From the Archives: Book thieves
Every time I write a book I reach the point where I am so deep in the work that I have to stop writing blog posts and newsletters. I always hope to avoid it. That somehow I’ll be smarter, or faster, or more organized, or just more. This time I’ve managed to avoid hitting the wall for several months by cutting back to one post a month. But the time has come. For last two months, I've shared blog posts from the past.--including this one from 2017. I hope you re-discovered an old favorite, or read a post that you missed when it first came out.
Tomorrow is March 1st--time to celebrate Women's History Month here on the Margins with our annual series of mini-interviews, and a few blog posts from me. I have some interesting people lined up to talk about their work in women's history, starting with biographer Cathy Curtis. Good stuff, people.
Ceremonial book burnings and the theft of precious art works are well-known elements of Nazi Germany's rampage through Europe. In The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance, Swedish journalist Anders Rydell tells the less familiar story of how two Nazi agencies—the intelligence wing of the Schutzstaffel (SS) under Heinrich Himmler and the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce headed by Alfred Rosenberg --competed to plunder Europe's libraries until the regime's fall in 1945.
The Nazis' motivation for the theft and dismemberment of libraries was different from that which inspired the looting of precious artworks from museums and private homes. The stolen books were intended to supply Nazi "research" libraries with the raw material for an intellectual war between Nazism and its enemies. Jewish libraries, public and private, were the primary targets, but the agencies also attacked libraries dedicated to Freemasonry, socialism and the occult. Plunder was followed by destruction. Collections were divided up between different research institutes and warehouses. Books that were not deemed valuable, whether for their rarity or for research, were often destroyed.
The Book Thieves is written in the form of a quest. Rydell travels across Europe, visiting the remains of plundered libraries and the institutions that still hold many of the stolen books. He talks to librarians who are engaged in the overwhelming task of identifying stolen books and their owners, those attempting to rebuild lost collections, and those who mourn the libraries that are lost without a trace. In the process, he tells the story of how the collections were built and the heroic attempts to protect them, creating a vivid and heartbreaking picture of lost communities and lost knowledge.
From the Archives: The Empress Maud (aka Matilda)
Every time I write a book I reach the point where I am so deep in the work that I have to stop writing blog posts and newsletters. I always hope to avoid it. That somehow I’ll be smarter, or faster, or more organized, or just more. This time I’ve managed to avoid hitting the wall for several months by cutting back to one post a month. But the time has come. For the next little while, I’m going to share blog posts from the past. (This one is from 2014.) I hope you re-discover an old favorite, or read a post that you missed when it first came out.
There will be new posts in March no matter what: we celebrate Women’s History Month hard here on the Margins. (I have some fascinating people lined up.)
I was first introduced to the Empress Maud and her battles to regain the throne of England by mystery writer Ellis Peters.(1) The war between Maud and her cousin Stephen is the immediate background against which her Brother Cadfael mysteries are set. (One step behind that stand the Crusades--a deft way to place her stories within their larger historical context and to give her main character a broader view of the world than many of the people around him.) Both Maud and Stephen are distant figures in the book and Peter's main characters are Stephen supporters, so for years I never thought about why a medieval noblewoman would feel she had a right to the crown.
Since then I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about Maud within the context of women warriors.(2) It turns out she had a good reason to claim the crown. Here's the short version.
Born in 1102 CE, Maud was the daughter of Henry I of England and Normandy.(3) When she was twelve, she was married to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry V, who was almost twenty years her senior.(4) By all accounts, she was a hardworking empress and well-regarded by her people: her German subjects called her "the good Matilda". She may have even been happy.
In 1125, the Emperor Henry died. If he had left an underaged son as heir to the throne, Maud would no doubt have served as the child's regent.(5) Since they were childless, she was left as a dowager empress at the relatively young age of 23. The options for a surplus empress were limited, though Maud clung to the title, calling herself "Matilda the Empress, daughter of King Henry".
In fact, the death of her brother some years previously meant that Maud was once again a factor in Henry I's dynastic calculations. Henry could have named one of his twenty-some illegitimate sons as his successor or one of his numerous nephews, Instead he called his now-marriageable daughter home, named her as his successor, and forced his council of nobles and bishops to swear fealty to her as "lady of England and Normandy". He then made the mistake of arranging another political marriage for her, this time to the teenaged son of the Count of Anjou, whose lands lay next to Normandy.
When Henry died in 1135, Maud was in Normandy. Her cousin Stephen of Blois had himself crowned in Westminster Abbey before a very pregnant Maud could hurry across the Channel and claim her throne, plunging England into nineteen years of civil war, known as the Anarchy. (6) The English nobility took sides, and sometimes changed sides depending on who seemed to be winning.
Finally the war ended with a compromise. Stephen kept the crown accepted Maud's young son, the future Henry II, as his heir. (Which, if truth be told, was probably Henry's intention in naming Maud his heir--women who inherited thrones or titles were often seen as the conduit between two generations of men.) The Empress Maud settled for the title Lady of the English.
As for me, I'm now squarely on team Maud.
(1) I realize not all hard-core history buffs agree, but I find that well done historical fiction is an excellent doorway to history itself.
(2) She was the first woman that I had to cut from the book because she didn't fit even my broadest definition of woman warrior. Just about broke my heart.
(3) Just to help you keep track: He was the son of William the Conqueror. Hard to tell the players without a program.
(4) That sounds horrible enough to a modern reader. Consider this: she was betrothed to him at the age of eight and sent immediately to Germany. Once there, her future husband sent away her English attendants and did his best to turn her into a good German. Now picture yourself at eight.
(5) Mothers were often preferred over uncles or grandfathers as regents, under the (usually correct) assumption that they were less likely to get ambitious and/or greedy and seize the throne for themselves.
(6) He claimed that Henry had changed his mind and named Stephen his heir on his deathbed. It may even have been true--primogeniture was not yet a settled theory of inheritance and thrones tended to go to the man most able to seize them. (There are echoes here of the rival claims to the English throne that led to the Norman Conquest. Or is that just me?)
From the Archives: The Crusades from A Different Perspective
In every book I write I reach the point where I am so deep in the work that I have to stop writing blog posts and newsletters. I always hope to avoid it. That somehow I’ll be smarter, or faster, or more organized, or just more. This time I’ve managed to avoid hitting the wall for several months by cutting back to one post a month. But the time has come. For the next little while, I’m going to share blog posts from the past. (This one is from 2014.) I hope you re-discover an old favorite, or read a post that you missed when it first came out.
There will be new posts in March no matter what: we celebrate Women’s History Month hard here on the Margins. (I have some fascinating people lined up.)
Recently I've been reading Sharan Newman's Defending The City of God: A Medieval Queen, The First Crusade And The Quest for Peace In Jerusalem. It was a perfect read for March, which was Women's History Month.*
Newman tells the story of a historical figure who was completely new to me. Melisende (1105-1161) was the first hereditary ruler of the Latin State of Jerusalem, one of four small kingdoms founded by members of the First Crusade. Her story is a fascinating one. The daughter of a Frankish Crusader and an Armenian princess, Melisende ruled her kingdom for twenty years despite attempts by first her husband and then her son to shove her aside. Even after her son finally gained the upper hand, Melisende continued to play a critical role in the government of Jerusalem. Those few historians who mention Melisende at all tend to describe her as usurping her son's throne.** Newman makes a compelling argument for Melisende as both a legitimate and a powerful ruler. (In all fairness, this is the kind of argument I am predisposed to believe.)
Fascinating as Melisende's story is, Newman really caught my attention with this paragraph:
Most Crusade histories tell of the battle between Muslims and Christians, the conquest of Jerusalem and its eventual loss. The wives of these men are mentioned primarily as chess pieces. The children born to them tend to be regarded as identical to their fathers, with the same outlook and desires. Yet many of the women and most of the children were not Westerners. They had been born in the East. The Crusaders states of Jerusalem, Edessa, Tripoli, and Antioch were the only homes they knew.
Talk about a smack up the side of the historical head!
If you're interested in medieval history in general, the Crusades in particular, or women rulers, Defending the City of God is worth your time.
* It was also nice to spend some time in a warm dry place, if only in my imagination. Here in Chicago, March came in like a lion and went out like a cold, wet, cranky lion.
** To put this in historical context. Melisende's English contemporary, the Empress Matilda (1102-1167) was the legitimate heir to Henry I. After Henry's death, her cousin Stephen of Blois had himself crowned king and plunged England into a nine-year civil war to keep her off the throne. Apparently twelfth century Europeans had a problem with the idea of women rulers.