Cultivated ladies, teaching ladies: the presence and influence of some Burgundian manuscript testimonies from the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance

Abstract

Medieval women are often found in the origin of literary and artistic creations which show the diversity of roles they played in the transmission of knowledge. Some specific works clearly show how these cultivated women were involved in the formative process of young princes and princesses through reading and playing educative and pleasant activities. The chess match in Évrart de Conty’s Livre des Échecs amoureux moralisés was conceived for two players, a young man and a damsel, a full protagonist who must have acquired the same proficiency and skills as the task at hand demands from her rival. Both characters are nourished by the didactic and encyclopedic texts which comprised the whole knowledge of their times.