Women in the Medieval Court
Women in the Medieval Court

Author: Rebecca Holdorph

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2022-04-06

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1526739828

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A surprising look at women who wielded power in medieval Europe, from queens to concubines to abbesses. Medieval society might expect the elite women who decorated its courts to play the role of Queen Guinevere, but many of these women had very different ideas. Great queens, who sometimes ruled in their own right, fought wars and forged empires. Noblewomen acted behind the scenes to change the course of politics. Far from cloistered off from the world, powerful abbesses played the role of kingmaker. And concubines had a role to play as well, both as political actors and as mothers of children who might change a country’s destiny. They experienced tremendous success and dramatic downfalls. This book tells the stories of women from across medieval Europe, from a Danish queen who waged political war to form a Scandinavian empire to a Tuscan countess who joined her troops on the battlefield. Whether they wielded power in battle, from a convent, or from a throne—or even in the bedchamber—these women were far from damsels in distress waiting for their knights in shining armor.

Women in the Medieval Court: Consorts and Concubines
Women in the Medieval Court: Consorts and Concubines

Author: Rebecca Holdorph

Publisher:

Published: 2022-04-30

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9781526739810

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While the courts of medieval Europe ate up tales of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress, the reality for the elite women who inhabited those courts could be very different. Medieval society might expect the noblewomen who decorated its courts to play the role of Queen Guinevere, but many of these women had very different ideas.In a society dominated by men, women who stood out from the crowd could experience great success - and greater failure. Great queens, who sometimes ruled in their own right, fought wars and forged empires. Noblewomen acted behind the scenes to change the course of politics. Far from cloistered off from the world, powerful abbesses played the role of kingmaker. And concubines had a role to play as well, both as political actors and as mothers of children who might change a country's destiny. They experienced tremendous success and dramatic downfalls.Meet women from across medieval Europe, from a Danish queen who waged political war to form a Scandinavian empire, to a Tuscan countess who joined her troops on the battlefield. Whether they wielded power in battle, from a convent or throne room, or even in the bedchamber, these women were far from damsels in distress.

Women in Medieval History and Historiography
Women in Medieval History and Historiography

Author: Susan Mosher Stuard

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-11-11

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 151280729X

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What was the status of women in the Middle Ages? How have women fared in the hands of historians? And, what is the current state of research about women in the Middle Ages? Susan Mosher Stuard addresses these questions in a collection of essays that delve in to the history and historiography of women in medieval England, France, Italy, and Germany. Contributors include Barbara Hanawalt, Diane Owen Hughes, Suzanne Wemple, Denise Kaiser, and Martha Howell. One of the most interesting observations made in Women in Medieval History and Historiography is the way in which the history of women in each country has followed a distinct course that is in rhythm with other concerns of national historical writing. Women in Medieval History and Historiography will interest historians, scholars of women's studies, and medievalists.

Medieval Women and the Law
Medieval Women and the Law

Author: Noël James Menuge

Publisher: Boydell Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780851159324

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Legal records illuminate womens' use of legal processes, with regard to the making of wills, the age of consent, rights concerning marriage and children, women as traders, etc. Determined and largely successful effort to read behind and alongside legal discourses to discover women's voices and women's feelings. It adds usefully to the wider debate on women's role in medieval society. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW What is really new here is the ways in which the authors approach the history of the law: they use some decidedly non-legal texts to examine legal history; they bring together historical and literary sources; and they debunk the view that medieval laws had little to say about women or that medieval women had little legal agency. ALBION The legal position of the late medieval woman has been much neglected, and it is this gap which the essays collected here seek to fill. They explore the ways in which women of all ages and stations during the late middle ages (c.1300-c.1500) could legally shift for themselves, and how and where they did so. Particular topics discussed include the making of wills, the age of consent, rights concerning marriage, care, custody and guardianship (with particular emphasis on the rights of a mother attempting to gain custody of her own children within the court system), women as traders, women as criminals, prostitution, the rights of battered women within the courts, the procedures women had to go through to gain legal redress and access, rape, and women within guilds. NOELJAMES MENUGE gained her Ph.D. from the Centre of Medieval Studies at the University of York. Contributors: P.J.P. GOLDBERG, VICTORIA THOMPSON, JENNIFER SMITH, CORDELIA BEATTIE, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, NOEL JAMES MENUGE, CORINNE SAUNDERS, KIM M. PHILLIPS, EMMA HAWKES

Women and Power in the Middle Ages
Women and Power in the Middle Ages

Author: Mary Erler

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0820323810

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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 and the religious power of female saints. Among the specific topics addresses are Griselda's manipulation of silence as power in Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale"; the extensive networks of influence devised by Lady Honor Lisle; and the role of medieval women book owners as arbiters of lay piety and ambassadors of culture. In every case, the essays seek to transcend simple polarities of public and private, male and female, in order to provide a more realistic analysis of the workings of power in feudal society.

Women in Medieval Europe
Women in Medieval Europe

Author: Jennifer Ward

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1317888596

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Women in Medieval Europe were expected to be submissive, but such a broad picture ignores great areas of female experience. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, women are found in the workplace as well as the home, and some women were numbered among the key rulers, saints and mystics of the medieval world. Opportunities and activities changed over time, and by 1500 the world of work was becoming increasingly restricted for women. Women of all social groups were primarily engaged with their families, looking after husband and children, and running the household. Patterns of work varied geographically. In the northern towns, women engaged in a wide range of crafts, with a small number becoming entrepreneurs. Many of the poor made a living as servants and labourers. Prostitution flourished in many medieval towns. Some women turned to the religious life, and here opportunities burgeoned in the thirteenth century. The Middle Ages are not remote from the twenty-first century; the lives of medieval women evoke a response today. The medieval mother faced similar problems to her modern counterpart. The sheer variety of women’s experience in the later Middle Ages is fully brought out in this book.

Divorce in Medieval England
Divorce in Medieval England

Author: Sara Margaret Butler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0415825164

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Divorce, as we think of it today, is usually considered to be a modern invention. This book challenges that viewpoint, documenting the many and varied uses of divorce in the medieval period and highlighting the fact that couples regularly divorced on the grounds of spousal incompatibility.

Women in Medieval Society
Women in Medieval Society

Author: Susan Mosher Stuard

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-04-17

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 081220767X

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Early medieval women exercised public roles, rights, and responsibilities. Women contributed through their labor to the welfare of the community. Women played an important part in public affairs. They practiced birth control through abortion and infanticide. Women committed crimes and were indicted. They owned property and administered estates. The drive toward economic growth and expansion abroad rested on the capacity of women to staff and manage economic endeavors at home. In the later Middle Ages, the social position of women altered significantly, and the reasons why the role of women in society tended to become more restrictive are examined in these essays.

Women in Medieval Western European Culture
Women in Medieval Western European Culture

Author: Linda E. Mitchell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-11-12

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 1136522034

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This is the book that teachers of courses on women in the Middle Ages have been wanting to write-or see written-for years. Essays written by specialists in their respective fields cover a range of topics unmatched in depth and breadth by any other introductory text. Depictions of women in literature and art, women in the medieval urban landscape, an the issue of women's relation to definitions of deviance and otherness all receive particular attention. Geographical regions such as the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Near East are fully incorporated into the text, expanding the horizons of medieval studies. The collection is organized thematically and includes all the tools needed to contextualize women in medieval society and culture.

Same Bodies, Different Women
Same Bodies, Different Women

Author: Christopher Mielke

Publisher: Trivent Publishing

Published: 2019-12-31

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 6158122238

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This volume is a collection of essays focusing on marginalized women mostly in Central and Eastern Europe from around 1350 to 1650. "Other" women are discussed in three different categories: women whose religious practices put them on the social margins, "common women" who are in society but not of society because they are in the sex trade, and women whose occupations were reason enough to shunt them. In order to fill a gap in gender history for countries east of the Rhine River, the studies included present how official city-funded brothels in medieval Austria worked, how a princess' disability affected her life as Byzantine empress, how one unmarried Transylvanian woman who got pregnant dealt with being the center of a court case, and how enslaved women in medieval Hungary were treated as sexual property. The hope with this volume is that it will show the many interdisciplinary ways that women on the margins can be studied in this region, and to diminish the taboo of discussing this topic to begin with.