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
Christopher Mielke: The Material Culture of Queen Gertrude and Her Contemporaries So what these examples show, in a certain sense, is that donating these sorts of practical objects for use by the church was expected of the queen. Yet it was also an opportunity for the queen to portray their own power and sense of family identity. Some queens even seem to have imitated earlier predecessors in terms of their choice and style of donation of liturgical object. This seems to be the case for the two eleventh century Hungarian queens Gisela (d. 1065), wife of Stephen I, and Adelaide (d. 1075), wife of Béla I, who both commissioned reliquary crosses as a memorial for the graves of their mothers.42 In the case of these reliquaries, an object that was used for devotion was also one which boosted the image of the queen and her family; the “Gisela Cross” even has a small figure of a queen and an abbess at the feet of Christ, presumably the queen and her mother.43 Furthermore, donations like this could indicate that the queen favoured a particular religious order, monastic foundation, or shrine. The will of Empress Matilda, claimant to the English crown, was written in 1134 and enacted after her death in 1167, and included a lengthy list of gold and silver chalices, crosses, censers, a pyx, flasks, an incense box, and two portable altars amongst others to be donated to her favoured abbey of Le Bee. Even her clothing was to be made into liturgical vestments, and her silk mattress was to be sold to provide the monastery with more church furnishings.44 Most of this held true in the time of Queen Gertrude, though some of the surviving examples show the precarious nature and limitations of using this as a means of displaying the power of the queen. Dulce of Aragon (d. 1198), the queen of Portugal was the first one to make a donation of a gold-plated silver chalice with her husband to Santa Marinha de Costa, and she is also attributed to another chalice as well. Her successor though, Urraca of Castile (d. 1220) only seems to have had involvement with Franciscan missions in Morroco, and her husband greatly reduced the religious bequests that she itemized in her will.45 Stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral have the arms of France and Castile which has usually been attributed to the queen, Blanche of Castile (d. 1252); however, the chronology of the glazing casts doubt on her direct involvement in such an undertaking.46 In Central Europe, the chronicler Jan Dlugosz states that the Chancellor Jan Czapla was imprisoned, tortured, and then hanged on the orders of Duke Conrad of Masovia (r. 1229-1232), but that Conrad’s wife Agatha (Agafia of Rus, d. cca. 1247/1248) “like a second Jezebel” had a cart drawn by two oxen take the body to the river and hanged one more on a second set of gallows erected just for showing his corpse.47 As penance, the duke and his family ended up donating a silver gilt chalice and paten to Plock Cathedral; the paten is of particular interest as it depicts Conrad and Agatha both offering up chalices and their two sons paying homage to the Christ Pantokrator.48 In this case, if Dlugosz is to be believed, the actions of the queen prompted the duke to donate these vessels as expiation. While a further investigation of these donations by queen has yet to be published, it is very much worth considering, as it seems to have been a widely used and acceptable means for the queen to bolster the image of herself, her family, and the institutions she favoured. Clothing and Jewellery Concerning the personal adornment of the queen, in addition to the regalia mentioned above, clothing and jewellery were very important to the appearance of the queen. The appearance of the queen dripping with jewels was considered an important part of royal dignity in the medieval world, and many representations of queens, ideal or otherwise, seem to indicate that this was the norm.49 The clothing in the trousseaux of Isabella of England (1214-1241), the third wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220-1250) had a dark colour scheme in mind, as most of the brides clothes were made from scarlet, blue, dark blue, dark brown, and green fabric.50 However, clothing in this period could also be used to express piety as well through re-use. The wardrobe accounts of Henry III of England (r. 1216-1272) record two entries from 1236 mentioning donations of the queen, Eleanor of Provence (d. 1291); one was of an embroidered cap to the shrine of Saint Edward, and another was the gift of a ring to the shrine of Saint 42 Mielke 2013: 207-209. 43 Kovács 2000: 158. 44 Van Houts 1999: 118. 45 Shadis 2012: 687-691. 46 Nolan 2009: 132. 47 Dlugosz 1997:175-176. 48 Lorentz (ed.) 1966-1967: No. 4; Blumówna (ed.) 1970: 52. 49 Stafford 2000: 73. 50 Wild 2011:10. 211
