Holy Motherhood Gender, Dynasty and Visual Culture in the Later Middle Ages

by L'Estrange, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780719075438
• ISBN10: 0719075432
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-01
• Publisher: Manchester University Press

Summary

This study brings images of holy motherhood and childbearing into the center of an art-historical enquiry, showing how images worked not only to script and maintain gender and social roles within patriarchal society but also to offer viewers ways of managing those roles. Some of the manuscripts discussed are relatively unknown and their images and texts are made available to readers for the first time.Through an adaptation of Baxandall's 'period eye,' the study considers the many 'cognitive habits' acquired by aristocratic lay women and men through familiarity with prayers for childbirth, the lying-in ceremony, and the rite of churching. It then uses this methodology to interpret the images and prayers in six bespoke manuscripts, including the Fitzwilliam Hours and the Hours of Marguerite of Foix.This book was produced with financial assistance from The Medieval Academy of America, The Scouloudi Foundation and The Weiss-Brown Subvention of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Author Biography

Elizabeth L’Estrange is an FNRS Post-Doctoral Fellow in History of Art at the University of Liège in Belgium.

Table of Contents

List of plates	p. ix
List of figures	p. xi
Preface and acknowledgements	p. xvi
Family trees of the houses of France, Anjou, Brittany and Burgundy	p. xviii
Introduction	p. 1
Gender, agency and the interpretation of material culture	p. 23
The situational eye: viewing, gender and response in the later middle ages	p. 25
De conceptione ad partum: saints, treatises and prayers for successful childbirth	p. 44
The lying-in month and the rite of churching: post-partum rituals and the material culture of childbearing	p. 76
Manuscript case studies from the houses of Anjou, Brittany and France	p. 111
Holy mothers, sainted monarchs and beata stirps: the Fitzwilliam Hours and Books of Hours for the house of Anjou	p. 113
Steriles fecundas fecisti: viewing and reading holy motherhood in the manuscripts of four duchesses of Brittany	p. 199
Conclusion	p. 248
Prayer and translation from the Hours of Marguerite of Foix	p. 257
Prayer and translation from the Prayer Book of Anne of Brittany	p. 260
Bibliography	p. 263
Index	p. 278
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