Gendering medieval Portugal
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© Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004459397_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. © koninklijkebrillnv,leideN,2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004459397_002 CHAPTER1 Gendering Medieval Portugal Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues GenderhistoryisnotapopularsubjectinPortugal.Ibelievethatthisdisaffectioniscausedbyignoranceratherthanbyinformeddisapproval.Among Portuguesehistorians,asamongthegeneralpublic,thewordgenderisstill associatedwithwomen,asifonlywomen’slivesweredeterminedbytheirgender.Genderhistoryisthereforedismissedasathingthatconcernsonlywomen, aswomen’shistorywassomedecadesago.Thisisrathercurious,asgender historydevelopedoutofwomen’shistorypreciselybecause,atsomepoint, itbecameobviousthatthelatterhadenteredasortofblindalley.Studying womenasadistinctsubjecthadbeenparamountinrenderingwomenvisible inthepastanddemonstratingthattheytoohadahistory.Yetwomen’shistorianswerekeptinasortofghettoandtheirfindings,debatesandchallengesto mainstreamhistorywerenotheard,discussedorassimilated.Anewapproach seemedtobenecessary,onethatwascalledforandtheorizedbyJoanScottin herseminalarticleof1986ongenderasacategoryofhistoricalanalysis.1 Inthefollowingyears,feministsandwomen’shistoriansengagedinalively debateonwhethertocontinuefocusingexclusivelyonwomenorwhetherto turn their attention to “social relationships based on perceived differences betweenthesexes”,especially“relationshipsofpower”,asdefinedbyScott.2 Someofthesedisputantsremainedattachedtotheaimsandmethodologiesof women’shistory,consideringthatthesewerenotexhausted;othersembraced genderanalysisenthusiastically.Afewevenstartedtostudymenasgendered subjects,givingbirthtoanewfieldofstudy,men’shistory,aspartofthewidest domainofmen’sstudies.3 1 JoanW.Scott,“Gender,aUsefulCategoryofHistoricalAnalysis,”American Historical Review 91(1986):1053–1075.Thoughthisarticleinspiredmanyresearcherswhocouldreaditinits Englishversion,itwasonly translatedintoEuropeanPortuguesein2008: “Género,uma categoriaútildeanálisehistórica,”inVariações sobre sexo e género,ed.AnaIsabelCrespo, AnaMonteiro-Ferreira,AnabelaGalhardoCouto,IsabelCruzandTeresaJoaquim(Lisbon: LivrosHorizonte,2008):49–77.ABrazilianversion,unknowninPortugal,hasexistedsince 1990:“Gênero,umacategoriaútildeanálisehistórica,”Educação e Realidade15,2(1990):5–22. 2 JoanW.Scott,“Gender,”1067. 3 ThelmaFenster,“Preface:WhyMen?”inMedieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed.ClareA.Lees(Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress,1994),ix–xiii. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
14 Rodrigues All these new theories, methodologies and debates reached Portugal with a considerable delay: only in 1985 was there enough critical mass to promote the first conference on women’s history; and gender history took two more decades to find its way into the universities, the media and the bookshops.4 As a result, today, as far as medieval history is concerned, we know a little about Portuguese medieval women, as a reasonable number of articles and masters’ dissertations have been produced on them. We know very little about Portuguese medieval men as men, i.e. as gendered subjects rather than as kings, bishops, knights, craftsmen or peasants. And we know similarly little about the way femininity and masculinity were constructed and articulated by society in order to perpetuate not only male domination over female and other genders, but also the domination of hegemonic masculinity over other – subordinated – forms of masculinity. In this chapter, I shall therefore start by making a brief presentation of the main lines of research that have been developed concerning Portuguese medieval women over the past 30 years.5 I shall then turn to the study of medieval men and masculinities; and I shall end by showing how the interrelated study of women and men has thrown new light on Portuguese medieval society at its highest level, including its political society. Some of the earliest studies on Portuguese medieval women concerned women’s role in the family and their juridical status. These revealed that daughters had the same rights to their parents’ inheritance as sons; and even when a special law (the Lei Mental) was passed regulating the succession to royal estates (bens da Coroa), which stated that only a firstborn male could succeed to the father, many exceptions were granted to female successors. Wives were indeed subordinated to husbands; but the latter could not pawn or sell property without their spouses’ consent. Moreover, at their husbands’ death, widows were not only entitled to their dower and dowry but also to half of the couple’s assets. Women thus enjoyed property and succession rights that assured them some power and autonomy.6 4 Manuela Santos Silva and I have explained the reasons for this delay in a previous work: Manuela Santos Silva and Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Women’s and Gender History,” in The Historiography of Medieval Portugal c.1950–2010, ed. José Mattoso, Maria de Lurdes Rosa, Bernardo Vasconcelos e Sousa and Maria João Branco (Lisbon: IEM – Instituto de Estudos Medievais, 2011), 483–484. 5 A very brief one since Manuela Santos Silva and I have already presented them in the chapter referenced in the previous note, and very few new studies have been published since then. 6 The references concerning these matters are listed in Manuela Santos Silva and Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Women’s and Gender History,” 485–486. To our knowledge, no new studies have been published since then. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Gendering Medieval Portugal 15 Another field of studies that started in the 1980s but is still underrepresented is women’s work. The importance of women’s activities to the household economy has been demonstrated, as has women’s participation in crafts and in small urban businesses.7 Yet we do not know much about their salaries or earnings, their working conditions, or their membership of confraternities and guilds, and the very few essays published in the last few years have done little to change this situation.8 Women’s relationship to religion, however, has roused the curiosity of Portuguese historians for some time now. The institutional forms of religiosity were the first ones to get attention, and many articles and dissertations were written on the branches that religious orders created for women and on female monastic communities.9 This trend is still bearing fruit today, especially as concerns the female branches of the mendicants.10 And new inquiries have broadened our knowledge on the subject considerably. One of these concerns the reciprocal relations of female monasteries with their urban environment and the male convents that shared it with them. This reveals the existence of serious conflicts but also of cooperation and of a sense of protection among the urban population, the municipal authorities and the friars towards the nuns.11 7 Manuela Santos Silva and Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Women’s and Gender History,” 486. 8 Joana Sequeira and Arnaldo Sousa Melo, “A mulher na produção têxtil portuguesa tardo-medieval,” Medievalista 11 (2012): 1–26; Maria Amélia Álvaro de Campos, “A mulher da paróquia de Santa Justa de Coimbra na Baixa Idade Média: o retrato possível das suas ocupações, relações e afetos,” in Ser mujer en la ciudad medieval europea, ed. Jesus Ángel Solórzano Telechea, Beatriz Arízaga Bulumburu and Amélia Aguiar de Andrade (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2013), 215–232. An MA dissertation on this subject has recently been defended: Mariana Fonseca Antunes Alves Pereira, A mulher e o trabalho nas cidades e vilas portuguesas medievais (séculos XIV e XV), unpublished MA dissertation (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2020). 9 Manuela Santos Silva and Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Women’s and Gender History,” 487–489. 10 Maria Filomena Andrade, In Oboedientia, Sine Proprio, Et In Castitate, Sub Clausura. A Ordem de Santa Clara em Portugal (séculos XIII e XIV), unpublished PhD thesis (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2011). A PhD on the Dominicans is currently under way. 11 Maria Filomena Andrade, “O Convento e a Cidade: desafios e diálogos,” in Ser mujer en la ciudad medieval europea, ed. Jesus Ángel Solórzano Telechea, Beatriz Arízaga Bulumburu and Amélia Aguiar de Andrade (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2013), 407–438; Id., “Mulheres sob custódia: as comunidades de clarissas como espaços de obediência e autonomia (séculos XIII e XIV)”, Lusitania Sacra, 2nd series, 31 (2015): 33–50; Id., “As Clarissas na Cidade: Nobreza e Poder (séculos XIII e XIV),” in Conflicto Politico: Lucha y Cooperación, Ciudad y Nobleza en Portugal y Castilla en la Baja Edad Media, ed. Adelaide Millán da Costa and José Antonio Jara Fuente (Lisbon: IEM – Instituto de Estudos Medievais, 2017), 69–90; João Luís Inglês Fontes and Maria Filomena Andrade, “Devoção e autoridade: a afirmação da religiosidade feminina em Coimbra na época medieval,” Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
16 Rodrigues Another line of investigation has concerned the particularities of religious women’s devotions, their memorial and bodily practices, which have emerged as the very few texts written by them that have survived have been studied using new approaches.12 Finally, non-institutional forms of female religiosity have also been scrutinised, which has led to the conclusion that, despite the frequent emergence of new radical experiences, anchoresses, beguines and other “women of the poor life” were continuously under pressure from religious and urban authorities to accept a rule and to transform their informal communities into monastic ones, which they eventually did.13 If we turn now to the history of Portuguese medieval men and masculinity, the harvest is meagre. In 2006, I opened the field with a reflection on the masculinity of the canons of the cathedral of Braga.14 With the imposition of celibacy on priests during the Gregorian Reform, the church extended to them an ideal of sexual renunciation that had been characteristic of monks and nuns until then, and had forged, according to certain authors, a third gender identity. Yet, due to their upbringing and their role in society – they had not been locked in monasteries since their childhood but educated by their mothers in Autoridad, Poder e Influencia. Mujeres que hacen Historia, vol. 2 [CD ROM], ed. Henar Gallego Franco and María del Carmen García Herrero (Barcelona: Icaria, 2017), 571–589; João Luís Inglês Fontes, Maria Filomena Andrade and Maria Leonor Silva Santos, “Frades, monjas e reclusas: os primórdios da presença mendicante em Santarém medieval,” in Clarisas y Dominicas. Modelos de implantación, filiación, promoción y devoción en la Península Ibérica, Cerdeña, Nápoles y Sicilia, ed. Gemma Teresa Colesanti, Blanca Garí and Núria Jornet-Benito (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2017), 383–405. 12 Gilberto Coralejo Moiteiro, As dominicanas de Aveiro (c. 1450–1525): Memória e identidade de uma comunidade textual, unpublished PhD thesis (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2013); Id., “Texto e experiência religiosa feminina: estratégias discursivas hagiográficas no seio da observância dominicana portuguesa,” in Vozes da vida religiosa feminina: Experiências, textualidades e silêncios (séculos XV–XXI), ed. João Luís Fontes, Maria Filomena Andrade and Tiago Pires Marques (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos de História Religiosa, 2015), 31–48; Id., “Manifestações exteriores da vida interior. Usos do corpo e representações da alma na Crónica da Fundação do Mosteiro de Jesus de Aveiro,” in Género e interioridade na vida religiosa: Conceitos, contextos e práticas, ed. João Luís Fontes, Maria Filomena Andrade and Tiago Pires Marques (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos de História Religiosa, 2017), 65–86. 13 João Luís Inglês Fontes, “Em torno de uma experiência religiosa feminina: as mulheres da pobre vida de Évora,” Lusitania Sacra, 2nd series, 31 (2015): 51–71; Id., “O deserto na cidade: experiências religiosas femininas em Portugal nos finais da Idade Média,” in História Antiga e Medieval 6 – Conflitos sociais, guerra e relações de gênero: representações e violência, ed. Adriana Zierer and Ana Lívia B. Vieira (São Luís: Editora UEMA, 2017), 51–74. 14 Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Um mundo só de homens. Os capitulares bracarenses e a vivência da masculinidade na Idade Média,” in Estudos de Homenagem ao Prof. Doutor José Marques, vol. 1 (Porto: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 2006), 161–172. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Gendering Medieval Portugal 17 until at least the age of seven; and they had regular contact with women in the form of parishioners, servants, traders, and so forth – it was much more difficult for priests to conform to this “emasculinity”, as some have named it. In fact, the information provided by the sources on the canons of the cathedral of Braga showed that many of them lived in large households with female servants who were frequently their concubines and children they called their criados,15 nephews or godchildren, but who were in fact illegitimate children that they sometimes legitimized to allow them to have access to their inheritance. The canons acted as paterfamilias to these children and to their servants and dependants, educating them and boosting their ecclesiastical or lay careers if they were men, providing them with a good marriage if they were women, and obtaining royal privileges for both. They also showed other characteristics of knightly masculinity: they hunted and carried weapons despite the prohibitions on these; they were occasionally involved in street fights and in military campaigns; and they wore conspicuous and inappropriate clothes and shoes, including rich adornments and jewels. However, they shared a few male traits with lower categories of society too: occasionally, they drank and gambled in taverns and other infamous locations. I thus concluded that these ecclesiastics did not conform to the third gender paradigm that the Church attempted to impose on them. Rather they undertook and performed the masculinity of the social order most of them were born to, the nobility, although surreptitiously, often feeling shame, guilt and a final repentance which is evident in their last wills and testaments. In 2012, I returned to the debate on third genders.16 I discussed recent work on eunuchs that presented them as a third gender and other work that considered that they embodied a particular form of masculinity, to conclude that there was (and still is) no consensus about it. I also analysed again the case of secular clerics in the face of new work and my own research. I concluded once more that, despite the dominant position of the Church in many aspects of medieval society, the gender model it attempted to impose on its own members – a third gender according to some authors, a specific form of masculinity (“clerical virility”) according to others – was never generalized among them, 15 Criados and criadas were boys and girls raised and educated in a lord’s household, with which they established long-lasting ties that could even be placed above consanguinity. On this designation, see Rita Costa Gomes, The Making of a Court Society: Kings and Nobles in Late Medieval Portugal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 205–208. 16 Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “La Identidad de Género en la Edad Media, una cuestión polémica,” in Identitats (XIV Curs d’Estiu de Balaguer), ed. Flocel Sabaté (Lleida: Pagés, 2012), 43–57. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
18 Rodrigues let alone exerted any strong appeal on other social groups. Therefore, knightly masculinity remained the hegemonic masculinity of that time. In that same chapter, I spent some time defining knightly masculinity based on other, foreign, authors’ work, because I had no personal research to present and knew of no Portuguese work on the subject either. Only as recently as 2016 did the ideology of chivalry in Portugal become the subject of a master’s dissertation which gave us some insight into the way Portuguese knights built their identity in the fifteenth century.17 The author looked at a varied array of sources: moral and technical treatises, law codes, letters, reports, and chronicles. Yet he did not use gender as an analytical tool and therefore never considered masculinity as a pertinent factor of the knight’s identity. Quite a different perspective was used by Manuela Santos Silva in her study of the violent characters and situations reported in the Portuguese genealogical books of the fourteenth century. She availed herself of gender analysis to argue that aggressive behaviour was considered a normal, perhaps even a necessary, expression of masculinity among knights when their honour was at stake. This occurred, for example, if their lord was in danger and needed their help, if they were ridiculed in public by other knights, or if their wives committed adultery or were accused of doing so, all of which would call into question their virility. Yet some extreme violent behaviour was considered excessive, deviant, and punished through social criticism, exile or even the death penalty.18 I reached similar conclusions about knightly masculinity in an essay that explores the three chronicles that Zurara dedicated to the military achievements of the Portuguese in Marocco in the fifteenth century, in order to understand how the chronicler constructed each gender in relation to war.19 That fighting was not a woman’s business was so evident for Zurara that he rarely felt the need to state the fact. For him, women were weak, not only in their bodies but in their hearts, and only exceptional women managed to transcend their natural weakness and encourage their husbands and children to go to war instead of attempting to keep them at home. One such exceptional woman 17 Miguel Pereira Aguiar, Cavaleiros e cavalaria. Ideologias, práticas e rituais aristocráticos em Portugal nos séculos XIV e XV (Lisbon: Teodolito, 2018). There is a brief version of this work in English: Miguel Aguiar, “Chivalry in Medieval Portugal,” e-Journal of Portuguese History 13, 2 (2015): 1–17. 18 Manuela Santos Silva, “Violência ou exibição de virilidade? Comportamentos masculinos nos Livros de Linhagens portugueses da Idade Média,” eClassica 2 (2016): 126–135. 19 Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Em torno da conquista de Ceuta: Guerra e género na Idade Média,” in História Antiga e Medieval 6 – Conflitos sociais, guerra e relações de gênero: representações e violência, ed. Adriana Zierer and Ana Lívia B. Vieira (São Luís: Editora UEMA, 2017), 17–32. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Gendering Medieval Portugal 19 was a biblical figure, the mother of the Maccabean, who was fortified by faith. Another was Queen Philippa of Lancaster (1360–1415), who was strong because she was descended from a line of valiant knights. Zurara also describes Queen Philippa and another noblewoman as quiet and austere, always occupied in needlework, quite the opposite of the noisy and shallow women of the people who greeted warriors when they returned to Portugal after a victory. As such, the femininity he praised was markedly aristocratic. Indeed, the masculinity that Zurara praised was also typically knightly. He accused the men who participated in the conquest of Ceuta as infantry of being more interested in pillaging the city than in killing the enemies of the true Faith. He also stated that some esquires who stayed behind to seize the belongings of the dead Muslims were killed because of their greed. According to him, only knights and great lords displayed a proper, chivalric behaviour in war. Yet Zurara did not compare these men only to other males. The knight’s manly features stood out in contrast with female characteristics as well: they did not have “effeminate”, but rather strong, hearts; they did not have “delicate complexions”, but rather powerful, vigorous bodies; they did not cry. Other characteristics of knightly masculinity were the permanent spirit of competitiveness among them, their impulsiveness, their thirst for blood, and their love of violence. A gender perspective was also used by Hélder Carvalhal and Isabel dos Guimarães Sá to study Constable Afonso’s brief life.20 Afonso (c. 1480–1504) was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Viseu-Beja, D. Diogo (1450–1484), who was raised secretly as a peasant after his father’s murder by King John II of Portugal (r. 1481–1495). He was reinstated in his rightful role when his uncle, Manuel I (r. 1495–1521), succeeded to the throne. Carvalhal and Sá show how Afonso constructed his new identity as a member of the royal family and third in line to the throne by conforming to the hegemonic model of knightly masculinity prevailing in his time: he married a young noblewoman and fathered a child; he took great care of his attire, his armour and the equipping of his horses; he participated in aristocratic games such as jousts, cane games (jogos de canas) and mummeries. Yet, as Portugal was then at peace with Castile, he did not have occasion to show his courage and valour as a warrior by performing his duties as Constable. He could have participated in the permanent war against the so-called “infidels” that was being pursued by the Portuguese in Northern Morocco, though. This situation allowed the Portuguese noblemen 20 Hélder Carvalhal and Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, “Knightly Masculinity, Court Games and Material Culture in Late-medieval Portugal: The Case of Constable Afonso (c. 1480–1504)”, Gender & History 28, 2 (2016): 387–400. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
20 Rodrigues and even some more humble young men to practice their fighting skills, show their bravery in battle and eventually be knighted. The authors of the article do not discuss this possibility, even though they acknowledge the importance of Moorish elements in courtly games. In another article, Hélder Carvalhal draws on the poetry of the Cancioneiro Geral and several other sources to evaluate the contribution of the adoption of the hegemonic model of masculinity to the social mobility of men at the royal court in the transition from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century. He finds that this model was undergoing a transformation, with duels using weapons starting to be replaced by duels using words in a chivalry that wanted to be considered not only brave but also learned. In any case, those who conformed to this ambivalent chivalric model still had the best chances of being noticed and consequently promoted by the king.21 Violence and aggression were not the only characteristics that medieval lay men – and a few ecclesiastics – had in common, though. Most of them also experienced paternity at some point in their lives. By studying how King Dinis (r. 1279–1325) chose the names and provided for the education, the maintenance and the property of the many children he fathered, not only with his wife Queen Isabella of Aragon (c. 1270–1336) but also with his mistresses ( barregãs), Ana Raquel da Cruz Parra demonstrates that impregnating women and providing for them and for their children also defined masculinity.22 Another scholar, Mariana Bonat Trevisan, argues that underlying the image of King John I (r. 1385–1433) as a perfect father to his children built by the chronicles and moral treaties of the fifteenth century was the idea that his exemplary fatherhood made him the perfect ruler for his subjects.23 It is thus possible to study women separately from men and masculinity separately from femininity; but we get a much clearer view of medieval society and its power relations if we scrutinize the way in which they were constructed and articulated in order to secure male hegemony and perpetuate patriarchy, as I said at the beginning of my observations. Thus, I shall dedicate the last part of this chapter to some recent works that have offered this kind of scrutiny. 21 Hélder Carvalhal, “Poder, género e estatuto social. Novas interpretações em torno da corte renascentista ao tempo do Cancioneiro Geral de Garcia de Resende,” in Arte poética e cortesania – o Cancioneiro Geral revisitado, ed. Ana Maria Machado, Hélio J. S. Alves, Luís Fardilha and Maria Graciete Silva (Évora: Universidade de Évora, 2019), 51–74. 22 Ana Raquel da Cruz Parra, A paternidade na Idade Média: o caso de D. Dinis, unpublished MA dissertation (Lisbon: Universidade de Lisboa, 2018). 23 Mariana Bonat Trevisan, “Ser rei, ser pai: a exemplaridade de D. João I na criação dos infantes da Ínclita Geração (Portugal – Séc. XV)”, in Seminário Internacional Fazendo Gênero 10 (2013): 1–12. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Gendering Medieval Portugal 21 The already mentioned Brazilian researcher Mariana Bonat Trevisan has developed a consistent body of work in this domain. In her master’s dissertation she argues that, in order to legitimize the new dynasty inaugurated in 1385 by the Master of the Military Order of Avis – later, the already mentioned King John I – a set of resources were used, among which were the chronicles of the doings of this king and his predecessors commissioned from the first royal chronicler and keeper of the royal archives, Fernão Lopes, by King Edward (r. 1433–1438), John I’s son and successor.24 This is not a new line of investigation, as many authors have studied various aspects of the political discourse of Lopes before. In 2002, for instance, Amélia P. Hutchinson presented a doctoral thesis on Leonor Teles and the construction of female characters in Fernão Lopes.25 She points out that Lopes tells the story of King Fernando I (r. 1367–1383) and Queen Eleanor Teles (c. 1350 – c. 1391) as a tragedy so as to “pin the blame” for everything that went wrong during his reign on his spouse. In her words, the King “is shown not only to be under the spell of his wife but to fall victim of her whims and betrayal”.26 Lopes accuses the Queen of adultery, a typical gendered argument used to delegitimize queens and their progeny, in this case delegitimizing Beatrice (r. 1383), Fernando and Eleanor’s daughter whom the Master of Avis replaced on the throne, though he never substantiates the accusations. As Eleanor promoted the marriage of Beatrice to King John I of Castile (r. 1379–1390) and encouraged him to invade Portugal when her regency was challenged, Lopes accuses her of being a traitor (aleivosa) too.27 However, as Queen Eleanor was eventually imprisoned and sent to Castile by her son-inlaw, no further notice was taken of her by the chronicler. Amélia Hutchinson also states that Lopes constructed Queen Philippa of Lancaster, John l’s wife, as the antithesis of Queen Eleanor Teles. “She is 24 Mariana Bonat Trevisan, Construção de identidades de gênero e afirmação régia: Os casais da realeza portuguesa entre os séculos XIV e XV a partir das crônicas de Fernão Lopes, unpublished MA dissertation (Niterói: Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2012). 25 Amélia P. Hutchinson, Leonor Teles and the construction of female characters in Fernão Lopes, unpublished PhD thesis (London: University of London, 2002). I did not have access to this work. 26 Amélia P. Hutchinson, “Punctuating the Narrative: The Structural Function of Female Characters in Fernão Lopes’ and Gomes Eanes de Zurara’s Chronicles,” Portuguese Studies Review 13, 1–2 (2005): 6. The author also expresses her views on the character of Leonor Teles in her article “Leonor Teles: Representations of a Portuguese Queen”, Historical Reflexions/Réfléctions Historiques 30, 1 (2004): 73–87. 27 Another essay on Lopes’ responsibility in the emergence of the myth of Eleanor Teles as a “bad woman” is: Isabel de Pina Baleiras, “O mito da mulher má e a história da mulher na política,” in Representações do mito na História e na Literatura, ed. Ana Luísa Vilela, Elisa Nunes Santos, Fábio Mário da Silva and Margarida Reffoios (Évora: Universidade de Évora, 2014), 73–90. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
28 Rodrigues domain, the queens consort could appoint officials, collect taxes and exercise justice.48 Yet, it has been demonstrated that they also had plentiful occasions to intervene in government affairs: they were their husbands’ advisors and mediated on behalf of supplicants; they intervened in the conduct of wars and negotiated peace; and they filled in for the kings in the Cortes (Parliament) and in the conduct of government during the king’ absences, among other roles.49 In fact, they represented monarchy as much as their husbands and the heir to the throne, and when travelling around the kingdom they were treated with the same deference as them.50 They used the same titles as the kings and were represented on seals with the insignia of royal authority: crowns and sceptres.51 48 Manuela Santos Silva, “El señorío urbano de las reinas consortes de Portugal (siglos XII– XV),” in Ser mujer en la ciudad medieval europea, ed. Jesus Ángel Solórzano Telechea, Beatriz Arízaga Bulumburu and Amélia Aguiar de Andrade (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2013), 271–288; Id., “Small Towns Belonging to the Medieval Queens of Portugal: Distinctiveness, Taxation, Jurisdiction,” in Petites villes européennes au Bas Moyen Âge: perspectives de recherche, ed. Adelaide Millán da Costa (Lisbon: IEM – Instituto de Estudos Medievais, 2013), 125–136; Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “La reine, la cour, la ville au Portugal médiéval,” in La cour et la ville dans l’Europe du Moyen Âge et des Temps Modernes, ed. Léonard Courbon and Denis Menjot (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 77–90. 49 Giulia Rossi Vairo, “Il protagonismo d’Isabel d’Aragona, regina del Portogallo, nella Guerra civile alla luce delle fonti portoghesi, aragonesi e dei Regesta Vaticana (1321–1322),” in Reginae Iberiae: El poder regio femenino en los reinos medievales peninsulares, ed. Miguel García-Fernández and Sílvia Cernadas Martínez (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2015), 131–150; Manuela Santos Silva, “Filipa e Catalina de Lancaster e as negociações da paz de 1411 entre Portugal e Castela – segundo os cronistas portugueses,” in La participación de las mujeres en lo político. Mediación, representación y toma de decisiones, ed. María Isabel del Val Valdivieso and Cristina Segura Graiño (Madrid: Al-Mudayna, 2011), 281–91; Id., “Felipa de Lancáster, la dama inglesa que fue modelo de reginalidad en Portugal (1387–1415),” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 46, 1 (2016): 203–230; Isabel de Pina Baleiras, “The political role of a Portuguese Queen in late fourteenth century,” in Queenship in the Mediterranean. Negotiating the Role of the Queen in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras, ed. Elena Woodacre (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 97–123; Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “«Polla raynha Dona Lionor mjnha molher que sobre todas amo e preço». D Duarte e D. Leonor de Aragão: uma parceria aquém e além-túmulo,” in D. Duarte e a sua época: Arte, cultura, poder e espiritualidade, ed. Catarina Fernandes Barreira and Miguel Metelo de Seixas (Lisbon: IEM – Instituto de Estudos Medievais / CLEGH – Centro de Estudos Genealógicos, Heráldicos e Históricos, 2014) 67–83. 50 Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “A mesa, o leito, a arca, a mula. Como se provia ao sustento e itinerância das rainhas de Portugal na Idade Média,” in A mesa dos reis de Portugal, ed. Ana Isabel Buescu and David Felismino (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2011), 44–63. 51 Maria do Rosário Barbosa Morujão, “A imagem do poder no feminino: selos de rainhas portuguesas da Idade Média,” in Reginae Iberiae: El poder regio femenino en los reinos medievales peninsulares, ed. Miguel García-Fernández and Sílvia Cernadas Martínez (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2015), 89–109; Ana Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Gendering Medieval Portugal 29 Queens consort could also rule as regents after their husbands’ death if the heir to the throne was under-age. There was no specific law determining or preventing this; yet it was often overtly stipulated in the last wills and testaments of kings. It only happened, effectively, twice during the Middle Ages, though; and in both cases the dowager queens were evicted from the regency by the brothers of the deceased kings supported by part of the nobility and the oligarchy of the urban centres, who vigorously opposed women’s rule.52 In fact, queens consort were much more appreciated by their contemporaries when they abstained from intervening in government and conformed to traditional female roles. For example, some of them were praised for their virtue and piety to the point of being presented as potential saints.53 Chroniclers described in great detail the original features of their religiosity, the protection they granted to the Church and the poor, their contribution to the introduction of new or reformed religious orders in the kingdom, and their religious foundations, thus allowing historians to explore these dimensions of their agency.54 All this was often performed in conjunction with their husbands and for the Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Rainhas de Portugal e do(s) Algarve(s): A intitulação das rainhas de Portugal na Idade Média,” in Raízes Medievais do Brasil Moderno. Do Reino de Portugal ao Reino Unido de Portugal, Brasil e Algarves, ed. Manuela Mendonça and Maria de Fátima Reis (Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa da História, 2016), 75–94: Id., “Espacios y objetos de poder reginal en la Edad Media: el caso portugués,” in Autoridad, poder e influencia: Mujeres que hacen historia, ed. Henar Gallego Franco and María del Carmen García Herrero ( Barcelona: Icaria, 2017), 35–60. 52 Maria Alegria Fernandes Marques, “O papel das rainhas na consolidação do reino (Os testamentos dos primeiros reis de Portugal),” Revista Portuguesa de História 44 (2013): 79–93; Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Las regencias femeninas en los reinos ibéricos medievales: ¿Fue el caso portugués una singularidad?” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 46, 1 (2016): 301–328; Manuel Francisco Ramos, “«Mulier ne debuerit habere regnum»: a regência na menoridade de D. Afonso V vista pelos juristas,” Medievalista 23 (2018): 1–33. 53 Manuela Santos Silva, “A construção coeva da imagem de Filipa de Lencastre como uma «santa rainha»,” in Representações do mito na História e na Literatura, ed. Ana Luísa Vilela, Elisa Nunes Santos, Fábio Mário da Silva and Margarida Reffoios (Évora: Universidade de Évora, 2014), 137–147. 54 Manuela Santos Silva, “Tendências e agentes espirituais da capela régia de D. Filipa de Lencastre,” in Raízes Medievais do Brasil Moderno: Ordens religiosas entre Portugal e o Brasil, ed. João Marinho dos Santos and Manuela Mendonça (Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa da História – Centro de História da Sociedade e da Cultura, 2013), 70–81; Id., “Filipa de Lancáster en Portugal (1387–1415): ¿las raíces de una nueva religiosidad?” Edad Media. Revista de Historia 18 (2017): 101–117; Vanda Lourenço Menino, “A religiosidade de uma rainha: D. Beatriz (1293–1359),” in Género e interioridade na vida religiosa: Conceitos, contextos e práticas, ed. João Luís Fontes, Maria Filomena Andrade and Tiago Pires Marques (Lisboa: Centro de Estudos de História Religiosa, 2017), 45–64; Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Isabel de Coímbra y los modelos de religiosidad reginal en los reinos ibéricos a fines de la Edad Media,” Edad Media. Revista de Historia 18 (2017): 118–145. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
30 Rodrigues good of the kingdom; but it could also be done by queens alone as a way of enhancing their reputation and increasing their influence.55 The queens’ religious patronage was frequently an artistic patronage as well: they promoted the construction of churches and nunneries, and ordered altarpieces and reliquaries to donate to their favourite religious institutions, though they also had crowns made and palaces built.56 Sometimes, they brought with them from their original kingdoms artists, musicians and craftsmen, as well as books and artistic pieces that were later translated and copied, thus contributing to the introduction of new ideas, fashions and styles.57 The Queens consorts’ artistic patronage could again be the occasion for them to make sure that their memory would last forever and they would be remembered as pious and powerful women. This is particularly patent in their commissioning of funerary monuments with effigies.58 To sum up, in the years that have elapsed since the last review on Portuguese medieval women’s and gender history was written, a great deal of research 55 Miriam Shadis, “The First Queens of Portugal and the Building of the Realm,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Therese Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012), vol. 2, 671–702; Maria Filomena Andrade, “Foundresses and Patronesses of Portuguese Mendicant Nunneries in the 13th and 14th Centuries: Practices and Models,“ in Women’s Networks of Spiritual Promotion in the Peninsular Kingdoms (13th–16th Centuries), ed. Blanca Garí (Barcelona/Roma, IRCVM/Viella, 2013), 77–88; Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Spirituality and Religious Sponsorship in the 15th-century Portuguese Crown: Kings, Queens and Infantes,” in Ibidem, 205–220; Id., “The Crown, the Court and Monastic Reform in Medieval Portugal. A Gendered Approach,” in Queens, Princesses and Mendicants. Close Relations in a European Perspective, ed. Nikolas Jaspert and Imke Just (Zurich: Lit Verlag, 2019), 53–63. 56 Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “The treasures and foundations of Isabel, Beatriz, Elisenda, and Leonor. The art patronage of four queens of Portugal and Aragon in the 14th century,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Therese Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012) vol. 2, 903–935. 57 Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, “Royal Marriages and the Circulation of People, Objects and Ideas in Medieval Europe,” in Medieval Europe in Motion: The Circulation of Artists, Images, Patterns and Ideas from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Coast (6th–15th centuries), ed. Maria Alessandra Bilotta (Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali, 2018), 21–29. 58 Joana Ramôa Melo, O Género Feminino em Discussão. Re-presentações da mulher na arte tumular medieval portuguesa: projectos, processos e materializações, unpublished PhD thesis (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2012); Id., “Ser rainha e ser presente, ser mulher e ser potente: o suposto primeiro jacente régio português e as dúvidas geradas em torno da pertença a D. Urraca (1187–1220) ou D. Beatriz Afonso (1244–1300),” in Reginae Iberiae: El poder regio femenino en los reinos medievales peninsulares, ed. Miguel García-Fernández and Sílvia Cernadas Martínez (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2015), 61–88; Giulia Rossi Vairo, Dinis del Portogallo e Isabel d’Aragona in vita e in morte. Creazione e trasmissione della memoria nel contesto storico e artistico europeo, unpublished PhD thesis (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2014). Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Gendering Medieval Portugal 31 has been done on aristocratic women and men, especially queens, kings and noblemen. Now, it is necessary to turn our attention to other social groups to understand how the gender system worked in its entirety, not only within the highest strata of society. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues - 9789004459397 Downloaded from Brill.com 03/06/2024 03:28:47PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/