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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2025
This article examines how clerical reformers in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries utilized the Old Testament figure of Deborah to legitimize and encourage the active participation of elite laywomen in ecclesiastical reform. Focusing on key figures such as the countesses Matilda of Tuscany and Adelaide of Turin, the study shows how reformers crafted allegorical and historical links between biblical women and contemporary noblewomen, promoting the latter as agents of reform. Ecclesiastical reformers such as Peter Damian and Bonizo of Sutri made particular use of the Book of Judges’ Deborah to explore concepts of female secular authority defending the Latin Christian Church. The article argues that these reformers newly emphasized Deborah’s militant and authoritative role in the Old Testament rather than promoting existing late antique and early medieval readings of Deborah as a wife, widow, and mother. This shift in exegetical interpretations of Deborah directly supported the roles of elite laywomen in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries as vital co-participants in the ecclesiastical reform movement.
1 This reform movement is commonly called the “Gregorian Reform,” after Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–1085). I am avoiding this term in order to highlight the fact that the developments the article discusses were not created by any kind of papal-imposed campaign but were instead the product of multiple individuals working throughout reformist circles.
2 Peter Damian, no. 143, in Die Briefe, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Die Briefe der Deutschen Kaiserzeit 4, ed. Kurt Reindel (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1989), 4:524–525: “indigent plerumque sexus infirmior auctoritate virili. Sed ubi mulier rectius iudicat, dignum est ut ei vir auctoritatis suae legibus non obsistat.” An English translation of Peter’s letters is available; see Damian, Peter, Letters, trans. Blum, Owen J., 6 vols. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted, translations are mine.
3 Genesis 21:12.
4 de Lubac, Henri, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Sebanc, Mark, 3 vols (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998): 1:5–6 Google Scholar.
5 Reformers reworked the legends of Simon Magus, for example, to support new arguments against the purchasing of ecclesiastical offices; see especially Cowdrey, H.E.J., “Simon Magus in South Italy,” in Popes and Church Reform in the 11th Century (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Variorum, 2000), 77–90 Google Scholar. I.S. Robinson argued that allegorical biblical commentary thrived in the papal-Matildine circle specifically as a tool of supporting Gregorian policies; “The Metrical Commentary on Genesis of Donizo of Canossa,” Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale 41 (1974): 11–12. See also Smalley, Beryl, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 46–49 Google Scholar. Patrick Healy discusses the Gregorian faction’s use of biblical exegesis to support their concepts of holy war in his essay “Merito nominetur virago: Matilda of Tuscany in the Polemics of the Investiture Contest,” in Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Women 4: Victims or Viragos?, ed. Christine Meek and Catherine Lawless (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005), 53–55. Jonathan Riley-Smith discussed the role of Matilda of Tuscany’s “think-tank” for fomenting the early intellectual impetus for the First Crusade; The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 45–47.
6 Consider, for example, Hrabanus Maurus’s commentaries on Esther and Judith, which he gifted to Carolingian empresses, as well as other works of exegesis that he presented to Carolingian kings. See de Jong, Mayke, “The Empire as ecclesia: Hrabanus Maurus and Biblical historia for Rulers,” in The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Hen, Yitzhak and Innes, Matthew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 191–226, esp. 205–20710.1017/CBO9780511496332.010CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Jong, Mayke, “Exegesis for an Empress,” in Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 69–100 10.1163/9789004476400_008CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Hrabanus Maurus, no. 17a–b, in Epistolae, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Epistolae Karolini aevi (III) 5, ed. E. Dümmler (Berlin: Weidmann, 1899), 420–422; Aelfric’s Homilies on Judith, Esther, and the Maccabees, ed. S.D. Lee (1999), https://users.ox.ac.uk/~stuart/kings/main.htm.
8 The two Lives of the Ottonian empress Matilda, for example, drew heavily from Venantius but include almost no references to biblical women. The later Life mentions the biblical Judith once, primarily as a model for encouraging the empress to frequent prayer. See “Vita Mathildis reginae antiquor,” and “Vita Mathildis reginae posterior,” in Die Lebensbeschreibungen der Königin Mathilde, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 66, ed. Bernd Schütte (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1994), 107–204. Sean Gilsdorf has translated both vitae in Queenship and Sanctity: The Lives of Mathilda and the Epitaph of Adelheid (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004).
9 Auerbach, Erich, “Figura” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 72 Google Scholar.
10 De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 1:13–17.
11 Rubenstein, Jay, “Biography and Autobiography in the Middle Ages,” in Writing Medieval History, ed. Partner, Nancy (London: Hodder Education, 2005), 24–26 Google Scholar.
12 Peter Damian’s letters in particular make frequent reference to the need to prepare for the Last Judgement.
13 Auerbach, “Figura,” 58.
14 De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 1:25.
15 Vitalis, Orderic, Historia Æcclesiastica, ed. and trans. Chibnall, Marjorie, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–1980), 4:228 Google Scholar: “Multa intueor in diuina pagina, quae subtiliter coaptata nostri temporis euentui uidentur similia.”
16 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, Diana (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 7Google Scholar.
17 De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2:91.
18 The past was, quite literally, sacred, and ideas of the past were fundamental to any endeavor. See Geary, Patrick, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 810.1515/9781400843541CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “A society that explicitly found its identity, its norms, and its values in the inheritance from the past, that venerated tradition and drew its religious and political ideologies from precedent, was nevertheless actively engaged in producing that tradition through a complex process of transmission, suppression, and re-creation.” See also Spiegel, Gabrielle, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1995), 1–10 Google Scholar; Remensnyder, Amy, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), especially 42–87 Google Scholar; McKitterick, Rosamond, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1–27 Google Scholar; Ashe, Laura, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1–26 Google Scholar. For the figural nature of history, see especially Auerbach, “Figura,” 53–58; see also Walter Goffart’s discussion of Gregory of Tours in The Narrators of Barbarian History (AD 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 168–174; Rider, Jeff, God’s Scribe: The Historiographical Art of Galbert of Bruges (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 145–147 Google Scholar; Given-Wilson, Chris, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London: Hambledon and London, 2004), 2–5 Google Scholar.
19 Cowdrey, “Simon Magus in Southern Italy,” 83–88.
20 Meens, Rob, “The Use of the Old Testament in Early Medieval Canon Law,” in The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Hen, Yitzhak and Innes, Matthew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 70–77 Google Scholar.
21 Donizo of Canossa, Vita di Matilde di Canossa, ed. Fumagalli, Vito and Golinelli, Paolo (Milan: Jaca, 2008), 140–142 Google Scholar; Paul of Bernried, Vita Gregorii VII papae, ed. Watterich, J.M., Pontificum Romanorum Vitae 1 (Leipzig: s.n. 1862), 1:476 Google Scholar. An English translation of Paul’s work is available in The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century: Lives of Pope Leo IX and Pope Gregory VII, trans. I.S. Robinson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 262–364. Amatus of Montecassino also linked Henry IV to Nero in his reconstruction of the Simon Magus story. See Cowdrey, “Simon Magus in Southern Italy,” 82–83.
22 Cited in Hugh of Flavigny, “Chronicon,” ed. Georg Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptorum 8 (Hanover: Hahn, 1848), 463.
23 Nichols, Stephen Jr. Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 8–9 Google Scholar; Kempshall, Matthew, “Historiography and History” in Rhetoric and the Writing of History 400–1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; H.E.J. Cowdrey, “Eleventh-Century Reformers’ Views of Constantine,” in Popes and Church Reform in the 11th Century, 63–91.
24 Peter was hardly alone in this endeavor. For example, William of Malmesbury described David of Scotland as both the descendant and the renewal of the saintly kings from the early medieval English dynasty; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 1:3.
25 Peter Damian, no. 149, in Briefe, 3:546–554.
26 Peter Damian, no. 40, in Briefe, 3:501–502.
27 Peter Damian, no. 13, in Briefe, 1:144; see also Cowdrey, H.E.J., Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 27–30 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206460.003.0002CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Robinson, introduction to The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century, 64–67.
29 Paul of Bernried, Vita Gregorii VII, 1:502–503: “nam quemadmodum illa, flens sua delicta, Domini vestigia lacrymando perfuderat, sic ista omnium crimina proferens, lacrymis suis tantum Pastorem proluebat. Osculabatur illa pedes domini Salvatoris, quo deinde lota, caput adusque perveniret; haec autem Dei et Domini famula, primo baptismate munda, postremo pectoris ardore adusta, caput deosculans lacrymis rigabat.” Eng. trans. in The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century, trans. and ed. I.S. Robinson, 299; trans. Revised.
30 Interestingly, the anonymous author of the Vita Heinrici IV also casts Henry IV as a Christological figure, opening the vita with an elaborate description of how Henry surrounded himself with the poor and sick, feeding, washing, clothing, and caring for them in a manner clearly emulative of Christ himself. See Vita Heinrici IV Imperatoris, ed. Wilhelm Eberhard, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 58 (Hanover: Hahn, 1899), 9–11. An English translation of the Vita is available in Imperial Lives and Letters of the Eleventh Century, trans. Theodor E. Mommsen and Karl F. Morrison (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 101–137.
31 John 12:3; Matthew 26:6–13; 14:3–9; Luke 7:36–50.
32 Gregory VII, no. 1.40, in Das Register, ed. Erich Caspar. Monumenta Germaniae Historica Epistolae Selectae 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1955), 1:63: “principi apostolorum beatissimo Petro bonitatem tuam promptam esse exhibere, quam Iesu Christo domino nostro vas electionis sanctus Paulus coapostolus eius usque ad mortem ferventissimo amore studuit conservare.” H.E.J. Cowdrey translated the papal register in The Register of Pope Gregory VII 1073–1085: An English Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 45; trans. Revised.
33 Gregory VII, no. 1.85, in Register, 1:122: “Per vos itaque novum exemplum antique letitie, per vos, inquam, ille mulieris olim querentes Dominum in monument sepe nobis ad memoriam redeunt”; Eng. trans. in Cowdrey, The Register of Pope Gregory VII, 90; trans. Revised.
34 Matthew 28:1–8; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–12; John 20:1–18.
35 Acts 9:15
36 Cowdrey, “Simon Magus in South Italy,” 86–88.
37 The Roman reform movement seems to have required new exemplars that were not as popular in the preceding centuries. See especially Klein, Stacy, Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), especially 128 and 160–165 Google Scholar.
38 Marbod of Rennes, Liber decem capitularum, ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 171 (Paris: s.n. 1854), col. 1701: “Sara, Rebecca, Rachel, Esther, Judith, Anna, Noem, Sidera ceu septem quas saecula prisca tulerunt, aequiparasse viros.”
39 Ferrante, Joan M., “Women’s Roles in Latin Letters from the Fourth to the Early Twelfth Century,” in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. McCash, June Hall (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 94 Google Scholar.
40 Spiegel, Gabrielle, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 89–93 Google Scholar.
41 “Vita Sanctae Margaretae Scotorum Reginae,” in Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera et Collectanea, ed. H. Hinde, Proceedings of the Surtees Society 51 (Durham: Andrews and Co., 1868), 142; “Vita Idae Comitissae,” Acta Sanctorum Aprilis 2, ed. Jean Bolland (Antwerp: s.n. 1675), 139–146. See also Huneycutt, Lois, “Intercession and the High-Medieval Queen: The Esther Topos,” in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Carpenter, Jennifer and MacLean, Sally-Beth (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 126–146 Google Scholar.
42 The dependence on Deborah as a model has not gone unnoticed by modern scholars, but the full ramifications of reformers’ allegorical interpretations have not been explored. See Healy, “Matilda of Tuscany in the Polemics of the Investiture Contest,” 54–55; and Schroeder, Joy, Deborah’s Daughters: Gender Politics and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 43–49 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199991044.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Book of Judges 4–5.
44 Smith, Katherine Allen, War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), 3 10.1515/9781846158414CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 Hrabanus Maurus also wrote the earliest commentary on the Book of Judith, again for the Empress Judith. In early medieval hagiography, biblical allegories tended to draw from the “domestic” roles of women in the New Testament rather than from the warrior-women of the Old Testament; see Coon, Lynda L., Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 121–133 10.9783/9780812201673CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stafford, Pauline, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (London: Leicester University Press, 1998), 20–25 Google Scholar; de Jong, “The Empire as Ecclesia: Hrabanus Maurus and Biblical Historia for Rulers,” 191–226.
46 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 17–21.
47 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 3.
48 Blamires, Alcuin, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 173–174 Google Scholar.
49 Ambrose, De Uiduis, Patrologia Latina 16, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: s.n. 1845), col. 248: “Haec enim docuit non solum viri auxilio viduas non egere…Et ideo lectum istius puto esse judicium, et gesta ejus arbitror esse descripta; ne mulieres a virtutis officio, muliebris sexus infirmitate revocentur. Vidua populos regit, vidua ducit exercitus, vidua duces eligit, vidua bella disponit, mandat triumphos.” An English translation of Ambrose’s text is available at the Catholic Library Project, www.catholiclibrary.org; the translations here are mine.
50 Judges 4:21.
51 Ambrose, De Uiduis, 249: “Nobis igitur prophetarum oracula dimicarunt, nobis illa prophetarum judicia et arma vicerunt.”
52 Ambrose, De Uiduis, 249–250: “Ergo secundum historiam ad provocandos animos feminarum femina judicavit, femina disposuit, femina prophetavit, femina triumphavit, et praeliaribus intermixta copiis, imperio viros docuit militare femineo. Secundum mysterium vero fidei militia Ecclesiae victoria est. Non ergo habetis quod per naturam vos excusetis, feminae. Non habetis, viduae, quod ad infirmitatem sexus, autad amissi onem subsidii maritalis, mobilitatem vestram referre possitis.”
53 Joy Schroeder argues that Ambrose wanted to use Deborah as an example of how widows should learn to be independent and use their own resources to fund their local religious communities, rather than be supported by those communities as was the standard practice. Deborah’s Daughters, 19–20.
54 Rupert even calls Barak a dux. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria verbi Dei, MGH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 5, ed. Rhaban Haacke (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1970), 122 and 128.
55 Schroeder, Deborah’s Daughters, 56–58.
56 Schroeder comments that Peter’s description of Deborah in his letter to Adelaide is unconventional but does not elaborate on the nature of Peter’s ideas about female lordship. Deborah’s Daughters, 45.
57 Peter Damian, no. 114, in Briefe, 3:297: “sine virili regis auxilio.”
58 Peter Damian, no. 114, in Briefe, 3:298–299: “cum virile robur femineo regnet in pectore, et ditior sis bona voluntate quam terrena potestate. Unde quia iuxta poetae gentilis eloquium, Opus est huic tutore, quem defensorem paro, hortor et peto, ut tu domno iungaris episcopo, quatinus mutuae virtutis fulti munimine furentis in Christum luxuriae valeatis aciem debellare…Quapropter sicut vir ille cum femina, Barach videlicet cum Debborra, mutuis se fulcientes auxiliis contra Sisaram praelium suscaeperunt, eumque cum suis agminibus et nongentis falcatis curribus funditus debellarunt, ita vos, tu scilicet et Taurinensis episcopus, contra Sisaram luxuriae ducem arma corripite, eumque in filios Israel, hoc est in clericos aecclesiae dominantem, mucrone pudicitiae iugulate. Quatinus et episcopus, immo omnes episcopi, qui in amministrationis tuae finibus commorantur, sacerdotali clericos disciplina coerceant, et tu in feminas vigorem terrenae potestatis.” Eng. trans. Blum, 4:296–297; trans. Revised.
59 Schroeder points out that Peter emphasizes Adelaide’s power of speech, similar to Deborah’s roles as prophet and judge. As Schroeder says, this was not a conventional model for lay female behavior before the mid-eleventh century.
60 Peter Damian, no. 114, in Briefe, 3:299–300: “Age ergo, esto virago Domini…Talis enim victoria Deum valde laetificat, qui aliquando per feminas gloriosiori laude triumphat…Tu quoque a domo tua et ab his, quibus premines regionibus, poteris divini furoris avertere.”
61 Peter Damian, no. 114, in Briefe, 3:305–306.
62 Pseudo-Bardo, Vita Anselmi Episcopi Lucensis, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptorum 12, ed. Georg Pertz (Hanover: Hahn, 1856), 16: “ut quasi altera Delbora populum iudicet, militiam peragat, haereticis ac schismaticis resistat.”
63 Pseudo-Bardo, “Vita Anselmi Episcopi Lucensis,” 16: “sola atque unica dux et marchionissa Mathilda in fide permanens.”
64 Pseudo-Bardo, “Vita Anselmi Episcopi Lucensis,” 19: “Illa pro pietate matris solicitabatur, ille gubernandi artem meditabatur; illa potestatem exercebat, ille regebat; illa praeceptum et ille dedit consilium…Illa enim nobiliter et magnifice, insolito mulierum more, plus dico quam viriliter agebat, nullum fere periculum metuebat.”
65 Patricia Skinner has argued that Donizo, lacking useful models of female rulers, played down Matilda’s gender; Women in Medieval Italian Society 500–1200 (New York: Longman, 2001), 139–141. See also Hay, David, The Military Leadership of Matilda of Canossa, 1046–1115 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 199 and 214Google Scholar.
66 Robinson, “The Metrical Commentary on Genesis of Donizo of Canossa,” 14–18.
67 Donizo of Canossa, Vita di Matilde di Canossa, 180: “Cumque timore tremit, furtim munima quaerit/Mathildis, poscens ut eam disiungat ab hoste/Aspiciens Debora nova tempus inesse vel horam/ Hunc ut prosternat Siseram, clam quippe catervam/Veronam misit.”
68 Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad Amicum, ed. Ernst Dümmler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), 1:620: “in manu cuius credimus quia tradetur Sisara, et sicut Iabin in torrente Cison disperiet; quia exterminavit vineam Dei et depascitur eam ut singularis ferus, factus ut stercus terre.” A partial English translation is available in The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century, trans. and ed. I.S. Robinson, 158–261.
69 Paul of Bernried, Vita Gregorii VII, 506.
70 Paul of Bernried, Vita Gregori VII, 506: “quae licet mundana cura ducum officium, Italiam gubernando, gesserint, ut Debbora nimirum effectae, quae iudicans Israel Iabin cum suis omnibus in torrente Cison dispersit, hoc est, iniquos multotiens confusibiles contriverunt.” Eng. trans. in The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century, trans. and ed. I.S. Robinson, 303–304; trans. Revised.
71 Benzo of Alba, Ad Heinricum IV. imp. Libri VII, ed. Karl Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptorum 11 (Hanover: Hahn 1854), 672: “Monachi et muliercule cogunt in fugam presules, quasi persequente Hercule. Monachos dicos, et quales monachos? Periuriis infamatos, stupris monialium sordidatos; et isti sunt creatores paparum ad dedecus eorum, qui sunt rectores aecclesiarum.” Eng. trans. in The Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century, trans. and ed. I.S. Robinson, 375; trans. Revised.
72 Benzo of Alba, Ad Heinricum IV. imp. Libri VII, 654: “Sanam mentem expetunt mysteria illa, non qua impellebantur Cassandra et Sybilla, quarum pectora Pythius replebat, cum phanaticos ex ambiguis deludere volebat. Sed incarnato Domino, illuminavit Spiritus sanctus corda fidelium, eiciens ab aecclesia Phytonissas et Delium.”