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Bathild of Francia

Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint

Isabel Moreira

Women in Antiquity

Description

This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in contemporary sources as beautiful and intelligent, she rose to power though her marriage to the short-lived King Clovis II. As regent for her young son, she promoted social and political reforms in Francia that included the rescue and rehousing of Christian slaves who, like Balthild herself, had been caught up in the human-trafficking practices of the mid-seventh century.

Implicated in the violent politics of the era, Balthild spent the remainder of her life in the convent of Chelles where a unique cache of surviving relics and personal items, including her hair, were protected and dispersed as relics over the following centuries. In the nineteenth century, Balthild’s anti-slave trade policies were recalled for new audiences when she was adopted as an icon for the cause of the abolition of the slave trade and installed as one of the twenty illustrious women whose statues are situated in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.

Although critical to her age, because of the remote time period and the specialized nature of the sources, Balthild is little known today. This book will correct this oversight by shining a light on a fascinating and courageous figure whose legacy long outlived the era to which she belonged.

Sommaire

Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Map
Family Tree
Chapter One: Finding her Story
Chapter Two: Trafficked Slave
Chapter Three: Marriage Makes a Queen
Chapter Four: Regent, Reformer, and Rescuer of Slaves
Chapter Five: Life and Death at the Convent of Chelles
Chapter Six: Mother, Mutilator — and Murderer?
Chapter Seven: Abolitionist Icon
Appendix: The Baldehildis Seal Matrix
Bibliography
Index

Isabel Moreira is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Utah, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, and author of Heaven’s Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity.