Speculum Matris: Duoda's Manual

Dhuoda (c. 803-843), wife of the Carolingian noble Bernard of Septimania and dedicated mother of two sons, William and Bernard, displays remarkable humility in her approach to writing and is startlingly honest in her use of personal voice. Her lengthy letter offers advice, worldly and spiritual, to her elder child William. In this letter, which she titles “liber manualis,”1 Dhuoda writes about herself and her hopes for both her sons. This paper will explore the two genres — the handbook or manualis and the mirror or speculum principis — that inform Dhuoda’s letter, as well as her success at overcoming anxiety about writing in these traditionally masculine modes through distinctly female, particularly maternal, authority.