Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)

Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300–1600) offers a nuanced exploration of female authority across a region shaped by dynastic struggles, Ottoman expansion, and shifting political cultures. This volume brings together case studies from royal courts, urban patriciates, monastic milieus, and noble estates, while it also examines how women exercised, negotiated, and represented power in contexts ranging from thirteenth-century Hungary and fourteenth-century Zadar to the aftermath of Mohács and the sixteenth-century Adriatic world. Through analyses of queens, empresses, regents, noblewomen, and urban elites, this collection reveals the diverse forms of agency available to women between 1300 and 1600. Furthermore, it challenges the narratives of female marginality and demonstrates that women were central actors in the making, performance, and preservation of political authority in the late medieval and early modern periods.