In this long essay on The Spirituality of Countess Matilda of Tuscany, Penelope Nash not only reconstructs the spiritual formation of the Countess, in connection to the religious personalities with whom she was in contact, but also identifies in this fundamental element for the people of the Middle Ages the strength that allowed her to face the harsh events of her life and make her a protagonist of history.
Nel saggio The Spirituality of Countess Matilda of Tuscany Penelope Nash dell’Università di Sydney, non solo ricostruisce la formazione spirituale della Contessa, collegandola alle personalità religiose con le quali fu in contatto, ma individua in questo elemento fondamentale per le persone del Medioevo la forza che le consentì di affrontare le dure vicende della sua vita e di farne una protagonista della storia.
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Nash Penelope
Penelope Nash is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney. She has published extensively, especially on how the changes between the tenth and early twelfth centuries affected women’s lives in Western Europe. This has given rise to the major study Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society (2017). She edited with others FORUM: Pauline Stafford’s Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers Thirty-five Years On (2020). She has written a number of articles on early medieval subjects, including studies of the power, wealth and dynastic stability of Ottonian and Salian women and Insular and Byzantine influences on Carolingian and Ottonian literature and art. She has published in Italian: L’imperatrice e la contessa: Adelaide di Borgogna modello per Matilde di Canossa? in «Matilde nel Veneto» (2016). Forthcoming are book chapters: Memories and Memorials of Literature and Art at the Turn of the First Millennium and «Italy and her [German] Invaders»: Otto III’s and Frederick Barbarossa’s Early Tours of Italy with Palgrave Macmillan and Amsterdam University Press.