Royal Witches
Long before women’s history became a thing, two types of women held a place in the public imagination: queens (or more accurately, princesses) and witches. In Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth Century England, historian Gemma Hollman considers a point at which two subjects of women’s history intersect—the political roles played by royal women in medieval and early modern Europe and witch trials. The result is a fascinating story of the power and vulnerability of those royal women.
Hollman explores the lives of four women who married into England’s royal family in the turbulent period between Henry IV’s usurpation of the British throne through the Wars of the Roses:* Joan of Navarre, Eleanor Cobham, Jacquetta of Luxembourg (later Jacquetta Woodville), and Elizabeth Woodville. She tells the story of each woman’s marriage. (Unusual among European nobility at the time, all four marriages were love matches.) She establishes the political context of those marriages. And then she demonstrates how accusations of witchcraft were used to attack each woman, and in two cases her husband’s political position as well.
Hollman does an excellent job of demonstrating how accusations of witchcraft lead to the falls of Joan, Eleanor, and Jacquetta and how those accusations, and each woman’s defense, relate to each other. The final section of the book, which deals with the better-known history of Elizabeth Woodville’s life as Edward IV’s wife and the tragic dissolution of her family after his death, is well told, but less clearly linked to Hollman’s central argument. Despite this unevenness, Royal Witches is an intriguing addition to the growing genre of books dealing with royal women in medieval Europe.
*If you want to look at women of this period from a slightly different perspective, I also recommend Sarah Gristwood’s Blood Sisters. Both books are part of a growing genre of books that look at royal and noble women of medieval and early modern Europe within the context of power politics and family networks. If you want to read my general thoughts on this genre (and the broader question of why we write group biographies of women), you can find them in this recent issue of my newsletter. **
If you simply want to read more books about queens, etc, here are links to some I’ve reviewed over the last few years:
Nancy Goldstone. The Rival Queens: Catherine de’Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal That Ignited a Kingdom
Sarah Gristwood. Game of Queens.
Sharan Newman. Defending The City of God: A Medieval Queen, The First Crusade And The Quest for Peace In Jerusalem
Giles Tremlett. Isabella of Castille: Europe’s First Great Queen
Not to mention Antonia Fraser’s The Warrior Queens: The Legends and the Lives of the Women Who Have Led Their Nations in War, which appeared much earlier and holds a special place in my heart for obvious reasons.
I am sorry to report that I have not reviewed any books about witches. Hmmm..
**If you like what you read, take a moment to subscribe.
The guts of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
“Degenerate Art” in Nazi Germany
In the early decades of the twentieth century, radical new art forms flourished in Germany. Expressionism, futurism, surrealism, cubism, fauvism, and the Dada movement, while different in their forms, shared a common mood of revolt against the established norms of both art and society and the authorities that supported those norms. Despite the inherently revolutionary nature of such work, state-owned German art museums collected and exhibited work by artists such as Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, Käthe Kollwitz, and Emile Nolde.* In short, art was hot.
The catalog cover for the Degenerate Art exhibition. Notice that Kunst (Art) is in quotation marks. (Image from the Deutsches Historisches Museum
The Nazis were less open-minded on the subject. In the summer of 1937, the Nazi government in Germany staged two important art exhibits in Munich that were designed to teach the German people the difference between great art and what they termed “degenerate art”—anything that was modern, abstract, elitist** or created by a Jewish, socialist, communist, or otherwise class-conscious artist.
One exhibit was titled “Degenerate Art”, comprised of 740 works of modern art by 120 artists—part of more than 20,000 such works the Nazi removed from the state collections between 1937 and 1939. According to the exhibition catalog, the purpose of the show was to “reveal the philosophical, political, racial and moral goals and intentions behind this movement, and the driving forces of corruption which followed them. The works were displayed in a manner designed not only to mock them as “bad art” but to suggest that they were part of an international plot against the German people. ***
Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels visiting the Degenerate Art exhibition, which was his brainchild. Image from the German Federal Archive
The other, designated the “Great German Art Exhibition, was a “model art exhibition” of works hand-picked by Hitler for the edification of the public. It was made up of works that were traditional in style, featuring beautiful landscapes, statuesque blond nudes, and idealized Germanic soldiers. By and large, the works were perfectly competent, but they weren’t particularly exciting.
People voted with their feet. In the first two weeks after the exhibitions opened, 400,000 people visited “Degenerate Art”—a record for Germany at the time. By contrast, 129,000 visited the Great German Art Exhibition in the same period. Over the total run of the two exhibitions, which toured around Germany after their opening in Munich, the gap narrowed to three-to-one in favor of “degenerate art.”
* Nolde was a member of the Nazi party, but that didn’t protect his work from Nazi attacks. More of his paintings were exhibited in the Degenerate Art exhibit than those of any other artist, and more of his paintings were confiscated from public galleries.
**A favorite term of abuse in the insult portfolio of populist politicians.
***An idea that I find hard to wrap my mind around. How could anyone consider Ernst Barlach’s breathtaking memorial to the German soldiers who died in World War I part of a plot against the German people?
World War II Map by Map
If you’ve been hanging around here on the Margins for a while, you know I have a weakness for reference books.
These days I try to exercise some self-control when it comes to adding a volume or three to my hoard.* The bookshelf dedicated to references books is close to full** and every book added requires me to make hard choices about books currently on the shelf.
Nonetheless, several weeks ago I gave in and bought a book that I’d been eyeing for months: World War II Map by Map, published by DK for the Smithsonian. I justified it for two reasons. First, I was looking for good maps of the North African campaigns of 1941 and none of the books already on my shelves had one. Second, the book I’m currently working on requires a strong grasp of WWII, even though it is not military history in the most technical sense of the term. *** But I will happily admit those were just excuses to place the order. The fact is, I am a sucker for an historical atlas, and this looked like it would be a good one.
World War II Map by Map lived up to my hopes. It is a thing of beauty—not a surprise for a volume created by DK and the Smithsonian working together. Divided into five sections, beginning with the years between the two world wars and ending with a section titled “Endgame and Aftermath”, the book uses maps to both tell the broad story of World War II and to provide a detailed focus on smaller stories within the broader arc. The book is enriched by photo essays on subjects that are not easily told by map, such as code breaking and Germany’s “V-weapons”.
In the short run, I found the two maps dealing with the North African campaigns of 1941 enormously helpful, particularly when paired infographics on the same subject from World War Infographics, another reference book I was pleased to add to my shelf. Going forward, I suspect I’ll be turning to it over and over again as I think about World War II.
Sometimes you just need to understand what’s happening on the ground.
* “Collection” suggests a more orderly and informed process of acquisition than I can claim.
**It’s too shallow to accommodate my favorite expansion technique of shelving books two-deep. Bad planning on my part.
***Personally, I think the most technical definition of military history is too narrow to teach us much about war. As the late military historian Peter Paret said at the Prtizker Military Museum and Library’s “On War” symposium several years ago, “You can’t get answers to the big questions about war by staying at the level of tactics and operations.” It was music to my ears.
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For anyone who might be interested: I’ll be speaking about Women Warriors as part of the on-line Lunch and Learn series at Norwich University, October 21, 11-12 Central Time. Here’s the registration link: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/8634144165090842127