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  • Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint

    Balthild of Francia by Moreira, Isabel;

    Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint

    Series: Women in Antiquity;

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    37 264 Ft

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    Product details:

    • Publisher OUP USA
    • Date of Publication 6 January 2025

    • ISBN 9780197518663
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages240 pages
    • Size 235x156 mm
    • Weight 1040 g
    • Language English
    • 627

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    Short description:

    This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in contemporary sources as beautiful and intelligent, she rose to power though her marriage to the short-lived King Clovis II. As regent for her young son, she promoted social and political reforms in Francia that included the rescue and rehousing of Christian slaves who, like Balthild herself, had been caught up in the human-trafficking practices of the mid-seventh century.

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    Long description:

    This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in contemporary sources as beautiful and intelligent, she rose to power though her marriage to the short-lived King Clovis II. As regent for her young son, she promoted social and political reforms in Francia that included the rescue and rehousing of Christian slaves who, like Balthild herself, had been caught up in the human-trafficking practices of the mid-seventh century.

    Implicated in the violent politics of the era, Balthild spent the remainder of her life in the convent of Chelles where a unique cache of surviving relics and personal items, including her hair, were protected and dispersed as relics over the following centuries. In the nineteenth century, Balthild's anti-slave trade policies were recalled for new audiences when she was adopted as an icon for the cause of the abolition of the slave trade and installed as one of the twenty illustrious women whose statues are situated in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.

    Although critical to her age, because of the remote time period and the specialized nature of the sources, Balthild is little known today. This book will correct this oversight by shining a light on a fascinating and courageous figure whose legacy long outlived the era to which she belonged.

    Most valuable is [the author's] examination of how subsequent ages used Balthild to symbolize their political and cultural interests.... Recommended.

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    Table of Contents:

    Preface
    Acknowledgments
    Abbreviations
    Map
    Family Tree
    Chapter One: Finding her Story
    Chapter Two: Trafficked Slave
    Chapter Three: Marriage Makes a Queen
    Chapter Four: Regent, Reformer, and Rescuer of Slaves
    Chapter Five: Life and Death at the Convent of Chelles
    Chapter Six: Mother, Mutilator -- and Murderer?
    Chapter Seven: Abolitionist Icon
    Appendix: The Baldehildis Seal Matrix
    Bibliography
    Index

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