Dhuoda (also known as Dodana) is the only known female Carolingian poet and one of the few lay poets whose work has survived from the period. Her place of birth is not known, but her name suggests a northern Frankish connection. She wrote her Liber Manualis (Handbook, 843), a book of advice for her son William, in Latin, but her style shows the influence of Germanic half lines and stress patterns. It is likely that her first language was a Germanic one and that she wrote in Latin because most learning and literature of the time were carried on in that language.
Dhuoda's writing reveals the sort of education that could only have been afforded by a noble family. Her first documented activity is her marriage to Bernard, Duke of Septimania, at the imperial palace at Aachen on 29 June 824. Bernard was well connected through his father, Wilhelm of Gellone, who was a cousin of Charlemagne, was renowned for fighting the Saracens in northern Spain, and appears by name in many of the chansons de geste. Before their marriage Bernard had been appointed to a position at the court of his godfather, Emperor Louis the Pious; his duties included tutoring the future Charles the Bald.
When Louis the Pious's sons began to offer a potential threat to the supremacy of their father, Louis, fearful of Bernard's growing personal power and suspicious of his motives, sent him to Spain. Dhuoda went with her husband, but he sent her to live under a sort of house arrest in Uzès, in present-day southern France, soon after her son William was born on 29 November 826.
Dhuoda does not criticize Bernard in her Liber Manualis; indeed, she awards him nothing but the utmost respect and loyalty and encourages William to do the same. Bernard was not popular with the nobles who surrounded him, however, and was often accused of tyranny. There were persistent rumors of a relationship between Bernard and Judith, the second wife of Louis the Pious; he also stole church property during military campaigns and switched loyalties on several occasions, depending on the prevailing balance of power. Dhuoda does not directly mention these faults, but while she exhorts William to respect and honor his father she does not recommend that he emulate Bernard's behavior.
In 831 Bernard allied himself with Pépin of Aquitaine, a rival of Louis the Pious, and both were accused of treachery. Bernard built up his power base in Aquitaine, ostensibly in support of Louis the Pious; he was clearly hedging his bets, but after Louis's death, at the decisive battle of Fontenoy in 841, Bernard backed the losing side. Charles the Bald emerged as the victor, and Bernard was in danger of retribution from his former pupil. To forestall this eventuality he sent his son William to Charles's court as a hostage.
Dhuoda was still in Uzès and had just borne a second son, who had not yet been christened. Bernard had the baby brought to him, named him Bernard, and left Dhuoda with neither husband nor children. It was against this background that she wrote the Liber Manualis as a book of instruction for William; it was completed in 843, when he was seventeen. Forced to live apart from her children and husband, Dhuoda saw her work as a way of carrying out her duty as a wife and mother.
The Liber Manualis consists mostly of prose but includes four poems. There are seventy-three sections, with several introductory dedications and concluding pieces. The preface recounts the birth of William's younger brother, who is mentioned throughout the book. The first eleven sections concentrate on God; sections 12 and 13 deal with William's father. After that the book develops the theme of obedience to God and loyalty to one's earthly masters, including clergy, royalty, and statesmen. The advice echoes Christian homilies and commentaries but also covers secular matters. The large space given to practical and political considerations is distinctive in a work of the time, as is the emphasis on astutia (the ability to deal with people), which is not one of the celebrated Christian virtues. Dhuoda's theology is more generous than that which prevailed in her day: for example, she urges William to pray for heretics and those who have not confessed their sins--people who, according to most clerics, would merit damnation. Dhuoda recalls her family's history of violent death; fearing such a fate for her husband and sons, she is willing to believe in the power of prayer to redeem even apparently hopeless cases. This part of the work provides valuable historical information about family relationships in Frankish court circles around the time of Charlemagne.
In her varied, rather experimental approach Dhuoda follows the examples of Alcuin and Hrabanus Maurus. She demonstrates a clear grasp of poetic form, including sapphic verses and more-rhythmical sections that are reminiscent of the liturgy and of Germanic verse forms. Dhuoda's language is fluent; she quotes Scripture and lightly reflects Carolingian commentators without the scholarly tone cultivated by the monastic writers. She names three important influences: Donatus, Isidore of Seville, and Gregory the Great; others are evident though not cited by name, including Prudentius and Augustine as well as contemporary authors. There is some evidence that she read the love poems of Ovid. Her Latin is not perfect, but the Latin of most Carolingians in the mid ninth century was idiosyncratic. Many of her "errors" are colloquialisms, some are grammatical misunderstandings, and others are caused by imitation of the elaborate language of classical authors. Dhuoda did not have the benefit of a complete monastic education or of access to a large library.
What is striking, however, is the fervor and immediacy of her language as she addresses God in simple but not craven obedience and implores William to submit to the duties of son, nobleman, and Christian servant of God. She is concerned about her son and sees herself as interceding with God on his behalf. Humility formulas abound in the poem; Dhuoda laments her physical weakness, her inability to concentrate on long prayers, and her tendency to melancholy, but the tone is one of resignation and acceptance rather than self-condemnation.
The work ends with Dhuoda's epitaph, her wishes regarding her burial, and instruction to her son on how to deal with matters of inheritance and family debts. It is not known how much longer Dhuoda lived after the writing of the Liber Manualis, but her husband was executed for treason a year later by Charles the Bald.
The recipient of the Liber Manualis followed in his father's footsteps, capturing Barcelona in 848. He threw in his lot with Pépin, the son of his father's friend Pépin of Aquitaine, and in 849 William, too, was executed for treason. In spite of his mother's efforts, William had been caught up in the same sort of intrigue and violence that had characterized his father's life. There is no reliable information on the fate of his brother Bernard.
Dhuoda has been largely ignored. She was neither statesman nor cleric, and, unlike the poetasters of the courts, she wrote for personal rather than political or religious reasons. Her concern with family honor and the proper behavior of a young nobleman of an illustrious Christian family adds to the sparse historical records of the time. Her very existence is testimony to the effectiveness of Charlemagne's educational reforms, at least for those who could afford to be tutored: the love of books and learning that is evident in her work demonstrates that her education was more than superficial. She read widely and understood complex classical works written in a Latin that was by no means straightforward.
Dhuoda had no need to dress her work up in flattering terms to impress a patron or to keep to a particular monastery or abbey "house style"; there was no bishop or schoolmaster to check the doctrinal purity of her ideas or the grammatical correctness of her language. This freedom gives her work a freshness and originality highly unusual for the period. She was aware, however, of the potential future of her little book, and on occasion she urges a general reader to take encouragement from her admonitions to her son. The inclusion of literary set pieces such as the prologue and preface, introductory and concluding chapters, and acrostics and literary allusions show a well-educated writer choosing and adapting existing literary models. Both verse and prose are within her repertoire, and theology is mixed with practical advice. Her appreciation of a wider context for her work, in terms both of antecedents and of potential audience, reveals that Dhuoda consciously aligned herself with the literary figures of her day. In the 1990s interest in this important author was revived, and new translations, commentaries, and articles began to appear. Inclusion in major reference works and books on women writers may yet ensure that Dhuoda is brought to her rightful place in the history of early Western literature.
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