Reinventing the Beatitudes in Dhuoda’s Liber manualis (c. 841–843)

The aim of this article is to highlight the original way in which Dhuoda uses Christ’s Sermo in monte to express her moral teaching for the benefit of her son’s religious and political upbringing while hinting at politics of her day. In a section of her moral speculum dedicated to the ways of overcoming vices by remembering the 8 beatitudes and living by them, she boldly reinterprets Christ’s sermon while preferring Mathew’s version to Luke’s. Not only does she suppress two beatitudes and add three culled from other biblical sources but she rewrites others, using both the rhetoric of copia and brevitas, so that her son may fashion his aristocratic self according to Christ. Our duchess comments on Old and New Testament texts in private, thus avoiding Saint Paul’s admonishments against women preaching in public. In addition, in a period where earthly happiness is considered inferior to heavenly bliss according to the Augustinian concept of contemptus mundi and contemptus carnis, she appears as a forerunner of the Renaissance where there is room for both.