Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index



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  • Title: Coronation of Edith of Wessex, from the Life of St. Edward the Confessor
  • Creator:
  • Description: Edith of Wessex (1025-1075) was the wife of King Edward the Confessor of England and sister of King Harold II of England. She had a reputation for piety and was an important figure in the 12th and 13th centuries in developing her husband’s cult based on chastity. Edith was the sole political figure among the English royalty to prosper during the Anglo-Norman reign of William I. Following Edward’s death in 1066, Edith commissioned a narrative account celebrating her husband’s virtuous life called the Vita Ædwardi Regis. Later medieval authors, especially Aelred of Rievaulx, composed variations of Edward’s life. This thirteenth-century illuminated French edition of Aelred’s version bears a scene of Edith’s coronation. Queen Edith stands in the center of the image, surrounded by male and female courtiers as well as a number of bishops. She wears a blue gown richly decorated with five contrasting horizontal bands of gold and bejeweled fabric appropriate for her royal status. She also wears a simple white veil. One attendant envelopes Edith in a green and red cloak while a second hands the new queen a floriated scepter. The bishop who crowns her also gives her a blessing. This particular manuscript is a copy of an earlier French edition of the Life of Edward the Confessor by Matthew Paris, presented to another English queen, Eleanor of Provence. Despite its status as a copy, Jill Hamilton Clements has underlined the importance of both the text and images in disseminating concepts of ideal queenship in thirteenth-century England.
  • Source: Wikimedia Commons
  • Rights: Public Domain
  • Subject (See Also): Coronations Edith, Wife of King Edward the Confessor of England Politics Queens
  • Geographic Area: British Isles
  • Century: 13
  • Date: 1250- 1260
  • Related Work: See a page-turn view of the entire manuscript: http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-EE-00003-00059/1
  • Current Location: Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Ee.3.59
  • Original Location: England, S.E., London or Westminster
  • Artistic Type (Category): Digital Images; Manuscript Illuminations
  • Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Vellum (Parchment); Paint
  • Donor: Laywoman; Manuscript includes dedications to Eleanor of Provence, Wife of Edward I of England
  • Height/Width/Length(cm): 27.9 cm/19.3 cm/
  • Inscription:
  • Related Resources: Stafford, Pauline. Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women's Power in Eleventh-Century England. Wiley-Blackwell, 2001. pp. 28-52, 255-79; Stafford, Pauline. "Edith, Edward's Wife and Queen" in Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend. Ed. Richard Mortimer. Boydell and Brewer, 2009. pp. 119-38; Clements, Jill Hamilton. "The Construction of Queenship in the Illustrated Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei" Gesta 52, no. 1 (2013): 21-42. Cutler, Kenneth E. "Edith, Queen of England, 1045-1066" Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973): 222-31.