Medieval Laudes Regiae in Chronological Order

Acentral focus of Mathilda of Flanders’ energy was her construction of a Benedictine abbey for women, Holy Trinity in Caen, dedicated in 1066. Mathilda's choice to establish her new monastic foundation in honor of the Trinity, as opposed to a saint or the Virgin Mary, was an early indicator of her spiritual preference for the Holy Spirit and, through it, apostolic authority. The mysteries of the Holy Spirit were connected in scripture to prophesy, which would be another fascination for her. Historians have long argued that Holy Trinity was founded as a penance for Mathilda's marriage in the face of a papal ban. Yet her creation of Holy Trinity eventually swept over the past to embrace a breathtakingly uncertain venture: the Norman invasion of England. In what follows, I consider Holy Trinity in light of the Norman conquest. Holy Trinity was Mathilda's frst contribution to Norman victory. Mathilda established the monastery's connections to the military ofensive from the beginning, despite the uncertainty of its success, and the conquest remained a central element of its character long afer her death. The second contribution was the Mora, the ship she had constructed for the invasion, that carried William to England. Tus, through the work of her hands, she placed herself at the heart of the Norman Conquest. To these two conquest gifs, one must add the most notable – her daughter, Cecelia. Given as an oblate on the day of Holy Trinity's dedication, Cecelia's role in the family's success was a critical one. Her career as the second abbess of Mathilda's new foundation was surely planned from the start.

Unlike the queens who ruled England afer her, Mathilda lef behind a tombstone that utterly ignores her children. The text of her epitaph celebrates her royal genealogy and her activities as ruler – especially the construction of Holy Trinity – while the maternal element of her identity is completely marginalized. It is revealing that this contemporary representation of Mathilda does not communicate that she had any ofspring at all.

While the omission indicates that other identifying features took precedence, Mathilda gave birth to nine children, which had a signifcant efect on her life and rule.

The upheaval of the conquest provided fertile soil for Mathilda of Flanders to expand the privileges and responsibilities of queenship. Amongst these developments was her participation in justice. Mathilda's judicial activity was truly woven throughout her reign. It consumed a signifcant portion of her time and was a defning factor of her queenship. Tat Mathilda acted as a royal judge is not a matter for debate; evidence is found in Domesday Book and the monastic chronicles surveyed below. The subject of this chapter is how she came to be there when previous English queens were not. The following discussion suggests that Mathilda drew from two sources that encouraged her to imagine herself as a judge: one practical and one ideological. The frst was the legal praxis of Norman female abbatial authority with which she was familiar. In Mathilda's duchy of Normandy, some women – particularly abbesses – handed down verdicts in their own manorial courts. This stands in contrast to eleventh-century English courts that were based on the assembly of the hundred, shire or county. The English structure allowed less room for lordly women to create manorial courts over which they had control. The second was the ideological foundation of the Ottonian empresses for whom Mathilda of Flanders was named. Ottonian traditions created a space for imperial women to preside over legal conficts. The imperial identity adopted by her mother may have predisposed Mathilda to assume prerogatives her English predecessors did not. Just as in earlier chapters, Mathilda can be found occupying unexpected spaces. This chapter shows her in the seat of justice.

Fulcoius of Beauvais, ‘Jephthah’

The physical city of Caen rose up rapidly in the middle of the eleventh century as Mathilda and William constructed its primary elements. These included the ducal castle, the abbey of Holy Trinity and, lastly, St Stephen's Abbey. The merchant community of Caen grew alongside it, encouraged by the ducal presence and the navigable waterways of the Orne and the Odon which fed Caen. The previous chapter provides evidence for the expansion of a bustling city with neighborhoods of tenants and workers developing in the boroughs of the abbess, the abbot, and those dependent directly on the ducal couple. As the contours of Caen emerged in the physical world, Mathilda was also building a parallel city; spiritual, ephemeral, liturgical. This spiritual city was governed by the presence of holy bodies: saints whose remains shaped the religious observance of Caen as it developed. Caen's liturgical city was organized around temporal observance of feast days. The assemblage of holy bodies also shifed the spiritual center of Normandy towards Caen.

Mathilda of Flanders died on November 2, 1083. Her illness must have lasted only a matter of months as she was active in mid-July of that year. According to Orderic Vitalis, she fell ill sometime in September and her condition rapidly declined. It is possible that Abbot Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds treated her as he was in Caen at the time. If so, he was unable to improve her health. Orderic reported that her death was mourned for many days in Normandy and England. Both Orderic and William of Malmesbury indicate she was celebrated with a lavish funeral.

Mathilda was interred at Holy Trinity, Caen just as she intended, her body placed between the choir and the altar. Orderic attests that many archbishops, bishops and abbots were present for the ceremony, as well as monks, nuns and ‘a great throng of poor people’. Mathilda was set beneath an elaborate black Tournai marble monument covered in gold and jewels, decorated with a golden efgy. Orderic records her epitaph, carved in gold, which celebrates her bloodline, her piety and her foundation of Holy Trinity (Plate 7).

The night of May 10, 1068 was a scene of great solemnity in Westminster Abbey. Candles pierced the darkness throughout the nave, gleaming as the vigil of Pentecost unfolded. Of all the nights in the church calendar, this one – save perhaps the night before Easter – was the most sacred. In the morning, a triumphal mass would commemorate the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles in the Upper Room in the form of a mighty wind, in tongues of fame. In this miraculous moment, according to scripture, the apostles spoke in many languages – a sign that the Spirit of God inhabited them. This was a fundamental mystery of the church year. The next morning the church would be flled with music; Pentecost mass featured special chants and songs dedicated to the Holy Spirit and the beginnings of Christ's church on earth. Pentecost Sunday at Westminster 1068, moreover, would see another beginning. Mathilda of Flanders’ coronation and anointing in this church would transform her through sacred ritual into a persona mixta – a ‘mixed person’; part human, part divine. The mass of Pentecost would enfold a diferent, parallel mystery that transmuted a woman into Christ's representative on earth. Something more, then, was playing out on that late Saturday night in May, before the gathered crowd of English and Normans, standing together in the dark. The expectation of the central event – the crowning of a new Norman queen – charged the atmosphere in the shadowed church. Mathilda stood as the central fgure as the sacred readings for the Pentecost Vigil were recited in the gloom. The Norman conquerors were probably thrilled with their new queen, every inch an unparalleled royal presence.

In her last charter, dated sometime before her death on November 2, 1083, Mathilda of Flanders constructed something along the lines of a will.

By the divine clemency of the eternal father, I, William, the leader of the Normans, to the true of the most blessed of mother church wherever they are distributed, faithfully to be known to all who believe in Christ, grant them not to be deprived of the inheritance of blessedness, but to exist as worthy co-heirs of God, who are placed in the midst of this unstable life, those things which they seem to possess by hereditary right, in the places consecrated to God, in the necessary continuous prayers of those vacant there, fulflling their duty to charity, arrange to share them by hereditary emancipation. Faith, confrmed by the apostle's authority as well as by the promise of the Lord, is directed to that which must be undoubtedly believed. For the Apostle says, ‘Indeed you are heirs of God, but joint heirs with Christ.’ For in the gospel, when the Lord foretold the future reward of those who had performed good deeds, he designated those who persevered with a worthy army to be co-heirs of the heavenly joys, saying, ‘And they shall inherit eternal life.’ Terefore, we shall not consider those who write down their father Christ as heir to their earthly labors to be deprived of the eternal inheritance of the celestial kingdom.