The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria

Contents

Download PDF (56.5 KB)
pp. ix-

Acknowledgments

Download PDF (40.2 KB)
pp. xi-xii

I would like first of all to thank Karen Green, who invited me in 2003 to take part in a colloquium on Christine de Pizan’s political thought. This study has its origins in the essay that I presented there, and I am very grateful to Karen for her continued support as the project developed. Thanks also to Constant Mews for his aid...

Introduction

Download PDF (100.4 KB)
pp. xiii-xxvi

I first encountered Queen of France Isabeau of Bavaria (1371–1435) in Christine de Pizan scholarship. The queen in this context is frequently deployed as a foil, her greed and turpitude contrasted with the moralizing Christine’s righteousness.¹ Because the queen is a peripheral figure in studies of Christine’s work, I did not question the depiction initially...

1. Isabeau of Bavaria: Her Life

Download PDF (193.9 KB)
pp. 1-37

Because the career of Isabeau of Bavaria is not well known, I begin this study by recounting the most important events of her life. No narrative is unbiased, of course. What I attempt to offer, however, is one that conforms to the information available in contemporary sources. As we have seen, Isabeau continues to suffer from a negative reputation in modern histories, although her promiscuity has been shown to be a myth...

2. Isabeau of Bavaria: Her Afterlife

Download PDF (163.0 KB)
pp. 38-72

The Isabeau whose story I have just recounted appears above all to have been circumspect. During her lifetime, she was at best respected, at worst ignored. Even regarding the now infamous Treaty of Troyes, her contemporaries were not uniformly critical of her attempt to put an end to a conflict between implacable enemies...

3. Isabeau Mediatrix: Defining the Mediator Queen

Download PDF (189.6 KB)
pp. 73-112

Historians reading the same documents have drawn widely differing conclusions about the nature of Isabeau’s queenship. For some she is a powerful figure, while for others she is essentially superfluous. But the documents only appear to offer conflicting information, I argue in this chapter, becoming coherent when we reassess...

4. Isabeau’s Contemporary Reputation

Download PDF (167.1 KB)
pp. 113-148

The assumption that isabeau was detested by her contemporaries, especially the Parisians, is so firmly established that even her recent champions assume that long before her involvement in the Treaty of Troyes she was intensely disliked by the “people,” or at least that around 1405 her good name was seriously impugned because of her association with Louis of...

5. Isabeau of Bavaria and the Cour amoureuse

Download PDF (98.6 KB)
pp. 149-165

Philibert-Bernard Moreau de Mautour, who in 1727 unearthed the founding charter of the institution known today as the Cour amoureuse, assumed Isabeau to have been instrumental in the institution’s founding. The queen is not mentioned in the charter. Why then did the erudite antiquarian, member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,and author of numerous scholarly mémoires on a wide variety of subjects.....

6. Reinterpreting the Enl�vement du dauphin

Download PDF (138.9 KB)
pp. 166-192

As Geraldine Heng makes clear in the passage above, feminine narratives require their own tellings. In the following chapter, I try to coax Isabeau’s narrative from contemporary accounts of an incident that has come to be known as the enlèvement du dauphin, the “kidnapping of the dauphin.” The queen’s actions throughout the incident have been considered negligible or capricious...

7. Revisiting the Treaty of Troyes

Download PDF (145.1 KB)
pp. 193-221

Isabeau’s involvement in the Treaty of Troyes is a principal reason, or perhaps the principal reason, for her infamy. A recent biography of Joan of Arc reveals how the Treaty has served as a nexus in the popular imagination for different elements of Isabeau’s black legend, a point at which the charges of corpulence, greed, promiscuity, treachery, and maternal...

8. Wife, Mother, Friend

Download PDF (143.0 KB)
pp. 222-248

Historians of the past have waged personal attacks against the queen: that she was scheming, promiscuous, greedy, neglectful of her children, hungry for power, lacking in intelligence. She has been treated as an allegorical figure of luxuria, fleshly and obese. While no one can offer substantive information about the character of a woman who lived over six hundred years ago, I hope in this final chapter to at least mitigate some of these...

Conclusion

Download PDF (75.5 KB)
pp. 249-253

The rehabilitation of Isabeau of Bavaria has been under way for decades. Despite the fact that scholars focusing upon her have unanimously concluded that she acquired the reputation she bears today only after her death and then within a specific political context, many working in tangential areas like the Hundred Years War, Joan of Arc, Charles VII, and queenship...

Appendix: Families and Allies of Isabeau and Charles VI

Download PDF (46.7 KB)
pp. 255-256

Notes

Download PDF (196.8 KB)
pp. 257-301

Bibliography

Download PDF (150.0 KB)
pp. 303-329

Index

Download PDF (428.1 KB)
pp. 331-338