Gui de Chauliac. Ars chirurgicalis II.ii.5, trans. and annotated by Michael McVaugh. In A Source
Book in Medieval Science, ed. Edward Grant. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp.
773–74.
Biraben, Jean-Noel. Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et
méditerranéens. 2 vols. Paris: Moulton, 1975–76. [Exhaustive bibliography in Vol. 2, pp. 186–
413.]
Emery, Richard W. “The Black Death of 1348 in Perpignan.” Speculum 42(1967):611–23.
Henneman, John Bell. “The Black Death and Royal Taxation in France, 1347–1351.” Speculum
43(1968):405–28.
Lucenet, Monique. Les grandes pestes en France. Paris: Aubier, 1985.
BLANCHE OF CASTILE
(1188–1252). At the age of twelve, Blanche of Castile, the daughter of Alfonso VIII of
Castile, was married to Prince Louis of France, who would reign briefly as Louis VIII
(1223–26). Louis’s early death while on the Albigensian Crusade left the throne to their
young son, Louis IX. The regency was entrusted not to a male relative or a council of
barons but to Blanche.
In the first years of her regency, Blanche was confronted with armed rebellions
intended to displace her and with the serious possibility of a reversal of French successes
in the southern lands that had been conquered in the Albigensian Crusade. She triumphed
in both cases. Gifted with an iron will and clever in her ability to cultivate allies but
careful not to link her fortunes too closely to any baronial house, such as the house of
Champagne, through a hasty remarriage, she pursued a policy of divide-and-conquer
against the rebellious barons. Their uprisings and shows of force never achieved a
decision in their favor. Blanche’s success against the baronial opposition in the north was
both cause and effect of her maintenance of French dominance in the south. The
swiftness and decisiveness of her actions against the northerners induced the southern
nobles to negotiate their grievances; and the army that had been left in the south at her
husband’s death remained, despite some difficulties, loyally commanded and in firm
control. By 1229 and the Treaty of Meaux-Paris, the opposition in Languedoc
acknowledged its defeat. The prestige of victory in the south encouraged loyalty and
support in the north when the crown had to respond to new baronial demonstrations
against it in the 1230s led by, among others, the titular count of Brittany, Pierre
Mauclerc.
Blanche’s regency was distinguished by a balanced foreign policy. On the one hand,
the traditional enemy, the English, never effectively made inroads into those provinces,
like Normandy, that they had lost in 1204. On the other hand, she made no concerted
effort to eject the English from their remaining territories in Aquitaine. In the war of
words and sometimes of men between the emperor Frederick II and the papacy, she kept
to a neutral path.
In the later 1230s down to 1244, Blanche’s role in government gradually diminished.
Her son reached adulthood, married, and became more active, especially in military
affairs. This translation of power was not entirely easy. There was mutual dislike between
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 248