Judith of Flanders and Her Books: Patronage and Politics

One of the few women referred to in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Judith of Flanders was a daughter of Count Baldwin IV of Flanders, wife to the Anglo-Saxon Earl Tostig of Northumbria, something of a refugee in Flanders after the Norman Conquest, and the owner of numerous magnificent illustrated manuscripts.  The events of her life illustrate the difficulty in trying to classify historical figures by time period or geography: a notable figure in the events of pre-Conquest England, she was also a person of importance in continental aristocratic and patronage circles throughout the second half of the eleventh century.  Judith left England in 1065, in the wake of her husband’s loss of his earldom; she took with her into exile to Bruges at least four magnificent Anglo-Saxon Gospel books (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS 708; New York, Pierpont Morgan Library 709; Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, Cod. 437; Fulda, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Aa.21).  The references to Judith and Tostig in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and a variety of other sources inform our analysis and understanding of her patronage of deluxe manuscripts; a detailed reading of the Chronicle provides a relatively specific date and provenance for Judith’s gospel books by determining the relatively short periods in Judith’s life in England when she would have had the most leisure and security to act as a patron of the arts, especially creation of illustrated books.