Traditionally, classes and textbooks on Western history have had little to say about the lives of women in Western civilization. This lack of attention was largely due to the fact that women were officially excluded from politics and the military in such formative civilizations as Classical Greece and Rome, as well as being excluded from official positions within the early Christian Church. In fact, when women did draw the attention of historians in the Classical and Medieval eras, it was usually because these women were transgressing accepted norms in these male-dominated, hierarchical societies. However, as we now know, women contributed to these early societies in very important ways, not just as wives and mothers but, occasionally, as political leaders and even military figures. In this class, we’ll examine the political, social, and cultural forces that shaped women’s lives, and we’ll examine the lives of a few of the remarkable women who challenged these forces, both successfully and unsuccessfully.

1. “On account of lightness of mind”: social and cultural views of women in ancient Europe
Top—Eowyn offeringAragorn a cup of mead, from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King; bottom—amulets representing female figures, one carrying a horn
of mead or ale, from Vikings: the North American Saga, edited by Fitzhugh andWard.
• Women in Celtic, Germanic, and Norse society
• Marriage
• The “morning gift”
• Germanic morgengabe
• British/Welsh cowyll
• Irish coibche
• Women choosing their husbands
• Peace weavers
• Adultery
• Punished in Germanic society?
• Divorce
• Allowed inWelsh and Irish society

2. Evidence of women’s role in society. Left—keys carried by the wife of a householder; center—an
amulet whose hairstyle indicates a high status woman; right—a reconstruction of a Finnish
noblewoman’s dress. Images from Vikings: The North American Saga, edited by Fitzhugh andWard.

3. The Oseberg Ship, built c. 820 AD, buried c. 825, excavated 1904.
TheViking Ship Museum, Oslo, Norway
• Used to bury two women, one
possibly a queen, the other
her slave.
• Buried with a horse-drawn
cart, buckets, barrels, and a
tapestry depicting the funeral
procession.

4. Women and the early Christian Church
Stone inlay depicting Jesus, 3rd century AD.
• Women as spiritual equals
• God as creator (not procreator)
• Eve and the exile from Eden
• TheVirgin Mary

5. Christian attitudes toward marriage and divorce
Mosaic of St. Paul, 3rd century AD.
• Women as equal to men, or subordinate?
• Genesis 1 and 2
• St. Paul, d. circa 60 CE
• St. Augustine, d. 430 CE
• Marriage indissoluble
• Limited ability to divorce
• Immoral behavior
• Adultery
• Severe abuse
• Marriage for the purpose of procreation

6. Women as converts, martyrs, and saints
Fresco of a veiled Christian woman, 3rd-5th century AD, Giordani Catacomb, Rome.
• St.Thecla, d. 1st century CE
• The Gnostic Church
• Greek “gnosis,” meaning knowledge
• Gospel of Mary Magdalene
• Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon
• St. Perpetua, d. 203 CE

7. Celibacy and monasticism
Icon of theVirgin and Jesus, 6th-7th century, Monastery of St. Catherine, Mt. Sinai, Egypt.
• Celibacy as the better path
• St. Jerome, d. 420 CE
• “Against Jovinian”
• “Letter to Eustochium”
• St. Macrina, d. late 4th century CE
• Transvestite nuns
• Matrona/Babylas, 6th century CE
• Mary/Marinos, 7th century CE

8. Christianizing Queens
Top—map of the Carolingian Empire, from Lynn Hunt, The Making of theWest,Volume 1; right—map of Anglo-Saxon
England, from Peter Hunter Blair, Roman Britain and Early England, 55 BC-AD 871.
• Christianizing queens
• Clothild, d. early 6th century
• Queen of Clovis I, king of Franks
• Bertha, d. early 7th century
• Queen of Aethelberht, king of Kent
• Aethelburh, d. mid 7th century
• Queen of Edwin, king of Northumbria

9. Women as saints and missionaries
Image of St. Balthild, 14th century, British Library, London.
• St. Radegund, d. 587
• Queen of Clothar I, king of Neustria
• St. Brigit, 6th century (Ireland)
• St. Bathild, d. 680
• Queen of Clovis II, king of Burgundy and Neustria
• St. Hilda, d. late 7th century
• Whitby, England
• St. Leoba, d. late 8th century
• Saxony (NW Germany)
• St. Boniface, d. late 8th century
• Double monasteries

10. Women in Carolingian Europe
Ende’s illumination of the apocalypse from “Commentary on the apocalypse of St. John”
by Beatus of Gerona.
• Charlemagne’s educational reforms
• Court school at Aachen
• Monastic schools
• Ende, Leon, Spain, d. late 10th century
• “Depintrix” and “Die Aiutrix”
• Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, d. 1001
• Women and religious authority
• The proprietary church
• Soldiers of Christ
• The third gender
• Claustration
• Castimony
• Female saints
• From conversion to maintenance
• De-emphasizing of women’s role as “peace weavers”

11. Saints, mystics, and heretics
• Some of the overarching issues in medieval society, 1100-1500
• Church reform, crusades, and new religious orders
• Growing papal authority
• Concerns regarding heresy
• The Black Death, 1347-1350
• The Avignon Papacy, 1305-1377
• The Great Schism, 1378-1417

12. Mary as the ideal woman
Triumph of theVirgin, Senlis Cathedral, c. 1170 AD.
• The Cult of theVirgin Mary
• Founded by St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
d. 1153

13. Left—Triumph of theVirgin, Chartres Cathedral, c.
1210; right—Coronation of theVirgin, Notre Dame
Cathedral, Paris, c. 1210.

14. Medieval image of Mary and Eve
“TheTree of Life and Death,” by Berthold Furtmeyer, Archbishop of Salzburg’s Missal, 1481
AD.

15. Mystics and saints
Fresco of Saint Claire (l) and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (r), by Simone Martini, 1317, Capella di San Martino,
San Francesco, Assisi, Italy.
• Hildegard of Bingen, d. 1178
• St. Elizabeth of Hungary, d. 1231
• St. Clare of Assisi, d. 1253
• The order of the Poor Clares
• St. Catherine of Siena, d. 1380
• Anchoresses

16. Hildegard’s visions
Left—Hildegard dictating a vision to a scribe, Liber Scivias, as preserved in the Rupertsberger Codex, c. 1180; center—the cosmic tree,
Liber Scivias;
right—an image of the universe, Liber Scivias.

17. Suspicious mystics
Illumination of Margery Kempe, from MS. Royal 15 D. 1, British Library, London.
• Beguines
• Beguinages
• Hadewijch of Brabant, d. circa 1240
• Margery Kempe, d. 1438

18. Mystic and heretic
Portrait of Joan of Arc, c. 1485, Archives Nationales, Paris.
• Joan of Arc, d. 1431
• The HundredYears’War, 1337-1453
• Jean la Pucelle (the Maiden)

19. Heretics
Depiction ofWaldensians, in Martin le France, “Le Champion des Dames,” c. 1440,
Bibliotheque Nationale Grenoble.
• Waldensians
• Founded by PeterValdes, d. 1216
• Cathars
• 13th-14th centuries
• Perfecti
• Lollards
• Founded by JohnWycliffe, d. 1384