Majorossy Judit: Egy történelmi gyilkosság margójára. Merániai Gertrúd emlékezete, 1213 - 2013. Tanulmánykötet - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, A. sorozat: Monográfiák 2. (Szentendre, 2014)

IV. - Mielke, Christopher: Gertrúd királyné és kortársai anyagi kultúrája

book, the Elisabethpsalter, she donated there (Figure 6)— it remains preserved to this day.63

Books are crucial to understanding the private role of the queen in the Middle Ages, as they clearly fulfilled several functions. (Figure 7) The Ingeborg Psalter is clearly an object of private devotion, yet at the same time its messages of political legitimization clearly display the queens attitude towards her own position and her refusal to be put aside. The Gertrude Psalter shows how books like this could have the function of a family heirloom and be passed down from generation, in this case through the female line. This family connection is very important as there is a manuscript with a note in it that it was a psalter that Blanche of Castile (d. 1252), the queen of France used to teach her son, Saint Louis IX (r. 1226-1270).64 The ever increasing survival and use of books in this period seems to be connected with the changing role of the queen at this time, and especially her unique bridging of her public and private roles.

Christopher Mielke: The Material Culture of Queen Gertrude and Her Contemporaries

Figure 7

The image of Queen Gertrude and King Andrew II in the so-called Landgrafenpsalter prepared most probably in the monastery of Reinhardsbrunn, around 1208/1213 (WLS, Inv. Nr. HB II 24,fol. 175v)

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Юне не ген fptcxafyecca-At the start of the thirteenth century, Gertrude was queen of Hungary at a time when the office of the queen was becoming more structured, and the development of the material culture around the queen is evidence of this. Seals and crowns began to be a part of the standard instruments of conveying the power of the queen in tandem with the standardization of the rules of crowning queens, such as the Bishop of Veszprém’s right to crown the queen. Yet at the same time, while instruments of power such as this are becoming more common, there is a shrinking visibility of the power of the queen in terms of soft power. It is incredibly difficult, for instance, to see the hand of the queen in marriage negotiations with a few very important exceptions like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Blanche of Castile. What is fascinating about Queen Gertrude is the fact that she appears at a critical junction between these transitions. In the chronicles her nepotism is heavy-handed, but she emerges as a key negotiator in the marriage of her daughter, Elizabeth. It is also through Elizabeth that the queen’s involvement in literature and her coronation mantle have been preserved to this day. Furthermore, the written record is a very useful tool in analyzing her interest in the queenly act of providing furnishings for the church such as the case of her crown being melted down to provide Wroclaw Cathedral with a chalice. The known relationship between Gertrude of Andechs-Meran and objects related to her shows that in many ways she was part of an established culture of queenly agency.

63 Bierbrauer 1981: 336-338.

64 Nolan 2009:129.

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