Spies, Instigators, and Troublemakers: Gendered Perceptions of Rebellious Women in Late Medieval Flemish Chronicles

Abstract

Women’s participation in medieval revolts has puzzled many scholars. Recent consensus is that women in the Low Countries were involved in a variety of insurgent activities, apart from violent actions. In this article, I will turn to a lesser-used source to investigate the different and often violent roles women played in various forms of sedition, factional wars, and uprisings in the late medieval County of Flanders. Chronicles have often been dismissed as unreliable. However, they offer an indirect insight into the stereotyped aspects of female and male roles in revolts. Various Flemish chroniclers point to the danger of female spies and secret messengers, particularly to the influence of the wives of aldermen on urban politics. These women were not described as anomalies. On the contrary, their capacity to disturb political order is a recurrent theme in narrative sources.