Abstract
Although English queenship since the Norman Conquest demonstrated an enduring sense of long-term continuity, there are also precipitable shifts in how queenship was enacted by the end of the thirteenth century, particularly in the roles queens played as peacemakers, diplomats, and negotiators—activities that constituted power in the public eye. Two strands of cultural and political influences as to why such changes may have occurred are discussed here. First is the rise of the phenomenon of cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary in which the model of Mary as the Queen of Heaven, and “the perfect woman,” influenced how earthly queens were perceived by contemporaries and expected to act. Second is the widespread loss of English lands in Europe. Resulting in centuries of “lost causes” of English kings attempting to reassert their Continental rights, combined with continuous conflicts on the English home front, the transference of royal power and concentration away from Europe to the British Isles impacted the political authority and duties of English consorts.
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Notes
- 1.
In fact, the word “peace-weaver” (freoðowebbe) only appears three times in the lexicon of Old English, and twice in reference to women. Larry M. Sklute defines the “freoðowebbe” in Elene as masculine: Larry M. Sklute, “‘Freoðewebbe’ in Old English Poetry,” Neuphilogische Mitteilungen 71, no. 4 (1970): 536. Gillian Overing points out that most specific examples of women called “freoðowebbe” are actually women who failed at peace-weaving, somewhat tempering the idea of this womanly or queenly ideal: Gillian Overing, Language, Sign and Gender in Beowulf (Carbondale: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 74.
- 2.
See: Jo Ann McNamara, “Imitatio Helenae: Sainthood as an Attribute of Queenship,” in Saints: Studies in Hagiography, ed. Sandro Sticca (Binghamton: MRTS, 1996), 51–80; and Iona McCleery, “Isabel of Aragon (d. 1336): Model Queen or Model Saint?,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57, no. 4 (2006): 668–692.
- 3.
See: Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); and Kati Ihnat, Mother of Mercy, Bane of the Jews: Devotion to the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Norman England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
- 4.
Hardy Long Frank, “Virginal Politics,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 3, no. 1 (1978): 46.
- 5.
See: M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, “The King of France and the Queen of Heaven: The Iconography of the Porte Rouge of Notre-Dame of Paris,” Gesta 39, no. 1 (2000): 58–72; and Amy G. Remensnyder, “Marian Monarchy in Thirteenth-Century Castile,” in The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350, ed. Robert F. Berkhofer, Alan Cooper, and Adam J. Kosto (London: Routledge, 2005), 253–270.
- 6.
Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 108.
- 7.
Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 109.
- 8.
Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 115–116. See: Amelie Fößel, “Gender and Rulership in the Medieval German Empire,” History Compass 7, no. 1 (2009): 55–65, for a concise and convincing overview of Ottonian mothers and consorts.
- 9.
Kati Ihnat, “Early Evidence for the Cult of Anne in Twelfth-Century England,” Traditio 69 (2013): 5.
- 10.
Ihnat, “Early Evidence for the Cult of Anne,” 9 (our italics).
- 11.
Æthelwold of Winchester, Regularis Concordia, ed. and trans. Dom Thomas Symons (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1953), 1–2, 6–7. Æthelthryth is named in the earlier passage as wife, not queen; the portion not specific to Edgar and Aethelthryth in the later section simply calls them rex and regina.
- 12.
George Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 71n206.
- 13.
That there was some connection between Mary and Edward is evident in the unusual dual dedication of a Cistercian house at Balmerino in Fife, Scotland, by Ermengarde de Beaumont, queen dowager of Scotland (wife of William I), during the reign of her son, Alexander II. The house was completed by 1229, and Ermengarde was buried there following her death in 1234. See: Matthew H. Hammond, “Queen Ermengarde and the Abbey of St. Edward, Balmerino,” Citeaux: Comentarii cistercienses 59, nos. 1–2 (2008): 1–15.
- 14.
T.A.M. Bishop and P. Chaplais, Facimilies of English Royal Writs to A. D. 1100 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 28 (n.p.).
- 15.
A tenth-century Old English poem, Judith, partially survives as part of the Nowell Codex. While the beginning is missing, the poem “ends with the poet’s celebration of divine power as something enacted through Judith,” which “favours the not uncommon critical view that Judith is an allegory for Æthelflæd, the Lady of the Mercians who fought a war to ‘free’ the Danelaw in 909–18.” Richard North, Joe Allard, and Patricia Gillies, eds., Longman Anthology of Old English, Old Icelandic, and Anglo-Norman Literatures (London: Routledge, 2014), 401–402. We thank Dr Aidan Norrie for this reference. See also more generally: Alyce A. Jordan, “Material Girls: Judith, Esther, Narrative Modes and Models of Queenship in the Windows of the Ste-Chapelle in Paris,” Word and Image 15, no. 4 (1999): 337–350.
- 16.
As well as this intercession, she also persuaded the King to allow the Jews to kill those who would harm them, and this was carried out: Esther 8:5–9:17; the origins of Purim, Esther 9:20–32.
- 17.
Lois Huneycutt, “Intercession and the Queen: The Esther Topos,” in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 129.
- 18.
Stacy S. Klein, “Beauty and the Banquet: Queenship and Social Reform in Aelfric’s ‘Esther’,” Journal of English and German Philology 103, no. 1 (2004): 80–81.
- 19.
Klein, “Beauty,” 82.
- 20.
Klein, “Beauty,” 85.
- 21.
Klein, “Beauty,” 88, 92.
- 22.
Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, “The Power of Women through the Family in Medieval Europe, 500–1100,” Feminist Studies 1, nos. 3–4 (1973): 126–141. For an opposing view, see: Heather J. Tanner, Laura L. Gathagan, and Lois L. Huneycutt, “Introduction,” in Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 1–18.
- 23.
Huneycutt, “Intercession,” 127.
- 24.
John Cami Parsons, “The Queen’s Intercession in Thirteenth-Century England,” in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 147–177.
- 25.
Wim Verball, “Cistercians in Dialogue: Bringing the World into the Monastery,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, ed. Mette Birkedal Bruun (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 239.
- 26.
Martha G. Newman, “Foundation and Twelfth Century,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, ed. Mette Birkedal Bruun (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 30.
- 27.
See: Katherine Weikert, “The Queen, the Countess and the Conflict: Winchester 1141,” in Early Medieval Winchester: Communities, Authority and Power in an Urban Space, c.800–c.1200, ed. Ryan Lavelle, Simon Roffey, and Katherine Weikert (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2021), 162–164.
- 28.
See, for ease of reference, Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Latin Letters, https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu.
- 29.
Letter from Bernard of Clairvaux to Matilda of Touraine, before 1132, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. LeClercq and H. Rochais (Rome: Eds. Cisterciennes, 1979), ep.121, accessed at https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/25200.html, 26 February 2022; Letter from Bernard of Clairvaux to Ida of Carinthia, 1148, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ep.375, accessed at https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/25191.html, 26 February 2022.
- 30.
Letter from Bernard of Clairvaux to Eleanor of Aquitaine, 1144x1147, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ep.511, accessed at https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/1294.html, 26 February 2022.
- 31.
Letter from Bernard of Clairvaux to Richinza of Nordheim and Brunswick, 1135, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ep.137, accessed at https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/1319.html, 26 February 2022.
- 32.
Letter from Bernard of Clairvaux to Melisende of Jerusalem, 1142, Sancti Bernardi Opera, v. 8, ep.355, accessed at https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/239.html, 26 February 2022; Letter from Bernard of Clairvaux to Melisende of Jerusalem, 1143x1144, Sancti Bernardi Opera, v. 8, ep.354, accessed at https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/246.html, 26 February 2022.
- 33.
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paradiso Canto XXXI, line 102.
- 34.
Quoted in J.A. MacCulloch, Medieval Faith and Fable (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1932), 107.
- 35.
Frank, “Virginal Politics,” 47. See also: William of Malmesbury, The Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, ed. and trans. R.M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015).
- 36.
Ihnat, “Early Evidence for the Cult of Anne,” 8–9.
- 37.
Ihnat, “Early Evidence for the Cult of Anne,” 9 (italics our own).
- 38.
Miri Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 121–124.
- 39.
Concurrently, though, the symbolism of Mary was also used negatively: William of Malmesbury’s treatise on the miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the 1120s, one of the earliest in the English tradition, both gave the model of Marian behaviour as we now come to expect, but also highlighted differences between Jews and Christians in considering Jews to be heretics in contrast to the righteousness of Christianity, if not outright antisemitic. R.M. Thompson, William of Malmesbury, rev. ed. (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), 169–170. Mary was, as Miri Rubin points out, a foil of purity against heretics and Jews. Rubin, Mother of God, 125.
- 40.
See: Kristen L. Geaman and Theresa Earenfight, “Neither Heir Nor Spare: Childless Queens and the Practice of Monarchy in Pre-modern Europe,” in The Routledge History of Monarchy, ed. Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Chris Jones, Russell E. Martin, and Zita Eva Rohr (London: Routledge, 2019), 518–533.
- 41.
Huneycutt, “Intercession and the High-Medieval Queen,” 126.
- 42.
Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 292.
- 43.
J.F. O’Callaghan, “The Many Roles of the Medieval Queen: Some Examples from Castile,” in Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, ed. Theresa Earenfight (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 21–22.
- 44.
Katherine Weikert, “Eadwig has a Threesome: Sex and the Breaking of Authority in the Tenth Century,” in Forgotten Kings: Edmund, Eadred and Eadwig in the Tenth Century, ed. Mary Blanchard and Christopher Riedel (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2023); Mary Elizabeth Blanchard, “Beyond Corfe: Aelfthryth’s Roles as Queen, Villain and Former Sister-in-law,” Haskins Society Journal 30 (2020): 1–20.
- 45.
BL Add MS 33241, fol. 1v.
- 46.
She went on to have at least seven children by her second husband, William d’Aubigy, Earl of Arundel; Henry I was known for his many illegitimate children, including Robert of Gloucester and Sybilla, Queen of Scotland.
- 47.
Mathilda of Flanders and Matilda of Boulogne acted as regent for their husbands; Matilda of England acted unofficially on behalf of her son Duke and then King Henry II in Normandy until her death.
- 48.
Arguably a commonwealth rather than an empire. See: Martin Aurell, L’empire des Plantagenets (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 11; John Gillingham, The Angevin Empire (London: Edward Arnold, 1984), 5.
- 49.
See: Sophie Thérèse Ambler, The Song of Simon de Montfort: England’s First Revolutionary (London: Picador, 2019).
- 50.
Stephen and Matilda of Boulogne’s son, William, married Isabella de Warenne, Countess of Surrey.
- 51.
His daughter Joan married Alexander II, King of Scotland, and his daughter Eleanor married (1) William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and (2) Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Richard of Cornwall’s first wife was Isabel Marshal. His illegitimate (and later legitimised) daughter Joan married Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd, and his illegitimate son, Richard FitzRoy, married Rohese of Dover.
- 52.
Edmund Crouchback (whose first wife was Aveline de Forz, Countess of Aumale) and Margaret, Duchess of Brabant, respectively.
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Messer, D.R., Weikert, K. (2023). Epilogue: Shifting Sands and Changing Lands. In: Norrie, A., Harris, C., Laynesmith, J., Messer, D.R., Woodacre, E. (eds) Norman to Early Plantagenet Consorts. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21068-6_15
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