Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442) Family and Power: The Reverse of the Tapestry 1st Edition Zita Eva Rohr (Auth.)
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/yolande-of-aragon-1381-1442-family-and-power-the-r everse-of-the-tapestry-1st-edition-zita-eva-rohr-auth/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
lacanian ink 29 From an Other to the other Josefina Ayerza
https://textbookfull.com/product/lacanian-ink-29-from-an-otherto-the-other-josefina-ayerza/
Academy of the Forgotten 1st Edition Eva Chase
https://textbookfull.com/product/academy-of-the-forgotten-1stedition-eva-chase/
Academy of the Forgotten 1st Edition Eva Chase
https://textbookfull.com/product/academy-of-the-forgotten-1stedition-eva-chase-2/
Academy of the Forsaken 1st Edition Eva Chase
https://textbookfull.com/product/academy-of-the-forsaken-1stedition-eva-chase/
Academy of the Fateful 1st
Edition
Eva Chase
https://textbookfull.com/product/academy-of-the-fateful-1stedition-eva-chase/
Academy of the Fateful 1st Edition Eva Chase
https://textbookfull.com/product/academy-of-the-fateful-1stedition-eva-chase-2/
Energy Geotechnics Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Energy Geotechnics ICEGT 2016 Kiel Germany 29 31 August 2016 Bauer
https://textbookfull.com/product/energy-geotechnics-proceedingsof-the-1st-international-conference-on-energy-geotechnicsicegt-2016-kiel-germany-29-31-august-2016-bauer/
When life gives you pears the healing power of family faith and funny people Gaffigan
https://textbookfull.com/product/when-life-gives-you-pears-thehealing-power-of-family-faith-and-funny-people-gaffigan/
Essentials of Hypertension: The 120/80 paradigm 1st Edition Flávio Danni Fuchs (Auth.)
https://textbookfull.com/product/essentials-of-hypertensionthe-120-80-paradigm-1st-edition-flavio-danni-fuchs-auth/
QUEENSHIP
AND POWER
Series Editors: Carole Levin and Charles Beem
This series brings together monographs, edited volumes, and textbooks from scholars specializing in gender analysis, women’s studies, literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitutional, and diplomatic history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the strategies that queens—both consorts and regnants, as well as female regents—pursued in order to wield political power within the structures of male-dominant societies. In addition to works describing European queenship, it also includes books on queenship as it appeared in other parts of the world, such as East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Islamic civilization.
Editorial Board
Linda Darling, University of Arizona (Ottoman Empire)
Theresa Earenfight, Seattle University (Spain)
Dorothy Ko, Barnard College (China)
Nancy Kollman, Stanford University (Russia)
John Thornton, Boston University (Africa and the Atlantic World)
John Watkins (France and Italy)
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History
By Charles Beem
Elizabeth of York
By Arlene Naylor Okerlund
Learned Queen: The Image of Elizabeth I in Politics and Poetry
By Linda Shenk
“High and Mighty Queens” of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations
Edited by Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves
The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe
By Sharon L. Jansen
The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I By Anna Riehl
Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch
By Ilona Bell
Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth
Edited by Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock
The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen
By Catherine Loomis
Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe
By William Layher
The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I
Edited by Charles Beem
The French Queen’s Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Europe
By Erin A. Sadlack
Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners
By Retha M. Warnicke
A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I By Rayne Allinson
Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England
By Lisa Benz St. John
Mary I: Gender, Power, and Ceremony in the Reign of England’s First Queen
By Sarah Duncan
The Last Plantagenet Consorts: Gender, Genre, and Historiography, 1440–1627
By Kavita Mudan Finn
Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship
By Jo Eldridge Carney
Mother Queens and Princely Sons: Rogue Madonnas in the Age of Shakespeare By Sid Ray
The Name of a Queen: William Fleetwood’s Itinerarium ad Windsor
Edited by Charles Beem and Dennis Moore
The Emblematic Queen: Extra-Literary Representations of Early Modern Queenship
Edited by Debra Barrett-Graves
The Queens Regnant of Navarre: Succession, Politics, and Partnership, 1274–1512
By Elena Woodacre
Queenship in the Mediterranean: Negotiating the Role of the Queen in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras
Edited by Elena Woodacre
The Queen’s Mercy: Gender and Judgment in Representations of Elizabeth I
By Mary Villeponteaux
Titled Elizabethans: A Directory of Elizabethan Court, State, and Church Officers, 1558–1603
Edited by Arthur F. Kinney and Jane A. Lawson
Elizabeth I’s Foreign Correspondence: Letters, Rhetoric, and Politics
Edited by Carlo M. Bajetta, Guillaume Coatalen, and Jonathan Gibson
The Man behind the Queen: Male Consorts in History
Edited by Charles Beem and Miles Taylor
Berenice II Euergetis: Essays in Early Hellenistic Queenship
By Branko F. van Oppen de Ruiter
Mary I and the Art of Book Dedications: Royal Women, Power, and Persuasion
By Valerie Schutte
Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens
Edited by Carole Levin and Associate Editor Christine Stewart-Nuñez
Royal Mothers and their Ruling Children: Wielding Political Authority from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era
Edited by Elena Woodacre and Carey Fleiner
Queenship and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: Henrietta Maria and Marie Antoinette
By Carolyn Harris
Ruling Women, Volume 1: Government, Virtue, and the Female Prince in Seventeenth-Century France
By Derval Conroy
Ruling Women, Volume 2: Configuring the Female Prince in Seventeenth-Century French Drama
By Derval Conroy
Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442) Family and Power: The Reverse of the Tapestry
By Zita Eva Rohr
YOLANDE OF A RAGON (1381–1442) FAMILY AND POWER
The Reverse of the Tapestry
Zita Eva Rohr
YOLANDE OF ARAGON (1381–1442) FAMILY AND POWER
Copyright © Zita Eva Rohr 2016
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-49912-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission. In accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
First published 2016 by PALGRAVE
MACMILLAN
The author has asserted their right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of Nature America, Inc., One New York Plaza, Suite 4500, New York, NY 10004-1562.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
ISBN: 978-1-349-58129-0
E-PDF ISBN: 978–1–137–49913–4
DOI: 10.1057/9781137499134
Distribution in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world is by Palgrave Macmillan®, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rohr, Zita Eva.
Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442) family and power : the reverse of the tapestry / Zita Eva Rohr. pages cm.—(Queenship and power) Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Yolande d’Aragon, Queen, consort of Louis II, King of Naples, –1442. 2. Louis II, Duke of Anjou, 1377–1417. 3. Nobility—France—Biography. 4. Anjou, House of. 5. France—History—Charles VI, 1380–1422. 6. France—History—House of Valois, 1328–1589. I. Title.
DC101.7.Y65R65 2015 944 .026092—dc23
2015019052 [B]
A catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library.
For My Family and Friends.
Territories and pretensions of the second house of Anjou during the tenure of Yolande of Aragon (1400–1442)
INTRODUCTION
To avoid stumbling into anachronism and wandering into the realms of subjective irrelevance, queenship research requires careful contextualization. I have striven to do this in the light of constantly evolving feminist, women’s, and gender history studies—endeavoring to apply a critical (but never cynical) eye to postmodern intellectual constructs that do not always stand up to objective scrutiny when examining complex issues of gender and the theme of women and power in the medieval and early modern periods.
A generation ago, Barbara Newman made some interesting observations regarding some of the pitfalls inherent in a hermetically sealed feminist approach to the Middle Ages. She posited that the second wave feminist critic in particular accepted certain clearly articulated ethical principles informing not only political views, but also cultural theories and an approach to reading. Newman explained that the first of these “insists that women’s experience, women’s history and women’s writings are inherently worthy of our attention and respect” and that this leads to a “hermeneutics of empathy.” She argued that the “feminist critical principle, recognizes that our experience has been severely constrained under patriarchy, and our history and literature unjustly suppressed.” This “critique of the patriarchy” informs a “hermeneutics of suspicion”—the second of Newman’s principles, and the antithesis of her first.1 Newman went further, positing that we should not necessarily “reject objectivity as a patriarchal concept,” and that we ought not indulge ourselves by privileging personal experience, feminist sensitivity, or subjectivity to the point where we become unwilling “to apply our finely honed suspicion to our own intellectual constructs as well.”2 Newman believed that there are three “besetting sins” that have the potential to undermine feminist historiography: the “temptation to idealize, the temptation to pity, and the temptation to blame.” The temptation to pity, she explained, arises from a need to identify feminist precursors to “transform our foresisters into feminist role models” such as Hildegard von Bingen, Joan of Arc, Christine de Pizan, and others. These medieval women are not “prototype[s] of the New Age woman: interested in female
autonomy, criticism of male power structures, ecology, holistic health, [females in frontline combat roles], versatile self-expression, and so forth.”3 Newman pointed out that women who do not fit neatly into “criteria for our role models” become easy targets for feminist pity; this enterprise is firmly anchored to “the recognition that as women we have collectively been the victims of the patriarchy, ‘semper ubique, et ab omnibus ’ ”4 (at all times, in all places, by everyone). Such feminist pity makes victims of women in the past who would be horrified to be so characterized and who would have rejected utterly such a characterization—especially when “ coupled with one of our most pervasive cultural dogmas, the idea that free sexual expression is essential to human fulfillment.”5 Intimately bound to the temptation to pity is the temptation to blame—for it is another negative judgment of historical female realities. For Newman, this “blame-game” “regards the women in question as complicit in their own victimization and sees every missed opportunity to rebel as an implicit betrayal.”6 It is generally deployed “to discuss women’s collusion with oppressive structures and ideologies” with barely, if ever, a thought given to examining the lives of women in the context of the times in which they lived. Opprobrium is directed likewise at “female writers who acquiesced in the prevailing gender ideology of their times and failed to articulate a feminist critique, or who (like Christine de Pizan and Anne of France) based their critiques on ethical and religious principles that are no longer acceptable to the modern historian.”7
More recently, Theresa Earenfight attests that such approaches “blind(s) us to the diversity of life in the past.” 8 Jacqueline Murray reminds us that “Bynum has observed that [there is] no such thing as ‘the medieval attitude to women.’”9 Caroline Walker Bynum’s words here are of even greater interest once they are restored to the context of her deeper reflections regarding gender, the human body, and medieval religion: “Men’s understanding of women’s piety and their own has certain specific characteristics not necessarily generalizable as ‘medieval religion.’ There is no such thing as the homo religiosus and no such thing as the medieval attitude to women.”10 All of which is to say that, resting upon the work of this distinguished scholarly sorority, the study of queenship must be contextualized and firmly anchored to a study of the institution of rulership, turning “us back towards questions about men as well as women. The study of gender is the study of how roles and possibilities are conceptualized; it is a study of one hundred per cent, not fifty-one per cent, of the human race.”11
Earenfight writes that “women were not rigidly defined by extremes of power and powerlessness because the relational dynamic between men and women depended upon social rank, age, marital status and economic resources” and that queens formed an unusual elite among women.”12 It was unusual to rid a monarchy of its queen unless she failed to produce a male heir and, in any case, such an eventuality might not put a queen necessarily at risk.13 Queens acquired power and exercised authority as wives, mothers, sisters, and aunts, and as tutors and guardians (natural governors), through their personal piety and patronage and by becoming the subjects of literary or visual arts.14 Queens with access to extensive personal and family networks could, and did, exercise considerable political authority to great effect; but, like their successful male counterparts, they needed to have a talent for the game and substantial intellectual dexterity and stamina.
At the genesis of my research some 15 years ago, Earenfight’s words and ideas, in particular, were a scholarly lifeline to a debutante who had begun to feel anxious that all was not as it should be in matters of queenship research and the study of medieval women and power. What I had begun to unearth regarding Yolande of Aragon, her foremothers, her contemporaries, and her descendants simply did not gel with the assumptions made by some feminist scholars, inspired perhaps by Marion Facinger, who proposed that, from the twelfth century onward, royal women were essentially relegated to the domestic arena as a result of the development of primogeniture and the re-establishment of the dowry.15 Facinger’s reading does not take sufficiently into account that the domestic sphere of royal and aristocratic families was a locus of power and authority for women intelligent and canny enough to make effective political use of it.
More than half a century ago, Marc Bloch made the important observation that medieval power structures were anchored in the domestic orbit of the dynastic family and princely household.16 Women, most frequently wives and mothers, often found themselves taking center stage in very public networks of political power—and they managed this while fulfilling traditional feminine “household” expectations. This shocked no one for, as Kimberly LoPrete asserts, “The dynamic interplay between the life-cycles of dynastic families and the domestic base of their power assured that, throughout the Middle Ages, the number of women exercising lordly authority at any one time was consistently high.”17 We must change the existing paradigm regarding such women and move beyond the idea of exceptionalism. Recent conference presentations and papers have argued that the notion of
exceptionalism is anachronistic and inaccurate; we must move on. For the ambitious, canny, and intelligent political woman, such privileged proximity to the inner circle of regalis potestas (royal power) functioned as backstage and front of house “access all areas” pass.
Natalie Zemon Davis suggests that we should be more attentive to how sex roles might shape a political career.18 Her thinking dovetails with the theoretical position I have chosen to adopt; she is firm in her belief that “we should be interested in the history of both men and women . . . our goal is to understand the significance of the sexes, of gender groups in the historical past . . . our goal is to explain why sex roles were sometimes tightly prescribed and sometimes fluid, sometimes markedly asymmetrical and sometimes more even.”19 Monarchy is a gendered institution but no successful king or queen has ruled in a vacuum—all needed supporting institutions to succeed and prosper. We should consider queenship and kingship therefore as complementary, sometimes symbiotic, institutions and this demands that we drop the creaky tendency to study powerful and successful kings and queens in isolation. It is better to study kingdoms and dynasties and kings and queens together, examining them in terms of cooperative rulerships (and sometimes uncooperative, antagonistic ones). Study of both sexes, in the context of their lived experience, would “help promote a rethinking of some of the central issues faced by historians.”20
The central pertinent issue to my research is the nature of power— a theme of primordial interest in any analysis of the political career of Yolande of Aragon and the women of her natal and marital houses. Davis asserts that “power can lodge in dangerous nooks and crannies . . . It can be informal, unpredictable, unaccountable, frittered away, or saved for important occasions.”21 This is no truer than in the nature of the power wielded by Yolande of Aragon— originating in the example of her foremothers and blossoming in the activities and responsibilities, respectively, of her granddaughters, Marguerite and Yolande of Anjou, and her great-granddaughter, Anne of France, and finding its antithesis in the ramshackle stateswomanship of her contemporary, Isabeau of Bavaria.
This book is about family and power. Essentially, all monarchies and ruling dynasties are about family, and the ways in which family and familial connections are used to attain sovereignty and buttress power and influence. While kings are most frequently analyzed and considered according to their deeds and efficacies, in their roles as monarchs they are rarely thought of as husbands and fathers, effectively rendering them “de-gendered”—neutered masculine pinnacles
of the political institution they represent.22 By way of contrast, their queens—consorts and “vessels” of dynastic succession, social cohesion, and territorial security and expansion (via their connections to their extended natal families)—are usually adduced of according to their gendered roles as wives, mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, cousins, and widows.23 Depending upon their respective levels of education, intellect, self-awareness, and political dexterity, queens-consort, in particular, frequently used and strategically manipulated gendered expectations of their roles to further their personal access to authority, power, and influence. Elizabeth I, that most successful of queens-regnant, was acutely aware of the pitfalls attached to her sex, fashioning herself as a prince with the “heart and stomach of a king” even as she acknowledged that she “may have the body of a weak and feeble woman”—a conscious act of “en-gendering.”24 What she had, in common with successful rulers of both sexes, was a keen intellect and a visceral understanding that, to be a successful monarch or consort, one needed to understand how one was perceived by one’s subjects and opponents and self-fashion accordingly—on her terms.
In penning her Enseignements for her only surviving child, Suzanne of Bourbon, Anne of France—Yolande of Aragon’s great-granddaughter and likewise a woman of astonishing pre-Machiavellian political insight—demonstrated her acute understanding of the need for a royal woman to self-fashion for the successful acquisition and maintenance of power and authority. Although some still hold that “Anne was no Christine de Pizan” and that her book is “conventional” and “an instructional book in the genre of the mirror for princes,” 25 such assessments fail to pick up on Anne’s subtle and astute transformation of Christine’s circumspect notion of “juste ypocrisie ”; Anne’s advice to Suzanne was born of successful political undertaking, which demanded that she neutralize her male opponents by manipulating patriarchal expectations of gender. Masquerading as a mother’s mirror for a princess, Anne of France’s Enseignements is actually a revolutionary political text, ignored for the most part by non-specialists, and largely absent from the canon of early modern political thought. Anne took up Christine de Pizan’s theme of “juste ypocrisie ” and subtly ran with it in her Enseignements, wherein the princess is instructed to “act against all her natural inclination to be honest” but only to further the greater good of her House and her subjects. Even the most general readership has a nodding acquaintance with Machiavelli; yet, few outside the scholarly community know of the political career and abiding influence of Anne of France
Power (1461–1522), daughter of a king (Louis XI) and guardian and unofficial regent of her younger brother (Charles VIII) during his minority and absence on campaign in Italy. Anne’s Enseignements should be read as the culmination and articulation of lived female political experience over a number of generations of her maternal and paternal dynasties in Aragon and France as well as her practical ideas on the education and preparation of young women—and men—for political life.26 Anne of France and her dynastic foremothers, including Elionor of Sicily, Yolande of Flanders, Marie of France, Violant of Bar, Yolande of Aragon, and Marie of Anjou, all “walked the walk”—they were canny and articulate political animals; Anne’s “talk,” her political treatise, grew out of generations of combined dynastic female lived experience. In keeping with her matrilineal heritage, Anne was a woman fiercely devoted to the practical realities of governing, and the manipulation of gendered expectations to buttress and expand her power and authorities.
Anne anticipates Machiavelli’s principle that “no one really knows who you are”—and that therein lies exploitable advantage. Anne wrote her Enseignements (c. 1503–4) well before Machiavelli addressed his extended curriculum vitae and very practical, hard-won advice to his Prince (c. 1513). With her Enseignements to her daughter Suzanne, Anne eases the passage from innocence to experience, informing the 12-year-old duchess of Bourbon’s transition from political debutante to empowered stateswoman. Anne of France’s (re)fashioning of virtues, which allows a princess to obtain and maintain power, anticipates Machiavelli’s conviction that politics has nothing to do with traditional virtue and everything to do with the exercise of power, and that, in the right hands, from power comes the ability to do good. Like her great-granddaughter’s treatise, the theme of family and gendered power is the golden thread woven into the “conventional” surface narrative of the tapestry of Yolande’s political life.
Henri Martin evaluates Yolande of Aragon’s contribution to the history of France in these terms:
Everything points to crediting the very significant and valuable influence of the mother of the queen, the dowager Yolande of Aragon. For France, this astute Spaniard, with less ado and with manifest authority, appears to have almost resurrected Blanche of Castile. 27
Martin’s is an interesting observation if we recall Christine de Pizan’s 1405 urging to the queen of France, Isabeau of Bavaria, that, for the good of France, she look to Blanche of Castile as her role model and
manifest un cuer d’homme (a heart of a man) to relieve the misery of the Valois dynasty and its wretched subjects.28 In 1408, Jean II Juvénal des Ursins compared Isabeau, Queen of France’s potential authority to rule in the “absences” of Charles VI to the precedent established by Blanche of Castile.29 Notwithstanding some revisionist posturing of recent literary scholarship to render pure and pristine Isabeau’s “black legend,” the outcomes of her tenure as queen of France point uncomfortably to the fact that, when compared to political career of Yolande of Aragon, Isabeau was not up to the task envisioned and championed for her by Christine and Juvénal des Ursins. Isabeau’s lack of political stamina and strategic pragmatism, combined with her ill-preparedness to surmount obstacles, speaks volumes when we compare her haphazard deeds and short-term influence to the hard-won authority and power wielded by Yolande of Aragon, who, like Isabeau, was obliged to toil away for some four decades in the same unhappy circumstances. Yolande’s support and actions to preserve her son-in-law Charles VII’s sovereignty ensured the survival and success of the Valois dynasty—something Isabeau was unable to achieve. The queen of France appears to have caved in to Burgundy’s coercion and England’s intimidation, alienating the unalienable French crown and bartering her daughter (Yolande of Aragon’s goddaughter), Catherine, to Henry V of England, in exchange for her personal security and a modest pension. Yolande of Aragon refused to capitulate to the hand fate had dealt her marital house in the fractured political climate of France and at the early death of her husband, Louis II of Anjou, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, in 1417. Instead, she manifested an active and consistent involvement in the political, military, and diplomatic affairs of France from the time of her son-in-law’s, the dauphin Charles of Ponthieu’s, declared regency in 1418 until her death in 1442—a period of almost 25 years.
The choice of a tapestry allusion for the title of this work is deliberate. The miraculously extant and meticulously restored Tapisserie de l’Apocalypse was commissioned by Yolande of Aragon’s father-inlaw, Louis I of Anjou, and completed c. 1382–3, coinciding with the birth and first years of Yolande, infanta of Aragon, the woman who fought to retain his Angevin legacy and played a leading role in the recovery of France during the closing stages of the Hundred Years War. The Apocalypse tapestry series, Louis’s beau tappis—a monumental opus depicting the destruction of Babylon and the creation of a new Jerusalem—probably appealed both to Louis I’s artistic, political, and religious sensibilities, and his sense of history; he was crowned king of Jerusalem and Sicily by Clement VI in Avignon on
February 22, 1382.30 In December 1400, the series served as a magnificent backdrop for the marriage of the king and new queen of Jerusalem–Sicily, Louis II of Anjou and Yolande of Aragon. Bertran Boysset, an eyewitness and chronicler of the spectacle, described the impression made upon him by the Apocalypse tapestry and hangings: “En non es homs, que pogues escrieure ni recontar la valor, la beutat, la noblesa d’aquelos draps (No one could write, or recount the value, beauty and nobility of these tissues . . . ).”31 By the end of this book, it is my hope that the reader might be able to make an informed assessment as to the “valor,” “beutat,” and “noblesa ” of Yolande of Aragon’s warp and weft. As she lay dying on November 12, 1442, Yolande willed the Apocalypse tapestry and the responsibility to work toward the maintenance of her Angevin legacy to her elder surviving son, René of Anjou, King of Jerusalem–Sicily.32 While he did not, in the end, manage to conserve the entirety of Yolande’s legacy intact, René did preserve the tapestry series in good estate and ensured it was securely held, moving it to Baugé with considerable care in 1476 to remove it from the path of his acquisitive nephew, Louis XI.33
The idea of slipping behind the tapestry stems from a desire to discover what was really going on and how victory was achieved during this troubled period of France’s history. After a long passage of time, the reverse of a tapestry is more simon-pure and vibrant than the image originally crafted for the beholder. The reverse of a tapestry reveals the intricacies of design—the texture and beauty of its interwoven schema, where the threads of decisions and actions were woven and knotted together to achieve the public narrative of victory; it is where the real work was done. Just as a completed tapestry results from a concerted team effort by artist, dyer, and weaver, no one person can be singled out as the sole architect of the re-conquest of France. Yolande of Aragon, however, played an important part in its reunification and recovery and, with this book, I seek to unpick the extent to which she was involved.
Dawn Bratsch-Prince has observed to me that feminist historians have drawn attention to this “messiness” (the complexity) of history that is often drummed out of traditional or prescribed historical narratives. With this in mind, the history of women, frequently pieced together from fragmentary evidence and gleaned from between the lines, is more effectively presented from the “underside” or the “reverse” of the tapestry. All true tapestries are mirror images: they are woven reverse-side uppermost, facing the weaver. My decade-anda-half research into the deeds of Yolande of Aragon has led me inevitably to the reverse of the tapestry; extant documentary evidence and
works she commissioned bear witness to Yolande of Aragon, master tisserande (weaver), Queen of Jerusalem–Sicily, patiently and prudently working toward the creation of a new Jerusalem in France from the rubble of its Babylon. Her contemporary, Jean II Juvénal des Ursins, expresses well the virtue of patience in overcoming tribulation:
Patience is a lady of observance and modesty, serious with a firm and stable countenance, battles and storms move her not, instead she remains always steadfast and composed.34
Prudence aside, patience was perhaps Yolande’s greatest virtue and strength, underscoring all of her actions and strategies. It enabled her to continue with her strategies despite the many storms she weathered, underwriting her eventual success in securing the throne of France for her son-in-law and her marital house’s future. That her surviving eldest son, René, was unable to fill her shoes, allowing her grandson Louis XI a relatively free hand to possess hard-won Angevin territories, should not detract from Yolande’s effective stateswomanship.
Yolande of Aragon is mentioned en passant by many historians and scholars of the closing stages of the Hundred Years War. In studies of the second house of Anjou, Good King René of Anjou, Charles VII, and Joan of Arc, Yolande is acknowledged as having been shrewd and intelligent, an éminence grise who facilitated political, military, and diplomatic advantage for her marital house, and for France. However, until this book, no scholar has attempted an examination and analysis of her activities in detail and in the broader context of her time. A few scattered masters dissertations, some scholarly papers, journal articles, popular histories, and novels have appeared from time to time, but these concentrate largely on isolated aspects of her undertakings, her children, or, if she is the point of focus, fall into the category of the hagiographic portrait or purposive and/or unsupported wishful thinking.
For any scholar, the unpicking and restoration of Yolande’s woven narrative in the context of a wider background of European geopolitics, religion, and warfare is a difficult and ambitious undertaking. Given the diversity of its players and theaters, attention to the narrative chronology of Yolande’s epoch was conceived of as the most effective means by which to avoid confusion and undue repetition for the reader. However, as Craig Taylor put it when commenting upon my earlier research, important themes—such as Yolande’s unwavering commitment to her family’s best interests; her unquestionable piety;
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
73. Why does the insect visit the flower?
74. Of what color are the flowers that need night-flying insects?
75. What can you say about the scattering of seeds?
76. How are some seeds blown about?
77. How do birds help in carrying seeds?
78. What is there about seeds to attract the birds?
79 What can you tell me of air-plants?
80. How do they get their nourishment?
81. Tell me something about water-plants.
82. What two shapes of leaves do some water-plants have?
83. Of what shape are most of the leaves that grow under water?
84. Why do they have these fringe-like shapes?
85. Of what shape are leaves that lie upon the water?
86. What kind of leaves have plants that grow in sand?
87. What use do these leaves serve?
88. Why are most plants that grow in sand prickly?
89. What can you tell me of a cactus-plant?
90. What long name have animal-eating plants?
91. What kind of living things do these plants catch and eat?
92. Tell me about the sun-dew.
93. Tell me about the Venus’s fly-trap.
94. Tell me about the pitcher-plant.
95. How do plants foretell changes in the weather?
96. What plants are the best weather prophets?
97. What is the reason of this closing before rain?
98. Of what use is this habit to the flower or seed?
99. Describe a flower clock.
100. Tell me about the hours when some plants open and close.
101. Will these hours of opening change with the time of year?
102. What is it that causes this opening and shutting?
103. Tell me about the sleep of leaves.
104. Of what use is this sleep to the plants?
1. Describe a grasshopper.
2. What is the meaning of his various names?
3. How does the grasshopper make his music?
4. What can you say of Mrs. Grasshopper’s sword?
5. Do all grasshoppers live in the grass?
6. Are the head and chest of an insect in the form of rings?
7. To what order does the grasshopper belong?
8. How many straight-wing families are there?
9. How are they sometimes divided?
10. Tell me about the grasshopper’s legs.
11. Describe his wings.
12. What do grasshoppers eat?
13. Where are the grasshopper’s eggs laid?
14. Tell me how the grasshopper changes from egg to full-grown grasshopper
15. Can you tell me of any of his queer ways?
16. Describe some grasshoppers to me.
17. Does the grasshopper migrate?
18. Does the grasshopper live alone?
19. What insect is the robber cousin of the grasshopper?
20. Tell me how a locust differs from a grasshopper.
21. What can you tell me of the numbers of locusts?
22. Tell me what harm locusts do.
23. What means are taken to destroy them?
24. What can you say about their size and color?
25. What insect is the grasshopper’s merry cousin?
26. Describe a cricket.
27. What three kinds of crickets are there?
28. What difference is there between the house and field cricket?
29. What will crickets eat and drink?
30. Tell me how the cricket plays his tunes.
31. Tell me about the life of a field cricket.
32. Describe a mole cricket.
33. Describe a mole cricket’s nest.
34. Tell me something of the mole cricket’s habits.
35. What is it that makes the mole cricket shine sometimes?
36. Why has the mole cricket been called the earth crab?
37. In what is the mole cricket like a mole?
III.
1. To what order of insects do the frog-hoppers belong?
2. What can you tell me about insects of this order?
3. Will you mention some of them?
4. What can you say about their wings?
5. How does the little frog-hopper make the ball of foam?
6. Of what use to him is this ball of foam, or froth?
7. What does the scale bug make for his covering, instead of froth?
8. Which is the largest insect of this order?
9. What name has he besides cicada?
10. Which of the insects of this order is the ant’s cow?
11. Which one carries a light?
12. On what food do all hoppers feed?
13. Where does the cicada lay her eggs?
14. Why does she not put them in a living branch?
15. How does she make the hole in which to put her eggs?
16. Where do the larvæ of the cicada live?
17. What kind of weather does the cicada like?
IV.
1. To what insect order do moths and butterflies belong?
2. How do the feelers of butterflies differ from those of moths?
3. How does the butterfly hold its wings, while at rest?
4. Which side of the butterfly’s wings is more gayly colored?
5. Why is this?
6. How does the moth hold its wings while resting?
7. What are the butterfly’s wings often called?
8. Which has the thicker body, a butterfly or a moth?
9. Which has the more furry coat?
10. Which usually flies by night?
11. Do butterflies ever fly by night?
12. What is the food of these insects?
13. How do bees get honey from flowers?
14. How do they carry this tube when it is not in use?
15. Will you describe this tube?
16. What can you say of the butterfly’s legs and feet?
17. Will you describe the wings of a butterfly?
18. Why is the butterfly the best partner of the flower?
19. Why have butterflies been so much studied?
20. Where are the eggs of butterflies laid?
21. Tell me about butterfly eggs.
22. What is the creature called that comes from a butterfly’s egg?
23. Describe a caterpillar.
24. What is the first act of a caterpillar, after leaving the egg?
25. What does the caterpillar eat?
26. What can you tell me of the horns of the caterpillar of the swallow-tail butterfly?
27. Why is this butterfly called by this name?
28. What is a girdle caterpillar?
29. How does the caterpillar pass into the pupa state?
30. What, then, is a caterpillar? (It is a butterfly larva.)
31. What effect has the weather on the pupa state?
32. Tell me how the butterfly leaves the pupa case.
33. How does a butterfly spend its time?
34. What does it do in bad weather?
35. Do any butterflies live over winter?
36. How do some caterpillars make a house for the winter?
37. Where is the silk-spinner of a caterpillar?
38. Why does a caterpillar make that sidewise motion with his head?
39. How do some caterpillars build a home for summer?
40. How do some spin or weave a hammock?
41. What can you tell me of the colors of butterflies?
42. Why are these insects called scale-winged insects?
43. What can you tell me of the hawk-moth?
44. In what is it like a humming-bird?
45. Why is one moth called a death’s-head moth?
46. Tell me about the wasp moth.
47. Where does it stay in the pupa state?
48. What is the bombyx?
49. Tell me all you can about the silk-worm.
50. Does the silk-worm moth ever eat?
51. Tell me about its caterpillar and its cocoon.
52. Which moth destroys furs and woollen goods?
53. Tell me about the tinea.
54. What can you tell me of the beauty of moths?
55. How can you capture moths to study or to keep?
V.
1. What is a bird?
2. How are eggs hatched?
3. On what plan is a bird built?
4. What can you say of a bird’s bones?
5. What can you tell me about a bird’s neck?
6. How do the bird’s bones help to keep it up in the air?
7. What shape is the breast-bone of flying birds?
8. What is the shape of the breast-bone of birds that do not fly?
9. In which part of the bird’s wing is the chief length?
10. Which is the short bone of the leg?
11. How many toes have most birds?
12. What is a bird’s beak?
13. Have birds any teeth?
14. What have they instead of teeth, for grinding their food?
15. What are a bird’s short feathers called?
16. Are any places on the body bare of feathers, and why?
17. What can you say of the large feathers?
18. Can birds move their feathers?
19. What else can you tell me about feathers?
20. Why do birds preen or dress their feathers?
21. What can you tell me about the feet of water birds?
22. What can you say about wading birds?
23. What kind of a bill has a duck?
24. How and why does it differ from a hen’s bill?
25. How are the beaks of fish-eating birds formed?
26. What can you learn of a bird’s habits from examining its feet and beak?
27. What can you tell me about the ostrich?
28. Why is the pigeon such a thirsty bird?
29. How does a swallow feed?
30. Tell me of the shrike, or butcher bird.
31. What different kinds of food do birds eat?
32. What can you tell me of the woodpecker family?
33. Will you tell me how and why birds migrate?
34. Tell me the history of the bobolink.
35. Describe an oriole’s nest.
36. Tell me about a humming-bird’s nest.
37. How do some birds ornament their nests?
38. Do birds ever build a roof over their nests?
39. What are some of our best singing birds?
40. What can you tell me of the blue jay?
41. Tell me how birds care for and defend their young.
42. What birds lay eggs in other birds’ nests?
43. What are some of the enemies of birds?
44. What birds can be called street and field cleaners?
45. Tell me any curious things you have seen or heard about birds.
46. Mention some of the lost birds.
47. How did these birds become extinct?
48. What are the different families of the parrot tribe?
49. In what countries do parrots live?
50. What can you say of their food and habits?
51. Where do canaries come from?
52. Of what color are they in their wild state?
VI.
1. On what plan is a fish built?
2. In what element do fishes live?
3. Where do you suppose men got their first boat patterns?
4. What fish is usually described as a pattern fish?
5. Will you describe a perch?
6. What part answers to the boat’s prow?
7. What part serves for a rudder?
8. How many fins has a perch, and where are they?
9. Which fin is used chiefly for motion?
10. What can you tell me of the eyes of the fish?
11. What use do the gills of a fish serve?
12. What does a fish breathe?
13. Does the fish need oxygen or carbon?
14. How does it get oxygen from the water?
15. Why do fish pant and struggle when taken from the water?
16. What fishes will live longest out of water?
17. What causes the fish taken out of water to die?
18. Where and what is the bladder of the fish?
19. Tell me about the backbone of the fish.
20. What can you say of the other bones of a fish?
21. What do you know about the scales?
22. What senses have fish?
23. How many senses have you? Name them.
24. What kind of blood have fish?
25. Is a whale a fish? What is it?
26. What are some of the largest fishes?
27. What are some of the smallest?
28. Do fishes differ much in form?
29. How do they differ in regard to their eyes?
30. What fishes have no scales?
31. What do some fish have instead of scales?
32. Will you describe fish of the ray family?
33. Describe flat fish.
34. What other odd forms of fish do you remember?
35. Tell me about some queer forms of fish heads and noses.
36. What are some of the weapons of fish?
37. For what do they use these weapons?
38. What can you tell me about the breast fins of fish?
39. To what do the breast fins sometimes change?
40. How are fishes able to climb trees?
41. What do you know about flying fish?
42. What are barbels?
43. What fishes have barbels?
44. Where do the fin family live?
45. How are sea fishes divided?
46. Do fishes ever go from salt to fresh water?
47. For what reason do some fish leave the sea and ascend rivers?
48. Tell me how air is put into tanks of water for fish.
49. How do fish behave if they have not enough air?
50. How does air get into the water of seas, lakes, and rivers?
51. How do fish sometimes help themselves to surface air?
52. What do fishes eat?
53. What is the basking of fish?
54. How are fishes kept in glass tanks?
55. Tell me of some of the queer ways of fish.
56. What about the fighting of fish?
57. How does a fish act when he darts after his food?
58. What are fish eggs called before they are laid?
59. What are they called when first dropped in the water?
60. What are the little fish called soon after they hatch?
61. What do we mean by a school, or shoal, of fish?
62. What can you tell me about skate and dog-fish eggs?
63. How will you know the egg-sacs of a skate from those of a dogfish?
64. How do the mackerel and herring leave their eggs?
65. What can you say of the numbers of the eggs of fish?
66. What kind of a nest does the trout make for her eggs?
67. Where and when can you find perch eggs?
68. What can you tell me of the shape and colors of scales?
69. What can you tell me of the scales of the side line of the fish?
70. Of what use is this slipperiness to a fish?
71. Why is it hard for a bird or fish to get a partly swallowed fish from its throat?
72. Tell me about some pretty fish.
73. Have all fishes teeth?
74. What can you say of the number of teeth in many fishes?
75. Where are these teeth set?
76. What do the French call “teeth in velvet”?
77. What can you tell me about the shape of fish teeth?
78. What kind of a fish is a stickleback?
79. How have some of his fins changed?
80. Tell me about the way sticklebacks can be caught.
81. Tell me something of their habits.
82. How does the stickleback build his home?
83. What do the eggs look like?
84. How does this little father take care of his family?
85. What is one of our largest river fish?
86. How are sturgeon often caught?
87. What do the Russians make from sturgeon?
88. What kind of candles do the Cossacks often have?
89. What are some of the things made from the shark?
90. What can you tell me about the shark?
91. Of what use are fish?
92. How can you learn more about fish?
93. Why in these Readers have you been told a little of many things?
94. Do you think you know a little about how to use your eyes as you go about the world?
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. The following printer errors have been changed.
CHANGED FROM TO
Page 84: “convovulus had its long” “convolvulus had its long”
Page 87: “the star of Bethlehem” “the Star of Bethlehem”
Page 88: “leaf up all in a bunch” “leaves up all in a bunch”
Page 106: “see Miss Grasshopper’s” “see Mrs. Grasshopper’s”
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NATURE READERS ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
