Women of the Medieval World [Paperback]

This fascinating volume breaks new ground in examining the status and lives of women in Europe during the Middle Ages, offering revealing new insights into the role of women in a wide range of religious, sexual and domestic affairs.

As this book amply demonstrates, women were central to the spiritual life of the medieval Church: Jo Ann McNamara writes on the legacy of miracles in the nunneries of Merovingian Gaul, Suzanne Wemple on one of the most important female monasteries in northern Italy, and Phyllis Roberts on the ideal of the virginal life. But the book is equally concerned with the family and relations between men and women. Leah Lydia Otis, for example, looks at the practice of prostitution in late medieval Perpignan; Helen Rodnite Lemay discusses medieval gynecology; and Julius Kirshner provides a revolutionary study of wives' claims against insolvent husbands, challenging the notion that the legal rights of women deteriorated in late medieval Italy.

Preface vii
Julius Kirshner and Suzanne F. Wemple

Abbreviations viii

John Hine Mundy: An Appreciation 1
Eugene Rice

1 Teste David cum Sibylla: The Significance of the Sibylline Tradition in the Middle Ages 7
Bernard McGinn

2 A Legacy of Miracles: Hagiography and Nunneries in Merovingian Gaul 36
Jo Ann McNamara

3 Bishops as Marital Advisors in the Ninth Century 54
Jane Bishop

4 S. Salvatore/S. Giulia: A Case Study in the Endowment and Patronage of a Major Female Monastery in Northern Italy 85
Suzanne F. Wemple

5 Stephan Langton’s Ermo de Virginibus 103
Phyllis B. Roberts

6 Ancilla Dei: The Servant as Saintl³O