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Julian of Norwich’s “Christ as Mother” and Medieval Constructions of Gender
Posted on April 13, 2013 | No CommentsRecent Christian feminists have revived an interest in women mystics and feminine religious imagery. In light of what most people generalize about medieval misogyny and about the veneration of the Virgin as a surrogate for a female divinity, Julian of Norwich's trope of Christ as Mother seems even more remarkable. -
Best Clothes and Everyday Attire of Late Medieval Nuns
Posted on March 25, 2013 | No CommentsThe habit symbolises humility because it nulifies any difference of estate; it signifies the will to chastity because it disguises the feminine form of the body; and it displays outer obedience to divine com- mands by its timelessly simple cut and fabric of linen or wool. Given this sort of symbolism, fashion and nuns appear to be mutually exclusive themes. -
Sisters Between: Gender and the Medieval Beguines
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsThe origins of the Beguines can be traced to two important medieval religious reform movements: monastic mysticism and the vita apostolica, or "apostolic life." -
Brigit: Goddess, Saint, ‘Holy Woman,’ and Bone of Contention
Posted on March 4, 2013 | No CommentsBrigit1 and Patrick, two saints from the beginnings of Christianity in Ireland in the fifth century CE, retain their popularity with Catholic Christians to this day. -
Literal and Symbolic: the Language of Asceticism in Two Lives of St Radegund
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsSince Radegund was never martyred, it is through her ascetic practice, a vicarious martyrdom, that her sanctity must be constructed. Both Fortunatus and Baudonivia treat Radegund's ascetic practices as a means of creating the powerful body of a saint, a living relic, but the differences in the two writers' approaches are notable. -
The speaking cross, the persecuted princess and the murdered earl: the early history of Romsey Abbey
Posted on February 5, 2013 | No CommentsThe Old-English note may have begun life as an endorsement, either to the grant of privileges or (what is perhaps more likely) to the agreement about the woodland belonging to Romsey, a notice of which has become attached to it; it was not uncommon when diplomas were collected into cartularies for such endorsements to be used as ‘headings’ for the text. -
The Representation of Antichrist in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsThe image thatis the subjectof this essay is one of thirty-five miniatures that once illuminated the lost Rupertsberg manuscript (Wiesbaden, Hessisches Landesbibl., MS 1, ca. 1165-75), a deluxe copy of Scivias. -
Princess Salomea and Hungarian – Polish Relations in the Period 1214 – 1241
Posted on January 9, 2013 | No CommentsIt is necessary to say at the beginning that almost all works devoted to Salomea come from the pens of Polish historians. Slovak and Hungarian historiography has devoted little attention to her, in spite of the fact that she played a part in the history of the Kingdom of Hungary. -
The Dominican Convents in Medieval Norway
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsIn the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Norway was larger than it is today, where the former Norwegian districts of Jämtland and Bohus are now parts of Sweden. In 1380, the Norwegian throne was inherited by the Danish king, and for the rest of the Middle Ages, Danish monarchs ruled Norway, but even though the kings often made use of Danes in the administration, the Norwegian kingdom did in fact remain as an independent part of a so-called double monarchy. -
Reading “The Revelations of Elizabeth of Hungary” as a Devotional Text
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsIn this thesis I would like to move beyond the discussions of authorship for The Revelations and begin to examine the text itself. In fact, I neither attempt to question the arguments for Elizabeth of Töss’s role as the visionary in the text, nor do I deny that someone in the community acquainted with Elizabeth, either first-hand or close to it, wrote her visions down. -
Medieval Nunnery excavated in Oxford
Posted on November 15, 2012 | No CommentsHundreds of volunteers worked with archaeologists from the University of Oxford to excavate the site of a medieval nunnery, and have even uncovered a small group of prehistoric worked flints, including a beautiful Bronze Age arrowhead which is about 4000 years old. -
You Are What You Eat: Hildegard of Bingen’s Viriditas
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsHildegard argues in the beginning of Physica that humans become what they eat. -
The Lands and ‘Sisterlands’ of Aberdour, c.1100-1650
Posted on October 13, 2012 | No CommentsOf the lands in Aberdour, we begin in very uncertain time long before the Sisterlands became such and a period from which few documents are available. It is thought that shortly after 1100 some of the lands in what was later to become the burgh of Aberdour came to be held by a Norman-French family, the Viponts. -
Chaucer’s costume rhetoric in his portrait of the Prioress
Posted on October 10, 2012 | No CommentsNo critic has ever discussed costume signs in order to reveal to what extent the Prioress does or does not conform in her costume to the fourteenth century norm, with consideration given, simultaneously, to the historical records, literature and visual arts of the period that form and inform the signs from the many traditions Chaucer in corporates in his portrait of the Prioress. -
The Education of Heloise in Twelfth-Century France
Posted on September 9, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper holds that Heloise had opportunity and one can demonstrate that other women, both secular and religious, while being located within the twelfth century of France, also had similar, if not more opportunities in education, business, and other domains that were typically thought of as impossible for women of this era. -
The Construction of the femina in Hildegard’s Symphonia
Posted on July 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe architectural metaphor used throughout Hildegard’s Symphonia is not an isolated or independent occurrence; rather it is deeply rooted in her theology. -
What became of the nuns of Haddington? Scholar calls for investigation into Scotland’s lost archaeological treasure
Posted on July 13, 2012 | No CommentsA farm in East Lothian could hold the secrets of one of Europe’s most important Cistercian nunneries, according to an expert at this week’s International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. -
The Middle English Manuscripts and Early Readers of Ancrene Wisse
Posted on June 10, 2012 | No CommentsThe main manuscripts (i.e. leaving aside E') range in date from the mid- thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. The eartiest seem to be C and A. These manuscripts both seem to date on textual and palaeographical grounds from around the middle of the first half of the thirteenth century (C has revisions by other scribes in hands from towards the end of the century). -
Work as a Manifestation of Faith in the English Nunnery: Barking Abbey, Essex
Posted on June 9, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper discusses various occupations held by nuns in the late-medieval and early-modern English convent, and argues that while the nuns did have extraordinary opportunities for self-management when compared to secular women, nuns carried out those responsibilities in part as extensions and expressions of their faith. -
Hildegard of Bingen: Interdisciplinarian of Medieval Europe
Posted on May 25, 2012 | No CommentsBorn in 1098, Hildegard was the tenth child to Hildebert von Bermersheim and his wife Mechtild. They were a very well‐to‐do family of the free nobility from the Bermersheim region of Germany. When she was eight years old, Hildegard’s parents dedicated her to the church as a tithe. Hildegard was placed in a Benedictine monastery in an enclosed room with an anchoress and tutor named Jutta von Sponheim. -
Oda: An Extraordinary Example of a Medieval Woman’s Religious Authority and Economic Power
Posted on April 22, 2012 | No Commentshristianity posed as a shackle for many women in the early Middle Ages. Though sexism and female subordination were prevalent prior to the emergence of this monotheistic religion, Christianity established its own justifications for continuing in the male domination. -
The female body, animal imagery, and authoritarian discourse in the Ancrene Riwle
Posted on April 17, 2012 | No CommentsThrough close reading and rhetorical analysis of numerous passages in the guide, this dissertation re-examines the importance of the body and authority in this work and notes the points at which the discourse of the Ancrene Riwle tends to place restrictions on its audience of medieval women religious. -
Sex, Enclosure, and Scandal in Medieval Monasteries
Posted on April 2, 2012 | No CommentsTo a modern reader the constraints of enclosure which were so strictly enforced in medieval monasteries may seem extreme. One could argue that some oblates found themselves subjected to a position they never desired, hence acted out against the rules of celibacy and enclosure -
VAGANTES: Between Tradition and Change: Monastic Reform in Three fifteenth-century German Redactions of the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt
Posted on March 30, 2012 | No CommentsUsing the life of St. Mary of Egypt, this paper will consider three different Middle High German versions produced by reform communities and will analyze how the reform ideologies and goals manifest in the texts. -
Convents, Courts and Colleges: The Prioress and the Second Nun
Posted on March 22, 2012 | No CommentsPilgrimage, after Whitby, and before Vatican II, was a secular activity, a performance of piety by the laity, not by the clergy; although there were a few exceptions.7 Chaucer's Monk, Friar, Prioress, Nun, Priest, Summoner, Pardoner and Parson ought not to be here. Their presence is outrageous comedy. Inns were forbidden to the cloistered clergy who, if they had to travel, were enjoined to stay in other monastic establishments along their route.