©Stad Gent - Dienst Toerisme
Written on 21/12/2024 by
The Carolingians, the Treaty of Verdun and the invasion of the Vikings: for most of us, the 9th century consists of nothing more than vague echoes from our third year in secondary school, and is therefore a period we're particularly keen to forget about. But once you realise that the people back then were also human beings made of flesh and blood, that's when history actually becomes rock-and-roll. And that's especially true in the case of Judith, the first countess of Flanders.
First of all, let's look at the facts. Judith of Francia was the daughter of King Charles the Bald of West Francia and Queen Ermesinde. At the age of twelve, she was married off to Ethelwulf, the King of Wessex, a much older man who died two years later. Judith then married his stepson Ethelbald, but he too didn't last long. So by the time she was sixteen, Judith had been widowed twice, without having any say in the matter. That was nothing unusual at that time. These marriages were entered into for purely strategic reasons.
Baldwin who?
After that, things got interesting. Judith's father, Charles the Bald, brought her back to the fortified city of Senlis (near Paris). By ‘storing her away’ safely, he would no longer risk having to share any of his territory or wealth. But suddenly, a certain Baldwin shows up, a man of much lower nobility. Someone who is certainly not a suitable match for a highly prized catch like Judith. While we don't know what exactly happened behind closed doors, he and Judith ran off together and wanted to get married.
Had she been carried off by the knight on the white horse – or was Judith herself the one holding the reins?
Her father was furious, because a move like that put paid to his plans. Even the Pope had to intercede personally to get Charles to allow the marriage. Very unwillingly, he then made Baldwin Margrave of ‘Flanders’, a marshy area between the North Sea and the river Yser, in around 864. At the time, it was an area of land that didn't amount to much, though it later developed into an excellent region, with thriving cities such as Ghent and Bruges. The Margraves of Flanders ultimately belonged to the cream of European aristocracy. That then brings us into the period that some more people are already familiar with.
But Judith was actually the ‘mater familias’ of that entire dynasty. Had she not taken the step that she did, our history could have looked very different. The question therefore remains, of course: why? Why did she flee from Senlis? The documents from that time simply refer to Judith and Baldwin as having ‘departed together’ but that has been interpreted very differently over the years.
But Judith was actually the ‘mater familias’ of that entire dynasty. Had she not taken thestep that she did, our history could have looked very different
Judith of Flanders: something for everyone!
In the 14th and 15th centuries, Judith became a popular main character in romantic novels. In those, she comes across as a young and naive girl who allows herself to be seduced by Baldwin. 'Departing' from Senlis is now more likely to be referred to as being ‘carried away’ by a prince on a white horse. Because theirs was a forbidden love, they had to wander from place to place around Europe for a while, but Judith still managed to remain true to her heart. Or something like that.
Judith meant something different to everyone ... and certainly to the British
But that is not how the British chroniclers saw it. They turned Judith into a voluptuous Frenchwoman, a kind of Emanuelle avant la lettre, a perverted woman who whose second marriage was to her own son. The fact that Ethelbald was a stepson, and therefore not a blood relative, was not mentioned at all. They actually portrayed that poor teenager as an incestuous shrew. That negative and sexually laden image lived on in Great Britain until the late 19th century. Well, you know, the British versus Europe....
The Mother of all Flemish people?
On our side of the Channel, however, Judith gained a quite different cachet. As it's thanks to Judith that Flanders literally appeared as a name on the map of Europe, we saw her as a kind of ‘primordial mother’ of the Flemish people. But that's nonsense of course. At the very most, she was the mother of a dynasty. In the case of historical figures such as Judith, there is a risk that their memory will be used to promote nationalist ideas....
After World War II, the feminist image then emerges – of Judith as a young woman who had already had to suffer too much at the beginning of her life and therefore decided to take matters into her own hands. So she rebelled against her father, but in a sense also against patriarchy in general. In one novel, for example, she even became the one leading a boar hunt, in place of a man. Recently, two more books have been published that reinforce that image of Judith as a proto-feminist.
The romanticised Judith remained forever young — but in reality, that was very different....
What stands out in all the stories, from shrew to fierce woman, is that Judith remained eternally young. As soon as Baldwin became Margrave (the one with the Iron Arm), she disappeared into the background. So in pictures, you always see her as a fresh-faced adolescent, even though we do know that she had at least two more children. In our exhibition, we too have attempted to adjust that image a little, by creating a simulation of the face that belonged to the skeleton.... IF that skeleton is actually hers, of course, but that's another story.
Steven Vanderputten
Steven Vanderputten is a professor of history at Ghent University. He conducts scholarly research into our medieval society and culture, with a predilection for the period from the 9th to the 12th century – a period he is definitely does not wish to call ‘the dark Middle Ages’.
