Tyranny and Resistance: Reading Countess Dhuoda’s Liber Manualis as a Prose Apologia for Medieval Rebel Barons

The Countess of Barcelona, Dhuoda, wrote a treatise in 841-843 for her son William entitled Liber manualis, or Handbook. Her writing is often compared to the books of political advice known as Mirrors for Princes. In it, Dhuoda exhorted her son William to place loyalty to his father, Count Bernard of Septimania and Marquis of the Spanish March, above all other social bonds, even while she acknowledged the anointed character of the ruling Carolingian kings. She advised William as a noble prince about how to negotiate his relationships with the powers of his day in Book III of her treatise.

Dhuoda repeatedly urged her son to remember his princely heritage through his father Bernard and his grandfather William of Gellone. The elder William, cousin to the king, Count of Toulouse, victorious general over the Umayyads for Barcelona, and revered as a saint, operated in southern Gaul among Franks, Goths, Basques, and Iberian hispani. He built a patrimony under Louis the Pious, holding significant lands and honores (titles) in the fiercely independent region of Aquitaine.

In the years when Dhuoda composed her treatise, her family’s hold on such power and territories was at risk because of political machinations in the Carolingian courts. Her husband Bernard strove to rebuild their influence and their son William eventually made a bid for independence from the Carolingian juggernaut, traveling to Cordoba and negotiating with the Umayyad emir in his efforts.

This paper argues one may read Book III of Dhuoda’s Liber manualis as an early prose apologia for the rights of princely families vis-à-vis royalty. That very princely identity was vested in two key points: loyalty to family and attachment to a belief in their right to possess lands, offices, and jurisdictions analogous to those held by royal families. Those very points infused later poetic epics of rebellion and resistance. Sunderland (Rebel Barons, 2017) argued that the ‘rebel barons’ cycles of chansons de geste demonstrated political resistance to tyranny and arbitrary, unjust governance. William of Gellone’s warrior-cum-monk identity underwent elaborate, fictional transformation in the Guillaume cycle of chansons de gestes, some of which included his unjust treatment by his king. I argue that the core epic themes of resistance, rebellion, and tragic hubris were already present in Dhuoda’s 9^th-century prose treatise.

My poster will contain the following visuals in color:

Two 9^th century maps: Aquitaine/Spanish March; the Carolingian kingdoms;

Manuscript images: excerpts from a 10^th century copy of Dhuoda’s Liber manualis, illuminated pages from Guillaume cycle of chansons de gestes.

Schemae: Guillaume cycle of chansons; Outline of Liber Manualis, Book III

Genealogical charts: Dhuoda’s family; Carolingian kings