ABSTRACT
In their critically important study Women in Early Modern England, Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford argue for a new vision of political history that restores women to politics. As they demonstrate, gender was of central significance to even the most traditional concepts of political action.1 One of the forums they examined, in which early modern women and men exercised political power, was the courtly household.2 In this essay, I want to explore an aspect of political life at court that has not received significant gender analysis to date – women and men’s participation in ritual conduct within the court community. This essay examines how the manuscript of a fifteenthcentury noblewomen, Eleanor de Poitiers, detailing matters of precedence and ceremony at the Burgundian court, provides unique evidence about the meanings and practice of ritual conduct in the ducal household, particularly that of Philip the Good (1419-67) and his third wife, Isabel of Portugal (1397-1471). This essay explores the complexities and significance of the culture of honour which women and men negotiated on a daily basis, arguing that Eleanor’s text provides particular insight into the importance of gender in the determination and application of ritualized codes.
