's father, because she has been the one who has acted honorably, who has acted in his best interests. It is a startling claim of mother as abbot, of mother as father(101). Her teachings, her praecepta, are to be bound in William's heart along with those of the patres sancti.

 

Dhuoda, having established herself as a father among fathers, then begins an interesting, if somewhat furtive, attack on William's own male progenitor. In chapter 3, she examines the lives of the patriarchs for examples of worthy behavior. She notes that Shem and Japheth, the sons of Noah, reached heaven because they loved their father, that Isaac prospered because he received his father's benediction, and that Jacob was strong because God blessed him on account of his father's merits(102). She then turns to her favorite biblical example, Joseph. He was, she tells us : "so loving and obedient to his father that he would have accepted death on his behalf, if God and the merits of his father had not defended him(103)". Joseph, in fact, is an ideal for Dhuoda, not only because of his respect for and obedience to his father but also because of his role as counselor to his lord : he exemplified the aristocratic ideal of Königsnähe, a proximity to the king which brought rewards and honores(104). Joseph, like the successful Carolingian nobleman, benefited both materially and spiritually because he had ready access to his royal leader. But what separates Joseph from the other examples that Dhuoda draws on is the peculiar circumstances of his life. After he was sold by his brothers into slavery, he became the greatest of counselors, and thus, in the royal court "he shone as second in command(105)." God so blessed him that he achieved preeminence in a foreign country. But there is more Joseph always acted in a way that brought honor to his father, to his lord, and to his God. Alluding to the episode with the wife of Potiphar, Dhuoda especially notes that "avoiding the debauchery of women [...] he preserved pure chastity, in mind for the sake of God, in body for his worldly lord(106)." Finally, God so rewarded him that he ended his life in peace. The contrast with William's own father could not have been more plain. Bernard too entered court, and he rose to preeminence as Louis the Pious's virtual vice emperor(107). But as to maintaining his chastity for the honor of either his lord or his God - that was another matter. Regardless of their truth, rumors were certainly rife about the affair between Bernard and Louis's second wife, the Welf Judith, mother of Charles the Bald(108).  Moreover, even if the liaison between Bernard and Judith was simply rumor, the result of a smear campaign waged against Bernard by his enemies, there is no denying that Bernard's own behavior, both as chancellor and after Louis's death, was less than honorable. As Louis's surviving sons fought over the division of the empire, Bernard, who was Charles the Bald's godfather and had pledged to support him by 838, consistently wavered in the support he gave his new lord. At the bloody and destructive battle at Fontenoy in June 841, Bernard withheld committing his troops to Charles until the outcome was sure, and then quickly sent in his son William as proof of his intention to support Charles in the future(109). In light of Bernard's own fickleness, Dhuoda's admonitions to loyalty become more ironic and indeed tragic. She writes, for example in 3.4, that she doubts that William will be disloyal to his lord "because such a thing has never appeared in your ancestors, nor does it appear now, nor shall it ever(110)." Later she says that he should pray for Bernard, because Bernard does not have the time to do so for himself, and that he should pray that, if it is possible - si fieri potest - Bernard might have, while he is still alive peace and harmony with others(111). Bernard's political life never knew a moment of peace, and despite the prayers that Dhuoda urged upon her son, it did not end peacefully : Charles the Bald had Bernard beheaded for treason in 844(112).

 

In praising Joseph, the comparison Dhuoda wants William to make between her husband and the biblical hero is clear. Joseph, the model son, the model father, the model counselor, served his various lords in every way, even serving the "pagan" pharaoh without abandoning the ways of his own religion(113). Bernard, whose circumstances were so similar, did otherwise : he dishonored Louis when he seduced his wife, Charles when he consistently betrayed him, Dhuoda herself by his adultery, William by his shameful use of him as a political chit, and through and because of all of this he dishonored his God as well. And if, as Dhuoda argues in book 3, the respect and obedience due a father are due him on account of his honor, William indeed owes Bernard little other than the prayers that could lead to his conversion. Bernard is a loser, in this reckoning, on many counts. 

 

Dhuoda does not simply question the value of a social system based on unquestioning obedience to a father : she also posits a different ideal for society, one informed by ideals of mutual charity, cooperation, self-sacrifice. She does not call for an end to the class system, nor does she advocate a radically new social and economic equality between individuals(114). Rather, she works on another level. She offers William examples of a better world, based on different models than those dominating ninth-century Francia. The individual who comes off best in the handbook is Theuderic, Bernard's brother and William's uncle. He is mentioned twice in the text, once just in passing, once in some detail(115). We learn that Theuderic was William's godfather, and until his recent death he had been William's nutritor[...] atque amator(116). But although he left William "as if abandoning his first born son",  his goods went to "our lord and master" to benefit William(117). Riche believes this means that Theuderic left his worldly possessions to his brother Bernard, and these benefit William, because he will eventually inherit them(118). Thus, the argument goes, Theuderic deserves William's special prayers, because he has significantly added to the honores that William will one day receive in due and legitimate inheritance. But I believe this interpretation is incorrect. It seems clear that this is the same Theuderic who, along with his father William and his brother Bernard, signed the foundation charter for Gellone as domnus Teudericus, and who in a charter dated to 842, wherein he is described as a presbyter, left three executors to dispose of all his worldly goods to the poor and to the church(119). This would explain why in the foundation charter he alone is given the honorific domnus(120). Here again we meet the ambiguity in Dhuoda's language when she speaks of fathers and lords and masters. In this case, when she says that Theuderic, to benefit William, left his goods to domino and seniori nostro, she means not Bernard but God. The benefits William receives will not be secular honores but spiritual ones, including the prayers of the poor who benefit from Theuderic's largesse, and indeed the prayers of Theuderic himself, now comfortably ensconced in the other world. Theuderic is for Dhuoda a new kind of father, a spiritual one - something Bernard is clearly not -  and this links Theuderic to Dhuoda's description of spiritual parenthood in book 7(121). There, drawing on Paul's image that he is in labor to form Christ in the Galatians (4.19), Dhuoda explains that people can bear children many ways, physically, obviously, but also through the teaching of sacred doctrine or the example of their good words(122). Theuderic stands as an example of a new model of father, one who acts honorably, who honors his God as his lord and master, who benefits his son by such acts, and one who has borne children - but not fleshly ones - whose numbers are plurimi. Theuderic, in fact, becomes like Joseph, Dhuoda's model for the good aristocrat. Like Joseph, he maintained his integrity in every situation, honoring king, father, children, and God. Like Joseph, his acts remained upright throughout his life, and even in death he continues to benefit his descendants. This is the sort of fatherhood that Dhuoda embraces and proclaims, but it is not the patriarchy of Bernard and his political ploys ; as spirit surpasses flesh, so William's uncle surpasses Bernard, so Dhuoda's patriarchy surpasses that of her contemporaries.

 

Dhuoda's second model of another kind of society is perhaps the single most striking image in the whole text. In the tenth chapter of book 3, drawing on Augustine's and Gregory the Great's explanations, she glosses the fortieth psalm, Sicut cervus(123). She says that when harts cross seas or rivers with a strong current, they line up, so that each hart can rest its head and antlers on the back of the one in front of it. And when the front animal tires, another hart,"with equally great intelligence and discretion", takes the lead, so that the first can rest(124). The harts, both great and small, thus show "fraternal compassion" in their cooperative quest of one goal. This, Dhuoda says, is a lesson for humanity, and she argues that nature is filled with many other such edifying examples(125). In her examination of the natural order, Dhuoda finds a vision of Christian society quite different from ninth-century patriarchy. For the wise and discrete harts, power and leadership are not ends in themselves. In fact, leadership is an onerous burden, so difficult that it has to be shared through the entire community. But even more striking, the whole of hart society is based on mutual support all, weak and strong, powerful and poor, work to serve some end, and that end, for the harts, is to reach the shore. For Dhuoda, the end for humans is different but analogous : it is to reach that eternal shore.

 

These two models are complemented by perhaps the most important task she assigns William. Throughout the book, she regularly urges him to pass on to his younger brother Bernard what she has taught him(126). This is the great task she has prepared him for, and this is what she sees as William's obligation to her. This, of course, involves something of a radical role reversal for William, because he will become the equivalent of Dhuoda-he will play the young Bernard's mother. He will be to Bernard, in fact, what Dhuoda and Theuderic were to him : spiritual parent, amator, nutritor. This is the image Dhuoda leaves us with then - not one of powerful fathers who are owed duties and obedience, but rather spiritual parents, whether male or female, who because of their concern for their children receive their honor, respect, and love, and who at the same time gather in the accumulated blessings of God-regular inheritance, a stable social order, and most importantly, peace, concord, and harmony.