The 3rd IEM Conference of 2025 will take place on October 30 at 5:00 PM, in a hybrid format (in-person and streamed online). In-person attendance is possible at Campus Av. de Berna, Tower A, Room A304. The session will be led by Jitske Jasperse (Ramón y Cajal Researcher, Instituto de Historia, CSIC Madrid) and will focus on the topic “Tracing Women and Seals in the Chronicle of Hainault”, followed by a workshop session on the theme of the conference, open to all attendees.

Abstract

As an art historian working on medieval women, I first encountered the Chronicle of Hainaut (Chronicon Hanoniense, 1195–1196) in my study of Teresa/Matilda of Portugal, about whom the chronicler Gilbert of Mons repeatedly says that “she called herself queen.” This might be read as a sign that not all contemporaries understood or accepted the use of the royal title – as expressed on her seals and in charters – on the part of the Countess of Flanders. To me this chronicle remains a captivating text because it is not only full of references to women, but also to material culture (things made of gold and silver, household utensils, silk cloth, garments). In his history of the counts of Hainaut, Gilbert of Mons is keenly aware of the importance of people and things and their interconnectedness. This talk explores how Gilbert renders in/visible both women and seals.

This paper is inspired by a chapter of my current book project The Art of Concealment: The Display, Storage, and Loss of Seals. The issues addressed in connection with Teresa/Matilda of Portugal and other women, men, and seals (perhaps even material culture in general) can help us explore the following questions:

  • Women in medieval written and material sources: where can we encounter them? And where have we perhaps not yet looked?
  • Medieval women in current scholarship: themes and approaches.
  • The visibility and invisibility of seals: practices of display and concealment in (Portuguese) chronicles.
  • The performance of actions – like the breakage of seals – in spatial settings.

About the Speaker

Jitske Jasperse (PhD, University of Amsterdam, 2013) is Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid. From 2018-2022 she was assistant professor of medieval art history at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Driven by questions concerning why and how people engage with artefacts, both precious and mundane, Jitske has a particular interest in the relationship between material culture and gender. This was explored in her monograph Medieval Women, Material Culture, and Power: Matilda Plantagenet and Her Sisters (2020) as well as in her recent edited volume The Social Lives of Medieval Rings (2025). This summer, her four-year project Gender and Medieval Enamels in Spanish collections, ca. 1150-1300 received a research grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

Her current book project deals with the material culture related to seal, which will be the focus her book project The Art of Concealment: Display, Storage, and Loss of Seals. This book will include chapters on seal wrappings, for which research was carried out in collaboration with conservation scientist Lucía Pereira Pardo and The National Archives (Kew). Initial ideas were presented in the co-authored article in Materia: Journal of Technical Art History (2024). Other chapters are devoted to the role seals played in chronicles, which is the basis of today’s talk and workshop.