Download or read book Forgetful of Their Sex written by Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-06-29 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable study of over 2,200 female and male saints, Jane Schulenburg explores women's status and experience in early medieval society and in the Church by examining factors such as family wealth and power, patronage, monasticism, virginity, and motherhood. The result is a unique depiction of the lives of these strong, creative, independent-minded women who achieved a visibility in their society that led to recognition of sanctity. "A tremendous piece of scholarship. . . . This journey through more than 2,000 saints is anything but dull. Along the way, Schulenburg informs our ideas regarding the role of saints in the medieval psyche, gender-specific identification, and the heroics of virginity." —Library Journal "[This book] will be a kind of 'roots' experience for some readers. They will hear the voices, haunted and haunting, of their distant ancestors and understand more about themselves." —Christian Science Monitor "This fascinating book reaches far beyond the history of Christianity to recreate the 'herstory' of a whole gender." —Kate Saunders, The Independent

Download or read book The Mystic Mind written by Jerome Kroll and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a database of over 1400 medieval holy persons and in-depth studies of individual saints, this fascinating collaboration between a medieval historian and a professor of psychiatry applies modern biological and psychological research to the lives of medieval mystics and ascetics.

Download or read book Women Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative written by Natasha R. Hodgson and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women's role in crusades and crusading examined through a close investigation of the narratives in which they appear. Narratives of crusading have often been overlooked as a source for the history of women because of their focus on martial events, and perceptions about women inhibiting the recruitment and progress of crusading armies. Yet women consistently appeared in the histories of crusade and settlement, performing a variety of roles. While some were vilified as "useless mouths" or prostitutes, others undertook menial tasks for the army, went on crusade with retinuesof their own knights, and rose to political prominence in the Levant and and the West. This book compares perceptions of women from a wide range of historical narratives including those eyewitness accounts, lay histories andmonastic chronicles that pertained to major crusade expeditions and the settler society in the Holy Land. It addresses how authors used events involving women and stereotypes based on gender, family role, and social status in writing their histories: how they blended historia and fabula, speculated on women's motivations, and occasionally granted them a literary voice in order to connect with their audience, impart moral advice, and justify the crusade ideal. Dr NATASHA R. HODGSON teaches at Nottingham Trent University.

Download or read book Women in the Mission of the Church written by Leanne M. Dzubinski and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women have been central to the work of Christian ministry from the time of Jesus to the twenty-first century. Yet the story of Christianity is too often told as a story of men. This accessibly written book tells the story of women throughout church history, demonstrating their integral participation in the church's mission. It highlights the legacies of a wide variety of women, showing how they have overcome obstacles to their ministries and have transformed cultural constraints to spread the gospel and build the church.

Download or read book Women in the Piast Dynasty written by Grzegorz Pac and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-03-07 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive study of the role of women in the Polish Piast dynasty from 965 until c.1144, comparing them with female members of other contemporary medieval dynasties.

Download or read book The Cruelest of All Mothers written by Mary Dunn and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1631, Marie Guyart stepped over the threshold of the Ursuline convent in Tours, leaving behind her eleven-year-old son, Claude, against the wishes of her family and her own misgivings. Marie concluded, “God was dearer to me than all that. Leaving him therefore in His hands, I bid adieu to him joyfully.” Claude organized a band of schoolboys to storm the convent, begging for his mother’s return. Eight years later, Marie made her way to Quebec, where over the course of the next thirty-three years she opened the first school for Native American girls, translated catechisms into indigenous languages, and served some eighteen years as superior of the first Ursuline convent in the New World. She would also maintain, over this same period, an extensive and intimate correspondence with the son she had abandoned to serve God. The Cruelest of All Mothers is, fundamentally, an explanation of Marie de l’Incarnation’s decision to abandon Claude for religious life. Complicating Marie’s own explication of the abandonment as a sacrifice carried out in imitation of Christ and in submission to God’s will, the book situates the event against the background of early modern French family life, the marginalization of motherhood in the Christian tradition, and seventeenth-century French Catholic spirituality. Deeply grounded in a set of rich primary sources, The Cruelest of All Mothers offers a rich and complex analysis of the abandonment.

Download or read book Women in Christian Traditions written by Rebecca Moore and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-03-06 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovers women's participation and impact on defining historical moments and themes of Christian traditions Women in Christian Traditions offers a concise and accessible examination of the roles women have played in the construction and practice of Christian traditions, revealing the enormous debt that this major world religion owes to its female followers. It recovers forgotten and obscured moments in church history to help us to realize a richer and fuller understanding of Christianity. This text provides an overview of the complete sweep of Christian history through the lens of feminist scholarship. Yet it also departs from some of the assumptions of that scholarship, raising questions that challenge our thinking about how women have shaped beliefs and practices during two thousand years of church history. Did the emphasis on virginity in the early church empower Christian women? Did the emphasis on marriage during the Reformations of the sixteenth century improve their status? These questions and others have important implications for women in Christianity in particular, and for women in religion in general, since they go to the heart of the human condition. This work examines themes, movements, and events in their historical contexts and locates churchwomen within the broader developments that have been pivotal in the evolution of Christianity. From the earliest disciples to the latest theologians, from the missionaries to the martyrs, women have been instrumental in keeping the faith alive. Women in Christian Traditions shows how they did so.

Download or read book Women of the Gilte Legende written by Jacobus (de Voragine) and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2003 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a prose translation of a selection of women saints' lives from the Gilte Legende, the Middle English version of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea, one of the most influential books to come from the middle ages. Because of its popularity and subject matter, the Gilte Legende was widely read and used as a model for everyday life, including the education of women through examples set by early Christian martyrs. Many of the women saints spoke passionately about their convictions and defended their faith and their bodies to the death. For over 400 years, these amazing vernacular stories have been inaccessible to a wider audience. This book divides the lives of female saints into: the "ryght hooly virgins", who vocally defend their bodies against Roman persecution; "holy mothers", who give up their traditional role to pursue a life of contemplation; the 'repentant sinners', who convert and voice their defiance against a society that demanded silence in women; and the "holy transvestites", who cast off their gender identity to find absolution and salvation. Their lives reach through the ages to speak to a modern audience, academic and non-academic, forcing a re-examination of women's roles in the medieval period. LARISSA TRACY is Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown University and George Mason University. Series editor JANE CHANCE

Download or read book Reassessing the Roles of Women as Makers of Medieval Art and Architecture 2 Vol Set written by Therese Martin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012 with total page 1185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twenty-four studies in this volume propose a new approach to framing the debate around the history of medieval art and architecture to highlight the multiple roles played by women, moving beyond today's standard division of artist from patron.

Download or read book The Body Legal in Barbarian Law written by Lisi Oliver and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sixth to ninth centuries saw a flowering of written laws among the early Germanic tribes. These laws include tables of fines for personal injury, designed to offer a legal, non-violent alternative to blood feud. Using these personal injury tariffs, The Body Legal in Barbarian Law examines a variety of issues, including the interrelationships between victims, perpetrators, and their families; the causes and results of wounds inflicted in daily life; the methods, successes, and failures of healing techniques; the processes of individual redress or public litigation; and the native and borrowed developments in the various 'barbarian' territories as they separated from the Roman Empire. By applying the techniques of linguistic anthropology to the pre-history of medicine, anatomical knowledge, and law, Lisi Oliver has produced a remarkable study that sheds new light on early Germanic conceptions of the body in terms of medical value, physiological function, psychological worth, and social significance.

Download or read book Pope Gregory and the Brides of Christ written by John R. C. Martyn and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-02 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Letters of Gregory the Great, pope from 590 to 604, have long been viewed as an indispensable resource for scholars of the early medieval period. John Martyn’s knowledge of these letters is well nigh unsurpassed, In this book he turns his attention to a hitherto neglected subject; those letters of Pope Gregory which pertain to nuns and convents. Despite the fact that scholarship on the Middle Ages has in the last thirty years been transformed by feminist contributions, and there has developed, as a result, a heightened awareness of the presence of women in medieval life, both secular and religious, only two of the thirty-six letters identified by Martyn have previously been discussed by scholars. This edition of the letters in both Latin and English is therefore of inestimable value to scholars and will act as a spur for further research. This sizeable collection of letters are analysed in company with other, better-known, writings about nuns from Gregory’s dialogi. In the introduction Martyn argues that his upbringing, dominated by his mother and four devout aunts, might reasonably have inculcated in him a deep and abiding concern for women, the religious in particular. This is evidenced by his friendships with Theoctista and Gordia, the sisters of the Byzantine Emperor Maurice, and with his wife, the pious Constantina. and with a number of abbesses, including Respecta (from Marseilles) and Talasia (from Autun). Gregory’s deep interest in the religious life of women, and his concern for their safety and wellbeing, are apparent throughout the letters. Martyn’s translations are clarified and enhanced by a commentary.

Download or read book Contesting Christendom written by James L. Halverson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2008 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pervasiveness of the Christian religion has long been treated as one of the key features of medieval society. Indeed, Europe in the Middle Ages is often described simply as a Christian culture. Yet what do we mean when we say that medieval Europe was a Christian society, and what did it mean to be a Christian in the Middle Ages? These questions are fundamental to any understanding of the Middle Ages, yet the variety of theoretical approaches and conclusions represented in this carefully selected and provocative collection of key works in the field highlights the complexity of the answers. Introducing students to medieval Christianity, James L. Halverson presents a rich array of readings that offers a variety of ways to study the history of religion within a chronological setting. His opening chapter and introductions to each section and selection frame the essays and provide a strong conceptual framework to build upon. Making it clear that scholars have approached religion from many perspectives and used many different methodologies, this collection presents some of the best scholarship of religion as culture and practice, emphasizing the ongoing attempt to understand the social and cultural aspects of medieval Christianity. Contributions by: Rudolf Bell, Constance Brittain Bouchard, Peter Brown, Marcus Bull, Caroline Walker Bynum, Mark R. Cohen, Georges Duby, Eamon Duffy, Joan Ferrante, Richard Fletcher, Katherine L. French, Thomas A. Fudge, Herbert Grundmann, James L. Halverson, Karen Louise Jolly, Lester Little, Rob Means, Bernd Moeller, Andrew P. Roach, Jane Tibbets Schulenburg, Keith Thomas, and Ian Wood.

Download or read book Anchoress and Abbess in Ninth Century Saxony written by Frederick S. Paxton and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2009-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the growing field of early medieval texts in translation, this book presents the first full English translations of the Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen, the first anchoress in Saxony, and Hathumoda, the first abbess of Gandersheim.

Download or read book Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature written by Albrecht Classen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although courtly literature is often associated with a chivalrous and idyllic life, the fifteen original essays in this collection demonstrate that the quest for love in the world of medieval courtly literature was underpinned by violence. Lovers were rejected, mistrust ruled, rape was a rampant problem, and marriage was often characterized by brutality. Albrecht Classen brings together an outstanding group of historical, cultural, and literary scholars in this volume to investigate the complicated, nuanced, and often surprising unions of love and violence in courtly medieval literature.

Download or read book Margaret s Monsters written by Michael E. Heyes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: St. Margaret of Antioch was one of the most popular saints in medieval England and, throughout the Middle Ages, the various Lives of St. Margaret functioned as a blueprint for a virginal life and supernatural assistance to pregnant women during the dangerous process of labor. In her narrative, Margaret is accosted by various demons and, having defeated each monster in turn, she is taken to the place of her martyrdom where she prays for supernatural boons for her adherents. This book argues that Margaret’s monsters are a key element in understanding Margaret’s importance to her adherents, specifically how the sexual identities of her adherents were constructed and maintained. More broadly, this study offers three major contributions to the field of medieval studies: first, it argues for the utility of a diachronic analysis of Saints’ Lives literature in a field dominated by synchronic analyses; second, this diachronic analysis is important to interpreting the intertext of Saints’ Lives, not only between different Lives but also different versions of the same Life; and third, the approach further suggests that the most valuable socio-cultural information in hagiographic literature is found in the auxiliary characters and not in the figure of the saint him/herself.

Download or read book Signs of Virginity written by Michael Rosenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the theme of bloodied nuptial sheets seems pervasive in western culture, its association with female virginity is uniquely tied to a brief passage in the book of Deuteronomy detailing the procedure for verifying a young woman's purity; it seldom, if ever, appears outside of Abrahamic traditions. In Signs of Virginity, Michael Rosenberg examines the history of virginity testing in Judaism and early Christianity, and the relationship of these tests to a culture that encourages male sexual violence. Deuteronomy's violent vision of virginity has held sway in Jewish and Christian circles more or less ever since. However, Rosenberg points to two authors-the rabbinic collective that produced the Babylonian Talmud and the early Christian thinker Augustine of Hippo-who, even as they perpetuate patriarchal assumptions about female virginity, nonetheless attempt to subvert the emphasis on sexual dominance bequeathed to them by Deuteronomy. Unlike the authors of earlier Rabbinic and Christian texts, who modified but fundamentally maintained and even extended the Deuteronomic ideal, the Babylonian Talmud and Augustine both construct alternative models of female virginity that, if taken seriously, would utterly reverse cultural ideals of masculinity. Indeed this vision of masculinity as fundamentally gentle, rather than characterized by brutal and violent sexual behavior, fits into a broader idealization of masculinity propagated by both authors, who reject what Augustine called a "lust for dominance" as a masculine ideal.

Download or read book Women Writing and Religion in England and Beyond 650 1100 written by Diane Watt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women's literary histories usually start in the later Middle Ages, but recent scholarship has shown that actually women were at the heart of the emergence of the English literary tradition. Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 focuses on the period before the so-called 'Barking Renaissance' of women's writing in the 12th century. By examining the surviving evidence of women's authorship, as well as the evidence of women's engagement with literary culture more widely, Diane Watt argues that early women's writing was often lost, suppressed, or deliberately destroyed. In particular she considers the different forms of male 'overwriting', to which she ascribes the multiple connotations of 'destruction', 'preservation', 'control' and 'suppression'. She uses the term to describe the complex relationship between male authors and their female subjects to capture the ways in which texts can attempt to control and circumscribe female autonomy. Written by one of the leading experts in medieval women's writing, Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100 examines women's literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as letters and hagiographies from the 8th and 9th centuries. Diane Watt provides a much-needed look at women's writing in the early medieval period that is crucial to understanding women's literary history more broadly.