Highly Visible, Often Obscured: The Difficulty of Seeing Queens and Noble Women

Shakespeare Newsletter, 2022

, 2019) is a similar kind of cross-cultural defamiliarization, a new perspective on an early-modern figure who in the anglophone West might be instantly recognizable. Representations of Elizabeth I are so familiar a subject in scholarly circles as to be almost hackneyed, hence the distinct note of weariness already evident in Horace Walpole's statement, "a vast ruff, a vaster fardingale, and a bushel of pearls, are the features by which every body knows at once the pictures of Queen Elizabeth." [1] The value of this anthology for scholars of English literature and history is its revelation of the various ways that Gloriana was seen by the great antagonist of her reign's last two decades, Catholic Spain.

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies

An exhaustive analysis of the very last words drafted by one of the most powerful noblewomen of the fifteenth century, Duchess Aldonza de Mendoza (d. 1435), reveals that her project to transform the Hieronymite monastery of Lupiana into a pantheon might have been connected to the birth of a child outside her marriage, more precisely, to a son who had remained hidden until the moment of Aldonza’s death. The aim of this study is to offer a new reading of the Duchess’s mausoleum, a pantheon planned to showcase her lineage by focusing exclusively on the female line. Further, this paper rediscovers two panels of the lost main altarpiece of the monastery of Lupiana commissioned by Aldonza de Mendoza and proposes an allegorical portrait of the Duchess represented as the wife of Pontius Pilate. Aldonza’s project reveals itself as crucial for understanding the selffashioning mechanisms employed by late medieval women, as well as the ways in which visual culture was used in the shaping of female memorial programmes.

History Compass, 2006

This essay outlines some main themes of gender and rulership in Iberian history from the early twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. Focusing mainly on queens, the essay also addresses the experience of other elite women and men, looking at the nexus of gender ideology and the practical requirements of monarchy.

Medieval Prosopography, 22 (2001), pp. 31-64, 2001

In the second half of the fourteenth century the kingdom of Navarre escaped the domination of Frerich culture and poli tic s and enjoyed a period of independence and strength. The archives of the royal household enable us to trace 364 women who held a . variety of positions.at court, from menials (and even slaves) to those who surrounded the queen and her daughters and who played a strong role in the "indirect" power that women exercised. Women of Castile and then of Navarre emerged as active participants in the household, and they-whether alone or as part of families with a service tradition-remind us that a royal court was far from being a male preserve with its women confined to muted roles in the domestic quarters.

This chapter surveys queenship in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages. Even though legal codes and didactic texts written by men mapped out gender norms and stereotypes regarding women, and tended to limit the role of queens as rulers, many queens took active roles in politics, whether they were queens in their own right, royal consorts, regents and lieutenants, queen-mothers or dowagers. In the Middle Ages, rulership and kingship were not synonymous, and monarchical power was a broad enterprise in which other members of the royal family participated, particularly the queen—especially given the fact that the government and the court were very much integrated, and that there was little distinction between the public and the private spheres in royal circles. This chapter analyzes how power was conceived and used by queens, and also surveys the pillars of medieval queenship: the role of the family, the networks of power and patronage (religious, political, artistic, etc.) created by queens to wield authority and influence, and how piety and ceremonial functioned and were entwined. Particular historical contexts, the evolution of the legal tradition and canon law, and the constitution of broader and more complex realms all affected the model of queenship and made it evolve. In sum, this contribution emphasizes the queen’s role in medieval monarchy.

Royal Studies Journal, 2023

The thirteenth century was a transformative period for Western European monarchies, which experienced the development of institutions and an increasing bureaucratisation of their administrative systems. During this time in Castile, the queen’s establishment began to be recognised as progressively differentiated from the king’s own household. This study examines the composition and structure of the Castilian queen’s household in the thirteenth century through two case studies: the households of Juana of Ponthieu (r.1237-1252), wife of Fernando III; and Violante of Aragon (r.1252-1284), wife of Alfonso X. It draws upon the references to their personnel contained in the repartimientos, the grants of land that followed the conquest of new territories in the Southern Iberian Peninsula. This approach demonstrates that the examination of well-known sources through the lens of queenship provides important new insights into the personnel and households of thirteenth-century queens consort. This article argues that, during the thirteenth century, the queen’s household constituted a space of connection which linked together people from diverse origins, kingdoms, and backgrounds; and provided the queen with a sphere of influence, through which she could exercise her largesse and patronage.

This article teases apart an apparent paradox, often noted but rarely examined by art historians: despite their great expense and artistic virtuosity, some of the most celebrated funerary effigies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are extremely difficult to see in situ. Opening with a consideration of the political, social and religious significance of partial visibility in the later Middle Ages, the issues of sight and scale are further interrogated through the study of an important (and largely unknown) fifteenth-century royal tomb in Portugal. Through an examination of the extraordinary height of this monument and its implications for the relationship between the sculpted effigies and their viewers, this article complicates the notion that late-medieval art was characterised by a ‘need to see’, arguing that the limited, conditional or partial visibility of an artwork could be a strategy to produce a distinctive type of aesthetic experience, lending the memorial both meaning and importance.

Gender & History, 2007

These three works demonstrate the impact that gender studies has had on the scholarship on early modern Spain. From political biography to religious and intellectual history, gender not only offers depth and breadth to historical study, it is becoming central to our understanding of Spanish society.

This dissertation is a new historicist approach to studying the cultural legacy of the medieval queen María de Molina of Castile-León (1284-1321). In this study, works of literature are examined alongside historical accounts-such as chronicles and official documents-which are read as literature and analyzed for the political rhetoric which they contain. This study is focused on two things: First, understanding María de Molina's exercise of queenship, with an emphasis on how that queenship is constructed and represented in texts, and second, evaluating the impact of her queenship and its connection to the so-called cultural movement of molinismo in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In this study, Queen María's queenship is understood as the combination of her exercise of power in the discursive space of the court, as well as her representation in royal documents and histories. The first chapter explores the origins of what some literary critics have dubbed "molinismo" in thirteenth-century Castile-León, and the explanation of molinismo as a conservative movement back to orthodoxy, contained in literature produced in the court of Queen María's husband, Sancho IV. This chapter provides an overview of Sancho's cultural production, but it focuses on an analysis of the king's cultural politics and the only work that Sancho claimed credit for as an author, Castigos del rey don Sancho IV. Chapters two and three examine María de Molina's queenship as it is constructed in the royal chronicles written by the archdeacon of Toledo, Jofré de Loaysa, and Alfonso XI's chancellor, Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid, as well as in other official documentation, such as royal charters, privileges, and ordenamientos from the medieval iv political institution of the cortes. These chapters consider the gendered construction of the queen's image, the extent of her participation in shaping that image, and the political motivations for her portrayal in these texts. The last chapter returns to the topic of molinismo in Castilian literature produced in the first half of the fourteenth-century. Through an analysis of three works that are connected to the cultural movement of molinismo (Libro del caballero Zifar, Poema de Alfonso XI, and Libro de buen amor), this chapter attempts to measure the queen's influence on molinismo and poses the question of whether or not molinismo should be considered a unified cultural movement. v This project is the product of more than two years of work and it would not have been possible without the assistance and support of professors, friends, and family members. First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation director, Michael Gerli, for introducing me to María de Molina and the topic of molinismo and for generally being the best advisor a graduate student in my position could hope for. I needed an advisor like you, supportive and thoroughly knowledgeable in all things medieval, to help guide me through this process. I sincerely appreciate your enthusiastic encouragement and lightning-fast feedback. To my second and third readers, Allison Weber and Randolph Pope, thank you for your advice in helping me limit the scope of this study to something manageable and humble and for your suggestions on how to approach the topic. I am especially grateful to Professor Weber for her advice to be careful in attributing Queen María's voice to any of the documents she had a hand in composing, which has been a guiding principle throughout my writing process. To my outside readers, Theresa Earenfight and Deborah McGrady, thank you for lending your time and considerable expertise to this project and for your kind words of encouragement and suggestions. I would also like to thank Duane Osheim and Deborah Boucoyannis, for their suggestions of references on this period in Medieval Spain at the beginning of this project. I also need to thank the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Virginia, as well as the Clay Foundation, who generously funded my archival research for this project. vi I could not have completed this project without the support of my friends and family. I would like to thank my "dissertation support group," Natalie McManus, Ashley Kerr, and Allison Libbey, who helped me through all aspects of the dissertation writing process, both academic and emotional. I would have been lost without you. I would also like to thank my sister, Emily North, my adopted sister, Susan Eger, and my fiancé Michael Hortesky, all of whom listened to my theories and ideas about medieval queenship, patiently acting as sounding boards at different points during this process. Also, I want to thank my family and friends for their support and encouragement, not only during the period which I was writing this dissertation, but throughout my graduate studies. Chapter 4 Molinismo in the Literature of Fourteenth-Century Castile-León Conclusion Works Cited This study examines the cultural legacy of the medieval Castilian queen María de Molina (1284-1321) in an attempt to appreciate the impact of her rule on the cultural politics of Castile at the turn of the fourteenth century. We sometimes talk about

The Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre had a distinctive record with regard to female rule, with five reigning queens between the accession of Juana I in 1274 and the annexation of the realm by Castile in 1512. These five women, in common with all sovereigns, used the language of charters, the imagery on their seals and their visual representation on the coins of the realm to establish and emphasize their authority. They had to negotiate the particular challenge of female rulers; to define their authority both as the natural sovereign of the realm and with regard to their spouse, the king consort. This complex personal and political partnership between the female sovereign and her spouse confounded contemporary understandings of gender roles and the relationship between husband and wife. The husband was perceived, though Biblical tradition, of being the ‘head’ of his wife and yet the wife’s head wore the crown, creating a lack of clarity over how they ought to function as a ruling pair. This complicated power sharing dynamic between the queen and her consort found literal and physical expression in the cartulary and numismatic output of their reign. This paper will provide a comparative analysis of the address clauses, seals and coinage of the five reigning queens of Navarre. It will note the adoption and adaptation of previous models and the significant innovations which occurred, including the great double seal of Blanca I (r.1425-1441) and her consort Juan of Aragon and the portrait coins of Catalina I (r.1483-1512) and Jean d’Albret. It will compare the often divergent representation of authority in textual sources versus visual sources. For example, Juana I (r.1274-1305) was often listed after her husband or a reduced to a mention or consent clause in her cartulary and yet her name appears alone on the coins of the realm, with no mention of her powerful spouse. Taken together, these sources demonstrate the ways in which these queens demonstrated their authority as sovereigns, in context with their male predecessors and in tandem with their spouses. It will add to the understanding of rulership generally by highlighting practices in Navarre, which is often overlooked or omitted in wider surveys. It will also develop awareness of the particular challenges of representing female authority and this more unusual formulation of joint rule.