The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800

by William Monter

  Notes

  Chapter 1. Early Female Sovereigns in Global Perspective

  1. Jean Blondel, World Leaders: Heads of Government in the Post-War World (London, 1980), 116.

  2. Jacob Lassner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam (Chicago, 1993).

  3. Anna Maria Capomacchia, Semiramis: Una femminilità ribaltata (Rome, 1986), 13.

  4. Quotes from Joan R. Piggott, “The Last Classical Female Sovereign: Koken-Shotoku Tenno,” in Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan Piggott, eds., Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (Berkeley, 2003), 48; Richard Stoneman, Palmyra and Its Empire: Zenobia's Revolt against Rome (Ann Arbor, 1992), 6, 119; Gavin R. G. Hambly, “Becoming Visible,” in Gavin Hambly, ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World (New York, 1998), 9; and Abou'lkasim Firdousi, Le livre des rois, trans. Jules Mohl (Paris, 1838–78), 7:337.

  5. Götz Schregle, Die Sultanin von Ägypten: Sagat ad-Durr in der Arabischen Geschichtschreibung und Literatur (Wiesbaden, 1961).

  6. Duane Roller, Cleopatra: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 2010), 106–7, 179–83; also Jonathan Williams, “Imperial Style and the Coins of Cleopatra and Mark Antony,” in Susan Walker and Sally-Ann Ashton, eds., Cleopatra Reassessed (British Museum, 2003), 87–94.

  7. Pat Southern, Empress Zenobia: Palmyra's Rebel Queen (London, 2008).

  8. Suggested in December 689 by a high-ranking official, the son of one of her cousins, Zetian characters were required for official documents throughout the empire and remained in use during her personal reign but were abandoned immediately after her abdication. Estimates of the number of new ideographic characters involved range from twelve to nineteen, and the first change affected Wu's own name: see R. W. L. Guisso, Wu Tse T'ien and the Politics of Legitimation in T'ang China (Bellingham, Wash., 1978), 221–22; useful examples adorn chapter headings in Jonathan Clements, Wu: The Chinese Empress Who Schemed, Seduced and Murdered Her Way to Become a Living God (Stroud, UK, 2007).

  9. Judith Herrin, Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (Princeton, 2001).

  10. Firdousi, Livre des rois, 7:340–43; Jenny Rose, in Hambly, Medieval Islamic World, 43–45; Antonio Panaino, “Women and Kingship: Some remarks about the enthronisation of Queen Boran and her sister Azarmigduxt,” in Josef Wiesehöfer and Philip Huyse, eds., Eran und Aneran. Studien zu den Beziehungen zwischen dem Sasanidenreich und der Mittelmeerwelt (Stuttgart, 2006), 221–40; H. M. Malek and V. S. Curtis, “History of the Coinage of the Sassanian Queen Boran (A.D. 629–31),” in Numismatic Chronicle 158 (1998), 113–29.

  11. Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam (Cambridge, 1993), 115–38; Farhad Daftary, “Sayyida Hurra,” in Hambly, Medieval Islamic World, 117–30. No coins are known.

  12. After Suiko (Tenno 33), Tenno 35 ruled for three years, Tenno 37 for six-plus years, Tenno 41 for eleven years, Tenno 43 for eight years, Tenno 44 for a few months, Tenno 46 for nine years, and Tenno 48 for six years: see Joan R. Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (Stanford, 1997).

  13. Piggott, “Koken-Shotoku Tenno,” 47–74, esp. 52–54.

  14. It still stands in her old capital of Gyeongju in South Korea: Nha Il-Seong, “Silla's Cheomseongdae,” in Korea Journal 41 (2001), 269–81.

  15. Yung-Chung Kim, ed., Women of Korea: A History from Ancient Times to 1945 (Seoul, 1976), 25–30.

  16. David Lang, Studies in the Numismatic History of Georgia in Transcaucasia (New York, 1955), 22–27, 28–33; Stephen H. Rapp, “Coinage of T'amar, Sovereign of Georgia in Caucasia,” Le Muséon 106 (1993), 309–30. In Europe, no coin of joint rulers placed the wife's name first until 1566.

  17. Antony Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia (University Park, Penn., 1998), 93–184; M. Canard, “Les reines de Georgie dans l'histoire et la légende musulmanes,” Revue des Etudes islamiques 42 (1969), 3–20.

  18. Minhaj Siraj Juzjani, Tabakat-i-Nasiri, ed. and trans. H. G. Raverty, 2 vols. (London, 1881–87), 1:637–38; Peter Jackson, “Sultan Raddiya bint Iltutmish,” in Hambly, Medieval Islamic World, 181–97; for her coins, Stan Goron and J. P. Goenka, The Coins of the Indian Sultanates (New Delhi, 2001), 26–27, 153–54.

  19. It is approved by ’Ismat ad-Din, the title on her coins: printed by Schregle, Sultanin von Ägypten, 161–65.

  20. Peter Jackson, The Seventh Crusade, 1244–1254: Sources and Documents (Aldershot, 2007), offers the best recent introduction to these events.

  21. Ibid., 153. A Victorian expert noted that “the inscriptions [on her coins] are unparalleled in Oriental numismatics”: S. Lane Poole, The Coinage of Egypt (AH 358–922) (London, 1879), xvii–xxi.

  22. Jackson, Seventh Crusade, 216.

  23. Hambly, Medieval Islamic World, 18; Mirnissi, Forgotten Queens, 99–100.

  24. G. Gyorffy, King St. Stephen of Hungary (Boulder, 1991), 45; Miriam Yalom, Birth of the Chess Queen (New York, 2004).

  25. Therese Martin, Queen as King: Politics and Architectural Propaganda inTwelfth-Century Spain (Leiden, 2006), 198–207 (at 199).

  26. Maria del Carmen Pallares Mendez, La Reina Urraca (San Sebastian, 2006), 12, 105–7; Elena Lobato Yanes, Urraca I: La Corte Castellano-Leonesa en el siglo XII (Palencia, 2000), 126; Martin, Queen as King, 29.

  27. Marsilio Cassotti, D. Teresa: A primeira rainha de Portugal (Lisbon, 2008).

  28. Charles Beem, The Lioness Roared (New York, 2006), 25–62. On her seal and charters, see Elizabeth Danbury, “Queens and Powerful Women: Image and Authority,” in N. Adams, J. Cherry, and J. Robinson, eds., Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals (London, 2008), 18.

  29. Joyce Tyldesley, Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh (London, 1996), 103–4.

  30. Antonino Forte, Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century (Naples, 1976), 204, 268 (quotes). Two authentic accounts from Wu's time, now in the British Library, were finally identified as such after World War II. On Wu's use of this sutra, compare Guisso, Wu and the Politics of Legitimation, 37–46, 66–68, with Clements, Wu, 134–37. Three centuries later an official Chinese history would claim that Wu had it fabricated: see Nghiem Toan and Louis Ricaud, Wou Tsö-T'ien d'après le texte du Nouveau livre des T'ang (Saigon, 1958–59), 117.

  31. Cynthia Herrup, “The King's Two Genders,” Journal of British Studies 45 (2006), 493–510; Louis Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth (Chicago, 2006), 201–3, 234–5, 245–6.

  Chapter 2. Europe's Female Sovereigns, 1300–1800

  1. Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem (Oxford, 1993), 274. The British Museum has over two dozen of Sati Beg's coins from several mints; see Stephen Album, Checklist of Islamic Coins, 2d ed. (Santa Rosa, Calif., 1998), 108; Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam (Cambridge, 1993), 85–6, 107–10.

  2. This section summarizes my article “Gendered Sovereignty: Numismatics and Female Rule, 1300–1800,” in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41 (spring 2011): 533–64.

  3. Alphonse de Witte, Histoire monétaire des Comtes de Louvain, Ducs de Brabant et Marquis du Saint-Empire Romain, 3 vols. (Antwerp, 1894–99), 1:156. As late as 1498 another female ruler of a (temporarily) autonomous duchy, Anne of Brittany, issued equally daring gold coins depicting her seated and enthroned.

  4. Maximilian's name nowhere appears on the 92 gold and silver coins from her five-year reign in the Belgian Royal Library, or on any of her more than 150 silver coins from four of her provincial mints possessed by the American Numismatic Society (ANS); her annual averages surpass those of either her male predecessor or her male successor.

  5. The ANS holds over 90 coins from their joint reign (1598–1621), but only 28 of them are silver and only one albertin (named for her husband) is gold.

  6. Margaret and her successors kept Norway's mints closed for a century after 1387; Danish coins had apparently resumed by 1400.

  7. 1507–15 and 1518–30, 1531–55, 1559–67, 1598–1633, 1725–41, and 1780–93. Mar
ia Theresa's younger sister also governed it jointly with her new husband for much of 1744 before dying in childbirth. Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic 1477–1806 (Oxford, 1995), 981–83, sketches the government of the region's most obscure female regent, Maria Elisabeth, an older sister of Emperor Charles VI.

  8. David Chambers, Discours de la legitime succession des femmes aux possessions de leurs parens et du gouvernement des princesses aux Empires et Royaumes (Paris, 1579), 16.

  9. Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (reprint, London, 2002), 153 (emphasis added).

  10. See page 82 for a fuller discussion.

  11. Her candidacy generated 267 letters, now preserved in France; Waclaw Uruszczak, Polonica w korespondencji królowej szwedzkiej Krystyny w zbiorach Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire w Montpellier (Cracow, 2001).

  12. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York, 1953), 130.

  13. Alison Weir, Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley (London, 2003), 77, 99, 388.

  14. Albertus Magnus, Quaestiones de animalibus, book 10, q. 4.

  15. At her formal entry into Ghent in 1599, the sovereign archduchess Isabel Clara Eugenia was girded with a traditional sword: see Ruth Betegón Diez, Isabel Clara Eugenia: Infanta de España y soberana de Flandes (Barcelona, 2004), 99.

  16. Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica: vida y reinado (Madrid, 2002), 181; Christian Steeb, “Kaiser Franz I. und seine ablehende Haltung gegenüber der Stiftung des königlich ungarischen St.-Stephans-Ordens,” in H. Dikowitsch, ed., Barock–Blütezeit der europäischen Ritterorden (St. Polten, 2000), 35: per fictionem juris virtute pragmaticae sanctionis die qualiatem masculinam anererbet hat.

  17. Louis Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth (Chicago, 2006), 231.

  18. Later in his sixty-year reign, George III suffered a major breakdown and was replaced by his heir from 1810 until 1820.

  19. John H. Elliott, ed., The World of the Favorite (New Haven, 1999), includes Elizabeth I and Leicester.

  20. For analogous reasons, this consideration helps explain why no French king or Holy Roman emperor married one of his own subjects.

  Chapter 3. Difficult Beginnings

  1. Armin Wolf, “Reigning Queens in Medieval Europe: When, Where, and Why?” in John Carmi Parsons, ed., Medieval Queenship (New York, 1993), 169–88. The 1:8 ratio also holds between 1600 and 1800 among the far fewer but larger monarchies permitting female successions.

  2. Charlotte of Cyprus bequeathed her claims to her husband's Savoyard relatives; Blanca of Navarre bequeathed hers to her ex-husband, Enrique IV of Castile; and Juana la Beltraneja of Castile bequeathed hers to her long-dead husband's Portuguese heirs.

  3. S. Herreros Lopetegui, “Navarra en la órbita francesa,” in Historia de Navarra (Pamplona, 1993), 1:193–208.

  4. The relevant document is the only one of seventeen surviving from his reign in Navarre written in French rather than Latin: M. D. Barragán Domeño, ed., Fuentes documentales medievales del Pais Vasco: Archivo General de Navarra, I: Documentación Real (San Sebastian, 1997), 18 (#6).

  5. There is now a considerable body of scholarship on the so-called Salic law; see especially Eliane Viennot, La France, les femmes et le pouvoir, vol. 1, L'invention de la loi salique (V–XVIe siècle) (Paris, 2006).

  6. Béatrice Leroy, “A propos de la succession de 1328 en Navarre,” in Annales du Midi 82 (1970), 138–46. On their reign, see Fermín Miranda García, Felipe III y Juana II de Evreux, 2d ed. (Pamplona, 1994), 53–65. Their successors, escaping from Spanish invaders in 1512, carried Navarre's official invitation back to France; with twenty-one of its original eighty-seven seals still attached, it is now in the departmental archives at Pau, E 517.

  7. Archivo General de Navarra, Catalogo de la Sección de Comptos, I (842–1331) (Pamplona, 1952), 380–81 (# 879, 883).

  8. Barragán Domeño, Documentación Real, 55–62, esp. 58.

  9. Ibid., 64–70, 78–86.

  10. Philippe Charon, “Les chanceliers d'origine française des rois de Navarre, comtes d'Evreux au XIVe siècle,” Principe de Viana 60 (1999), 119–44; Miranda García, Felipe III y Juana II de Evreux, 113–14, 136–38, 84 (quote). The couple drew far more income from their French possessions than from Navarre; most of the money spent at their coronation came from their French domains.

  11. Barragán Domeño, Documentación Real, 71–301 (#45–180).

  12. Nancy Goldstone, The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I (New York, 2009), 79.

  13. This section relies heavily on Elizabeth Casteen, “The Making of a Neapolitan She-Wolf: Gender, Sexuality and Sovereignty and the Reputation of Johanna I of Naples” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2009), and on Goldstone's Lady Queen. Contrary to the assumption of many writers, including Boccaccio, Robert the Wise gave Joanna's fiancé no titles and none of his lands except a principality that he and his fiancée already shared. Compare a reproduction of one of her earliest state seals (1346), with a later one, .

  14. Matteo Villani, Cronica, ed. G. Porta (Parma, 1995), 1:9: maestra, e donna del suo Barone, il quale come marito dovea essere suo signore.

  15. Emile-G. Léonard, Les Angevins de Naples (Paris, 1954), 402–3.

  16. Boccaccio, Famous Women, ed. V. Brown (Cambridge, 2001), 467, 471, 473. Boccaccio's much-studied feminist critic, Christine de Pizan (1365–1430), avoided any mention of Joanna in her writings and excluded her from the City of Ladies.

  17. Matteo Camera, Elucubrazioni storico-diplomatiche su Giovanna Ia, regina di Napoli e Carlo III di Durazzo (Salerno, 1889), 262 n. 1; Henri Rolland, Monnaies des comtes de Provence, XIIe–XVe siècles (Paris, 1956), 145–68, 221–37, esp. figs. 89–92 (231–34).

  18. Etienne Baluze, Vitae paparum avenionensium, 4 vols. (Paris, 1914–27), 2:646: volebat corrigere et emandare reginam, et quod regnum fuerat male rectum et gubernatum a magno tempore per feminam.

  19. Jean-François de la Harpe, Jeanne de Naples: tragédie en cinq actes et en vers: représentée par les Comediens français le 12 décembre 1781 au palais des Tuileries et à Versailles devant Leurs Majestés le 20 du même mois (Paris, 1782).

  20. Vivian Etting, Queen Margrete I (1353–1412) and the Founding of the Nordic Union (Leiden, 2004), xvii, 22, 58–59, 61, 148.

  21. Ibid., 55–56 (emphasis added), 58. Her privy seal from the early 1390s can be seen at .

  22. Full text of her instructions in Etting, 146–50.

  23. Her most recent biographer, Alessandro Cutolo, Giovanna II (Novara, 1968), judges her most detailed biographer, Nunzio Federico Faraglia, Storia della regina Giovanna II (Lanciano, 1904), to be excessively indulgent.

  24. Another female royal succession could have taken place in Castile in 1369, after its king was murdered by an uncle of illegitimate birth; but the killer ascended the throne while the dead king's two unmarried daughters sought sanctuary as far away as England. Both women married English princes and founded so-called Lancastrian lineages that played a major role in Iberia, especially Portugal, for many centuries. Illegitimacy was also no barrier to succession in fourteenth-century Italian principalities: see Jane Fair Bestor, “Bastardy and Legitimacy in the Formation of a Regional State in Italy: The Estense Succession,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38 (1996), 549–85.

  25. Her documentary trail vanishes after 1418: César Olivera Serrano, Beatriz de Portugal (Santiage de Compostela, 2005), 495 (#45).

  26. The ANS possesses coins from the reigns of the sisters who inherited Hungary and Poland but none bearing the names of their husbands, who ruled these kingdoms for thirty years after their deaths. Maria of Sicily and her husband each have one coin. Only four silver coins with the name and image of Beatrice of Portugal are known to exist. Samples of Maria of Hungary's coins at ttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MarieUhry_penize.jpg>.

  27. Maria Rita Lo Forte Scirpo, C'era una volta una regina: Due donne per un regno: Maria d'Aragona e Bianca de Navarra (Naples, 2003), 44, 67. Maria's crudely printed signature is reproduced as fig. 7.

  28. Compare Serrano, Beatriz, with the Portuguese version: Salvador Dias Arnaut, A crise nacional dos fins do seculo XIV (Coimbra, 1960).

  29. Oscar Halecki, Jadwiga of Anjou and the Rise of East Central Europe (Boulder, 1991), 150–51, 156, 164–66, 194–95, 226–27 n. 47. For her state seal, see .

  30. Ibid., 247–48, 262; Jadwiga's name never appears in the foundation charter. On her beatification and canonization, see Boleslaw Przybyszewski, Saint Jadwiga–Queen of Poland 1374–1399 (Rome/London, 1997), 83–95.

  31. On female regency government in the fifteenth-century crown of Aragon, see Theresa Earenfight, The King's Other Body: Maria of Castile and the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia, 2009). On Blanca, see Lo Forte Scirpo, C'era una volta una regina, 133–262; Laura Sciascia, “Bianca di Navarra, l'ultima regina: Storia al femminile della monarchia siciliana,” Principe de Viana 60 (1999), 293–310; Eloisa Ramirez Vaquero, Blanca y Juan II (Pamplona, 2003); and Florencio Idoate, “La coronación de unos reyes navarros en 1429,” in his Rincones de Historia de Navarra (Pamplona, 1954), 17–20.