Les Saintes reines du Moyen Age en Occident: VIe-XIIIe siecles.

This volume, a companion to the same author's Les saints rois du moyen age en Occident ([VI.sup.e]-[XII.sup.e] siecles), summarizes the medieval documentary sources for the lives of twelve royal female saints and presents the evidence for their cults. In an introductory chapter, Professor Folz delineates the typical portrait of the holy queen, which drew on Late Antique and patristic sources. Its prominent features were chastity or virginity (although most of these women, paradoxically, owed their royal status to their husbands), humility, charity, asceticism (which functioned as a substitute for martyrdom), and a life of active service to the poor. The women themselves were no …