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Rating: 
Summary: Matillda, Who???
Review: After reading this book, I had to ask myself, 'how is it that a woman who had such an impact on the church and western culture, has been unknown to me for all these years...and I consider myself a fairly bright and knowledgeable person. Where I've been?...Or more, WHERE HAS MATILDA BEEN???
A great read... I'd recommend to anyone (who wants to be "in the know")!
Jim Kauffman
Rating:
Summary: Wimpy Title, Powerful Book
Review: Victorious warrior, careful scholar, profound believer, linguist, devoted lover, ruthless ruler and gentle nurse of battlefield wounded, the Matilda Michele Spike presents to us is a complex person, whose internal contradictions are as it were writ large across the history of Italy. She and her man Hildebrand, the adulteress and the unchaste pope, enforced clerical celibacy. The reforms by a Jew's descendant brought about the persecution of that people. They who so ardently desired to enshrine the power and glory of Rome caused its devastation. Together Gregory VII and the Tuscan countess were a formidable team, yet undone. But in the end, one woman's love triumphed, and the world has never been the same since. No wonder that another, much later pope ordered her body stolen and enshrined in St. Peter's, Rome, in a gorgeous sarcophagus by Bernini surmounted by his vision of Matilda, Athena-like in her power and grace.
The bishops of Rome certainly owe Matilda. It took her very formidable biographer to uncover just how much.
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