probably were put to work at about age seven. Also characteristic of the late Middle Ages
is the increasing vulgarization of religious knowledge to the laity, as seen in the
preaching efforts of the mendicant orders, the foundation of religious communities for
laymen, and the proliferation of religious woodcut images and, by the end of the 15th
century, of books.
Throughout the Middle Ages in France, the entire Jewish population learned to read in
separate schools. There were at all times both supporters and opponents of female
education; women were educated largely at home or in convents in the early Middle
Ages. In the high and late Middle Ages, while women were generally excluded from the
universities, there was nonetheless a tendency to favor some female education, as witness
Héloïse and Christine de Pizan and the widespread iconographic motif of the Virgin
reading at the moment of the Annunciation.
Leah L.Otis-Cour
[See also: CHARTRES; LIBERAL ARTS; SCHOOLS, CATHEDRAL; SCHOOLS,
MONASTIC; UNIVERSITIES]
Initiation, apprentissage, éducation au moyen âge (Actes du Ier Colloque International de
Montpellier (Université Paul Valéry) de Novembre 1991. Published as Cahiers du CRISIMA 1.
Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, 1993.
Rouche, Michel. L’enseignement, des origines à la Renaissance. Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de
France, 1981. [Vol. 1 of Histoire générale de l’enseignement et de l’éducation en France, ed.
Louis-Henri Parias.]
EDWARD I
(1239–1307). King of England and duke of Aquitaine (1272–1307). Henry III of
England’s grant of Gascony to Edward gave his son the start on a career that was to
engage him in the last Anglo-French war of the 13th century. Nonetheless, Edward did
not enjoy real control over the administration of Gascony until he became king of
England and duke of Aquitaine in 1272. It was in part the tension between these two
positions that led to war with Philip IV.
In 1273, Edward did homage to Philip III for Gascony and then visited his duchy,
where he captured his rebellious vassal Gaston de Béarn. Their dispute was negotiated to
an end in 1278. On leaving for England, Edward appointed his first seneschal, whose
administration was unpopular and resulted in a number of cases appealed to the
Parlement de Paris, cases that had no grave diplomatic repercussions. Edward himself
resolved problems arising from the Treaty of Paris, gaining most notably the Agenais in
the Treaty of Amiens (1279). His fortune held when Philip III’s death in 1285 kept
Edward from having to choose between, on the one hand, the demands of his Gascon
vassals not to fight in Aragon and his own policy of peace on the Continent, and, on the
other, his duty as a vassal of the king of France to participate in the invasion of Aragon.
Edward’s relations with the newly crowned Philip IV appeared amiable in 1286, when
he returned to Gascony. Edward performed homage, compromised over Quercy, and
mediated between Philip and Aragon. This harmony did not last. From 1292, conflicts
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