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Pirate, Traitor, Wife: Jeanne of Belleville and the Categories of Fourteenth-Century French Noblewomen

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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

Pirate, traitor, military ally. None of these labels are usually applied to fourteenth-century noblewomen, and yet Jeanne of Belleville earned them all, along with wife, mother, and widow. Even her activities within these traditional roles, however, defy simplistic definition: she successfully sued her husband and remained happily wed; she saw her eldest two children ally with her enemies; and she refused to retire as an elderly widow, preferring to literally carry on the fight she had taken up decades before. Jeanne’s life demonstrates that the traditional labels are not self-explanatory and limit our understanding of noblewomen’s experiences. Taking up Joan Scott’s second, mostly neglected, call-to-arms: how did (fourteenth-century French) society shape what it meant to be a (noble) woman?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The majority of this account is taken from Auguste Molinier and Emile Molinier, eds., Chronique normande du XIVe siècle, Publications de la Société de l’histoire de France (Paris: Renouard/Henri Loones, 1882), 60–61 and Henri Moranvillé, ed., Chronographia Regum Francorum. Tome Deuxième, 1328–1380, Publications de La Société de l’histoire de France (Paris: Renouard/H. Laurens, 1893), 205–206. Later legend added the part about her two young sons: Émile Péhant, Jeanne de Belleville, vol. II (Paris: Auguste Aubry, 1868). There is no medieval evidence to corroborate the story that she sold off all her jewels and lands to finance the purchase of three ships. If she had, she would no longer have a claim on the lands later, as she insisted and her contemporaries recognized for the rest of her life.

  2. 2.

    There is a growing body of scholarship on the military roles of medieval women: Megan McLaughlin, “The Woman Warrior: Gender, Warfare and Society in Medieval Europe,” Women’s Studies 17 (1990): 193–209; Jean A. Truax, “Anglo-Norman Women at War: Valiant Soldiers, Prudent Strategists or Charismatic Leaders?” in The Circle of War in the Middle Ages: Essays on Medieval Military and Naval History, ed. Donald J. Kagay and L. J. Andrew Villalon (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), 111–125; Sarah Lambert, “Crusading or Spinning,” in Gendering the Crusades, ed. Susan Edgington and Sarah Lambert (Columbia University Press, 2001), 1–15; Adrien Dubois, “Femmes dans la guerre (XIVe-XVe siècles): un rôle caché par les sources?,” Tabularia 4 (2004): 39–51; and Martin Aurell, “Les femmes guerrières (XIe et XIIe siècles),” in Famille, violence et christianisation au Moyen Age. Mélanges offerts à Michel Rouche, ed. Martin Aurell and Thomas Deswarte (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2005), 319–330.

  3. 3.

    Katrin Sjursen, “Weathering Thirteenth-Century Warfare: The Case of Blanche of Navarre,” The Haskins Society Journal 25 (November 2014): 205–222; Katrin Sjursen, “The War of the Two Jeannes and the Role of the Duchess in Lordship in the Fourteenth Century,” Medieval Feminist Forum 51:1 (2015): 4–40.

  4. 4.

    Although she has inspired popular novels in French, Jeanne of Belleville has not been the focus of any scholarly studies. References must be gleaned from studies about her husband’s family, the lords of Clisson, and her famous son, Olivier IV, constable of France. Arthur de La Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne (Rennes: H. Vatar, 1906); Auguste Lefranc, Olivier de Clisson, connétable de France (Paris: V. Retaux, 1898); Claude de Berthou, Clisson et ses monuments (Nantes: Imprimerie de la Loire, 1910); John Bell Henneman, Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France Under Charles V and Charles VI (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996); and Frédéric Morvan, “Les seigneurs de Clisson (XIII–XIVe siècle),” in Actes du congrès de Clisson de septembre 2003, vol. 82 (Rennes: Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Bretagne, 2004), 59–80.

  5. 5.

    In 2008, The American Historical Review published a roundtable assessing the impact of Joan Scott’s famous article (Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91:5 [December 1986]: 1053–1075.). Scott herself appreciated the attention that scholars have subsequently paid to how gender has shaped politics, as she put it, but renewed her call for studies on the reverse relationship, how politics have shaped gender. Joan W. Scott, “Unanswered Questions,” The American Historical Review 113:5 (December 1, 2008): 1422–1249.

  6. 6.

    Of course, this example also brings to mind how class and social status, not to mention race, might also affect definitions of “woman.”

  7. 7.

    These lands became the subject of two lawsuits; the first in the 1350s, when their daughter, Louise, attempted to prohibit the king from redistributing Jeanne’s lands following their confiscation after her 1343 treason conviction; and the second when Louise’s widower attempted to keep the lands from passing out of his hands: Arthur Bertrand de Broussillon, Paul de Farcy, and Eugène Vallée, La maison de Laval, 1020–1605; étude historique accompagnée du cartulaire de Laval et de Vitré, Tome II (Paris: A. Picard et fils, 1895), 252–253, #673; 258, #692; 259, #693; and 336–339, #905.

  8. 8.

    Henneman, Olivier de Clisson, 21, 227.

  9. 9.

    Henneman, 38. Frédéric Morvan detailed the process of the Clisson rise in prestige and wealth during this same period: Morvan, “Les seigneurs.”

  10. 10.

    Morvan notes that Olivier’s first marriage brought him within the royal circle, which enabled him to earn wages and annual rentes in return for serving alongside Philip VI: Morvan, “Les seigneurs,” 69–70.

  11. 11.

    Morvan, 70–71.

  12. 12.

    Morvan, 71, Footnote 29 in Chapter 2. By the early fifteenth century, Brittany boasted three counts, nine great barons, eighteen bannerets, and 4700 lesser nobles, suggesting Olivier and Jeanne were among the very top seigneurial couples in the fourteenth century: Michael Jones, “The Breton Nobility and Their Masters from the Civil War of 1341–1364 to the Late Fifteenth Century,” in The Crown and Local Communities in England and France in the Fifteenth Century, ed. J. R. L. Highfield and Robin Jeffs (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1981), 222. Similarly, by the fifteenth century, Châteaubriant, the lordship held by Jeanne’s first husband and children, was one of those nine great baronies.

  13. 13.

    Theresa Earenfight, The King’s Other Body: Maria of Castile and the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); 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.

  14. 14.

    Anneke Mulder-Bakker, “Jeanne of Valois: The Power of a Consort,” in Capetian Women, ed. Kathleen Nolan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 253–269. For a similar division of political and military duties, see Sjursen, “The War of the Two Jeannes.”

  15. 15.

    Archives historiques du Poitou (Poitiers: Imprimerie Oudin, 1881), 11:429; Registres 1818.

  16. 16.

    Henri Furgeot, ed., Actes du Parlementde Paris. Deuxième série: de l’an 1328 à l’an 1350. Jugés. Tome I: 1328–1342, 2 (Paris: Impr. nationale, 1920), 161, #1624; 164, #1663; 167, #1690; 204, #2125, 364, #3625 and #3626.

  17. 17.

    Furgeot, 196, #2033 (May 10, 1337); 260, #2658 (June 12, 1339).

  18. 18.

    Furgeot, 292, #2963.

  19. 19.

    Dom Pierre-Hyacinthe Morice, Mémoires pour servir de preuves à l’Histoire ecclésiastique et civile de Bretagne. Tome I (Paris: Charles Osmont, 1742), cols. 1380–1381.

  20. 20.

    Lefranc, Olivier de Clisson, 26; Prosper Jean Levot, Biographie bretonne (Vannes: Cauderan, 1852), 1:360.

  21. 21.

    Archives historiques du Poitou (Poitiers: Imprimerie Oudin, 1883), 13:108–112, #241.

  22. 22.

    “le dit chevalier, par son serement donné par devant nous seur ce, nous respondre si ces choses estoient vraies. Li quel respondi et recorda par son serement que les dites convenances et donoisons estoient vraies et qui les vouloit tenir et acomplir en bonne foy, et par ce que communion a acoustumé engendrer dissension et brigue, le dit chevalier bailla, livra et assigna dès maintenant la dite dame pour la dite tierce partie,” Archives historiques du Poitou, 13:110.

  23. 23.

    Guillaume Mollat, Études et documents sur l’histoire de Bretagne (XIIIe-XVIe siècles) (Paris: H. Champion, 1907), 49–50.

  24. 24.

    Guillaume Mollat, Jean XXII (1316–1334). Lettres communes analysées d’après les registres dits d’Avignon ou du Vatican, vol. 9–10 (Paris: A. Fontemoing, 1921), 298, #49440.

  25. 25.

    The scholarship on the Breton Civil War is extensive; for a good introduction see: Michael C. E Jones, “Nantes au début de la guerre civile en Bretagne,” in Villes, bonnes villes, cités et capitales: Etudes d’histoire urbaine (XIIe-XVIIIe siècle) offertes à Bernard Chevalier, ed. Monique Bourin (Caen: Paradigme, 1993), 105–120; Jean-Christophe Cassard, La Guerre de succession de Bretagne: dix-huit études (Spézet (Finistère): Coop Breizh, 2006); and Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (Philiadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); and Sjursen, “The War of the Two Jeannes.”

  26. 26.

    For more on Jeanne of Penthièvre’s participation in the civil war, see Erika Maëlan Graham-Goering, “Negotiating Princely Power in Late Medieval France: Jeanne de Penthièvre, Duchess of Brittany (c.1325–1384)” (PhD diss. University of York, 2016).

  27. 27.

    For more on the Clisson family at this time, see La Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne; de Berthou, Clisson et Ses Monuments.

  28. 28.

    Lefranc, Olivier de Clisson, 27.

  29. 29.

    The full text can be found in La Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne, 473–474.

  30. 30.

    Morice, Preuves, col. 1434.

  31. 31.

    For more on treason and lese majesty see S. H. Cuttler, The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Claude Gauvard, De grace especial: Crime, état et société en France à la fin du moyen âge (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991); and Jolanta Komornicka, “The Parlement of Paris and Crimes of Lese Majesty in France, 1328–1350” (Boston University, 2013).

  32. 32.

    Brigitte Labat-Poussin, Monique Langlois, and Yvonne Lanhers (eds.), Actes du ParlementdeParis: Parlementcriminel, règne de Philippe VI de Valois: inventaire analytique des registres X-2a 2 à 5 (Paris: Archives nationales, 1987), 177, #4097 G.

  33. 33.

    Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, 177, #4097 v B.

  34. 34.

    Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, 177, # 4097 v C.

  35. 35.

    Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, 183, #4103 v B; Cuttler, The Law of Treason, 147.

  36. 36.

    Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, Actes du Parlementde Paris, 187, #4107 v. D; 226, #4220.

  37. 37.

    Henneman, Olivier de Clisson, 26–27; Morvan, “Les seigneurs,” 75.

  38. 38.

    Lefranc, Olivier de Clisson, 26.

  39. 39.

    See Footnote 2 in Chapter 7.

  40. 40.

    Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, Actes du Parlementde Paris, 190, #4110 v. H.

  41. 41.

    Thomas Rymer, ed., Foedera, conventiones, literae, et cujuscunque generis acta publica, inter regs angliae, et alios quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates, 3 ed., 10 vols. (Hague, 1737) 2.4:153. That is certainly the interpretation offered by La Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne, 3:483.

  42. 42.

    Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, Actes du Parlementde Paris, 191, #4113 B.

  43. 43.

    Labat-Poussin, Langlois, and Lanhers, 191 #4113 v. A; Monique Langlois and Yvonne Lanhers (eds.), Confessions et jugements decriminels au Parlementde Paris: 1319–1350 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1971), 150–156; Raymond Cazelles, La société politique et la crise de la royauté sous Philippe de Valois (Paris: Libraire d’Argences, 1958), 147, 153–154 and Cuttler, The Law of Treason, 146–147.

  44. 44.

    Morice, Preuves col. 1452–1453.

  45. 45.

    Michael Jones, ed., Recueil des actes de Charles de Blois et Jeanne de Penthièvre, duc et duchesse de Bretagne (1341–1364); suivi des actes de Jeanne de Penthièvre (1364–1384) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires Rennes, 1996), 58–62, #8.

  46. 46.

    Rymer, Foedera, 3.1:20–22.

  47. 47.

    Philip VI named two women in the treaty: the Duchess of Lothrenne and her children and the Countess of Bar and her children.

  48. 48.

    For a discussion of Jeanne of Montfort’s actions during the Breton civil war, see Sjursen, “The War of the Two Jeannes.”

  49. 49.

    Gui Alexis Lobineau, Histoire de Bretagne (Paris, 1707) tome II, col. 491; Henneman, Olivier de Clisson, 27, Footnote 27 in Chapter 2.

  50. 50.

    Sumption, The Hundred Years War, 55 and Charles Goudé, Histoire de Chateaubriant. Baronnie, Ville & Paroisse (Rennes: Oberthur et fils, 1870), 33.

  51. 51.

    Bertrand de Broussillon, Farcy, and Vallée, La maison de Laval, 2:228.

  52. 52.

    Michael C. E. Jones, “Les capitaines anglo-bretons et les marches entre la Bretagne et le Poitou de 1342 à 1373,” in La “France Anglaise” au moyen age. Actes du 111 congres nationale des sociétés savantes (Poitiers, 1986), Section d’histoire médiévale et de philologie, ed. Robert-Henri Bautier (Paris, 1988), 1:363–364.

  53. 53.

    Lobineau, Histoire de Bretagne tome 2, col. 491.

  54. 54.

    Jones, “Les capitaines anglo-bretons,” 365–369 and Michael Jones, “Edward III’s Captains in Brittany,” in Between France and England: Politics, Power, and Society in Late Medieval Brittany (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 100.

  55. 55.

    Citing a document in the Public Records Office (PRO, C 81/339/20344), Jones, “Les capitaines anglo-bretons,” 366.

  56. 56.

    A transcript of the document appears in Jean le Bel, Chronique de Jean le Bel, ed. Jules Viard and Eugène Déprez (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1904), 354–356, app. XXXII.

  57. 57.

    Kenneth Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310–1361 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1969), 91.

  58. 58.

    Fowler, 91–92.

  59. 59.

    Lobineau, Histoire de Bretagne tome 2, col. 491.

  60. 60.

    Raoul died in captivity in 1343. Jones, “Les capitaines anglo-bretons,” 364–367.

  61. 61.

    Jones, 367; Henneman, Olivier de Clisson, 31.

  62. 62.

    Morice, Preuves, col. 1494–1495.

  63. 63.

    Michael Jones, ed., Recueil des actes de Jean IV, duc de Bretagne (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1980) tome I, #1.

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Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank Jolanta Komornicka for generously sharing her images of the Parlement of Paris’s documents relating to Jeanne.

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    Katrin E. Sjursen

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

    Heather J. Tanner

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Sjursen, K.E. (2019). Pirate, Traitor, Wife: Jeanne of Belleville and the Categories of Fourteenth-Century French Noblewomen. 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_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01346-2_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01345-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01346-2

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

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