A new collection of essays on Mary of Burgundy, edited by Elizabeth L’Estrange (AHCVS) and colleagues from Vienna, Oxford and Ghent has just been published by Brepols.
Beginning as a conference at Birmingham’s Brussels office and the Groningen Museum in Bruges in 2015, this collection explores the patronage, politics and legacy associated with Mary and her reign. The twenty-four articles shed new light on this last duchess of Burgundy who has traditionally been overlooked by historians due to her gender and early death. The authors explore issues such as Mary’s contested legitimacy as a late-medieval female ruler; how law, literature, visual art and theatrical representations were used to strengthen or weaken her authority; the governmental tools at Mary’s disposal and the agents behind them; and the ways in which Mary’s power and her principate have been represented and reinterpreted in subsequent eras, often with political or social intent, in modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands.