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A Lifetime of Power: Beyond Binaries of Gender

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Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

Abstract

This chapter examines the power, agency, and influence of queens not as static or singular, but variable and not linked directly to gender norms. To better understand acts of power within the context of the royal family, court, and household, it utilizes a framework that challenges a commonly perceived binary of masculine power (independent, active, and coercive) and feminine influence (ancillary, passive, and persuasive). A close study of Catherine of Aragon’s (1485–1536) life reveals that she exercised power in different ways over the course of her lifetime: latent, dynastic, governmental, diplomatic, charismatic, and religious. Looking at the shifts in power across a queen’s life illustrates that while monarchy privileged male rule, it also had ample room for women to operate as vital components.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1977); idem, History of Sexuality, An Introduction, Vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978), quotation on 94.

  2. 2.

    Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 93.

  3. 3.

    Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 9:5 (1986): 1053–1075. Two influential essay collections shaped the field: Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (eds.), Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Mary-Beth Carpenter and Sally McLean (eds.), The Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). For feminist critiques of Foucault, see, for example, Lois McNay, Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2013); Margaret A. McLaren, Feminism, Foucault, and Embodied Subjectivity (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012); and Caroline Ramazanoglu, ed., Up Against Foucault: Explorations of Some Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism (London: Psychology Press, 1993).

  4. 4.

    For an important recent study of political theory that considers gender and monarchy, see Daisy Delogu, Allegorical Bodies: Power and Gender in Late Medieval France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015).

  5. 5.

    Early studies on queens tended to focus on restoring individual queens from centuries of neglect. See Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaineand the Four Kings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950); Eleanor Searle, “Women and the Legitimisation of Succession at the Norman Conquest,” Anglo-Norman Studies 3 (1980): 159–170; Suzanne F. Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500–900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983); Marion Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship: Capetian France, 987–1237,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (1968): 3–47; and Janet Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: The Careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 31–77. Three influential edited volumes configured the field of queenship studies as part of institutional history: L. O. Fradenburg, ed., Women and Sovereignty (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1991); John Carmi Parsons, ed., Medieval Queenship (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993); and Anne J. Duggan, ed., Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997).

  6. 6.

    On agency, see Lois McNay, Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2013).

  7. 7.

    Heather Tanner, “Queenship: Office, Custom, or Ad Hoc? The Case of Queen Matilda III,” in Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 133–158.

  8. 8.

    Theresa Earenfight, “Without the Persona of the Prince: Kings, Queens and the Idea of Monarchy in Late Medieval Europe,” Gender & History 19:1 (April 2007): 1–21.

  9. 9.

    The classic study of monarchy and rulership is Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). See also Cary J. Nederman and N. Elaine Lawson, “The Frivolities of Courtiers Follow the Footprints of Women: Public Women and the Crisis of Virility in John of Salisbury,” in Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Carole Levin and J. Watson (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 82–98.

  10. 10.

    Bernard Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla Under Queen Urraca, 1109–1126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Therese Martin, Queen as King: Politics and Architectural Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Miriam Shadis, Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Janna Bianchini, The Queen’s Hand: Power and Authority in the Reign of Berenguela of Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Peggy Liss, Isabel the Queen, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004; 1st ed., 1992); Elizabeth Lehfeldt, “Ruling Sexuality: The Political Legitimacy of Isabel of Castile,” Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 31–56; and Barbara Weissberger, Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004).

  11. 11.

    JoAnn McNamara and Suzanne F. Wemple, “The Power of Women Through the Family in Medieval Europe, 500–1100,” Feminist Studies 1 (1973): 126–141; JoAnn McNamara, “Women and Power Through the Family Revisited,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 17–30.

  12. 12.

    My reading of Foucault owes a debt to the work of three colleagues. Licia Carlson introduced me to Foucault’s articulations of power; Melissa Schade posed provocative and important questions about power and resistance; and Natalie Cisneros fine-tuned my reading of later works by Foucault.

  13. 13.

    The standard biography of Catherine by Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon (Boston: Little, Brown, 1941) is dated, but reliable. Giles Tremlett updates this work slightly with reference to Spanish sources in Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen (London: Faber & Faber, 2010). For recent work on Catherine, see Michelle Beer, “Practices and Performances of Queenship: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503–1533,” (PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014); Theresa Earenfight, “A Precarious Household: Catherine of Aragon, 1501–1504,” in Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More Than Just a Castle, ed. Theresa Earenfight (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 338–356; idem, “Raising Infanta Catalina de Aragón To Be Catherine, Queen of England,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 46:1 (2016): 417–443; idem, “Regarding Catherine of Aragon,” in Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens, ed. Carole Levin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 137–157; Timothy Elston, “Widow Princess or Neglected Queen? Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII, and English Public Opinion, 1533–1536,” in Queens & Power in Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 16–30; idem, “Transformation or Continuity? Sixteenth-Century Education and the Legacy of Catherine of Aragon, Mary I, and Juan Luis Vives,” in “High and Mighty Queens” of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 11–26; and idem, “Almost the Perfect Woman: Public and Private Expectations of Catherine of Aragon, 1501–1536,” (PhD dissertation, University of Nebraska, 2004).

  14. 14.

    The terms “soft” and “hard” power were articulated by Joseph S. Nye, an expert in modern international politics, in “Soft Power,” Foreign Policy 80 (1990): 153–171.

  15. 15.

    Studies of the king’s favorites bear out this assertion. See Lisa Benz, “Conspiracy and Alienation: Queen Margaret of France and Piers Gaveston, the King’s Favorite,” in Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060–1600, ed. Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 119–141.

  16. 16.

    Earenfight, “Raising Infanta Catalina de Aragón,” 417–443.

  17. 17.

    Liss, Isabel the Queen, 233–234.

  18. 18.

    This shared monarchy is symbolized by Isabel and Fernando’s famous motto—“tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernando,” meaning “as much Isabel as Fernando.” Theresa Earenfight, “Two Bodies, One Spirit: Isabel and Fernando’s Construction of Monarchical Partnership,” in Queen Isabel I of Castile: Power, Patronage, Persona, ed. Barbara Weissberger (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), 3–18.

  19. 19.

    J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 37–40 and Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 125–146.

  20. 20.

    “Venice: January 1513,” in Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 2, 1509–1519, ed. Rawdon Brown (London, 1867), 2:86–88.

  21. 21.

    Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The Holinshed Project: The Texts, accessed September 5, 2015, www.english.ox.ac.uk/Holinshed/texts.php, 1479.

  22. 22.

    Patricia Hill Buchanan, Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), 68; George Goodwin, Fatal Rivalry: Flodden 1513, Henry VIII, James IV, and the Battle for Renaissance Britain (New York: Norton, 2013).

  23. 23.

    Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 137–145.

  24. 24.

    “The Chronicle of the Grey Friars: Henry VIII,” in Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, Camden Society Old Series, ed. J. G. Nichols (London, 1852), 53:29–53, accessed September 8, 2015, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/camden-record-soc/vol53/pp29-53. For a military history of the Battle of Flodden, see George Goodwin, Fatal Rivalry: Flodden1513, Henry VIII, James IV, and the Battle for Renaissance Britain (New York: Norton, 2013). For Margaret Tudor, see Maria Perry, The Sisters of Henry VIII: The Tumultuous Lives of Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1998).

  25. 25.

    She diplomatically held back from sending the dead king’s corpse: “My husband, for hastiness, with Rougecross I could not send your Grace the piece of the King of Scots coat which John Glynn now brings. In this your Grace shall see how I keep my promise, sending you for your banners a king’s coat. I thought to send himself unto you, but our Englishmens’ hearts would not suffer it. It should have been better for him to have been in peace than have this reward.” London, British Library, Vesp. F. III., 15 in Henry Ellis, ed., Original Letters Illustrative of English History, 4 vols. (London: Bentley, 1846), 1:88.

  26. 26.

    Ellis, Original Letters, 1:89.

  27. 27.

    Buchanan, Margaret Tudor, 83.

  28. 28.

    Scarsibrick, Henry VIII, 37–40 and Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 154–159.

  29. 29.

    Edward Hall, Hall’s Chronicle (New York: AMS Press, 1965), 545–548, 555–564, esp. 564.

  30. 30.

    Kavita Mudan Finn, The Last Plantagenet Consorts (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

  31. 31.

    Holinshed, Chronicles, 1493–1494.

  32. 32.

    Calendar of State Papers, Milan I (1385–1618), ed. Allen B. Hinds (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912), 396.

  33. 33.

    Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, Opus Epistolarum Petri Martyris Anglerii, cited in Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Vol. 2, 1509–1525, ed. G. A. Bergenroth (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1866), no. 2299.

  34. 34.

    Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 159–186.

  35. 35.

    Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 67.

  36. 36.

    “There is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case: resistances that are possible, necessary, and improbable; others that are spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant, or violent.” Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1: 95–96.

  37. 37.

    Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1:95.

  38. 38.

    Henry Ansgar Kelly, The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976).

  39. 39.

    Calendar of State Papers, Spain, 1534–5, ed. Pascual de Gayangos (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1886), 5.1, no. 142.

  40. 40.

    Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); idem, Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140–1200 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

  41. 41.

    Steven Gunn, Charles Brandon, ca. 1484–1545 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 95–96, 118, 130, 132–133, 142, 154, 156, 158, 199.

  42. 42.

    Gunn, Charles Brandon, 157–158.

  43. 43.

    Gwen Seaborne, Imprisoning Medieval Women: The Non-judicial Confinement and Abduction of Women in England, c. 1170–1509 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013); Annette P. Parks, “Rescuing the Maidens from the Tower: Recovering the Stories of Two Female Political Hostages,” in Feud, Violence and Practice: Essays in Medieval Studies in Honor of Stephen B. White, ed. Belle Tuten and Tracey Billado (London: Routledge, 2010), 279–292.

  44. 44.

    Eileen Kim, “Eleanor of Brittany in Confinement: Problematizing Paradigms for Noble Prisoners,” in Royal and Elite Households, ed. Earenfight, 115–141.

  45. 45.

    Marie Kelleher, “What Do We Mean by ‘Women and Power’?” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 51:2 (2015): 104–115.

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  1. Seattle University, Seattle, WA, USA

    Theresa Earenfight

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  1. Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Heather J. Tanner

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Earenfight, T. (2019). A Lifetime of Power: Beyond Binaries of Gender. In: Tanner, H.J. (eds) Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01346-2_13

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