“The women and children, eyes fixed on the boats,
gave cries of fear that mingled with their sobs.
Even they, the sailors, vaunted for their courage,
Who had defied without paling some twenty storms,
And who, when the English descended upon their coast,
Used any weapon without fear in their heart:
They, even they, felt terror flood their veins
And their plan to fight expired in a vain clamour.”1
As the citizens of Penmarc’h spied the ships inch threateningly close to their plentiful port town, they prepared their souls for certain death. The medieval world was fraught with in-your-face-brutality, but what awaited the citizens of this Breton town was a threat unlike any they’d seen before. This seaside satan wasn’t the English under the banner of St. George keen on conquest and colonization, nor was it the French preparing to protect, interject or overtake. Instead, it was a Breton lord so feared that terror filled the hearts of those within the harbor towns long before the dark masts could be seen blowing in the breeze.
This was the Black Fleet.
This was pirates.
This was la tigresse Bretonne—the lioness of Brittany—Jeanne de Clisson.
Welcome to episode 2 of the Women Written Out: Women of the Hundred Years War, by Kate Wagner - the 15th Century Feminist. Be sure to subscribe to be notified of all future posts as we continue to explore the countless patriarchy confronting women of the past. If your brain requires words on a page, fear not, a written version of today’s episode and references are available via the 15th Century Feminist Substack. Though each episode is written to stand alone, I do recommend listening along in order as each builds upon the prior.
This is episode 2 - The Lioness of Brittany: The archaic right of the feminine fight
We love a man that subverts patriarchal authority, railing against the establishment on behalf of the every-man. There is no shortage of this theme within our library shelves, streaming services, and news cycles. Hell, you could say this very idea (and a ton of propagandized misconceptions) placed a white supremacist back into the White House.
A quick search into the internet movie database (better known as IMDB), yields overwhelming results: Just one name, two words, and well over thirty hits pop up without expanding the page further: Robin Hood.
I doubt I need to add much to draw up an image within your mind’s eye. A man (or perhaps maybe a fox) for the people, for the common-weal. A man against patriarchal governance and greed. A man confronting authority. A man whose own criminality becomes a moot point, affirming we must sometimes overlook the not-so-good—the harmful and violent even—to counteract what too many refuse to identify as Patriarchy.
We praise those that act individually without questioning why they didn’t first attempt to access their goals through acts of non-violence. We don’t ask if they’ve rallied their community to recognize and subvert patriarchal influence within their everyday. We don’t question why they never utilize their access to patriarchal power to enact solutions possessing any sort of longevity. We glorify an individual’s violent act(s) against a violent system, presenting it as an act of defiance against the system. As if patriarchy hadn’t always allowed them access to violence; As if the very system they are said to be confronting isn’t violent and predicated upon that violence.
In the 1973 Disney rendition of Robin Hood, we are met almost immediately with the following dialog between our disenfranchised hero and his confederate-borrower, Little John:
Little John: You know somethin’, Robin, I was just wonderin’? Are we good guys or bad guys? You know, I mean, uh... Our robbin’ the rich to feed the poor.
Robin Hood: Rob? That’s a naughty word. We never rob. We just sort of borrow a bit from those who can afford it.
Little John: “Borrow”? Huh. Boy, are we in debt.
Little John can’t quite puzzle out where they fall within the binary of good and bad. Surely they are good because they are ensuring others can meet their basic needs, but they seemingly cannot achieve their task without utilizing violence, causing immense bodily harm and even death—and that is bad, right? As bell hooks aptly posited “patriarchy encourages men to surrender their integrity and to live lives of denial. By learning the arts of compartmentalization, dissimulation, and disassociation, men are able to see themselves as acting with integrity in cases where they are not.”2 —‘Robin Hood and the men who compartmentalized in tights’ is perhaps not as sexy a title.
But who determines what is good or bad within patriarchal realties? Who is allowed to subvert and rebel in ways that will be socially acceptable, and maybe even praised and idolized?3 In patriarchy, crime is met with punishment which yields far more punishing crimes, yet very few actually contribute to establishing the definitions of either crime or punishment, nor is effort made to identify the root cause of either. If the system which governs our livelihoods refuses to meet our basic human needs, who, in patriarchy, are we willing to place our faith into outside of the established organizations to enact change? In patriarchy who gets power, who gets authority, and who is allowed access to confront either?
In the latter half of The Hundred Years War, England was plagued with civil unrest… and, occasionally, the plague itself. This unrest started long before Henry IV (1399) supplanted his cousin on the throne and one could argue lasted until the brief respite of peace felt in Edward IV’s later years (1471)—long after the close of the 116 year conflict that would alter the landscapes of medieval France and England irrevocably. And though England would see a short-lived prosperity under Henry V between the two, his lust for patriarchal authority and glory ultimately sealed the downfall of his line and furthered crises within the countries he was charged to care for.
Dear listener, if you’re already lost in all of the Henry’s and Edward’s, don’t worry, we’re not here for them. Though admittedly, at some point in this episode, everyone is going to be named Jeanne, so prepare yourself. I do my best, but there is only so much one can do.
Alongside idolizing men that subverted patriarchal authority through exerting patriarchal power—cough, cough Robin Hood, the various Robin themed rebellions, the gunpowder plot, etc etc…—the lore of England within the middle ages maintained that the nation would crumble under the rule of a child, and that is exactly what happened in 1422 when Henry V succumbed to the disgustingly painful ails of dysentery, leaving his eight-month-old son to inherit England and France courtesy the Treaty of Troyes. The fact that anyone was surprised by this in a system predicated upon domination via warfare, hierarchical divine right, and patrilineal inheritance under the notion of male supremacy, was short-sighted, to say the least. But alas, that was the situation the English nobility found themselves in on that fateful day in 1422 when Henry V took his last breath.
However, I’ve once again gotten ahead of myself. Before the various Henry’s, there were the various Jeanne’s.
Before England’s succession crisis, there was the question of the French succession in 1316 followed closely by the question of the Breton succession the very next generation—Brittany being a powerful vassal of France at this time.
Furthermore, early fourteenth century France was fractured. A break so deep it would take generations to heal. This is the setting we find ourselves within as we meet back up with Jeanne de Clisson; la tigresse Bretonne; the lioness of Brittany; the feared captain of the Black Fleet who was but moments away from storming the port of Penmarc’h and enacting terror within our introduction of today’s episode. Within Pirate, Traitor, Wife: Jeanne of Belleville and the Categories of Fourteenth-Century French Noblewomen, Katrin E. Sjursen writes:
Jeanne of Belleville was a pirate. Or so recorded the anonymous author of the fourteenth century Chronique Normande. In 1343, Jeanne’s husband, Olivier III of Clisson, was beheaded for treason against the French crown; his head was then sent from Paris to the Breton city of Nantes and stuck on a pike before the gates to serve as a warning to all would-be traitors. Jeanne responded by bringing her two young sons to the gates of Nantes, to impress upon them the image of their dead father’s head and a lesson of eternal hatred to the French crown. Swearing vengeance herself, Jeanne then led a band of 400 men into a nearby walled town, entering by treachery and slaughtering the garrison within. When the French sent troops to retaliate, she slipped away to sea, leading a small fleet of ships in brigandage and killing all French merchants unfortunate enough to cross her path.4
According to patriarchal standards of rebellion and rage Jeanne was a badass. If she’d been born a man she’d be upheld within the annals as a certified-patriarchy-confronter through her access to patriarchal power. As Ellen O’Brien pointed out within the preface of her translation of Émile Péhant’s 1868 epic poem titled after our heroine, “time and again, [Jeanne] found herself pitted against tyranny and injustice, and was not afraid to make her displeasure known…Resolute to the point of obstinacy and bold to the point of recklessness, Jeanne could easily join the ranks of historical women who were determined to find security and autonomy despite the structure of their time.”5
The animalistic monikers ascribed to women of the medieval world were meant to dehumanize the subject. The she-wolves and lionesses of the middle ages were akin, to some degree, to the treatment of the witch and hag in early-modern literary culture. Though it wouldn’t be entirely wrong to perceive it as an ascription of power through the imagery of a strong animal—as is the case with Jeanne de Clisson being hailed the Lioness of Brittany—it also served to alert the reader of the closer-to-nature element of women while signaling a deviation from contemporary gender norms. Casting disdain while reminding the reader of who holds both reason and authority in perpetuity under patriarchy, regardless of power exhibited and exerted.
Outside of specialized research, most receive a perniciously painted picture of the middle ages—a time of few baths and much misogyny. A time when a woman’s greatest calling was to be perceived correctly by the patriarchy: virgin, wife, mother, but most importantly, helpmeet to all. A time when a woman’s entire reality was controlled by both the patriarchal church and patriarchal imperialism, reinforced within the manifestations of literature and law alike. And though this isn’t entirely incorrect, it also isn’t entirely correct. As with any narrative including humans, context and nuance are needed if we are truly to learn from the lived realities of the past. Yet, in most cases, context has historically been allotted to the history of one specific gender manifestation.
Our Lioness, born sometime around the turn of the fourteenth century, was a Breton noblewoman—an auxiliary branch of an auxiliary branch of the French nobility. Had she been born of a lower class we’d likely not know of her at all as she is “limited to the official documents that connect her to property, marriage, and children, her life can be traced from birth to death via the men she encountered.”6
When Jeanne’s father died in 1304, her brother inherited most of the Belleville lands, however a third of said lands so too belonged to Jeanne by the very same right of inheritance. Upon marriage to her third husband, Olivier III of Clisson—the dude whose head ended up on a gate-post—Jeanne found herself in possession of a significant swath of the Brittany shoreline consisting of important trade routes and destinations both for the ducal kingdom of Brittany and the larger kingdom of France. “This marriage created a powerful and quite wealthy bloc of lands; in the legal squabbling conducted by the kings of France and England over Jeanne’s lands in the 1360s, the English valued her property alone as worth 30,000 pounds annually.”7
It would be silly to argue against the hierarchical nature of the medieval world, our modern rendition of patriarchy could not exist in its current form without our ancestors of this time-period informing our inherited biases, so please don’t presume I am dismissing it entirely. But because patriarchy is predicated upon such biases, we’ve received an almost encompassing image of women’s meekness and lack of access to any real power in the middle ages. The imposition of an ancient Salic Law to ensure patrilineal inheritance during the French succession crisis solidified later historians confidence in claiming women’s dominion was relegated strictly to the domestic while men dominated public domains through both force and divine right.
If we were to ascribe and impose this pernicious patriarchal bias of women’s complete-and-total diminished and subservient status of the middle ages, then Jeanne’s later actions would seem singular, defying the standard operating procedure of her era. But as we’ll soon discover, she wasn’t even the only Jeanne waging war against an anointed king at this time.
The reality is, the chronicles, the correspondence both secular and ecclesiastical, and the extensive parliamentary documentation within France and Brittany (and sometimes even England!) point more to a lived reality of partnership in lordship, of a shared power; “A form of monarchy and lordship that encompassed the couple rather than a single all-powerful individual”8—a form of lordship that would have been more familiar to those contemporary to Jeanne than the image of missing-and-meek-medieval-woman modern readers have inherited from patriarchal historians.
As Katrin E. Sjursen justly identifies in one of many documented examples in regards to our pirate:
“The practice by the king and Parlement of naming both Olivier and Jeanne in legal suits suggests their complementary rule of their lands. For example, in November 1333, Philip VI confirmed some gifts presented by his former seneschal of Poitou to “the lord of Clisson and to the said lady of Belleville, his wife.” The inclusion of Jeanne in these gifts indicates that the king and seneschal viewed her as a partner in the seigneurial couple. Note also that Jeanne is not identified by her husband’s lordship of Clisson but her own lordship of Belleville, recognizing the importance of her own position.”9
Jeanne’s lore includes inheriting the entirety of her family’s lands upon her brother’s death making her incredibly wealthy in her own right—a right she would fiercely litigate to preserve throughout her life, including against her multiple husbands who she had a habit of outliving. She acted as the main administrator of her own lands but also of the lands of her various husbands, as they were often called away to campaign during this historically tumultuous time, transitioning easily into lordship, as would have been required of her. When one husband became imprisoned under charges of treason, Jeanne is said to have bribed a prison guard in order to delay proceedings, an act which sealed her fate as a traitor to the French crown herself.
When her husband was separated from his head, Jeanne sold off a significant amount of wealth in order to acquire means of domination to become a whole problem for the French crown. Anytime she instigated an act of violence, she partook in both planning and execution of said plan, easily slipping into this specific side of medieval lordship required of women that is not often acknowledged within the histories. Jeanne aligned herself with many powerful allies against the French king, including Edward III the king of England, who, as mentioned earlier, was always itching to invade his Frankish neighbors.10
And finally, what Jeanne is perhaps best known for: She was a pirate for 13 years. First in the Bay of Biscay, and then in the English Channel to disrupt trade routes that sought to support the French king. When Jeanne acquired her fleet she is said to have ordered them painted black—sails and all—in order to better surprise and overtake those she meant to dominate. When Jeanne and the Black Fleet boarded a vessel or waded ashore, all but one would be slaughtered to ensure the message of destruction would make it back to the man she opposed.11—Hardly a meek domestic figure maintaining the private sphere.
Though it is true much of Jeanne’s lore in terms of her treason and seaside treachery resides in non-traditional sources, a long-learned patriarchal bias has rendered such accounts necessary to consider when crafting the lived realities of women past. The picture that emerges of Jeanne’s life is one so sufficient with navigating both the private and public spheres of lordship required of the medieval nobility that the reader often forgets we are meant to view Jeanne as “soft and timid”—as noted by two nineteenth century historians. An anachronistic view appropriated from their own more puritanical time.
Doubtful those that crossed Jeanne’s path would recognize her through terms of passivity, nor dismiss her as but ‘wife’ and ‘bandit’. The more likely? Jeanne exerted both patriarchal power and authority which was recognized by her contemporaries as a rightful manifestation of her marital lordship.
As historian Eileen Power asked over 80 years ago:
Who looked after his manor and handed it back again, with all walls in repair, farming in order and lawsuits fought when he returned? And when the lord got himself taken prisoner, who collected the ransom, squeezing every penny from the estate, bothering archbishops for indulgences, selling the family plate? Or when the lord perchance got killed, who acted as executor of his will and brought up his children?12
It was the women, missing from the histories of the middle ages, assuming authority as would have been expected of them. And though this authority was not held in perpetuity, preserved by the histories as having been a right of woman within this time, we see evidence of its existence in so many forms. In our own lived reality of invisible labor.
When Christine de Pizan argued that noblewomen should be “wise and of great governance” at the turn of the fifteenth century, she wasn’t creating a mold of woman not before seen. She was articulating the true manifestations of feminine power that were evident in the women around her. Women did need to know law, lease, and tenure. They did need to understand accounts, management of estates, the engagements of bailiffs, and the nuances of patronage. Women were expected to take up arms to protect property just as men were, and not just so as widow or regent—titles which often yield some acknowledged power under patriarchy. Women were as much a part of the public sphere as they were the domestic one and the ability to navigate both was expected of them. Even if this diminished over time. Even if this is diminished within the retelling of history.
Furthermore, when Jeanne filed a suit against her husband on behalf of herself, rather than embodying the externally governed helpmeet transmuted down the centuries, she “appears as an antagonist and yet, strikingly, neither the king nor her husband seemed to view this behavior as unworthy of a wife. In fact, by going to the trouble and expense of an inquest, the king signaled his approval of her actions, an opinion which he further supported by finding the case in her favor. Olivier, too, does not appear to have viewed Jeanne’s actions as extraordinary or objectionable; when asked by the king whether the witness testimony was correct, Olivier agreed it was and expressed his intent to hold to the contract in good faith.”13
Jeanne’s ultimate break from France, meant to loudly proclaim her grievances against tyranny, allied her with another Jeanne, Jeanne de Montfort, against yet another Jeanne, Jeanne de Penthièvre, in the fight for lordship of Brittany. A disputed claim made only more challenging through France’s reinstitution of Salic Law. A law which wholly disregarded the long-standing tradition of feminine inheritance and authority in medieval Brittany.14
De Montfort’s ability to assume a position of lordly authority was evident equally across the genders. She was able to rouse the women of a Breton town—those supposedly void of public participation—“urging them to tear the stones from the streets, to use as ammunition against the attacking men,”15 which they promptly did. Alongside rallying contingents of armed men whilst leading beyond-the-gates sorties, these instances require us to look beyond the traditionally accepted patriarchy propagated position of men-at-arms possessing the “true basis of power behind a female figurehead” and reckon with the reality of not only recognizable female authority, but expected female authority that has been voided—almost in its entirety—from history.16
Jeanne de Clisson, our Lioness of Brittany, is relatively unknown and far from being positioned as a universal folk-hero willing to stand firm against tyrannical rule. Why? Because a woman confronting patriarchal authority was not just an aggrieved citizen espousing a corrupt system, but a complete contradiction to the social and political power which has been presented as the divinity of men for thousands of years.
Émile Péhant, Jeanne de Clisson, ed. Ellen O’Brien, 2023.
hooks, bell, 1952-2021. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York, 2004.
Katrin E. Sjursen, Pirate, Traitor, Wife: Jeanne of Belleville and the Categories of Fourteenth-Century French Noblewomen, 2019.
Émile Péhant, Jeanne de Clisson, ed. Ellen O’Brien, 2023.
Ibid.
Katrin E. Sjursen, Pirate, Traitor, Wife: Jeanne of Belleville and the Categories of Fourteenth-Century French Noblewomen, 2019.
Amy Livingstone, For Love of my Kin. Cornell University Press, 2010.
Katrin E. Sjursen, Pirate, Traitor, Wife: Jeanne of Belleville and the Categories of Fourteenth-Century French Noblewomen, 2019.
‘Froissart Chronicles’ translated by Geoffrey Brereton. Penguin Classics, 1978.
Katrin E. Sjursen, Pirate, Traitor, Wife: Jeanne of Belleville and the Categories of Fourteenth-Century French Noblewomen, 2019.
Eileen Power, ed. M.M. Postan, Medieval Women, 1975.
Katrin E. Sjursen, Pirate, Traitor, Wife: Jeanne of Belleville and the Categories of Fourteenth-Century French Noblewomen, 2019.
Yannick Hillion, “La Bretagne et la rivalité Capétiens-Plantagenêts: Un exemple: la duchesse Constance (1186-1202),” Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l’Ouest 92, no. 2, 1985.
Judith Everard and Michael C. E. Jones, eds., The Charters of Duchess Constance of Brittany and Her Family, 1171-1221. Boydell Press, 1999.
Katrin E. Sjursen, The War of the Two Jeannes: Rulership in the Fourteenth Century, 2015.
Ibid.
