Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400–1400: Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser ed. by Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith (review)

Abstract

Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400-1400: Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser. Edited by Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith. [Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2012. Pp. xvii, 369. $149.95. ISBN 978-1-409-4315-9.)Medieval motherhood is not perhaps quite such a neglected topic as the editors of this volume claim. Nonetheless, a collection devoted to it is very welcome, not least one dedicated to Henrietta Leyser, whose own work on medieval women remains a constant inspiration. The preface highlights the paradox of medieval motherhood-power and vulnerability-and the themes of the volume: survival (meaning recovery history, mortality, and loss), social agency (preparing children for life, the fight for property rights, maternal protection, and-more rarely, at least in the sources-rejection), and institutionalization (detaching the concept of motherhood from biological mothers). The collection is overtly social history, but its editors-if not all its authors-are also concerned with motherhood and its paradoxes in the context of Christian discourse and practice.It is a truism of medieval motherhood (and fatherhood, for that matter) that we see it largely through the eyes of adult, male clerics. Kate Cooper's excellent consideration of St. Augustine and Monica warns how far our Monica is Augustine's mother: not only idealized but also a vehicle for thinking through his own development and particularly his route to God. Augustine and his Monica, became in turn models for later clerical (self-)reflection-as Brian McGuire notes-for twelfth-century celibates like Guibert, St. Bernard, or St. Anselm. That renewed significance raises questions about the intervening centuries. The twelfth century saw a return to adult choice of the religious life; did that breathe new life into the Augustine/Monica story, while child oblation of the early Middle Ages had little space or need for it? A history of parenting in hagiographical texts would make interesting reading, although it would tell us less about flesh-and-blood mothers than we might expect.Its picture of mothers and daughters also might be different, given Christina of Markyate's conflicts with her mother over her vocation. Mothers and daughters are an especially elusive topic, given the nature of the sources. Augustine's sister is completely lost to history, as is his elder brother-although, as Cooper reminds us, it was this son who was at Monica's deathbed. Sethina Watson shows us the development of three hospitals as Augustinian-and thus more liturgical-foundations, through the lens of maternal response to the deaths of children. …