Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

by Janina Ramírez

Yeavering in Northumberland. Only discovered in 1949 when a particularly harsh summer had scorched the fields and revealed the outlines of an early medieval complex, it is most likely the site of Ad Geferin, the royal palace whe...

The site at Yeavering, like Loftus, made use of older Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age remains on the landscape.

He could hear the concerns and gather the taxes of the people of his kingdom, including those who tied themselves back to Romano-British relatives, and further still, to Celtic tribes. The buildings that formed Edwin’s court, however, were firmly those of Anglo-Saxon kings and queens, and the largest hall would have been reminiscent of Hrothgar’s hall, Heorot, described in Beowulf: ‘The building in which that powerful man held court was the foremost of halls under heaven; its radiance shone over many lands.’

The royal court would move between centres like that at Yeavering, stopping to receive taxes in livestock and supplies from the local people, on a cycle of visits that kept the king connected to his subjects. As a member of their court, Hild may well have travelled with them.

She would have been brought up listening to the boasts of warriors, the tales of heroes and the myths of Woden, Freyja and Thor. She was a warrior princess. However, Bede states that at 33 – the age at which Christ died and halfway through her own life – Hild embraced Christianity.

her predecessor, Heui, was the first woman in Northumbria to become a nun and found a monastery in AD 640.

Excavations at Hartlepool have revealed interesting details of how these early converts in the north commemorated their dead. There were four cemeteries in use simultaneously at Hartlepool, serving different functions and communities.

Church Walk cemetery contained the graves of men, women and children, indicating this was for the local population. In a time of great change, it is understandable that communities would be made of a mixture of people, some who wanted to be buried according to older traditions, while others wanted to embrace the new.

foreigners like missionaries and members of monastic communities who could move hundreds of miles to take up religious positions across the country. The complex burials at Hartlepool reflect complex communities, with people of different backgrounds, classes...

Nearer to the sheer cliff face, a collection of female graves was discovered. This was most probably the earliest cemetery space for the nuns, called Cross Close. Like the Loftus Princess, the newly converted noblewomen at Hartlepool were buried on a windswept headland...

Significantly, though, these nuns were part of a literate community, as eight of the graves had headstones inscribed with women’s names. Stone and Rome. Literacy and T...

Other finds from Hartlepool suggest that this early monastery, founded by a woman in the seventh century, was a place of wealth, privilege, power and learning. A gilded hairpin may have belonged to one of the nuns. Its imagery is not Christian, but more reminisce...

Despite Bede’s claims that no one at Hild’s monasteries was rich or poor, holding ‘all things in common’, early English medieval convents were not places of simple living and modesty. These first-generation converts did not have to give up all the luxuries of their secular lives, and as wealthy noblewomen, they broug...

Hild was at the top of the tree in terms of influence in seventh-century Northumbria. Bede states that ‘even kings and princes sought and received her counsel’, and she acted as mentor to the daughter of Oswui, King of the Northumbrians from 642–670.

It is also significant that five men who trained under Hild were all made bishops; if there were king-makers in the medieval world, then she was the bishop-maker. Whitby was the training ground for a new, Roman Christian, learned and respected English church.

From Hild’s northern headland, educated men and women would stretch out the length and breadth of the country, assuming the very highest positions within churches and monasteries, including the archbishop of York.54 Hild’s influence would permeate the fabric of Christianity in this part of the world and its effects were felt down the centuries.

Bede records how Hild’s importance within the church was told to her mother in a dream of a brightly shining necklace:

Loftus could very well have been part of the Whitby monastery’s estate. It’s highly unlikely that we will ever know for sure whether the satellite community ruled over by the Loftus Princess was tied to Hild and Whitby.

what these seventh-century northern women do reveal is that joining the Roman church in the first flush of conversions was a way of gaining power and influence. These noblewomen could bypass marriages arranged for the purposes of securing allegiances and creating heirs, and instead form their own centres of learning where they could be rich, respected and remembered, with the same opportunities as the men around them. They could shape their future and those of their communities. This was a singularly positive time for women in the church and the Loftus Princess, Hild, Ælfflæd and others reaped the rewards of the new faith.

The Loftus Princess’s grave was deliberately placed as a focal point of the cemetery. She was buried in a designated ‘shrine’ area, with a processional route leading mourners and pilgrims past her burial mound and out the back – a form of early medieval crowd control.

clear her community venerated her. As later pilgrims would visit sacred sites and leave votives to a saint, so it seems the people visiting the burial at Loftus left scraps of heirlooms around the head of the princess.57

But the fields at Loftus, cultivated by humans for over 4,000 years, were abandoned shortly after the princess and her community were buried there. As we’ve established, the period she lived and died in was one of religious, cultural and social change.

Burying newly converted Christians within and alongside older prehistoric and Roman monuments was not accidental;58 this act deliberately ties this woman and her community to the landscape. Both permanence and change are in evidence at Loftus.

Traditionally his Ecclesiastical History has been seen as concerned with the lives of ‘great men’ – bishops, warriors, kings. But it does, in fact, feature powerful, influential, significant and important women throughout. If, when reading Bede, we ignore these medieval women we lose an important layer of detail, as his world is one in which they mattered.

He includes hymns to Queen Ethelthryth, ascribes miracles to the nun Eadgyth, and declares Hild ‘the most religious handmaid of Christ’. The women in his world were worthy of note and some changed the course of history.

While so much has been lost, looted, or still remains under layers of soil, archaeological evidence gives voices and an identity to the many women who have been overlooked. While men have been searched for in the archaeological record, women have not.

Women like Hild chose to join monasteries, rising to positions of great power as abbesses, gaining wisdom and influencing decision-making within the newly emerging church. They had a choice and they embraced lives that brought them in touch with the Christian continent, with new ideas, beautiful art and architecture, and a world of stories, saints and sinners that would change the ideological landscape of Britain long-term.

Medieval texts report that one of the most influential women of the eighth century, Cynethryth, became abbess of a monastery somewhere along the river by the contested border between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. It’s where she lived out her final years and was most likely buried. But the monastery is thought to be ‘lost’. Now Dr Thomas wants to ‘solve this mystery once and for all’.1 They only have two weeks to dig and return the site to its original state. They need to move fast.

tower of Holy Trinity Church, just 50 metres away from the largest trench. It is this building which brought the team to Cookham. A wall behind the altar is made up of reused Saxon stones, and it is clear the site had served a religious function for over a thousand years.

The meticulous process of scraping and brushing continues, and the outlines of long-lost wooden buildings start to emerge. There are also treasures, not in the sense of sparkling gold and cloisonné jewels, but rather archaeological treasures that build a picture of a real eighth-century environment.

Monasteries, convents and double monasteries like the one at Cookham, where men and women lived and prayed together, were political, social, artistic and cultural hubs. They were run by the most powerful people in the country, and were the nexus of education, medicine, science, technology, writing and both secular and religious influence. This establishment, overseen by Abbess Cynethryth at the end of the eighth century, would have rivalled the royal court in terms of luxury and wealth.

These saintly superheroes have taken the place of warriors, and a surprising number of women feature in this new spiritual universe.

‘Cynethryth, by the Grace of God, Queen of the Mercians’.

Now a widow, she owns this micro-town of Cookham outright and coordinates everything from religious worship to the trade up and down this stretch of the river.5

Called ‘Abbess’ by the men and women around her, she has double power in this double monastery. She is both spiritual leader and lady of the land.

The greatest of the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the eighth century, Mercia had a different approach to women in power than the neighbouring kingdoms of Wessex, Northumbria and East Anglia. In the huge region stretching from the Humber in the north, down the Welsh border to the Thames, women could sign charters, own land in their own right, and co-rule with their husbands. What’s more, through the increasing reach of monasteries founded by female members of the royal family, Mercian women could navigate their way into politically expedient positions as prominent decision makers.

Offa’s legacy as ruler is recorded in the sophisticated coins that survive from his reign. His wife Cynethryth is the only early medieval woman in the West to have her own coinage minted. On these incredibly rare artefacts found across England, her profile portrait gives a stylised view of what she looked like, rather than a faithful reproduction. Nevertheless, they remain the earliest depictions of an English queen.

It is possible the coins were minted for her own use, although the fact that they are found across the country in every kingdom suggests they had wide circulation. More likely, the choice to feature Cynethryth rather than Offa was a strategic move to distance the newly subjugated people from the individual responsible for their subservience.

another powerful woman was also minting coins with her image pressed into metal. In Constantinople (now Istanbul) the Empress Irene had, over a period of thirty years from 775 to 802, progressed from queen consort, to regent for her son, and finally to sole ruler.

Irene’s supporters had gouged out her own son’s eyes to secure her position as sole ruler, and with her rivals out of the way Irene demanded she rule not as empress, but as emperor. She signed her letters with this title and even had coins minted referring to the ruler as ‘Emperor of Rome’.

But Cynethryth and Offa modelled their coins on a different image – the Roman imperial rulers of the West.8 Although this idea of ‘Romanitas’ – tying a dynasty back to the imagery and power of Rome – was a technique employed by many early medieval rulers, the elegance and artistic quality of the portraits on Cynethryth and Offa’s coins set them apart.9

Threatened by her influence, Pope Leo III threw his support behind Charlemagne as Emperor of the West and on Christmas Day AD 800, declared him Holy Roman Emperor. The threat of this powerful woman in the East had to be subdued at all costs.

To strengthen resistance to Irene, Charlemagne reached out to Offa and Cynethryth through letters, even offering his son Charles in marriage to their daughter. In an act of brazen one-upmanship, Offa displayed his arrogance on the world stage by suggesting his son Ecgfrith should also marry Charlemagne’s daughter Bertha. This led to a break in friendly relations between the Holy Roman Empire and Mercia,

One coin minted during Offa and Cynethryth’s time as rulers reveals more than most. Struck in 774, the template is that of the golden dinars produced under the powerful Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur at the same time.

This coin indicates that the Mercian court was in contact with Islamic lands and sought to directly copy their style of inscription, even if the English version indicates little knowledge of written Arabic. The text has minor errors, with ‘Offa Rex’ inserted upside down in relation to the script.

This little object opens a window onto an eighth-century world which was interconnected across religious divides and boasted trade links thousands of miles long.13

Cynethryth’s name is revealing in itself: the first element ‘Cyne’ means ‘royal’ or ‘ruler’. Her standing was different to that of the wife and daughters of the last pagan king of Mercia, Penda, who ruled from AD 626–55.15

Like his wife, Offa also claimed descent from Penda, so to marry someone with ties to the Mercian royal house would have reinforced his position. What’s more, by consistently raising up his wife and allowing her power in her own right, Offa was creating a Mercian dynasty. To empower her was to strengthen his own position.

With the birth of an heir – her son Ecgfrith – she entered the political sphere, co-signing and witnessing documents as queen. Although Ecgfrith would go on to succeed his father as king of Mercia, he died after just five months of rule, and Cynethryth would outlive both husband and son. Arguably it was her daughters who became the more important nation-builders.

By doing so she tied her family to rulers of the separate kingdoms and secured their status as saintly queens. Æthelburh became abbess of Fladbury, continuing her mother’s example of holding land and running a religious community. Eadburh was married to the king of Wessex, while another daughter became queen of Northumbria through her union. These women were the glue that helped hold together ever-fractious regional relations.