Queens, Regents, Mistresses

When the editors of this series asked me to write a collection of essays centered around a common theme, I jumped at the chance. Like the novel in literature, the argument-driven monograph is the gold standard in scholarly studies. A carefully structured monograph whose parts converge in a climactic thesis is, like the well-constructed novel, a thing of beauty. But, like a collection of short stories, a set of essays offers its own pleasures. Free from the tyranny of the thesis, essays let ideas accumulate and retain points that would have been pruned as irrelevant in a monograph. As Adorno put it, “In the essay, concepts do not build a continuum of operations, thought does not advance in a single direction, rather the aspects of the argument interweave as in a carpet. The fruitfulness of the thoughts depends on the density of this texture.”¹

In this collection of essays, I have sought “density of texture,” that is, reiterations of, or variations on, an overarching argument that I would characterize as follows: when readers open a work of history, they have the right to assume that what they find on the pages is “historically true,” in other words, that it accords with primary sources.² And yet, scholars studying women of the medieval and early modern periods know all too well how often unprovable or even false anecdotes, frequently scandalous or misogynistic, pass for true in such works. In the following essays, in which I reflect on representations of elite women in narrative primary sources—as opposed to documents like accounts, marriage agreements, or wills, which carry their own interpretive problems—I take this issue of unprovable or false anecdotes as a point of departure, adding that readers also have the right to assume that the secondary sources they find cited in a work of history have been vetted by the author. This means that the author has consulted and verified the primary sources on which the secondary sources rely, or, at least, provided the bibliographical information readers need to trace the secondary source footnotes back to the primary sources for themselves.

Not that the relationship between primary sources and what really happened is self-evident. On the contrary. Primary sources require critical interpretation. Although nineteenth- and early twentieth century chartistes like Antoine Le Roux de Lincy, Auguste Vallet de Viriville, Alfred Coville, and Marcel Thibault produced indispensable studies minutely documented with primary sources, they tended to read their sources as straightforward transmitters of information. Chroniclers, however, greatly reduced the complexities of female activity; also, often associated with the Church and lacking direct access to the women whose stories they told, they frequently viewed their female characters unsympathetically, deploying anecdotes about them to make a moral point rather convey a disinterested truth. Earlier historians were generally not attentive to such gaps, and the effects of their readings have lingered. Scholars of course have been aware of such issues for decades and most exercise caution when dealing with nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century histories. But historians who are not specialists in women of the Middle Ages and early modern period, along with general audiences interested in women’s history, are often not familiar with the primary sources, with what they actually say, and how they have been interpreted.

Another problem is that, compared to the sources for later periods, sources for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are meager, often leaving historians to rely on the testimony of one or two possibly biased or misinformed chroniclers for details. In addition, the primary sources, by focusing significantly more attention on men than women, create the impression that powerful, active women were anomalies, which has encouraged historians to treat them as exceptions. Although recent scholars have shown how intimately women of the period were involved in social and political life at every level, revisionist histories often seem to have little impact on subsequent studies. For example, a collection that aims to demonstrate how unexceptional politically active medieval women were opens by lamenting that attitudes toward such women have remained so static:

Why, after three decades of historical advocacy, of producing and teaching excellent books and articles bringing to light of dozens of women whose political behavior fails to fit modern assumptions of medieval women’s experience, were we still hearing papers describing powerful women in positions of authority as exceptions to the norm. And not only a “norm” but a norm that presumes that a medieval elite woman was a cipher on the arm of her husband, whose only influence came through whispers in male ears and who, should widowhood [have] allowed her a small measure of influence, was merely a placeholder for her male children.³

Primary sources do not necessarily lead to historical truth, then. Using them to reconstruct the lives of elite women of medieval and early modern France is more an art than a science and requires a good deal of educated guesswork. But they are all we have. In each of the following essays, I reflect on how we use primary sources, seeking to surface the assumptions that guided representations of women and revising modern historical retellings of their stories where necessary. My readings of sources are guided by the following premises. First, I assume that most woman of the past, like most women today, were neither saints nor monsters, neither brilliant nor dolts, but imperfect people trying to do their job as effectively as possible. Although earlier historians qualified elite women as greedy, ambitious, flighty, divisive, or any number of unflattering adjectives, typically because they were citing primary sources, I refrain from such judgments because the elite often occupied a world distinct from that of contemporaries writing about them, a world ruled by different mandates. Because the judgments that made sense in one world did not necessarily pertain to another I try to make the documents speak without recourse to the moralizing vocabulary one often finds in the primary sources. Second, I do not assume that the inability to accomplish goals signals incompetence. Some of the women whose stories I discuss exercised power quite successfully: the Duchess of Étampes, Diane de Poitiers, Marguerite of Navarre, Louise of Savoy. But many women were confronted with obstacles that no one could have overcome: Philip IV’s Burgundian daughters-in-law, Isabeau of Bavaria, Valentina Visconti, Eleanor of Austria, Anne Boleyn. I agree that women of the period were active in ways often not appreciated by earlier historians, but they were nonetheless hindered by structural barriers. In light of the political realities of the past few decades, historians today are more alert than their nineteenth-century counterparts to obstacles like intractable polarization, rigged judicial systems, and the lack of enforcement mechanisms that kept women from achieving goals. I emphasize these obstacles in the following essays. My point is not to apologize for failures to realize goals but to understand.

In chapter 1, “The Affaire de la Tour de Nesle in Contemporary Chronicles: History or Persecution Texts?” I examine chronicle accounts of the 1314 arrest and imprisonment for adultery of the Burgundian daughters-in-law of Philip IV of France and the horrifying execution of their supposed lovers. Until recently, the chronicle accounts have almost always been taken at face value. I argue for approaching the accounts as what René Girard has called “persecution texts,” that is, narrative accounts that, written from the perspective of the persecutor, mask collective violence. A critical examination of the Grandes Chroniques de France, “official” history of the realm, and the more “popular” Chronique métrique, shows that these texts obscure the violent victimization of the princesses and suggests that these women served as scapegoats for a community torn by strife.

Chapter 2, “Isabeau of Bavaria and Christine de Pizan: Creating Political Authority,” is the first of three case studies that I devote to this once-vilified queen. In this essay, I add detail to a rehabilitation that is already well underway. Regarded by historians following the French Revolution as a monster and, more recently, as a slightly dim and frivolous spendthrift, Isabeau can more accurately be understood, I argue, as a woman tasked by her intermittently insane husband with the impossible job of managing a feud between implacable and well-armed rivals who had no incentive to heed her. I argue that the ordinances authorizing, first, Isabeau’s mediation and, later, regency represent a work in progress and cannot be read as evidence of authority that could be translated into practice. The early historians who focused on the royal ordinances failed to take Isabeau’s lack of enforcement power into account.

In “Misogynistic Throwaways: The Case of Isabeau of Bavaria,” chapter 3, I consider the lingering presence of misogynistic tropes in recent scholarship where the woman in question is not the star of the study. Such tropes typically derive from secondary sources that themselves rely on secondary sources, in mutually reinforcing feedback loops reaching back to the nineteenth century. Focusing on a number of very recent subplots that recycle verifiably incorrect assumptions about Isabeau of Bavaria, the essay makes a plea for turning to the primary sources even when the woman in question plays a small role, or, at the very least, when the secondary sources consulted offer misogynistic tropes in place of documentation. The heart of the essay is a detailed examination of Froissart’s account of Isabeau’s entry into Paris and coronation, which has mistakenly been read as evidence that Isabeau never mastered the French language.

In chapter 4, “Caught in the Middle: Valentina Visconti and Accusations of Witchcraft,” I turn my focus from Isabeau to her sister-in-law, Valentina Visconti, and primary source accounts of Valentina’s exile from the royal court under accusations of causing the king’s insanity through witchcraft. Valentina is an example of a woman undone by a set of obstacles no one could have overcome. Forced to serve as the scapegoat for the strife caused by the power struggles among mad King Charles VI’s male relatives, Valentina was originally relatively secure because her father, Giangaleazzo Visconti, was an important ally of the French. When the king’s favor turned to the queen’s branch of the Visconti family, Valentina was made to pay the price. Accusations of witchcraft intensified thanks to the new political orientation, and a woman who could have flourished under different circumstances was driven from court.

“Revisiting Isabeau of Bavaria’s Jewels,” chapter 5, argues that the queen’s unjustified reputation as debauched and avaricious has distorted her status as patron in fourteenth and early fifteenth-century Paris. Whereas the princes of the blood have been hailed by historians as patrons of the arts and political actors exchanging jewels and decorations in gift-giving rituals that created and solidified alliances, Isabeau’s commissioning of gold objects has been dismissed as self-indulgent extravagance. Jan Hirschbiegel’s study of étrennes, New Year’s gifts, at the Valois court, reveals Isabeau as one of a small party who exchanged valuable jewelry and elaborate figures as a way of exercising political influence. The queen’s supposed avarice requires a new look in this context. I propose that Isabeau be included along with the princes of the blood as a patron exercising authority through gift-giving.

The sixth chapter, “Agnès Sorel and Antoinette de Maignelais: A Star and a Footnote,” examines how differently these cousins, both favorites of Charles VII, have been incorporated into the tradition of the French mistress, even though contemporary chroniclers were not flattering to either. But today Agnès Sorel is a star, a fixture in popular culture who enjoys a widespread social media presence, her iconic image as the Melun Virgin adorning internet fan sites, instagram, pinterest, tumblr, and facebook. By comparison, Antoinette de Maignelais, her cousin and successor in the role, is little known, and, where she is known, her reputation as transactional and promiscuous has stuck. Contemporary primary sources suggest that in terms of political clout Antoinette’s role more closely resembled those of the later great royal mistresses, like the Duchesses of Étampes and Valentinois and Mesdames de Montespan and Pompadour. Agnès, in contrast, became the ideal against which these women were measured and found too greedy and ambitious.

In “Unpacking Brantôme’s Particularitez,” chapter 7, I examine some of the observations and anecdotes passed down through the generations by the memoirist of the late Valois and early Bourbon courts, Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme. Brantôme’s accessibility as a narrator has encouraged readers over the centuries to take his gossip for unmediated glimpses of court life, even though many of his subjects lived over a century before his birth. This essay examines some figures whose modern reputations have been powerfully influenced by Brantôme. The purpose of the essay, however, is not to deny his historical value but to suggest ways of reinterpreting his anecdotes. Applying recent theories of female power to the anecdotes, we see that much of what Brantôme writes about women simply casts in negative terms qualities that can be “re-processed” through recent feminist models of power. Recast, some of the anecdotes begin to look more positive.

Chapter 8, “‘Issuing from the great flame of this joy’: Louise of Savoy, Marguerite of Navarre and Emotional Intimacy,” seeks to extract information about the personal interaction between King François I’s mother and sister from a variety of sources. Numerous documents verify that contemporaries regarded Louise and Marguerite as strategic and formidable politicians. And yet, the women adopt fearful personae in their own writings. These personae are worthy of scrutiny, I suggest, representing distinct, deliberate, and emotionally necessary performative poses. In contrast with the forceful personae that gave mother and daughter the courage to advocate, their fearful personae gave them a means of sharing the anxieties that might otherwise have overwhelmed them.

The relationship between Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess of Étampes, mistress of François I, and Diane de Poitiers, Duchess of Valentinois, mistress of François I’s son who would reign as Henri II, is the subject of chapter 9, “Catfight or Political Rivalry? The Duchess of Étampes and Diane de Poitiers.” The two women have often been characterized as jealous vixens and blamed for factionalism at the court of Francois I. Even recent historians continue to construct the relationship as motivated by personal jealousy. And yet, it is preposterous to attribute conflicts arising from major political and religious rifts to female envy. After showing how the jealous vixen trope developed, I turn to contemporary accounts to suggest that far from creating the factionalism, Anne and Diane’s relationship was a function of the factions into which they were drawn by virtue of their attachment to the king and the dauphin, and, in Anne’s case, Marguerite of Navarre.

Chapter 10, “Eleanor of Austria: The Foreign Queen,” argues that Eleanor’s career represents the epitome of the French version of queenship, despite the common perception that her reign was of little interest. Tasked with guaranteeing peace between her brother Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and her husband François I of France, Eleanor undoubtedly had a thankless and impossible job. Reconciling implacable enemies proved impossible, and, as proxy for the emperor, she was sidelined by the Duchess of Étampes, the French king’s long-term French mistress. And yet, the primary sources treat Eleanor like other Valois queens, showing her involved in mediation. Still, the primary sources also suggest that, beginning with her reign, the French queen was strongly identified with foreignness while the royal mistress, who was always French, became the king’s most trusted advisor.