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Chariots of Ladies
Francesc Eiximenis and the Court Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Iberia
Nuria Silleras-Fernandez (Author)
9780801453830
Hardback, published 25 November 2015
328 pages, 6 halftones, 1 geneaological tree, 1 map - 6 Halftones, black and white
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.7 cm, 0.907 kg
Convincingly demonstrates the lasting influence of Eiximenis's models of womanly virtue and queenship.... Seamlessly unites literary and historical analysis, and the result is illuminating and eminently readable. Besides its perfect contextualization, his- torical detail, historiographical precision, and general knowledge about the world surrounding Eiximenis across the Crown of Aragon (which occupies most of the first part of the book, "Genesis"), the author puts the emphasis in the processes whereby those powerful women appropri- ate the work, making it their own.... This is a great book.
In Chariots of Ladies, Núria Silleras-Fernández traces the development of devotion and female piety among the Iberian aristocracy from the late Middle Ages into the Golden Age, and from Catalonia to the rest of Iberia and Europe via the rise of the Franciscan Observant movement. A program of piety and morality devised by Francesc Eiximenis, a Franciscan theologian, royal counselor, and writer in Catalonia in the 1390s, came to characterize the feminine ideal in the highest circles of the Iberian aristocracy in the era of the Empire. As Eiximenis's work was adapted and translated into Castilian over the century and a half that followed, it became a model of devotion and conduct for queens and princesses, including Isabel the Catholic and her descendants, who ruled over Portugal and the Spanish Empire of the Hapsburgs. Silleras-Fernández uses archival documentation, letters, manuscripts, incunabula, and a wide range of published material to clarify how Eiximenis's ideas on gender and devotion were read by Countess Sanxa Ximenis d'Arenós and Queen Maria de Luna of Aragon and how they were then changed by his adaptors and translators in Castile for new readers (including Isabel the Catholic and Juana the Mad), and in sixteenth-century Portugal for new patronesses (Juana's daughter, Catalina of Habsburg, and Catalina's daughter, Maria Manuela, first wife of Philip II). Chariots of Ladies casts light on a neglected dimension of encounter and exchange in Iberia from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries.
Introduction: Eiximenis, His Patronesses, and Female Virtue in Late Medieval and Early Modern IberiaPart I. Genesis1. A Return to Piety: Eiximenis and the Culture of the Late Medieval Catalan Court (The Crown of Aragon, 1327–1409)2. Noble Inspiration: Sanxa Ximenis d'Arenós and the Book of Women (Valencia, c. 1380–96)3. Fit for a Queen: The Scala Dei, Franciscan Queenship, and Maria de Luna (Barcelona, c. 1396–1410)Part II. Afterlife4. Found in Translation: Isabel the Catholic Reads Eiximenis (Castile, c. 1490–1516)5. Eiximenis on the Atlantic: The Chariot of Ladies and Catalina of Habsburg (Portugal, c. 1525–78)Conclusion: Feminine Virtue, Female Agency, and the Legacy of EiximenisWorks Cited
Index