dr Patrik Paštrnák

Section 11.: Women and Power in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (Central Europe)

Death was a crucial moment in the life of medieval people. For the privileged and powerful, it was a time to order their matters with respect to heirs or pious donations. The last wills of sovereigns and their consorts are important pieces of documentation, revealing their social, familial, and patronage networks, financial conditions, and material culture. However, these documents have not been extensively studied on a comparative scale. In the case of Central European queens, this is probably a result of poor source documentation as only a handful of these testaments from Bohemia and Hungary have survived. This paper will analyse the recently discovered testament (and adjacent codicils) of Beatrice of Naples (1457–1508), wife of Matthias Corvinus by shedding light on its language, strategies, and the queen’s social context. Furthermore, it will compare it with testaments of other Bohemian royal women and men (Richenza, John the Blind, Sophie of Bavaria, Elizabeth of Görlitz etc.)