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Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Judith Bennet and Ruth Karras -…
Women and Gender in Medieval Europe
Medieval Womanhood
Key Concepts
Remember - sex=morphological differences; gender=cultural construct
Women's limited rights existed in context of hierarchical patriarchal society
Popular misogyny
-- Jean de Meun - C13 French poet, wrote
Roman de la Rose
, satire criticising women and marriage
-- Jaume Roig - C15 Catalan writer, wrote
Espill
, fictional experiences of harmful women
Proto-feminists also existed
-- Peter Abelard (and Heloise)
-- Hrotsvitha - C10, lived in an abbey in Saxony, first Germanic female writer
-- Christine de Pizan - C14-15, court writer for Orleans, Burgundy, Charles VI of France, wrote about contributions of women to society (
The City of Ladies
)
Patriarchy created an unequal society but didn't necessarily deny women agency - could wield power, just in different ways from men
Legal Rights
Could often ask for divorce but only in limited cases eg impotency (had to prove impotency in court)
Could own property and run businesses under certain circumstances but not often
Historiography
Before C19 - Whig history, focused on politics, discounted evidence of female agency as hoax
1900-50 - first female academics eg E. Power
1950-65 First re-evaluations of categories applied to women eg R. Pernoud
1968-90. Influence of feminism
-- M. Facinger, a study of Medieval Queenship: Capetian France, 1968
-- J. MacNamara and S. Wemple, The power of women through the family in Medieval Europe, 1973
-- J-K Gadol, Did women have a Renaissance?, 1977
1993 onwards - consolidation of women's history and gender studies eg J. Bennet, R. Mazo-Karras
Queenship
Easier to study - more visible in historical records
However most writing by men about men for men
Gender-specific roles - wife and mother, queen consort or queen regnant
Queenly power mostly based on personal networks and family bonds eg regent, sister, wife - couldn't use warfare or force to exert power
Gendered political power - unofficial influence vs overt rule
Powerful Women
Early Medieval - Queen Judith - C9
Queen Judith/Judith of Bavaria
Daughter of Count Welf - ruled territories east of the Rhine
819 - Married much older Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne - Louis' first wife had died 818
Chosen in a 'bride show' - apparently chosen because beautiful, intelligent, musically talented - also because political advantage from Rhine territories on eastern frontier
823 - Gave Louis a fourth son - inclusion of Charles in succession in 829 caused conflict
Great prestige at court - enough influence for sons of Louis to want to get rid of her
-- 830-33 - Rumours about her having an affair with Louis' chamberlain, exiled from the palace to a convent twice
834 - Louis regains control of his empire from his sons and reinstates Judith as queen and empress
841 - Died one year after her husband
Portrayed both as loving wife and mother or as corrupt and disloyal, leading Louis astray with her advice - both prestige and criticism stem from her role as mother rather than her own role at court
Early Medieval - Queen Emma - C11
Emma of Normandy/England/Denmark - Aelfgifu of England
1002 - Marries Aethelred the Unready of England to make an alliance between England and Normandy against the Danes - given the Anglo-Saxon name Aelfgifu
Had three children with Aethelred - sons Edward the Confessor and Alfred, daughter Goda
1013 - Sven Forkbeard conquered England, royal family went to Normandy
1014 - Returned to England
1016 - Aethelred died, Knut invaded and captured London and England as a whole
1017 - Emma marries Knut - suggested that it was a political move - Knut killed political rivals but her sons spared - seeme to have eventually become an affectionate marriage
Had two children with Knut - son Harthacnut, daughter Gunhilda
1035 - Knut dies, conflict for the English throne, Emma backs her son against Knut's sons from his first wife
1037 - Harald, Knut's son from his first wife, becomes king - Emma goes into exile
1040 - Harald dies, Harthacnut becomes king
1042 - Harthacnut dies, Edward the Confessor becomes king
1052 - Emma dies
Used her sons to gain power and advantage for herself - used her role as wife to aid her sons
Powerful in her own right - commissioned
In Praise of Queen Emma
Late Medieval - Joan of Arc - C15
The prophet
-- 1424 - Started hearing voices
-- 1429 - Came to the French court as a prophet
-- 1429 - Theological questioning at Poitiers
The crusader
-- 1429 - La Tourrelles, Orleans, Patay, Troyes, Reims, crowning of Charles VII
-- Also failed attempt to take Paris
The martyr
-- 1430 - Captured by Burgundians, sold to the English
-- 1431 - Trial, first sentence, swore not to wear men's clothes again - tricked into breaking her oath by stripping her, threatening to rape her, only giving her men's clothes as an option - executed three days later
Significance - long tradition of crusading in Lorraine, 'prophecy' that a maid would save France, compared to Biblical prophetesses and warrior queens
Power comes from religion - not a wife or mother
Late Medieval - Yolande of Aragon - C14-15
1381 - Born in Zaragoza, Aragon - women had more political power than was customary in rest of Europe
1400 - Marries Louis II duke of Anjou and king of Naples, Sicily, Jerusalem
1417 - Louis dies leaving Yolande as regent
1421 - Marries her daughter Marie of Anjou to the Dauphin Charles after 1413 betrothal
1422 - Charles VI dies and leaves Charles VII as 'rightful' king - Yolande takes over championing his cause
Aided Joan of Arc at court
1442 - Yolande dies
Judith Bennet and Ruth Karras - Historiography of Gender
Medieval vs Modern Views
'Man' as standard, 'woman' as different
Biblical ideas - woman as both Virgin Mary and Eve - aka Madonna-whore dichotomy
Until 1970s - women as a separate study, men as unnoticed gender - women as revered under chivalry vs maligned under patriarchy
Since 1970s - study of variety and opportunity
Medieval Gender
Shaped options for men and women and how they thought about the world
Described institutions (church as bride of Christ), nature (goddess/mother), xenophobia (gendered language eg effeminate to describe Jewish and Muslim men)
Gendered metaphors - God as father, Mercy as woman etc
Simultaneously respected and denigrated women, women simultaneously restricted and enabled
Dictated by religion - Xtianity, Judaism and Islam all agreed women less than men, female attributes worse, women should be submissive and men should govern - paralleled submission of humanity to God
Xtian teachings on marriage and virginity developed over time, Islamic teachings developed from Arab, Roman and Sassanid contexts, etc
Contradictory views - eg coronations with rule by women simultaneously intolerable and something to be celebrated
Should move away from 'learned traditions' - variation in ideas
-- Scholastic ideas on how men and women should be; romances and poems imagine how men and women might be; general evidence is that women generally expected to be competent but still answerable to husband
Rich adhered more to strict gender roles - poor people had some similar ideas but also own traditions
Historiography
C19
-- Exploited medieval history/gender - Victorian medievalism eg gothic revival, Lady of Shalott etc
-- Dismissed authenticity of female influence - Heloise's letters written by Abelard, writings by abbesses actually by male secretaries, Hrotsvitha's plays a late medieval hoax
Early C20
-- Few female medievalists - studying women in their own right, focused on the elite
Mid C20
-- Feminism had waned, more negative views
-- 1955,
Betty Bandel - negative trajectory, Aethelflaed of Mercia praised C10, considered too man-like C12, dismissed in favour of Aethelred and Edward C13 onwards
Late C20
-- Feminist medievalism more vibrant
-- 1986 - first journal, now
Medieval Feminist Forum
-- 1992 - Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship established
-- Decades of fact-finding and uncovering lost history of women
--
David Herlihy - women's land-holding, life expectancy etc, using quantitative data
--
Caroline Bynum - female Xtian mystics imagining Jesus as a maternal figure
-- Narrative of decline expanded upon
---
Georges Duby - early medieval aristocrats egalitarian but changed with importance of primogeniture
(now undermined by archival studies)
---
Joan Kelly - women lose opportunity as men gain it eg Renaissance
(women did participate in Enlightenment and Renaissance)
1990s - Changing ideas about gender and womanhood
Law
Some of best source material
-- Prescriptive law - how lawyers, judges and legislators understood gender difference - echoes learned tradition
-- Legal practice - court records, notarial registers etc - evidence for actual lives of women
Frameworks differentiating women and men - specific laws varied but general ideas stayed the same as did moral regulation
Roman law as a set of procedures interacted with local law and customs
Technically controlled women's affairs but in reality more forgiving - ability to negotiate legal and business affairs
Domestic Lives
Narratives of change - marriages going from multiple and easily broken to a single permanent bond, lineage going from bilineal to patrilineal
Different patterns from 1000 onwards
-- North vs South Europe - southern women marrying younger, more often, and to older husbands and more likely to be dependent on husbands then widowed
-- Class - aristocratic women being betrothed and married younger and in higher numbers
-- Religion - Jewish women tended to marry earlier
-- Other domestic situations - never-married women (up to 1/3 of northern women), nuns, widows
Men identified by occupation, women by family ties
Middle-class domesticity
-- Wealthy merchants had more riches, clothing, furnishings etc - became a female responsibility and source of female agency
--
Howell - bourgeois ideology of gender with women as good housewives busy at home and men as good citizens busy in public works
-- Ler to poorer women mimicking domestic ideas of richer women
Gendered space
-- Not neatly public=male and private=female
-- Streets and markets both common and public spheres
-- Designs of castles and townhouses promoted privatisation of domestic spaces
Domestic piety
-- 1970s-80s - study of medieval Xtian life focused on institutional - female piety was focused on nuns
-- Now more of a focus on lay households - rich had chapels, middling had psalters, poor had rosaries
-- Increasing number of women recognised for holiness or pursuing devotions at home rather than in a nunnery eg Catherine of Sienna
Land and Economy
Feminist history drew on economic history - looking at women's work
Clothmaking and urbanisation
-- eg
David Herlihy's
Opera Muliebria
-- Cloth industry showed how women's work outside the home slowly became less important
-- Pre-1000 - usually made entirely by women
-- 1000-1500 - men becoming more active in the industry
-- Post-1500 - men completing all but the most menial tasks
-- But throughout women and clothmaking were essential to the economy
--
Berman - spread of wind and water mills c.1000 freed women from hand-milling and sent them into the cloth industry
Medieval-modern divide - 'golden age' post-plague before capitalism?
Value in reproduction - men needed women to give heirs and run households, valued for wealth they could bring marriage
Division of labour - prominent in poorly-paid trades eg spinning and small-scale marketing, lower wages
More often carriers of wealth than earners or possessors
-- Early medieval - owned total of 1/5 of all land, less by late medieval
-- Less control of what they held - guardians for unmarried heiresses; husbands managed dowries and property, widows had usufruct (use of another's property short of selling or destroying) of conjugal property
Sexuality
Boswell - gay identity and gay relationships were tolerated in the Middle Ages
-- Now doubted - 'homosexuality' not a concept - dominance masculine and passivity feminine
-- Noblemen could be dominant over a passive male servant etc
-- Female same-sex relations - few court cases still extant treat dominant partner as in the wrong and passive partner as still feminine therefore forgivable
Christianity
Redirecting discussions away from nuns and theological hostility to women and towards women shaping their own faith
Bynum - association of women with the flesh allowed women to identify with the body of Christ, although only priests could celebrate the Eucharist women had their own Eucharistic miracles
Medieval church playing with gender - church as a bride to Christ, nurturing aspect of God the Father, ambiguity of the Holy Spirit - cults of the saints including female saints
Women guarding the boundaries of faith - proselytisers, converts etc, converting their husbands
Heresies offering freedom to women eg ability to preach
Nuns an important consideration as well - degendered by vows? bound by gender?
-- Nuns and monks more similar to each other than nuns to laywomen and monks to laymen
Role of female piety in spirituality - Hildegard of Bingen, Marguerite Porete, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe etc - produced texts, likely often anonymously
Mulder-Bakker - forceful women able to take leadership roles in lay piety eg commissioning artwork
Amalie Fössel - Female Rulership
Gender and Power
Contemporary political conceptions reflected patriarchal social order and male hierarchy - men born to rule and women to be ruled
'Mirrors for Princes' written by men, for men, about 'male' attributes eg strength, virtue - no concept of female political responsibility
Thomas Aquinas revived Aristotle's theory of woman as an incomplete man - influenced later period
-- Early medieval writers had perceived female rulers as political actors to be praised or criticised
-- Especially upper nobility reigning as proxies for sons or husbands or in their own right or abbesses
Politically successful women described as having male qualities which allowed them to overcome their feminine weakness - Latin
virago
'acting like a man'
Queen as Institution and Model
C10 Ottonians crowned and anointed empresses as legitimisation
-- Had been used sporadically by Carolingians eg 754 Bertrada wife of Pippin I, 816 Ermengarde first wife of Louis the Pious (first with gold circlet and title
augusta
), 819 Judith second wife of Louis the Pious
Under Carolingians consecration, anointing and coronation separate events
Anointing used to give queen a 'sacral' aura - Charles the Bald had daughter Judith crowned and anointed when she married the Anglo-Saxon king, crowned and anointed his wife after 24 years of marriage
962 - Coronation of Adelheid as empress of Rome under Ottonians - provided a pattern for later generations - crowned queen in a German cathedral and empress in Rome
Later tradition - crowned queen separately from husband when he became king, anointed emperor and empress together in Rome
Ideal queen had specific characteristics
-- Overcoming inconstancy and femininity - Biblical model was Judith and Holofernes
-- Motherhood, bearing an heir - Biblical model was Sarah wife of Abraham, Rebecca wife of Isaac, Leah and Rachel wives of Jacob
-- Political power, piety, wisdom, courage - Biblical example of Esther - foundation of power was through marriage
Coronation
Ordines
/liturgies were 'Mirror for Queens' - Old Testament archetypes that should be mimicked by queens - using masculine strength in a feminine way to protect the people
Titles of the Queen
Most formulas only have a small amount of gender-specific language
Ottonian empresses -
imperatrix augusta
- elevated empress - paralleled male title, honorific term for wives of the emperor
Post-962 -
consors regni
- associate in royal lordship - used during Adelheid's first marriage, possibly her who had it added when she married Otto
C11 Salian rulers - associate in our bed and empire - interrelation of marriage and lordship, shows how authority of empress came from her marriage
Practice of Rulership
Reigning queens - basis of own heirship, had broad rights
Regent queens - ruled in name of underage relatives, had temporary rights
Queen consorts - had political duties alongside husbands or acted as representatives in their absence, had partial rulership rights
Different kingdoms had different legal traditions
-- Almost all had hereditary monarchy where women could inherit
Frankish empire had divided dynastic succession
Ottonian empire had indivisibility and succession of firstborn son
Post-C13 only adult rulers came to power in HRE because of electoral rulership
French monarchy
-- Dynastic principle continued with Hugh Capet, Capetian dynasty reigned until 1328 until they died without heirs and the Valois cadet branch took over
-- Daughters of Louis X and Charles IV made claims at the end of the Capetian dynasty but refused on grounds of Salic Law prohibiting female inheritance or transmission of claims via royal daughters - negated claim of English Edward III as his claim was via his mother
Reigning Queens
Monarchies other than France had female succession, especially C14-15
Queens legitimated in Iberian and Italian kingdoms, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia and Scandinavia
Some earlier examples but rarer
-- C12 - Urraca of Castile-Leon, Petronilla of Aragon, Empress Constance of Sicily, Empress Matilda of England
-- C13 - Joan of Navarre
Only Castile-Leon and Navarre had three or more queens - more 'liberal' for women in politics
Monarchies with the exception of France and HRE recognised female succession and hereditary rights could be passed through the female line
-- 12 in every 100 successions
Cognatic successions a last resort - only if no male claimant available or if the male claimant already ruled another nation
-- Reluctance to accept a foreign ruler sometimes to advantage of female heir but to disadvantage if female heir married to a foreign ruler
Mostly daughters who succeeded fathers with no other legitimate children
Two occasions of mothers succeeded sons for whom they had been regent
-- C14 Margaret of Denmark - electoral monarchy, chosen as regent for her son - outlived her son and ruled the three Scandinavian kingdoms for 20 years
Two occasions of sisters succeeding brothers
One of granddaughter succeeding grandfather
-- Joan of Navarre was named heir in her grandfather's will and ruled for 30 years
Importance of direct relationship with the dead monarch and individual hereditary rights
Some ruled in common with husbands eg Blanche of Navarre
Some represented by governors although were allowed to administer the realm
Overall
-- Female rights anchored in hereditary monarchies
Female succession infrequent and usually in the south/south-west
Regent Queens
Was a feature in Merovingian era but only a major feature late C10 onwards
East Frankish - first were Adelheid and Theophanu for Otto III, their son/grandson - decided through a power struggle
-- Dictated that mothers should be regents - less likely to try and take over monarchy
-- Annals of Quedlinburg made Adelheid (grandmother/mother-in-law) the focus of events - focused on her counsel etc
-- May have contributed to central role of HRE queens in politics
Gender-specific language
-- Regency of empress equated with male regencies if she fulfilled expectations and did well - female stereotypes when did not
Sometimes completely lost power after regency ended and had to leave politics (eg Anne of Kiev regent for Philip I of France, had to leave court after a controversial marriage); sometimes kept exercising political influence after end of regency (eg Agnes of Poitou regent for Henry IV of German empire, was a successful emissary for her son)
Became a long-term part of political traditions
-- Post-C12 - more or less standard practice for the mother to be regent - strengthened their position via official competencies and central political position
Queen Consorts
Influence varied - less in French court then German empire in central Middle Ages
Ottonian empire - power of intervention was a major duty - queenly advocacy via personal closeness to ruler and could exercise influence
Empress Adelheid - received petitioners for her advocacy from the entire empire as an institutional job - augmented her influence via intervention
-- Strengthened personal authority, made her appear as a co-ruler - consolidated agency
Institutionalisation of power of intervention showed high degree of acceptance - queen was most important advocate and best way of getting king's attention
Wealth/holdings varied
-- England C11-12 - Queens endowed with lordly domains post-1066 according to Domesday Book - post-C12 limited wealth for queens eg Eleanor of Aquitaine
-- German empire - Adelheid extremely wealthy, Kunigunde sometimes poor
English queens had fixed endowments and specific holdings C13-14 - evidence
Sean Gilsdorf - Sanctity and Queenship
Queens as Saints
Mathilda and Adelheid extolled as saints by biographers - most saintly women abbesses or nuns
Deemed worthy because of devotion to God, enduring faith, integration of faith with 'worldly' attributes of noble birth, royal marriage, political power etc -
royal sanctity
C10 Europe
Charlemagne's male descendents scarce, local aristocrats taking parts of kingdoms and subkingdoms
Mathilda raised in a convent like many aristocratic daughters - Herford, Westphalia
-- Met Henry, son of Otto Duke of the Saxons - 909 marriage was between two well-established Saxon families
-- 912 - Henry became Duke of Saxony
-- 918 - Henry named successor to King Conrad of East Francia - recognised as able to defend his title
-- 919 - Royal election of Henry as Henry I
-- Initially hostile relationship with Burgundy and King Rudolf II but by 926 had a friendly relationship
Adelheid daughter of Rudolf II
-- 947 - Married to Lothar, king of Italy after betrothal aged six
-- 950 - Lothar dies and Adelheid taken prisoner by a claimant to the throne
-- 951 - Otto, son of Henry I, entered Italy - had been widowed in 946 (Edith, granddaughter of Alfred the Great) - immediately arranged for Adelheid to be brought to Pavia to marry him when he was crowned king of Italy
-- Represented decades of close ties between the Burgundian and German ruling families
-- Adelheid's children - Emma (first marriage) became queen of the West Franks and regent for the last Carolingian king; son with Otto succeeded his father; Mathilda oversaw monastic complex of Quedlinburg
--
Gerbert of Aurillac - 'mother of kingdoms'
Queenship
Position of queen not expressly defined but in practice delineated
Depended on context - role of the king, her personal resources (material and symbolic) and her societal traditions/expectations
Inseparable from position and power within the family - ideological structure with familial relations a model for social ties
But only relative - still a dominant role
Power came in having the king's ear -
Leyser says especially in itinerant courts when messengers were slow it was important to have friends who were near the king
Role as intercessor or advocate
-- Formalised in
diplomata
saying a grant was made 'at the intercession' or 'at the request' of someone - queens most frequently mentioned as intercessors - had the king's ear, opinions valued by the king, petitioners recognised her power
Role as advisor
-- Church members, nobility etc also advisors but queens especially trusted
-- Seem to have been ethical/spiritual guidance - moral compass eg Henry I thanks Mathilda for
'sound counsel in every situation ... drew us away from iniquity and towards justice, and diligently urged us to have mercy upon the oppressed'
-- Sometimes self-serving eg Berengar (Adelheid's captor from 950) came in 952 to visit Otto and was kept waiting for three days
Palace as focal point - responsible for management, organisation of gifts for dignitaries etc - authority over palace officers, chamberlain etc - had own staff, scribes, chaplains
Janet Nelson - Merovingian Queens
Merovingian Monasticism
C7 Gaul had Columbanan monasticism - Irish monasteries brought by St Columbanus
Well-suited to aristocratic women unlike C6 monasticism - focus on family connections
Distinguishing feature of man vs woman was warfare and that not relevant in monasteries - women could transcend the weakness of their sex and become desexualised
-- Allowed abbesses of double monasteries to exercise political authority which would secularly be only for men
Position of Queens
Power could be exclusively through husband
-- Royal practice in Burgundy, Austrasia, Neustria, to choose a low-born or slave woman as a consort - position of mother didn't affect status or rights of sons
-- Typical Merovingian king proved his uniqueness by choosing a wife who didn't bring wealth to the marriage - owed everything she had to him and her marriage
Even when he married a foreign princess - family far away, dynasties often cut short, relied entirely on husband's generosity
Dependent position - rested entirely on personal association with king - if he became attached to another women he could divorce her so had to keep his favour
-- Particularly dangerous for a woman without sons, with pre-deceased sons, or who had quarreled with children
Had freedom to some extent
-- Economic - as well as inherited land for princesses, a low-born wife got wealth through her husband mostly in moveables - association in Merovingian history of queens with treasure - could control personal wealth and was 'guardian' of royal wealth while husband at war - fact that she didn't hold land gave her freedoms
-- Sexual-genetic - power-base in sexual services if she retained his affection - if noble-born a widowed queen could pass the throne to her second husband as a repository of royal power