Royal Women in Lombard Italy: Gender and Royal Power

Authors

Nicole Lopez-JantzenFollow

Abstract

An analysis of Lombard royal authority shows that women played an important role in forwarding royal families’ strategies of authority, despite an increasing and explicit exclusion from political power in the mid-seventh century, along with changing conceptions of Lombard ethnicity. Thus, this paper analyzes the gendered construction of ethnic identity in the development of royal power, as well as royal Lombard women’s patronage of the church to argue that royal women played a fundamental role in the creation and maintenance of royal Lombard ideology, although their roles were negotiated and changed as the Lombard kingdom and conception of Lombard kingship took on a sacral character, thereby coopting activities initially not within the realm of military masculinity.

Recommended Citation

Lopez-Jantzen, Nicole (2021) "Royal Women in Lombard Italy: Gender and Royal Power," Medieval People: Vol. 36: Iss. 1, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medpros/vol36/iss1/8