Chapter Nineteen Elite Women, Palaces, and Castles in Northern France (ca. 850–1100)

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have shown how important this complicated period was to the history of

women and authority. In the present study, my aim is to synthesize what

we know about the roles played by elite women in the construction and

use of palatine architecture in order to draw some overall conclusions

from the rare surviving documentary and material evidence.

Briefly stated, western Francia after the Carolingian ascendancy experienced a time of crises and difficulties that came to a head in the final

three decades or so of the ninth century. Raids by Norsemen and others,

the ambitions of the great, and the weakness of royal authority combined

to foster, from the end of the ninth century and throughout the tenth, the

rise of “principalities” and a number of dynastic changes that began as

temporary and became permanent (for instance, the establishment of the

Capetians, from 987).4 During the eleventh century, the kings, dukes, and

counts, who had to face down the middle-ranking and lower aristocracy,

gradually succeeded in consolidating their jurisdictions and by the end

of that century had begun to recover their position of more centralized

authority.5

These circumstances lent importance first to palaces and very soon

after to castles as places where political business was conducted alongside everyday life in both the personal and religious spheres. Both types of

residence were used by kings and the powerful as means of domination.

Paradoxically, this difficult period remained for a considerable time

rather favourable to the higher echelons of the female elite. There were



studies including La femme dans les civilisations des X e–XIII e siècles (Poitiers, 1977), esp. the

article by Jean Verdon on the sources; Michel Rouche and Jean Heuclin, eds., La femme

au Moyen Âge (Maubeuge, 1990), esp. the article by Suzanne Wemple on the power of

women in the tenth century, pp. 343–51; Stéphane Lebecq, Alain Dierkens, Régine Le Jan,

and Jean-Marie Sansterre, eds., Femmes et pouvoirs des femmes à Byzance et en Occident

(VI e–XI e siècles) (Lille, 1999), esp. the article by Janet Nelson on Carolingian queens, pp.

121–32; Jean Verdon, Les femmes de l’an Mille (Mesnil-sur-L’Estrée, 1999).

4 The Carolingian dynasty, descended from Charlemagne (742–814) and ruling in western Francia, was faced by a double threat. In the ninth century, especially toward the end

of the second half, it had to deal with Viking raids on the western seaboard, the Paris Basin,

and Flanders. These difficulties were aggravated by Muslim raids in the south and Hungarian raids (at the beginning of the tenth century) in the east. The Carolingians were also

confronted by the ambitions of the great aristocratic families (those of counts and other

ambitious nobles), which on three occasions (888–898, 922–923, and 936–954) managed to

seize the kingdom and, from the end of the ninth century/beginning of the tenth, establish

principalities that were more or less independent of royal tutelage.

5 A good analysis of the background to this situation can be found in Philippe Contamine, ed., Le Moyen Âge. Le roi, l’église, les grands, le peuple, 481–1514, Histoire de la

France politique (Paris, 2002).







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changes in the structures of power and kinship during the ninth century

that led in the tenth century to the relative blossoming of elite women

before circumstances, especially in the second half of the eleventh century, would favour a decline.6 It was a time when, although the role of

high-born women was already well-defined in private and in the home,

they also saw their power increase appreciably in the public and political

spheres.

The approach taken in the present study is, first of all, conceptual and

geopolitical. Did these few women whose names we know use palaces

and castles as a means to establish their power, just as male authority

figures did? What was their place in the power system, and what actions

did they take: did they themselves have authority to found and develop

palace and castle sites? Second, did their involvement have a recognizable

impact on the architectural plan? Did they exercise particular influence

on these major centres, and were they personally responsible for their

creation? We shall see that the tenth century was especially significant

in this regard.

Queens and Countesses in the System of Palaces and Castles

As they moved about, kings and “princes” needed places in which to live

and from which they could exercise their power. The construction of the

palaces and castles that emerged from this necessity was primarily and

predominantly, but not entirely, the business of men. In fact, the system

left open the possibility for elite women to intervene.

When networks of palaces and/or castles under royal and “princely”

authority began to be established, at the pinnacle were the royal palaces.

This polysemic term here refers primarily to the major centres of government and privileged residences.7 The palatium was both living space and



6 This “decline” is too complex to be discussed in detail in the present article. Some

elements were actually well in place before the 1050s, such as the end of lay abbacy. It was

notably an effect of Gregorian reform and of change in the concept of the palace, the rise

in the power of lineages, and the growth in numbers of castles, among other things.

7 On the palace and castle background, see my following publications: Annie Renoux,

Fécamp. Du palais ducal au palais de Dieu (Paris, 1991); “Aux marches du palais: des mots,

des concepts et des réalités fonctionnelles et structurelles,” in Aux marches du palais.

Qu’est-ce qu’un palais médiéval? Données historiques et archéologiques, VII e Congrès international d’Archéologie médiévale, ed. Annie Renoux (Le Mans, 2001), pp. 9–20; “Palatium

et castrum en France du Nord (fin IXe–début XIIIe siècle),” in The Seigneurial Residence

in Western Europe AD c. 800–1600, eds. Gwyn Meirion-Jones, Edward Impey, and Michael



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a place for the exercise and representation of royal power. The concept

gained in potency under the Carolingian kings, who made it a determining structural element in their authority.8 It was informed by a two-fold

framework: one that was itinerant, based on the existence of a network

where palaces were located close to abbeys and ordinary villae, and one

where they were associated more or less consubstantially with Christianity and the Church. Accordingly, the notion of the “sacred palace” came

to the fore. Being exclusive to the king, who was himself a sacred person

(witness the anointing of Pepin the Short in 751) and, therefore, elect by

God, the palace and its enclosure became in effect a sacred space.9 It was

a prefigurement of paradise, an open space of peace, where the secular

and religious collaborated in “co-managing” humanity. It was there that

foundational events, whether political or politico-religious in nature, took

place, such as assemblies or the celebration of Christian feast-days. Within

the palace genre a special category emerged, that of the somewhat rare

“monastic palace.”10 Here, at the large royal abbeys, the kings would on

occasion reside and issue documents. Some, like Saint-Denis near Paris,

had a royal domus and provided a setting for palace-type functions.

The accession of the Capetians to the royal throne in 987 did not fundamentally alter the palatine concept but, as troubles intensified, the palace

had to develop in response to a dual challenge. The first of these, pressure

Jones, British Archaeological Reports, International Series, 1088 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 15–25;

“Architecture, pouvoir et représentation en milieu princier et royal en France du Nord

(Xe–XIe siècle),” in Zentren herrschaftlicher Repräsentation im Hochmittelalter. Geschichte,

Architektur und Zeremoniell, eds. Caspar Ehlers, Jörg Jarnut, and Matthias Wemhoff, Die

Deutschen Königspfalzen, vol. 7 (Göttingen, 2007), pp. 25–68.

 

8 The present study addresses the western extreme of the post-Carolingian territories.

There is an extensive bibliography on the Carolingians proper and their central places

of power. See, as a starting point, Stuart Airlie, “The Palace of Memory: The Carolingian

Court as Political Centre,” in Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, eds. Sarah Rees Jones,

Richard Marks, and Alastair J. Minnis (York, 2000), pp. 1–20.

 

9 Pierre Riché, “Les représentations du palais dans les textes littéraires du haut Moyen

Âge,” Francia, 4 (1976), pp. 161–71; Renoux, Fécamp. Du palais ducal, pp. 471–82, 521–30,

656–59. See also my “Palais capétiens et normands à la fin du Xe et au début du XIe

siècle,” in Le roi de France et son royaume autour de l’an Mil. Actes du colloque Hugues

Capet, 987–1987. La France de l’an Mil, eds. Michel Parisse and Xavier Barral i Altet (Paris,

1992), pp. 179–91.

10 For an overall recent examination of the question, see Pfalz—Kloster— Klosterpfalz

St. Johann in Müstair, Historische und archäologische Fragen, ed. Hans Rudolf Sennhauser,

2 vols. (Zürich, 2011). As concerns the region and period addressed in the present study,

see, in that work, Annie Renoux, “Palais et monastères: la question des Klosterpfalzen en

France du Nord (IXe–XIe siècle),” vol. 2, pp. 81–97.







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from the princes, did not undermine its conceptual basis. A small number

of ducal palaces complemented the map of Carolingian and subsequently

Capetian royal palaces. However, a more fundamental challenge arose as a

consequence of the armed conflicts that occurred during this period. Such

strife prompted the introduction of fortifications to the palace, which, on a

conceptual level, had previously been a reflection of peace. Faced by physical attack, however, palaces needed defense, and fortification became a

virtual norm from the last three decades of the ninth century on. Investigation of the two phenomena—palaces and castles—therefore becomes

something of a single enterprise thereafter. The palace concept survived

as such where kings were concerned, in spite of the social and political

upheaval; but henceforth the kings’ palaces were located within fortifications (in castro). The castle, with its fortified curtains-walls between

bastions, thus becomes historically from this time on the all-embracing

structure of reference. Some of these complexes included substantial

towers or keeps. In the princely context, castle-style building is what we

see from the outset. Even where dukes and counts claimed, like kings, to

derive their power within their principalities from God and participated

in managing Church affairs, the religious dimension was not equivalent,

since these aristocrats had not received a sacred anointing. Almost without exception their buildings remained outside the palace system; in any

case, dukes and counts preferred a show of armed force in the form of a

solid fortress to the sort of more peaceful authority, informed by religion,

that the palace embodied and symbolized.

In short, although the palatium remained fundamental to kings in

the tenth and eleventh centuries, the castrum came to have a central

role at all levels of power. Within this initially dual and later primarily

single system, the position of the female elite, comprising queens and

“princesses,” became a relatively beneficent one, although it needs to be

viewed within the context of a society that was eminently and fundamentally patriarchal.

The Queen’s Importance within the Palace

Between castrum and palatium, the palatine context was decidedly more

favourable to women. Here queens intervened at different levels, justified

primarily by their status as wife of a reigning monarch. Archbishop Hincmar of Reims in his De ordine palatii (ca. 882) showed how important the



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queen was within the palatium, which was dominated by two chief persons and two spheres of power.11 The king was the system’s keystone, his

function that of maintaining order in the kingdom as a whole. Although

the queen’s importance was secondary, given that she was his dependent,

she nevertheless held sway in a major area. As the palace’s mistress or

lady (domina palatii), she was concerned with internal palace business,

a task that went beyond mere private and economic management, for

she saw to both the efficient functioning and the visual representation of

power. She made sure that the palace was well kept and that its ceremonial was of high quality in order to command respect. From the end of

the ninth century and throughout the tenth, this role went increasingly

beyond what might be termed private and domestic, gaining in public and

political influence. The chief reasons for this development lay in changes

that affected power structures and the role of the Church. With the Christianization of marriage, the Church became more closely bound up with

the monarchy and its political appointments. The queen, who, like the

king, could also receive holy anointing, became the “consort of the realm”

(consors regni). Hers, therefore, was a delegated authority in the exercise

and display of royal power: it derived from her association with the king,

and its mainspring was his will. She shared in the royal power (regalis

potestas) and its Christian mission.

The queen thus had her own place within the palace, which comprised

a sacred space of peace. She was wholly involved in its operations, not

least because women had already long been generally associated as intermediaries in the organization of the sacred.12 The queen was one of the

pillars of the palace system both theoretically and practically, as much in

what has been considered the private, domestic realm as in the public.

She strengthened the palatium, but—the coin had a reverse side—she

could weaken it if she was deemed unworthy for some reason, real or

imagined. In concrete terms, a queen’s actual influence varied according

to the power of her personality and that of her husband.



11 Hincmar of Reims, De ordine palatii, eds. Thomas Gross and Rudolf Schieffer, Monumenta Germanicae Historica, Fontes Iuris Germanici Antiquae (Hannover, 1980), vol. 3,

chpts. 13, 19, and 22.

12 See, for the same period, the queens and their sacred constructions addressed in the

present volume by Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, “Female Piety and the Building and Decorating of Churches, ca. 500–1150.”







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Generally speaking, the death of a king made his widow less secure,

unless there was a regency. In such a case, the queen exercised public

power in the name of an heir below the age of majority, though this did

not, of course, systematically exclude male guardianship. Comparable levels of authority were to be had by the female elite in the great nunneries.

Ninth- and tenth-century changes included the development of a system

that placed lay abbots and abbesses from the royal entourage in charge

of prestigious royal religious houses. Wives, mothers, and sisters of kings

participated in this system. The abbey was designated an honor, and the

women who held it controlled territorial taxes and thereby had public

rights and powers. Some of these prestigious establishments, particularly

those dear to the hearts of Carolingian and Robertian/Capetian monarchs,

gave them hospitality and provided them with a base for the administration of power.13 They were in effect “monastic palaces,” royal nunneries

endowed with palatine functions, where the ruler (save in the spiritual

sphere) was the lay abbess.14

The abbey of Saint-Jean at Laon (in the present-day Aisne département) is a good case in point for the tenth century, as we shall see in

due course. This establishment was held by the wives of tenth-century

Carolingian kings and formed part of their dower.15 Settled upon the wife

by the husband at their marriage, the dower was a last area in which royal

women could wield power.16 Although their male counterparts tried to

exert control, the women nonetheless—in theory at least—had room to

manoeuvre in regard to both dowers and dowries, the latter proceeding

from her parents. In this respect, queens and countesses were in similar

positions. The same was becoming true of the places they inhabited, for

although Saint-Jean at Laon was a “monastic palace,” it was also fortified.



13 The Robertians were the Capetian kings’ ancestors. In the tenth century, two of them,

Odo (888–898) and Robert (922–923), became kings of western Francia, displacing the

Carolingians, who were finally overthrown by the Capetians (in the person of Hugh Capet)

in 987.

14 Renoux, “Palais et monastères: la question des Klosterpfalzen.”

15 In modern English the words dower and dowry are occasionally, if inaccurately, used

interchangeably. The correct use of dower refers to the property given to the wife by her

husband (=French douaire), while dowry is reserved for property brought to the marriage

by the wife (=French dot).—Translator’s note.

16 Régine Le Jan, “Aux origines du douaire médiéval (VIe–Xe siècles),” and “Douaires

et pouvoirs des reines en Francie et en Germanie (VIe–Xe siècle),” in Femmes, pouvoir et

société dans le haut Moyen Âge (Paris, 2001), pp. 53–67 and 68–88.



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Elite Women and the Castle



In his De ordine palatii, Hincmar indicates that queens received gifts from

their vassals.17 Additionally, tenth-century narrative sources show them

receiving homage from the great and taking part in military expeditions.

As we shall see later, fighting was not something from which they were

excluded; far from it, they could be very actively engaged in battle, as was

Queen Gerberga (ca. 915–969) in the tenth century.18 It was no different

for other elite women, as the increasingly plentiful documentation during

the eleventh century makes even clearer.

For complex reasons that cannot be addressed here for lack of space,

few “territorial princes” had palaces, but we can still see that both they

and their wives were affected by the changes taking place around the

950s. The women’s power increased in the public sphere, as is attested,

among other things, by the appearance of the title of comitissa (countess).

Although they were not anointed, the countesses were consortes of their

husbands and joined them in managing practicalities associated with religion.19 The areas in which their interventions were privileged were the

same as those for queens: marriage, regency, and dowers or dowries.

In the military and feudo-vassalic area, female elites were generally tolerated—grudgingly perhaps, but most likely because there was no other

option!—and they were on occasion even encouraged. In concrete terms,

that is, architecturally speaking, we may ask what these powerful women’s actions amounted to. Were they able to establish, or at least manage,

palaces and/or castles?

Female Elites: Building and Structuring Spaces of Power

Elite women played a significant and sometimes essential role in the construction and structuring of royal and princely spaces of power. As consors regni, the queen could accompany the king on itineraries to major

foundations that rooted royal power within the regnum and established

its parameters; she could also undertake journeys in her own right for a

17 Hincmar of Reims, De ordine palatii, chpt. 22.

18 For her battle flag with the inscription Gerberga me fecit and additional bibliography,

see in the present volume the study by Pierre Alain Mariaux, “Women in the Making: Early

Medieval Signatures and Artists’ Portraits (9th–12th c.),” figure 3.

19 Le Jan, “L’épouse du comte du IXe au XIe siècle: transformation d’un modèle et idéologie d’un pouvoir,” in Femmes, pouvoir et société, pp. 21–29.







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variety of reasons that might include politics, family, or piety, among

others.20 By helping to define a repertory of places of power and by further adding to these places’ splendour, queens played an essential role

in establishing and consolidating palace geopolitics within evolving networks of central and secondary places of power. In this way, they helped

to create or manage palatine residences.

Although queens’ actions were subject to kings’ authority, queens

could take part in ordering space within palaces and even on occasion

entire palace sites, irrespective of whether there was a regency. Frederun (Frérone) (d. 918) offers a model illustration of this phenomenon.

Having received in 915 from her husband, King Charles the Simple (d. 929),

land earmarked for burial in the palace of Compiègne, the queen began

building works there for the chapel of Saint-Clément, staffed by canons.

After her early death, the king completed the construction in 918.21 A second example is provided by Ogiva (d. ca. 951), Charles the Simple’s second wife. When her husband died in 929, Ogiva kept her dower, which

included property at Attigny and the monastery of Saint-Jean at Laon with

its landed estates and royal buildings (praedia et aedes regiae).22 The palace at Attigny, which around 916 had been one of Charles the Simple’s

major residences, was then no longer in active use, which may partly,

though not totally, explain why it remained in Ogiva’s holdings. This fact

is symptomatic of something else, namely that even when demoted, not

to say shut down, a palace site remained a source of legitimacy and could

be reactivated. Thus a queen could on occasion act as the guardian of

palaces in decline or hibernation, which remained nevertheless special,

privileged places. She contributed to keeping their memory alive as royal

residences. But she could also, by mobilizing her dower, play a major role

in maintaining and consolidating palaces that were active as centres of

power. As a palace site, tenth-century Laon, as we shall see, was vital to

the Carolingian dynasty. Yet there were dangers, as later events in Ogiva’s

case showed, for the transfer of property was short-lived. When in 951

Ogiva married again, this time to Count Herbert III le Vieux, one of the

bitterest enemies of her son King Louis IV (d. 954), the king hastily confiscated her dower. He retained Attigny for himself, and to his own wife,

20 Le Jan, Femmes, pouvoir et société, pp. 39–52.

21 Philippe Lauer, ed., Recueil des actes de Charles III le Simple, roi de France (893–923)

(Paris, 1940–49), pp. 178–79, 217–21.

22 Richer of Reims, Histoire de France (888–995), ed. and trans. Robert Latouche (Paris,

1930), vol. 1, p. 293.



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Gerberga, he gave in dower the other major component of his mother’s

property, that is, the nunnery of Saint-Jean at Laon.

We see, then, that although a queen’s power may have been vulnerable,

it nonetheless existed. But could her field of action include the foundation of a palace? In order to answer this question, I shall consider three

relevant examples: Étampes, a lay foundation; and Chelles and Laon, both

ecclesiastical in nature (Fig. 1).

Helgaldus of Fleury, biographer of King Robert the Pious (996–1031),

ascribed the construction of a palatium at Étampes to the king’s wife,

Constance (ca. 984–1032), daughter of the count of Arles in Provence.23

It was a place whose location on the road from Orléans to Paris made it

particularly attractive. Given that the author takes care to state that King

Robert himself built a splendid palace in Paris, there is no reason to doubt

his assertion that Constance built the palace at Étampes. That said, the

queen’s construction was not an entirely new centre of government and

country residence, as the Robertians, the ancestors of the Capetian kings,

had had a residence there from at least the beginning of the tenth century.

But the queen did help to promote it to the status of palatium by making high-quality palatine improvements to the castrum, which the king

took pleasure in using. Étampes at the very least, therefore, exemplifies

“co-management” of a palace site, even if it was not a new construction

wholly built by a woman.

Chelles and Laon enter into the aforementioned category of what are

known, not always appropriately, as “monastic palaces.” Twenty kilometres east of Paris, Chelles was a former Merovingian “palace” (villa) going

derelict when Queen Bathilda founded a nunnery there, choosing it as her

final resting-place.24 This monastery was a favourite of the Carolingian

rulers, who frequently set up family members in the office of abbess. One

such was Gisela, a regular abbess, who was visited there by her brother

Charlemagne in 798. Another was Ermentrude (ca. 825–869), wife of King

Charles the Bald (d. 877). She was a lay abbess, and we know from an 861

document “elaborated at the monastery of Chelles” that the king stayed

there.25 In the tenth century, the establishment came under Robertian



23 Helgaldus of Fleury, Vie de Robert le Pieux, eds. Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette

Labory (Paris, 1965), pp. 64, 102, 130.

24 Santinelli, Des femmes éplorées?, pp. 184–85, 298–300.

25 Charles Tessier, Recueil des actes de Charles II le Chauve, roi de France, Chartes et

diplômes relatifs à l’histoire de France publiés par les soins de l’Académie des Inscriptions

et Belles-Lettres, 3 vols. (Paris, 1952), pp. 15–16.



elite women, palaces, and castles



Figure 1 Map of places mentioned in text (Map: Hugo Meunier and Annie Renoux/© Ea TRAME

4284–2011).





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control, which was challenged by King Charles the Simple in 922. Around

the year 1000 it was the location of a Capetian palace; in 1008, Robert the

Pious called a council and promulgated acts there, “sedis nostrae palatio.”

Chelles was not a major strategically located residence, as the great

dynastic palaces were by necessity. But it was far from an insignificant

centre of power, especially under the early Capetian kings, and it certainly

fulfilled palatine functions. But where, we may ask, did the monarch and

his retinue actually reside when there on visit? The documentary sources

tell us that Gisela, the sister of Emperor Charlemagne, undertook substantial building works within the monastery, but they do not specify enough

to determine what exactly was built or just where the monarch stayed at

Chelles. The abbess moved the monastic complex from its original site,

enlarging and improving the religious architecture. It is likely (though definite proof is lacking) that Charlemagne would have stayed in the abbess’s

residence. Thereafter, apart from mentioning the damage done by Ottonian troops in 978, the documentary sources are all but silent about the

architecture, so it is impossible to be sure either where the palatium

mentioned in the eleventh century actually was or who decided upon

its construction. For some historians, who regard Chelles as a prototypical Klosterpfalz or monastic palace, the ninth- to eleventh-century king’s

dwelling was simply—and vaguely—located within the abbey.26 The only

thing we can be sure of is that it was an institutional structure held in

women’s hands and that the king relied on it for government. But this palace complex was of a particular monastic type, and, as at Laon, we do not

know to what degree the king may have taken the initiative in building.

Laon (present-day département of Aisne) had another royal palatine

residence connected to a prestigious dynastic nunnery. In the tenth century, it was vital to the Carolingian kings that they should continue to

hold this ancient fortified city. It was one of the last royal bastions against

the ambitions and assaults of the magnates. Their palace at Laon is mentioned in a royal document of 921 and in another of 954, which styles

itself as an “act in the palace of Laon within the monastery of Saint-Jean”

(actum in palatio Lauduni Clavati, apud monasterium Sancti Johannis).27

The nunnery of Saint-Jean was founded outside the walls (extra muros)



26 On “monastic palaces” with the examples of Chelles and Laon analyzed in greater

detail, see Renoux, “Palais et monastères: la question des Klosterpfalzen.”

27 Lauer, Recueil des actes de Charles III le Simple, pp. 255–57; Louis Ferdinand Lot, ed.,

Recueil des actes de Lothaire et Louis V, rois de France (954–987) (Paris, 1908), pp. 1–4.