MALMEC MUSIC

MALMECC is made up of a number of sub-projects, which together aim to cover many different aspects of medieval music making and its culture.

Gender, Lineage and Patterns of Patronage in Late-Medieval France, England, the Low Countries, and beyond

What exactly was the impact of gender and lineage on artistic patronage and courtly life? To what extent and how precisely was artistic patronage used to project or deflect gendered and/or dynastic power, and what specifically was the impact of gender and lineage on the performative arts? The intense political and dynastic connections within the region and the presence of several prominent females in positions of great power (Mahaut of Artois, Philippa of Hainaut, Isabeau of Bavaria) invite research into the courts of northwestern Europe, with a focus on France, England, and the Low Countries, to conduct a study of the effects of gender, gender perceptions, and lineage on arts patronage. This will be aided by a plethora of well-researched documentary and artistic source materials that survive in the national libraries and archives of, among others, London, Paris, Brussels, and The Hague. These will be re-read from a gender-specific perspective.

       ©Photo. R.M.N. / R.-G. OjŽda

The interstitial role of women at court has received incommensurately little attention heretofore in musicology, art history, and general history (although see, e.g., Adams 2012); the body of scholarship around Christine de Pizan constitutes a notable exception in literary history. However, women often played crucial roles in courtly life, shaping tastes as patrons, dedicatees and indirect or direct objects of artists’ attention. Their aesthetic preferences and choices not infrequently affected their husbands’ decisions, were they cultural or political. Many maintained quasi-separate (sub-)courts built around the entourage that surrounded them in their positions as queens, duchesses or countesses (Hirschbiegel and Paravicini 2000).

A contrasting example on the male side is set by royal intimates such as Piers Gaveston (1284-1312), the younger Despenser (1286-1326), or Charles de la Cerda (1327-1354) and – in a slightly different context – the brothers d’Aunay (c.1290-1314) and the prototypical “evil councillor”, Enguerran de Marigny (c.1260-1315). These men – often noblemen of comparatively low birth or, in the case of de la Cerda, of suitably high birth but impoverished – attracted magnates’ and courtiers’ jealousy and envy, among other things, through their patronage of the arts, or the possession of artefacts that were perceived as excessive and contributed to their downfall. Conversely, the career and self-fashioning of poet-musician, Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377), as evident through his oeuvre, offers an example how a person of relatively low birth could successfully navigate the treacherous currents of courtly life.

This project will chart the possibilities open to women and lower-born men in the political and cultural arena of late medieval courtly life in France and beyond. It will explore both the handicaps, but also the possibilities of being a noblewoman and/or a male upstart in a society where power and status are by definition asymmetrical, taking into account the obligations and consequences of both gender and lineage.

Bibliography:

Adams, Tracy. “Between History and Fiction: Revisiting the Affaire de la Tour de Nesle.” Viator 43 (2012): 165-92.

Hirschbiegel, Jan and Werner Paravicini. Der Fall des Günstlings: Hofparteien in Europe vom 13. Bis 17. Jahrhundert. Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2004.

Hirschbiegel, Jan and Werner Paravicini. Das Frauenzimmer: die Frau bei Hofe in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000.