A story to start with...
In the year 1206, according to the fourteenth-century chronicle writer Wilhelm Procurator, the countess of Gelre, a county in the Netherlands, spots a young man, while she is looking out of one of the windows of her castle (Gumbert-Hepp and Gumbert 2001, 111–113). She monitors the young man in question and is puzzled. She wonders why a seemingly perfectly healthy and well-built man is looking like a beggar. There must be something wrong. She takes another look out of the window, checks out the wonderful legs of the beggar and she knows; this young man is defi nitely not a beggar. He can only be a man of high standing, he must be Count Willem I of Holland!
The countess orders a messenger to invite the beggar into the castle and she confronts him with her suspicions. Willem is not willing to admit he is Count Willem in disguise. That seems a perfectly under-standable thing, too. Count Otto of Gelre and the count of Holland are not really on speaking terms, ac-cording to Procurator, and it would be very unwise for Willem to make himself known in this situation.
The countess eventually succeeds in her plans to get Willem’s identity confi rmed and Willem himself admits to being the count of Holland. She then offers the young man a bath and some clean clothes, a well-known ritual in showing hospitality to guests. She houses Willem temporarily in a chamber next to the great hall.
The countess then waits for Count Otto to come home. When he arrives, they greet each other and the countess asks her husband almost immediately if he can grant her one special request. The count answers that he will grant her any request she might have, of course, because she is his wife. She asks her husband to support a marriage between their daughter Aleida and Count Willem of Holland. The count objects, of course. How on earth can he give his permission to the marriage if even the groom, the countess aims at, is not aware of the request himself? His wife then reminds him of his promise;
could she not ask for whatever she wanted? She visits Willem in the chamber and tells him what she has discussed with her husband. She makes her plan known to Willem and he agrees to a wedding. Willem is introduced to Count Otto and Otto can do nothing else but give in, if he wants to retain his honour.
Procurator makes him comment: “...nothing can prevent God from executing his own plan.” Aleida also gives her consent, the wedding takes place and the two families that once waged war on each other, now live together in peace and harmony.
The making of ... man and woman
What makes this passage in the chronicle interesting is not the fact that this situation, as described by Procurator, never took place this way. Yes, Willem was on the run and yes, the count of Holland married the count of Gelre’s daughter, but the historical facts present a different picture all together.
The wedding took place, not in 1206 but in 1197, as two Dutch historians, Hattinga van ‘t Sant and F.
Hugenholtz, presented in their 1985 article on Procurators’ story (Hattinga van ‘t Sant and Hugenholtz 1985). Willem was, as the son of the count of Holland, the second in line (1203–1222). As a younger son, he had to gain his own fortune. In 1197, he pays his brother, Count Dirk VII of Holland a visit.
During dinner Willem is taken captive by his old enemy Hendrik de Kraan (the Crane) and his brother
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does not do anything to prevent this or to rescue his younger brother. Willem succeeds in fl eeing and he goes underground at the court of Count Otto of Gelre. There he will probably have met Aleida, his future wife.
The historians Hugenholtz and Hattinga argue that the story, as invented by Procurator, must be seen as an adventure of a iuvenis, a young man, who succeeds in making his own fortune. In this light, the story can be seen as a compliment to the count of Holland.
What interests me however, is the way the author, Willem Procurator, uses the medieval stere-otypes of man and woman to make his version of reality work. He writes this part of his chronicle as if he were writing a medieval romance. This is probably why Hugenholtz and Hattinga point out Willem as the hero of this story. This is actually not quite in accordance with Procurator’s way of handling the subject matter. Procurator does not make Willem, but the countess of Gelre, who is never mentioned by her name, the most important person in the story. She recognizes Count Willem and she works out a plan to mislead her husband, because, as Procurator is well aware, a man like the count of Gelre will not himself take the fi rst step to make peace with his enemy. That would be a clear signal of fading power and infl uence, a disgrace for every medieval knight. So, Procurator makes the countess act like a stereotype medieval woman, staying indoors while her husband is out hunting or waging war. She, a woman caring for her family and making use of strategic misleading techniques, as only a woman can do, brings both men together in an effort to make peace, without anyone of them having to sacrifi ce his or her honour. We know from Christine de Pisan’s Le livre de trois vertus that this is exactly one of the tasks of a noble housewife:
“This is the proper duty of the wise Queen and princess: to be the means of peace and concord, to work for the avoidance of war because of the trouble that can come of it. Ladies in particular ought to attend to this business, for men are by nature more courageous and more hot-headed, and the desire they have to avenge themselves prevents their considering either the perils or the evils that can result from war. But women are by nature more timid and also of a sweeter disposition, and for this reason, if they are wise and if they wish to, they can be the best means of pacifying men.” (Lawson 2003, 23–24)
In the end, however, Procurator does not declare the countess as the hero of the day. She did not bring about this fortunate development by her own doing; she acts as an instrument of God, inspired by his will.
The castle in this passage of the chronicle acts as a stage setting, against which man and woman play out their different roles.1 According to Procurator a man’s tasks lie outside the castle, he is adven-turous, proud and has his principles. He bewares of loosing his honour and never breaks his word. A woman, as we can read with Procurator between the lines, spends her life inside the castle, she cares for her family and always works to bring about peace. Although in this story she takes initiative, this is clearly not a natural trait of women in general, because as we understand, her acting in this situation is purely the doing of God. God uses the countess as his instrument. The way the countess brings about her success, is not very fl attering either: she has to mislead her husband to get what she wants.
If we analyze what is happening in the story, we can abstract a few contrasting characteristics: man – woman, outdoors – indoors, war – peace, business – family, active – passive, frankness – deceit. What do we make of the image of man and wife that takes shape before our eyes?
The image, of the man as the active and positive force and of the woman as the passive and nega-tive factor, seems to be based on the writings on man and woman by medieval thinkers and writers.
These thoughts were, as is known now for a long time, almost exclusively produced and spread by male writers and poets, who had already in an early phase occupied the realm of science.
1 One can also fi nd this idea of the castle as a stage setting in illuminations in manuscripts, for instance the visualisation of the marriage of Willem of Orleans and Amelie, the Gaue KB 76 E 1, KB The Hague, fol. 336v. Interestingly, the events in the castle are more or less visualized like they are played in some kind of theatrical setting, by the way you look inside the castle.
See for this illumination: http://collecties.meermanno.nl/handschriften/showillu?id=1851 (accessed November 17 2011).
Medieval etymological works state that the Latin word for ‘man’, vir, came from ‘power’, vis (Bullough 1994, 32–33). The essence of masculinity for medieval scientists was power. The American historian Vern L. Bullough comprises the tasks of medieval men as follows: to make women pregnant, to protect the weak and to take care of your family. The word ‘female’, was based on the Latin word mulier, which means ‘soft’. The life of a female was, consequently, to be spent indoors as much as pos-sible according to the beliefs of the time.
In most medieval art historical and literary sources where castles are mentioned (and, it should be said, they were mostly created by men) medieval noble women are “confi ned in their own towers”, to use the words of Roberta Gilchrist in her study about the social position of noble women in medieval society:
“The chaste female body was the key to patrimony, and the young noble woman or queen was protected by an ideology of enclosure” (Gilchrist 1999, 142). Within medieval marriage, the wife was expected to be modest and she had to obey her husband in any way possible. Her most important task was to give birth to a legitimate male heir, to make sure the noble dynasty was sure of a successful future.2
This subordinate position of the medieval gentlewoman was based on biblical texts and medieval medicine. An important source for medieval writers was the book of Genesis: “This at last is bone of my bones and fl esh of my fl esh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Genesis 2:23). In general women are described by many medieval authors as weak creatures. They are always talking too much and spending money without limits (Orbàn 1984). There was a medical explanation for their supposed inferiority (Janssen-Sieben 1984; Gilchrist 1999, 114–116; Lie 1999, 29; Lie 2008, 45).
Women were literally presented as ‘misformed men’ (Lie 2004, 22–27). In medieval medicine, women were believed to be of a very humid nature. Due to this constitution, women could digest not all their food. Men, who were much warmer by nature, were not affected by this problem. According to medieval physiological manuals undigested nutritious matter had to be expelled from a woman’s body in another way. There were two methods to bring this about. The fi rst was by menstruation and the second method, if menstruation did not work, was by means of having sex. A as result of this natural ‘defect’ the female body was believed to be in a constant state of lustfulness. Because of her natural physical condition medieval scientists believed a woman was also more inclined to commit adultery than a man. That was a situation every man should fear – his wife sleeping with other men. This could damage the reputa-tion of a lord and could in the long run endanger the whole future of a noble family line. Historian Gert Melville puts it this way:
“Die männliche Ehre (und damit die des dominierenden Teiles am Hofe) war anderen Kriterien unterworfen als die der Frau und war doch engstens mit dieser verbunden. Die Ehre der Frau stellte eine Dienstleistungsressource für den Hof dar und von daher kam ihr höchste Wichtigkeit zu. Eine en-tehrte oder unehrenhafte Frau war ungeeignet, die Ehre des Mannes zu repräsentieren oder ihm Ehrung erfahren zu lassen. Um der männlichen Ehre willen mußte also die weibliche geschützt und gefördert werden.” (Melville 2000, 466)
This all meant of course that women, fi rstly, had to be carefully raised in their youth and, secondly, they had to be guided and controlled throughout the rest of their lives.
This is illustrated by an illumination in a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, in which a young man in his dreams undertakes a quest to fi nd (sexual) love (Fig. 1). He tries to conquer female virginity, symbolized by a rosebud held captive in a heavily guarded castle. This part of the Roman, where the young man tries to storm the castle in order to set his beloved free, was illustrated in many subsequent manuscripts of the poem. Interesting is the way the female captive and the storming of her castle is visu-alized by the artists. The illumination in question shows us a rather sad picture of a woman being held captive in a mighty castle, believed by some to be the medieval Louvre. At the bottom of the
illumina-2 For further information about the tasks of noble women in daily life see Kooper 1984; Snip-Rengenhart 1996, Coulson 2003; Butz 2006.
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tion, the castle is being guarded by Dangier, who holds the keys to the property in his hand. His power over the woman is evident.
We can conclude Willem Procurator wrote his story in accordance with the beliefs of his time. The countess is the responsible housewife, who works with good intentions for the future name and fame of the family. She has limited in-struments however, in our modern eyes, because she is a woman. So she has no choice in this situ-ation but to fall back on deceit to reach her goal.
She has to work from inside the castle, but with her intelligence, she can overstep this boundary.
In other historical sources considering men and women and their involvement with castles, we see how medieval authors played with the same set of ideas.