Were aristocratic women in medieval France little more than appendages to patrilineal families, valued as objects of exchange and necessary only for the production of male heirs? Such was the view proposed by the great French historian Georges Duby more than three decades ago and still widely accepted. In Aristocratic Women in Medieval France another model is put forth: women of the landholding elite—from countesses down to the wives of ordinary knights—had considerable rights, and exercised surprising power. The authors of the volume offer five case studies of women from the mid-eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, and from regions as diverse as Blois-Chartres, Champagne, Flanders, and Occitania. They show not only the diversity of life experiences these women enjoyed but the range of social and political roles open to them. The ecclesiastical and secular sources they mine confirm that women were regarded as full members of both their natal and affinal families, were never excluded from inheriting and controlling property, and did not have their share of family property limited to dowries. Women across France exchanged oaths for fiefs and assumed responsibilities for enfeoffed knights. As feudal lords, they settled disputes involving vassals, fortified castles, and even led troops into battle. Aristocratic Women in Medieval France clearly shows that it is no longer possible to depict well-born women as powerless in medieval society. Demonstrating the importance of aristocratic women in a period during which they have been too long assumed to have lacked influence, it forces us to reframe our understanding of the high Middle Ages.

Modern historians have generally approached the study of medieval society through chronicles, charters, and other documents composed in Latin by members of the clergy. Although these records may be satisfactory for studying the affairs of ecclesiastics, kings, and high barons, they are inadequate for assessing the major preoccupations of the aristocracy—living extravagantly, fighting, making love, entertaining, eating and dressing ostentatiously, and, generally, earning the disapproval of the clergy. In Aristocratic Life in Medieval France, the respected medieval scholar John Baldwin undertakes a study of this segment of society using, for the first time in nearly a century, the vernacular romances written exclusively for the amusement of aristocratic audiences. Rather than attempting to encompass all of Middle Age Europe, this study selects two writers, Jean Renart and Gerbert de Montreuil, and their four romances. It focuses with depth and specificity on the discrete area of northern France during a precise period, 1190–1230. Since Jean and Gerbert framed their fictional stories with contemporary and realistic features that could be recognized by their audiences, their works provide a wealth of detail on aristocratic living. Employing such literary techniques as "reality effects" and "horizons of expectations," Baldwin successfully discerns the historical content in these romance narratives.

Medieval society was dominated by its knights and nobles. The literature created in medieval Europe was primarily a literature of knightly deeds, and the modern imagination has also been captured by these leaders and warriors. This book explores the nature of the nobility, focusing on France in the High Middle Ages (11th-13th centuries). Constance Brittain Bouchard examines their families; their relationships with peasants, townspeople, and clerics; and the images of them fashioned in medieval literary texts. She incorporates throughout a consideration of noble women and the nobility's attitude toward women.Research in the last two generations has modified and expanded modern understanding of who knights and nobles were; how they used authority, war, and law; and what position they held within the broader society. Even the concepts of feudalism, courtly love, and chivalry, once thought to be self-evident aspects of medieval society, have been seriously questioned. Bouchard presents bold new interpretations of medieval literature as both reflecting and criticizing the role of the nobility and their behavior. She offers the first synthesis of this scholarship in accessible form, inviting general readers as well as students and professional scholars to a new understanding of aristocratic role and function.

Theodore Evergates provides the first systematic analysis of the aristocracy in the county of Champagne under the independent counts. He argues that three factors—the rise of the comital state, fiefholding, and the conjugal family—were critical to shaping a loose assortment of baronial and knightly families into an aristocracy with shared customs, institutions, and identity. Evergates mines the rich, varied, and in some respects unique collection of source materials from Champagne to provide a dynamic picture of a medieval aristocracy and its evolving symbiotic relationship with the counts. Count Henry the Liberal (1152-81) began the process of transforming a quasi-independent baronage accustomed to collegial governance into an elite of landholding families subordinate to the count and his officials. By the time Countess Jeanne married the future King Philip IV of France in 1284, the fiefholding families of Champagne had become a distinct provincial nobility. Throughout, it was the conjugal community, rather than primogeniture or patrilineage, that remained the core familial institution determining the customs regarding community property, dowry, dower, and partible inheritance. Those customs guaranteed that every lineage would survive, but frequently through a younger son or daughter. The life courses of women and men, influenced not only by social norms but also by individual choice and circumstance, were equally unpredictable. Evergates concludes that imposed models of "the aristocratic family" fail to capture the diversity of individual lives and lineages within one of the more vibrant principalities of medieval France.

Countess Marie of Champagne is primarily known today as the daughter of Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine and as a literary patron of Chrétien de Troyes. In this engaging biography, Theodore Evergates offers a more rounded view of Marie as a successful ruler of one of the wealthiest and most vibrant principalities in medieval France. From the age of thirty-four until her death, Marie ruled almost continuously, initially for her husband, Henry the Liberal, during his journey to Jerusalem, then for her underage son, Henry II, and after his majority, during his absence on the Third Crusade and extended residence in the Levant. Presiding at the High Court of Champagne and attending to the many practical duties of governance, Marie acted with the advice of her court officers but without limitation by either the king or a regency council. If Henry the Liberal created the county of Champagne as a dynamic and prosperous state, it was Marie who expertly preserved and sustained it. Evergates mines Marie's letters patent and the literary and religious texts associated with her to glean a fuller picture of her life and work. He situates Marie within the regional institutions and external events that influenced her life as well as within her extended families of royal half-siblings—including King Philip II of France and her Plantagenet brothers—and her many in-laws, including the queen mother Adele and Archbishop William of Reims. Those who knew Marie best describe her as determined, gracious, and pious, as well as an effective ruler in the face of several external threats.

Theodore Evergates has assembled, translated, and annotated some two hundred documents from the country of Champagne into a sourcebook that focuses on the political, economic, and legal workings of a feudal society, uncovering the details of private life and social history that are embedded in the official records.

Explores the roles played by women of various classes in medieval society, in the nobility, in the church, and in daily life and work.