Library › Latin: Biography › Vita Mathildis Reginae Antiquior
This is the older of the two Lives of Queen Matilda, wife of the German king Henry I and mother of Otto the Great, who died in 968. In the prologue the anonymous author contrasts worldly writers who seek lasting fame by narrating the lives of famous men in a philosophical and fabulous style with his own aim: by command of the most glorious Emperor Otto he has written, though rustically, the true and praiseworthy life of the emperor’s worthy forebears, to be an example to him and to posterity. The Life follows Matilda’s marriage, her children and her piety; in the passage sampled her granddaughter Matilda is entrusted to the nuns of Quedlinburg and the young Otto is designated king, as the queen had prophesied.
The work is a key source for the Ottonian royal family and for the role of queens and royal widows in tenth-century Saxony, especially through religious foundations such as Quedlinburg. Written within the family’s own circle for Otto II, it shapes Matilda into a model of royal sanctity and supports the dynasty’s prestige. A later, revised Life was produced in the following generation, and comparison of the two shows how her memory was reworked.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Corpus Corporum, the Latin text repository of the University of Zurich (edition: Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 151, Parisiis 1853), reused with attribution for non-commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-SA). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.