Congratulations to Prof. Heather Tanner on the upcoming publication of her new book, "Lordship and Governance by the Inheriting Countesses of Boulogne, 1160–1260," (Amsterdam Univ. Press/ARC Humanities Press, March 28, 2023). 

Traditional scholarship argues that the changes fostered by the growth of royal power and feudalism in Western Europe directly impacted women’s public power and authority in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Focusing on the inheriting countesses of Boulogne (1160–1260) and their neighbours in northern France, this monograph investigates the influence of the rise of centralized government on elite women’s power. This chronological and comparative analysis highlights successive countesses’ governance of inherited lands, the roles they played in their spouses’ lands and in political affairs outside their inherited lands, along with crucial assessments of the social identity and status of the family. It challenges the established interpretation and shows that the establishment of feudalism did not curtail elite women’s access to or exercise of lordship to any significant degree.

Find out more