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History has, until recently, minimized the role of nuns over the centuries. In this volume, their rich lives, their work, and their importance to the Church are finally acknowledged. Jo Ann Kay McNamara introduces us to women scholars, mystics, artists, political activists, healers, and teachers - individuals whose religious vocation enabled them to pursue goals beyond traditional gender roles.
Sainted Women of the Dark Ages makes available the lives of eighteen Frankish women of the sixth and seventh centuries, all of whom became saints. Written in Latin by contemporaries or near contemporaries, and most translated here for the first time, these biographies cover the period from the fall of the Roman Empire and the conversion of the invading Franks to the rise of Charlemagne's family. Three of these holy women were queens who turned to religion only after a period of intense worldly activity. Others were members of the Carolingian family, deeply implicated in the political ambitions of their male relatives. Some were partners in the great Irish missions to the pagan countryside an...
Since the mid-1970s men's studies, and gender studies has earned its place in scholarship. What's often missing from such studies, however, is the insight that the concept of gender in general, and that of masculinity in particular, can be understood only in relation to individual societies, examined at specific historical and cultural moments. An application of this insight, "Medieval Masculinities" is the first full-length collection to explore the issues of men's studies and contemporary theories of gender within the context of the Middle Ages. Interdisciplinary and multicultural, the essays range from matrimony in medieval Italy to bachelorhood in "Renaissance Venice", from friars and sa...
Centering on the streets of this metropolis, Simone Roux peers into the secret lives of people within their homes and the public world of affairs and entertainments, populating the book with laborers, shop keepers, magistrates, thieves, and strollers.
Celibate Women in the First Three Christian,Centuries,.
Detailed account of the common people's daily life in the time of Charlemagne and how politics and military struggle affected them.
Power in medieval society has traditionally been ascribed to figures of public authority--violent knights and conflicting sovereigns who altered the surface of civic life through the exercise of law and force. The wives and consorts of these powerful men have generally been viewed as decorative attendants, while common women were presumed to have had no power or consequence. Reassessing the conventional definition of power that has shaped such portrayals, Women and Power in the Middle Ages reveals the varied manifestations of female power in the medieval household and community--from the cultural power wielded by the wives of Venetian patriarchs to the economic power of English peasant women...
Penny Schine Gold provides a bold analysis of key literary and artistic images of women in the Middle Ages and the relationship between these images and the actual experience of women. She argues that the complex interactions between men and women as expressed in both image and experience reflect a common pattern of ambivalence and contradiction. Thus, women are seen as both helpful and harmful, powerful and submissive, and the actuality of women's experience encompasses women in control and controlled, autonomous and dependent. Vividly recreating the rich texture of medieval life, Gold effectively and eloquently goes beyond a simple equation of social context and representation. In the proc...
This collection presents-through the medium of translated sources-a comprehensive guide to the development of hagiography and the cult of the saints in western Christendom during the middle ages. It provides an unparalleled resource for the study of the ideals of sanctity and the practice of religion in the medieval west. Intended for the classroom, for the medieval scholar who wishes to explore sources in unfamiliar languages, and for the general reader fascinated by the saints, this collection provides the reader a chance to explore in depth a full range of writings about the saints (the term hagiography is derived from Greek roots: hagios=holy and graphe=writing). The thirty-six chapters ...
A new economy of power relations: female agency in the middle ages / Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski -- Women and power through the family revisited / Jo Ann McNamara -- Women and confession: from empowerment to pathology / Dyan Elliott -- "With the heat of the hungry heart": empowerment and Ancrene wisse / Nicholas Watson -- Powers of record, powers of example: hagiography and women's history / Jocelyn Wogan-Browne -- Who is the master of this narrative? Maternal patronage of the cult of St. Margaret / Wendy R. Larson -- "The wise mother": the image of St. Anne teaching the Virgin Mary / Pamela Sheingorn -- Did goddesses empower women? the case of dame nature / Barbara Newman -- Women in the late medieval English parish / Katherine L. French -- Public exposure? consorts and ritual in late medieval Europe: the example of the entrance of the dogaresse of Venice / Holly S. Hurlburt -- Women's influence on the design of urban homes / Sarah Rees Jones -- Looking closely: authority and intimacy in the late medieval urban home / Felicity Riddy.