Abstract
Maria de Luna was an unexpected queen, brought to the throne of the Crown of Aragon by the accidental death of her brother-in-law, Joan I the Hunter (1387–96), on 19 May 1396. Joan left no son to succeed him and, as a result, the Crown went to his younger brother, Marti. Maria, then Countess of Luna and Duchess of Montblanc, and who had been married to the infant Martí since 1372, became queen.
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Notes
Power here is understood as exercised in action, a “relation of force.” [Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Others Writings, 1912–11 (New York: Pantheon, 1980): pp. 89–90.]
Lois Huneycutt, “Intercession and the High-Medieval Queen: The Esther Topos,” in Power of the Weak, ed. J. Carpenter and S.B. MacLean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 126–46
Janet Nelson, “Medieval Queenship,” in Women in Medieval Western European Culture, ed. L. E. Mitchell (New York: Garland, 1999), p. 186
Mary Stroll, “Maria Regina: Papal Symbol,” in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne Duggan (Woodbridge, CT: Boydell, 2002), p. 173.
Authority can be understood as “constituted power,” sometimes derived from a title or position that involved a hierarchy of command. See Leonard Krieger, “The Idea of Authority in the West,” American Historical Review (1977): 250; and Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, “Introduction.” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 1–17.
See Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, The Problem of a Catalan Mediterranean Empire 1229–1321 (London: Longman, 1975)
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Earenfight, “Maria of Castile, Ruler or Figurehead? A Preliminary Study in Aragonese Queenship,” Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994): 45–61.
James M. Boyden, “Fortune Has Stripped You of Your Splendour”: Favourites and their Fates in Fifteenth-and Sixteenth-Century Spain,” in The World of the Favourite, ed. J. Elliott and L. Brockliss (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 27
Elizabeth Brown, “Eleanor of Aquitaine Reconsidered: The Woman and Her Seasons,” in Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady, ed. B. Wheeler and J. Parsons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 12–8
Ffiona Swabey, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love, and the Troubadours (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004): 46–53.
Bernard Reilly, The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109–1126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 51–4.
Miriam Shadis, “Berenguela of Castile’s Political Motherhood: The Management of Sexuality, Marriage and Succession,” in Medieval Mothering, ed. J.C. Parsons and B. Wheeler (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996), p. 336.
Ana Echevarría, Catalina de Lancaster, reina regente de Castilla (1372-1418) (Madrid: Nerea, 2002), pp. 93–118
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Reilly, The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla, pp. 51–4; Joseph O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976), pp. 213–5
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Peggy Liss, Isabel the Queen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)
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Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris: Guillemard, 1996), pp. 207–8.
Such was the fate of Maria de Sicilia and Blanca de Navarra in the fourteenth-century Kingdom of Sicily and of Juana the Mad in sixteenth-century Castile. [Maria R. Lo Forte, Cera una volta una regina (Naples: Liguori, 2003)
García, “La sucesión,” 12–3; Cristina Segura, “Derechos sucesorios al trono de las mujeres en la Corona de Aragón,” Mayurca 22 (1989): 591–9.
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Áurea Javierre, Mata dArmanyac, Duquesa de Gírona (Barcelona: Dalmau, 1957), pp. 20–2
Lalinde, “Virreyesy lugartenientes,” pp. 167–9; Jaunie Vicens Vives, “Los precedentes mediterráneos del virreinato colombino,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 5 (1948): 3.
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Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (London: Penguin, 1999), p. 80.
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Theresa Earenfight, “Political Culture and Political Discourse in the Letters of Queen María of Castilla,” La Coránica 32.1 (2003): 136
Dawn Bratsch-Prince, “Bringing Women into the Canon,” La Coránica 32.1 (2003): 8.
As Scott put it, “all unequal relationships [are] ‘political’ because they involve unequal distribution of power.” [Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988): pp. 25–7.]
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© 2008 Nuria Silleras-Fernandez
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Silleras-Fernandez, N. (2008). Introduction. In: Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230612969_1
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