The Empress Matilda and Church Reform

Abstract

MATILDA'S epitaph, proclaiming her the daughter, wife and parent of a Henry, great by birth, greater in marriage, and greatest of all in her offspring, epitomises her standing among her contemporaries. It also explains some of the difficulty any historian must experience in attempting to penetrate her character and motives. Her role was seen essentially as an auxiliary one. The relatively few years when she played a leading part in English politics as ‘domina Anglorum’, with one very brief and ill-advised attempt to act as ‘regina Anglie’, years to which modern historians have devoted most of the pages they have allowed her, counted for virtually nothing in the summing up of her influence made in 1167. As a woman involved in politics she was assigned a woman's place: important and influential, but limited, variable, and always secondary.

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