Weibliches Mäzenatentum zwischen dynastischer Bestimmung, politischem Kalkül und höfischer Memoria

Abstract

Some recent trends in the research on womens’ roles in medieval dynastic nuptial practice have focused on the cultural displacement of noblewomen through marriage, and their status as »bartered brides« in foreign courts. This essay examines the role of the foreign noblewoman as mediatrix, highlighting the cultural advantages that these women — by reason of their gender and their relocation into a foreign court — could bring to bear in their new homeland. One such advantage discussed here is the notion of »double competency« in linguistic and cultural matters: the first being the result of their prenuptial socialisation, while the second is acquired in the new dynastic homeland. I suggest that art and especially literature provided the relocated noblewoman with opportunities to mediate between the old and the new cultures. At the same time, the process of mediation made it possible for her to exert a modicum of political or social influence, or to express a didactic comment. Queen Eufemia of Norway (d. 1312), the daughter of prince Wizlaw II of Rugen, gives an instructive example of this process. As the celebrated patron of the first Old Swedish epics, the cycle of the so called Eufemiavisor (verse adaptations of three continental epics of different language, genre and matiere), Eufemia not only transferred a new genre from her Low German courtly homeland to the North, but also tried to use literary production to smooth over a dynastic and nuptial crisis that had broken out between her husband, King Hakon V. of Norway, and her favoured son-in-law, a powerful nobleman from Sweden.