Of Six Mediæval Women; To Which Is Added A Note on Mediæval Gardens — Background and Themes

From Stewards’ Accounts to Inner Life

The chapter on Mahaut, Countess of Artois, exemplifies Kemp-Welch’s reliance on administrative records. She notes that “her stewards’ entries furnish the only materials from which we can weave some outline of her life,” and from these she attempts to reason about Mahaut’s “inner life, the pattern, as it were, that is not wrought for the world.” The author uses inventories of the Hôtel d’Artois—mentioning “four figure-pictures,” embroideries, and a window depicting the Crucifixion—to evoke the sensory environment. She also speculates that Mahaut “may have met and talked with Dante” during her Paris sojourns, a cautious inference grounded in chronology and location. This approach balances documentary evidence with imaginative reconstruction, a pattern repeated across the profiles.

Material Culture as Biography

Throughout the excerpts, Kemp-Welch treats objects as biographical clues. In the introduction, she describes the hall of Mahaut’s residence: “tables on trestles, easily removed before the dance began,” “dressers to hold the gold and silver plate,” and “settles with footboards so necessary when the rushes were only renewed at lengthy intervals.” She compares these to examples from the Castle of Chillon and quotes Brunetto Latini’s Tesoro on French castles lying “in the midst of meadows and gardens, with large painted chambers.” The illustrations listed—such as “Lady playing Harp” and “Boat with Knights and Lady”—suggest that visual sources complement the text. This attention to furnishings, gardens, and manuscripts grounds each woman’s story in tangible remains.

Political Context Without Biography

Kemp-Welch often sketches the political landscape when direct biographical material is thin. For Mahaut, she details the reign of Philip le Bel: “avaricious by nature,” he “quarrelled with the Pope, Boniface the Eighth, and brought about the removal of the Holy See from Rome to Avignon,” and “robbed and ruined the Templars.” This context frames Mahaut’s position as a noblewoman navigating a court where “war in high places” persisted despite peace in the land. The author does not claim to know Mahaut’s motives but uses the era’s conflicts to suggest pressures and opportunities. Similarly, the introduction to the volume as a whole—with its list of subjects from Roswitha to Agnes Sorel—indicates a chronological sweep that ties each figure to broader medieval developments.

The Supplementary Note on Gardens

The volume concludes with “A Note on Mediæval Gardens,” which extends the material focus beyond the six women. The table of contents lists illustrations of gardens from manuscripts, such as “Harl. MS. 4425, Brit. Mus.” and “Flemish Master, 15th century.” Kemp-Welch’s interest in gardens aligns with her method: she reads horticultural details as expressions of aesthetic and social values. The note likely draws on the same kind of sources—manuscript illuminations, account books, and literary references—used in the biographical chapters. For readers, this appendix offers a coda that ties together the themes of patronage, domesticity, and the natural world that appear throughout the profiles.

Kemp-Welch’s profiles reward readers who attend to the margins of history—the inventories, the marginalia, the garden plans. The excerpts show that she treats each woman as a node in a network of objects and texts, rather than as a subject for psychological portraiture. First-time readers may find it useful to note how she signals uncertainty (e.g., “it is interesting to think it possible, nay even probable”) and how she uses contemporary comparisons to bridge gaps in evidence. The book is best approached as a series of essays that illuminate medieval culture through individual lives, rather than as a continuous narrative.

Sitting with Alice Kemp-Welch's medieæval women, I kept thinking of their gardens and the quiet rituals of their days. Then I recalled that old volume on Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period — A Closer Reading, and how its illustrations made those same women feel suddenly close, like neighbours in a long afternoon.