Medieval Women Research Articles

Deviance or Devotion: Women Dressed as Men in Late Medieval England

On the 18th September 1417, Matilda Burgin and Margaret Usshar were brought before the ecclesiastical court of the Bishop of Durham for attempting to enter Durham Cathedral in order to approach the shrine of St Cuthbert from which women were banned. So to enter, they put on masculine clothing and for these crimes they were punished with the public humiliation of wearing the offending clothing in full view of their community. This article will first examine the case of Matilda and Margaret, their arrest in Durham Cathedral and the social, spiritual and sartorial consequences of their very public punishment. It will then compare their experience with that of other medieval women and gender non-conforming people who were arrested in masculine dress. Finally, this article will examine the possible influence the popular religious literature of cross-dressing saints may have had on Matilda and Margaret. This article will ask whether Matilda and Margaret’s own personal devotion to St Cuthbert drove them to put on masculine clothing to see his shrine? Or was it a disdain for the gendered segregation upheld by the Bishop of Durham and a disobedience of the command of St Cuthbert? Or something else entirely.

Women’s Perception in Late Medieval European Preaching: A Comparative Analysis

The perception of women in the late medieval European preaching is rather complex and interesting. The theological viewpoint against medieval women is constrained towards their moral and social deliverance and virtues. However, late medieval sermons of preachers have helped to understand and amplify the conception of medieval society towards the social standing of European medieval women. In retrospect, this article examines women’s representation in the sermons of three prominent preachers from the 14th and 15th centuries: Giordano da Pisa, Bernardino of Siena, and St. Vincent Ferrer. The research individually analyzes the preachers' sermons through a comparative analysis, addressing women's weaknesses in the European medieval era. The sermons focus on the societal perceptions of women and their moral constitutions, aiming to promote spiritual conversion. Although the preachers share common perceptions, they have also managed to adopt the use of vernacular language, thus condemning sins, for instance, lust and adultery. Moreover, the preaching style and context they present medieval women vary significantly. Giordano da Pisa addresses an educated audience with an academic approach, whereas Bernardino da Siena preaches the broader and intellectual society in an accessible and didactic style. St. Vincent Ferrer employs a vehement tone, centered on instilling fear of the Final Judgment. The analysis reveals the importance of the image of women in medieval preaching. Moreover, the sermons of the preachers also aim to reinforce and redefine the social and religious norms related to women of the medieval era, therefore emphasizing on their role in maintaining moral stability and developing the institution of moral enrichment and social nourishment of their offspring.

Touching Female Memories in the Purification Funerary Chapel in Burgos (c. 1482–1531)

Abstract Late medieval women were able to promote highly sophisticated funerary ensembles, which included architecture, painting, sculpture, liturgy, textiles, lighting and other ephemeral elements, and to adapt them to their specific ideas and needs. These material and ephemeral elements were manipulated to create complex spaces so as to generate sensory experience. This article will focus on the Purification Chapel in the Cathedral of Burgos (Spain) built by the Countess of Haro, Mencía de Mendoza, at the end of the fifteenth century. We will use art historical analysis to understand the relation between gender and the senses, and the ways in which intersensorial interaction shapes experience and memory. The analysis of the construction and design of spaces by actors like Mencía de Mendoza shows that robust models of perception and cognition were tacitly operating in the medieval era in ways that are not adequately captured by textually-focused approaches.

PLACING WOMEN INTO THE HISTORY: DANCERS AND MUSICIANS AS REPRESENTED IN THE PALM LEAF PAINTING OF MEDIEVAL ODISHA

Painting is an integral part of historical studies. In order to comprehend medieval women's history, it is essential to rely on paintings as there are insufficient sources related to the subject. Studying medieval Orissa, particularly women's history in Orissa, is challenging due to a shortage of sources and neglect towards women's history. Medieval painting is considered the most vital and rich historical source. Like literature, painting of the periods also holds the same value as archaeological evidence for historical reconstruction. The social and cultural aspects of society were represented in the paintings of that period. Medieval women were renowned for their contributions to music and dancing. The advancement of musical and dancing culture in ancient and medieval Orissa was largely due to the contribution of women. Palm leaf paintings, stone sculptures, and mural paintings have depicted them with clear visibility. The palm leaf paintings of medieval Orissa, which were produced in large numbers during these periods, depict women's talents and skill in playing musical instruments and dancing. This paper is intended to examine the role and status of women in society through the examination of palm leaf paintings from the medieval period.

Jitske Jasperse, Medieval women, Material culture, and Power. Matilda Plantagenet and her Sisters

Jitske Jasperse, Medieval women, Material culture, and Power. Matilda Plantagenet and her Sisters

Wives, Daughters and Sisters: Noble Women in Medieval Lithuania (13th–15th Centuries)

The history of medieval women in Lithuania a little-known topic. This is due to two reasons. Firstly, the long-dominant research tradition, which has given the main role to the history of “great men”, has undoubtedly left women on the margins of studies. Secondly, the state of research has been, and continues to be, largely determined by the availability of the sources. Of all the rulers of Lithuania during the pagan period, only the names of Mindaugas’ wife and both of Algirdas’ wives are known with certainty. Sensing this gap, some of the rulers’ wives were “given” names by later chroniclers.The situation concerning the sources regarding the wives and daughters of the nobility is similar. For example, of the 26 most influential nobles of the time of Grand Duke Vytautas, in 14 cases, we do not know the name or origin of the wife. Nevertheless, the processing and compilation of the rather scattered material on the Lithuanian noble women allows us to draw some conclusions about the political and social system of the Lithuanian medieval state.Women played an important role in the world of the nobility. As wives, daughters, and sisters, they established and maintained ties between relatives, both at home and (in the case of rulers) abroad. Successful marriages often determined the trajectories of men’s careers, and sometimes even of individual families. However, they mostly remained in the silence of the sources and, thanks to the conjuncture of the sources, they appear before us first of all as pious foundresses, preservers of the memory of the family, and guardians of children.

Death and burial in late medieval women’s houses

ABSTRACT The approaching death of a member of a women’s monastic community set a series of rituals in motion. These rituals accompanied the sister from the end of her life through her death and finally to her interment. These began with the community gathering for the last moments of the sister’s life, through the preparation of the body for burial, the procession to the church and rituals there. They end with the burial of the sister and a procession by the community back to their church. How the rituals were performed – and who performed them, whether the sisters themselves or a priest – varied based on the order to which the house belonged. Further shape of these rituals and the texts that they used reflect an order’s understanding of death. This paper considers the rituals for the dying and the dead described in books belonging to two medieval women’s communities.

Visualizing Household Health: Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Régime du corps, by Jennifer Borland

Visualizing Household Health: Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the <i>Régime du corps</i>, by Jennifer Borland

Consent and Mystical Marriage in the Late Middle English Prose Life of St. Katherine and John Capgrave’s The Life of St. Katherine

ABSTRACT Many studies of mystical marriage depend upon the assertion that writers and readers agreed upon its desirability and usefulness as a devotional paradigm for medieval women. This article challenges the assumption that mystical marriage held an unambiguously positive meaning for medieval audiences by offering a comparison of two Middle English accounts of St. Katherine of Alexandria’s vita: the prose Life (ca. 1420) and John Capgrave’s The Life of St. Katherine (ca. 1445). It argues that these authors use the motif of mystical marriage to opposing social and religious ends. While the former offers an idealized portrayal of Katherine’s marriage, Capgrave, perhaps responding to the concerns of his lay, female readership, instead uses the same episode to critique the efficacy of bridal imagery as a devotional tool. The article concludes by asserting that Capgrave, through his engagement with contemporary discourses surrounding consent, suggests that the concept of marriage to Christ contains problematic theological implications.

Performing death in medieval Iberia: an introduction to the end of life

ABSTRACT This article serves as an introduction to a discussion on cultural practices relating to death in late medieval Iberia. It contends that an intersectional approach is necessary to study this topic because, while all humans die, the way they are buried, memorialized, and remembered is tied to factors such as culture, religion, class, wealth, gender, tradition, legal practices, medical knowledge, technology, and historical context. The second part of this introduction offers an overview of the articles that form this special issue, the goal of which is to gender death in order to better appreciate how late medieval women prepared for it, and how they were commemorated by those they left behind.

Bynum, Gender, and the Western Christian Middle Ages

Abstract As a contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Caroline Walker Bynum across the Disciplines,” this article argues that Bynum's work on gender has overturned bedrock interpretations of the religious significance of the widespread ascetic practices of the Western Christian Middle Ages. Bynum's claim has been that medieval asceticism is best understood not as an upshot of dualism — of the soul and body understood as in opposition — but as “an effort to plumb and realize all the possibilities of the flesh.” Drawing on underused religious sources, analyzing in their larger social and cultural context the images that medieval women and men used, and employing a comparative analysis of female and male spiritualities, she has demonstrated that each had its own different emphases. In this effort, she has pioneered what is sometimes called a “history of masculinities.” Focusing on women's own experience and ferreting out basic assumptions of their religious thought and practice, she has argued for women's profound contributions to their contemporary theological culture by drawing on the dominant culture's hierarchical gender binaries in order to undermine them and accentuate their shared (bodily) humanity with Christ. Bynum has shown successfully that medieval women had confidence in their own ability to love and imitate Christ and thus to participate in the salvation of the world.

Jitske Jasperse, Medieval women, Material culture, and Power. Matilda Plantagenet and her Sisters

Jitske Jasperse, Medieval women, Material culture, and Power. Matilda Plantagenet and her Sisters

From Spiritual Guide to Church Mother

Abstract This article compares late medieval and early modern patterns of women’s preaching in Strasbourg. Medieval women circumvented gendered restrictions against female preaching through performative acts of embodied devotion. This article compares the embodied sermons of Gertrude Rickeldey of Ortenburg and the printed sermons of Katharina Schütz Zell to discuss the change and continuity in late medieval and early modern women’s preaching. Using Beverly Kienzle’s definition of the sermon and Roxanne Mountford’s concept of rhetorical space, I identify continuity in both’s women’s conformity to gendered regimes of piety. I also argue that Protestant reform shifted the location of female religious authority from embodied piety to printed sermons, but in a way that reflects a continuity with medieval traditions of female preaching. Overall this article demonstrates how women’s preaching persisted within the theological and cultural changes of the early modern period.

The Middle Ages’ Influence on Women’s Role in Romantic Poetry

Women in the medieval period suffered from abuse and inequality. The pressure on women was so noticeable that they were treated as a marginal component of society in all aspects, an important one of which is the literary aspect. The literary role of women has largely disappeared from the European society in general and the English one in particular. Therefore, women, at every stage, struggled to show themselves amid these great pressures; their struggle led them to reach and succeed in the feminist movement. They attempted to counter the stereotypical image of the medieval women being helpless and subservient in the warrior societies depicted in Old English texts and the evil shrews responsible for men’s failings in Middle English texts. Their new adapted literary role focuses on showing their strength, intelligence, agency in society, and the extent of women’s impact on society and its change, despite the fact that this change came in secret. This study sheds some light on the women’s role in the literary social movement by critically examining the relevant literary works through which the role and effectiveness of women are revealed. This study contributes to dispelling some of the myths surrounding the perspectives assumed about women by providing greater clarity for their cultural and historical settings. Also, this study offers a feminist reading to the female characters in the selected works which clearly illustrates women’s role and the impact of feminist literature on English literature and English society at that period using the famous old legendary epic in English literature, Beowulf.

Julie Orlemanski. Review of "Visualizing Household Health: Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Régime du corps" by Jennifer Borland.

Julie Orlemanski. Review of "Visualizing Household Health: Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Régime du corps" by Jennifer Borland.

In Loving Memory? Indecent Forgetting of the Dead in Continental Sister-Books and Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love

Medieval nuns and anchorites (recluses) were spiritually and economically bound to pray for the dead, no matter their feelings towards the departed, who frequently appear to them in visions. This article charts medieval enclosed women’s attempts to intervene in this economy by forgetting souls. Staging a generative conversation between medieval women’s writings and Marcella Althaus-Reid’s (1952–2009) ‘indecent theology’ (queer liberation theology), this essay scrutinizes medieval female-authored texts for indecent forgetting (socially and economically disruptive forgetting). It juxtaposes a Middle English visionary text, A Revelation of Love by anchorite Julian of Norwich (1342/1343–c. 1416), with the mid-fourteenth-century Middle High German sister-book (compilation of nuns’ lives) of the Dominican convent of St Katharinental in Diessenhofen (in present-day Switzerland) and the early sixteenth-century Middle Dutch sister-book of Diepenveen (in the present-day Netherlands), originating from a Devotio Moderna convent of Augustinian canonesses regular. Heeding Althaus-Reid’s call, it dissects how forgetting unsettles systems of sanctioned spiritual and economic exchanges. I first examine how the sister-books forget certain souls and define their own terms for their participation in this system. I then turn to how Julian enlists all believers for her intercessory duties but also misplaces souls. Throughout, this article considers how these texts prise open space for medieval women within indecent theology. Ultimately, it illustrates how medieval women’s negotiations of their economic conditions supply a fertile ground for considering larger concerns of defiance, community, and the charity that binds together the living and the dead.

Ugly Book Feelings: Materiality and Negative Affect in Late Medieval Women’s Writing

Abstract Drawing on the work of Sianne Ngai in Ugly Feelings (2005), in this essay we focus on two examples from early fifteenth-century medieval literature that represent medieval books as ‘ugly’ either because they arouse negative feelings of aversion or disgust or because they are considered in some way aesthetically lacking or inadequate. Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la cité des dames and Margery Kempe’s Book of Margery Kempe present women’s involvement with troubling or difficult books. The ‘ugly book feelings’ which both narrators encounter challenge not only their authority as writers, but their very sense of self. Such feelings, however, are transitory when placed in narrative context: in the two examples we discuss, a single material text serves as the catalyst for a moment of emotional transformation which may be spiritual and/or intellectual. Attending to literary representations of ugly book feelings, we argue, complements existing scholarship on late medieval women’s relationship to material textual culture by placing such feelings at the centre of a broad emotional spectrum.

The Nursing Madonna in the Middle Ages: An Interdisciplinary Study

Because of the transgression of the first woman Eve, all medieval women bore the punishment, including the biological consequences related to pregnancy and birth. This affected the entire female gender, according to Judeo-Christian tradition. Although Mary was able to avoid some biological consequences, this was not the case with breastfeeding. This work aims to study sacred images—and especially those of the Nursing Mary—from an interdisciplinary point of view, by delving into rather unconventional sources such as medical treatises, whose perception of the female body may have influenced the creation and reception of certain iconographic types of the Virgin.

Sex, Politics, Religion: Teaching Challenging Medievalisms with Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968)

This essay explores how the films Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968), both starring Peter O’Toole as Henry II, can start conversations about medieval sexuality, politics, and religion in the undergraduate classroom. All three of these topics are frequently imagined by students as monolithic in the medieval period; sex and sexuality, for example, can be reduced to heterosexual practices joylessly regulated by church law. Insofar as students have a conception of medieval political systems, these are usually imagined as both strictly hierarchical and inescapably oppressive. Medieval religion — usually Christianity — is also often imagined as an instrument of oppression and control. All these negative assumptions can be productively interrogated using these films. This essay explores how the films — colorful, tightly scripted, and featuring arguably some of the twentieth century’s most celebrated actors — are useful teaching tools, both in an undergraduate course on the Middle Ages in cinema, and in a general medieval survey course. Becket, with its characteristically Anouilhian theme of realism vs. idealism, is a good starting point for discussing the complexities of medieval law, church politics and the church’s social functions with students. The films also help to start useful conversations on the visibility and invisibility of medieval women in film. Finally, both films depict queer sexualities in ways that are at odds with much popular medievalism. Whether in The Lion in Winter’s multiple transgressive sexual relationships, or in the visually explicit erotic tension between Burton’s portrayal of Becket and O’Toole’s Henry II, this essay examines how these films challenge students’ preconceptions and create opportunities for analyzing relevant primary sources. As such, this essay discusses both pedagogical strategies and assignment options related to the two films. I argue that both films can encourage analysis of the Angevin Empire and its afterlives in popular culture, and that this analysis is broadly relevant to popular medievalisms.Banner image: The Lion in Winter (1968), Haworth Productions. Image taken from Filmdetail (www.filmdetail.com).

Women's Friendship in Medieval Literature ed. by Karma Lochrie and Usha Vishnuvajjala

Reviewed by: Women's Friendship in Medieval Literature ed. by Karma Lochrie and Usha Vishnuvajjala Diane Watt Women's Friendship in Medieval Literature. Ed. by Karma Lochrie and Usha Vishnuvajjala. Columbus: Ohio State Press. 2022. viii+299 pp. $99.95. ISBN 978-0–8142–1515–9. The Bechdel Test (or, more correctly, according to Bechdel herself, the Bechdel-Wallace Test) first appeared in 1985 in Alison Bechdel's comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. It describes three criteria by which the level of women's representation in cinema can be judged: a film should have (1) at least two women in it, who (2) talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man. The test has gained widespread currency up to the present day, in and beyond the LGBTQ+ community, as a gauge for progress (or its lack), and has been adapted to apply to a range of under-represented groups in film and other media. In her contribution to Women's Friendship in Medieval Literature, Karma Lochrie riffs off the Bechdel Test to explore the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, teasing out what she calls 'the fleeting and even quirky moments of female friendship [. . .] carved out of the predominantly male fellowship in The Canterbury Tales' (p. 195). In fact, 'fleeting' and 'quirky' are appropriate adjectives to apply to the representation of women's comradeship in medieval literature more generally, as the other essays in this valuable collection illustrate. Starting on the more solid ground of spiritual relationships between women in the essays by Jennifer N. Brown, Stella Wang, Andrea Boffa, and Alexandra Verini, the focus then moves to consider the representation of women's friendship in Middle English romances and in the works of writers such as Chaucer, John Gower, and Thomas Malory in essays by Lydia Yaitsky Kertz, Usha Vishnuvajjala, and Melissa Ridley Elmes. The final section of the volume, which includes contributions by Christine Chism, Laurie A. Finke, and Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, forges innovative approaches in the consideration of virtual friendships and the work of Christine de Pizan, the modern Wicca movement, and contemporary literary reimaginings of relations between early medieval women. Also in the final section, alongside Lochrie's piece, is Carissa M. Harris's study of women's 'cummarship' in medieval alehouse poems, which, like Lochrie's essay, is informed by twentieth-century lesbian culture. Harris finds in the lesbian bar culture which emerged in the United States from the 1930s onwards a queer connection with the representation of women in the alehouse poems, identifying 'the political possibilities of twentieth-century lesbian bar cummarship [that] underscores how it, like premodern cummarship, can foster peer pedagogy that empowers and edifies its participants and provides them valuable knowledge to challenge their marginalized position' (pp. 174–75). In their editorial introduction, Lochrie and Vishnuvajjala suggest that the critical neglect of medieval women's friendship hitherto may have happened because 'the topic was subsumed in the movement of queer studies in the 1990s and early 2000s. [. . .] Queer medieval studies co-opted female friendship studies before [End Page 237] there was such a thing' (p. 7). This seems a rather odd accusation to level at queer studies, and an odder still exoneration of mainstream feminist studies, given that this collection illustrates just how much can be achieved by an intersectional approach. As Audre Lorde said in her 1979 lecture entitled 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House', 'without community, there is no liberation' (in Lorde, Sister Outsider: Lectures and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2019), pp. 110–14 (p. 110)). Women's Friendship in Medieval Literature offers the reader a range of innovative ways for identifying and analysing textual evidence and representations of comradeship and camaraderie between women in the Middle Ages. These readings often involve being open to finding links between the past and the present and to reading the absences and gaps in the narratives. Diane Watt University of Surrey Copyright © 2023 Modern Humanities Research Association