Anne Of Bohemia Research Articles

The Queen's Affinity: Anne of Bohemia and the Politics of the Realm, 1381-1394

The Queen's Affinity: Anne of Bohemia and the Politics of the Realm, 1381-1394

The Court of Richard II and Bohemian Culture by Alfred Thomas

Reviewed by: The Court of Richard II and Bohemian Culture by Alfred Thomas Elizabeth Allen alfred thomas, The Court of Richard II and Bohemian Culture. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 225. isbn: 978-1-8438-4566-9. $105. Over more than two decades, Alfred Thomas has brought to light for an English readership the international court culture of medieval Bohemia and its influence in England. Anne's Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310–1420 (University of Minnesota Press, 1998) took Anne's marriage to Richard II as the justification for a masterful survey of Czech literature with an eye to inviting comparisons with English literature. Thomas's subsequent work on Czech and English literature, A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Cornell University Press, 2007), cemented this essential scholarly project of making known in English a thoroughly cosmopolitan eastern European literary history; a deeper dive into the Bohemian connections to Chaucer's works came in Reading Women in Late Medieval Europe: Anne of Bohemia and Chaucer's Female Audience (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). From Thomas' erudite and meticulous body of work, scholars of late-medieval English literature have gained crucial insight into the cultural relations between [End Page 158] England and Bohemia. Thomas' work is essential to an important twenty-first century scholarly undertaking—spearheaded by David Wallace (Europe: A Literary History) and taken further by scholars like Candace Barrington (Global Chaucers) and Marion Turner (Chaucer: A European Life)—to widen the context of English literary culture to include all of Europe and indeed, the rest of the globe. In his present monograph on the subject, Thomas details Bohemian art, literature, and statecraft in order to pursue readings of late fourteenth-century works by Chaucer, Gower, the writer of the Alliterative Morte Darthur, and the Pearl poet. The Court of Richard II and Bohemian Culture is a handsome volume: printed on clay-covered paper, it contains 40 high-resolution, full color in-line illustrations. These visual materials draw a particularly vivid picture of the ties between Bohemia and England: the shared materials, styles, and themes which, Thomas argues, emphasize not so much national identities as 'familial and dynastic affiliations that transcended the west-east European divide' (p. xvi). This book consists of four chapters and a conclusion. In Chapter One, Thomas establishes that Richard II's court found creative inspiration in the multilingualism of Anne's Bohemian relatives, especially her father, Emperor Charles VI, and her half brother, King Wenceslas IV. This political link creates occasions for reading the English poetry of the late fourteenth century in an international context. In Chapter Two, Thomas treats Anne as the real-life corollary to Venus in Gower's Confessio Amantis and to Alceste in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, where the 'collaboration' with the patron 'is clearly not working out' (p. 71). In a series of short sections, Thomas explores the literary culture of female patronage in other works by Chaucer and by other authors including Dante, Petrarch, and Machaut. Chapter Three turns to more sustained readings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Alliterative Morte Darthur, arguing that both poems, far from provincial, register the international court culture he describes. In Gawain's seduction scenes, he finds a reflection of Robert de Vere's scandalous affair with Anne's lady in waiting, Agnes Lancecrona; in the Morte, he finds in King Arthur's grief a reflection of Richard II's grief for de Vere upon his death. In both poems Thomas finds an ambivalence about the moral and political values that international court culture seems to embrace. Chapter Four finds that Pearl's 'curious blend of consolatio and courtly love motifs' (p. 167) registers links to Bohemian architectural, visual, and poetic texts: Karlstein Castle outside Prague, and the Czech Legend of St. Catherine of Alexandria. Here and in the book's conclusion, Thomas describes Richard's political ambition and his investment in the ideology of sacral kingship as thoroughly embedded in an international court culture shared by England and Bohemia—an international culture that, after Richard's death, gave way to the comparative insularity of the Lancastrians. Thomas' work proceeds by testing associations (as opposed...

Following Chaucer: Offices of the Active Life. Lynn Staley. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020. Pp. viii+218.

Insomuch as Staley’s offices are meant to complement and update the foundational work of Jill Mann on estates satire, her first office, that of the queen, is clearly meant to advance as well the understanding provided to us in another classic and still important essay: Paul Strohm’s “Queens as Intercessors.”4 Staley’s queens, embodied in Anne of Bohemia, act as intercessors, sure, but the importance of that activity is something greater than the distribution of mercy to individuals. Anne, as filtered through the imagination of Chaucer and others, is endowed “with the possibility of giving Richard realistic and rational advice,” and in so doing “adumbrate[s] an office where the internalization of the ideals of a common good operates as restraint, the restraint of self, and the restraint of heedlessness” (17–18). The second office, that of the poet, is embodied by Chaucer himself, specifically in the articulation of the writer’s role in the world embedded within the Trinitarian prayer that serves as the prologue to the Second Nun’s Tale. Chaucer uses a secularized version of this Trinitarian thinking to posit “a unified relation between self and society,” in which the writer in his role as a public figure and civic official “must keep in mind his relationship to others, who are also citizens,” those who are working together mutually for the “common profit” (82). Staley’s final office is the merchant, a complex one due to “Chaucer’s recognition that terms like good—common or individual—are hard to separate from self-interest” (98). Chaucer is thus articulating “the anxieties and the aspirations that mark growing mercantile power,” with the merchant as “a figure whose quest for profit defines his or her restless motion” and who asks of merchants—in their ascendant self-importance—to attend to the “relationship between actual practice and proclaimed reality,” to live up—that is—to their self-understanding as strivers after that which would profit us all (97–99).

Patientia et misericordia, poena et signum. The picture of a diseased person and the disease in Mediaeval narrative sources

The article presents the manner of showing disease and the suffering of a person by Mediaeval narrative sources. The basis for the article are various national chronicles, monastic historiography and hagiography written in the Middle Ages. The analysed works are the lives of Saint Kinga of Poland, Anne of Bohemia, Salomea of Poland and Saint Francis of Assisi, three monastic chronicles written by canons regulars in the monasteries in Kłodzko, Żagań and Wrocław, and chronicles describing the Polish history by Gallus Anonymous, Jan Długosz and Jan of Czarnków. The author describes the attitude of the society towards the ill person and the attitude of the ill towards their suffering. The article presents also the description of disease and the attempt (or the lack of attempt) to provide medical causes of the illnesses. The indication of pathogenesis of the disease is very rare in the medieval narrative sources. The authors of these works often appeal to God in this matter, they look for an explanation in the Lord’s wrath or divine providence. The author of the article shows the differences in presenting the disease in the sources given in the article depending on the kind of works and its purposes.

Transformative Genealogies: Childbirth and Crises of Succession in Athelston

In medieval historical narratives, including chronicles and many romances, violent and explicit scenes of childbirth often accompany political upheaval or dramatic genealogical changes. In such scenes, childbirth—including pregnancy, labor, and delivery—is frequently in tension with ideal agnatic succession, erupting into the narrative at moments of patrilineal disruption or ambiguity, such as illegitimacy, the loss of patrimonial lands, and the lack of a direct male heir. This essay examines how representations of women's child-bearing provide a means of genealogical transformation, particularly during disruptions in succession. It focuses on the late fourteenth-century romance Athelston, with reference to royal genealogical rolls, the Beaufort/Beauchamp Book of Hours, and the Wilton Diptych, situating these sources in late medieval political and genealogical challenges, including Richard II's tumultuous reign and non-agnatic ascension and succession, and Anne of Bohemia's childlessness. In particular, it examines the tension in representations. In Athelston, whose narrative crisis and climax involve horrific violence toward and political action by royal pregnant women, this tension between the mother's role in producing an heir and the urgent embodiedness of child-bearing allows both genealogical continuity and sudden change. The essay argues that prominent childbearing characters and detailed acts of childbirth in medieval texts, particularly those concerned with genealogy, often show how women not only contribute to an existing genealogy but imbue it with types of authority that are new and possibly radically different from male primogeniture.

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

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...

Anne of Bohemia and the Making of Chaucer

Anne of Bohemia and the Making of Chaucer Andrew Taylor University o f Saskatchewan In 1382 the young Anne ofBohem;a a,c;ved ;n England to marry King Richard II as part ofan alliance designed to promote his imperial ambitions. 1 Poor-she brought no dowry and was accompanied by an impecunious train of courtiers who probably spoke as little English as she did-and by many accounts not beautiful, she was the object of scorn. As the Westminster chronicler remarked: De ista regina sic quidam scripsit metrice: Digna frui manna datur Anglis nobilis Anna; set scrutantibus verum videbatur non dari set pocius emi, nam non modicam pecuniam refundebat rex Anglie pro tantilla carnis porcione. [About this Queen somebody wrote the verse: Worthy to enjoy manna, To Englishmen is given the noble Anna; but to those with an eye for the facts it seemed that she represented a purchase rather than a gift, since the English king laid out no small sum for such a small piece of flesh.]2 From this unpromising beginning, Anne went on to exercise a notable influence in the kingdom, interceding with the king on numerous occa­ sions and gaining a reputation for prudence, charity, and the devout 1 Constantin Hofler discusses the diplomatic negotiations behind the marriage; "Anna van Luxemburg," Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historischen Classe, 20 (Vienna, 1871), pp. 89-240, esp. pp. 123-38. 2 L. C. Hector and Barbara F. Harvey, eds., The Westminster Chronicle, 1381-1394 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 24-25. I have used their translation except for the last line, which they soften to "to secure this tiny scrap ofhumanity." 95 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER reading of Scripture. She is one of the women Susan Bell terms "arbiters of lay piety and ambassadors of culture," while Agnes Strickland, in her history Queens of England, goes so far as to call Anne the first of "the nursing-mothers of the Reformation."3 This influential queen, Anne the Good or Anne the Wise as the chroniclers eventually called her, was also allegedly a patron of Chaucer's and is widely held responsible for im­ posing upon him the task of writing The Legend of Good Women as an amends for his depiction of Criseyde. It is the intersection of these two figures, the historical queen and the censorious patron figured in Alceste, the consort of the God of love, that is my topic. I wish to advance two arguments: first, that although we cannot have anything approaching di­ rect access to Anne, and although she herself could only exert her cul­ tural influence indirectly and through heavily predetermined social nar­ ratives, at the point of triangulation of these various formations there lay a real woman of significant cultural authority. The second is that the re­ pudiation of Anne and her authority has been closely tied to the con­ struction of Chaucer as a self-sufficient author. Since my second argu­ ment claims that the literary tradition denies the social conditions of its inception, I wish to begin by considering what we can know of the his­ torical Anne of Bohemia before turning to Chaucer's poems. One possible means of recapturing the cultural power of the histori­ cal Anne, or indeed of many other medieval women, would be to look for traces of the books they owned or commissioned. Thus Bell argues that while women writers in the Middle Ages are few and hard to find, "as readers of vernacular literature, as mothers in charge of childhood ed­ ucation, as literary patrons who commissioned books and translations, and as wives who married across cultural and geographical boundaries, women had a specific and unique influence."4 Recognizing this influence is not just a matter of doing fresh research; as Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski argue, it requires a reassessment of cultural authority itself along the lines of recent feminist scholarship, "which broadens the conventional understanding of power to include new forms of power and 3 Agnes Strickland,Lives ofthe Queens ofEngland, 2d ed., 6 vols. (London, 1880), 1:416. 4 Susan G. Bell, "Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of...

Reading Women in Late Medieval Europe: Anne of Bohemia and Chaucer’s Female Audience by Alfred Thomas

Reading Women in Late Medieval Europe: Anne of Bohemia and Chaucer’s Female Audience by Alfred Thomas

Anne of Bohemia and Her Struggle to Conceive

Anne of Bohemia and Her Struggle to Conceive

A Personal Letter Written by Anne of Bohemia

A Personal Letter Written by Anne of Bohemia

THREE VERSE EULOGIES OF ANNE OF BOHEMIA

Anne of Bohemia, the first queen of Richard II, died on 7 June 1394, after a short struggle with what may have been the plague. Her funeral on 3 August, nearly two months after she died, was of course an occasion to focus on her deeds and character, to reflect on the past and on how her reign had impacted England. Yet the crowd which gathered at Westminster Abbey that day did not check its politics at the door. The Earl of Arundel, for one, was not in a particularly reflective mood; arriving late to the funeral (and asking to leave early on pressing business), his audacity provoked Richard to physical violence, which caused a delay in the proceedings until Arundel's blood could be cleared and the church reconsecrated.1As Anne and Richard had been childless, her death also brought to the fore a looming crisis of succession, part of a more widespread anxiety about Ricardian legitimacy. Richard was under enormous pressure, then, to turn the occasion of Anne's funeral to his own political advantage. It was to be an affair of state which would command a degree of obligatory cooperation and, as Richard made clear to Arundel, the 'unity' of all factions, however coerced.2 Any commemoration that might have been offered for the Bohemian queen thus presented its narrative of the past under the duress of tremendous political tensions.And indeed one would like to know what was said of Anne during or after her funeral, and whether her legacy was shaped to address Ricardian political woes. Up to now, with the exception of a scattering of brief eulogizing generalities in the chronicles and a specious anecdote about a funeral sermon by Thomas Arundel (then the Archbishop of York),3 what scholars have known about the impact of Anne's death has had more to do with her contemporaries' commemoration through indirection. Most notable are Chaucer's efforts to edit out what many have read as references to Anne between the F and G prologues to the Legend of Good Women. Anne's absence has also been credited for much of Richard II's subsequent tyrannical bent, no longer moderated by a queen who was celebrated for her meek supplications.4 John Bowers has argued that the Middle English Pearl may also eulogize Anne, but if he is right, then the poet does so (as Bowers admits) by carefully avoiding direct association with any particular mourner, any specific deceased maiden.5 It seems, in light of such commemoration, that Anne of Bohemia left the world quiedy, relegated to near total obscurity, the legacy of her twelve-year reign reduced to stock characterizations of piety, veiled literary allusions, and indignant remarks about modish footwear.6Fortunately there is more to be said. We can now add to the discussion of the discourse surrounding Anne's funeral three verse eulogies, carried to Prague within years of her deadi, which commemorate Anne of Bohemia in explicit terms. The eulogies, which I edit and discuss in the appendix, are valuable indications of die ways in which Anne's piety was construed and then used to advance royalist devotional and political agendas. In the discussion which follows I restrict my commentary primarily to issues of manuscript context and transmission history, as well as to the origin and audiorship of the eulogies. Social and political implications, together with considerations of historical context, will be addressed more fully as part of a book-length study on Angloimperial relations which I am currendy revising.ManuscriptsOf the three eulogies, only the poem beginning Anglica regina' survives in two witnesses (Prague, Knihovna Metropolitni Kapituly (hereinafter PKMK) MS H.i 5, fol. 9or; and PKMK MS D. 12, fol. 2.17^sup r-v^), with the other two poems ('Femina famosa' and 4NoHs natura florem')7 extant in a single copy (PKMK MS H.i 5, fols 9o^sup v^ and 9o^sup v^- 92^sup r^, respectively). The poems in both manuscripts are copied in Bohemian hands - the D.i 2 poem in a competent book hand, the H. …

<i>A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare</i> (review)

Reviewed by: A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare John M. Bowers A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare. By Alfred Thomas. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv + 239, frontispiece and 15 figures. $45. Alfred Thomas began putting Bohemia back on the map for English literary historians with his previous book Anne's Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310–1420 (1998). The kingdom had begun disappearing from the political as well as the mental map of Europe in 1620 with the loss of the Protestant army at the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague, and its position further eroded during the course of the Thirty Years' War. After its nineteenth-century status as a "colonized country," the Czechoslovak Republic emerged in 1918 under the Treaty of Versailles only to fall victim to Nazi occupation in the 1930s, and then to disappear again on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain for most of the remainder of the twentieth century. The Czech Republic's freedom from Soviet domination has liberated cultural historians, too, to envisage more clearly the nation's centrality in Europe, especially during the medieval and Renaissance periods covered by the book under review, when Bohemians and Englishmen tended to view each other's country as synonymous with the utopian ideals of the early Church. In the process of returning the kingdom to the heart of empire, not its fringes, Thomas focuses his discussion upon two fairly well-known but problematic literary connections between England and Bohemia. First, there is the question of Geoffrey Chaucer and Anne of Bohemia. In 1382 Richard II of England wedded the daughter of King Charles IV of Luxembourg, the Holy Roman Emperor who made Prague his residence and capital. The marriage alliance fueled King Richard's own imperial ambitions that survived Queen Anne's death in 1394 but contributed to his own over-reaching and deposition in 1399. She had arrived with a large entourage of Bohemians who brought with them to far-off, "marginal" England the high styles of the Continent, including ladies riding side-saddle and a passion for decorating with pearls, hence a proliferation of art and literature celebrating pearls, including the Middle English masterpiece Pearl (pp. 54–64). In terms of work already begun by Paul Strohm and David Wallace, Queen Anne emerges as a plausible "cultural mediatrix" channeling much of the refinement that would encourage artistic achievements like Wilton Diptych and literary masterpieces like Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. Scholars have long recognized Queen Anne as the model for Queen Alceste in Chaucer's later work The Legend of Good Women so that her inspiration, including some important ingredients of Italian humanism in her cultural baggage, can now be reckoned to run even deeper in the poetic brilliance of the age. [End Page 265] Though devoutly orthodox, Queen Anne's alleged practice of reading the Bible in the vernacular languages of German and Czech emboldened followers of the reform-minded theologian John Wyclif to argue in favor of English Biblical translations. The nexus of religious dissent, forged during the fourteenth century, extended into the next century when Oxford scholar Jerome of Prague copied several of Wyclif's works and took them back to Bohemia where they were avidly read by John Hus. During 1407–08, two Bohemian students arrived in England for the express purpose of contacting Lollard centers at Kemerton and Braybrooke in order to acquire more Wycliffite works to take home, with the result that some of the radical theologian's texts would survive only in Prague. Encouragement for Czech reform would continue from the notorious English Lollards Richard Wyche and Sir John Oldcastle, though King Sigismund would prove as ruthless at stamping out heresy as his English counterpart Henry V. Radical Hussites, such as the Taborites with their pacifism and the Adamites with their sexual primitivism, paved the way for the Bohemian Brethren of the sixteenth century with their belief in a strict separation of church and state reaching all the way to Protestant America. One of the gems of this volume is a close reading of the fifteenth-century Bohemian satire "The Wycliffite Woman...

Whose Body? Monuments Displaced from St Edward the Confessor's Chapel, Westminster Abbey

Documentary evidence reveals that, when in 1395 the Purbeck marble tomb with gilt cast copper-alloy effigies commemorating Richard II and his queen, Anne of Bohemia, was installed in St Edward the Confessor's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, another tomb was moved to make room for it. It has commonly been supposed that the displaced tomb was the Cosmatesque tomb chest now in the south ambulatory, which has traditionally been believed to house the bones of Katherine, daughter of Henry III, and up to eight other royal infants and older children of Henry III and Edward I. Examination of the evidence indicates that neither part of this view is correct. Three other tombs may have been moved from the Confessor's chapel; of these, the highstatus monument to William de Valence is the most likely candidate for the tomb displaced in 1395.

Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England (review)

Reviews 243 detailed but unfortunately not only are they presented as endnotes, but the notes pages lack running headers referring back to the text, meaning that finding and keeping one's place between the notes and the text isfrustratinglydifficult. Overall this book gives a detailed and sustained account of Elizabeth de Burgh's life and would be useful as a text for upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students of women's history, economic and legal history because of its detailed explanations and examples of legal, economic and social circumstances. DiHall University of Melbourne Warren, Nancy Bradley, Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England (The Middle Ages Series), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001; cloth; pp. xii, 276; R R P US$55.00; ISBN 0812235835. Medieval English nunneries, until recently neglected, are now attracting from medievalists of all scholarly hues. In her contribution to this resurgence ofinterest, Nancy Bradley Warren argues that late medieval women's religious houses were in every way an integral part of society, 'enmeshed in material, symbolic, textual, political, and spiritual economies'. Consequently she uses varied source-materials, many of them unfamiliar, in thefirstpart of the book, 'Monastic Identities in Theory and Practice'. Her analysis of liturgical texts shows the different ways in which Benedictine, Franciscan and Brigittine profession ceremonies present the nun as bride of Christ. Her examination of regulatory texts argues that the various Middle English translations made for nuns of the Rule of St Benedict (originally written for men in Latin) and the contrast with the Brigittine mle (originally dictated to St Bridget in her vernacular, then translated into Latin, from which i t passed into English, but always aimed primarily at women) shaped nuns' identities. Accounts and legal documents illustrate the relative financial independence of Brigittine and Franciscan nuns in particular and the extent of their business dealings (sometimes abrasive) with the local community, while even conventual seals help present the nunneries' self-fashionings of maternal authority. In the second part, 'Beyond the Convent Wall: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval Culture', however, the book's focus becomes less tight This 244 Reviews section is more concerned with nuns as image or metaphor - or, as Warren puts it, the 'symbolic capital available from female monasticism and holy women'. Although she rightly stresses the 'permeability' of convent walls, one has to point out that to slide from nuns to 'holy women' is not really playing by the rules. If nuns had a particular identity (as Part 1 illustrates) this cannot be silently transferred to other women, however holy. But this elision enables Warren to consider at length Margery Kempe, who had 'many profitable interactions with w o m e n religious', particularly Brigittines and Franciscans, and was much influenced by the former and their foundress, and, more briefly, three noblewomen who had links with Syon. This 'symbolic capital' was open to exploitation by men, too, in various ways, and Warren reads the devotional treatise Book to a Mother in this light. She also has a suggestive and original chapter on the political uses made of 'holy women', both alive and dead, by powerful men. But once again one has to demur that the York recluse E m m a Rawghton and Bridget of Sweden, let alone Richard II's queen, Anne of Bohemia, or St Anne herself, are not nuns. A further shift occurs in the next chapter, on 'holy women and the literary economy'. This discusses Lydgate's Life of Our Lady and Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen, both texts that 'mobilize female saints in connection with political concerns'. So Warren's attention has now shifted from 'holy women' to 'female saints' (the Virgin Mary in particular), with the nuns coming a poor third. Lydgate's poem may well be a neglected text, but this book does not seem to be the obvious place to rectify that. Bokenham's less neglected poems have female patrons and dedicatees as well as subjects, but none of them are nuns. Finally, and most surprisingly, w e conclude with none other than Joan of Arc, one of 'theflip-sidesof the symbolic coin of female spirituality'. She had defied the authority of the Church on earth...

Anne's Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310-1420 by Alfred Thomas (review)

REVIEWS127 and on to the fabrication, around the figure of Oldcastle, of an extensive, selfserving polemic linking heresy, treason, and counterfeiting as coordinate parts ofa plot to subvert Church and Crown (Chapter Five). Of particular note is Strohm's somewhat revisionist assessment of the activity and threat ofLollardy, which he sees as largely constructed by the Lancastrian Church and State for their political convenience. He argues persuasively (45-53), for example, that the institutional Church used the notoriously difficult Eucharistie doctrine of transsubstantiation to entrap those perceived as threats to civil and ecclesiastical authority, irrespective of their actual views on the sacrament. I suspect that this approach will generate a widespread reconsideration ofdocuments ofall kinds dealing with late medieval religious nonconformity—an outcome that Strohm, whose own arguments are scrupulously provisional, is sure to welcome. ROBERT W. MANNING Columbia University Alfred Thomas, Anne's Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310-1420, foreword by David Wallace. Medieval Cultures, 13. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Pp. xix, 193. isbn: 0-8166-3053-4. $49.95 (cloth), isbn: 0-8166-30542 . $19.95 (paper). Though the events ofher life have yet to be reliably documented, Anne of Bohemia's associations with Geoffrey Chaucer, public mediations between Richard and his subjects, and ownership of a trilingual Bible, make her one of the most frequently mentioned of medieval queens. But those who open this volume expecting details ofAnne's early life at the brilliant court ofher father Charles IV will be disappointed. Her marriage indeed transferred to England some of the Bohemian court's international sheen, but Thomas says nothing ofher role in that process; only David Wallace's foreword suggests (xii) that Chaucer 'learned as much about Petrarch from Bohemians in Westminster as... from Italians in Genoa, Florence, and Milan.' That said, it must be emphasized that this book is ofconsiderable merit. It exposes to English-speaking readers the sophistication and richness of Czech vernacular culture at a time when the Bohemian court was among the most cosmopolitan in Europe. As Wallace makes clear, the book's persistent undercurrent is the Hussite heretical movement, which took much impetus from John Wycliffe's writings. Thomas does not merely document obvious links; rather, he seeks the traditions oftextual culture that preceded, transmitted and surrounded the Hussite movement within Bohemia. Hand in hand with this emphasis goes attention to the slow but massively influential shift in both kingdoms from Latin to the vernacular as the language of orthodox and heterodox belief (xiii). Thomas's first chapter after the introduction is a prologue, in which he helpfully discusses Old Church Slavonic, Latin and Czech literary production in Bohemia before 1310. Each chapter then focuses primarily on a single work produced between 1310 and 1420. Thomas admirably observes parameters suggested in his introduction, 128ARTHURIANA and convincingly deals with an impressive variety of genres. Attention to gender and ethnicity is carefully but very naturally maintained and contributes greatly to the generally satisfying tone of Thomas's discussion. Some background material may, however, strike the reader as unproblematized—e.g, the reasons for the Church's 'new openness' to women in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (34). Of the later chapters, ? Literature ofTheir Own' examines writings for and by Bohemian women; such literary creation tended to parallel the realm's political fortunes, and flourished particularly in Charles IVs reign, when charismatic piety and patronage afforded women ample scope for literary activity. 'The War of the Bohemian Maidens' analyzes a legendary account of the realm's foundation and its permutations at the hands ofmale writers who made the maidens symbols ofwomen's loquacity, a change Thomas relates to women's resort to the vernacular. 'Alien Bodies' employs a close reading of an obscene poem, 'The Ointment Seller,' to establish Czech writers' use of body imagery to construct and exclude the otherness of Jews, women and Germans. The LegendofSaintProcopius, studied in ? Bohemian Imitano Christi,' alludes to Charles IVs restoration ofthe Slavonic liturgy. The complex late medieval image ofwoman as virgin, mother and teacher emerges from 'The Radiant Rose,' an analysis of the Life ofSaint Catherine, possibly written for Queen Anne's mother, Empress Anne of Schweidnitz. In 'Bohemian Knights,' Thomas turns to...

The De Anima of John Sharpe

THE DE ANIMA OF JOHN SHARPE We are fortunate that bibliographers in late-medieval England have left detailed records of works written in that country. Yet, if one searches for these works today, one discovers only a small fraction extant. Not many of them were printed, and many manuscripts containing them were lost through carelessness or wanton destruction. There is one writer, however, whose works have survived in some number: John Sharpe, whose writings have not yet been studied. Since there is such a scarcity of material available for studying the philosophy taught in late-medieval England, this study proposes to give an account of Sharpe's De Anima, perhaps his most interesting work, and probably the only extant De Anima written in England from the death of John Wycliffe (1384) until long after the Reformation. Life and Works Not a great deal is known of John Sharpe's life. He is not mentioned in the Dictionary of National Biography. Most of the information about him comes from Dr. Emden's A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500.1 Sharpe was of the diocese of Münster in Westphalia , and came from Hannonia, in present-day Belgium. He received his B. A. from the University of Prague in 1379.2 It is known that he was a fellow at Queen's College, Oxford, at least from 1391 to 1403, that he became a Master of Arts, and that he held various posts at the College, including that of provost. His admission to Queen's may well have been due to a recommendation by the College's patron, Anne of Bohemia, who was consort of King Richard II from 1382 to her death in 1394.3 John was ordained a secular priest in 1393 and admitted as a bachelor of theology in 1396—97. Though Dr. Emden does not mention that Sharpe obtained his doctorate in theology, there is evidence that he 1 (Oxford, 1957—59), III, 1680. 2 Monumenta Historiae Universitatis Carola-Ferdinandeae Pragensis, ed. Dittrich and Spirk (Prague, 1830—48), 1, 190—191. 1 am indebted to Dr. John M. Fletcher and Dr. Emden for this reference. 8 I am again indebted to Dr. Emden for this suggestion. 250LEONARD A. KENNEDY, C. S. B. did so. Two writers4 call him doctor, one of these being Thomas Gascoigne of Oxford, who was in a position to know about such a matter. Sharpe is also called a doctor of theology in two other manuscripts.5 The date of his death is not known. It would seem that in his day he was considered an important person. Thomas Gascoigne calls him doctor famosus* and a scribe refers to him as doctor eximius.1 Leland, Bale, Pits, and Tanner, the chief bibliographers of fifteenth-century England, all indicate that he established a reputation as a writer. His importance is also attested by the large number of extant manuscripts containing his works. None of his works has been printed. The certainly authentic ones include : (a)Questio de anima, in eight manuscripts.8 (b)Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, in seven manuscripts. ß (c)Questio super universalia, in four manuscripts.10 (d)Six anti-Wyclifite tractates in a Merton College manuscript at Oxford.11 The titles are : De orationibus sanctorum, De suffragiis viatorum, De pluralitate beneficiorum, De potestate sacerdotii, De adoratione imaginum , De peregrinationibus. G. F. Warner and J. G. Gilson think that the last two may be found in a revised version in another manuscript,12 but the initial words of these works in this manuscript are the same as those listed by Tanner among the works of the Franciscan William Woodford (d. c. 1399),13 and probably belong to Woodford. 4 Cambridge University Library, Ms. Ff. 3. 27, f. 45 ?; Balliol College, Oxford, Ms. 192, f. 2 v. 6 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Rawl. C. 677; Vatican Library, Codices Reginenses Latini, codex 392, f. 99 v. ß R. A. B. Mynors, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College, Oxford (Oxford, 1963), p. 193. 7 Vatican Library, Codices Reginenses Latini, codex 392, f. 99V. 8 Balliol College, Oxford, Ms. 93; Merton College, Oxford, Ms. CI. 13; All Souls College, Oxford, Ms...

"LE SONGE VERT": ITS OCCASION OF WRITING AND ITS AUTHOR

"Le Songe Vert" is a dream vision poem extant in two manuscripts – one in France and one in the Spalding MS that belonged to Henry Despenser, the crusading bishop of Norwich. In its focus on a grieving lover who must learn to love again, "Le Songe Vert" has some similarities with Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess." Seaton argues that it was likely written for Richard II, after his wife Anne of Bohemia died in 1394. It may have been written by Froissart, who arrived in England in 1395, but Seaton feels that Gower is a slightly more probable candidate for authorship. Seaton suggests that Gower, as "a poet of talent rather than of genius" (9), was likely to recycle poetic material, and so she lists a number of passages in Gower's known works that mirror (or invert) "Le Songe Vert." Seaton also feels that Gower's easy and graceful octosyllabic couplet perfected in the CA is stylistically similar to the French poem: "the light swift turn of dialogue, the unaffected handling of situations without overemphasis, these are common to both poems" (12). The fact that the poem survives in so few MSS is likely due to Gower's later change in allegiance from Richard II to Henry IV. [CvD]

III. Observations on the Heraldic Devices discovered on the Effigies of Richard the Second and his Queen in Westminster Abbey, and upon the Mode in which those Ornaments were executed; including some Remarks on the surname Plantagenet, and on the Ostrich Feathers of the Prince of Wales. By John Gough Nichols, Esq. F.S.A.

The volume of Monumental Effigies, drawn and engraved by Mr. Charles Alfred Stothard, F.S.A. the late draughtsman to the Society, is so generally known and so highly appreciated wherever known, that it is only necessary, in order to introduce the subject of the following remarks, to remind the reader that it was left imperfect, in consequence of the author's sudden death, from a lamentable accident which occurred in the pursuit of his congenial profession. It was a part of Mr. Stothard's plan to have included in his work a complete series of the effigies of the Kings and Queens of this country; and for that purpose he visited France, and brought from Fontevraud his drawings of the statues of Henry the Second and his Queen, of Richard the First, and of Isabella Queen of John; and from the Abbey of L'Espan, near le Mans, the effigy of Berengaria, Queen of Richard I., as well as the figure of Geoffrey, Comte of Anjou, from an enamelled Plate in the church of St. Julien at le Mans. There were others, however, and those by no means inferior to any in beauty or interest, which had been left, perhaps from the very reason of their being within immediate reach, until some convenient opportunity, which was frustrated by the premature close of the artist's career. I allude particularly to those of Queen Philippa, King Richard the Second, and his Queen Anne of Bohemia, all in Westminster Abbey.