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Scott Black: A slave becomes Queen and later is sainted for her work as an abolitionist. This is not the plot of a new romantic novel, but the true story of a medieval French queen told by Isabelle Moreira and her new biography of Queen Balthild of France. Welcome to the Virtual Jewelbox Podcast of the Tanner Humanity Center.

I am Scott Black, director of the Tanner Humanity Center, and today I'm joined by Isabel Moreira to talk about her wonderful new biography of Balthild of Francia. Welcome.

Isabel Moriera: Thank you for having me on, Scott.

Scott Black: My pleasure. Dr. Moreira is distinguished professor of history and associate. Dean for research in the College of Humanities at the University of Utah.

She's a world renowned expert on the Mero Vian period of French history, and the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of the Mero Vian World and the author of two Scholarly Monographs, heaven's Purge, purgatory, late Antiquity and Dreams, visions and Spiritual Authority, and Ian Ga. So Isabelle, this is a fantastic read, much better than most academic biographies.

It's quite a story, and it sounds, as I said, more like the stuff of high fantasy or romance than history. Could you start telling us just a broad overview of Matilda's life or incredible story and why it's important?

Isabel Moriera: Mm-hmm. Yes, thank you. You know, her life is truly remarkable and you know, as you say, you could imagine it being a novel.

She is a well-known figure in France. She is a saint of the Catholic church, but she started her life as an Anglo-Saxon slave who was bought for, we are told a low price by the mayor of the Ntri Palace in Francia, in Northern Goul. And she. Ends up being married to Aerin King. Clovis II has three children.

By him is widowed becomes regent for her son. And then finally, after some political issues, she is relegated to a monastery, essentially a political exile for the rest of her life.

Scott Black: I do want to get to those political issues 'cause it's fascinating. But first I want to focus on her Regency. She was able to be.

A political figure in a queen because her son was underage, is that correct?

Isabel Moriera: That's correct, yes. And in the seventh century there were queen regions, so she is sort of fitting a model there, but it is because she's widowed really early. Her son is very young. And so for the duration of his childhood, uh, she essentially wields power in his name together with some other key political figures.

Scott Black: So I'm really interested in the various ways she gets represented over time. There were really historically two lives of Balthild, right?

Isabel Moriera: That's right. So there was the life that was written very soon after her death. This is commonly known as Vita a. It's the first life, it's the near contemporary life.

But in the Carol Ian period, another version of the Life was written, which. Categorically stated that she was of royal birth and that was very much what the Carol Engines wanted to believe about her and her royal status was very important for the convent and its fortunes going forward for most of French readership in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries.

19th century, they would've been reading French accounts of her life. What's important about that is that the French accounts of her life derive from the second, the B version of her life, the Carol engine version of her life. So French readers believed that she was. Of a, from a royal background, and so that is the view that dominated over the centuries Periodically, people did go back and look at the vita A at the first life, but they had to go to extra effort to find that it was not the, it was not even the Latin edition that was in every set of Vita Sanctorum.

You had to go and find that life to discover. Her more common origins, let, let's say,

Scott Black: really interesting, and it's interesting because I think for us, for you, that first life is really the more valuable and it's closer to it. Potentially. People who knew her could have written it, but also it has some really striking details.

There are descriptions of her body, her look. Her cheerfulness, which you don't, that kind of attention to her body is not what you expect of a saint's life.

Isabel Moriera: No, that's right. I, I, I like to give credence to this first life. I think because it is so contemporary that it, it shows us a version of Marvin society that seems very strange to us, but the second life.

Shows us a more medieval view, right. In which being royal is, is so important. The first life is very interesting. As you say, there was this sort of description of her body in the life. It's, they talk about her being sort of spelled in how good she is to look at and how beautiful she is, and that she's.

Kind of smart. These are not the descriptions that are conventional to saints lives. Descriptions of women at this time. Most of the other saints of the mayor of Indian area, the female saints are noble women and they are described very discreetly. So I thought it was really indicative that. Bal Hills was coming from a different social milieu that the biographer, the ancient biographers, could sort of look at her and describe her in a way that seems frankly, quite intrusive when you compare it with other works of this time.

Scott Black: The mayor of Indian World was influenced by Rome. It was a very different kind of place than the Anglo-Saxon world that Matilda must have been born into. What would've been like for her to come from what now we would call England into Gaul?

Isabel Moriera: Yeah, so Anglo-Saxon England was not as romanized as Gaul was.

There had of course been Roman Britain, but much of it had been destroyed, the sort of the buildings and so forth, and the Anglo-Saxons themselves ha had been accustomed to building in wood. Yes, it's very much a wooden world. And when she comes to Northern Gaul, she's encountering a late Roman world in which much of the infrastructure of Roman cities must still have been around and visible.

The me of engines themselves seemed to have built in stone, or at least they were capable of rebuilding stone buildings. Although they also built royal palaces in the countryside out of wood. So I think the biggest cultural shock for belt tilt would have just been how prosperous Northern Gaul probably looked by comparison to Anglo-Saxon England.

Scott Black: In your book, you talk about some. Scholarly speculation about her background. We actually don't know anything about her. We don't know her status. We don't know exactly where she's from, but you have put together some informed speculation. Where do you think she's coming from socially?

Isabel Moriera: So this is the one of the big questions that we have about Ba Hill and over the centuries, writers and historians have thought of her differently.

Was she a. A noble woman who was captured from from England, or was she an ordinary person? Was she in fact a slave in Anglo-Saxon England who had been traded? And we don't really have a lot of evidence for this. I have my particular view, and I do elaborate that in the book. I believe that she was of low birth as our earliest written testimony indicate.

And that she was part of the movement of peoples. Who were slaves or captured and that's how she comes to France.

Scott Black: And the slave trade is fascinating at this time. It was a common practice, I believe, across Europe and across this late antique world. Could you tell us a little bit about the slave trade itself and slavery more generally?

Isabel Moriera: So France like most of the Roman Empire, was based on slave economy. The France that Bal til came to, like the one she came from was a world of slaves doing labor in France at this time. Many slaves were basically employed to do domestic work, to work in the fields. To do the kind of labor that the prominent families and the elite were not going to do in terms of the trade.

However, this, this is really hard to gauge, how much is going on at this time? Our sources clearly indicate that people are being traded, perhaps not as much as in subsequent centuries. But it is significant and the sources are recording this. So she is coming from Britain to France as part of a trade that is already established.

And we know that because we have sources slightly earlier that are telling us that these men and women are being brought over the channel to France.

Scott Black: So when she becomes regent and becomes queen. She abolishes the slave trade, but not slavery. Is that correct?

Isabel Moriera: Well, yes. So she is renowned for having made a prohibition in her kingdom that states that slaves should not be transported across her kingdom or within her kingdom.

There had been some earlier legislation that slaves should not be. Traded abroad. What she does that's different is that she adds to that and says, no, they cannot be traded within the kingdom. And I think that's really important because a trade where you cannot move people at this destination, I mean, it's a way to dry up a trade that she could otherwise not have controlled.

Scott Black: Interesting. And this is one of the innovation she made as a queen. I want to get back to some of the controversy around her, uh, as a political figure. But first I think we should back up. 'cause you mentioned the first biography, the first hagiography that we have of hers, but that's not the only source we have or the only source you're using.

Could you sort of sketch out the range of different. Bat tills there are out there right in text.

Isabel Moriera: So we're really fortunate to have some very good sources for her life. , the first is a hagiography that a life of a saint that was written probably within a decade of her death by people who. Could have known her.

So an excellent source. We also have a Carol Engine biography that it, obviously of a later date and that has certain other kinds of information to relay. But in addition to the written work, we also have material items. She, because she was a saint and because her community was able to preserve. Her remains and some of her artifacts across the centuries.

We actually have parts of her skeleton. We have clothing, we have her hair, which is just an an amazing artifact. So we have other kinds of sources for her. And in addition to sort of the formal. Hagiographic work. She also appears in Annals of the Time and she also appears as a secondary figure in some of the other lives of Saints, mostly Bishop Saints of the time.

So we have quite a lot on her. In fact, to go on.

Scott Black: And some of the stories that are going around about her in some of these annals are not by her fans.

Isabel Moriera: That's correct. So she gets a particularly bad rap in Anglo-Saxon sources where she is called a Jezebel, where she's accused of having murdered nine bishops.

And uh. This simply isn't true. Of course, she was part of a political system at a time when bishops were being murdered. However, it is certainly an exaggeration to say that she murdered nine. Bishops,

Scott Black: and that was not the reason she was sent in exile to the monastery.

Isabel Moriera: Well, it, it may have been a sort of a knock on effect repercussion of the bishop's murder, but, uh, essentially she falls foul of the politics.

She's very instrumental during her time in power in keeping a balance among competing factions. And so e eventually. She loses that game and she is put into exile in, in the convent that she had founded.

Scott Black: So her going to the convent you think is not strictly voluntary?

Isabel Moriera: Oh, it was absolutely wasn't voluntary.

And in fact, it seems that it, when she joins the, the convent that there, there was some opposition to her doing that. So this was a very bad time for her. When this happened, she loses power. Her son is now king, but under the influence of other power brokers, she herself is sent to this convent, which she had founded, but I don't think she ever anticipated being a nun in, in the convent.

Scott Black: Was she a nun?

Isabel Moriera: Well, so she wasn't a nun. Initially, I believe in fact, uh, she spends about 15 or 16 years in the convent before her death, and I believe that she only became a nun probably in the last year of her time there. Her grapher wants us to believe that she became a nun immediately, that this was a religious conversion, that this was what she had always wanted to do.

But there are good reasons for thinking that that probably wasn't the case and that she. Hoped perhaps that a reversal in her situation having once happened, could happen again and she could see herself return to power.

Scott Black: One of the really interesting details you talk about is the fact that the lock of hair we have of hers is dyed.

Isabel Moriera: This was discovered in 1983 when the archeologist team under this archeologist LA Lapar, they examined the hair and they saw that it had been dyed her original hair color. Was a sort of strawberry blonde, but it had gray in it and the dye had been made to match the rest of the hair so that it would look as if she was not going gray.

Scott Black: That is, that's fascinating. And it does suggest she probably wasn't a nun if she was concerned with her hair.

Isabel Moriera: I, I think the other thing it says is that her. Hair was likely on view as well. Hmm. You wouldn't bother dying your hair if it was under some kind of elaborate head headdress or a veil or anything else.

So I think that she was keeping up a royal appearance really until her last illness when she perhaps decided that it was time to give up secular ambitions and, uh, see the rest of her life in the convent.

Scott Black: The science. Of archeology that you talk about in the book is also really interesting. You have you discussed the ways that historians and archeologists can use.

Scientific methods to really closely pinpoint origin, place of origin based on the food they ate. This is fantastic science.

Isabel Moriera: Yes. Right. Now, I, I should sort of preface this by saying that with the exception of the hair and the bones that are now in the parish church, that these scientific methods are things that we are not really able to.

Check her for, uh, the problem being that much of her skeleton was given away over the centuries, but the scientific methods that you could potentially use would be to do isotopic analysis, which can tell you a lot about a person's diet, especially their protein diet. Whether they ate mostly meat or whether they ate mostly fish, that sort of thing.

The thing that was. Really interesting to me is this use of str analysis of the teeth. If we had belt hills teeth, we could do analysis on them that would enable us to know where she had spent the first years of her life. And that's because the. The teeth essentially hold a footprint, like a geographical footprint of where a person has spent these early years.

And this can be done by sort of looking at like the kind of water that they would've drunk, for example. And yeah, it's, it's just, it's an amazing, uh, sort of thing. Unfortunately, we don't have her teeth. There are also opportunities to look at her bones. For example, you can tell when somebody was weaned.

From breast milk. But again, the problem is that, you know, we don't have access to, we don't have access to the teeth because we don't have them. And her bones are relics and they are, although they were examined in 1983, they're now part of the back in the re que in the, in the church. And I, I'm not aware of any plans to reexamine them at this point.

Even though now we have better methods of examining them.

Scott Black: It's fascinating. And just the thought that we can so closely pinpoint where someone lived based on this very little material is terrific. You also point out that it's location and geography that determined someone's health over their life rather than their status.

That's really interesting too.

Isabel Moriera: So I really went into this when I was writing the part of the book that dealt with her childhood. So we know. Absolutely nothing about her childhood, because none of the written sources addressed that. However, when I was writing this biography as part of a series, the editor and the reviewer said, well, still, we would like to know something about what her childhood could have been like.

And so I did some explorations into this to try and find out, you know what her life. There could have have been like, and you know how those sources could be used to reconstruct that

Scott Black: and really, really interesting. I wanna move into the sort of final part of your book on her after lives. I. Her importance for later historians and later artists and literary figures.

There's a rich set of materials that talks about her, or maybe doesn't talk about her, but uses her as the basis for some romances in the 19th century. Your book starts and is framed by a discussion of a statue of her. Could you talk a little bit about her afterlives, her various afterlives, including what you call her as an abolitionist saint.

Isabel Moriera: Yeah. So she does have this very sort of varied afterlife in the sources. Perhaps starting with the Middle Ages, she becomes this, the subject of some very strange stories in, uh, in which she is represented as the mutilated of her own sons. And that storyline does get picked up in the 19th century by an artist Lumina, who paints a, a picture of this, this event.

And so with the. Anglo-Saxon stories about her being a Jezebel, and then the, these medieval stories of her mutilating, her sons. We definitely have a, a very unusual trajectory for this saint. Of course, at the same time. The memory of her is being kept fresh in the convent of Shell, which persists the con convent of Shell remains active until the French Revolution.

And so for them, she is the perfect queen and nun, and she's often represented in a nun's habit. So they're very much interested in her as a royal figure and as a monastic figure. And. This changes in the 19th century when we suddenly have this image of her as an abolitionist. And I was very curious to know how that had come about.

Because of course, her, during her life, she had done much to try to rescue slaves in her kingdom. But through the Middle Ages, she wasn't known for that. And even through the early modern period, the Abess didn't seem to reference her as a freer of slaves, very much so for me, this was very intriguing. I wanted to sort of go back, look at the sources and try and figure out at what point does this become an important part of who she is represented to be.

And

Scott Black: it sounds like that happens really because of the abolitionist movement in the beginning of the 19th century in France, where they wanna reclaim, I guess, a foremother

Isabel Moriera: right now. This gets to be a little tricky because of course, what I wanted to find is that she was always thought an abolitionist for the abolitionist movement because that would make.

A great story. I really did a lot of work to try and find that information, and we know we have these abolitionist societies in the 1830s and forties, but I couldn't find any references to BA tilt herself. So this sort of added to the mystery as to why the sculptor had chosen to label her as an abolitionist in 1848.

It's not that the memory of her freeing slaves had been lost entirely, but it wasn't a huge, a hugely strong part of the abolitionist culture. Up until then. I even speculated to myself. Whether the fact that she was a female potential abolitionist was designed to encourage women in France to become abolitionists.

But unfortunately, again, I, I hit some roadblocks there. I couldn't seem to quite find the right kind of connection, even though we know that there, there were women involved in that.

Scott Black: This suggests that all biography is shaped by assumptions. That are local to that particular time, to the moment it's being written and assumptions about what makes a good life or a good life story.

Your biography. Is continuing that you are thinking about bat til in our terms. Mm-hmm. I wanted just to sort of conclude by asking what do you think our assumptions or your assumptions are about what makes a good biography? What makes a good life story, or what makes a good life?

Isabel Moriera: That's an interesting question.

Of course. For me, I was trying to find sort of what. What is the hook for belt tilt? You know what is going to resonate with modern audiences? And I really felt that both the statue in the Luxembourg Gardens, which is where most people might actually know her from, and her reputation as an abolitionist would have most relevance to readers today.

Of course, B Tilled in the seventh century was not doing exactly what. Abolitionists were doing in the ninth century, although I do think that there are some ways in which they are similar. She was attacking the slave trade and that was also the approach of the abolitionists to try to stop the trade. So in, in that regard, there were some kind of convergences there but Bal Hills as a 19th century icon of abolition.

It is interesting because it really related to that moment in time when a sculptor like Tera and perhaps his associates saw an opportunity. To make a political statement. And in the book I offset this with another image of ba Hild, which is, uh, done by the very famous painter Angar, who's very well known for painting these obelisks, right?

He creates an image of ba hild, and I use that for the front of the book. That image is of a very sweet looking, saintly woman. She's. Dressed, uh, in secular garb. But as a queen, she looks very feminine and she's there really as a representative of the Royal House, which had descended from the Orlie.

And so there was sort of a lot of connections there for them. When the sculptor put on his statue, abolition of slavery, he inscribes it on the book that she holds. He was making a new statement. About who she was or could be. And I mentioned that this was this moment in time because within months the monarchy was deposed.

King Louis Philippe, who of course had been behind the, uh, statues in the garden. The Luxembourg Gardens, he was deposed, and Viktor Tera doesn't have the same kind of patronage thereafter. So it's sort of this, this particular moment in time when it was meaningful and then suddenly didn't become meaningful again.

And the next sort of big cultural moment is the painting by Lumina. Of the tortured boys. And I think, you know, for the 19th century, this is sort of whiplash between, you know, here she is as an important political figure. She's always been a saintly figure and now she's a mutilating figure. And I just found this really fascinating and I hope that readers would find this fascinating also.

Scott Black: It's a terrific history and a terrific sort of. Scholarly exploration of both her, but also how someone gets remembered. I'm really struck also by your comment that your editor really wanted something about her childhood. 'cause that says something about the kind of figures we want in our biographies, which are fully rounded people who lead ordinary lives.

I would guess there's nothing about what she ate in the hagiography or the political right. Uh, representations. Yeah. So it does say something about what we think a real life should be, how to tell the story, what the significant parts of a biography are.

Isabel Moriera: I think that's absolutely right. I think that as readers, we are curious about these other aspects of somebody's life, and because of archeology and other sort of scientific opportunities, there are ways of fleshing out her society and sort of seeing her exist in the seventh century.

Yes. I was also surprised by the request to write a chapter on some on her childhood because it's like go ahead, write a chapter on something that sort of doesn't exist. But in the end, I thought it was a very useful exercise and it does help give us a sense of a person who lived, and that's really what I wanted.

To come out of this biography is to have a sense that a person of the seventh century had a life that she could live, that she could have a family, that she could preside over, a court, that she could have. Political ambitions and that she could be remembered for many, many centuries. I just find this fascinating.

Scott Black: It's an excellent biography. I really enjoyed reading it and I've enjoyed talking with you. Thanks very much, Isabel.

Isabel Moriera: Thank you, Scott.

Scott Black: You have been listening to the Virtual Jewel Box Podcast of the Tanner Humanity Center. Our theme music is Jelly Roll Morton's Perfect rag. Thanks for joining us.