Was Einhard a widower?

Abstract

AbstractThe ‘widow’ is a gendered, socially contingent category. Women who experienced spousal bereavement in the early middle ages faced various socio‐economic and legal ramifications; the ‘widow’ was further a rhetorical figure with a defined emotional register. The widower is, by contrast, an anachronistic category. In the absence of developed models of male ‘widowhood’, this article considers the case study of Einhard, whose letter of bereavement appears to offer a rare glimpse into early medieval interiority. Einhard did not experience the same socio‐economic and legal consequences of female widowhood. But was he, in his own rhetorical self‐expression, a male widow?