Slandered and Expelled: Female Monastic Exile in Carolingian Europe, c. 814 CE

Abstract

This essay reexamines ninth-century sources about Carolingian emperors, particularly the so-called Astronomer’s biography of Louis the Pious (r. 814–40 CE), to demonstrate that Emperor Louis employed popular tropes of female sexual immorality to remove his sisters from court on account of their political power. Although Louis used political language to describe the monastic exiling of male relatives, he chose sexualized and gendered language for female relatives who presented similar dangers. We argue that this discrepancy in language reveals an early-ninth-century discourse that lacked either the language for understanding, or the willingness to acknowledge, female political power—as well as a reluctance in modern historiography to recognize the political potential of women beyond their reproductive capabilities.