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The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria This Page Intentionally Left Blank Rethinking Theory Stephen G The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria This page intentionally left blank rethinking theory Stephen G. Nichols and Victor E. Taylor, Series Editors S E L North A D Sea W N H A L O G T Damme N N London A B R L E S A ER R h D Ghent i AN B n Calais FL e Y Lille Liège R Agincourt Tournai . l Valenciennes n n e Arras Le Quesnoy h a ARTOIS HAI h C NAUT R E n g l i s PICARDY Cherbourg Harfleur Rouen O n Compiègne Gisors Honfleur CE M a Caen AN BAR Falaise -FR e Inset E -D Touraine NORMANDY E c Map LORRAINE A IL S MAINE e Troyes O in Chartres Montereau e N Orleans R Vendôme . Montbéliard c U L Y E i O o J R i BURGUNDY N Tours R re t A E . B R R M Bourges e n . n o a a S P l Bay of I t S A Biscay I R A N T . O BOURBONNAIS R N e E 0 20 M G n E o Senlis h 0 20 Km Bordeaux R GUYENNE Meulan C S G eine R a . ro O Mantes Aubervilliers n n D Pont de Paris ARMAGNAC e Saint-Cloud R E . Neauphle Vincennes U Villejuif G RE VAR N Juvisy NA A Brétigny L Mediterranean 0 100 M Corbeil Pouilly Sea Melun ARAGON 0 100 Km ]lllll]lllll]lllll]lllll]lllll]lllll] The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria TRACY ADAMS The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2010 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 987654321 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Adams, Tracy, 1959– The life and afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria / Tracy Adams. p. cm. — (Rethinking theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8018-9625-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8018-9625-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Isabella, Queen, consort of Charles VI, King of France, 1370–1435. 2. Isabella, Queen, consort of Charles VI, King of France, 1370–1435—Public opinion. 3. Queens— France—Biography. 4. Mediators (Persons)—France—Biography. 5. Women—Political activity—France—History—To 1500. 6. Charles VI, King of France, 1368–1422. 7. France—History—Charles VI, 1380 –1422. I. Title. DC101.7.I7A336 2010 944Ј.026092—dc22 [B] 2009046067 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid-free, and our jackets and covers are printed on paper with recycled content. For Glenn, Danny, and Elf This page intentionally left blank contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii 1 Isabeau of Bavaria: Her Life 1 2 Isabeau of Bavaria: Her Afterlife 38 3 Isabeau Mediatrix: Defining the Mediator Queen 73 4 Isabeau’s Contemporary Reputation 113 5 Isabeau of Bavaria and the Cour amoureuse 149 6 Reinterpreting the Enlèvement du dauphin 166 7 Revisiting the Treaty of Troyes 193 8 Wife, Mother, Friend 222 Conclusion 249 Appendix: Families and Allies of Isabeau and Charles VI 255 Notes 257 Bibliography 303 Index 331 This page intentionally left blank acknowledgments would like first of all to thank Karen Green, who invited me in I 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 devel- oped. Thanks also to Constant Mews for his aid and encouragement in so many ways. The debt of gratitude I owe to Jeff Richards is enormous; he has been generous in sharing his knowledge, scholarship, and friendship. James Laidlaw was encouraging early on in this project, kindly sharing both his ex- pertise and documents with me. His scrupulous scholarship, which moves effortlessly between the historical and the literary, has been my model, al- though I have certainly fallen short of his example. Françoise Autrand gra- ciously received me in her home and shared a portion of her lifetime of scholarship with me. I would also like to thank Thelma Fenster, whose schol- arship and conversation have been inspiring and thought-provoking. Last, I have been very fortunate to work with the Johns Hopkins University Press. Michele Callaghan has been the ideal editor. A special thanks to colleagues and friends who have contributed to this project in ways direct and indirect: Christine Adams, Trudy Agar, Anne Cruz, Anne Curry, Rachel Gibbons, Julia Simms Holderness, Celita Lamar, Berna- dette Luciano, Kevin Mendousse, Raylene Ramsay, Glenn Rechtschaffen, Mihoko Suzuki, Craig Taylor, Deb Walker, Michael Wright, and Joe Zizek. A number of scholars kindly responded to a desperate message that I posted on H-France while trying to pin down the first name of a historian of the regency in France. As always, I am grateful to Steve Nichols for his contin- uing and generous aid. And a very special thanks to Kevin Hendryx for send- ing documents and encouragement. Many people and institutions have allowed me to present and receive feed- back on the ideas of this study: Anne-marie Legaré and the Institut des recherches historiques du Septentrion, Université de Lille III; Lori Walters and the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics and the History xi of Text Technologies, Florida State University; the Department of Romance Languages, University of Texas, Austin; the Medieval Studies Center, Uni- versity of Virginia; Andrew Lynch and the Medieval and Renaissance Group of the University of Western Australia, Perth; Susan Noakes and John Watkins and the Center for Medieval Studies, University of Minnesota; the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of South Carolina. I acknowledge with gratitude my colleagues and friends in SELL and the SELL office at the University of Auckland for moral support and at the University of Miami for offering a haven in which to work spring se- mester, 2008. As anyone working on Christine de Pizan knows, work carried out over the past three decades on that author’s texts has made much of her corpus accessible. I acknowledge with deep appreciation the work of colleagues and friends Liliane Dulac, Thelma Fenster, Karen Green, Angus Kennedy, James Laidlaw, Constant Mews, Therese Moreau, Christine Reno, Jeff Richards, Gabriella Parussa, Janice Pindar, Andrea Tarnowski, Josette Wisman, and, of course, our regretted colleagues, Charity Cannon Willard and Eric Hicks. I would also like to recognize the scholars, past and present, whose tireless ef- forts in the archives have resulted in the editions and the histories essential to our research today on medieval France. Thanks to the staff at the Biblio- thèque Nationale in Paris for making these volumes available, and to the staff at the Archives Nationales in Paris and the Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal for offering excellent working environments. Sylvie Merian and the staff at the Morgan Library permitted me to consult a volume on very short notice, for which I am grateful. This study could not have been completed without generous funding from the University of Auckland Research Fund, the SELL Conference Travel Fund, and the SELL PBRF fund. I am afraid that I have kept the interlibrary loan desk at the University of Auckland busy over the past several years: I am grateful for all the help. And a sad thank you to our beloved Shelley Taylor who helped me to procure a number of sources essential to this study: you are not forgotten. To my “family” in Paris, Tanguy, René, Nadine, and, most recently, Chérine, I can never thank you enough for giving me a home away from home. Thanks again to Sylvie for teaching me French and so many other things. And to Glenn, Danny, and Elf, thanks for accepting Isabeau into our family for the past several years. xii Acknowledgments introduction first encountered Queen of France Isabeau of Bavaria (1371–1435) I 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 stud- ies of Christine’s work, I did not question the depiction initially. On the con- trary, I was guilty of perpetuating it, uncritically, in one of my own articles.2 But the frequent references to the queen as a cupidinous woman of dubious morality began to strike me as out of place in a body of scholarship devoted to a figure who was herself a champion of women. Moreover, the scholarship gave no documentation for the charges. Increasingly curious, I began to search for what might lie behind them, turning to histories of medieval France for information. In these volumes I discovered the lascivious spendthrift with whom I was familiar from Christine de Pizan scholarship. A history of the Hundred Years Wars published in 2008 remarks coyly that “il [Louis of Orleans] serre d’un peu trop près sa belle-soeur, la jeune et jolie Isabeau de Bavière, la reine. Cette brunette ardente a vingt-deux ans; son mari est fou, et son séduisant beau-frère adore la faire danser.
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