The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages [Hardcover]

Did women really constitute a `fourth estate' in medieval society and, if so, in what sense? In this wide-ranging study Shulamith Shahar considers this and the whole question of the varying attitudes to women and their status in western Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries.Did women really constitute a 'fourth estate' in medieval society and, if so, in what sense? In this wide-ranging study Shulamith Shahar considers this and the whole question of the varying attitudes to women and their status in western Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries.`Wide ranging and scholarly.'  Times Higher Education Supplement1 Introduction 2 Public and Legal Rights 3 Nuns 4 Married Women 5 Women in the Nobility 6 Townswomen 7 Women in the Peasantry 8 Witches and the Heretical MovementsUS? 1983, 2003 Shulamith Shahar