Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100-1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate ed. by Heather J. Tanner

Abstract

Reviewed by: Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100-1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate ed. by Heather J. Tanner Elizabeth Kinne Heather J. Tanner, ed., Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100-1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. The New Middle Ages Series. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Pp. xvii, 310, 3 plates. isbn: 978-3-030-01345-5. $77.42. [End Page 134] This twelve-essay volume makes a significant contribution to feminist medieval scholarship by presenting evidence for myriad forms of medieval feminine power, putting to rest the frustrating perception that powerful women were exceptions to the rule. The conversation is artful and ambitious, rich in geographical breadth and theoretical depth, built on the premise 'that elite women in positions of authority in the central medieval period were expected, accepted, and routine' (p. 2). The introduction by Heather J. Tanner, Laura L. Gathagan, and Lois L. Huneycutt revisits Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Fonay Wemple's 1973 claim for medieval England that emerging royal centralized government and bureaucratic institutions after 1050 relegated women to a private domestic realm divorced from public affairs (p. 5), a claim often generalized uncritically in subsequent scholarship. The editors, like the contributors who follow, systematically disprove that there was a 'public-private dichotomy of [medieval] governance' (p. 6), that women's roles as wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers were confined to the domestic, and that women's property and possibilities were determined strictly by the men in their lives. The first three essays focus on medieval England. RaGena C. De Aragon's 'Power and Agency in Post-Conquest England: Elite Women and the Transformations of the Twelfth Century' revisits McNamara and Wemple's thesis and its context, and deftly displays how prosopography, micro-history, and comparative study can be used to reinterpret bureaucratic documents such as pipe rolls and the 1185 Rotuli to conclude that widows defiantly controlled their marital status in the face of male authority to maintain ownership of their landholdings. Examining the power inherent in familial networks, Linda E. Mitchell's 'The Most Perfect Knight's Countess: Isabella de Clare, Her Daughters, and Women's Exercise of Power and Influence, 1190-ca. 1250' shows how Isabella bequeathed to her daughters a governing ethos honed during thirty years of co-governing, and argues that 'the sorority within politically engaged families deserves a place at the historical table' (p. 64). Kristen L. Geaman in 'Beyond Good Queen Anne: Anne of Bohemia, Patronage, and Politics' revisits traditional readings of Queen Anne as an apolitical wife, showing that her role as an 'especially active intercessor' (p. 69) made the queen an integral part of a royal persona that 'required two corporeal bodies: that of the masculine king and the feminine queen' (p. 85). Chapters Five through Seven concern France and begin with Charlotte Cartwright's 'Emma of Ivry, c. 1008-1080'; Emma emulated her aunt, Countess Gunnor, as matriarch of the ducal household and incurred the debt of politically prominent men. She encourages the integration of 'the power of women into our understanding of lordship' (p. 110). Emulation is central too in Kathy M. Krause's 'From Mothers to Daughters: Literary Patronage as Political Work in Ponthieu'; the author shows how Marie de Ponthieu's literary patronage of Gerbert de Montreuil was modeled after that of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and demonstrates that Gerbert's reworking of material for Marie in favor of her exiled husband makes of patronage 'a potential source that can reveal political agency (p. 131). Women's politically adroit defense of rebellious husbands is also seen in Katrin E. Sjursen's 'Pirate, Traitor, Wife: Jeanne of Belleville and the Categories of Fourteenth-Century French Noblewomen' as she shows how the 'labels of wife, mother, and widow are not self-explanatory' (p. 137) [End Page 135] through Jeanne's actions as military commander, traitor to the crown, ally in the Breton Civil War, and widow forging marital alliances to further her political interests. Chapters Eight through Ten turn east and north. Tiffany A. Ziegler in 'Just Another Day in the Neighborhood: Collective Female Donation Practices at the Hospital of Saint John in Brussels' uncovers networks of influence of...