Chapter 6 - Patronage and Commemoration

Summary

NOBLE SOCIETY OF the medieval period was organized, to a great extent, around family and lineage. As Amy Livingstone has persuasively argued, there was no single form of family or inheritance pattern in the central medieval period. The concept of family, for each generation, was complex and shifting. Once children were born, families tended to be perceived as a unit represented by parents and children. However, aristocratic families had an “ethos of inclusivity” which brought connections, patronage, recognition, and respect. Thus, the blood, status, and connections of elite women were highly valued and acknowledged. This chapter focuses upon social display, identity, and artistic patronage as expressions and perpetuators of dynastic piety. Societal display draws upon material culture in combination with written texts in order to address “family and lineage, social distinction and aspiration, ceremony and social bonding, and the expression of power and authority.” The Boulonnais comital family's identity, or the “traits and traces of collective awareness (and self-awareness)” had its origins in the eleventh century and can be seen in the family's naming patterns and coins. Their reputation for military prowess, deep piety, and Carolingian descent was forged in the deeds of Eustace II, his wife, Ida of Lorraine, and their sons Eustace III, Godfrey, and Baldwin in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Their social identity was strongly linked to the success of the First Crusade, where the three brothers emerged as key figures, and as the first rulers of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. Eustace III's daughter and heir, Matilda II (1103–1152), united Carolingian, Wessex, and Scottish royal blood, with the saintly lineage of her grandmothers, Ida of Lorraine and Margaret, queen of Scotland. Trained by her Romsey-educated mother and aunt, Mary and Queen Matilda II of England, Matilda II of Boulogne added to the family's fame by her character, her piety, and marriage to Stephen of Blois, (1096/1097–1154), grandson of William the Conqueror, son of a crusader, and king of England. Their descendants—daughter Marie II, granddaughter Ida II, and great-granddaughter Matilda III—enhanced the family's reputation through social displays and patronage that emphasized crusading, Carolingian descent, chivalric qualities, and piety.