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The five queens of Navarre were the largest group of female sovereigns in one European realm during the Middle Ages, but they are largely unknown beyond a regional audience. This survey fills this scholarly lacuna, focusing particularly on issues of female succession, agency, and power-sharing dynamic between the queens and their male consorts.
Ideology and Royal Power is a collection of essays describing and assessing the ways in which royal publicists in medieval France conceived the authority of the crown, especially with regard to protecting and defending its Christian subjects from their alleged enemies at home and abroad--corrupt officials, Jews (particularly moneylenders), heretics, and Muslims. A number of the essays also describe the execution of royal policies with respect to these groups and evaluate their impact, both in terms of the groups affected and their influence on further developments in royal ideology. A key figure is that of Louis IX, Saint Louis (r. 1226-1270).
This volume brings together a selection of the papers on the theme of the Papacy and the Crusades, delivered at the 7th Congress of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. After the introduction by Michel Balard, the first papers examine aspects of crusader terminology. The next section deals with events and perceptions in the West, including papers on the crusades against the Albigensians and Frederick II, and on the situation in the Iberian peninsula. There follow studies on relations between crusaders and the local populations in the Byzantine world after 1204 and Frankish Greece, and in Cilician Armenia, while a final pair looks at papal interventions in Poland and Scandinavia.
Procession, arguably the most ubiquitous and versatile public performance mode until the seventeenth century, has received little scholarly or theoretical attention. Yet, this form of social behaviour has been so thoroughly naturalised in our accounts of western European history that it merited little comment as a cultural performance choice over many centuries until recently, when a generation of cultural historians using explanatory models from anthropology called attention to the processional mode as a privileged vehicle for articulation in its society. Their analyses, however, tended to focus on the issue of whether processions produced social harmony or reinforced social distinctions, potentially leading to conflict. While such questions are not ignored in this collection of essays, its primary purpose is to reflect upon salient theatrical aspects of processions that may help us understand how in the performance of “moving subjects” they accomplished their often transformative cultural work.
This volume contains articles covering the centuries between the establishment of Carolingian power in Western Europe and the expansion of the Anglo Norman and Angevin ’Empire’ within the French kingdom of the Capetians. The common underlying themes of these papers are the exercise of political power, and the social position and resources of those who wielded power. Aquitaine provides the focus for papers on regional government, individual rulers and members of the aristocracy - men and some women. The most important of the women considered is Eleanor of Aquitaine. The political and economic problems which confronted Carolingian kings of this region are discussed; and the later contribut...
The reign of Philip the Fair marks both the culmination of the medieval French monarchy and the beginning of the transition from the medieval to the modern period. In this long-awaited study of Philip's reign, Joseph R. Strayer discusses the king's personality, his quarrels with the Church and with neighboring rulers, and his relations with his subjects. He also examines developments in the French administrative system. In studying the decision-making process and the careers of hundreds of royal officials, the author determines how increases in royal power and in the effectiveness and complexity of the administration were achieved. He also considers how these changes affected the possessing ...
On 31 May 1310, at the Place de Grève in Paris, the Dominican inquisitor William of Paris read out a sentence that declared Marguerite “called Porete,” a beguine from Hainault, to be a relapsed heretic, released her to secular authority for punishment, and ordered that all copies of a book she had written be confiscated. William next consigned Guiard of Cressonessart, an apocalyptic activist in the tradition of Joachim of Fiore and a would-be defender of Marguerite, to perpetual imprisonment. Over several months, William of Paris conducted inquisitorial processes against them, complete with multiple consultations of experts in theology and canon law. Though Guiard recanted at the last m...
In this visually rich volume, Mariah Proctor-Tiffany reconstructs the art collection and material culture of the fourteenth-century French queen Clémence de Hongrie, illuminating the way the royal widow gave objects as part of a deliberate strategy to create a lasting legacy for herself and her family in medieval Paris. After the sudden death of her husband, King Louis X, and the loss of her promised income, young Clémence fought for her high social status by harnessing the visual power of possessions, displaying them, and offering her luxurious objects as gifts. Clémence adeptly performed the role of queen, making a powerful argument for her place at court and her income as she adorned h...