How did a medieval dowager duchess in Central Europe rule her lordship? How were her official statements composed and disseminated? The charters of Matilda of Głogów expose her interest in supporting religious women and promoting the power of female saints.
Medieval European charters were intended to record the voices of the living, so that they could be heard in the present and reproduced in the future. Matilda of Brunswick-Lüneburg was a German noble lady from the prestigious House of Welf who ended up on the Slavic frontier: she married Duke Henry III of Głogów, a Polish prince from Silesia. After her husband’s passing, she became a dowager widow and the sole ruler of Głogów. Her words were noted in her charters, revealing what she wanted to be heard. Her autonomous position, as a mother, widow, and ruler, provided Matilda with the latitude to express herself.
The dissemination and wider acceptance of charters to document legal decisions and transactions profoundly changed European societies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. People from various walks of life became familiar with pieces of parchment inked with written text, to which wax seals with portraits or visual symbols were attached. Charters were typically issued by rulers to document events that took place at public assemblies or tribunals, giving transactions and decisions the validity of the ruler’s approval. Charters were kept in careful storage by those who held rights and properties; they would refer to them whenever required. What changed, however, was not only the more common occurrence of these objects that, until then, would have been quite rare. What changed was how information was now communicated.
The traditional method of recording information involved living witnesses. These were individuals who attested to the validity of that information by explaining what they knew in a public performance. Their solemn oaths validated the accuracy of their voiced statements. Charters made the living witnesses increasingly redundant. Instead of asking them to speak publicly, someone would retrieve the charter from its protected storage, show the piece of parchment and its seal, and offer a public reading of the text. When the text was in Latin, which was long the most common, the reading was accompanied by a rendering into the local language (in Silesia, German or Polish), just like the speeches of today’s politicians are heard on television in simultaneous translation.
In earlier times, the witnesses had spoken out upon request, in their own words, about what they knew, what they had seen or heard. Now, what was heard was not the spontaneous utterances of the rank-and-file individuals who just happened to have been there, but the carefully crafted statements of the rulers: when the charter was read out loud by a clerk in front of an audience, the ruler was, through this proxy, speaking in the first person to those who attended. What was heard was meant to replicate the commanding voice of the ruler. The seal represented visually the person speaking; the text vocalized their speech. In this way, the ruler was effectively made present to those attending every time the document was consulted. The staged reenactment allowed rulers to actually address various audiences more directly than ever before. Their words could be reproduced indefinitely.
A man presents a charter to the judge at the tribunal; illustration from the Heidelberg manuscript of the Saxon Mirror, east Germany, early fourteenth century. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 164, fol. 17r (detail).
In the later thirteenth century, Lüneburg was a prosperous city in the north German lands and Brunswick had long been the main residence of the House of Welf. The dynasty counted among its famous ancestors the powerful Duke Henry the Lion and Emperor Otto IV. Albert the Tall ruled the duchy of Brunswick and Lüneburg until 1267, when it was partitioned with his brother John; he received the southern part that included Brunswick. Albert and his second wife, Alesina, daughter of Boniface II of Montferrat, had four baby boys until a daughter was born in 1276. She was given the name of Albert’s mother, Matilda.
Matilda, however, did not grow up in the bright limelight of the court in Brunswick among poets and musicians praising chivalric values. Her father died in 1279; a year later, Alesina married a widowed lesser noble, Count Gerard I of Holstein, and joined a household that included several children. The woman and the girl, despite their powerful family backgrounds, now resided in remote Itzehoe, an obscure provincial town on the Danish border. Gerard passed away in 1290; the teenage Matilda left her northern backwater the following year to marry Duke Henry III, lord of Głogów, a bachelor probably in his thirties. Głógow was one of the lordships of the Polish province of Silesia, ruled by descendants of Henry the Bearded, proud members of the Piast dynasty that governed Poland since time immemorial.
The court of Matilda’s husband, Henry III, was imbued with chivalric culture. Henry himself was the son of a Silesian duke and a Polish mother. Like the other rulers of the region, Henry surrounded himself with newcomer knights; both German and Polish were heard at his court. The young Matilda would not have felt entirely foreign in her new country.
Matilda’s Path to Power
Henry III of Głogów was an ambitious but irresolute man. When his cousin Henry Probus died of poison in 1290, he had officially designated him as his successor in the duchy of Wrocław. The Silesian metropolis, however, was immediately taken over by a cousin of the two Henries, also named Henry, nicknamed the Fat. The imposter moved swiftly, securing the support of the townspeople, of local knights, and of King Wenceslas II of Bohemia. Helpless, Henry III of Głogów swallowed his pride. Traumatized by this experience, he did not even dare to attempt to take Wrocław when Henry the Fat died in 1296 and was succeeded by underage children.
Map showing locations mentioned in the article.
The lord of Głogów was also designated successor to Duke Premislaus II of Greater Poland. Premislaus, the controversial king of Poland since 1295, ended up murdered. Henry’s tepid support for him when he had needed him most made it difficult to claim succession. The pushy duke of remote Cuyavia and future king, Ladislaus the Short, took over Greater Poland and left territorial crumbs to Henry III. The opportunist King Wenceslas II of Bohemia claimed the title of king of Poland in 1300. Henry then affirmed in his charters: “We, Henry, by the grace of God [are] the heir to the reign of Poland, the duke of Silesia, and the lord of Głogów and Poznań.” His expression, though, exposed his indecisive character: the “reign of Poland” could be interpreted as referring to the province of Greater Poland (the region around Poznań, often referred to as Polonia at the time) or to the kingdom of Poland as a whole. The awkward title disappeared from Henry’s charters after the death of Wenceslas II in 1305. Henry III of Głogów, who spent his career striving to be recognized as a legitimate successor in territories he never managed to rule, died in 1309.
During their eighteen-year marriage, Matilda and Henry III of Głogów had five sons and four daughters together; the oldest of the boys, Henry IV, nicknamed the Faithful, was 17 years old when his father passed away. He succeeded him, ruling with his mother Matilda keeping an eye on him. The territory of Henry III’s duchy was eventually partitioned between Henry IV and his brothers Conrad, Boleslaus, John, and Przemek, as these became of age. Matilda, however, did not go anywhere. Although only in her early thirties, she was now the family matriarch and expected appropriate respect. She had been given the lordship around Głogów, the part of her husband’s duchy that included its most important town and residence, as a dower. Jealous of her independence, she pushed back at pressure to remarry and ruled as a self-conscious dowager duchess until she died in 1318, at the age of 42.
Ruling as a Dowager Duchess
Matilda of Głogów’s independent rule is documented through ten charters now stored in the State Archive of Wrocław. The sons of Silesian Piasts were often educated by notaries and chancellors. The young boy Henry III of Głogów, for example, had been entrusted to his father’s chancellor, Nicholas. Nothing is known of the education that Matilda had received growing up in Itzehoe. Her stepfather, Count Gerard, was a well-educated man who had studied in Paris; he might have cared about the intellectual training of the girls at his court. Dukes and duchesses, though, did not compose their Latin charters themselves. The skills required included not only a good mastery of Latin, but also training in legal matters and the technical ability for charter writing, which a late medieval notary compared to the art of painting. Just like today’s politicians hire speech writers, medieval rulers relied on professionals to write their own words.
The ducal castle in Głogów. The brick tower was built in the thirteenth century; this is where Henry III and Matilda resided. Picture: Wikipedia Commons.
In medieval Europe, writing documents, a public task, was considered a manly activity and notaries were invariably men. Women like Matilda could, however, tell these subordinated men what to do. Matilda’s notaries are well known. Frederick of Buntense had worked since 1306 for Henry III of Głogów and since 1299 for his brother, Conrad II of Żagań. After Henry’s passing, Frederick was employed by Matilda and her son, Henry IV, working for them between 1310 and 1316. Educated at the University of Bologna, canon of the collegiate church in Głogów, Frederick of Buntense was a trusted and experienced man at the court.
By the time she became a widow, Matilda had some experience observing how a duchy could be governed. She clearly did not want to rely entirely on her husband’s notary, no matter how much she trusted him. Already in 1311, she hired another man of her own choosing: a canon from Lebus named Zachary. She assigned him the writing of the charters documenting her foundations of two altars in the collegiate church. Interestingly, Frederick of Buntense is mentioned as a witness in both documents: Matilda did not hire Zachary because Frederick was unavailable. Matilda convinced Henry IV to also hire Zachary in 1312. Finally, in 1314 and 1318, a certain Master Erinbert, canon in the Głogów collegiate church, also wrote a few documents on behalf of both Matilda and Henry IV. While Frederick of Buntense remained a trusted adviser, Matilda relied on different men for different requests, which suggests her active involvement in decision-making.
Faith, Saints, and Female Communities
Some of Matilda’s charters dealt, as was usual for dukes and duchesses, with other people’s business. In 1310, she promised to respect the immunity of the churches in her duchy. In 1318, she confirmed a purchase made by her chaplain, Nicholas of Sądowel. She turned down the request of the citizens of Freystadt (today Kożuchów) who, in 1312, demanded the right to have foreign merchants sell cloth by the ell on their market: only the citizens of Głogów held that right.
Matilda’s documents reveal institutions close to her heart, especially two that were for religious women, albeit of very different groups. The first was the convent of Poor Clares in Głogów, which had just recently been established by her husband in 1307. Matilda confirmed two purchases the convent made in 1310 and 1314. She stated, “it is becoming for us to adequately provide for those who choose a religious life, so that no cause for necessity or idleness arise, or, hopefully, for them to lack strength in their vows.” Later on, she was hoping that through her support, the nuns “might have more liberty to devote their sweat to the divine cults.” In 1312, she asked her son Henry to confirm the privileges of the Poor Clares; Henry complied, and Matilda attached her seal to his document.
While the mendicant friars dedicated their energy to preaching and active involvement in their communities, the mendicant nuns, despite also living in towns, followed a contemplative lifestyle; their sweat and effort were directed to the spiritual support of their communities. The Poor Clares – the female branch of the Franciscans – had been introduced to Bohemia by the Přemyslid princess Agnes; the first Silesian convent, in Wrocław, had been established with Czech nuns. Unlike to the Dominicans, who welcomed nuns of burgher status, the Silesian Poor Clares, whose communities looked back to a royal model, recruited among the nobility. The nuns that Matilda supported here were of an élite social status.
This was not the case with the other institution that Matilda backed. The convent of Magdalen Sisters in Bytom on the Odra had been established by her husband in 1290. In 1311, Matilda confirmed a donation to the convent; the same year, she confirmed an exchange of property between that convent and the collegiate church in Głogów. Putting her authority behind these transfers, she asserted that “those things that through the declarations of princes enter into public knowledge obtain perpetual durability.”
The former church of the Magdalen Sisters in Szprotawa. Picture: Wikipedia Commons.
In 1314, Matilda and her son Henry requested permission from Bishop Henry of Wrocław to relocate the convent from Bytom on the Odra to the town of Szprotawa. The sisters felt unsafe in their isolated convent outside the gates of Bytom and sought the greater protection that a downtown setting would offer. Communities of Magdalen Sisters were originally shelters for retired female sex workers; since the mid-thirteenth century, they also welcomed unmarried women, mostly from urban milieus, who were unable to secure a good marriage. Matilda clearly cared for the well-being of these marginalized women.
Matilda not only supported religious women; she also sought the support of female saints. She single-handedly endowed two altars with their attached vicars in St. Mary’s collegiate church in Głogów. Zachary put into words Matilda’s intentions: she confidently proclaimed that “altars and churches” were founded “for the service of divine praise,” so that through “the support of the multitude of the saints” the faithful will be rendered “more suitable for divine grace.” The first altar was set up in January 1311 and was dedicated to the Holy Spirit; its revenues were augmented with another donation in 1316. The second altar followed in October 1311; it was dedicated to Saints Hedwig and Elizabeth. Matilda also directed additional revenues to the collegiate church in 1313.
The oldest religious building in Głogów, St. Mary’s church, boasted of brick Romanesque architecture that was rare in the region. Its school served the educated élite; ducal notaries were trained there and often recruited among the church’s canons. Moreover, the monument was a necropolis of the local Piasts since Duke Conrad and his wife Salome – the parents of Henry III – had elected to be buried there.
St. Mary’s collegiate church, Głogów. Originally conceived in the Romanesque style, it was rebuilt as a Gothic church in the fifteenth century. Picture: Wikipedia Commons.
The dedication of the second altar reveals Matilda’s soft spot for powerful women. Elizabeth was the Hungarian princess, married to a Thuringian landgrave, whose life story of commitment to helping the needy proved immensely inspirational throughout Central Europe. Hedwig of Andechs – the aunt of Elizabeth and great-grandmother of Henry III – was the wife of the Silesian duke Henry the Bearded. Her vita had made her the most famous female saint and role model in the region. Both Elizabeth and Hedwig were secular women, mothers, and female rulers; both were canonized by the papacy and thus spiritual leaders and miracle workers in the other world. Their examples resonated with Matilda, also a mother and female ruler.
Matilda regularly showed the expected reverence to her late husband. Establishing the two altars in the collegiate church, Matilda recalled his bombastic, though unsuccessful title: the altars were created “in remedy of the sins of the lord Henry of happy memory, the late heir to the reign of Poland, duke of Silesia and lord of Głogów.” Writing to the Magdalen Sisters of Bytom on the Odra, she did not fail to remind them that the convent had been founded by “the illustrious prince, the lord Henry, duke of Silesia and lord of Głogów, of pious memory,” who was her “late dearest husband.”
Her sons’ opinions, however, rarely interested Matilda, except when they did her bidding. Confirming the rights of the Poor Clares in 1311, she obtained the consent of “the distinguished princes Henry and Conrad,” whom she referred to as her “heirs, the dukes of Silesia and lords of Głogów.” She convinced Henry to attach his seal to the document. Her chaplain Nicholas, receiving a charter from her, might have insisted that the seals of two of Matilda’s sons be attached to it, for added authority. By contrast, Matilda gave her own fiat to the young Henry when he confirmed, in 1310, the privileges of the bishop of Wrocław; in 1312, she was the one pushing Henry to confirm the rights of the Poor Clares; and in 1314, she convinced him to request the relocation of the Magdalen Sisters.
When acting in her own matters, Matilda asserted herself in full self-confidence. She notably did not consult with her sons when founding the two altars in the collegiate church. While reminding her audience of her late husband might have strengthened her positioning as a woman who was still a foreigner in Silesia, Matilda’s commanding temperament was on full display when interacting with her offspring.
Although she does not appear to have issued any charter during her marriage, Matilda did already then insist on having a seal matrix made to her effigy: her seal was attached to a charter of her husband in 1309, signalling that she approved of his donation to Lubiąż Abbey. Matilda’s seal was quite spectacular. The legend introduced her with a title that, in the feminine form, mirrored that of her spouse: she was Matilda, “by the grace of God duchess of Silesia and of Głogów.” The image depicts her, mimicking royal attributes, sitting in majesty with a crowned head. She holds two shields, one with the Silesian eagle and the other with flowers. The counter-seal (the smaller image imprinted on the reverse) reproduces the coat of arms of her father, the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. On her seal and in all her charters, the name of the duchess is consistently spelled Mechthildis, reproducing the German pronunciation of her name.
The charters of Matilda were preciously kept in the repositories of the beneficiaries of the legal actions they documented. The Poor Clares in Głogów, the Magdalen Sisters in Szprotawa, the canons of the collegiate church in Głogów, and even her chaplain, Nicholas, all found a place to keep her charters safe. In medieval Europe, it was not considered appropriate for women to speak in public. Should the need arise, a male cleric representing the Poor Clares or the Magdalen Sisters, or a canon of the collegiate church in Głogów would stand up and solemnly read Matilda’s statements, bringing her words back to life. Veiled by the tones of a masculine voice, the words of the duchess would resonate again, demanding respect with all the authority of the woman ruler sitting in majesty, when she introduced herself as “We, Mechthild, by the grace of God, duchess of Silesia and lady of Głogów.”
The seal of Matilda. Picture: Glogopedia – Internetowa Encyklopedia Ziemi Głogowskiej (https://www.glogow.pl/ezg/index.php/Mechtylda_(Matylda)).
Matilda, the proud woman from the powerful House of Welf, who hailed from the modest town of Itzehoe, had secured her legacy. Making a life for herself in Głogów, her image and her voice had been recorded, as she promised, “for the perpetual memory of those in the future.” Indeed, they were.
Dr. Sébastien Rossignol is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. This article was made possible by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Top Image: Witnesses swearing an oath on relics at the tribunal; illustration from the Heidelberg manuscript of the Saxon Mirror, east Germany, early fourteenth century. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 164, fol. 16v (detail).
By Sébastien Rossignol
How did a medieval dowager duchess in Central Europe rule her lordship? How were her official statements composed and disseminated? The charters of Matilda of Głogów expose her interest in supporting religious women and promoting the power of female saints.
Medieval European charters were intended to record the voices of the living, so that they could be heard in the present and reproduced in the future. Matilda of Brunswick-Lüneburg was a German noble lady from the prestigious House of Welf who ended up on the Slavic frontier: she married Duke Henry III of Głogów, a Polish prince from Silesia. After her husband’s passing, she became a dowager widow and the sole ruler of Głogów. Her words were noted in her charters, revealing what she wanted to be heard. Her autonomous position, as a mother, widow, and ruler, provided Matilda with the latitude to express herself.
The dissemination and wider acceptance of charters to document legal decisions and transactions profoundly changed European societies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. People from various walks of life became familiar with pieces of parchment inked with written text, to which wax seals with portraits or visual symbols were attached. Charters were typically issued by rulers to document events that took place at public assemblies or tribunals, giving transactions and decisions the validity of the ruler’s approval. Charters were kept in careful storage by those who held rights and properties; they would refer to them whenever required. What changed, however, was not only the more common occurrence of these objects that, until then, would have been quite rare. What changed was how information was now communicated.
The traditional method of recording information involved living witnesses. These were individuals who attested to the validity of that information by explaining what they knew in a public performance. Their solemn oaths validated the accuracy of their voiced statements. Charters made the living witnesses increasingly redundant. Instead of asking them to speak publicly, someone would retrieve the charter from its protected storage, show the piece of parchment and its seal, and offer a public reading of the text. When the text was in Latin, which was long the most common, the reading was accompanied by a rendering into the local language (in Silesia, German or Polish), just like the speeches of today’s politicians are heard on television in simultaneous translation.
In earlier times, the witnesses had spoken out upon request, in their own words, about what they knew, what they had seen or heard. Now, what was heard was not the spontaneous utterances of the rank-and-file individuals who just happened to have been there, but the carefully crafted statements of the rulers: when the charter was read out loud by a clerk in front of an audience, the ruler was, through this proxy, speaking in the first person to those who attended. What was heard was meant to replicate the commanding voice of the ruler. The seal represented visually the person speaking; the text vocalized their speech. In this way, the ruler was effectively made present to those attending every time the document was consulted. The staged reenactment allowed rulers to actually address various audiences more directly than ever before. Their words could be reproduced indefinitely.
In the later thirteenth century, Lüneburg was a prosperous city in the north German lands and Brunswick had long been the main residence of the House of Welf. The dynasty counted among its famous ancestors the powerful Duke Henry the Lion and Emperor Otto IV. Albert the Tall ruled the duchy of Brunswick and Lüneburg until 1267, when it was partitioned with his brother John; he received the southern part that included Brunswick. Albert and his second wife, Alesina, daughter of Boniface II of Montferrat, had four baby boys until a daughter was born in 1276. She was given the name of Albert’s mother, Matilda.
Matilda, however, did not grow up in the bright limelight of the court in Brunswick among poets and musicians praising chivalric values. Her father died in 1279; a year later, Alesina married a widowed lesser noble, Count Gerard I of Holstein, and joined a household that included several children. The woman and the girl, despite their powerful family backgrounds, now resided in remote Itzehoe, an obscure provincial town on the Danish border. Gerard passed away in 1290; the teenage Matilda left her northern backwater the following year to marry Duke Henry III, lord of Głogów, a bachelor probably in his thirties. Głógow was one of the lordships of the Polish province of Silesia, ruled by descendants of Henry the Bearded, proud members of the Piast dynasty that governed Poland since time immemorial.
The court of Matilda’s husband, Henry III, was imbued with chivalric culture. Henry himself was the son of a Silesian duke and a Polish mother. Like the other rulers of the region, Henry surrounded himself with newcomer knights; both German and Polish were heard at his court. The young Matilda would not have felt entirely foreign in her new country.
Matilda’s Path to Power
Henry III of Głogów was an ambitious but irresolute man. When his cousin Henry Probus died of poison in 1290, he had officially designated him as his successor in the duchy of Wrocław. The Silesian metropolis, however, was immediately taken over by a cousin of the two Henries, also named Henry, nicknamed the Fat. The imposter moved swiftly, securing the support of the townspeople, of local knights, and of King Wenceslas II of Bohemia. Helpless, Henry III of Głogów swallowed his pride. Traumatized by this experience, he did not even dare to attempt to take Wrocław when Henry the Fat died in 1296 and was succeeded by underage children.
The lord of Głogów was also designated successor to Duke Premislaus II of Greater Poland. Premislaus, the controversial king of Poland since 1295, ended up murdered. Henry’s tepid support for him when he had needed him most made it difficult to claim succession. The pushy duke of remote Cuyavia and future king, Ladislaus the Short, took over Greater Poland and left territorial crumbs to Henry III. The opportunist King Wenceslas II of Bohemia claimed the title of king of Poland in 1300. Henry then affirmed in his charters: “We, Henry, by the grace of God [are] the heir to the reign of Poland, the duke of Silesia, and the lord of Głogów and Poznań.” His expression, though, exposed his indecisive character: the “reign of Poland” could be interpreted as referring to the province of Greater Poland (the region around Poznań, often referred to as Polonia at the time) or to the kingdom of Poland as a whole. The awkward title disappeared from Henry’s charters after the death of Wenceslas II in 1305. Henry III of Głogów, who spent his career striving to be recognized as a legitimate successor in territories he never managed to rule, died in 1309.
During their eighteen-year marriage, Matilda and Henry III of Głogów had five sons and four daughters together; the oldest of the boys, Henry IV, nicknamed the Faithful, was 17 years old when his father passed away. He succeeded him, ruling with his mother Matilda keeping an eye on him. The territory of Henry III’s duchy was eventually partitioned between Henry IV and his brothers Conrad, Boleslaus, John, and Przemek, as these became of age. Matilda, however, did not go anywhere. Although only in her early thirties, she was now the family matriarch and expected appropriate respect. She had been given the lordship around Głogów, the part of her husband’s duchy that included its most important town and residence, as a dower. Jealous of her independence, she pushed back at pressure to remarry and ruled as a self-conscious dowager duchess until she died in 1318, at the age of 42.
Ruling as a Dowager Duchess
Matilda of Głogów’s independent rule is documented through ten charters now stored in the State Archive of Wrocław. The sons of Silesian Piasts were often educated by notaries and chancellors. The young boy Henry III of Głogów, for example, had been entrusted to his father’s chancellor, Nicholas. Nothing is known of the education that Matilda had received growing up in Itzehoe. Her stepfather, Count Gerard, was a well-educated man who had studied in Paris; he might have cared about the intellectual training of the girls at his court. Dukes and duchesses, though, did not compose their Latin charters themselves. The skills required included not only a good mastery of Latin, but also training in legal matters and the technical ability for charter writing, which a late medieval notary compared to the art of painting. Just like today’s politicians hire speech writers, medieval rulers relied on professionals to write their own words.
In medieval Europe, writing documents, a public task, was considered a manly activity and notaries were invariably men. Women like Matilda could, however, tell these subordinated men what to do. Matilda’s notaries are well known. Frederick of Buntense had worked since 1306 for Henry III of Głogów and since 1299 for his brother, Conrad II of Żagań. After Henry’s passing, Frederick was employed by Matilda and her son, Henry IV, working for them between 1310 and 1316. Educated at the University of Bologna, canon of the collegiate church in Głogów, Frederick of Buntense was a trusted and experienced man at the court.
By the time she became a widow, Matilda had some experience observing how a duchy could be governed. She clearly did not want to rely entirely on her husband’s notary, no matter how much she trusted him. Already in 1311, she hired another man of her own choosing: a canon from Lebus named Zachary. She assigned him the writing of the charters documenting her foundations of two altars in the collegiate church. Interestingly, Frederick of Buntense is mentioned as a witness in both documents: Matilda did not hire Zachary because Frederick was unavailable. Matilda convinced Henry IV to also hire Zachary in 1312. Finally, in 1314 and 1318, a certain Master Erinbert, canon in the Głogów collegiate church, also wrote a few documents on behalf of both Matilda and Henry IV. While Frederick of Buntense remained a trusted adviser, Matilda relied on different men for different requests, which suggests her active involvement in decision-making.
Faith, Saints, and Female Communities
Some of Matilda’s charters dealt, as was usual for dukes and duchesses, with other people’s business. In 1310, she promised to respect the immunity of the churches in her duchy. In 1318, she confirmed a purchase made by her chaplain, Nicholas of Sądowel. She turned down the request of the citizens of Freystadt (today Kożuchów) who, in 1312, demanded the right to have foreign merchants sell cloth by the ell on their market: only the citizens of Głogów held that right.
Matilda’s documents reveal institutions close to her heart, especially two that were for religious women, albeit of very different groups. The first was the convent of Poor Clares in Głogów, which had just recently been established by her husband in 1307. Matilda confirmed two purchases the convent made in 1310 and 1314. She stated, “it is becoming for us to adequately provide for those who choose a religious life, so that no cause for necessity or idleness arise, or, hopefully, for them to lack strength in their vows.” Later on, she was hoping that through her support, the nuns “might have more liberty to devote their sweat to the divine cults.” In 1312, she asked her son Henry to confirm the privileges of the Poor Clares; Henry complied, and Matilda attached her seal to his document.
While the mendicant friars dedicated their energy to preaching and active involvement in their communities, the mendicant nuns, despite also living in towns, followed a contemplative lifestyle; their sweat and effort were directed to the spiritual support of their communities. The Poor Clares – the female branch of the Franciscans – had been introduced to Bohemia by the Přemyslid princess Agnes; the first Silesian convent, in Wrocław, had been established with Czech nuns. Unlike to the Dominicans, who welcomed nuns of burgher status, the Silesian Poor Clares, whose communities looked back to a royal model, recruited among the nobility. The nuns that Matilda supported here were of an élite social status.
This was not the case with the other institution that Matilda backed. The convent of Magdalen Sisters in Bytom on the Odra had been established by her husband in 1290. In 1311, Matilda confirmed a donation to the convent; the same year, she confirmed an exchange of property between that convent and the collegiate church in Głogów. Putting her authority behind these transfers, she asserted that “those things that through the declarations of princes enter into public knowledge obtain perpetual durability.”
In 1314, Matilda and her son Henry requested permission from Bishop Henry of Wrocław to relocate the convent from Bytom on the Odra to the town of Szprotawa. The sisters felt unsafe in their isolated convent outside the gates of Bytom and sought the greater protection that a downtown setting would offer. Communities of Magdalen Sisters were originally shelters for retired female sex workers; since the mid-thirteenth century, they also welcomed unmarried women, mostly from urban milieus, who were unable to secure a good marriage. Matilda clearly cared for the well-being of these marginalized women.
Matilda not only supported religious women; she also sought the support of female saints. She single-handedly endowed two altars with their attached vicars in St. Mary’s collegiate church in Głogów. Zachary put into words Matilda’s intentions: she confidently proclaimed that “altars and churches” were founded “for the service of divine praise,” so that through “the support of the multitude of the saints” the faithful will be rendered “more suitable for divine grace.” The first altar was set up in January 1311 and was dedicated to the Holy Spirit; its revenues were augmented with another donation in 1316. The second altar followed in October 1311; it was dedicated to Saints Hedwig and Elizabeth. Matilda also directed additional revenues to the collegiate church in 1313.
The oldest religious building in Głogów, St. Mary’s church, boasted of brick Romanesque architecture that was rare in the region. Its school served the educated élite; ducal notaries were trained there and often recruited among the church’s canons. Moreover, the monument was a necropolis of the local Piasts since Duke Conrad and his wife Salome – the parents of Henry III – had elected to be buried there.
The dedication of the second altar reveals Matilda’s soft spot for powerful women. Elizabeth was the Hungarian princess, married to a Thuringian landgrave, whose life story of commitment to helping the needy proved immensely inspirational throughout Central Europe. Hedwig of Andechs – the aunt of Elizabeth and great-grandmother of Henry III – was the wife of the Silesian duke Henry the Bearded. Her vita had made her the most famous female saint and role model in the region. Both Elizabeth and Hedwig were secular women, mothers, and female rulers; both were canonized by the papacy and thus spiritual leaders and miracle workers in the other world. Their examples resonated with Matilda, also a mother and female ruler.
Matilda regularly showed the expected reverence to her late husband. Establishing the two altars in the collegiate church, Matilda recalled his bombastic, though unsuccessful title: the altars were created “in remedy of the sins of the lord Henry of happy memory, the late heir to the reign of Poland, duke of Silesia and lord of Głogów.” Writing to the Magdalen Sisters of Bytom on the Odra, she did not fail to remind them that the convent had been founded by “the illustrious prince, the lord Henry, duke of Silesia and lord of Głogów, of pious memory,” who was her “late dearest husband.”
Her sons’ opinions, however, rarely interested Matilda, except when they did her bidding. Confirming the rights of the Poor Clares in 1311, she obtained the consent of “the distinguished princes Henry and Conrad,” whom she referred to as her “heirs, the dukes of Silesia and lords of Głogów.” She convinced Henry to attach his seal to the document. Her chaplain Nicholas, receiving a charter from her, might have insisted that the seals of two of Matilda’s sons be attached to it, for added authority. By contrast, Matilda gave her own fiat to the young Henry when he confirmed, in 1310, the privileges of the bishop of Wrocław; in 1312, she was the one pushing Henry to confirm the rights of the Poor Clares; and in 1314, she convinced him to request the relocation of the Magdalen Sisters.
When acting in her own matters, Matilda asserted herself in full self-confidence. She notably did not consult with her sons when founding the two altars in the collegiate church. While reminding her audience of her late husband might have strengthened her positioning as a woman who was still a foreigner in Silesia, Matilda’s commanding temperament was on full display when interacting with her offspring.
Although she does not appear to have issued any charter during her marriage, Matilda did already then insist on having a seal matrix made to her effigy: her seal was attached to a charter of her husband in 1309, signalling that she approved of his donation to Lubiąż Abbey. Matilda’s seal was quite spectacular. The legend introduced her with a title that, in the feminine form, mirrored that of her spouse: she was Matilda, “by the grace of God duchess of Silesia and of Głogów.” The image depicts her, mimicking royal attributes, sitting in majesty with a crowned head. She holds two shields, one with the Silesian eagle and the other with flowers. The counter-seal (the smaller image imprinted on the reverse) reproduces the coat of arms of her father, the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. On her seal and in all her charters, the name of the duchess is consistently spelled Mechthildis, reproducing the German pronunciation of her name.
The charters of Matilda were preciously kept in the repositories of the beneficiaries of the legal actions they documented. The Poor Clares in Głogów, the Magdalen Sisters in Szprotawa, the canons of the collegiate church in Głogów, and even her chaplain, Nicholas, all found a place to keep her charters safe. In medieval Europe, it was not considered appropriate for women to speak in public. Should the need arise, a male cleric representing the Poor Clares or the Magdalen Sisters, or a canon of the collegiate church in Głogów would stand up and solemnly read Matilda’s statements, bringing her words back to life. Veiled by the tones of a masculine voice, the words of the duchess would resonate again, demanding respect with all the authority of the woman ruler sitting in majesty, when she introduced herself as “We, Mechthild, by the grace of God, duchess of Silesia and lady of Głogów.”
Matilda, the proud woman from the powerful House of Welf, who hailed from the modest town of Itzehoe, had secured her legacy. Making a life for herself in Głogów, her image and her voice had been recorded, as she promised, “for the perpetual memory of those in the future.” Indeed, they were.
Dr. Sébastien Rossignol is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. This article was made possible by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Further Readings:
Rossignol, Sébastien. Medieval Silesia: An Inclusive History. London: Routledge, 2025.
Rossignol, Sébastien. “The Authority and Charter Usage of Female Rulers in Medieval Silesia, c. 1200-c. 1330.” Journal of Medieval History 40:1 (2014): 63-84.
Top Image: Witnesses swearing an oath on relics at the tribunal; illustration from the Heidelberg manuscript of the Saxon Mirror, east Germany, early fourteenth century. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 164, fol. 16v (detail).
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