Download or read book Medieval Women on Sin and Salvation written by Mary Lou Shea and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hadewijch of Antwerp (c.1200?-1240), Beatrice of Nazareth (1200-1268), Margaret Ebner (1291-1351), and Julian of Norwich (1343-1416/19) are best known for their mystical experiences and literary styles. Medieval Women on Sin and Salvation explores the reality that these women understood their encounters in primarily theological categories. It is well documented that Anselm of Canterbury's 1098 Cur Deus Homo was quickly and widely adopted by late medieval religious men. Given the deeply relational, somewhat unconventional, yet clearly orthodox interpretations of Anselm's theory expressed by Hadewijch, Beatrice, Margaret, and Julian, it would seem that nuns, beguines, and devout lay women were compelled by the same understanding of Atonement as the priests, monks, brothers, and lay men of the era. Unable to offer academic theological treatises, given the constraints of their age, these women managed to convey, through their writings, profoundly theological insights into the crucial Christian concepts of the natures of soul and sin, the Fall, and the Incarnation and its benefits, both for God and for humanity. This book offers valuable new insights and is suitable for upper division undergraduate classes and graduate courses in the history of Christianity/Medieval Christianity, theology, spirituality, and women's studies.
Download or read book The Satisfied Life written by Jane Ellen McAvoy and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity centers on the life and death of Jesus as Christ. Often Christians focus on the importance of Christ's Sacrifice as the means of human salvation, and the faithful are encouraged to imitate this suffering through self-sacrifice and self-denial. More than a few Christians, particularly women, have found such encouragement to self-sacrifice to be a means for continuing oppression--men over women, colonizers over the colonized, the powerful over the powerless. In The Satisfied Life, Jane McAvoy constructs a feminist theology of atonement--or satisfaction for sin--that draws on the insights of six medieval women mystics: Julian of Norwich, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hildegard of Bingen, Margery Kempe, Hadewijch of Brabant, and Catherine of Siena. These Christian writers reveal alternatives to a theology of oppression. Salvation, for them, means experiencing the death and resurrection of Christ not as life-denying, but as a life-affirming celebration of God's love for us through the sustaining love of Jesus.
Download or read book Robert of Arbrissel written by Jacques Dalarun and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author tells the story of Robert of Arbrissel (ca 1045-1116). Robert was a parish priest, longtime student, reformer, hermit, wandering preacher, and founder of the abbey of Fontevraud. This book narrates the course of Robert's life and his relationships with others along the way.
Download or read book Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages written by Frances Beer and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original and thought-provoking study of three medieval women mystics based on writings and biographical material.
Download or read book Nuns Priests Tales written by Fiona J. Griffiths and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Middle Ages, female monasteries relied on priests to provide for their spiritual care, chiefly to celebrate Mass in their chapels but also to hear the confessions of their nuns and give last rites to their sick and dying. These men were essential to the flourishing of female monasticism during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, yet they rarely appear in scholarly accounts of the period. Medieval sources are hardly more forthcoming. Although medieval churchmen consistently acknowledged the necessity of male spiritual supervision in female monasteries, they also warned against the dangers to men of association with women. Nuns' Priests' Tales investigates gendered spiritual hierarchies from the perspective of nuns' priests—ordained men (often local monks) who served the spiritual needs of monastic women. Celibacy, misogyny, and the presumption of men's withdrawal from women within the religious life have often been seen as markers of male spirituality during the period of church reform. Yet, as Fiona J. Griffiths illustrates, men's support and care for religious women could be central to male spirituality and pious practice. Nuns' priests frequently turned to women for prayer and intercession, viewing women's prayers as superior to their own, since they were the prayers of Christ's "brides." Casting nuns as the brides of Christ and adopting for themselves the role of paranymphus (bridesman, or friend of the bridegroom), these men constructed a triangular spiritual relationship in which service to nuns was part of their dedication to Christ. Focusing on men's spiritual ideas about women and their spiritual service to them, Nuns' Priests' Tales reveals a clerical counter-discourse in which spiritual care for women was depicted as a holy service and an act of devotion and obedience to Christ.
Download or read book Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality written by Various and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-05-28 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biographies, poetic compositions, works that are mystical, prophetic, visionary, or meditative: the selections here reflect the developments in medieval piety, particularly in the link between female spirituality and the body. Included are the dramatic visionary writings of Hildegard of Bingen; letters and poems by Hadewijch expressing passionate love for God; and Marguerite Porete's allegorical poem "The Mirror of Simple Souls," a dialogue between Love and Soul that was condemned as heretical. Also included are biographies written by male ecclesiastics of women such as Christine the Astonishing, whose extraordinary behavior included being resurrected at her own funeral; revelations received by Bridget of Sweden, the first woman to found a religious order; and excerpts from The Book of Margery Kempe, in which Margery imagines herself as a servant caring for the Virgin Mary in her childhood. This volume, edited by Elizabeth Spearing, who also prepared some of the translations, features a rich introduction to the lives and religious experiences of its subjects, as well as full explanatory notes. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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 Equally in God s Image written by Julia Bolton Holloway and published by Julia Bolton Holloway. This book was released on 1990 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equally in God's Image: Women in the Middle Ages is a volume of essays presenting the argument that with the coming of the universities women were excluded, in an apartheid of gender, from education and power. It discusses the resulting paradigm shift from Romanesque to Gothic, describing the images which women had of themselves and which the dominant male society had of them. We meet, in the pages of this book, medieval women in their roles as writers, pilgrims, wives, anchoresses and nuns, at court, on pilgrimage, in households and convents. The volume, as a «Distant Mirror» for ourselves today, seeks to present ways in which women then fulfilled the roles society expected of them and the ways in which they also subverted - through entering into textuality - the expectations of the dominating culture in order to quest identity and equality.
Download or read book From Sin to Salvation written by Virginia Lieson Brereton and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1991-07-22 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "... fascinating... " -- Theological Book Review By examining women's conversion experiences, the author provides a corrective to the much popularized TV evangelism. She examines the stories U.S. women have told of their profound realization of their sinfulness and the necessity of turning to God's grace and love for forgiveness.
Download or read book Sainted Women of the Dark Ages written by Jo Ann McNamara and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1992-03-27 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sainted Women of the Dark Ages makes available the lives of eighteen Frankish women of the sixth and seventh centuries, all of whom became saints. Written in Latin by contemporaries or near contemporaries, and most translated here for the first time, these biographies cover the period from the fall of the Roman Empire and the conversion of the invading Franks to the rise of Charlemagne's family. Three of these holy women were queens who turned to religion only after a period of intense worldly activity. Others were members of the Carolingian family, deeply implicated in the political ambitions of their male relatives. Some were partners in the great Irish missions to the pagan countryside and others worked for the physical salvation of the poor. From the peril and suffering of their lives they shaped themselves as paragons of power and achievement. Beloved by their sisters and communities for their spiritual gifts, they ultimately brought forth a new model of sanctity. These biographies are unusually authentic. At least two were written by women who knew their subjects, while others reflect the direct testimony of sisters within the cloister walls. Each biography is accompanied by an introduction and notes that clarify its historical context. This volume will be an excellent source for students and scholars of women's studies and early medieval social, religious, and political history.
Download or read book Medieval Women Religious C 800 C 1500 written by Kimm Curran and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2023-01-24 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multi-disciplinary re-evaluation of the role of women religious in the Middle Ages, both inside and outside the cloister. Medieval women found diverse ways of expressing their religious aspirations: within the cloister as members of monastic and religious orders, within the world as vowesses, or between the two as anchorites. Via a range of disciplinary approaches, from history, archaeology, literature, and the visual arts, the essays in this volume challenge received scholarly narratives and re-examine the roles of women religious: their authority and agency within their own communities and the wider world; their learning and literacy; place in the landscape; and visual culture. Overall, they highlight the impact of women on the world around them, the significance of their presence in communities, and the experiences and legacies they left behind.
Download or read book Holy Feast and Holy Fast written by Caroline Walker Bynum and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1988-01-07 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the period between 1200 and 1500 in western Europe, a number of religious women gained widespread veneration and even canonization as saints for their extraordinary devotion to the Christian eucharist, supernatural multiplications of food and drink, and miracles of bodily manipulation, including stigmata and inedia (living without eating). The occurrence of such phenomena sheds much light on the nature of medieval society and medieval religion. It also forms a chapter in the history of women. Previous scholars have occasionally noted the various phenomena in isolation from each other and have sometimes applied modern medical or psychological theories to them. Using materials based on saints' lives and the religious and mystical writings of medieval women and men, Caroline Walker Bynum uncovers the pattern lying behind these aspects of women's religiosity and behind the fascination men and women felt for such miracles and devotional practices. She argues that food lies at the heart of much of women's piety. Women renounced ordinary food through fasting in order to prepare for receiving extraordinary food in the eucharist. They also offered themselves as food in miracles of feeding and bodily manipulation. Providing both functionalist and phenomenological explanations, Bynum explores the ways in which food practices enabled women to exert control within the family and to define their religious vocations. She also describes what women meant by seeing their own bodies and God's body as food and what men meant when they too associated women with food and flesh. The author's interpretation of women's piety offers a new view of the nature of medieval asceticism and, drawing upon both anthropology and feminist theory, she illuminates the distinctive features of women's use of symbols. Rejecting presentist interpretations of women as exploited or masochistic, she shows the power and creativity of women's writing and women's lives.
Download or read book Medieval Women and Atonement written by Mary Lou Shea and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: This study investigates the degree of acceptance offered by select late medieval religious women to the model of atonement set forth in Anselm of Canterbury's 1098 Cur Deus Homo and largely adopted by late medieval religious men. Additionally, the research reveals the interpretation of Anselm's thought by these women as deeply relational, rather than as fundamentally juridical, recapturing a perspective largely lost to modern students of Anselm. To date, little research has been published on the theological understandings of such women, with primary emphasis being given instead to their mystical experiences and literary styles. This dissertation explores the theological underpinnings that shape and support the writings of four medieval women known primarily for their ecstatic experiences of God: Hadewijch of Antwerp, Beatrice of Nazareth, Margaret Ebner and Julian of Norwich. While Julian has received some attention, especially for her understanding of the Fall and of human sinfulness, several aspects of her theology remain underappreciated. Virtually no work has been done to uncover the theological understandings of the other three subjects. This study establishes the theological, historical and socio-cultural worlds of the authors, with particular consideration being given to the roles of women, both noble and bourgeois; the lives of nuns, beguines and anchoresses; and the individual stories of the four authors. Attention is devoted to the documents written by each woman, with particular focus given to the specific areas of the natures of soul and sin; the Fall; and the Incarnation and its benefits, both for God and for humanity. Finally, the results are compared to Anselm's Cur Deus Homo. The resulting comparison indicates a strong degree of Anselmian orthodoxy in the writings of these female mystics and, in some cases, a significant subtlety to their theologies of sin and salvation, especially in their understanding of the whole as fundamentally relational. Medieval women, while unable to offer academic theological treatises, found ways to express profound theological understanding in acceptable ways that guided their audiences and advisees in orthodox, yet unconventional, manners.
Download or read book The Writings of Medieval Women written by Marcelle Theibaux and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Royal and saintly women are well-represented here, with the welcome addition of women from the Mediterranean arc...Garland has done a solid job of presenting this book." -- Arthuriana "The Anthology gives a fine sense of the great range of women's writing in the Middle Ages." -- Medium Aevum
Download or read book A Medieval Woman s Companion written by Susan Signe Morrison and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What have a deaf nun, the mother of the first baby born to Europeans in North America, and a condemned heretic to do with one another? They are among the virtuous virgins, marvelous maidens, and fierce feminists of the Middle Ages who trail-blazed paths for women today. Without those first courageous souls who worked in fields dominated by men, women might not have the presence they currently do in professions such as education, the law, and literature. Focusing on women from Western Europe between c. 300 and 1500 CE in the medieval period and richly carpeted with detail, A Medieval Woman’s Companion offers a wealth of information about real medieval women who are now considered vital for understanding the Middle Ages in a full and nuanced way. Short biographies of 20 medieval women illustrate how they have anticipated and shaped current concerns, including access to education; creative emotional outlets such as art, theater, romantic fiction, and music; marriage and marital rights; fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, contraception and gynecology; sex trafficking and sexual violence; the balance of work and family; faith; and disability. Their legacy abides until today in attitudes to contemporary women that have their roots in the medieval period. The final chapter suggests how 20th and 21st century feminist and gender theories can be applied to and complicated by medieval women's lives and writings. Doubly marginalized due to gender and the remoteness of the time period, medieval women’s accomplishments are acknowledged and presented in a way that readers can appreciate and find inspiring. Ideal for high school and college classroom use in courses ranging from history and literature to women's and gender studies, an accompanying website with educational links, images, downloadable curriculum guide, and interactive blog will be made available at the time of publication.
Download or read book Medieval Christianity written by Daniel E. Bornstein and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book That Gentle Strength written by Lynda L. Coon and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Christian women : sources and interpretation / Elizabeth A. Clark -- Women in early Byzantine hagiography : reversing the story / Susan Ashbrook Harvey -- Marital imagery in six late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century vitae of female saints / Diane L. Mockridge -- The place of women in the late medieval Italian church / Duane J. Osheim -- Misconduct in the medieval nunnery : fact, not fiction / Graciela S. Daichman -- Telling her sins : male confessors and female penitents in Catholic Reformation Italy / Rudolph M. Bell -- The battle of the sexes and the world upside down / Keith Moxey -- The religion of the femmelettes : ideals and experience among women in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century France / Thomas Head -- The nuns of Port-Royal : a study of female spirituality in seventeenth-century France / Alexander Sedgwick -- Calling and career : the revolution in the mind and heart of Abigail Adams / Rosemary Skinner Keller. - Religion in the lives of slaveholding women of the antebellum South / Elizabeth Fox-Genovese -- Between fiction and madness : the relationship of women to the supernatural in late Victorian Britain / Mary Walker -- A spirit of her own : nineteenth-century.
