Valerie L. Garver. Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009.
For those who are tired about reading the history of “dead white men,” Valerie L. Garver has provided an alternative look at the equally dead alternative. Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World is 381 pages of analysis that takes into consideration both the clerical ideal of women and the actual circumstances of their lives and argues that “women, especially elite women, were active participants in shaping and perpetuating the behaviors, beliefs, and practices that marked the culture of the Carolingian lands between c. 700 and c. 925.” Garver’s women essentially act behind the scenes, building and holding together the world in which their men act, but while her evidence is used well and her arguments reasonable, Garver at times allows her numerous assumptions to take control of the narrative.
The structure of Women and Aristocratic Culture is based upon the “four reasons why men desire women” outlined by Jonas of Orléans in the 820s: “family prudence, wealth, and beauty.” Each of the chapters is devoted to one of these themes, with the all-important work of textile production added as a bonus fifth. Throughout the work, one of the most prominent themes – and one in keeping with Jonas’ ideals – is the notion that Carolingian women complimented and enhanced their men and families. The ideal woman was the most desirable enhancement, and according to the poem Karolus Magnus et Leo papa, almost literally a physical treasure, shining in beatific glory that originated not only from herself, but also the rich ornaments festooning her person. Thus, in her first chapter Garver determines that beautiful women, decked out in their Sunday best, were physical manifestations of their men’s status and wealth. But more than mere centerpieces to familial standing, women had active roles as the glue that bound families together and as the means for perpetuating family memories and heritage. Whether through marriage or convent, women were instrumental in shaping their families fortunes, for while Garver characterizes men as the “social face” of clan politics, women acted behind the scenes, praying for the dead as nuns, offering hospitality as wives, and in both capacities honoring those with whom they wished alliance by gifting hand-crafted textiles. In addition to prayer, Garver repeatedly drives home the thesis that women “kept alive the memory of their family members and others by writing about them” (but the strange emphasis almost takes on the assumption that, somehow, men were not doing that very thing). In this she fleshes out the passing statement made by Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Simon MacLean in The Carolingian World.
Memory is very important to Garver, and so is continuity, her book establishing connections throughout between the late-antique past and the Carolingian era, for “The originality of the Carolingian renaissance rested upon an ability to draw from older texts and traditions while applying them to contemporary exigencies.” For example, prayer and remembrance was nothing new, as “Carolingian female preservation of familial memory had roots in late antiquity and in the Merovingian and Lombard kingdoms.” But while many other Carolingian practices, such as keeping ornamental birds – harking back to Paul Edward Dutton’s Charlemagne’s Mustache – and the production of textiles , were the continuation of ages-old practice, the most compelling argument for continuity comes from the written sources. Many of those cited by Garver are clerical in nature, written in a pastoral context. The Carolingians were interested in women acting as moral exemplars within their own spheres, a desire that “drew from late antique ideals” such as the writings of Jerome. Churchmen’s denunciation of vanity similarly enjoyed a long tradition of exhortation, from the Hebrew Scriptures to the early church fathers in the second-to-fifth centuries. Yet while biblical allusions and allegory dominate, other classical elements informed the authors’ styles; thus in writing “On the Court” and Karolus Magnus et Leo papa, the authors drew upon motifs from Virgil’s Aeneid. Moreover, Garver laments the lack of reliable examples of Carolingian dress, as “illuminations and textual descriptions of dress are often drawn from antique sources and were meant to convey certain religious, political, and social messages more than describe dress through accurate observation.” Yet for all her proof of continuity, such is not the thesis of Garver’s work, and thus other hot-button issues of history escape close scrutiny.
The issue of defining the Carolingian court is a thorny issue and in Charlemagne Rosamond McKitterick devoted a great deal of ink to the argument over whether or not the Carolingians had a court and the attendant administrative structure, or just a glorified posse that followed the king from manor to manor. For her part, Garver seems to believe that a stable court existed, at least in the popular sense, for she makes broad, matter-of-fact statements, such as acknowledging the Carolingians’ emphasis upon women’s reforming roles as a source of agency for controlling their surroundings, the court included. Here the court is the center of Politics, where young men go to finish their militant education and young ladies meet future husbands with whom to establish more family bonds – or to pursue a lady’s education – if their over-protective parents do not commit them to the comparative safety of convents. Though not examined in any detail, one gets the impression that Garver’s court is an established culture, for not only was one young noble, William, taken away from his mother Dhuoda, she also warned him to avoid the temptations likely habitual to courtly life. Yet it is apparent that court was nothing like a continuous community as what one might imagine of, say, a parliament; for Garver points out – in another elated aside about building bonds – that the great men of the realm came to court for assemblies , indicating that there were at least spurts of activity, or perhaps a continual flow of coming and going. What appears concrete is the notion that this was a dangerous milieu that required practice and experience to navigate successfully, at least insofar as Garver can tell from the work On the Governance of the Palace by Hincmar of Rheims. With this in mind, it is not surprising that Garver’s following observation is that aristocratic families “almost certainly did not want young, unmarried female kin to go to court as their young brothers did.” In the final analysis, the court – whatever organizational features it bore – was the place to further one’s goals and those of the family – except for young girls, whose medium was the convent.
By her own admission, Garver relies upon educated guesswork to reach her conclusions, though some of her ideas are a bit of a stretch. “In order to study some areas, particularly household management,” Garver says as she attempts to justify such leaps, “I suggest the activities for which women almost certainly had responsibility based on the existing evidence. For example, according to prescriptive texts, gardening seems a probable activity of religious and lay aristocratic women, and the discovery of a watering can at an excavation of the convent of Herford helps to bolster the veracity of that impression.” Many such leaps are similarly benign, yet a few such slips seem to undermine Garver’s key arguments, such as her fascination with women as bearers of identity. In the case of Dhuoda, the laywoman often cited for her singular volume of advice for her teenaged son (this document’s unique nature does warrant remark from Garver ), her exhortations to pray for many listed relatives is used to back up Garver’s argument that women of all elite ranks, religious and otherwise, were actively transmitting memory. Yet this same illustration also serves to undermine her argument for this “womanly duty,” as William’s own prayers are suddenly appropriated for memorial maintenance, thus placing this burden upon both sexes and alerting the reader to the broader implication of mutual participation. That is not to say that all such educated guesses are poorly done. There is an especially clever moment where Garver points out that the word for the officer given charge over the larder was the feminine cellararia, thus implying positions open to, or possibly especially for, women. But at the far opposite end of this endeavor is the seemingly absurd assumption that, because women did not often write about the colors of textiles and their meanings, as men did, the ladies somehow “were probably not aware of such meanings.”
Women and Aristocratic Culture is nonetheless a book well done. Garver’s meticulous use of “textiles, exegesis, archaeological remains, poetry, liturgy, letters, inventories, lay mirrors, charters, polyptychs, capitularies, church councils, hagiography, and memorial books” attempts to recreate an entire world of elite women and is a demonstration of what the eagle-eyed scholar can produce. Suitable for the student with a general understanding of Carolingian culture, Garver’s work is certainly inspiration for future work on medieval gender.
Image taken from Tower.com
