Download PDF | (The New Middle Ages) Murielle Gaude-Ferragu (auth.) - Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500-Palgrave Macmillan US (2016).
230 Pages
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the institutions that supported this project. Special thanks go to the Institut Universitaire de France and the Université Paris-13, both of which allowed me to see it through, as well as my French publisher Tallandier and the prematurely departed Anne-Laure Bonnet, who so carefully read my work and to whom this book is dedicated. I would also like to thank my colleagues and the following professors, to whom I am grateful for providing me with invaluable scientific support: Elisabeth Brown, Colette Beaune, Jean-Patrice Boudet, Monique Chatenet, Philippe Contamine, Didier Lett and Catherine Vincent.
The following people also provided detailed comments and technical support throughout my research: Etienne Anheim, Ghislain Brunel, Aubrée David, David Fiala, Laura Gaffuri, Laurent Hablot, Didier Le Fur, MarieAdélaide Nielen, Cécile Vincent-Cassy, Laurent Vissi¢re and Caroline Zum Kolk. Lastly, I would like to thank my daughters Juliette, Chloé and Capucine, my parents and my sister for their constant support and understanding when it came to a research project that often occupied my thoughts and took up a large part of my time.
Introduction
In September 2004, analysis of Agnés Sorel’s remains caused a stir.! A team of 28 researchers, led by the paleopathologist Dr Philippe Charlier, wanted to determine if Charles VII’s well-known mistress, who died prematurely in February 1450, had been poisoned. The investigation was undertaken when her tomb was transferred from the royal castle in Loches to the Collegiate Church of Saint-Ours. On examining hair samples taken from the deceased woman, scientists found a large amount of mercury, which had led to her quick demise after she had ingested it. Although her death was probably accidental, since the woman known as the ‘Lady of Beauty’ (Dame de Beauté) had been prescribed a pharmaceutical treatment using mercury salts to fight off an intestinal parasite, the mercury levels were so high that the possibility of criminal intent was also raised. As early as 1450, rumors of murder had also spread throughout the French court, but no conclusive proof was ever found to support this claim. In any case, the ‘crime of poison’ was always mentioned in cases of sudden death.’
The name of Agnés Sorel—who was reputed for her beauty and intelligence in addition to being gifted with a real sense of politics, influencing Charles VII’s government on numerous occasions—nonetheless remains firmly planted in the minds of the French. Jean Fouquet’s famous posthumous portrait of her also glorified her memory. The Lady of Beauty is exquisitely depicted as a crowned Virgin Mary holding the Infant Jesus on her lap, displaying a fashionable hairstyle for her time, and wearing an unlaced bodice.?
Unlike her bothersome rival, Charles VII’s wife and ‘inglorious queen”* Marie of Anjou has remained in the shadows of history. And she is not alone, for most of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century female sovereigns have been completely forgotten. Except for historians, who still recalls the names of Clementia of Hungary, Joan of Burgundy, Joan of Evreux, Joan of Bourbon and Charlotte of Savoy? Only two queens from this period continue to figure in historical output devoted to the time: Isabeau of Bavaria and Anne of Brittany, the former for the political role she played during the civil war and the signing of the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 (when she became the woman who sold the kingdom of France to the English) and the latter because of her mythologized status as the last Duchess of Brittany, said to have fought to maintain the independence of her principality until the very end.°
Further emphasizing the oblivion into which these queens have fallen, no courtly portrait placed them at the forefront of a historical event. The superb iconographical cycle Marie de’ Medici commissioned from Rubens in 1622 to decorate the Luxembourg Palace in Paris and which depicted her triumphant majesty for posterity was still a long way away.° Indeed, for some time the easel portrait was reserved only for monarchs in France (up until the reign of Charles VII), but their wives were still rarely represented during the fifteenth century. Only a watercolor depicting a lost portrait of Marie of Anjou is found in the Gaigniéres collection held at the French National Library’ in addition to Jean Hey’s moving portrait of the ‘Little Queen’ (/a petite reine) Margaret of Austria, who was the future Charles VII’s fiancée at the time. She never became Queen of France, having been dismissed from court in 1491, when the king wanted to marry Anne, heiress to the duchy of Brittany.® In contrast, numerous paintings representing ‘powerful women’ of the same period have been conserved, such as those representing Louis XI and the Duchess of Bourbon’s daughter Anne of Beaujeu or those depicting Isabella of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy and wife of Philip the Good, Grand Duke of the West.’
The memory of these forgotten queens therefore needs to be revived. Even so, such a task should not be about leading the reader through a gallery of individual portraits, but should, more fundamentally, involve examining the nature of their power and their roles within the court and kingdom of France. Well before the time of Catherine and Marie de’ Medici, these women were playing an essential role in the monarchy, not only because they bore the weight of their dynasty’s destiny but also because they embodied royal majesty alongside their husbands.
Indeed, since women were excluded from the French crown in 1316, they could only be ‘queen consorts’, meaning simply the wives of kings. Contrary to other European states, a princess of the French blood could not inherit the kingdom and become a full-fledged queen wielding the complete range of political powers.
All of them were also subject to the same rules governing the female sex. During the Middle Ages, women did not enjoy the same rights as men. From a legal standpoint, they were perpetual minors, depending first on their fathers and then on their husbands. To both, they had a duty to obey and to submit.!”
The source of female inferiority, whereby a woman was deemed physically and mentally weaker than her male counterpart, lay in the Creation.
God had first created man in his image. Born of Adam, woman was supposed to act as his companion and assist him in procreation. All fault lay primarily with the woman, for Eve had allowed herself to be seduced by the snake and led her companion down the path of disobedience. Thus, being too vulnerable to temptation, woman found herself subjugated to man, within both marriage and the Cité. During the thirteenth century, the spread of Aristotle’s ideas further reinforced clerics’ misogyny. According to the philosopher, nature—not God—demanded the distinction between the sexes for the survival of the species. It had endowed man with a strong physique and a developed intellect and woman with a soft, weak body and little wisdom.
Tales about the inequality of the sexes were continually revived. There were a multitude of anti-female proverbs and discourses, such as this particularly juicy quote: ‘Woman is an evil that man cannot avoid.”!’ Preachers also devoted a large part of their sermons to female sins. As the worthy descendants of Eve, women were said to be temptresses, liars and gossips, at once lustful, proud and backstabbing. Some texts were especially virulent, such as that of the Dominican Antoninus of Florence (d. 1459), who drafted a lengthy list in a pastoral manual detailing the sins of woman (in alphabetical order), which included everything from ‘Avid Animal’, ‘Concupiscence of the Flesh’ and ‘False Faith’ to ‘Mountain of Pride’, ‘Talkative Throat’ and ‘Vanity of All Vanities’.!
Such a level of acrimony was exceptional and aimed primarily at converting attitudes. Other authors were more nuanced, acknowledging female virtues like gentleness and a naturally compassionate heart. This latter virtue likened women to the Virgin Mary, the mother of God who was ‘blessed among women’ and whose depiction as the Virgin of Mercy spread throughout the Medieval West. As mediator and universal advocate, the Queen of Heaven protected the faithful and preserved them from earthly peril.!°
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, both men and women voiced their defense of the ‘second sex’.'* Among them was Christine de Pizan, one of the most important writers of the Late Middle Ages, and Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris—both of whom contributed to the ‘Debate of the Romance of the Rose’.!° In a treaty written in 1401, Christine de Pizan strongly reacted to the misogynistic allegations contained in the Romance, which at that time was celebrated by Charles VI’s secretaries Jean de Montreuil and Gontier Col. ‘Who are women?’ she wrote. ‘Are they serpents, wolves, lions, dragons, vipers or devouring beasts? And, by God, they are your mothers, your sisters, your daughters, your wives and your friends. They are you yourselves, and you yourselves are they!”!°
However, one should not misunderstand this pervading misogyny, for the idea that women were weak and inferior was shared by all. Even Christine de Pizan never challenged the idea that women should obey their husbands. In The Book of the Three Virtues, she thus reminded the princess in her parable that she was supposed to be controlled by her ‘lord’.’” In a lengthy defense of female honor (The Book of the City of Ladies), however, her words were more nuanced, including the addition that woman was created from Adam’s rib in order to be by his side as ‘a companion ... whom he would love as if they were one flesh, and not his servant lying at his feet’.!®
To each his or her own role then, as everyone was supposed to acknowledge. Men had the public sphere, justice, government and the necessities of war, while women had the domestic sphere, submission to their husbands and child rearing. There were numerous legal and political implica-tions behind this asymmetry between the sexes.!? Contracts, donations and testaments underwritten by a woman had to be drafted with either her father’s or her husband’s consent. Similarly, at the district, seigneurial and kingdom levels, authority was primarily wielded by men. In Italian cities, women could eventually engage in economic dealings, but they were not under any circumstances allowed to elect anyone or be elected to any office. They neither took oaths, participated in public life nor intervened in assemblies.”°
When it came to passing on property, however, it was proper to establish regional differences according to inheritance customs. Furthermore, the absence of a male heir often authorized a woman to wield power. In reality, women thus had to play diverse political and economic roles in addition to religious and cultural ones.
Among other issues, the history of gender has strived to define these plural roles. The place of women in medieval society has never before so thoroughly fed historiographical output on this subject in both Anglophone countries and France. Some authors have focused specifically on ‘powerful women’ in the Medieval West and the notion of ‘queenship’.?! The queen of France has inspired many studies, which have essentially centered around the Early Middle Ages (see Pauline Stafford and Régine le Jan)”? or the early modern period (see Fanny Cosandey and Bartolomé Bennassar).?* However, there has never been a synthesis of these studies that looks at queens of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which is what this work seeks to examine.
Such an examination leads one down many paths, where political, religious and cultural histories converge with the history of gender. It implies defining the queen’s status as well as her role(s) within the royalty, the court and civil society. The female sovereign not only had rights, but duties too. She had to practice the ‘profession of queen’, which was not simply reduced to the acts of procreation and caring for the children of France. Far from being confined solely to the private sphere, she participated in the communication of power, and, as her husband’s corporeal double, she embodied the female equivalent of majesty. At once queen of ceremonies, queen of hearts and renowned patroness, she also contributed to the proper functioning of ‘court society’.** Isabeau of Bavaria even played a broader political role due to her husband’s intermittent ‘absences’ (due to bouts of madness).
Such an examination should also make it possible to observe the transformations in reginal power, since the place and roles assigned to the queen changed greatly over the course of the Late Middle Ages. As one example among many others, her body—which was for a long time destined to be itinerant, albeit interred in the most important Parisian sanctuaries—subsequently entered the prestigious ‘cemetery of kings’: the Abbey of Saint-Denis. It is therefore necessary to consider the implications—if, in fact, there were any—of the rediscovery of Salic Law concerning her status.
This book commences under the reign of those ‘accursed kings’ (Louis X, Philip V and Charles IV, who had no male descendants),”° beginning with what historians consider to be the most significant event in the history of queens: the exclusion of women from the French crown during two crises related to succession in 1316 and 1328. Firmly planted in popular memory, Salic Law—which was exhumed by Richard Lescot in 1358—served to justify this exclusion after the fact. The promulgation of Salic Law apparently deeply modified the nature of the queen’s power. From the moment queens were dismissed from any political action, new areas of intervention—particularly ceremonial ones—opened up for them.’ This book concludes with the end of Anne of Brittany’s reign (d. 1514, in Blois), one that was situated at the crossroads of the medieval and the early modern periods and which led to a completely different world altogether: the Renaissance.
The challenge of this work therefore lies in grasping the meaning and complexity of the office of queen and thus elaborating a female history of power.
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