If great men embody history, the same cannot be said of women, so consistently has the past been cast in masculine terms.
Yet certain women of the Middle Ages once left their mark on their era: queens, saints, writers or adventurers. The medieval chronicles evoke the figures of queens Clotilde, Radegonde, Brunehaut, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Blanche of Castile or Isabeau of Bavaria, powerful women such as the Countesses of Champagne and Flanders; later, Joan of Arc and Isabella of France also found their biographers.
Yet the question of women's role in history is never raised, for they are not regarded as autonomous. As long as they are embodied only through great male figures, the national or European narrative will remain desperately incomplete.
For they are numerous, those who rightly deserve to be introduced to the wider public: these medieval women were strong, mystical, pioneering, feminist. It is high time to draw the portrait of those who changed history, from the Merovingian queens to Joan of Arc.
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