Theodore EvergatesReviews

Following on from his biographies of Marie of France and Henry the Liberal, Theodore Evergates turns his focus to another key figure from the medieval Champenois: Geoffroy de Villehardouin, a key figure in the comital administration who today is perhaps best known for the chronicle/memoir he left about his involvement in the Fourth Crusade. As you'd expect, Evergates' depth of knowledge about Champagne and its medieval documentary record shines through here, while he also plays close attention to the contexts and genre of Geoffroy's book. Given the nature of the surviving source evidence, this of course can't be a biography in the more modern sense, but I think Evergates gets us as close as we can to an understanding of who Geoffroy was and the times in which he lived.

One of a pair of biographies (Theodore Evergates has also published a biography of Henry II's wife, Marie), Henry the Liberal explores the career of a count who ruled over a prosperous polity at the economic crossroads of western Europe. By nature of the surviving sources, this of course cannot be a biography of the kind that could be written of a more contemporary figure. Much of who Henry was a person and the kinds of business which occupied his days as count of Champagne are simply lost to us. However, Evergates' depth of knowledge about Champagne and its medieval documentary record allows him to recover as much of a twelfth-century life as is possible, particularly Henry's contribution to cultural and administrative matters.

Exactly the kind of clear, competent scholarship on medieval Champenois history that you'd expect from Theodore Evergates. Likely to remain the standard reference work on Marie for several decades.½

These five essays collectively push back against the Duby-inspired theory that medieval aristocratic women were little more than docile uteruses under the control of their fathers and husbands. The first three essays on Adela, countess of Blois and daughter of William the Conqueror (Kimberly LoPrete), several inter-related castellan families of the Chartrain (Amy Livingstone), and the careers of the countesses of Champagne (Theodore Evergates) cover a broad swathe of what is now northern France. The last two, on the countesses of Flanders (Karen Nicholas) and on the relation of Occitan troubadour poetry to political reality (Fredric Cheyette) push further north and south respectively. All of the authors challenge Duby's sweeping statements with specific reference to primary sources, and make a convincing case for a Middle Ages in which women may not have been able to act as men's equals, but could act jointly with them.

This is a really fascinating, authoritative analysis of the lives of aristocrats and their families in the Champagne during the High Middle Ages. Evergates builds a prosopographical picture of their lives and examines how family relationships were changed by, and helped to influence, the political development of the county. Chapter 4, which looks at the centrality of the 'conjugal unit'—of the married couple—to social relationships, is the most interesting and perhaps the most controversial of the book. Evergates rejects Duby's influential theory as to the internal relationships of noble families, arguing that patrilineal/agnatic descent was not predominant in the Champagne during this period—bilaternal/cognatic inheritance was rather the order of the day. It's a convincing thesis, and one which I think provides a good departure point for future, similar regional studies of familial relationships during this time period.