Commemorating Power in Early Medieval Saxony

Abstract This book examines the function of convents as memorial centres in early medieval Saxony as expressed in the historical texts written for and by these institutions. In the early medieval world, how people remembered the past changed how power was seen in the present. Certain sites, like the prominent convents of Gandersheim and Quedlinburg, were linked to memories of the predecessors of the new dynasty that came to power in tenth century Saxony, the Ottonians. With the accession of the first Ottonian king to the throne in 919, the memorial centres linked to his family shot to the foreground of Saxon politics, with their prominence and prestige seen as exceptional in tenth-century Western Europe. Through closely examining how and why these convents became central sites in the new Ottonian Empire, this book reveals how the women in these communities themselves were skilful political actors. The women of Gandersheim and Quedlinburg were constantly renegotiating their relationships with the Ottonian rulers and their families and were able to produce new visions of the past to achieve their ends. In so doing, a new vision of the history of the Ottonian dynasty and their convents emerges, one of contingency, versatility, and luck.