Though seldom read today by nonspecialists in medieval Iberian literature, the works of Francesc Eiximenis (ca. 1327–1409) were highly influential in their time. The reforming Franciscan friar’s output varied widely, ranging from theological works to doctrinal instruction to moral and political treatises aimed at both clerical and lay readers. In Chariots of Ladies, Silleras-Fernandez focuses on two of Eiximenis’s didactic works of conduct and morality for women, the Llibre de les dones (Book of women, ca. 1395) and the Scala Dei, a.k.a. Tractat de la contemplació (Ladder to God, or Treatise on contemplation, ca. 1396/97). She adeptly historicizes the treatises and their original patrons/readers—Sanxa Ximenis d’Arenós, Countess of Prades (d. 1416), and Maria de Luna, queen of Aragon (ca. 1358–1406)—and traces the transformations effected on both the texts and their messages during the following century and a half, as they spread throughout the Iberian kingdoms, from their origins in the Crown of Aragon, to the Castile of Isabel the Catholic (1451–1504), and finally to the Portugal of Catalina of Habsburg (1507–78). The resulting analysis reveals not only the evolution of a model of feminine virtue and agency that came to dominate at the Iberian courts of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, but also the intersections between didactic theory and actual practice and between (male, clerical) author/translator and (female, lay, noble/royal) patron.

The first three chapters examine Eiximenis, his treatises, and their original patrons within the context of the court society of late medieval Catalonia and the Crown of Aragon. Silleras-Fernandez grounds Eiximenis’s prescriptions for female virtue and piety in the specific life circumstances of both countess and queen. For the former, the friar gave guidance to women at all stages of life on self-knowledge and self-control through deepened religious devotion; for the latter, he offered a model of holy queenship, one grounded in virtue and piety and one in which queens took a secondary political role to their husbands. Silleras-Fernandez argues that not only did Maria de Luna own a copy of Scala Dei, she also read it and used both it and the Llibre de les dones to construct a public image that conformed with Eiximenis’s ideals. While I find the evidence for this direct cause and effect to be somewhat thin, Silleras-Fernandez convincingly demonstrates the lasting influence of Eiximenis’s models of womanly virtue and queenship, which found new life in the late fifteenth century at the court of Isabel of Castile.

The second half of the book takes up the shift from Aragon to Castile and beyond. In the sometimes fragmented world of Iberian literary and historical studies, Silleras-Fernandez breaks new ground by taking a pan-Iberian view of the transformations effected upon Eiximenis’s texts and ideas in the new contexts of the Castilian and Portuguese courts. Chapter 4 examines the translation and adaptation of the Llibre de les dones and the Scala Dei in the court of Castile’s Isabel the Catholic, while chapter 5 examines the texts’ new incarnation in a new, Castilian adaptation presented in 1542 to Catalina of Habsburg, queen of Portugal. Silleras-Fernandez’s careful and nuanced readings unpack the changes wrought upon the texts as their translators and adaptors modernized them for new royal (and other) readers, and highlights the linguistic politics at work at the Iberian courts. Her analysis of the letters of Catalina of Habsburg to Maria Manuela reveals the considerable gap between the virtues and behaviors advocated by Eiximenis and his translator/adaptors and those explicitly endorsed by the women to whom these works were dedicated. The conclusion follows up on this distinction, finding considerable agency for early modern female rulers even as humanist and other writers on women’s conduct sought ever narrower and constraining roles for women.

In Chariots of Ladies, Silleras-Fernandez seamlessly unites literary and historical analysis, and the result is illuminating and eminently readable. There are a few errors in the text that are sometimes confusing (e.g., what are the “teleological virtues” mentioned on page 86?), but they are minor, and the press is to be thanked for allowing footnotes, rather than the endnotes that are increasingly ubiquitous. This book will be of considerable interest to specialists in medieval and early modern intellectual and political history and gender studies, as well as those interested in translation and literary studies.