Professor Lindy Grant
Research projects
My research interests range across politics, religion and culture in Capetian France and its neighbours in the 11th and 13th centuries, and my approach is essentially interdisciplinary. I am the author of Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis: Church and State in Early Medieval France, Longman's Medieval World Series, 1998, and Architecture and Society in Normandy, c.1120-c.1270, Yale University Press, 2005, Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, Yale University Press, 2016, and now Eleanor of Aquitaine: Woman, Queen and Legend, Reaktion Books, 2025. Recent articles and papers have explored aspects of architectural patronage and the impact of ecclesiastical reform on the North French Church in the 12 and 13th centuries. I have a particular interest in questions of cultural identity, in patronage and the representation of power and rulership, and in the cultural impact of ecclesiastical reform.
Selected publications
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Woman Queen and Legend (Reaktion Books, 2025)
‘Transforming the kingdom: artistic patronage and the establishment of early Capetian kingship in France’, in Romanesque and the Year 1000, ed. by J. McNeill and R. Plant, British Archaeological Association Transactions, London 2025, pp. 21-26
‘Prophesies of the End of Time in the Psalter of Blanche of Castile’, in Royaute, ecriture et theatre au Moyen Age, ed. M. Bouhaik-Girones, A. Grelois and X. Helary, Rouen, 2024, pp. 259-288.
‘Abbot Suger’s Paris’, in Paris, The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City, ed. by Alexandra Gajewski and John Mc Neill, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions xliv, London, 2023, pp. 9-26.
‘Time and the Princess: Salvation History in the Psalter of Blanche of Castile’, in Visualisieren, Ordnen, Aktualisieren: Geschichtskonzepte de Mittelalters un der Fruhen Neuzeit im Bild, ed. By W. Augustyn and A. Worm, Passau, 2020, pp. 15-27.
‘The Montfort and the Capetain Court: Amaury V and his Family’, in Simon de Montfort (c.1170-1218): le croise, son lignage et son temps, ed. by M. Aurell, G. Lippiatt and L. Mace, Turnhout, 2020, pp. 179-191.
L. Grant, ‘Stephen of Lexington, the Abbey of Savigny, and Problems in the Cistercian Order in the Thirteenth Century’, Reading Medieval Studies, xlv (2019), esp. 36-9.
Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, (Yale UP, 2016)