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steph | semi-hiatus costume dramas, history, and sometimes cats

[city-of-ladies]

The first queen of the Capetian dynasty, Adelaide of Aquitaine (c. 945/950–1006) set an important precedent through her patronage of the Church and her diplomatic activities.

A queen’s duty

Adelaide was the daughter of William III, Duke of Aquitaine. In 970, she married Hugh Capet, who was not yet King of the Franks. Adelaide was five to ten years younger than her husband. The marriage was a strategic union that helped secure peace between their two rival houses. When Hugh became king in 987, Adelaide became queen.

The exact extent of Adelaide’s involvement in government is difficult to assess, as the sources portray her as a relatively discreet figure. She likely fulfilled the traditional duties expected of a queen: overseeing the royal households, providing the insignia associated with royal authority, and advising her husband and children. These responsibilities were far from insignificant, as they provided essential support for the functioning of the monarchy.

A generous patron of the Church

Adelaide was more visible through her support of religious institutions. Although the surviving records reveal little about her personality, she appears to have been a deeply pious woman. In this sphere, she acted with indepandently, founding and endowing religious establishments.

She was particularly attached to Argenteuil and Saint-Denis. Among her gifts were a cloak embroidered with the sky and the planets, as well as a textile depicting the Apocalypse. Her lavish donations enriched the abbeys and churches of the kingdom. In doing so, she established a model that later Capetian queens would follow.

Adelaide also founded the collegiate church of Saint-Frambourg in Senlis, staffed by twelve canons whose duty was to pray for the salvation of the royal family.

Bearer of royal authority

Adelaide also played a more overtly political role in 988. In a letter addressed to Empress Theophano, regent of the Holy Roman Empire, Hugh Capet announced that his wife would meet the empress to discuss their shared political interests and the possibility of an alliance.

The letter presented Adelaide as a bearer of royal authority, describing her as the “co-bearer of the royalty with which we have associated her.” She was therefore entrusted with public authority and could represent her husband abroad while exercising power in her own right.

After Hugh Capet's death in 996, Adelaide remained at court and continued to be an influential presence alongside her son, Robert II. She later likely retired to Argenteuil, where she died in 1006. She was probably buried there, although her tomb has since disappeared.

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Further reading: 

Brouquet Sophie, Capétiennes

Gaude-Ferragu Murielle, Queenship in Medieval France, 1300-1500

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[city-of-ladies]

A powerful and proud queen, Constance of Arles (c. 986–1034) was vilified as grasping and even demonic. Yet a closer look at her life reveals a far more complex woman, one deeply conscious of her duties and status.

Fighting for her throne

The daughter of the Count of Arles-Provence, Constance was the third wife of King Robert II "the Pious," King of the Franks. Their marriage took place sometime between 1004 and 1007, when Constance was between eighteen and twenty years old. It was a political union that provided the king with ties to a powerful family and a means of extending his influence in southern France.

Constance soon found herself in a difficult position at court. Robert II had repudiated his previous wife, Bertha of Burgundy, but he showed signs of wanting to annul his marriage to Constance and return to Bertha. In response, Constance gathered a faction around her at court and ultimately prevailed.

The marriage quickly produced children, including sons and heirs. Constance enjoyed considerable visibility as queen and frequently took part in government affairs. She made donations to monasteries and was involved in the construction of a palace in Paris that included an oratory. She also introduced a brilliant and colorful culture at court.

Keeper of the treasury

Ecclesiastical chroniclers spread a negative image of Constance, portraying her as quick-tempered, greedy, and even demonic. These writers recorded several conflicts between husband and wife. In one instance, Robert protected a man who had stolen a precious candelabrum. In another, he gave away the valuable metal from a lance that had been provided by Constance. In both cases, the queen was said to be furious with the charitable king.

These accusations deserve to be placed in context. Constance was, first and foremost, fulfilling her role as queen. One of her responsibilities was to manage and maintain the royal household and provide the luxurious objects associated with monarchy. She was the proper custodian of the royal treasury.

By giving away valuable royal possessions, Robert was effectively undermining her efforts. At a time when royal resources were already decreasing, Constance's actions reflected concern for the needs of the royal family. Rather than greed, they reveal a woman keenly aware of the dignity and status of the monarchy.

Her pride could also lead to acts of violence. In 1022, several clergymen were convicted of heresy, among them Constance's confessor, Stephen. The queen refused to tolerate the stain of heresy within her household, especially when it involved someone who had benefited from her favor.

As Stephen was led to the stake, Constance reportedly struck out one of his eyes with the staff she was carrying. During the same trial, Robert placed her outside the church doors to prevent the crowd from killing the convicted priests before judgment could be carried out. Although Constance was a woman, the king knew her formidable character and trusted her to maintain order.

Fratricidal conflicts

As the question of succession became pressing, Robert chose his eldest son, the future Henry I, as his heir. Constance, however, favored her son Robert. The reasons remain unclear, but sources suggest that a personal antagonism existed between mother and son. Henry was unwilling to share power with Constance, which may explain her preference for his younger brother.

Henry was crowned in 1027, and Constance did not attend the ceremony. She then took control of her dower lands, which included the towns of Senlis, Sens, Béthisy, Dammartin, Le Puiset, and Poissy. When Henry attempted to seize part of these possessions, it proved to be the final insult she was willing to tolerate.

In 1033, she encouraged her son Robert to rebel against Henry. In this conflict, Constance enjoyed the support of part of the nobility. Henry nevertheless returned with reinforcements. Constance fled and took refuge in the fortress of Le Puiset. There, she endured a siege led for several weeks until she and her followers ran out of ressources.

Constance emerged from the fortress, threw herself at Henry's feet, and begged for mercy. Her son immediately set aside his anger and treated her with respect. Constance then persuaded him to grant the Duchy of Burgundy to his brother Robert, thereby securing peace between them.

Constance retired afterward, probably to Melun or Senlis. She died on July 25, 1034. She became the first Capetian queen to be buried in the royal necropolis of Saint-Denis, a testament to her power and indomitable personality.

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Further reading: 

Adair Penelope Ann, “Constance of Arles: A study in duty and frustration”, in: Capetian women

Brouquet Sophie, Capétiennes

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[city-of-ladies]

"Like most people remembered in memorial brasses, Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge were well born, both daughters of gentry families with properties in Sussex, Kent, and beyond. Their homes were close by, and like others of their status, they were probably raised at home until adolescence and then placed for several years in another elite household; they would certainly have known each other in childhood, and they easily could have lived for several years in the same household.

Both would have been expected to marry in their late teens or twenties, although a few well-born daughters (about one in every twenty) did not marry, by choice or happenstance. Only a handful entered nunneries; the rest, supported by modest bequests from their parents, passed their lives as dependents within their families. Usually identified as “maidens” or “singlewomen,” they paid their own way in both coin and family service.

Contemporary records offer no further information about Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge, and like other maidens, they were quickly effaced in family memory. Everything we know comes from the memorial itself. The brass offers two clear indications that both were never-married: no husbands are mentioned in their inscriptions, and the uncovered heads—and, in the case of Elizabeth Etchingham, long f lowing hair—of their effigies were conventional signs of maidenhood. Elizabeth Etchingham was likely born in the 1420s and died by her mid-twenties; Agnes Oxenbridge was also likely born in the 1420s and was in her fifties when she died, almost three decades after Elizabeth Etchingham.

Although Elizabeth Etchingham’s burial in her family church in 1452 was unremarkable, the internment in 1480 of Agnes Oxenbridge next to her, rather than in her family mausoleum at Brede, was exceptional.

The heads of both families must have agreed to the unusual arrangements of 1480—Thomas Etchingham II (Elizabeth’s brother) accepting the burial of an Oxenbridge woman in his family church, and Robert Oxenbridge III allowing his sister to lie away from their family vault. But it is unlikely that either brother instigated this unusual commemoration; instead, Agnes Oxenbridge herself probably requested it, as was then the custom, in a deathbed will that no longer survives. Of course, Agnes Oxenbridge’s instructions could have been ignored, modified, or poorly implemented, so the actual execution of the Etchingham-Oxenbridge monument relied on a collaboration involving the man in whose church it was to be laid (Thomas Etchingham II), her survivors (especially Robert Oxenbridge III), and the London workshop that got the commission (denoted as workshop F by students of brass styles). As a product of so much collective effort, this memorial brass to two women must have been a scandal to no one at the time.

It nevertheless presented some creative challenges. First, the designers had to determine how to place the two effigies, given that most joint monuments commemorated married couples. Elizabeth Etchingham was assigned the conventional spot for husbands (the left, as viewed by observers), perhaps because the brass was destined for her family church, because her family was of more ancient origin, or because her smaller effigy presented less insult to husbandly prerogatives. Second, the designers had to distinguish a young, nubile maiden from her middle-aged counterpart. They used hairstyle and height to this end, differentiating the smaller maiden with youthful f lowing hair from her larger, coifed, and middle-aged companion.

Third, the designers had to express the relationship that caused these two women to be remembered together, and their decisions here are especially revealing. The design suggests that no one—not Agnes Oxenbridge in pre-mortem requests, not Thomas Etchingham II and Robert Oxenbridge III acting on her behalf, and not the artisans in the workshop—shied away from representing the two women as an intimate couple. Indeed, the monument seems to have been designed with special emphasis on their warm affection. This affection was suggested, of course, by the simple fact of their joint brass, for most brasses with multiple figures remembered married persons—a motif generally understood as celebrating the closeness and fidelity of marriage. But the designers of this brass pushed beyond mere joint commemoration in stressing intimacy, for Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge were also deliberately shown facing each other, moving towards each other, and looking directly into each other’s eyes.

Most contemporary joint effigies showed couples facing the front, much like bodies laid in tombs, but Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge were portrayed in semi-profile, turned towards each other. New and not yet standard, this pose derives partly from design developments extraneous to the specifics of this 1480 monument—particularly the patterns favored by workshop F and a desire to show in effigies the complex headdresses of the time. But the pose had an affective purpose too, for as Paul Binski has noted of other brasses, “the turning of figures on their axis enabled the intimacy of marriage to be expressed.” The designers of the Etchingham-Oxenbridge brass evoked intimacy by adopting this inward turn, and they emphasized it even more by eschewing two features common in other brasses of workshop F—a so-called “jaunty” leaning of the figures away from each other and a draping of women’s gowns in deep, immobilizing folds. 

The effigies of Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge lack these distancing features and show, instead, the two women moving towards one another. As if to seal the affective power of the composition, the designers show Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge gazing directly into each other’s eyes, even though most married couples in contemporary brasses stare past each other into the distance. Their brass unmistakably evokes more intimacy and mutual affection than do most contemporary monuments of husbands and wives."

Bennett Judith M., "Remembering Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge", in: The Lesbian Premodern