old. Her second marriage of political expediency was
a rocky one, but it did produce the needed heir in 1133
(Henry II Plantagenet). After her father’s death in 1135
Matilda spent some twenty years asserting her son’s
claim to the Anglo-Norman throne against her cousin,
Stephen of Blois.
Once Henry II succeeded Stephen in 1154, Matilda
lived the remainder of her life in Normandy, and was
buried at the abbey of Bec upon her death in 1167. She
proved to be a valuable and trusted adviser to her royal
son. Although she recommended against the appoint-
ment of Thomas à Becker as the archbishop of Canter-
bury, Matilda was turned to repeatedly by all sides as a
mediator (mediatrix) in the subsequent dispute between
the king and cleric. This remarkable woman’s Anglo-
Norman-German life was summed up in the epitaph on
her tomb: “Great by birth, greater by marriage, greatest
by offspring. Here lies the daughter, wife, and mother of
Henry.” Yet surely the legacy of this indomitable woman
reaches beyond the men whose political needs set the
boundaries of her life.
See also Henry I
Further Reading
Chibnall, Marjorie. The Empress Matilda: Queen, Consort, Queen
Mother and Lady of the English. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1991.
Geldner, Ferdinand. “Kaiserin Mathilde, die deutsche Königswahl
von 1125 und das Gegenkönigtum Konrads III.” Zeitschrift
für bayerische Landesgeschichte 40 (1977): 3–22.
Leyser, Karl. “Frederick Barbarossa, Henry II and the hand of St.
James.” English Historical Review 90 (1975): 481–506; rpt. in
Medieval Germany and its Neighbors. London: Hambledon,
1980, pp. 215–40.
Pain, Nesta. Matilda: Uncrowned Queen of England. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978.
Rössler, Oskar. Kaiserin Mathilde, Mutter Heinrichs von Anjou,
und das Zeitalter der Anarchie in England. Berlin: E. Ebering,
1897; rpt. Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1965.
Schnith, Karl. “Domina Anglorum, Zur Bedeuntungsstreite eines
hochmittelalterlichen Herrscherinentitels.” In Grundwis-
senschaften und Geschichte: Festschrift für Peter Acht, ed.
Waldemar Schlogl and Peter Herde. Kallmunz: Lassleben,
1976, pp. 101–111.
Joseph P. Huffman
MATTEO DA PERUGIA (d. by 1418)
Matteo da Perugia (Matheus de Perusia) was born in the
latter fourteenth century and belongs, offi cially, to the
third and last generation of Italian ars nova musicians;
however, his curious career and his stylistic focus make
him almost a French musician.
Except for his presumed Perugian origin, we know
nothing of Matteo’s early life, although it is apparent
that he chose to become a professional musician rather
than a priest. At some point, he became a singer at the
cathedral of Milan (which was then still unfi nished),
and in 1402 he was appointed to be its fi rst choirmas-
ter (magister capellae or maestro di cappella). This
appointment is thought to refl ect the infl uence of the
colorful man who became Matteo’s chief patron, Pietro
Filargo di Candia (Petros Philargos). Pietro Filargo was
born a Greek; joined the Roman church; studied and
then taught theology at the University of Paris; was an
adviser to Gian Galeazzo Visconti; was made bishop,
successively, of Piacenza (1386), Vicenza (1387), and
Novara (1389); became archbishop of Milan in 1402;
was made a cardinal in 1405; and became the antipope
Alexander V in 1409.
Filargo took up his episcopal residence in nearby
Pavia, where he could teach at its university and hold a
lavish court. Matteo, loyally, came to this court to serve
Filargo, so annoying his own employers in Milan that he
felt compelled to give up his cathedral post in 1407 and
devote himself fully to Filargo. In 1409, when Filargo
was elected as antipope Alexander V by the Council of
Pisa, Matteo presumably moved with his master to a
new residence in Bologna. It was apparently then that
Matteo participated in the preparation of one of the
most important musical manuscript collections of the
day (now in the Estense Library in Modena). When
Alexander V died in 1410 (by poison), Matteo evidently
stayed on with his successor, John XXIII, until John was
assured of deposition by the Council of Constance. In
May 1414, Matteo resumed his post at the cathedral in
Milan, offi cially until October 1416. However, but not
until January 1418—by which time Matteo himself
seems to have died—was his successor given full status
as maestro di canto.
There is no evidence that Matteo himself ever visited
France, but French cultural infl uences had been present
in northern Italy for decades, thanks partly to the prox-
imity of the absentee papal court at Avignon. Filargo’s
Francophile tastes, in particular, probably caused Matteo
to develop an identifi cation with French rather than Ital-
ian musical styles—whether by imposition or voluntary
affi nity. Matteo’s output of compositions must have been
extensive, and what survives of it, though small by some
standards, is the largest of any of the Italian ars nova
composers. Aside from some six Latin liturgical pieces
(two of them complex polytextual motets), the surviving
works are secular. Only two ballate are in Italian. The
remainder (four ballades, seven virelais, ten rondeaux,
and one canon) are all in French, presumably to suit
the Francophile tastes of his patrons. Most of Matteo’s
compositions are for three vocal parts, and in virtually
all his work—sacred or secular—he applies the arcane
techniques of isorhythmic integration, carrying them
to elaborate extremes (disjunct lines, confl icting time
signatures, etc.) in the style of the so-called ars subtilior,
the “mannerist” school of exaggerated effects, which heMATTEO DA PERUGIA