La Reine au Moyen Âge

Murielle Gaude-Ferragu addresses the silence surrounding the queens of late medieval France (with the exceptions of Isabel of Bavaria and Anne of Brittany) and provides an impressively well informed and engaging book which attempts to address this lacuna. Her work draws mainly on other published sources but brings in some new information through engagement with manuscripts, especially books of hours, and the financial accounts of the queens where possible. The result is a valuable contribution that sheds light on some much-neglected women and their influence, and indeed it is hoped that this will encourage future and more in-depth studies of French queenship. Gaude-Ferragu’s work is divided into three sections, analysing firstly royal marriages and relationships, then the role of women/queens in politics and finally the symbolic governance of queens. Beginning with the political significance of marriages, a survey of the goods a future queen could bring—be they alliances, land or money—is interwoven with more general studies of marriage and the age of majority to show the political significance of marriage-making and conjugal affections. If the first chapter seems to lack depth and precision, this is made up for in the section exploring the coronations of queens (and, indeed, of kings), with a valuable analysis of the coronation of Charles V and his wife Joanna of Bourbon contrasted with singular coronations, including that of Isabel of Bavaria with reference to ordines . The most important duty of a queen, to carry the blood of France, is discussed with clarity and with careful analysis of allegations of gifts on childbirth, the power of devotion, the ritual of purification and the role of queens as mothers and educators. In analysing women in politics, the differences between France and the rest of Europe where women could inherit the throne after 1316 are questioned with reference to war, administration of lands and patronage. There is a good discussion of the exclusion of women from the throne, though it often draws on old-fashioned scholarship, as well as use of Christine de Pizan’s writings and other courtly literature to consider the duties and expectations of French queens, with particularly valuable points on queens as negotiators and the power of theatre. In trying to show queens in power, as regents or lieutenants, important new analysis of the role of queens militant is brought in, as are some interesting comments on the dominant idea of ‘bad queens’ in later writings, with impressive scrutiny of a range of sources. Such detail is contrasted nicely with the theatrical analysis of the ‘Queen of Ceremonies’, with reference to Isabella’s entrance to Paris in 1389 and queenly funerals. The final, and shortest, section, on symbolic government, might also have been called a study of court society, and draws on both literature and accounts to look at queens within their palaces and participation in spectacles. A number of important details are brought in on devotion and on the patronage distributed by queens, hinting at their influence over courtiers and family members as well as the female role in the creation of the ideology of kingship

Ancient history · Art · CLARITY · Coronation · Duty · Genealogy · Political science · Politics · Queen (butterfly · Silence · Wife · European Political History Analysis · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History