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Travels With A Medieval Queen
Two Women Set Out Across Europe in Search of a Dead Queen
The medieval queen in question is Constance of Hauteville, daughter of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily, wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, and mother to the Emperor Frederick II. In 1194, at the age of forty, Constance journeyed from Germany south to reconquer her father's throne. On the way she discovered that she was pregnant for the first time. She decided to give birth in public so that the world would know the child was truly hers. These intriguing facts, and very few others, are all we know directly of Constance's life.
Seventeen years ago, Mary Taylor Simeti promised in On Persephone's Island--her now-classic memoir of an American in Sicily--that she would someday tell the story of Constance (who was, like her, an expatriate and the mother of a bicultural family). In Travels with a Medieval Queen, Simeti keeps her promise: retracing Constance's route from Germany to Sicily, contrasting the exotic setting of Constance's childhood in Palermo with that of her married life in the north, and drawing on reading in contiguous fields to flesh out a spare legacy of historical facts. This is the beautifully illustrated chronicle of Simeti's twentieth-century travels, first in books, then on the road, as she searches the landscapes and the monuments that survive from the twelfth century for clues to the inner life of a mother who was also a monarch.
The medieval queen in question is Constance of Hauteville, daughter of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily, wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, and mother to the Emperor Frederick II. In 1194, at the age of forty, Constance journeyed from Germany south to reconquer her father's throne. On the way she discovered that she was pregnant for the first time. She decided to give birth in public so that the world would know the child was truly hers. These intriguing facts, and very few others, are all we know directly of Constance's life.
Seventeen years ago, Mary Taylor Simeti promised in On Persephone's Island--her now-classic memoir of an American in Sicily--that she would someday tell the story of Constance (who was, like her, an expatriate and the mother of a bicultural family). In Travels with a Medieval Queen, Simeti keeps her promise: retracing Constance's route from Germany to Sicily, contrasting the exotic setting of Constance's childhood in Palermo with that of her married life in the north, and drawing on reading in contiguous fields to flesh out a spare legacy of historical facts. This is the beautifully illustrated chronicle of Simeti's twentieth-century travels, first in books, then on the road, as she searches the landscapes and the monuments that survive from the twelfth century for clues to the inner life of a mother who was also a monarch.
368 pages, Paperback
First published December 7, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 12, 2010
This book was SUPPOSED to be about the journey taken by Constance of Hauteville from the Kingdom of Sicily (where her father was king) to Germany, to become wife of the Holy Roman Emperor. What is REALLY was about was the journey taken by the author and her friend along Constance's ROUTE, a sort of "reliving" of that experience. As a travel guide, it was interesting, but history (which I was looking for)? Not so much.
February 28, 2009
I liked the historical part of the book. I didn't care for the narrative. It bounced back and forth between the author's travels as she traced Queen Constance's return journey to Sicily and the actual historical infromation about the Queen (which was very limited since there wasn't a lot written about her in history).
October 17, 2017
I just can't keep trying to read this book anymore.
It sounded right up my street, combining travel and historical sites with an actual Medieval queen! How fascinating! It didn't live up to my excitement in the slightest and I had to force myself to stay awake while reading it, put it down at the slightest opportunity, and I've spent most of 2016+17 avoiding reading it sooo yeah it's going in the unfinished pile.
The premise of this book is that Simeti and her friend decided to travel the same route through Italy that Constance of Hauteville travelled while pregnant in the Middles Ages. Except they don't really stick to her actual route and guess a lot of it. That would be fair enough because hey, Medieval records on specific women's lives are kind of patchy, but Simeti just fills in the gaps with her imagination. Some of her imaginings are reasonable. The feeling of a new mother, the fact everyone's going to be tired after travelling through some mountains in the cold, but most of it is just wild speculation of what Constance might have been feeling, heavily influenced by Simeti's own feelings on the subject. It isn't good history, and it doesn't make fun reading either.
Mostly, this book is Simeti rambling on about the route they took, describing buildings Constance may have seen in a fairly uninspired way, and then dryly reciting some facts. The facts were actually pretty cool, as Constance is an interesting figure, but this book is not going to be the way I learn about her.
It sounded right up my street, combining travel and historical sites with an actual Medieval queen! How fascinating! It didn't live up to my excitement in the slightest and I had to force myself to stay awake while reading it, put it down at the slightest opportunity, and I've spent most of 2016+17 avoiding reading it sooo yeah it's going in the unfinished pile.
The premise of this book is that Simeti and her friend decided to travel the same route through Italy that Constance of Hauteville travelled while pregnant in the Middles Ages. Except they don't really stick to her actual route and guess a lot of it. That would be fair enough because hey, Medieval records on specific women's lives are kind of patchy, but Simeti just fills in the gaps with her imagination. Some of her imaginings are reasonable. The feeling of a new mother, the fact everyone's going to be tired after travelling through some mountains in the cold, but most of it is just wild speculation of what Constance might have been feeling, heavily influenced by Simeti's own feelings on the subject. It isn't good history, and it doesn't make fun reading either.
Mostly, this book is Simeti rambling on about the route they took, describing buildings Constance may have seen in a fairly uninspired way, and then dryly reciting some facts. The facts were actually pretty cool, as Constance is an interesting figure, but this book is not going to be the way I learn about her.
March 8, 2020
This book is part of a rather peculiar genre, a modern journey that attempts medieval insight as it follows the route thought to have been taken from Germany to Sicily in the 12th century. So it's part memoir, part travelogue, part historical biography. Did I mention astrology?
It's a tricky assignment and plenty of potential pitfalls await the author/voyager.
However, the biographical details about Constance are generally handled quite well. Yes, I wish that characters (like a fictional lover) weren't invented. I wish the author had refrained from talking about her own family quite so much. The horoscope (FWIW) commissioned for Constance is based on a flawed date of birth, and why include such a thing anyway?
Nevertheless, this book is a noble effort.
It's a tricky assignment and plenty of potential pitfalls await the author/voyager.
However, the biographical details about Constance are generally handled quite well. Yes, I wish that characters (like a fictional lover) weren't invented. I wish the author had refrained from talking about her own family quite so much. The horoscope (FWIW) commissioned for Constance is based on a flawed date of birth, and why include such a thing anyway?
Nevertheless, this book is a noble effort.
February 18, 2019
I enjoyed this book partly because there is much about Sicily that intriques me and I have visited many tof the places mentioned. The mixture of travelogue, history and imagination is unusual, and perhaps not sufficiently rigorous for purists, however, having read "Persephone's Island" and appreciated the author's observations on architecture, nature and culture I was not disappointed.
I would return to this book if planning a trip through Italy.
I would return to this book if planning a trip through Italy.
July 1, 2024
I've never read this author before, but I couldn't get into this style. I knew it combined travel and history but I was hoping for more history.
June 22, 2011
Great book. It fails to fall neatly into any discrete category, but overlaps with memoirs, travel lit, history and historical fiction. Simeti, an expatriated American now resident in Sicily is trying to recreate the journey of a medieval empress down to her ancestral home in Sicily. Much of the journey presented his is imaginatively invented. I appreciate Simeti's attempts to put Constance's experience into (then-)current scholarship (though now somewhat outdated.) It is apparent that the author is familiar with popular biographies in English and Italian, but her repeated claims that there's nothing else belies her lack of searching into German scholarship/biographies.
Some of the most interesting thoughts have to do with Simeti's application of how difficult journeys shape and forge personalities and groups into something new and stronger. All in all, I have a much greater appreciation for Constance of Aragon and her world than I had before.
Some of the most interesting thoughts have to do with Simeti's application of how difficult journeys shape and forge personalities and groups into something new and stronger. All in all, I have a much greater appreciation for Constance of Aragon and her world than I had before.
October 10, 2016
Fascinating. I wasn't sure I was going to like it because it is a modern author trying to retrace the Empress Constance Hauteville's journey from Germany then the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom that was hers by hereditary right -- Sicily. But the author had done some incredible research that I found fascinating. I had never heard of the medical school in Salerno Italy form 9-12th century that not only had women students, but women professors and surgeons at least one of which was famous enough to write a medical text that is extant. A research rabbit hole, I will have to follow.
The fact that the Empress was 41 and had conceived for the first time opened up the medical issues, travelling that distance during a pregnancy that was too precious to possibly loose and where she could stay and rest due to the bad relations between the papcy and her husband Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor was another interesting element.
The fact that the Empress was 41 and had conceived for the first time opened up the medical issues, travelling that distance during a pregnancy that was too precious to possibly loose and where she could stay and rest due to the bad relations between the papcy and her husband Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor was another interesting element.
January 7, 2013
I picked this up in a discount bookstore in Australia when I was running out of things to read, and I was a little disappointed because it's not really what the cover sells it as- more of a travelogue of the modern author ('we drove here and got lost then didn't have time to look round here then found another Romanesque castle on the map we thought we would drop in on'-esque) based on the very vague possibilities of where Constance may have possibly travelled than a historical, factual book, but once I got past my disappointment it was OK... a pretty slow read that took me several months to finish though!
July 30, 2012
the story of Constance, a Sicilian princess with the most magnificent dowry Europe had ever seen, wed to Hery son of the German Emperor Barbarossa and the author's attempt to recreate and relive the princess's journey from Germany back to Palermo to reclaim her father's crown.
The author has done her best to piece together a story from the fragments of historical data available and though I personally find it a chore to read long descriptions of architecture and landscape;the author's passion is clear in what is a labour of love.
The novel is peppered with stories and people from the crusades including Eleanor of Aquitane and Richard the Lionheart.
The author has done her best to piece together a story from the fragments of historical data available and though I personally find it a chore to read long descriptions of architecture and landscape;the author's passion is clear in what is a labour of love.
The novel is peppered with stories and people from the crusades including Eleanor of Aquitane and Richard the Lionheart.
July 30, 2008
I kept reading this book because a friend loaned it to me, but it was a little boring. It's kind of half travel book, half medieval history. It just wasn't my style; I would have been more interested in a regular biography. It's hard to get excited about a book full of descriptions of landscapes and musing about the trails that Constance (the medieval queen) MIGHT have taken when she was alive. Maybe I'll try a regular biography of the same kind of period next.
November 16, 2008
The author follows the journey of Constance, a medieval queen. Jumps between actual journey, actual facts from Constance's era, and what the author thinks Constance would experience. It was hard for me to follow
April 8, 2009
My mother and I adore this author, and surprised each other several years ago by buying this book for one another for Christmas! If you can't go to Sicily, buy one of Simeti's books instead.
August 5, 2013
Parts of it were interesting. Parts of it were very boring. There was too much about the author and her friend. I really didn't care about them.
April 6, 2016
The writer just isn't clever enough to turn the premise (travelogue plus history) into a good read.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews