Abstract
Thanks to an unprecedented experience, that of confinement on a global scale due to a pandemic, this article offers a reflection on the confinement of only a part of humanity, women, at a given time, the 12th century, as a modest contribution to the history of gender relations in the Middle Ages. Different women, in fact, underwent or on the contrary sought at that time isolation and seclusion: in all cases, their loneliness was linked to men, who inspired them to withdraw as a solution to escape marriage and sexuality, or required to get rid of their unwanted company. We therefore wonder here what are the faces and common points of the various forms of relegation that were going on, what resistance women could oppose, but also what were its limits: some of them chose the solitude as a pledge of peace and security but could they really be left alone? Could the recluses really provide for themselves? Were the imprisoned wives not kept in touch with the outside world, especially the male? At the end of this study, absolute solitude in the feminine seems more an ideal than a reality because even in the most austere cells, women could hardly do without men completely. On the other hand, confinement largely protected them physically, leaving in many cases other types of love than carnal one to flourish
Highlights
Thanks to an unprecedented experience, that of confinement on a global scale due to a pandemic, this article offers a reflection on the confinement of only a part of humanity, women, at a given time, the 12th century, as a modest contribution to the history of gender relations in the Middle Ages
Underwent or on the contrary sought at that time isolation and seclusion: in all cases, their loneliness was linked to men, who inspired them to withdraw as a solution to escape marriage and sexuality, or required to get rid of their unwanted company
We wonder here what are the faces and common points of the various forms of relegation that were going on, what resistance women could oppose, and what were its limits: some of them chose the solitude as a pledge of peace and security but could they really be left alone? Could the recluses really provide for themselves? Were the imprisoned wives not kept in touch with the outside world, especially the male? At the end of this study, absolute solitude in the feminine seems more an ideal than a reality because even in the most austere cells, women could hardly do without men completely
Summary
En cette période où l’humanité subit pandémie et confinement collectif, le Moyen Âge trouve beaucoup d’échos. Que le Moyen Âge ait été “mâle”, voilà qui paraît désormais acquis: la femme était toujours la mineure d’un homme, dans le cadre social d’une domination masculine multiforme. Moins extrêmes dans leur détachement du monde, communiquaient, notamment par lettres, avec un extérieur religieux ou laïc – on possède ainsi une brève réponse de Hildegarde à Aliénor7 – voire y avaient à l’occasion physiquement accès. Le positionnement de ces différentes femmes par rapport au mariage, devenu un sacrement précisément au XIIe siècle, fut également très variable, de la résignation sacrificielle, comme Ingeburge, au rejet, comme chez nombre de recluses, en passant par la revendication d’une conception originale du lien conjugal, comme Aliénor, Héloïse, voire Hildegarde. On ne reprendra pas ici la question, récemment traitée par Chiara Frugoni, de savoir si les recluses “étaient toujours malheureuses”; on se contentera de mettre en lumière pour finir que toutes, à l’abri des hommes ou écartées par eux, s’avèrent avoir été étonnamment travaillées par le thème de l’amour, qu’il fût charnel, maternel, spirituel
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