We’ve been busy working as we masked up, locked down, and got vaccinated. There is a lot of new work to add to the bibliography, which I last updated the summer of 2019, back when we were still living in a different world. This is an ongoing process because the backlog is lengthy, so if you don’t see what you’re looking for, don’t give up!

One thing I’m happy to announce is my new book, Catherine of Aragon: Infanta of Spain, Queen of England, just now in bookstores and at your favorite web booksellers. Here’s a link to the Penn State Press website: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09164-8.html.

Whew! I just updated the bibliography and it’s impressive. I’ve copied it below, broken out by category so you can skim easily. This follows the organization of the links to pages on the website, and you can see that the scholars of early modern queenship were particularly busy this past year.

I am sure that I have missed a lot of new work, so please get in touch by replying on this website with the citation, and I’ll be sure to post it straightaway.

 

Reference Works

Woodacre, Elena (ed.). A Companion to Global Queenship. York: Arc Humanities Press, 2018.

 

Queens and Queenship: Edited Source Texts

Bajetta, Carlo M. (ed. and trans.). Elizabeth I’s Italian Letters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

 

Queens and Queenship, Women and Power: Essay Collections

Broomhall, Susan (ed.). Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018.

Dunn, Carolyn and Elizabeth Carney (eds). Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Earenfight, Theresa (ed). Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Guerrero, Eduardo Olid and Esther Fernández (eds). The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Matheson-Pollock, Helen, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Schutte, Valerie and Estelle Paranque (eds.).Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Tanner, Heather J. (ed.), Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

 

Monographs

Alio, Jacqueline. Margaret, Queen of Sicily. Palermo: Trinacria Editions, 2017.

Allinson, Rayne. A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Beer. Michelle L. Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503-1533. Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2018.

Fleming, Gillian B. Juana I: Legitimacy and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Castile.Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Jestice, Phyllis G. Imperial Ladies of the Ottonian Dynasty: Women and Rule in Tenth-Century Germany. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Kosior,Katarzyna.Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Paranque, Estelle. Elizabeth I of England through Valois Eyes: Power, Representation, and Diplomacy in the Reign of the Queen, 1558–1588. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Pick, Lucy. Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017.

Proctor-Tiffany, Mariah. Medieval Art in Motion: The Inventory and Gift Giving of Queen Clémence de Hongrie. University Park: Penn State Press, 2019.

Wellman, Kathleen. Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.

 

Journal Articles, and Essays in Edited Volumes: ca. 300–ca. 700

La Rocca, Cristina. “Consors regni: a problem of gender? The consortium between Amalasuntha and Theodatus in 534.” In Janet L. Nelson and Susan Reynolds, with Susan M. Johns (eds.). Gender and Historiography: Studies in the History of the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford. London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012.

 

Journal Articles, and Essays in Edited Volumes: ca. 700–ca. 1100

Gillingham, John. “Women, children and the profits of war.” In Janet L. Nelson and Susan Reynolds, with Susan M. Johns (eds.). Gender and Historiography: Studies in the History of the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford. London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012.

Joye, Sylvie. “Carolingian rulers and marriage in the age of Louis the Pious and his sons.” In Janet L. Nelson and Susan Reynolds, with Susan M. Johns (eds.). Gender and Historiography: Studies in the History of the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford. London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012.

Keller, Katrin. “Gender and Ritual: Crowning Empresses in the Holy Roman Empire.” German History37: 2 (June 2019), 172–85.

Nash, Penelope. “Maintaining Elite Households in Germany and Italy, 900-1115: Finances, Control, and Patronage.” In Theresa Earenfight (ed).Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 42–72.

Ni, Yun. “Reinventing Rule: The Queen’s Two Bodies in Clemence of Barking’s Vie de Sainte Catherine.” Neophilologus103:1 (2019): 5–21.

Verbanaz, Nina. “A ‘Necessary Companion’: The Salian Consort’s Expected Role in Governance.” In Heather J. Tanner (ed.), Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 177–97.

Vukašinović, Milan. “Great Is the Imperial Dignity: Voices, Adventus, and Power of the First Macedonian Empresses.” Byzantinoslavica: Revue internationale des Etudes Byzantines75 (2017): 99–115.

Welton, Megan. “Domina et Fidelibus Eius: Elite Households in Tenth-Century Francia and Anglo-Saxon England.” In Theresa Earenfight (ed).Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 15–41.

 

Journal Articles, and Essays in Edited Volumes: ca. 1100–ca. 1350

Alvestad, Karl C. “Dynasty or Family? Tenth and Eleventh Century Norwegian Royal Women and Their Dynastic Loyalties.” In Carolyn Dunn and Elizabeth Carney (eds), Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 87–97.

Bérat, Emma O’Loughlin. “Constructions of Queenship: Envisioning Women’s Sovereignty in Havelok.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology118:2 (April 2019), pp. 234–51.

Creber, Alison. “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Dissolving Royal and Noble Marriages in Eleventh-Century Germany.” German History37: 2 (June 2019): 149–71.

Heckel, Waldemar. “King’s Daughters, Sisters, and Wives: Fonts and Conduits of Power and Legitimacy.” In Carolyn Dunn and Elizabeth Carney (eds), Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp.19–30.

Huneycutt, Lois. “Becoming Anglo-Norman: The women of the House of Wessex in the century after the Norman Conquest. In Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Johns, Susan M. “Nest of Deheubarth: reading female power in the historiography of Wales.” In Janet L. Nelson and Susan Reynolds, with Susan M. Johns (eds.). Gender and Historiography: Studies in the History of the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford. London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012.

Jordan, Erin L. “Women of Antioch: Political Culture and Powerful Women in the Latin East.” In Heather J. Tanner (ed.), Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 225–46.

 

Journal Articles, and Essays in Edited Volumes: ca. 1350–ca. 1500

Adams, Tracy. “Anne de France and Gift-Giving: The Exercise of Female Power.”  In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 65–84.

Baleiras, Isabel de Pina. “Love, Calumnies, Murders, War, Ambition, and Survival at the Court of King Fernando and Queen Leonor Teles of Portugal (1367-1384).” In Theresa Earenfight (ed). Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 248–70.

Brown, Michael H. “War, Marriage, Tournament: Scottish Politics and the Anglo-French War, 1448–1450.” Scottish Historical Review 98:1 (2019): 1–21.

Dunn, Caroline. “Serving Isabella of France: From Queen Consort to Dowager Queen.” In Theresa Earenfight, (ed). Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 169–201.

Earenfight, Theresa. “A Lifetime of Power: Beyond Binaries of Gender.” In Heather J. Tanner (ed.), Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 271–93.

Evans. Michael R. “The Missing Queen? Eleanor of Aquitaine in the Early Reign of Louis VII.” In Michael L. Bardot and Laurence W. Marvin (eds), Louis VII and His World. Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 105–13.

Fenton, Kirsten. “The tale of Queen Ælfthryth in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum. In Janet L. Nelson and Susan Reynolds, with Susan M. Johns (eds.). Gender and Historiography: Studies in the History of the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford. London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012.

Geaman, Kristen L. “Beyond Good Queen Anne: Anne of Bohemia, Patronage, and Politics.” In Heather J. Tanner (ed.), Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 67–89.

Georgiou, Andriani.  “Empresses in Byzantine Society: Justifiably Angry or Simply Angry?” In Stavroula Constantinouand Mati Meyer (eds), Emotions and Gender in Byzantine Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Lord, Alana. “‘Our Servants Say Scandalous Things about You’: Royal Households in the Fourteenth-Century Crown of Aragon.” In Theresa Earenfight (ed).Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 225–47.

Mielke, Christopher. “Doubly Crowned: The Public and Private Image of Two Fourteenth-Century Hungarian Queens.” Trivent (2019). Open access: http://trivent-publishing.eu/

Mielke, Christopher. “From Her Head to Her Toes: Gender-Bending Regalia in the Tomb of Constance of Aragon, Queen of Hungary and Sicily.” Royal Studies Journal5:2 (2018): 49–62. DOI: http://doi.org/10.21039/rsj.

O’Leary, Jessica, “Wife, Widow, Exiled Queen: Beatrice d’Aragona (1457–1508) and Kinship in Early Modern Europe.” In Lisa Hopkins and Aidan Norrie (eds), Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.

Rodrigues, Ana Maria S. A. “Prince Pedro, A Case of Dynastic Disloyalty in Fifteenth Century Portugal?” In Carolyn Dunn and Elizabeth Carney (eds), Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 99–110.

Rohr, Zita Eva. “Rocking the Cradle and Ruling the World: Queens’ Households in Late Medieval and Early Modern Aragon and France.” In Theresa Earenfight (ed). Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 309–37.

Ruiz Domingo, Lledó. “Power, patronage, and politics: Maria of Navarre, queen of the Crown of Aragon (r. 1338–1347). In Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Shadis, Miriam. “Unexceptional Women: Power, Authority, and Queenship in Early Portugal.” In Heather J. Tanner (ed.), Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 247–70.

Silva, Manuela Santos. “The Portuguese Household of an English Queen: Sources, Purposes, Social Meaning (1387–1415).” In Theresa Earenfight (ed). Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 271–87.

Storey, Gabrielle. “Berengaria of Navarre and Joanna of Sicily as crusading queens: Manipulation, reputation, and agency.” In Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Waag, Anaïs. “Gender and the language of politics in thirteenth‐century queens’ letters.” Historical Research 92:256 (May 2019): 288–304.

 

Queens & Queenship in the Sixteenth Century:

Alcalá-Galán, Mercedes. “Elizabeth I and the Politics of Representation: The Triumph over Spain.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Beem, Charles. “The Tragic Queen: Dynastic Loyalty and the ‘Queenships’ of Mary Queen of Scots.” In Carolyn Dunn and Elizabeth Carney (eds), Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 111–21.

Beer, Michelle L. “Between Kings and Emperors: Catherine of Aragon as Counsellor and Mediator.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 35–58.

Beer, Michelle L. “A queenly affinity? Catherine of Aragon’s estates and Henry VIII’s Great Matter.” Historical Research 91:253 (August 2018): 426–45.

Billing, Valerie. “Antichrists, Pope Lovers, and Atheists: The Politics of Elizabeth I’s Christian Prayers and Meditations.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Bouchard, Mawy. “The Power of Reputation and Skills according to Anne de Graville: The Rondeaux and the Denunciation of Slander.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp.  241–62.

Bromilow, Pollie. “Power through Print: The Works of Hélisenne de Crenne.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 287–308.

Broomhall, Susan. “‘The King and I’: Rhetorics of Power in the Letters of Diane de Poitiers.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 335–56.

Broomhall, Susan. “Counsel as Performative Practice of Power in Catherine de’ Medici’s Early Regencies.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 135–59.

Brown, Cynthia J. “Family Female Networking in Early Sixteenth-Century France: The Power of Text and Image.”  In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 209–40.

Coates, Hannah. “The Moor’s Counsel: Sir Francis Walsingham’s Advice to Elizabeth I.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 187–214.

Cockram, Sarah. “Isabella d’Este’s Sartorial Politics.” In Erin Griffey (ed.), Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.

Crouzet, Denis. “Catherine de Médicis Tested by the Virtue of Charity (1533–1559): Discourse and Metadiscourse.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 357–76.

David-Chapy, Aubrée. “The Political, Symbolic, and Courtly Power of Anne de France
and Louise de Savoie: From the Genesis to the Glory of Female Regency.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 43–65.

Earenfight, Theresa. “A Precarious Household: Catherine of Aragon in England, 1501–1504.” In Theresa Earenfight (ed). Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle. Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 338–56.

Fagnart, Laure and Mary Beth Winn. “Louise de Savoie: The King’s Mother, Alter Rex.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 85–115.

Fernández, Esther. “Unmasking the Queen: Elizabeth I on the Early Modern Spanish Stage.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Fletcher, Catherine. “The Ladies’ Peace Revisited: Gender, Counsel and Diplomacy.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 111–33.

García-Reidy, Alejandro. “Political Rhetoric in Lope de Vega’s Representation of Elizabeth I.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Germann, Jennifer.“Queenly afterimages: The visual and historical legacy of Marie Leszczinska.” In Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Gregory, Eilish. “Catherine of Braganza’s relationship with her Catholic household.” In Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Ihinger, Kelsey J. “The Mirror in Albion: Spanish Theatrical Reimaginings of Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 70:1 (2018): 33–57.

Izquierdo, Adrián. “Elizabeth Tudor, the Elephant, and the Mirroring Cases of the Earl of Essex and the Duke of Biron.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Jack, Sybil. “Katarina Jagiellonica and Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow: Power, piety, and patronage.” In Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Jerez-Gómez, Jesús-David. “Elizabeth I and Spanish Poetic Satyr: Political Context, Propaganda, and the Social Dimension of the Armada.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Johnson, Alexandra Nancy. “Mary Stuart and Her Rebels-Turned-Privy Councillors: Performance of the Ritual of Counsel.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 161–85.

Kosior, Katarzyna.“Bona Sforza and the Realpolitik of Queenly Counsel in Sixteenth-Century Poland-Lithuania.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 15–34.

Mansfield, Lisa. “Lustrous Virtue: Eleanor of Austria’s Jewels and Gems as Composite Cultural Identity and Affective Maternal Agency.” In Erin Griffey (ed.), Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.

Mansfield, Lisa. “Portraits of Eleanor of Austria: From Invisible to Inimitable French Queen Consort.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 173–207.

Matheson-Pollock, Helen. “Counselloresses and Court Politics: Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Female Counsel in European Politics, 1509–15.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 59–82.

Mesa Higuera, Claudia. “In Search of Elizabeth I: Visual Representations of the Virgin Queen in Early Modern Spanish Sources.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Niiranen, Susanna. “Catherine Jagiellon, Queen Consort of Sweden: Counselling Between the Catholic Jagiellons and the Lutheran Vasas.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 83–110.

Paranque, Estelle. “Elisabeth of Austria and Marie-Elisabeth of France: Represented and remembered.” In Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Pazzis Pi Corrales, Magdalena de. “From Friendship to Confrontation: Philip II, Elizabeth I, and Spanish-English Relations in the Sixteenth Century.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Paul, Joanne. “Publica si domini regerent moderamina cunni”: Deciphering Queenship and Counsel.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 259–75.

Peebles. Kelly D. “Embodied Devotion: The Dynastic and Religious Loyalty of Renée de France (1510–1575).” In Carolyn Dunn and Elizabeth Carney (eds), Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 123–37.

Peterson, Kaara L. “Picturing Elizabeth I’s Triumph of Melancholy [with illustrations],”English Literary Renaissance 48:1 (Winter 2018): 1-40.

Potter, David. “The Life and After-Life of a Royal Mistress: Anne de Pisseleu, Duchess of Étampes.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 309–34.

Recca, Cinzia. “The eagle eye of the Habsburg family on the Kingdom of Naples: Lights and shadows of Queen Maria Carolina at court.” In Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Reid, Jonathan A. “Imagination and Influence: The Creative Powers of Marguerite de Navarre at Work at Court and in the World.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 263–86.

Sadlack, Erin A. “Literary Lessons in Queenship and Power: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Authority of the Ambassador-Queen.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 117–38.

Samson, Alexander. “Cervantes Upending Ribadeneira: Elizabeth I and the Reformation in Early Modern Spain.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Schutte, Valerie. “Beyond patronage: Richard Jonas’s The Byrth of Mankynde as counsel to Queen Katherine Howard.” In Valerie Schutte and Estelle Paranque (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making, and Patronage. London: Routledge. 2018.

Tibble, Matthew. “Sovereignty and spectacle in 1557: the reunion of Philip II and Mary I.” Historical Research 92:256 (May 2019): 305­–17.

Usunáriz, Jesús M. “The Political Discourse on Elizabeth I in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Spain.” In Eduardo Olid Guerrero, and Esther Fernández (eds),The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Walters, John. “The Queen as the Counsellor’s Muse: Elizabeth I in The Faerie Queene’s Proems.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 215–35.

Whitelock, Anna. “Reconsidering the Political Role of Anna of Denmark.” In Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher (eds), Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 237–58.

Wilson-Chevalier, Kathleen. “Claude de France and the Spaces of Agency of a Marginalized Queen.” In Susan Broomhall, (ed.), Women, Power, and Authority at the French Court, 1483–1563. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 117–38.

Younger, Neil. “How Protestant was the Elizabethan Regime?” The English Historical Review 133:564 (October 2018): 1060–92.

 

 

 

 

 

I love this regal statue of Queen Victoria in Hyde Park, which a cheeky soul dressed up with a pair of sunglasses. It sums up why I study queens: sunglasses or not, they matter. Even when not cast in stone, they are visible signs of women and power. They matter more now than ever when women are still, frustratingly, struggling to be taken seriously. Queens are living proof that reveals the lie that women cannot govern, cannot rule even their own bodies. This makes them such a valuable lesson to people today, people of all races and ethnicities and of all regions of the world: Once considered ancillary to the world of men, queens have taken their rightful place in the political, social, cultural, economic, and religious histories of medieval and early modern Europe. As we ponder the implications and ramifications of #MeToo and whether leaning in is enough to counteract the sexism of the workplace, we can learn a lot from queens.

This is clear when looking at an impressive body of new work in new directions as well as a much-needed overview and review of three decades of work on queenship. Lois Huneycutt put it best when she took stock of the field in “Queenship Studies Comes of Age,” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 51:2 (2016): 9-16. Queenship studies have come of age, which for people of my generation, this means we see our students publishing and teaching and expanding the field in ways we could only imagine. Keep an eye out for work by medieval historians with recent doctorates:

• Jane Clay, “Performing Queenship in premodern England: Gender, politics, and drama.” PhD dissertation, St. John’s University, New York, 2016.
• Gillian Lucinda Gower, “The Iconography of Queenship: Sacred Music and Female Exemplarity in Late Medieval Britain.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2016.
• Claire Louise Harrill, “Politics and sainthood: literary representations of St Margaret of Scotland in England and Scotland from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.” PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2017.
• Amy Victoria Hayes, “The late medieval Scottish Queen, c.1371–c.1513.” PhD dissertation, University of Aberdeen, 2016.
• Anne-Marie Strohman, Kathleen. “A more natural mother”: Concepts of maternity and queenship in early modern England.” University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2014.
• Laura Tompkins, “The uncrowned queen: Alice Perrers, Edward III and political crisis in fourteenth-century England, 1360-1377.” PhD dissertation, University of St Andrews, 2013.

One significant trend over the past 30 or so years is the growing emphasis on rethinking chronological continuity. With this in mind, this blog and the accompanying bibliography has added a new section—still a work in progress—on sixteenth-century queens to take into account the importance of continuity of the ideologies and practices of queenship. This trend is evident in “Renaissance Queenship: A Review Article,” in which Tracy Adams surveys ten recent works that spans the wonderfully nebulous late medieval and early modern Europe.

Collections of essays have also dismantled the older notions of a clean break at 1500, or so. Even saying that with an “or so” qualifier signals just how uncomfortable we are with assigning a date alongside which we can hang “medieval” and “early modern.” Essays in Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), edited by Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz demonstrate well this continuity across centuries with a focus on the gender of reputation and its effects on the power of a queen.

 

Studies on Tudor-era queens dominate the sixteenth-century, due in large part to the tremendous influence of Carole Levin whose work on Elizabeth I dominates my bookshelves on queens. Her work has been instrumental in guiding both a methodology for research and a theoretical framework for the study of queens. As Willa Cather Professor of History and Director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Nebraska, she has guided the future of the field by her mentorship of graduate students who are now working in teaching and research positions in colleges and universities. Most relevant to a bibliography, the Queenship and Power series at Palgrave Macmillan Press, the brainchild of Levin and Charles Beem, has provided a highly respected venue for innovative studies on queenship. It is fitting, then, that she be honored with an impressive collection of essays entitled Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, edited by Anna Rielh Bertolet (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). A glance at her CV (https://history.unl.edu/carole-levin) makes me wonder how she ever found time to cook dinner or post updates on social media!

But Levin shares space on my bookshelf with new monographs and collections of essays on medieval and early modern queens and queenship:

• Carlo Bajetta, Guillaume Coatelen, and Jonathan Gibson (eds), Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
• Ilona Bell, Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Gaude-Ferragu, Murielle. Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Murielle Gaude-Ferragu, Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Marguerite Keane, Material Culture and Queenship in 14th-century France: The Testament of Blanche of Navarre (1331-1398) (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
• Simon MacLean, Ottonian Queenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Penelope Nash, Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society, Queenship and Power(Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Estelle Paranque, Nate Probasco, and Claire Jowitt (eds). Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Valerie Schutte. Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications: Royal Women, Power, and Persuasion (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Valerie Schutte (ed). Unexpected Heirs in Early Modern Europe: Potential Kings and Queens (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Warnicke, Retha M. Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485–1547 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

Here’s the full list of works I’ve added to the bibliographies. Please let me know what I have missed. I’ll be sure to add it to the bibliographies:

• Adams, Tracy. “Gender, Reputation, and Female Rule in the World of Brantôme.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 29-49.
• Adams, Tracy. “Renaissance Queenship: A Review Article.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 42, no. 1 (2016): 87-107.
• Bagerius, Henric and Christine Ekholst. “The Unruly Queen: Blanche of Namur and Dysfunctional Rulership in Medieval Sweden.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp.99–118.
• Carlo Bajetta, Guillaume Coatelen, and Jonathan Gibson (eds), Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
• Barrow, Lorna G. “Queenship and the Challenge of a Widowed Queen: Margaret Tudor Regent of Scotland 1513–1514.” Journal of the Sydney Society for Scottish History 16 (2016): 23–42.
• Beem, Charles. “Princess of Wales? Mary Tudor and the History of English Heirs to the Throne.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 13–30.
• Bell, Ilona. Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Bell, Ilona. “Queen of Love: Elizabeth I and Mary Wroth.” In Bertolet (ed.). Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 287–306.
• Benz, Lisa. “Conspiracy and Alienation: Queen Margaret of France and Piers Gaveston, the King’s Favorite.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp.119–41.
• Bertolet, Anna Rielh (ed.). Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Bertolet, Anna R. “Doppelgänger Queens: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart.” In Bertolet (ed.). Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 223–45.
• Carney, Jo Eldridge. “The Queen’s Deathbed Wish in Early Modern Fairy Tales: Securing the Dynasty.” In Bertolet (ed.). Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 123–37.
• Cerda, Jose Manuel. “Marriage and Patrimony: The Dower of Leonor Plantagenet, Queen Consort of Castile.” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 46:1 (2016): 63-96.
• Clay, Jane. “Performing Queenship in premodern England: Gender, politics, and drama.” PhD dissertation, St. John’s University, New York, 2016.
• Codet, Cecile. “Defining the virtues of a queen: mirrors for Isabelle I-era of Castile.” E-Spania-Revue Electronique d’Etudes Hispaniques Medievales 22 (2015).
• Colbert, Carolyn. “‘Well, then . . . Hail Mary’: Mary I in The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1607) and Lady Jane (1986).” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 215–32.
• Cole, Mary Hill. “The Half-Blood Princes: Mary I, Elizabeth I, and Their Strategies of Legitimation.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary, pp. 71–88.
• Dahlinger, James H. “Etienne Pasquier on French History and Female Strategies of Power.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 77-95.
• Doda, Hilary. “Lady Mary to Queen of England: Transformation, Ritual, and the Wardrobe of the Robes.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp.49–68.
• Donawerth, Jane. “Elizabeth I and the Marriage Crisis, John Lyly’s Campaspe, and the Politics of Court Drama.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 83–102.
• Doran, Susan. “Did Elizabeth’s Gender Really Matter?” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 31–52.
• Duncan, Sarah. ““Bloody” Mary? Changing Perceptions of England’s First Ruling Queen.” In The Name of a Queen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 175-191.
• Duncan, Sarah, and Valerie Schutte, eds. The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
• Earenfight, Theresa. “Medieval Queenship.” History Compass 2017 (https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12372)
• Garcia Herrero, Maria del Carmen, and Angela Munoz Fernandez. “Queenship and Monastic Foundations in the Crowns of Castile and Aragon. An Approach to the Topic.” Edad Media: Revista de Historia 18 (2017): 16-48.
• Gaude-Ferragu, Murielle. Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
• Gibbons, Rachel C. “Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France: Queenship and Political Authority as “Lieutenante-Général” of the Realm.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 143-160.
• Gibbs, G. “The Queen’s Easter Pardons, 1554: Ancient Customs and the Gift of Thucydides.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 113–33.
• Gibson, Jonathan. ““Dedans la plie de mon fidelle affection”: Familiarity and Materiality in Elizabeth’s Letters to Anjou.” In Carlo Bajetta, Guillaume Coatelen, and Jonathan Gibson (eds), Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) , pp. 63-89.
• Gower, Gillian Lucinda. “The Iconography of Queenship: Sacred Music and Female Exemplarity in Late Medieval Britain.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2016.
• Grana Cid, Maria del Mar. “Catherine of Lancaster, the Order of Preachers, and Queenship: Monastic Policies.” Edad Media: Revista de Historia 18 (2017): 75-100.
• Hackett, Helen. “Anne Boleyn’s Legacy to Elizabeth I: Neoclassicism and the Iconography of Protestant Queenship.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 157–80.
• Harrill, Claire Louise. “Politics and sainthood: literary representations of St Margaret of Scotland in England and Scotland from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.” PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2017.
• Hayes, Amy Victoria. “The late medieval Scottish Queen, c. 1371-c. 1513.” PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 2016.
• Huneycutt, Lois L. “Queenship Studies Comes of Age.” In Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 51:2 (2016): pp. 9-16.
• Keane, Marguerite. Material Culture and Queenship in 14th-century France: The Testament of Blanche of Navarre (1331-1398). Leiden: Brill, 2016.
• Kruse, Elaine. “‘A Network of Honor and Obligation’: Elizabeth as Godmother.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 181–98.
• Lamb, Mary Ellen. “Dressing Queensn (and Some Others): Signifying through Clothing in Wroth’s Countess of Montgomery’s Urania.” In Bertolet (ed.) Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 307–21.
• Levin, Carole. “Pregnancy, False Pregnancy, and Questionable Heirs: Mary I and Her Echoes.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 179–93.
• Levin, Carole, and Cassandra Auble. ““I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys”: Turquoise, Queenship‚ and the Exotic.” In Paranque, Probasco, and Jowitt (eds), Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens, pp. 169–94.
• Lin, Chi-I. “Maternity and Mourning with Queenship in Shakespeare’s” Henry VI”.” Tamkang Review 44:1 (2013): 25-46.
• Liu, Sophia Yashih. “The Jewel for the Crown: Reconsidering Female Kingship and Queenship in the Galfridian Historiography.” In Francis K. H. So (ed.), Perceiving Power in Early Modern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 69-84.
• Loomis, Catherine. “A Great Reckoning in a Little Room: Elizabeth, Essex, and Royal Interruptions.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 53–66.
• MacLean, Simon. Ottonian Queenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Mearns, Anne. “Unnatural, Unlawful, Ungodly, and Monstrous: Manipulating the Queenly Identities of Mary I and Mary II.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 197–214.
• Meyer, Allison Machlis. “The Politics of Queenship in Francis Bacon’s The History of the Reign of King Henry VII and John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck.” Studies in Philology 111: 2 (2014): 312-45.
• Moore, Gaywyn. ““You Turn Me into Nothing”: Reformation of Queenship on the Jacobean Stage.” Mediterranean Studies 21: 1 (2013): 27-56.
• Nash, Penelope. Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society, Queenship and Power (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Nash, Penelope. “Demonstrations of Imperium: Byzantine Influences in the Late Eighth and Tenth Centuries in the West.” Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 7(2011): 159–172.
• Nash, Penelope. “L’Imperatrice e la Contessa: Adelaide di Borgogna modello per Matilde di Canossa?” In P. Golinelli (ed.), Matilde nel Veneto (Bologna: Pàtron, 2016).
• Nash, Penelope. “The Ottonians Turn their Gaze West to the Court of al-Andalus.” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 12 (2017): 51–66.
• Nash, Penelope. “Perceptions of Tenth-Century European Elites by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Thietmar of Merseburg, Odilo of Cluny, the Quedlinburg Annales, and other Contemporary Chroniclers.” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 10 (2014): 77–95.
• Nash, Penelope. “Reality and Ritual in the Medieval King’s Emotions of Ira and Clementia. In M. Champion and A. Lynch (eds), Understanding Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 251–71.
• Nash, Penelope. “Shifting Terrain – Italy and Germany Dancing to their Own Tapestry.” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association, 6 (2010): 53–73.
• Nash, Penelope. “Women and Power: Thoughts Arising out of the Roundtable ‘Debating Women and Power in the Middle Ages.” Medieval Feminist Forum 51:2 (2015: 39–60.
• Paranque, Estelle. “Queen Elizabeth I and the Elizabethan Court in the French Ambassador’s Eyes.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 267–84.
• Paranque, Estelle, Nate Probasco, and Claire Jowitt (eds). Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• Paul, Joanne. “Sovereign Council or Counseled Sovereign: The Marian Conciliar Compromise.” In Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, eds, The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 135–53.
• Percec, Dana. “Queenship, Power, and Elizabethan Mentalities in Shakespeare’s Histories.” Romanian Journal of English Studies 10, no. 1 (2013): 253-262.
• Robinson, William B. “Marrying Mary to the Black Legend: Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Marian Messages in Anglo-American Films about Philip II of Spain.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary, pp. 233–54.
• Rohr, Zita. “True Lies and Strange Mirrors: The Uses and Abuses of Rumor, Propaganda, and Innuendo during the Closing Stages of the Hundred Years War.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 51–75.
• Rohr, Zita Eva, and Lisa Benz, eds. Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Samson, Alexander. “Culture under Mary I and Philip.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 155–78.
• Schutte, Valerie. “Under the Influence: The Impact of Queenly Book Dedications on Princess Mary.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 31–47.
• Schutte, Valerie, ed. Unexpected Heirs in Early Modern Europe: Potential Kings and Queens. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
• Schutte, Valerie. Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications: Royal Women, Power, and Persuasion. Springer, 2016.
• Shadis, Miriam. “‘Received as a woman;: rethinking the concubinage of Aurembiaix of Urgell.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 8:1 (2016): 38-54.
• Shenk, Linda. “Elizabeth I and the Politics of Invoking Russia in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 247–65.
• Siegfried, Brandie R. “Conjuring Three Queens and an Empress: The Philosophy of Enchantment in Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 323–45.
• ​Silleras-Fernández, Núria. “Versión (no) original: Isabel y Carlos, Rey Emperador frente al multilingüismo y la diversidad cultural.” Miríada Hispánica. Hispanic Studies Journal 12 (2016): 41–56.
• Silva, Manuela Santos. “Philippa of Lancaster, the English Lady Who Was a Queenship Role Model in Portugal (1387-1415).” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 46:1 (2016): 203-30.
• Stavrena, Kirilka. “’We Are Such Stuff’: Absolute Feminine Power vs. Cinematic Myth-Making in Julie Taymor’s Tempest (2010).” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 67–80.
• Strohman, Anne-Marie Kathleen. “A more natural mother”: Concepts of maternity and queenship in early modern England. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2014.
• Stump, Donald. “Spenser’s Dragon Fight and the English Queen: The Struggle over the Elizabethan Settlement.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 141–56.
• Tompkins, Laura. “The uncrowned queen: Alice Perrers, Edward III and political crisis in fourteenth-century England, 1360-1377.” PhD diss., University of St Andrews, 2013.
• Watkins, John. “Lesbianism in Early Modern Vernacular Romance: The Question of Historicity.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 201–21.
• Warnicke, Retha. “Mary I, Queen of England: Historiographic Essay, 2006 to Present.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary, pp.255–72.
• Warnicke, Retha M. “Tudor Consorts: The Politics of Matchmaking, 1483–1543.” In Bertolet (ed.), Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, pp. 103–121.
• Warnicke, Retha M. Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485–1547. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
• Whitelock, Anna. “’A queen, and by the same title, a king also’: Mary I, Queen-in-Parliament.” In Duncan and Schutte (eds), The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, pp. 89–112.
• Wilkinson, Louise. “Queenship in Medieval England: A Changing Dynamic?” Historian 119 (2013): 6–11.
• Woodacre, Elena. “Leonor of Navarre: The Price of Ambition.” In Rohr and Benz (eds), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600, pp. 161-182.
• Vejrychová, Věra. “The Depiction of Queens in Fourteenth Century Czech Chronicles: Ideal, Power, Transgressions.” Médiévales 2 (2014): 31-48.
• Vitiello, Massimiliano. Amalasuintha: The Transformation of Queenship in the Post-Roman World. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was in graduate school at Fordham, I worked as a research assistant to Nancy Stuart Rubin on a biography, Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991) http://nancyrubinstuart.com/bookshelf/isabella-of-castile. Nancy struggled over that title and the question of whether Isabella was a medieval or renaissance queen. Over more than a few conversations with really strong coffee, we went back and forth, teased out the differences, and looked around for good examples that typified medieval and early modern queenship. It was easy when we looked at the extremes–Clothilde and Marie Antoinette, for example. Nancy finally decided that there was something genuinely “renaissance” about Isabella. But the fifteenth century is tricky. Her court was filled with some of the best Italian humanist authors, she and Fernando together governed a realm that spanned the western Mediterranean, her religiosity was very much a product of renaissance theology, and her reign inspired new works on political theory that would prove influential in the sixteenth century. True as all that is, the medievalist in me, especially one studying Spanish queens, could see many of those traits as typically medieval.

This conundrum was still with me this week as I put together the updated bibliography on medieval queens and queenship. And it resonates in my own work on Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536). She was born in the Middle Ages but her court in London was decidedly early modern, filled with court masques and Thomas More’s Utopia and Juan Luis Vives’s On the Assistance to the Poor. Does she belong in a bibliography of queens of the Middle Ages? Or early modern queens? Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, and the wives of Philip II of Spain seem comfortably early modern, but what about Louise of Savoy (1476–1531), Anne of France (1461-1522), and others who literally straddle the conventional chronological divide at 1500?

These questions were very real to me as I worked my way through a mountain of new work. What should I do about the sixteenth century? Was there a logical reason to include or exclude it from a bibliography on medieval queens? My expertise falls off dramatically around 1600, and the bibliography is already VERY LONG.

For example, I struggled to decide what to do with two works by Estelle Paranque:

• “Catherine of Medici: Henry III’s inspiration to be a Father to his People”, in Royal Mothers and their Ruling Children: Wielding Political Authority from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era, eds. Elena Woodacre and Carey Fleiner, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
• “The Representations and Ambiguities of the Warlike Female Kingship of Elizabeth I of England”, in Medieval and Early Modern Representations of Authority in Scotland and Great Britain, eds. Katherine Buchanan and Lucinda Dean, (London: Routledge, 2016).

In the end, neither was included, but that made me think harder about questions of continuity and change in terms of queenship. I may never fully settle this, and for now I’ve established a very fuzzy temporal zone where the line is drawn right around 1520, the point when the Habsburg empire has its growth spurt and when Martin Luther shook up the papacy and secular politics. But I’m not so sure that 1520 as a border make sense for queens.

What do you think?

Queenship scholars have been very over the past few years, as you can see from the list below. I just updated the bibliography sections of this blog, but I am certain that I missed a few things. Please, if I missed your book or essay, send me an email (theresa@seatleu.edu) and I will add your work to the list. And if you have something forthcoming, please let me know and I’ll spread the word.

I want to note a few things that come to mind as I look at this list. First, there are four new editions of texts that are directly pertinent to queens and queenship:

• d’Avray, D. Dissolving Royal Marriages: A Documentary History 800-1600. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
• De Pizan, Christine. The Book of Peace by Christine de Pizan. K. Green, C. J. Mews, and J. Pinder (eds.). University Park: Penn State Press, 2008.
• Hincmar of Rheims: On the Divorce of King Lothar and Queen Theutberga. R. Stone and C. West (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
• The Warenne (Hyde) Chronicle. E. van Houts and R. Love (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

This is a sign of the continued demand for edited materials on queens and queenship, and one that I hope prompts publishers to produce more edited source texts.

Next, there are four new collections of essays specifically devoted to queens:

• Fleiner, C. and E. Woodacre (eds). Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era. Queenship and Power series. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
• Levin, C. and C. Stewart-Nuñez (eds.). Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
• Woodacre, E. (ed.). Queenship in the Mediterranean: Negotiating the Role of the Queen in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
• Woodacre, E. and C. Fleiner (eds).  Royal Mothers and Their Ruling Children: Wielding Political Authority from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

The richness of the field–in terms of geographic scope, methods, and theoretical approaches–is evident in the impressive number of studies on medieval queens since 2012. In many ways, this reflects two projects that provide platforms for publication: The Royal Studies Network (http://www.royalstudiesnetwork.org) and the Queenship and Power series published by Palgrave Macmillan. But that is just the beginning:

Adams, T. “L’Affaire de la Tour de Nesle: Love Affair as Political Conspiracy,” in C. Leveleux-Teixeira, Ribémont B (eds.) Le crime de l’ombre. Paris: Klincksieck, 2010. 17–40.

———. Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France. University Park: Penn State Press, 2014.

———. “Renaissance Queenship: A Review Article.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 42:1 (2016): 87–107.

Beem, C. “‘Greatest in Her Offspring’: Motherhood and the Empress Matilda,” in C. Fleiner and E. Woodacre (eds), Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era, 85–100.

———. “The Virtuous Virago: The Empress Matilda and the Politics of Womanhood in Twelfth-century England,” in C. Levin and C. Stewart-Nuñez (eds.), Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens, 85–98.

Beer, M. “Practices and performances of queenship: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503-1533.” Doctoral Dissertation. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014.

Blanton, V. “‘[. . .] the quene in Amysbery, a nunne in whyght clothys and blak [. . .]’: Guinevere’s Asceticism and Penance in Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur,” Arthuriana  20:1 (2010): 52–75.

Bowie, Colette. “To Have and Have Not: The Dower of Joanna Plantagenet, Queen of Sicity (1177–1189)”, in E. Woodacre (ed.), Queenship in the Mediterranean, pp. 27–50.

Casteen, E. “Sex and Politics in Naples: The Regnant Queenship of Johanna I.” The Journal of the Historical Society 11:2 (2011): 183–210.

Cimino, R. “Italian queens in the ninth and tenth centuries,” Doctoral Dissertation. University of St Andrews, 2014.

Clements, J. H. “The Construction of Queenship in the Illustrated Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei.” Gesta 52:1 (2013): 21–42.

Comba, M. “Methods of Queenship in Matrimonial Diplomacy: Fifteenth Century Scottish Royal Women,” Constellations 5:2 (2014) [https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/constellations/article/view/22030]

 Dockray-Miller, M. The Books and Life of Judith of Flanders. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.

———. Saints Edith and Æthelthryth: Princesses, Miracle Workers, and their Late Medieval Audience: The Wilton Chronicle and the Wilton Life of St Æthelthryth   Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 25. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009.

Earenfight, T.  “Raising Infanta Catalina de Aragón To Be Catherine, Queen of England,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 46:1 (2016): 417–43.

———. “Regarding Catherine of Aragon.” In Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens. Edited by Carole Levin. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 137–57.

———. “Trastámara Kings, Queens, and the Gender Dynamics of Monarchy.” In The Emergence of León-Castile, c. 1065–1500: Essays Presented to J. F. O’Callaghan. Edited by James Todesca. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015. 141–60.

———. “Where Do We Go From Here? Some Thoughts on Power and Gender in the Middle Ages.” Medieval Feminist Forum 51:2 (2016). http://ir.uiowa.edu/mff/vol51/iss2/12

Evans, M. R. Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Fisher, S. “‘Margaret R’: Lady Margaret Beaufort’s Self-fashioning and Female Ambition,” in C. Fleiner and E. Woodacre (eds), Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era, 151–72.

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Gamero Igea, G. “Stepmother and Mother of Princes: Legitimation and Political Action during the Reign of Juana Enríquez (1447–1468),” in E. Woodacre and C. Fleiner (eds), Royal Mothers and Their Ruling Children, 31–52.

Gathagan, L. L. “‘Mother of Heroes, Most Beautiful of Mothers’: Mathilda of Flanders and Royal Motherhood in the Eleventh Century,” in C. Fleiner and E. Woodacre (eds), Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era, 37­–64.

———. “The Trappings of Power: The Coronation of Mathilda of Flanders,” Haskins Society Journal 13 (2004): 21–39.

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Heidecker, K. The Divorce of Lothar II: Christian Marriage and Political Power in the Carolingian World.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.

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———. “Duke Charles of Guelders (r.1492-†1538) and the ‘restoration’ of the tomb monument of Gerard IV and Margaret in the Roermond Minster,” in A.-M. J. van Egmond and C. A. Chvannes-Mazel (eds), Medieval Art in the Northern Netherlands before Van Eyck. Clavis: Stichting publicaties middeleeuwse kunst, 2014. 172–87.

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———. Material Culture and Queenship in 14th-century France: The Testament of Blanche of Navarre (1331–1398). Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016.

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Kotsis, K. “Defining Female Authority in Eighth-Century Byzantium: The Numismatic Images of the Empress Irene (797–802),” Journal of Late Antiquity 5:1 (2012): 185–215.

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———. “Mothers of the Empire: Empresses Zoe and Theodora on a Byzantine Medallion Cycle,” Medieval Feminist Forum 48:1 (2012): 5–96.

Lecky, K, “How the Iceni Became British: Holinshed’s Boudicca and the Rhetoric of Naturalization,” in C. Levin and C. Stewart-Nuñez (eds.), Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens, 55–73.

López Izquierdo, M. “Palabras de reinas, santas y alcahuetas: Modalización y representación del discurso femenino en la literatura medieval,”Cahiers de linguistique et de civilisation hispaniques médiévales 27 (2004): 83–94.

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———. “Queen Mother Knows Best: María de Molina and the Vestiges of Medieval Politics in Modern Historiography,” in E. Woodacre and C. Fleiner (eds), Royal Mothers and Their Ruling Children, 205–24.

Pelaz Flores, D. “Jaque a la Reina: cuando la mujer se convierte en un estorbo politico,” Miscelánea Medieval Murciana 35 (2011): 177–87.

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———. “To Be the Queen’s Daughter: Controversy, Adultery, and the Legitimacy Problem in the Reign of Enrique IV of Castile (1454–1474), in E. Woodacre and C. Fleiner (eds), Royal Mothers and Their Ruling Children, 11–30.

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Rohr, Z.  “Lessons for My Daughter: Self-fashioning Stateswomanship in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon,” in Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, Laura Delbrugge (ed.). Leiden: Brill, 2014. 46–78.

———. “Not Lost in Translation: Aragonese Court Culture on Tour (1400–1480),” in E. Woodacre (ed.), Queenship in the Mediterranean, pp. 145–68.

———. “Playing the Catalan: The Rise of the Chess Queen; Queenship and Political Motherhood in Late Medieval Aragon and France,” in C. Fleiner and E. Woodacre (eds), Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era, 173–98.

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———, “Isabel la Católica: Una mujer para el trono de Castilla,” Memòries de la Reial Acadèmia Mallorquina d’Estudis Genealògics, Heràldics i Històrics 14 (2004): 7–23.

———, “Isabel la Católica o el triunfo de la intriga,” Historia 16:4 (40) (1979: 47–51.

Ward, E. J. “Anne of Kiev (c.1024–c.1075) and a reassessment of maternal power in the minority kingship of Philip I of France.” Historical Research 89:245 (2016): 435–53.

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———. “The Perils of Promotion: Maternal Ambition and Sacrifice in the Life of Joan of Navarre, Duchess of Brittany, and Queen of England,” in C. Fleiner and E. Woodacre (eds), Virtuous or Villainess? The Image of the Royal Mother from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern Era, 125–48.

Zajac, T. “Gloriosa Regina or “Alien Queen”?: Some Reconsiderations on Anna Yaroslavna’s Queenship (r. 1050-1075).” Royal Studies Journal 3:1 (2016) [DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21039/rsj.v3i1.88%5D

 

And finally, keep an eye out for this book, coming very soon!

Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz (eds.), Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600. Aldershot: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How many times have you been at a huge conference—the AHA, Leeds, Kalamazoo, MAA—and missed a session you really wanted to attend but couldn’t because the panels were at the same time? Plenty, I’ll bet. And when that happens, we imagine the perfect conference that would bring together scholars whose work dovetails with your own, whose critique you value, and with whom you would love to brainstorm over drinks and dinner? Well, sometimes dreams come true.

Professor Heather Tanner organized a conference at Ohio State University-Mansfield this past weekend with the captivating title, “Beyond Exceptionalism” (The conference program can be found at https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/default.aspx?EventID=1738546). About two dozen of us spent two days pondering questions of women and the exercise of power—political, economic, familial, religious, among others—in the Middle Ages and thinking about ways to move the discourse further. It was among the intellectually richest weekends I’ve ever spent, filled with smart, funny, and articulate people. Our conversations ranged from Flanders to Georgia, included nuns and queens, and took up all sorts of things, from politics, economics, warfare, and family relations to a noblewoman who took up piracy.

At the roundtable wrap-up on Saturday, we talked about ways to move, literally, beyond the idea that women who have and/or exercise power are somehow exceptional. They are, they were not, of course, and we have ample evidence to back up that claim. Stay tuned the for articles, books, and all sorts of conference papers generated by this rich conference.

 

Over the summer, I read a LOT, but two books and one article have occupied a lot of space in my brain lately. They are all on rather different historical moments and problems, but they have changed the way I think about queenship. The interesting thing is, only one of these works has queenship as the main point.

The first was a new book by Simon Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia. Barton “seeks to elucidate why interfaith sex mattered greatly to secular and religious lawmakers” (p. 4). To do this, he focuses on the Muslim-Christian relationship and links changing attitudes towards female sexual purity with the political and military events that tipped the balance of power. Barton ultimately argues that sex, or to be precise, protecting Christian women from having sex with Muslim men, a central feature of a masculine “national” political identity that developed in the later Middle Ages.

He is making an important point, but the book needs an extended and in-depth feminist critique. Barton shows how attitudes toward interfaith sex preserved the patriarchal hierarchies of power, but touches lightly on important feminist theories concerning the commodification of women and the way women are used to prop up patriarchal institutions and practices. He talks about dowries and women’s inherited lands and wealth, but needs to say more about the patriarchal culture that regarded women as means of exchange. He briefly discusses the double standard of sexual conduct that circumscribed Christian women’s agency, but does not consider reasons why. And this made me think about queens. Perhaps the highly militarized society privileged men so highly that women’s consent was deemed irrelevant? Barton spends considerable time on the history of the Voto de Santiago, the famous forgery that first told the story of the one hundred maidens paid in tribute to Muslim conquerors. He argues convincingly how and why this document sets in motion the discourse of women in need of protection and a pretext for war. Then, he shifts the perspective to women as wanton instigators of sex whose dishonorable behavior was akin to military surrender and thus cast women as enemies of the realm.

Barton admits that his sources largely reflect the views of the patriarchy, but his argument would have been much stronger had he connected the dots between medieval women who were, and all too often still are, treated as a means for masculine expressions of power and contemporary feminist theoretical work on the political, social, religious, and cultural norms that permitted and promoted the demeaning treatment of women. Scholarly work on queens is absent, too, which is problematic in a book filled with kings, sexuality, and an argument that masculinity was crucial to national identity. The missing link here is the gender dynamics of the reign Isabel and Fernando that was intimately intertwined with Jews and Muslims, military conquest and religion. He completely missed the mark by not engaging, for example, with Barbara Weissberger on the monarchy of Fernando and Isabel, particularly how Isabel was seen as the “Second Mary, sent by God to heal the wounds [the Muslims] inflicted on the body politic” (Weissberger, Isabel Rules xxiv–xxv).

Daisy Delogu’s book, Allegorical Bodies: Power and Gender in Late Medieval France, is a much stronger book in terms of theory, all sorts of it, mostly on gender and political theories on power. Working with the richly ambivalent political allegories written in response to the unstable reign of Charles VI (r. 1380–1422), her argument is that “metaphors of the body politic privilege the male body as a vehicle for the expression of conceptions about political unity and integrity, and occlude the space that real women occupied within the body politic as well as the power they exercised” (p. 7).

Delogu’s sophisticated analysis centers on the works of Eustace Deschamps, Jean Gerson, Alain Chartier, Jean Juvenal des Ursins, and Christine de Pizan. They described the realm of France during the 100 Years’ War in over-determined feminine roles: the courtly beloved, wounded, ill, damsel in distress, mother—all in need of a man to step in and take charge. So, Delogu argues that the problem the French had with a ruling queen was less that she was a woman and more that she might be married to a foreigner. This became a problem of “penetration of the French body politic by foreign elements” (p. 138) and this is a lot like what Barton describes as a Spanish concern for Christian women having sex with Muslim men.

Delogu takes up issues that scholars of queenship have struggled with in recent decades: “the simultaneous exclusion and celebration of women within the cultural and political imaginary. I now find, instead, that these are like two sides of the same coin, that the fabrication of Salic Law and of female allegories of the kingdom both work, though in different ways, to create a national identity founded in part upon the exclusion of women from royal rule, a masculine political subject, and the structures of authority, as well as to master, control, and delimit the parameters within which women may function. [. . .] France may bear a woman’s likeness, but the French have asserted themselves as a kingdom of masculine subjects, rule a roi très chrétien” (p. 178).

Delogu has done something important that has been sorely needed for a very long time: put queens into political theory. She shifts the discourse in ways that reveal the inadequacies of masculinist approaches that utterly fail to include women, elite or royal, from the discourse. Hers is a political theory regarding monarchy that takes gender theory very carefully into account and crafts a far more complex analysis that puts women front and center in the discourse on “nation” and “state.” She deliberately engages with women as fundamental to the political sphere, not exceptional or marginal. This work links feminist theory with questions of masculinity in terms of sexual impotency or military weakness.

But reading the essay by Louise Olga Fradenburg showed me how much these works rest on the foundations of important earlier work on gender and power. Her essay, “Troubled Times: Margaret Tudor and the Historians,” in the edited collection The Rose and the Thistle, also looks at gender and state formation in early sixteenth-century Scotland by examining the historiography of Margaret’s regency for her son, James IV. Fradenburg critiques “statist” historiographies that construct “an opposition between public and private interests, privileging the latter with respect to ethics and historical agency: certain interests are defined as public and represented as obstructive or even destructive to the history of the nation” (p. 38). Working my way through her argument that employs an impressive range of theories—not just feminist and gender, but also post-colonial, anthropological, sociological, literary—she reminded me to take very seriously standpoint epistemologies, particularly ones with a nationalist bent. We have been trained to query our sources for bias, but it was her focus on gender and nation-formation in the Tudor period that makes me associate her work on Scotland with Barton’s on Spain and Delogu’s on France.

What they all have in common is how nations are based on gendered assumptions and over-determined definitions of both masculinity and femininity. We still struggle with this today, whether it concerns the abduction of hundreds of girls by the Boko Haram in Africa and women captured by ISIS in Iraq or why it so darned hard to get a women elected President of the United States.

The title of this posting comes from Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey, who was reported to have said, “I mistrust threads wrought by women’s fingers.” Reading this in 2015 makes me queasy as I ponder questions of continuity and change, but Barton, Delogu, and Fradenburg have helped us move the discourse on monarchy forward an inch or two in the direction of a richer, more nuanced, more complete sense of the past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the past two years, I’ve been working on a database that documents maternity and paternity among the royal families of medieval Europe. This fall I will work with someone far more knowledgeable than I am to translate a mountain of raw data from Excel to a relational database, so for now it’s just a lot of data. But a quick look reveals a lot more than just mothers. There are a lot of childless queens, a lot more than I expected. This flies in the face of what queenship scholars have long taken as a given Janet Nelson’s observation in “Inauguration Rituals” that “royal maternity was the matrix of future kings, pregnant queen was the guarantor of the realm’s survival and integrity and so of peace and control.” John Carmi Parsons agreed, noting that a queen’s “sexual role was of central importance to the realm [. . .] pregnancy was “a powerful image of male versus female [. . .] that forcefully opposes the power to give life and the power to take it away—a conflict as epochal and eternally tragic as that of Cain and Abel.” For many queens, the maternal duty was part of the coronation oath, as was intercession, which was explicitly linked to maternity (“The Pregnant Queen as Counsellor and the Construction of Motherhood,” 1998).

Yes, pregnancy and motherhood were integral to the political rhetoric of queenship. And yes, the consequences of a childless queen could be dire, and the fear was not just of civil war. It was about the identity of the realm, with the king and queen reflecting what was considered god’s blessing and the proper ordering of society. But monarchies did not necessarily descend into chaos and war when the royal couple did not have children, and childless queens did not necessarily suffer rejection, divorce, or worse. It wasn’t the end of the world.

I knew this because the first queen I studied, María of Castile, was married for 43 years and was probably never pregnant. Her husband, Alfonso V of the Crown of Aragon, fathered three children with two other women, and the couple spent 28 years of marriage apart—she stayed in Spain and governed as queen-lieutenant while he went off to conquer and govern Naples. Only very late in his reign did Alfonso consider a divorce, and only then under pressure from a mistress. Pope Calixtus III told him to stop being ridiculous, his Catalan subjects told him to come home and stop leaving his realms “like a widow,” and mirabile dictu, there were no threats to the realm. What I found especially interesting was that nobody said anything bad about María just because she was not a mother. She skillfully governed the Crown realms in Spain and that was just fine.

I’ve been thinking about queens for a long time, since my dissertation and then a book on María and another on queenship, and the fact of regal childlessness kept bugging me. So in 2012 I began work on the maternity/paternity database to get some solid numbers for comparison. I owe a mountain of thanks to four wonderful student research assistants who will agree with me that it’s time consuming to comb through genealogies, many of them annoyingly incomplete and patently misogynistic. It would appear from older genealogies that most kings were motherless, that they sprang up spontaneously from the loins of their fathers. This biological impossibility is depicted without wit or irony, but honestly, you have to laugh when looking at all those Philips in the genealogy of the Capetians in Robert Fawtier’s 1969 book, The Capetian Kings of France. For comparison, look at the genealogies in Suzanne Fonay Wemple’s Women in Frankish Society (1981) and you can trace the development of church-sanctioned monogamy (bye bye concubine, hello serial marriage) while marveling at the fertile abundance of Merovingian and Carolingian families.

But the work is rewarding. Tucked away in these tangled branches of kinship are startling empty spaces where either children are not recorded or where childless couples reside. Some are queens considered “barren,” who suffered a heartbreaking string of miscarriages and stillbirths like Catherine of Aragon who was pregnant six times with Henry VIII’s children, but only one lived to adulthood. That child, Mary Tudor, (1516–1558) married Philip II of Spain when she was 38 (he was 27) and she had no children. Her maternal history is controversial: she was nearing menopause when she married and we don’t really know for sure if she was really ever pregnant or if a chronic cancer caused her periods to stop and if this made her appear pregnant. We know, or we think we know, that Mary’s marriage was not a chaste marriage, like that of Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor. They married when she was 20, he was 42, and either really did not have sex or did but used the idea of chastity to explain their childlessness.

Some, like the marriage of Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia, were fruitless love matches. Or maybe sex was just not in the cards. Richard II’s second wife, Isabelle of Valois, was only six when they married, but he was deposed and died before Isabelle was old enough to have sex. Jaume II of the Crown of Aragon was married four times and three unions were childless: Isabel of Castile (she later married Jean III de Brittany, but had no children with him, either), Marie of Lusignan, and Elisenda de Montcada. But we can’t blame Jaume entirely: His second wife, Blanche of Anjou, bore ten children. But what about other childless couples? Blanca de Bourbon, first wife of Pedro I of Castile? Beatriz of Naples, twice married (Matias Corvino of Hungary and Vladislav II of Bohemia and Hungary), but had no children. Joan of the Tower and David of Scotland? And so many more . . . stay tuned for the database. Or just drop me an email and I’ll give you what I’ve got in its raggedy state.

I hesitate to use the term “infertility” although some queens may have had medical problems, which means we all need to dive into the history of medicine for answers. María of Castile suffered from serious medical ailments that may have impaired her fertility, but maybe the problem just was a rocky marriage and decades of separation. But I want to know a lot more about medieval medicine before I call her “infertile.”

With a few notable exceptions—Urraca of León, Berenguela of Castile, Isabel of Castile, Mary I Tudor, and Elizabeth I Tudor—marriage made a queen. But pregnancy, maybe not. A queen-consort was expected to have children, preferably boys. But the evidence so far suggests that motherhood may not have been the make-or-break event of a queen’s marriage. Let’s take another look at the narrative of the queen-as-mother and broaden our understanding of how maternity and mothering fit into the institution of monarchy.

 

 

 

I’m working on a project about Catherine of Aragon and keep coming back to one question: Why are so few people interested in her? Yes, there are plenty of biographies and I’ve read them all, both scholarly and popular, and I can tell you that they are strikingly alike. They all rely the same set of sources that every author has used for the last century and a half: the Calendar of State Papers and a few letters to, from, or about Catherine edited and published well over a century ago. The biographers devote two-thirds of the book to Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the King’s Great Matter, otherwise known as The Divorce.

Part of the problem with Catherine is that scholars have followed the lead of male authors—Garrett Mattingly, David Starkey, Giles Tremlett, Patrick Williams—who portray her as the dour and bitter Spanish wife Henry ditched in favor of the lively and sexy Anne Boleyn. After a while, honestly, it gets a little dull. To be fair, scholars have begun to consider Catherine in other ways, such as her patronage of humanist writers. But where is Catherine the queen? Why are there so few studies on what she did, rather than what happened to her?

When I started this project I thought perhaps the sources were lost, damaged, or maybe lurking about in some obscure archive. Trained as a feminist scholar, I knew that women are overshadowed by men and that women’s lives have been overlooked, but come on, this is Tudor England. Surely, there must be something.

Well, there is. There is plenty. And it’s not lurking in a secret archive—it’s in printed sources that have been available for decades, sources that are now readily available to anyone with a library card and access to the internet. It doesn’t even require a university library account. British History Online, a tremendous project spearheaded by the Institute for Historical Research, has made available the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, a compendium of many—not all, mind you, just many—of the documentary archival material available in The National Archives at Kew. Scholars have been editing household accounts, inventories, and wills. Archaeologists have been documenting the material side of history, the houses and town where people lived. And the joys of the search function allows us to type in “Catherine” or “queen” or “princess” or the name of anyone close to her and voilà, there she is, waiting to talk to us. This is no secret. Anyone who teaches the history of England knows the value of British History Online as both a research tool and a boon to teaching.

But I had an “aha moment over the weekend. I am reading the household accounts of Catherine’s mother, Isabel I of Castile, from 1477 to 1504 (Cuentas de Gonzalo de Baeza, tesorero de Isabel la Católica, edited by Antonio de la Torre and E. A. de la Torre, 1955). I was looking for records of members of Catherine’s entourage who travelled with her to England in 1501 when she went to marry Arthur, her first husband who was the elder brother of Henry. I’m happy to say that I found her court and entourage, but I’m even happier to say that I found out a lot about things like shoes. Her shoemaker, Diego de Valencia, started to make her shoes when she was two years old and continued until she left for England. That year, 1501, he was a very busy guy. 36 pairs of borçeguies (leather shoes that come up over the ankles) and 48 pairs of xervillas (slippers). It’s likely that these were not all for Catherine, that she gave them as gifts to her ama, Ines Vanegas, or one of her maids-in-waiting, María de Rojas, María de Guevara, or Elvira Manuel. I imagined Catherine giving black velvet slippers as gifts and wearing the leather shoes of Diego de Valencia, dancing, strolling through gardens, boarding the ships that took her England.

And with that image of a real person wearing shoes, Catherine came alive to me.

The spring and summer conference season is ending and once again studies on queens and queenship could be found at the Medieval Academy of America, the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo), the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, and the Royal Studies Network conference at the University of Winchester). There was only one session at the Medieval Academy devoted to “Queens and Empresses: Beyond the Agency Question,” and we all owe a loud shout-out of thanks to Marie Kelleher (California State University at Long Beach) for organizing that session!

There were dozens of sessions on queens at Kalamazoo, Leeds, and Winchester. Alas, I missed Kalamazoo (it was midterm at Seattle University), but got topped up on recent scholarship at Leeds and Winchester. It was intense to go straight from Leeds to Winchester, but it was wonderful to catch up with colleagues from Europe who have been unable to attend US conferences during the recent economic crises. At Leeds, the theme of empire opened up a broad conversation about queens and empresses in Europe, which accounts for the many sessions on the political work of queens. The Royal Studies Network (University of Winchester) focused on the theme of entourage and provided innovative and rich ways of understanding monarchy as more than just a family affair. Many papers focused on a queen’s management of the complex and costly royal household and its attendant ceremonial and theatrical events.

It is very gratifying to see so much excellent work on queens. When I was in graduate school in the early 1990s, there were a few dozen scholars studying queenship. Now, we are numerous and we are changing the narrative of the history of medieval Europe. There will be a time–soon, I hope–when this list will be too long to note in a blog post! For now, I’ve organized the list of conference papers thematically to give you a good sense of the wide range of topics and help you pinpoint spots for new research projects.

If you read a paper at a conference but I neglected to include you in the list below, drop me an email and I’ll send out an addendum.

Historiography

Zita Eva Rohr (University of Sydney): “‘Do not try to teach our Granddames to suck eggs’: Researching Our Queenly Protagonists in the Broader Context of Their Lives and Times,” IMC Leeds

Politics

Ilse Aiglsperger (Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz): “‘Ut sicut Esther […]’: Biblical Exempla as a Justification for Female Rule? The Ordines for the Coronation of Queens,” IMC Leeds

Barbara Boloix-Gallardo (Universidad de Granada): “Beyond the Haram: Nasrid Women and Their ‘Veiled’ Participation in the Politics of the Kingdom of Granada, 13th–15th Centuries,” IMC Leeds

Colette Marie Bowie (University of Glasgow): “Eleanor of Aquitaine’s Daughters and Their Dower Portions,” IMC Leeds

Laura Brander (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg): “Reigning Queen, tutora, and hallow: Sancha of Castile in the Kingdom of Aragón,” IMC Leeds

Aysu Dincer (University of Birmingham): “‘The one to hold the strings’: Philip of Novara, Alice of Champagne and the Ibelins,” Royal Studies Network

Daniela Dvořáková (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava): “The Birth of Historic Legend: The Black Queen Barbara of Cilli,” IMC Leeds

Theresa Earenfight (Seattle University): “Was There a Medical Basis of a Queen’s Right to Rule? Gender and Inheritance in Pierre André’s Pomum aureum, 1444,” at IMC Leeds

Amalie Fößel (Universität Duisburg-Essen): “Queenship in the Age of the Luxemburgians,” IMC Leeds

Anna Jagošová (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien): “Queen Elisabeth of Luxemburg: Her Ruling Practice in the Mirror of Her Charters and Correspondence,” IMC Leeds

Jitske Jasperse (Universiteit van Amsterdam): “Jutta and Bertha: 12th-Century Sisters-In-Arms,” IMC Leeds

Tiziana Lazzari (Università di Bologna): “Who Saved the Young Queen?: The Escape of Adelaide from Rosvita to Donizo,” at IMC Leeds

Amy Livingstone (Wittinberg University): “The King’s Sister: Countess Ermengard of Brittany,” Royal Studies Network

Simon MacLean (University of St Andrews): “Empress Adelheid and the Ottonian Invasion of Italy,” IMC LeedsFraser McNair (University of Cambridge): “Queens as interfaces between political networks in tenth-century France,” Royal Studies Network

Penelope Joan Nash (University of Sydney): “Empress Adelheid’s Travels during the Regencies,” IMC Leeds

Piotr Oliński (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Torún): “Queen Elizabeth of Poland and the Treatise De institutione regii pueri: Royal Authority of the Future Jagiellonian King of Hungary and Bohemia,” IMC Leeds

Lucy K. Pick (University of Chicago): “Networking Power, Mediating Encounter: The Royal Women of León-Castilla,” Medieval Academy of America

Sacramento Roselló-Martínez (Northwestern University): “Negotiating Exile: Constanza of Castile and John of Gaunt and their claim of the Castilian Crown (1372–1386),” Royal Studies Network

Ingrid Schlegl (Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz):” ‘Vicisti reges […]’: Does Matilda of Canossa Challenge Male Rule?” IMC Leeds

Miriam Shadis (Ohio University): “Charting Queenship and Community in 13th-Century Portugal,” IMC Leeds

Kathleen Thompson (University of Sheffield): “The Empress Matilda Puts a Brave Face on It,” IMC Leeds

Shaun Tougher (Cardiff University): “City of Queens: Imperial Women in the Constantinian Dynasty,” IMC Leeds

Nina Verbanaz (University of Missouri, Columbia): “The Imperial Authority of Salian Empresses in Word and Image,” IMC Leeds

Megan Welton (University of Notre Dame): “Mapping Fideles: A Visual Investigation into Empress Adelheid’s and Empress Theophanu’s Political Networks,” Royal Studies Network

Ashley Sarah Winterbottom-Firth (University of Huddersfield): “William of Tyre’s Representation of Melisende of Jerusalem: A 12th-Century Female King?” IMC Leeds

Religion

Rebecca Browett (University of London): “The Monastic Empire of Queen Matilda, Wife of Henry I,” IMC Leeds

Kirsty Day (University of Leeds): “Constructing Royal Franciscan Identities: The Example of the 13th- and 14th-Century Piasts,” IMC Leeds

Zita Rohr (University of Syndney): “On her majesty’s secret service: Yolande of Aragon and her Franciscan Entourage; Power, Piety and Patronage,” Royal Studies Network

Käthe Sonnleitner (Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz): “‘Non gladio, non armis [. . .]’: Is Female Rule Closer to Christian Ideals? The Ideology of the Ottonian Women,” IMC Leeds

Talia Zajac (University of Toronto): “Cultural connections between Kyiv and Paris in the eleventh century: the embassy of King Henri I and the cult of St. Clement of Rome,” Royal Studies Network

Michaela Zöschg (Courtauld Institute of Art): “Queens, Nuns, and Friars: Female Artistic Patronage in Royal Clarissan Foundations of 14th-Century Europe” at IMC Leeds

Representations of Queens in Art, Art History, Cultural History, Literature

Valentine Balguerie (Brown University): “Ousting the queen of Navarre: the shift from example to personhood in Villedieu’s Disorders of Love,” Royal Studies Network

Ingrid Bennewitz (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg): “From Prünhilt to Brünhilda: Cinematic Staging of the Icelandic Queen in the 20th and 21st Century,” IMC Leeds

Sabine Berger (University Paris IV-Sorbonne): “The councilors of the last Capetians: an entourage of art patrons and builders (c. 1270–c. 1330),” Royal Studies Network

Başak Burcu Tekın (Meliksah University): “Let’s Raise a Seljuk Empire Together: Reading Women’s Role and Identity in Medieval Islam through Art,” IMC Leeds

Sheri Chriqui (Royal Holloway, University of London): “A ‘Foreign’ Queen in King Uther’s Court: 15th-Century Insular Xenophobia and Malory’s Portrayal of Arthur’s Mother,” IMC Leeds

Sanne Frequin (Universiteit van Amsterdam): “Rivalry and Ambition in the Tombs of Margaret of Constantinople and Her Descendants,” IMC Leeds

Gillian Gower (University of California, Los Angeles): “Mirrors for Princesses: Musical Models and the Public Images of England’s Medieval Queens,” Medieval Academy of America

Kriszta Kotsis (University of Puget Sound): “The Beauty of Byzantine Empresses,” Medieval Academy of America

Jan Shaw (University of Sydney): “Queens and Empire in Middle English Romance,” IMC Leeds

Philippa Woodcock (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée): “Odet de Foix,” Royal Studies Network

 The Royal Household & Entourage

Hélder Carvalhal (Universidade de Évora), “Lineage, House and Service: the family Teles de Meneses during the reigns of Manuel I and John III (1495–1557),” Royal Studies Network

Nicola Clark (Royal Holloway, University of London): “‘Richly beseen’: an investigation into the identities and roles of women at the court of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, 1485–1509,” Royal Studies Network

Caroline Dunn (Clemson University): “Fruits of their Labour: Recompensing Ladies-in-Waiting in Fourteenth-Century England,” Royal Studies Network

Amy Hayes: “Scotland’s Royal Children, 1371–1528,” Royal Studies Network

Isabel de Pina Balerias (University of Lisbon): “The entourage of Queen Leonor Teles and King Fernando of Portugal (1367–1384),” Royal Studies Network

Manuela Santos Silva (University of Lisbon): “Philippa of Lancaster’s lady-in-waiting: the matriarch of the Portuguese Coutinho’s lineage in charge of the queen’s household (1387–1415),” Royal Studies Network

Nuria Silleras-Fernandez (University of Colorado, Boulder): “An Entourage Proper for a Princess: Maria Manuel of Portugal in the Spanish Court (1543–1544),” Royal Studies Network

Laura Tompkins (The National Archives, UK): “Was Alice Perrers Unusual? The Origins of the Queen’s Ladies in Fourteenth-Century England,” Royal Studies Network

Women and the History of Medicine

Theresa Earenfight (Seattle University): “Mixing Politics and Medicine: Late Medieval Queens of Navarre and Problems of Generation, Genealogy, and Inheritance in Pierre Andrée’s Pomum Aureum (1444),” Medieval Academy of America