1. WHY BERENGARIA?

Medieval studies have a long and distinguished history in Europe and North America, but in more recent times a welcome and somewhat overdue interest in women's history has contributed considerably to our knowledge of an important aspect of medieval life. As a result, not only has the institution of queen received closer attention, but the lives of individual queens have been studied in some detail. Many of these women, whether queens in their own right or queens consort, are known to us from a variety of substantial and reliable sources.

Aunque los estudios medievales tienen una larga y distinguida trayectoria en Europa y Norteamérica, ha sido en los últimos años cuando el interés por conocer a las mujeres de la historia ha aportado a nuestro conocimiento un aspecto importante de la vida medieval. Como consecuencia de esto, además de analizarse el papel institucional de las reinas, también se han estudiado algunos detalles de su vida individual. Así, una gran variedad de importantes y fiables documentos nos han permitido conocer a algunas de estas mujeres, reinas consortes o reinas por derecho propio.

Berengaria is a notable exception. She has been describes as 'shadowy', 'enigmatic’, ‘un peu fade' (rather colourless) and 'moving silently in the background of events'. These comments are based in part on the sparse details available in the contemporary chronicles where the accounts of the policies, achievements, character and even physical appearance of her famous husband are, by contrast, extensive and full of interest. Berengaria only engages the attention of these chroniclers for a brief spell at the time of her marriage, in rather unusual circumstances, to Richard, but they have little to say about her in any other context, and the additional evidence concerning her life both before and after marriage -by far the greater part of her sixty- odd years has to be quarried from rather unyielding sources. Few of these are in continuous narrative form, but comprise a variety of documents of an administrative, legal or ecclesiastical nature. Berengaria might well be seen as an unpromising subject for a conventional biography.

Pero Berenguela es una excepción. De ella se ha dicho que era "oscura", "enigmática", "un poco sosa" y que "discretamente se apartaba de los acontecimientos". Estos comentarios están basados en los escasos datos que nos aportan las crónicas de su época; crónicas que, por el contrario, muestran todo tipo de detalles en lo concerniente a los acontecimientos políticos, logros, carácter y apariencia física de su famoso marido. Berenguela sólo reclama la atención de estos cronistas durante un breve pasaje de su vida, el correspondiente a su extraño matrimonio con Ricardo, por lo que para conocer más detalles de su vida anterior y posterior –la mayor parte de sus 60 años– es necesario acudir a fuentes menos directas. Aunque algunos de estos documentos tienen forma narrativa, la mayoría tiene naturaleza administrativa, legal y eclesiástica. Todo esto hace que Berenguela no sea un personaje adecuado para protagonizar una biografía convencional.

If the Church historians and chroniclers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have little to say about Berengaria, nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians, both academic and popular, have interpreted the existing material in ways which are almost entirely dismissive. Anthony Bridge pronounces her, on the evidence, to be 'dull, plain and worthy', while M. Meade in her eulogistic portrait of Eleanor of Aquitaine, describes her as 'unlike Eleanor ... a passive female who allowed herself to be buffeted around by the winds of circumstance and never raise a finger on her own behalf', a surprising comment which stands at odds with the historical record or suggests a licence more appropriate to a popular novelist than to a serious historian. But no one has, as yet, bothered to correct this view.

Sí los cronistas e historiadores de la Iglesia de los siglos XII y XIII apenas nos dicen algo sobre Berenguela, los historiadores de los siglos XIX y XX, tanto los académicos como los aficionados, han interpretado el material existente y lo han hecho de manera poco seria. Anthony Brigde la califica, ante las evidencias, como "sosa, simple y orgullosa", mientras que M. Meade, en su elogioso retrato de Leonor de Aquitania, la describe como "distinta a Leonor… una mujer pasiva que se dejó maltratar por las circunstancias que le rodearon y que nunca movió un solo dedo para su propio beneficio", un comentario sorprendente y ajeno a los registros históricos, que parece más propio de un novelista vulgar que de un historiador serio. Pero hasta ahora, nadie ha hecho nada para corregir esta visión.

While Richard and his immediate family have provided inspiration for a good many historical novels, the novelists have, for the most part, neglected Berengaria in favour of the more colourful members of the 'devil's brood': where she does appear in romantic fiction, it is often as a marginal figure, such as the frivolous, immature consort of Sir Walter Scotts novels or the unresponsive spouse, cold, unloved and unloving, of Maurice Hewlett's early twentieth century novel, The Life and Death of Richard Yea and Nay. For Hewlett, as for other more recent writers, Berengaria's supposed inadequacies provide a convenient starting point for Richard's extra-marital activities. Three best-selling women writers of the recent past have painted a more sympathetic portrait: in Margaret Campbell Barnes' novel Like Us They Lived, Richard is a Mr Rochester figure, brutal, impulsive and tormented, who is redeemed by the enduring love of Berengaria, while in Nora Lofts' The Lute Player, it is Richard's homosexual love for Blondel with which the faithful wife must compete. Jean Plaidy, in The Heart of the Lion, suggests a similar conflict.

Mientras Ricardo y su familia han inspirado muchas buenas novelas históricas, los autores, en su mayor parte, han descuidado a Berenguela frente a los más llamativos miembros de la "camada del diablo". Así, su presencia en éstas se reduce a papeles marginales: como la inmadura y frívola consorte de las novelas de Sir Walter Scott, o como la insensible, no enamorada y poco cariñosa esposa de "The life and Death of Richard Yea and Nay", novela escrita a principios del siglo XX por Maurice Hewlett. Para este último, al igual que para otros escritores más recientes, las supuestas carencias de Berenguela constituyen el punto de partida de las actividades extra-matrimoniales de Ricardo. Frente a esta visión, tres mujeres escritoras de "best sellers" han pintado una visión de Berenguela más simpática. En la novela "Like Us They Lived" de Margaret Campbell Barnes, Ricardo, representado por Mr. Rochester, es un personaje brutal, impulsivo y atormentado, que es redimido por el sólido amor de Berenguela. Por el contrario, en las novelas "The Lute Player", de Nora Lofts, y "The Heart of the Lion", de Jean Plaidy, Berenguela compite contra los amores homosexuales de Ricardo.

What is acceptable in a work of fiction is less admissible in writing which aspires to some kind of historical accuracy. Even the inspired conjecture to which all historians occasionally resort, needs to be supported at least by circumstantial evidence. Some of the writers cited above have not bothered to offer any evidence in support of their generalisations. They have been content to settle for the traditional stereotyping of women which has remained remarkably constant over the centuries. Thus we have, across the spectrum of 'history' and 'fiction', Berengaria as the beautiful virgin bride, the neglected wife, the helpless widow and, in more misogynistic mode, the 'barren' woman, the frigid, unattractive kill-joy and the pathetic victim who is largely to blame for her own misfortunes.

Lo que es aceptable en trabajos de ficción, no es admisible en escritos que aspiran a tener algún tipo de rigor histórico. Incluso las conjeturas a los que los historiadores recurren ocasionalmente, necesitan estar basadas al menos en evidencias circunstanciales. Algunos de los escritores citados no se han molestado en ofrecer ninguna evidencia que apoye sus generalizaciones. Sólo se han dedicado a seguir el tradicional estereotipo de las mujeres que ha permanecido inalterable a lo largo de los siglos. Así, de la imagen que de la historia y la ficción podemos extraer, sólo vemos a Berenguela como la bella novia virgen, la esposa abandonada, la viuda caritativa, y en términos más misóginos, como la mujer estéril, frígida y patética víctima responsable de sus propias desgracias.

Berengaria's case is by no means unique. It merely highlights a wider pattern, to which feminist historians have successfully drawn attention in a range of important studies over the last thirty years or so: the 'writing out' of women in representations of the past. 'Winners', says Joel Rosenthal in a lively introduction to a recent collection of essays entitled Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, 'write history'. And where there are winners, there are also, unfortunately, losers. Who are the losers here? We may give a variety of answers to this question but Rosenthal goes on to ask another question, and to suggest an answer: 'What material was ignored, buried and falsified in the sources that the winners were so careful to edit in their own favour and to whom did it belong? One response to this alternative question, today, is women.'

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There are obvious problems inherent in this approach. In some cases the process of 'writing out' has been all too successful and the activities of women in particular cultures, together with those of religious and ethnic minorities and other marginalised groups, are no longer retrievable. No one thought to ask a shepherd in Wales or a rush-cutter on Sedgemoor what they were doing when King Harold was shot in the eye at Hastings, and it is unlikely that the answer would have been particularly illuminating. Nor would it be other than naive to suggest that there was ever an abundance of authentic, comprehensive, objective, bias-free sources which some benighted male conspiracy contrived in each successive generation to doctor and distort. But everyone is now aware of the problem.

In other cases, fortunately, the long and laborious process of writing women back in again has achieved real gains, and the women students who outnumber their male counterparts in Arts faculties and Humanities departments the world over need no longer look in vain for their reflection in the looking glass of history. It would be unfair, too, to deny the contribution of earlier scholars, men and women, with no special theoretical orientation, whose studies of individual women's lives and female social groups have helped to lay the foundations of the discipline on which a new generation, more eclectic in its use of both technology and theory but less well-grounded in such traditional skills as palaeography, codicology and philology, has been able to build.

These concessions made, due recognition must be given to the central achievements of the women's history movement, which has been able to focus much more explicitly on the question of cultural bias, to challenge established concepts of the past and to expose the fragility of many perspectives and positions which had hitherto been regarded as non-negotiable. As a result of these endeavours 'History', as Judith Anderson and Bonnie Zinsser observe, 'can never be the same again’.

The first of such traditional positions to be challenged was the convention whereby women were defined in historical writing primarily in terms of their gender, that is, in contradistinction to men. Perhaps this was understandable: women have always been the ‘other'. There is no documented culture, past or present, in which women have not been defined in terms of their gender, a cultural construct based on the assumption that biology is destiny. It is inevitable then that, in each society or culture, the custodians of accepted values should have followed the same pattern in their attempts to record, codify and prescribe.

From earliest recorded times women have had to come to terms with this and in many cases to accept their own marginalisation. A few have succeeded in turning this to their own advantage; far more have learned to 'master the strategies of those in subordinate positions: pleasing, manipulating, enduring, surviving'. The textual records of the high Middle Ages (the so-called 'courtly' age), both fiction and non-fiction, afford numerous examples of women who ‘chose' one or other of these strategies. Each of them, while offering a solution for the individual, is isolating and divisive. The importance of women as a group is downplayed and their shared concerns denied. Women's participation in the written record becomes incidental, anecdotal, or they are reduced to an anonymous collectivity.

Because Berengaria's role has been consistently defined by her relationship with Richard, French historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were happy to exaggerate her status as victim, in order to emphasise Richard's moral turpitude. For English historians, Richard's reputation as national hero has inevitably cast her in a different but equally demeaning role. These perspectives have, inevitably, influenced the reader's perception of Richard and his queen.

Debido a que el papel de Berenguela siempre ha estado definido por su relación con Ricardo, los historiadores franceses del siglo XIX han sido propensos a exagerar su estatus de víctima, con el fin de enfatizar la inmoralidad de Ricardo. Por el contrario, para los historiadores ingleses, la consideración de Ricardo como héroe nacional ha hecho que el papel desempeñado por Berenguela haya sido degradado. Estas perspectivas han influenciado, inevitablemente, en la visión que los lectores tienen sobre Ricardo y Berenguela.

lt is not difficult to summarise the brief accounts of Berengaria's appearances in the earliest accounts of the third crusade and the life and times of Richard the Lionheart. We first read of her on her arrival in Sicily with Richard's mother Eleanor, shortly before her marriage on 12 May 1191 at Limassol in Cyprus to the recently crowned king of England. The circumstances of the marriage negotiations are nowhere describes, and historians have been left to make informed guesses as to their nature. Almost immediately after the wedding Richard and Berengaria left Cyprus separately for Palestine, where they spent one and a half years before returning, separately again, Berengaria in company with her sister-in-law, Joanna, the widowed queen of Sicily, and Richard, after a series of adventures in disguise, falling captive to his enemies in Austria. On the evidence of later events, it is assumed that they became estranged in Palestine, but, whether or not this was the case, on Richard's release and return to Normandy and Anjou, they were not often together, partly because of Richard's frequent military excursions. Around 1195 they were reconciled by the good offices of an unnamed hermit and/or Hugh of Avalon, bishop of Lincoln, who reproached the king for improper sexual conduct. Richard died shortly after this, of a gangrenous wound incurred in the siege of the castle of Chalus-Chabrol, leaving Berengaria childless. Berengaria did not remarry but lived in Le Mans for thirty years until her death in the abbey she founded on the outskirts of the city. She is remembered as a benefactor of several other religious congregations and institutions and was regarded as a model of piety.

Even this bare summary provokes our curiosity and prompts as yet unanswered questions. Was it true, as two of the earliest crusade narratives claim, that Richard had fallen in love with Berengaria in his youth, before coming to the throne? When and how did they meet? What were Berengaria's experiences on the crusade? Why is it said that Richard and his bride became estranged? What were the sins with which Richard was reproached by churchmen, and which had caused him to neglect his wife? Was this why they had no children? If, as some claim, Berengaria was 'barren', why did Richard not repudiate her, as so many others did when their wives were no longer of use to them? Was Berengaria summoned to Richard's death-bed? What was the role of Eleanor, the possessive mother, in all this? Why did Berengaria not remarry or return to Spain? What happened to her during the thirty years of widowhood? And finally, the inevitable speculation, can we ever know what sort of a person she was?

Incluso este pequeño resumen provoca nuestra curiosidad y hace que nos hagamos preguntas que todavía no tienen respuesta. ¿Es verdad, como se afirma en dos narraciones anteriores a las cruzadas, que Ricardo se enamoró de Berenguela antes de que fuera rey?. ¿Cuándo y como se conocieron?. ¿Cuales fueron las experiencias de Berenguela en la cruzada?. ¿Por qué se dice que Ricardo y Berenguela llegaron a enemistarse?. ¿Cuál fue el pecado por el que Ricardo fue reprobado, causante del distanciamiento con Berenguela?. ¿Es por esto por lo que no tuvieron hijos?. Si como algunos dicen Berenguela era estéril, ¿por qué no la repudió, como otros lo hacían cuando sus esposas no les podían dar hijos?. ¿Fue avisada Berenguela para que acudiera al lecho de muerte de Ricardo?. ¿Por qué Berenguela no volvió a casarse o volvió a Navarra?. ¿Que sucedió durante sus 30 años de viudedad?. Y finalmente, una especulación inevitable, ¿podremos llegar a saber que clase de persona fue?

Those who see history as essentially political, dynastic or economic will, no doubt, dismiss these questions as trivial or naive. Once more the perspective of the 'winners' asserts itself: fighting wars, subduing territories, massacring prisoners, laying waste towns and villages, outsmarting political opponents, buying and selling, making pacts, deals and appointments to high office, these are serious activities. They are also activities almost exclusively controlled by men, in which women seldom figure more than marginally and intermittently. When we try to turn the picture inside out, however, and, moving these events into the background, focus more closely on some of the detail, the episodes at the margins, the significant gaps and spaces, a different picture begins to emerge.

Esto nos conduce a formularnos nuevas preguntas: ¿qué sabemos o qué podemos averiguar sobre los antecedentes de Berenguela, su infancia y su educación en el reino de Navarra, cuya estratégica posición en los Pirineos y control sobre algunas ciudades del Camino de Santiago, hacían que tuviera cierta importancia para las monarquías Angevinas y Capetas del norte?

What is known about Berengaria's family and the social, political and cultural context to which it belonged? How helpful are medieval Spanish sources and how have they been traditionally interpreted by Spanish historiography? The Hispanic peninsula at this turning point in the history of the reconquest was a complex cultural mosaic quite different from the lands north of the Loire or even just across the mountains: Jewish and Muslim influences formed part of this legacy, though these have been partly obscured by the bias of some nationalist Spanish historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

How would such a background have influenced a woman marrying into a different culture? Berengaria, of course, was not the only Spanish princess of the time to leave her homeland and marry into a powerful dynasty of northern Europe: her sister Blanca, whose son, Thibault IV, was ultimately to succeed his uncle Sancho El Fuerte on the throne of Navarre, married Eleanor of Aquitaine's grandson Thibault III of Champagne and spent twenty years as regent during her son's infancy at a crucial time in the struggle between England and France. Blanca's life in some ways paralleled that of her sister though hers was of necessity a more public role. Something can be inferred about their common background and perhaps similar personalities, from the history of Blanca's regency. The movement was not all one-way either: Plantagenet princesses too, were married to Spanish, Sicilian and Occitanian kings, and counts, for similar dynastic reasons.

Nor was Berengaria the only crowned queen to have taken part in a crusade. Her reactions and experiences have not been recorded but, again, the extraordinary circumstances in which she found herself must arouse curiosity and interest. A royal marriage which begins on the eve of an active military campaign, in physical and climatic conditions of great rigour, in an atmosphere of heightened religious and nationalistic fervour, must be subject to considerable stress.

Were these unusual conditions and the stresses to which they would have given rise, factors in the apparent failure of Berengaria to conceive - or at least to bear - a child? The common assumption is that she was infertile - I eschew the demeaning term 'barren', which the dictionary lists as referring to land, plants and women, in that order - and one extreme view is that the marriage was never even consummated. Given Richards intense involvement in military matters, his intermittent bouts of sickness and his questionable sexual preferences, we might wonder why it is assumed that the inadequacy was Berengaria's. Male infertility and impotence have always been treated with greater sensitivity than infertility in women, and the fact that Richard fathered one ex-nuptial child in his youth (in contrast to the numerous 'bastards' acknowledged by most of his peers) is not a decisive argument.

After Richard's return from captivity in 1194, Berengaria's movements are much less well-documented than those of her husband. Some historians insist that she went, more or less voluntarily, into semi-retirement in her dower lands in Maine and Anjou. But what was the alternative? Richard was constantly on the move in the escalating conflict with his old rival Philip Augustus of France, his principal companions were no longer the Norman churchmen and administrators of his early reign but military advisors, including a large number of mercenaries, some of ill-repute.

The circumstances of Richard's death, too, have not always been clearly explained. French propaganda from the last century has represented this accidental death from a cross-bow shot as the consequence not only of Richard's well-known arrogance and risk-taking but of his greed and lust for treasure. John Gillingham has demolished this and other embellishments, but the accounts are still somewhat terse and lacking in detail, giving rise to such apocryphal elaborations as that of Walter of Guiseborough, which depicts Richard on his deathbed warned by doctors not to indulge in sexual activities. Accounts of the last days are coloured by partisan views of one kind or another. The absence of Berengaria from these accounts cannot be taken as evidence that she was deliberately excluded. Richard's mother Eleanor, whose devotion to her son is well-attested, played an important role in the last rites and would no doubt have wished to exercise some control over their recording. The proprieties of the day would have made it unlikely for a spouse not to have been present at some part of the obsequies, but a bitter and disappointed mother-in-law, blaming her daughter-in-law for the lack of an heir, might well have attempted, and succeeded in, removing her from the official record.

Be that as it may, Berengaria's thirty years of widowhood in Le Mans are no longer of any interest to the English chroniclers. They become instead part of the history of the city and diocese of Le Mans, a region of considerable antiquity and interest for an impressive number of local historians. Significantly, scholars working in this area have taken a very different view of Berengaria's personality and achievements from the views of Richard's biographers, ancient and modern. The great Pope Innocent III, himself one of the outstanding figures of his day, was among her best-known champions. His letters show that he found her a doughty and enthusiastic emulator of the importunate widow of the parable. What happened in the interim? How did the mal mariée, the passive, colourless victim become a strong decisive survivor?

In reality, those long years of widowhood reveal, on the basis of the record, a strong, courageous woman, independent, solitary, battling against difficult political and economic circumstances, with little interest in the trappings of a courtly existence, sustained by her faith in Christ and her royalty to the See of St Peter, not afraid to assert her rights against powerful enemies, both lay and clerical. All this was with no sons to champion her cause, no father to protect her interests, with only the support of her sister and perhaps of her reclusive brother several hundred miles away whose steadily deteriorating health made him an unlikely source of assistance. Even now, the reputation of the dead husband cast a long shadow over his widow: as an innocent relict of Angevin power she was an embarrassment to the French and their local clients, including the many opportunists who had changed sides, and a potential financial liability to her brother-in-law, King John, and his successor.

Berengaria's life illustrates very clearly the constraints under which medieval women, even aristocratic ones, were obliged to live. She left the obscurity of a tranquil childhood, to enjoy a brief moment of celebrity as a bride, followed by the vicissitudes of a stressful marriage into a difficult family and a long, childless widowhood in a foreign land.

Like the majority of women in her day, Berengaria was all the time at the mercy of political events whose course was dictated by others; only at the very end of her life did she succeed in carrying to fruition a project of her own. It is perhaps less easy today than in the past to see the foundation of an abbey as an exciting achievement. It was, admittedly, a common practice among the pious nobility of both sexes to endow religious houses often with a view to retiring or dying there in old age. The regular donations of prominent men and women to religious foundations have sometimes been compared in a general way with the sponsorship of good causes by wealthy philanthropists and shrewd entrepreneurs today. There was, however, a genuinely spiritual dimension involved which still survives in part at least, today, in Catholic countries, in memorial masses for the dead and other practices. Part reparation for the past, part insurance for the future, these practices also signal official recognition that in the last resort, old wrongs can be righted, human imperfections healed and hope triumph over adversity. The foundation of the abbey of l'Épau, the culmination of a quarter of a century of generous donations to the religious foundations, makes a fitting conclusion to the story of Berengaria.

Our search for Richard's queen leads us through a variety of historical documents, chronicles, charters, records, letters, treaties' and so on. Most historians also supplement their descriptions of institutions and practices with reference to contemporary fiction. Our knowledge of the training of young noblemen, knightly ideals, the conduct of tournaments, feasting and other entertainments, costume and accepted canons of beauty is often extended and enriched by the use of literary texts. The distinction between 'literary' and 'nonliterary' texts is itself often hard to maintain: the chronicles of a writer like the twelfth-century Jerseyman Wace, for instance, or biographies such as that of William the Marshal are part history, part fiction.

Literary sources must be used with particular caution, however, because it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about women's lives and conditions from those texts which have been characterised as 'courtly' and which were produced prolifically in the latter part of the twelfth century under Anglo-Norman or Continental patronage. It is something of a paradox that this literature above all romances, lyrics, lais - has been seen as a response to female tastes and the growing importance of women in an increasingly leisured aristocracy when its actual representation of women is so clearly shaped by a male perspective. Georges Duby has made this point on more than one occasion, in the light of his own interest in the history of marriage, sexual relationships and the condition of women in what he has labelled, the Male Middle Ages (Mále Moyen Age).

The debates over the origins of the troubadour lyric in the south, the meaning of the frequently used expression 'fin'amors' and the notion of 'courtly' love in the narrative and lyric poetry of northern France and Anglo-Norman England cannot be summarised here. Although these literary-genres are clearly related, there are significant differences between the fin'amors of the troubadours and the courtly code of the north. Moreover, it is doubtful weether 'courtliness' in the literary sense ever existed as a distinct ideology.

Much of this literature is highly conventional, even artificial: few would be bold enough to claim that 'courts of love' ever existed as real institutions or that the values conveyed by the vocabulary of courtly love ever reflected contemporary social reality. Literature is always related to 'real' life, but often in ways much more complex than mere imitation. Escapism, fantasy, protest, subversion, irony are also present, even if, at times, expressed with caution and subtlety.

There may well have been a considerable body of lyric poetry composed by women in the earliest European vernacular tradition. Yet the troubadour poetry which seems to have originated with William IX of Aquitaine is masculinist in its orientation, despite the existence of a few poems composed by women. These women, for whom modern critics have resuscitated the old and rare term trobairitz, expressed themselves differently from their male counterparts and in ways which merit study and attention, but the weight of their contribution has been overstressed. The poetry of the troubadours, for the most part, offers a perverse and unreal image of women, in language which is artificial and often obscure. With its senhals (mysterious pseudonyms) the bizarre masculine midons (literally 'my lord') for the lady and its camp little 'in-jokes', this poetry is frequently self-indulgent and narcissistic.

In the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and the Tristan poems, as well as in the minor verse romances, all of which were so influential in courtly societies across Europe, the theme of love and its place in the chivalric code, while probably appealing to better educated women patrons and audiences, in no way reflects the totality of women's experiences. The range of female characters presented in this narrative fiction is a narrow one: the beautiful maiden, the object of a quest, the seductive enchantress, the treacherous deceiver, however delicately and decoratively presented, are essentially a male creation. This is woman as framed by the male imagination.

En los romances de Chrétien de Troyes y los poemas de Tristan, así como en los versos de romances menores, todos ellos tan influyentes en las cortes de toda Europa, el tema del amor y su lugar en el código de caballería, aunque probablemente reflejan una mejor educación y presencia de las mujeres, de ninguna manera reflejan la totalidad de las experiencias de las mujeres. El rango de los caracteres femeninos que se presentan en estas narrativas de ficción es bastante reducido: la bella doncella, el objeto a conquistar, la hechicera seductora, la infiel impostora, que por mucho que sean mostrados de manera delicada y elegante, son esencialmente una recreación de los hombres. Esta mujer es la que ha sido ideada por la imaginación de los hombres.

Some categories of women are not represented in this literature, perhaps because they represent unwelcome realities: where do we find the repudiated spouse or the neglected fiancée? Where in courtly literature is there a heroine comparable to poor Ingeborg of Denmark, queen of France, repudiated by her husband on the day after her wedding, slandered, banished, humiliated, imprisoned and only grudgingly reinstated after long years of suffering and repeated pressure from the Pope? Occasionally a woman is depicted as suffering a slight at the hands of her lover or her spouse, but she is not usually portrayed as a heroine, and such incidents are usually minor ones. In this respect, aristocratic literature contrasts notably with popular tradition, where the folklore type known as the 'Calumniated Wife' is extremely common. Occasionally this theme does appear in 'courtly' literature, though not usually in French.

Algunas categorías de mujeres no han sido representadas en esta literatura, quizás porque representan realidades molestas: ¿dónde se encuentran las esposas repudiadas o las novias abandonadas? ¿Hay en estos textos alguna heroína comparable a la desgraciada Ingeborg de Dinamarca, reina de Francia, repudiada por su marido el mismo día de su boda, difamada, desterrada, humillada, encarcelada y sólo restituida, de mala gana, después de muchos años de sufrimiento por las reiteradas presiones del Papa?. Ocasionalmente alguna mujer ha sido retratada sufriendo algún desprecio a manos de su amante o marido, pero ella no es generalmente considerada como una heroína, y estos casos son los menos. En este aspecto, la literatura de la aristocracia contrasta notablemente con la tradición popular, en cuyo folclore la figura de la ‘mujer calumniada’ es muy común. Ocasionalmente este tema ha aparecido en la literatura ‘cortés’, pero no es habitual en la de Francia.

Although courtly texts, and particularly the lays and romances, are useful for the details they provide about background, settings, architecture, food, clothing, hunting, archery etc., it would be unwise to see in them a comprehensive and accurate reflection of the position of women in medieval society. In essence these romances are concerned with chivalry: any serious messages they convey are directed towards men, while female audiences and readers had to content themselves with the decorative, diversionary elements. It would not have been surprising if many of them were willing to accept this, and even to toy with the amusing illusion that women like a Guinevere, an Isolt, could, at least in the escapist world of fiction, exercise such apparent power over the sex which in daily reality controlled every aspect of their lives. Courtly literature, then, must be used with caution.

There are very few biographical accounts of Berengaria available in English. Agnes Strickland devoted one chapter to her in her classic Lives of the Queens of England, and Mary Anne Everett Green mentions her in another nineteenth-century work on royal princesses. These early works are not without interest but their authors did not have access to the full range of information which we have today. Much more recently, Mairin Mitchell published a book-length 'biography' entitled Berengaria: Enigmatic Queen of England but it is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons.

Strickland's account is characterised by a Victorian sentimentality which glosses over the harsher aspects of Richard's character and leaves us with an inappropriate picture of a pair of star-crossed pre-Raphaelite lovers. Mitchell's work is superficial and makes many claims for which no evidence at all is forthcoming. It displays a credulous and uncritical attitude to secondary sources and is unlikely to dispel the 'enigma' of its title. The best account is still the short mid nineteenth-century biography by Henri Chardon, which, as the author freely acknowledges, concentrates almost exclusively on Berengaria's life as a widow in Le Mans and has very littie to say about her background or her relations with Richard. In recent years a brief article by Elizabeth Hallam, delivered on the occasion of a congress to celebrate the transfer of Berengaria's bones to the abbey of l'Épau, supplies a useful overview but is of necessity limited in scope and relies heavily in places on recent biographies of Richard.

Richard's life and times have been more than adequately explored from the contemporary accounts of Roger of Howden, Richard of Devizes and others to the prolific output of John Gillingham, and other modern historians. As all the modern biographers cover the same ground and call upon the same range of primary sources, the reader who wishes to know something about Richard has an enviable array of choices. The figure of Richard in folklore and popular tradition including stage, screen and comic strip represents another area rich in possibilities for research. Berengaria is almost entirely absent from this tradition.

La vida y época de Ricardo han sido sobradamente explorados desde los relatos de sus contemporáneos Roger de Howden, Richard de Devizes y otros, hasta las prolíficas producciones de John Gillingham y otros historiadores modernos. Debido a que todas las biografías posteriores abarcan el mismo campo y utilizan las misma fuentes directas, el lector que desee conocer algo de Ricardo tiene una envidiable serie de opciones. La figura de Ricardo en el folclore y en la tradición popular, e incluso en el teatro, el cine y el cómic, ofrecen otra área rica en posibilidades para investigar. Berenguela, en cambio, apenas está presente en ellas.

There is, in the final resort, insufficient source material to provide a detailed narrative account of Berengaria's life in the conventional manner, to set against the numerous nineteenth- and twentieth-century biographies of her famous husband. But the insights afforded, first by 'histories of women' and subsequently by feminist history, have provided a key to understanding and evaluating the few precious references we do have. The first category includes many fine studies of individual women's lives and times and overviews based on these pioneering works, while feminist and gender-based studies have attempted, often with considerable success, to deconstruct the texts themselves, showing how their various contextual influences and cultural biases shape the construction of both masculinity and femininity.

In recent years too, there have been a number of useful and important studies of medieval queenship as an institution. These, too, help to throw light on the meagre details afforded by the chronicles and records. Berengaria's life, her background and the choices which were made for her by others, can be compared and contrasted with those of other medieval princesses and her achievements can be assessed against these constraints.

Durante los últimos años han aparecido un número de importantes y útiles estudios sobre las reinas como institución. Éstos también nos ayudan a arrojar luz sobre los pobres detalles proporcionados por las crónicas y los registros. La vida de Berenguela, sus antecedentes y las decisiones que por ella tomaron otros, puede ser comparados y contrastados con los de otras princesas medievales y, así, sus logros pueden ser analizados a pesar de las limitaciones.

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