Wives, mothers and widows on pilgrimage: categories of ‘woman’ recorded at English healing shrines in the High Middle Ages

Abstract

This article examines the types of women undertaking pilgrimage in medieval England as recorded in a range of twelfth-century miracle collections. Miracle narratives provide details of pilgrims visiting local saints' shrines, and are often used by scholars to conduct sociological surveys of a shrine's clientele. This article extends this methodology by analysing women pilgrims within two common medieval frameworks of collective identity: the six ‘ages of man’, and the four familial/sexual life stages of women. Exploring the ways in which hagiographers identified, categorised and, indeed, stereotyped women pilgrims, the essay re-appraises the customary sociological approach to miracle narratives, and assesses both the social reality and the cultural representation of female pilgrimage in these twelfth-century sources.