Radegund

Women in Antiquity

by E. T. Dailey

A princess born to the Thuringian royal house. A captive in war, forced to marry the Frankish king who killed her family. A queen, who renounced her position, received consecration as a deaconess, and took monastic vows. A religious leader, who acquired a fragment of the Cross of the Crucifixion for her convent of Holy Cross in Poitiers. And, lastly, a saint, remembered for her healings, exorcisms, and extreme self-mortification. Such was Radegund, a woman who lived through an era defined by headlong change. Honored as a "mother" by subsequent Frankish kings and as a holy woman by her nuns and devotees, Radegund enjoyed a reputation for righteousness that spread throughout the whole of medieval Europe, with later queens emulating her pious achievements. For generations, she defined medieval queenship, female monastic practice, and the expectations associated with holy women. Today, she is often envisioned as a pan-European saint.

Radegund presents a new interpretation of this remarkable woman, examining her vibrant life and legacy. E. T. Dailey shows how she succeeded in establishing a place for herself within this difficult and dangerous world, despite the trials she faced. He also demonstrates how Radegund achieved a position of prominence as a woman in a foreign land without resorting to the violence and intrigue that characterized the lives of other prominent women during this period. Based on a wealth of English, French, and German scholarship, this book will equip experts and lay readers with a concise, authoritative, and accessible portrait of Radegund.

Genres: Biography

228 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2023

Reviews

[Jim Chevallier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am probably one of the rare people to have studied the life of Radegund closely, along with various commentaries on it. So I know the subject well. I was pleased to see this relatively recent overview of her subject. But having now read it, I have very uneven feelings about it. Certainly, it is not the definitive work on the subject it might have been. It's not like it brings NO new insights. I had never before seen the suggestion that Radegund's brother's name (generally thought to be unknown) might be embedded in the poem that Fortunatus has often been thought to have written (and that is this author's position) on the destruction of Radegund's homeland, but which some scholars now feel she wrote (a hypothesis Dauley rejects a little summarily based on another writer's thesis). My own position - take it for what it is worth - is to split the difference, considering that Radegund herself likely wrote out at least the bare bones of the tale, but required Fortunatus' expert help to craft her "material" into a respectable poem; that is, if she did not craft this sophisticated work on her own, nor did she simply "assign" it to her resident poet. Some of his other positions are arguable or, sometimes, wrong. He has an annoying habit of calling any woman in captivity a "slave" or even assuming captivity where we have no evidence. If Ingund and her sister Aregund WERE captives of the Franks, given that they might have been the (well-born) daughters of Radegund's uncle, they were no more slaves than she was. But in fact we know so little of either that we cannot say, for instance, that Ingund was not conventionally married to Chlothar - as opposed to Radegund herself who really WAS a captive. As for Aregund, Gregory says that Chlothar went to find her at her villa, which Dailey curiously interprets as the place of her "servitude" (Gregory, the source, makes no such suggestion). Yet the fact that she was the queen's sister alone argues against her remaining servile, if ever she was. He also takes the child Radegund's giving food scraps to the poorer residents of her estate as "servile behavior" when it plainly seems to be the act of a higher status person giving charity to others less exalted (and prefigures service she would do as a queen, when she most certainly was NOT servile). He dismisses accounts of her acting as a "nun" as a queen, but the fact that Chlothar had six children by Ingund and some by other queens and none by Radegund at least leaves at least the possibility that Chlothar (already older) had little or possibly no congress with his much younger wife.
He also curiously touches on her possible desire for children, something not so much as hinted at in the source material. This puts another point in relief - his lack of interest in Agnes' role in Radegund's life before they founded the convent. Yet Radegund says in a latter that she had virtually raised Agnes from childhood. That is, if we have no evidence she wanted to bear children, she clearly savored a maternal role. Certainly, given Agnes' importance in her life, one would like to know more, even if that required looking at better-documented similar relationships.
He also glides over other points that might have born closer examination. Radegund's attempt to escape her upcoming marriage raises a number of questions, not least where she would have gone when Chlothar and his brothers controlled what was her known world. Or how she would have confronted the danger facing anyone who might have helped her (Chlothar was hardly known to be forgiving). One very credible explanation for this "escape" is a Germanic custom which persisted in a more symbolic form of a bride escaping and being "captured" by her fiancé. It was, by this account, merely one more ritual.
He questions a tale of her burning down a pagan temple "since there is little evidence to support the idea of a thriving Frankish paganism". To the contrary, we have signs that paganism persisted into Charlemagne's time. Even in Radegund's, Frankish warriors, nominally Christian, were accused of sacrificing Goth women and children to a river god.
He assumes with little foundation that she was already a Christian in Thuringia, though the poem which she either wrote or greatly contributed to mentions "lares" (household gods), a purely pagan element, there.
Etc. Any reader who is not closely interested in Radegund or Germanic customs of the period may be finding this tedious. My overall point is that Dailey makes assumptions which are at the least arguable and sometimes are simply demonstrably wrong.
This is disappointing, since the book is readable and probably a useful introduction to Radegund's story overall. But it is nowhere near as thorough or authoritative as it might have been. Should it spark your interest, I would recommend you start by going back to the several period accounts of her life and then read the more nuanced commentary (hard to sort out from the many essentially religious retellings) on her story and her time for richer illumination.
(NOTE: Like so many academic works, in print copy this is priced more for libraries than individuals. If the book interests you, check out the Kindle.)

[James Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very convincing; tends to overinterpret its sources.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Retells, in an original and accessible way, an exciting story which too many scholars will have wrongly assumed they knew already.

[Katie D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dailey does an excellent job synthesizing the three hagiographies, while weaving his own analysis as to the context and motivations of their content. Well written, a fun read, and the instances of close analysis on Latin translations are very well done. Occasionally the interpretations toed a line of outright speculation, but remained within the academic and logical constraints of the rest of the book.