Face to face with Judith of Flanders? Science meets art.

Biological anthropologists, historians  and artists have joined forces to create detailed virtual images of what could be the head of Judith of Flanders. The face was reconstructed from a skull that scientists at Ghent University investigated as possibly being that  of the ninth-century princess. 

The realistic images are the outcome of a collaboration between anthropologists and historians from Ghent University, Belgium, and craniofacial experts from Face Lab, Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), United Kingdom. The project to put a face to the skull of skeleton S127, one of almost 300 burials in the medieval necropolis of St Peter’s abbey in Ghent that were discovered between 2002 and 2006, was led by Professor Isabelle De Groote. She requested the expertise of Professor Caroline Wilkinson, Director of LJMU’s Face Lab and a world-renowned craniofacial identification expert, and her team to conduct the facial reconstruction of the skeleton in grave S127. Professor Wilkinson was also responsible for the facial reconstruction of the English King Richard III. 

For facial recognition they use published scientific data to help determine the positioning of things like facial muscles, fat and skin limiting their searches to people of a certain sex, age, and ethnicity so that the features better match their subject. When available, they supplement this with information on skin, eye and hair colour based on genetic information retrieved from the skeleton. Simultaneously, the historians supplement this biological information with historic data on dress, make-up, jewellery, etc. The Face Lab then have a scientific framework to use their artistic skill to bring out the face of a “living” person. 

Two and a half years of multidisciplinary research by Prof. Steven Vanderputten (Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies), Prof. Isabelle De Groote and Dr. Jessica Palmer (ArcheOs Laboratory for Biological Anthropology) and archaeologists Geert Vermeiren and Marie Anne Bru (City of Ghent) has gone into evaluating the hypothesis, first formulated in 2009, that the skeleton in grave S127 is that of Judith of Flanders (1). Judith (born 843/844 AD) was the eldest daughter of the Carolingian king Charles the Bald (823 AD–877 AD) and queen Ermentrude.This great-granddaughter of Charlemagne was raised in northern France. At the age of twelve or thirteen, she was married off to the much older King Æthelwulf of Wessex in 856 AD, after she had been crowned queen (regina) at her father’s insistence, making her the first ever consecrated queen of a British kingdom. The marriage, which was concluded for diplomatic reasons, remained childless. In 858 AD, Æthelwulf died. Judith then married Æthelbald, Æthelwulf’s successor and her stepson. He, too, died shortly thereafter (860 AD).

Judith’s role in Wessex was over. She sold her possessions and returned home with her large dowry. Her father placed her under house arrest at Senlis, a famous Carolingian stronghold. Judith eloped with a nobleman of somewhat unclear origins: a certain Baldwin, known later as Baldwin ‘the Iron’ or ‘with the Iron Arm’. She was probably assisted in this by her brother, Louis the Stammerer. Charles the Bald was furious and had Archbishop Hincmar of Reims excommunicate them. They fled to Lotharingia to her cousin Lothair II and on to Rome, where they gained the support of Pope Nicholas I. The excommunication was lifted, and Judith and Baldwin were married in 863 in Auxerre. 

Charles the Bald included his son-in-law into his inner circle and gave him the title of count of Flanders. Flanders (Pagus Flandrensis), a marshy area on the Flemish coast, flourished under the latter’s leadership. From then on, Judith disappears from the sources. We know that she and Baldwin had at least two sons: the later Count Baldwin II of Flanders and Rodulph of Cambrai. But beyond that, her life remains a mystery. How many children she had, when she died, and where she was buried are all unknown. It is possible that Judith played a role in forging a new alliance with the house of Wessex, as her son Baldwin II married Ælfthryth, a daughter of Alfred the Great – her youngest stepson from her marriage to Æthelwulf. One thing is certain: Judith’s final resting place is not with her husband Baldwin in the Abbey of Saint-Bertin in Saint-Omer, where women were not allowed to be buried (2).

The anthropological and historical analysis of S127 supports the hypothesis that she could be Judith, but nothing has been able to fully authenticate her identity. The skull belongs to a middle-aged woman, who enjoyed the benefits of a privileged childhood, but also showed some age-related ailments (3). Even if this skeleton does not belong to Judith, the reconstruction would be that of a noble woman important enough to have been buried right in front of the Carolingian church in the  St. Peter’s Square in Ghent1.