Historians of the reign of Edward II and his overthrow by his wife, Isabella of France, often focus on the sexuality of the king. Edward’s excessive favouritism towards Piers Gaveston, and later to Hugh Despenser the Younger, was the major cause of his downfall, and has been the source of speculation about Edward’s sexuality; were Gaveston and Despenser ‘favourites’ or lovers of Edward? However, the assumption that Isabella and her ally Roger Mortimer were lovers has been largely unchallenged. She was cast as an adulterous ‘Jezebel’ by the chronicler Geoffrey le Baker, but such judgments were made after her and Mortimer’s fall from power, and follow in a tradition of clerical anti-female rhetoric against women such as the Empress Matilda and Eleanor of Aquitaine who were deemed to exercise improper authority. Given the problems of uniing the truth about past sex and sexuality, it is probably fruitless to try to answer definitively the question ‘were Isabella and Mortimer lovers?’ This chapter does, however, challenge the assumption that they were lovers through reference to near-contemporary primary sources, and interrogates the construction of Isabella as a ‘Jezebel’ by medieval and post-medieval historians.

Queen Isabel of Castile was a prolific collector of images, including many illuminated manuscripts. But how might she have engaged with these objects? Using Louise Rosenblatt’s theory of reader-response criticism, this essay argues that the imagery in her devotional manuscripts may have reinforced her self-conception as the morally superior alternative to her predecessor and half-brother, Enrique IV. Opposition to Enrique’s rule took the form of sexual slander, that he was an immoral, effeminate, and ineffectual ruler whose daughter and direct heir was the illegitimate result of an extramarital affair. Isabel, therefore, was the morally superior choice, even though she was similarly hindered by her own femininity. This framework is used to interrogate the imagery in two manuscripts: the Hours of Queen Isabella (Cleveland Museum of Art 1963.256) and the Isabella Breviary (British Library Add. MS 18851).

The essay analyses a specific chapter of Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium to show how the scandal of adultery, besides being a topos of medieval romance, was also used to point at very specific political issues. Walter Map was an itinerant justice active at the English court of King Henry II (1154–1189). Chapter 12 of the First Distinctio narrates the story of the ‘King of Portugal’ and his reaction to an accusation of adultery involving his wife and one of his knights. However, the issue has no confirmation from other sources. As a result of both the impossibility of identifying Map’s king in one of the coeval rulers of Portugal and Walter Map’s fame as a witty storyteller, scholarship usually considers the tale just a case of medieval fiction. Nevertheless, Henry II’s court and its authors played a significant role in the rise of romance and in its political use, making adultery and scandal part of the English court’s language and propaganda. Considering that, the analysis of Walter Map’s tale moves to reconstruct possible references to contemporary political issues involving the English kingdom. The essay identifies the ‘Portuguese king’ in Philip, count of Flanders, by following the path of a famous Anglo-Flemish rumour regarding the murdering of Walter de Fontaines, presumed lover of Philip’s wife Elisabeth of Vermandois, and Philip’s marriage with the Portuguese princess Theresa, arranged with the active involvement of Henry II. Thus, the essay contextualises this alleged scandal in the turbulent Anglo-Flemish political relations.

According to the earliest Vita S. Dunstani, on the day of his coronation the English King Eadwig (d. 959) absented himself from the event, only to be found shortly after by Abbot Dunstan (d. 988), ‘disporting himself disgracefully in between two women’. This is a famous story, but it is an invention rooted in political factionalism. Eadwig and the two women, his queen-consort Ælfgifu and her mother Æthelgifu, were being singled out for reputational damage by an opposing faction. This essay explores the question of why this was so effective, analysing the political context of Eadwig’s reign and tenth-century attitudes towards sexuality.

The Castigos of Sancho IV of Castile is one of the best-known mirrors-for-princes to emerge from medieval Iberia. Composed by a king for his heir, the text offers admonishments (castigos) against behaviours from which a good prince should abstain. Prominent among these castigos are exempla delineating social and sexual relationships to avoid, namely those involving non-Christian women. Examining these exempla both within their immediate framework and within the wider contexts of Castilian royal ideology and European interreligious relations, this chapter argues that the Castigos articulates a conception of royal authority which arises from questions of sex and religious difference.

This chapter discusses the Tour de Nesle affair of 1314, in which Philip IV accused his sons’ three wives of adultery and treason and had them imprisoned. The perceived ‘dangerous’ sexuality of these three women had a direct effect on the Capetian dynasty and, most notably, its end. This chapter pairs an examination of the alleged adultery with a close study of gendered inheritance in fourteenth-century France. Through these avenues of analysis, this chapter underscores the dangers of errant sexuality to queens in medieval France and how its consequences affected not only them but their children and the royal line.

When they became acquainted with Crete, the Mycenaeans were influenced by the Minoans, not only in artistic matters but also in the whole system of organization of their socio-economic life and most importantly in the field of religion; but a thorough examination shows that the ancestral religion of the Mycenaeans differs from the Minoan one, even if at first sight there are similarities. The Mycenaean religion is polytheistic; the nameless Cretan Great goddess is worshipped but also a number of male gods (though without any iconography), named Zeus, Poseidon or Hermes; syncretism was its central characteristic. In later times, as the Cretan spiritual dominance waned, typically Minoan symbols lost their prime symbolic power to the benefit of Mycenaean conceptions. Official and popular religion, the function of open-air and built sanctuaries, the symbols, rituals and Linear B tablets are subjects constantly debated, and yet the essence of Mycenaean religion, the related ideas and concepts escape us.

IIn the LH I period a social organization appears and a wealthy ruling class emerges. The foundation of the ‘palace’ structure is laid and the ‘ideology of power’ as well. The period is mainly known from tombs, the shaft graves excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in Mycenae being the most celebrated. The finds produced by the two Grave circles of Mycenae, remarkable for their variety and wealth, give plentiful information about the burial customs, the identity of the deceased and the art of the period. Stonework for precious vases, metalwork in gold, electrum or silver show sophisticated techniques – repoussé, inlaying, cloisonné – in the fashioning of cups, rhyta, weapons with decorated hilts. Outstanding are the Silver Siege Rhyton, the daggers with elaborate inlaid blades and the funerary masks, a special offering; also the distantly coming amber used in jewellery. Faience items bear Minoan influence, as do the seals and signet rings, a special category.

The first Linear B tablets were found by Evans in Knossos, many more by Blegen in Pylos in 1939 and progressively in all Mycenaean centres. Crete had three writing types Hieroglyphic, Linear A being more widespread, still undeciphered, and Linear B which descends from Linear A and appeared in mainland Greece around 1400 BC. After many endeavours, it has been deciphered in 1952 revealing a syllabic script for an early stage of Greek language. The debate of concordance between the Knossos and the Pylos tablets followed and is still alive. The inscribed clay tablets, simply dried, were baked by the fires that destroyed the palaces and thus preserved. They are administrative documents mostly inventory or tax statements teaching us a lot about Mycenaean life, palatial system, social hierarchy but no literature or history.

During the Bronze Age a high civilization developed in Greece and the Aegean consisting of three units: the Minoan civilization in Crete, the Cycladic in the islands and in Mainland Greece Hellenic civilization, whose last period is the Mycenaean era. Each of these areas had its own cultural expression but many commonalities which suggest continuous contact and interaction. Unknown until the end of the 19th century, the Mycenaean civilization came to light after the paramount excavation of Heinrich Schliemann in Mycenae and the discovery of the royal cemetery with splendid treasures buried along with the dead princes. Important discoveries followed in Greece, as in Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans, and the Mediterranean. The Mycenaean script was deciphered in 1952. Early Helladic, with Lerna in the Peloponnese as the most important site, was a period of contacts; unity broke in the end of the 3rd millennium by population movements and newcomers. Middle Helladic, characterized by new pottery styles and tumuli burials, is leading to the Late Helladic and new art expression strongly influenced by Minoan culture, a much-debated subject. Starting from the Argolid, the Mycenaean culture progressively covered the whole Greek space, Laconia and Messenia being early developed areas.