Queenship In The Mediterranean

This groundbreaking collection explores the key roles that Mediterranean queens played as wives, as mothers, and above all as political actors. Ranging from Byzantine empresses to regnants and consorts in the Italian peninsula, they offer a bracing new perspective on queenship in the medieval and Early Modern eras.

Medieval queens led richly complex lives and were highly visible women active in a man's world. Linked to kings by marriage, family, and property, queens were vital to the institution of monarchy. In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to the study of queenship, Theresa Earenfight documents the lives and works of queens and empresses across Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages. The book: - Introduces pivotal research and sources in queenship studies, and includes exciting and innovative new archival research - Highlights four crucial moments across the full span of the Middle Ages – ca. 300, 700, 1100, and 1350 – when Christianity, education, lineage, and marriage law fundamentally altered the practice of queenship - Examines theories and practices of queenship in the context of wider issues of gender, authority, and power. This is an invaluable and illuminating text for students, scholars and other readers interested in the role of royal women in medieval society.

Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe examines queens dowager and queens consort who have disappeared from history or have been deeply misunderstood in modern historical treatment. Divided into eleven chapters, this book covers queenship from 1016 to 1800, demonstrating the influence of queens in different aspects of monarchy over eight centuries and furthering our knowledge of the roles and challenges that they faced. It also promotes a deeper understanding of the methods of power and patronage for women who were not queens, many of which have since become mythologized into what historians have wanted them to be. The chronological organisation of the book, meanwhile, allows the reader to see more clearly how these forgotten queens are related by the power, agency, and patronage they displayed, despite the mythologization to which they have all been subjected. Offering a broad geographical coverage and providing a comparison of queenship across a range of disciplines, such as religious history, art history, and literature, Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe is ideal for students and scholars of pre-modern queenship and of medieval and early modern history courses more generally.

The essays in this book traverse two centuries of queens and their afterlives—historical, mythological, and literary. They speak of the significant and subtle ways that queens leave their mark on the culture they inhabit, focusing on gender, marriage, national identity, diplomacy, and representations of queens in literature. Elizabeth I looms large in this volume, but the interrogation of queenship extends from Elizabeth's historical counterparts, such as Anne Boleyn and Catherine de Medici, to her fictional echoes in the pages of John Lyly, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish. Celebrating and building on the renowned scholarship of Carole Levin, Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies exemplifies a range of innovative approaches to examining women and power in the early modern period.

In 1343 a seventeen-year-old girl named Johanna (1326–1382) ascended the Neapolitan throne, becoming the ruling monarch of one of medieval Europe’s most important polities. For nearly forty years, she held her throne and the avid attention of her contemporaries. Their varied responses to her reign created a reputation that made Johanna the most notorious woman in Europe during her lifetime. In From She-Wolf to Martyr, Elizabeth Casteen examines Johanna’s evolving, problematic reputation and uses it as a lens through which to analyze often-contradictory late-medieval conceptions of rulership, authority, and femininity. When Johanna inherited the Neapolitan throne from her grandfather, many questioned both her right to and her suitability for her throne. After the murder of her first husband, Johanna quickly became infamous as a she-wolf—a violent, predatory, sexually licentious woman. Yet, she also eventually gained fame as a wise, pious, and able queen. Contemporaries—including Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Birgitta of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena—were fascinated by Johanna. Drawing on a wide range of textual and visual sources, Casteen reconstructs the fourteenth-century conversation about Johanna and tracks the role she played in her time’s cultural imaginary. She argues that despite Johanna’s modern reputation for indolence and incompetence, she crafted a new model of female sovereignty that many of her contemporaries accepted and even lauded.

From Margaret of Anjou to Katherine Parr, All the Queen’s Jewels examines the jewellery collections of the ten queen consorts of England between 1445–1548 and investigates the collections of jewels a queen had access to, as well as the varying contexts in which queens used and wore jewels. The jewellery worn by queens reflected both their gender and their status as the first lady of the realm. Jewels were more than decorative adornments; they were an explicit display of wealth, majesty and authority. They were often given to queens by those who wished to seek her favour or influence and were also associated with key moments in their lifecycle. These included courtship and marriage, successfully negotiating childbirth (and thus providing dynastic continuity), and their elevation to queenly status or coronation. This book explores the way that queens acquired jewels, whether via their predecessor, their own commission or through gift giving. It underscores that jewels were a vital tool that enabled queens to shape their identities as consort, and to fashion images of power that could be seen by their households, court and contemporaries. This book is perfect for anyone interested in medieval and Tudor history, queenship, jewellery and the history of material culture.

Based on an exhaustive and varied study of predominantly unpublished archival material as well as a variety of literary and non-literary sources, this book investigates the relation between patronage, piety and politics in the life and career of one Late Medieval Spain's most intriguing female personalities, Maria De Luna.

Examination of the role played by key figures around the monarchy in the Wars of the Roses.