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The Common Woman in the Western Church in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Peter Biller*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of York

Extract

Shortly after 1290 an anonymous Alsace Dominican set down in writing what he thought had changed since about 1200. The range and variety of the themes and details in his account of changes between 1200 and 1290 are extraordinary. One did not yet have iron-wheeled carts, he wrote, nor that sort of plaster which is called cementum. The buildings of Strasbourg and Basel were mean, small-windowed, with little light, and there was no bridge across the Rhine. Now, on the other hand, the masters of mechanical arts have achieved much. His changes include newly imported breeds of poultry, differences in clothes, and much emphasis on expansion: the little towns of today did not yet exist. There were as yet few merchants. Now, there are many, as well as many surgeons and physicians. The picture of learning and books of 1200 included a Paris which was already flourishing, and lots of law books, though they were difficult to buy, presumably because books were more expensive. Since then many books have been compiled—and he lists many of the major Dominican works, including the libri naturales of Albert the Great.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990

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Footnotes

1

Acknowledgement is due here to Derek Jennings for suggestive discussion of the theme, and to Nick Furbank: see n. 9 below.

References

2 De rebus Alsaticis ineuntis saeculi XIII, ed. P.Jaffé, MCH SS, 17 (Hanover, 1861), pp. 232-7. Examples of use of the Colmar Dominican are H. Grundmann, Religiose Bewegungen im Mittelalter, 2nd edn (Hildesheim, 1961), esp. pp. 221–2, and n. 46, pp. 239–40, 346–8, n. 46, and, more recently, Freed, J. B., The Friars and German Society in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 434 Google Scholar (see n. 63), 48, 170.

3 On Heinrich of Basel, see SOPMA, 2, pp. 183-4.

4 Though Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record. England 1066-1300 (London, 1979)Google Scholar deals with England, the suggestion of the book is a plausible hypothèse de travail for contemporary western Europe; see now the discussion of the preceding period in Europe in B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy. Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, New Jersey, 1983), cap. 1.

5 St Albert’s quaestio is the central text in D. Herlihy’s ‘Life expectancies for women in medieval society’, in R. T. Morewedge, ed., The Role of Women in the Middle Ages (New York, 1975), pp. 1-22, esp. p. 11; it comes from St Albert’s Quaestiones super de Animalihus (XV. 8), lectures given in Cologne in 1258.

6 See Grundmann, ReligioseBewegungen, cap. 5 (vii), pp. 312-18: ‘Statisrische Angaben iiber die Frauenklöster der Bettelorden im 13. Jahrhundert’. See calculations for Béguines in Cologne in Southern, R. W., Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London, 1970), pp. 31920, 3235 Google Scholar (see also, pp. 313, 317 and n. 19 on Premonstratensians and Cistercians), and Ennen, E., Frauen im Mittelalter (Munich, 1984), pp. 11213 Google Scholar.

7 M. D. Knowles, RO, 2, p. 256. See now MRHEW, pp. 493–4. The general point is not new: ‘The proportion of women who became nuns was very small in comparison with the total female population’, Power, E., Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge, 1922), p. 4 Google Scholar.

8 Le Registre d’Inquisition de Jacques Foumier, évêque de Pamiers (1318-1325), ed. J. Duvernoy, 3 vols (Toulouse, 1965), and supplement, Corrections (Toulouse, 1972), p. 402: ‘Et in dicta in- differencia stetit… quasi per VII annos’. Her indifference here is towards Catharism.

9 Nick Furbank, thinking of phrases such as The Common Man’ and “The Common Reader’ suggested to me using the phrase The Common Woman’. No reference is intended to the meaning of the medieval Latin mulier communis, ‘prostitute’.

10 Representative of this tendency is the presentation of the theme ‘women in religion’ in the following: (a) General accounts of medieval women, e.g., in German, Ennen, Frauen im Mittelalter, where cap. 2(ii) deals with ‘Die weibliche Frömmigkeitsbewegung’, nuns, mystics, heretics, Beguines; in English, Shahar, S., The Fourth Estate. A History of Women in the Middle Ages (London and New York, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where cap. 3 deals with nuns and cap. 8 heretics and witches; (b) General histories of popular religion or of the Church, e.g., R. Manselli, La Religion Populaire au Moyen Âge. Problèmes de méthode et d’histoire (Montréal and Paris, 1975), cap. 2 (ix), ‘La femme dans la religion populaire’, and Morris, C., The Papal Monarchy. The Western Churchfrom 1050-1250 (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar, cap. 18 (ii), ‘Religion for Women: the Rise of the Béguines’, where these chapter titles mean female religious, sanctity, and mysticism.

11 C. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley and London, 1987), p. 30.

12 Among the exceptions see, in particular, N. Huyghebaert, ‘Les Femmes laïques dans la vie religieuse des XIe et XIIe siècles dans la province ecclésiastique de Reims’, I Laici nella “societas Christiana” dei secoli XI e XIII = Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medievali, 5 (Milan, 1968), pp. 346-89 (and see the discussion on pp. 390-5)—a study whose grappling with meagre sources shows what a contrast is provided by the richer material after 1200. The range of modern studies bearing indirectly, via, e.g., the cult of Mary, female saints, the regulation of marriage, etc., is, of course, massive.

13 A comparison of the key-words in S. M. Stuard’s general comments in 1976 and in 1987 shows the pervasiveness by the later date of the vocabulary and concepts of ‘gender’: in S. M. Stuard, ed., Women in Medieval Society (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 1-11, and Stuard, S. M., ed., Women in Medieval History and Historiography (Philadelphia, 1987), pp. vii, xiv, 71, 934 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Very useful comments on historiography appear in J. M. Bennett, ‘“History that stands still”. Women’s work in the European past (a review essay)’, Feminist Studies, 14 (1988), pp. 269-84, in particular on the thesis of a past ‘golden age’.

14 Delumeau, J., Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar, part 3, cap. 3,’La légende du Moyen Âge chrétien’ (b) ‘L’univers de magisme’, pp. 237–43.

15 Schmitt, J.-C., The Holy Greyhound. Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, trans. Thorn, M. (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar.

16 Ginzburg, C., The Cheese and the Worms. The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. J. and Tedeschi, A. (London and Henley, 1980), p. 155 Google Scholar.

17 Schmitt, Holy Greyhound, pp. 167-8.

18 Bossy, J. A., Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (Oxford and New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

19 Smith, R. M., ‘Some reflections on the evidence for the origins of the “European Marriage” pattern’, in Harris, C. C., ed., The Sociology of the Family: New Directions for Britain (Keele, 1979), pp. 74112 Google Scholar, and ‘Hypothèses sur la nuptialité en Angleterre au XlIe-XIVe siècles’, Annales, Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations, 38 (1983), pp. 107-24; P. J. P. Goldberg, ‘Female labour, service and marriage in the late medieval urban north’, NH, 22 (1986), pp. 18-38, and ‘Marriage, migration, servanthood and life-cycle in Yorkshire towns of the later Middle Ages: some York cause paper evidence’, Continuity and Change, 1 (1986), pp. 141–68.

20 For an introduction to the genre, see C. Bremond, J. Le Goff, and J.-C. Schmitt, L”Exemplum’ = Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge Occidental, 40 (Brepols, Turnhout, 1982).

21 The composition of this work has recently been given as ‘between 1214 and 1223’ by J. Le Goff, The Usury and Purgatory’, The Dawn of Modem Banking. Selected Papers given at a conference held at UCLA Sept. 23-25, IP77 (New Haven and London, 1979), p. 31, and Vers 1219-22’ or ‘entre 1218 et 1223’by Bremond, Le Goff, and Schmitt, Exemplum, pp. 59,76. In the following references, which are to Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. J. Strange, 2 vols (Cologne, Bonn, and Brussels, 1851), 1 note firstly numbers of Distinction and chapter, secondly, and in parentheses, the volumes and page numbers of the Strange edition. Thus ‘VIII. 46 (2, p. 118)’ means Distinction VIII, chapter 46, volume 2 in the Strange edition, p. 118.

22 Ibid., VI. 10 (1, p. 363).

23 Ibid., VIII. 46 (2, p. 118).

24 Ibid., VIII. 83 (2, p.150).

25 Ibid., VIII. 25 (2, p. 101).

26 Ibid., VIII. 56 and 61 (2, pp. 129 and 133-4).

27 Ibid., IV. 22(1, p. 193).

28 Ibid., III. 52(1, p. 169).

29 Ibid., VI. 5 (1, p. 351). See earlier in the exempium for Ensfrid’s knowledge of the affairs of widows in his parish (1, p. 346).

30 Ibid., III. 46(1, p. 16s).

31 Ibid., VI. 5(1, p. 351).

32 Ibid., III. 40 (1, pp. 160-1).

33 Ibid., X. 35(1, p. 243).

34 Ibid., IX. 46 (2, p. 201). See n. 44 below.

35 Ibid., VII. 3 (2, p. 4).

36 N. Z. Davis, ‘Some tasks and themes in the study of popular religion’, in C. Trinkaus and H. Oberman.eds, The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion: Papers from the University of Michigan Conference = Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 10 (Leiden, 1974), pp. 307-36, esp. pp. 307 ff.

37 Caesarius of Heisterbach, IX. 9 (2, pp. 173-4).

38 Thomas of Chantimpré, Bonum universale de apibus: this work has been the object of a model study by A. V. Murray, ‘Confession as a historical source in the thirteenth century. II. The confessor teaches: Thomas of Chantimpré, O.P. (c. 1201–1270/80)’, in R. H. C. Davis and Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., eds, The Writing of History in the Middle Ages. Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford, 1981), pp. 286305 Google Scholar.

39 Stephen of Bourbon, Tractatus de diversis materiis praedicabilibus, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris, 1877). See the references to various aspects of women and religious practice on pp. 24, 47,50–1,74-5,105,121,128,132,145,156,161,182,109,203,229,252,264, 318,319, 325, 354 (and 428–9), 364,365,367,369. Note the editor’s comments, pp. xxv-vi, on his omissions in this edition, including ‘un bon nombre’ of the exempla.

40 Liber exemplorum ad usum praedicantium saeculo XIII compositus a quodam fratre minore Anglico de provincia Hiberniae, ed. A. G. Little (Aberdeen, 1908). See references to Irish women and religious practice on pp. 27, 38-9, 55, 57,60,105.

41 T. Tender, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, New Jersey, 1977), cap. 4, ‘Sex and the Married Penitent’.

42 Caesarius of Heisterbach, XI. 59(2, pp. 310-11): ‘Satis enim erat luxuriosa, saris vaga, etvalde saecularis’.

43 Ibid., X. 52 (2, pp. 252-3).

44 Ibid., IX. 46 (2, p. 201): ‘Vos mulieres semper vultis communicare secundum libitum vestrum’.

45 d’Avray, D. L., The Preaching of the Friars. Sermons diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford, 1985), p. 206 Google Scholar.

46 A. V. Murray, ‘Piety and impiery in thirteenth-century Italy’, SCH 8 (1972), pp. 83-106, and ‘Religion among the poor in thirteenth-century France: The testimony of Humbert de Romans’, Tradilio, 30 (1974), pp. 285-324.

47 Thomas of Chantimpré, Bonum universale de apibus (Douai, 1627), II. 50. See Murray, ‘Con fession as a historical source’, p. 288 n. 1, on the editions of Thomas, and pp. 289 and 293 on the amount of Mendicant pastoral work with women which is reflected in the work.

48 Quoted by Murray, ‘Religion among the poor’, p. 296, n. 60.

49 On Humbert, see d’Avray, pp. 147-8; see the collection of these and two other groups of thirteenth-century ad status sermons addressed to women in C. Casagrande, ed., Prediche alle donne del secolo XIII: Testi di Umberto da Romans, Gilberto da Tournai, Stefano di Borbone = Nuova Corona, g (Milan, 1978), together with the remarks in the review by S. F. Wemple, Speculum, 55(1980), pp. 347-9.

50 W. Preger, ‘Der Tractât des David von Augsburg über die Waldesier’, ABAtV, PH. CI., 13 (i) (1975), p. 209: ‘Non autem solum viri sed et femine apud eos docent, quia feminis magis patet accessus ad feminas pervertendas, ut per illas eciam viros subvenant, sicut per Evam serpens illexit Adam’.

51 Fournier, 3, p. 189: ‘Si uxores eorum non essent de la entendensa, non possemus intrare in domibus eorum’; a similar sentiment is put proverbially, ibid., 3, p. 210.

52 Berthold von Regensburg. Vollstandige Ausgabe seiner deutschen Prediglen, ed. F. Pfeiffer and J. Strobl, 2 vols (Vienna, 1862-80), 2, p. 142, lines 112-14: ‘Ir roubet nit, ir mordet niht, ir brennet nit, und grôzer sünde ist vil, der ir also vil niht tuot als die man und tuot vil mê guotes’. On Berthold, see d’Avray, pp. 151–3. R. J. Iannucci, The Treatment of the Capital Sins and the Decalogue in the German Sermons of Berthold of Regensburg = The Catholic University of America, Studies in German, 17 (Washington, 1942), provides a useful introduction to some of the moral emphases of the sermons.

53 J.B. Given, Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England (Stanford, 1977), pp. 140-1.

54 Berthold von Rcgensburg, 1, p. 448, lines 23-31.

55 Ibid., 1, p. 324, lines 121T.: ir frouwen, ich weiz wol, daz ir mir vil mère volget danne die man’.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid, and 1, p. 101, quoted by Iannucci, German Sermons of Berthold, p. 49.

58 Berthold von Regensburg, 1, p. 414, lines 8f.: ir frouwen, ir sît barmherzic und get gerner zuo der kirchen danne die man und sprechet iuwer gebet gerner danne die man und get zer predige gemer danne die man …’, etc. The point is repeated at greater length in 2, p. 141, lines 28-36.

59 Thomas of Chobham, Summa Confessorum, ed. F. Broomfield, Analecta Mediaevalia Namurcensia, 25 (Louvain and Paris, 1968), Art. 7, Q. 15, p. 375: ‘Quod mulleres debent esse prédicatrices virorum suorum’.The text is the starting-point of S. Farmer’s ‘Persuasive voices: clerical images of medieval wives’, Speculum, 61 (1986), pp. 517-43.

60 Quoted here in a French translation which is close to the Latin original: ‘La cinquième secte est des femmes et de plusieurs idiots, qui remettent les malades de toutes maladies aux saints tout seulement, se fondans sur cela: Le Seigneur me l’a donnée ainsi qu’il luy a plû; le Seigneur me l’asterà quand il lui plaira; le nom du Seigneur soit benit. Amen’: La Grande Chirurgie de Guy de Chauliac, ed. E. Niçaise (Paris, 1890), p. 16.

61 Berthold von Regensburg, i, p. 324, line 13: ‘Wir vinden ofte’.

62 The possibility of using inquisitors’ trials to investigate religious beliefs and practices other than heretical ones was indicated by G. de Llobet’s attempt to do this with Fournier’s register in his ‘Variété des croyances populaires au comté de Foix au début du XIVe siècle d’après les enquêtes de Jacques Fournier’, in La Religion populaire en Languedoc du XIII’ siècle à la moitié du XIV siècle = Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 11 (1976), pp.. 109-26. The editor of the Fournier register, Jean Duvernoy, tells me that the register has not yet been properly exploited in this direction.

63 Paris, BN, MS Doat 25, fol. 49r: ‘quando Raimunda… infirmabatur aegritudine qua decessit, stetit per undecim septimanas, vel circa, nolens videri ab ipsa testis vel aliis vicinis, et non viderunt ad earn aportari corpus Christi’.

64 Liber Sententiarum Inquisitionis Tholosanae ab anno Christi mcccvii. ad annum mcccxxiii, ed. P. van Limborch (Amsterdam, 1692). A statistical break-down of the sentences is given in H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 3 vols (New York, 1887-8), 1, pp. 494-5.

65 Paris, BN, MS Doat 21, fols 143V-323V; Doat 22, fols IV-296V; Doat 23, fols 2v-346v;Doat 24, fols 1r-286v; Doat 25, fols 2r-331v; Doat 26, fols ir-316r;Doat 27, fol. 3r-249r (where the material concerning Cathar doctrine and practice is much sparser); Doat 34, fols 94r-107V. The principal southern French trial texts which were not surveyed in toto for this article are Toulouse, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 609 (hearings of 1245-6), and the register of Geoffrey of Ablis, L’Inquisiteur Geoffroy d’Ablis et les cathares du comiede Foix (1308-9), ed. and trans. A. Pales-Gobelliard (Paris, 1984). The most precise and useful survey of this material is the first chapter in Y. Dossat’s Les Crises de l’Inquisition Toulousain au Xllf siècle (1233-1273) (Bordeaux, 1959), ‘Les Archives de l’Inquisition Méridionale’.

66 See the extracts in A. Franz, ‘Des Frater Rudolphus Buch De officio cherubyn’, Theologische Quartalschrift, 88 (1906), cap. 8, ‘De ydolatria quam faciunt puerorum mulieres’, pp. 418-23, and cap. 9, ‘De sortilegiis puellarum et malarum mulierum’, pp. 423–31.

67 Doat 25, fol. 2o8r: ‘ad preces Johanne uxons ipsius testis quae credebat omnia maleficiata pro eo quod non poterat concipere vel habere prolem vocavit quandam mulierem [a diviner]’.

68 Fournier, 1, pp. 313-14, 328 (and Corrections, p. 12), and 2, pp. 247-8 (and Corrections, p. 10); discussed in Ladurie, E. Le Roy, Montaillou. Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324, trans. Bray, B. (London, 1978), pp. 312, 296, 342 Google Scholar.

69 Fournier, 3, p. 210: ‘respondit quod non curaret de avibus et talibus auguriis, quia tales factimationes curare est vetularum’. This passage has been used in Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, p. 13 3; see cap. 17, pp. 294 ff., for a discussion of the rarity of ‘magic [and] various kinds of pagan fall-out’ in Montaillou.

70 See Dossat, Les Crises, pp. 39 and 195, on the activities of Renous of Plassac and Pons of Parnac. Depositions before them, contained in Doat 2$ and part of Doat 26, have a richness which it is tempting to attribute to special qualities in these less well-known inquisitors.

71 Thomas of Chanrimpré, Bonum universale, II, 58 (p. 548): ‘adhuc Prussiae gentiles silvas aestimant consecraras’.

72 Liber exemplorum … Hiberniae, pp. 110–11: ‘in Dacia consuetudo est quod, quando mulieres iacent in puerperio, soient venire mulieres vicine et eis assistere et facere tripudia sua cum canrilenis inordinatis’.

73 Doat 25, fol. 275V: ‘ibant publice per carrerias, et ad Ecclesiam et ad furnum, et publice faciebant negocia sua sicut aliae mulieres de Soricino’.

74 Abbreviated version of the text in Fournier, 3, p. 358.

75 Doat 25, fol. 6ov: ‘cum in quadam puerperio ipsa tesris fuerit obstetrix eiusdem Bezersae nunquam audivit earn clamantem ‘Dominum’ nee ‘Jesum Christum’, ned ‘Beatam Virginem’ sed tamen “Sanctae Spiritus Dei, vale mihi’, unde mulieres aliae obstetrices aborrent earn in puerperiis [sic] quod nolunt ibi esse libenter quia non rogat beatam virginem’. See also fol. 62V, and Beserza’s denials, fols 164V-5V.

76 Doat 25, fols 55 bis-6r.

77 Aude Faure’s process is printed in Fournier, 2, pp. 82-105; the account of the origin of her thoughts is on p. 94 (see also, Corrections, p. 19).

78 The principal examples are in Doat 25 and the Fournier register. Doat 25 fols 20V-3V; 202v-6v;214v-15v,226r; 227r-8r; 231r-41r;Doat 27, fols 216r-25r; Fournier, 1, pp. 151-9 (and Corrections, pp. 7-8); pp. 163-8 (and Corrections, p. 8); pp. 260-7 (and Corrections, p. 11); pp. 447-8; p. 457; 2, pp. 118-34 (and Corrections, p. 20); pp. 241-54; p. 264; pp. 357-72 (and Corrections, pp. 26-7); pp. 373-4; 3, pp. 455, 457. Among these, the Doat 25 texts were discussed in W. L. Wakefield, ‘Some unorthodox popular ideas of the thirteenth century’, Medievatia et Humanistica, ns 4 (1973), pp. 285-321, and the Fournier texts briefly in Llobet, ‘Croyances populaires. Il: Le recours aux croyances traditionelles’, pp. 112-15. See the references to Le Roy Ladurie, Monlaillou, in nn. 68-9 above, and further discussion in Ginzburg, Cheese and Worms, pp. 143–5.

79 Fournier, 1, p. 167: ‘ipsemet per se adinvenit cogitando de mundo et de hiis que videbat in mundo’; p. 447: ‘ipse per se cogitando adinvenit quod post mortem corpora humana non resurgent nee revivificabuntur’; 2, p. 265: ‘per se cogitando’; and see n. 82.

80 Fournier, 2, p. 248: ‘nisi resiliret… veluthereticus obstinatus condampneretur, qui Iohannes respondit quod non poterat aliud facere’.

81 A striking testimony to Fournier’s ability to get at the truth was given by Peter Maury, ibid., 3, p. 181.

82 Ibid., 1, pp. 261, ‘la anima no es mas la sanc’, and 265, ‘solum per se ipsam hoc cogitavit et credidit’.

83 Ibid., 1, p. 151: ‘Nunquam erit aliud seculum nisi istud’.

84 Liber Sententkrum, pp. 9-12, 20,23,30, 41, 50, 53-4, 59,61-2,64,66,70-1,75,84,101-10, 112-14, 118, 120-1, 129-30, 133, 135, 137-8, 140, 147-8, 151-2, 154, 161, 186, 188, 190, 194-5,197, 220,245, 249, 254,342,348.

85 Liber Sententiarum, p. 151: ‘aliquos libros parvos de facto herericorum’; p. 220: ‘unum parvum libellum’; Fournier, 1, p. 437: ‘quemdam librum parvum’; Doat 25, fol. 163K ‘quendam paruum librum coopertum corio nigro’.

86 On portable little books used by Mendicant preachers, see D. d’Avray, ‘Portable Vademecum books containing Franciscan and Dominican texts’, in A. C. de la Mare and B. C. Barker-Benfield, eds, Manuscripts at Oxford. R. W. Hunt Memorial Exhibition (Oxford, 1980), pp. 61-4, and d’Avray, Preaching of the Friars, p. 67, and on comparable books used by Waldensian preachers see P. P. A. Biller, ‘Curate infirmos: die medieval Waldensian practice of medicine’, SCH, 19 (1982), p. 73, n. 73.

87 Bossy, Christianity in the West, pp. 167-71, and the fuller exposition on which this is based, ‘Some elementary forms of Durkheim’, PaP, 95 (1982), pp. 3-18; see the criticism by P. P. A. Biller, ‘Words and the medieval notion of “Religion”’, JEH, 36 (1985), pp. 351-9.

88 See Doat 26, fol. 1 iov, where enquiry is made of an ill woman’s voluntas about receiving the consolamentum.

89 The question of women and Catharism has attracted and continues to attract much attention. Among modern discussions, the most important are G. Koch, Frauenfrage uni Keuenum m Mittelalter. Die Frauenbewegung im Rahmenies Katharismus uni ics Waìiensertums uni Otre sozialen fVurzeìn (12.-14. Jahrhundert), Forxhungen zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte, 9 (Berlin, 1962), caps 1 and 3-9; and R. Abels and E. Harrison, The participation of women in Languedocian Catharism’, MS, 41 (1979), pp. 215-51, while attention still has to be paid to the brief comments in A. Borst, Die Katharer, MGH.SR1, 12 (1953), pp. 181-2 (see also the entries under ‘Frau’ in the index, p. 349).

90 Foumier, 2, p. 43, where, after helping to arrange marriages, ‘hereticus laudans dicta matrimonia dicebat quod magnum bonum erat viro credenti quando habebat in uxorem mulierem credencem’; see also 1, p. 292 (and n. 129); 3, p. 114; pp. 186,188-90.

91 E.g., Liber Sententiarum, p. 54:’ipsa aperuit sibit hostium & introduxit eum’;Doat 23, fol. 209r: ‘cum venissent ad portam dicti infirmi Galharda uxor dicti infirmi recepit dictos haereticos, et intromisit eos in domum’; Doat 25, fol. 17$r: ‘pulsantes ad portam … ipsa testis aparuit [rif] dictam portam’.

92 E.g., Ibid., p. 40: ‘ipsa aliquando ministravit sibi panem & vinum & alia noessaria, & fecit lectum pro eo’; p. 51: ‘Bernarda … fecit lectum dicto heretico, & lavit sibi calceos & camisiam’; p. 59: ‘Condors … ministravit sibi panem & vinum & pulmentum, & paravit lectum’; p. 63—where a married couple serve, but there is division of labour; ‘ipsa & vir suus ministrabant eis necessaria, & ipsa aliquando fecit eis lectum’; p. 106: ‘ipsa multociens servivit sibis de pane & vino & de aliis necessariis, & fecit sibi lectum & lavit sibi pannos’; p. 193: ‘ipsa Esclarmunda servivit sibi & parabat sibi coquinam & ministrabat panem & vinum & ilia que erant necessaria dicto heretico, & aliquando faciebat ei lectum & lavabat sibi vestes’.

93 E.g., Ibid., p. 137: ‘servivit sibi & ministravit’.

94 Foumier, 1, p. 325: ‘fuit territa et admirata quia sic Alazaicis serviebat dicto homini’. In earlier registers where female heretics loom larger one does not find them generally being accorded this type of assiduous service.

95 Doat 25, fol. 314V: ‘et praedicavit tunc dictus diachonus de Maria Magdalena, et Maria soror eius et earum exemplo qualiter mulleres debebant habere bo nam spem’.

96 Moneta of Cremona, Advenus Cathaws et Valdenses Libri Quinqué, ed. T. A. Ricchini (Rome, 1743), IV. 7. 3, p. 332: ‘Dixit autem haereticus, quod istud debitum intelligitur… providere uxori in victu, & vestiru; uxor autem viro in custodia domus, in suendo vestes suos, in lavando ei caput, & preparando ei cibos’.

97 See Borst, Die Kalharer, pp. 140 and 182 on the late modifications in Cathar perfects’ approach to the marriages of their believers, and n. 90 above.

98 Fournier, 3, p. 191.

99 Fournier, 2, p. 35: ‘Si tamen dicti spiritus in corpore mulieris habentis entendensa de se subintrassent, egressi de corpore mulieris convertebantur in viros, quia Pater sanctus iuraverat quod nulla mulier ingrederetur regnum suum’; pp. 441-2: ‘propterea mulieres nunquam intrant quando moriuntur in gloriam paradisi, set quando moriuntur anime earum subintrant corpora masculorum, et si mortis tempore recipiuntur per hereticum vestitum, convertuntur in homines masculos, et Deus mittit eis XXVIII angelos, et introducuntur ad gloriam paradisi’; p. 447: ‘mulieres revertebantur in homines, alias non salvarentur’ (but this is later denied, p. 452; see also p. 494). The principal account is in Borst, Katharer, p. 146. In Koch’s discussion, Frauenfrage, pp. 91-2, the notion is characteristic of late Catharism. In fact, a trace of it appears at an early date in anti-Cathar polemic. See a text of c. 1200, Everard of Béthune’s Liber Antiheresis, Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, ed. M. de la Bignè, 28 vols (Lyons and Geneva, 1677-1707), 24, cap. 18, p. 1562: ‘Femineo etenim sexui coelorum beatitudinem nituntur surripere … Ad Ephes. [quoting 4.13] … Ex hoc enim affirmant quod in specie viri perfecti, & in aetate XXX annorum ad iudicium veniamus, et mulieres suum permutent sexum… quare in femineo sexu non resurgerent?’ On Everard, see Borst, Katharer, p. 9 and n. 16. For a Gnostic analogue, see The Gospel According to Thomas, ed. and trans. A. Guillaumont et al. (Leiden and London, 1959), p. 57, log. 114: Jesus said, See, I shall lead her so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven’.

100 See, e.g., Fournier, 3, pp. 201,223.

101 Liber Sententiarum, p. 249: ‘Dicebant etiam quod inpossibile erat Deum fuisse incarnaram, quia nunquam taliter humiliavit se quod poneret se in utero mulieris’.

102 Fournier, 2, p. 409: ‘non erat dignum cogitare vel credere quod Dei filius naras esset de mullere vel quod in re tarn vili, sicut mulier est, Filius Dei se adumbraverit’.

103 Ibid., 2, p. 500: ‘quando aliquis cognoscebat carnaliter mulierem, fetor illius peccati ascendebat usque ad capam celi, et dictus fetor se extendebat per toram mundum’.

104 See the examples given in J. Guiraud, Histoire de l’Inquisition au Moyen Âge, 2 vols (Paris, 193 5–8), 1, p. 92 and n. 4; Abels and Harrison, ‘Women in Languedocian Catharism’, p. 218, n. 16. See the examples in nn. m–12 and 114 below. The point was generalized by Moneta of Cremona: see n. 108 below.

105 See, e.g., Fournier 2, p. 12, where this is the first point a witness can recall from a sermon: ‘Non tamen recordarar de erroribus quos dixit ei dicta nocte, nisi quod dixit ei quod ipsi nullo modo tangerent in carne nuda mulierem’. The next example suggests abhorrence at touching at least some types of covered flesh.

106 Ibid., 3, pp. 91, 92,94.

107 Liber Sententiarutn, p. 111. Male perfects’ avoidance of touch by female flesh is encountered throughout the registers. The equivalent for female perfects certainly existed, witness the concern to avoid contact in the ritual kiss of peace (on this seeBorst, Katharer, p. 199, n. 27) and the custom of eating at separate tables, but it is difficult to find anecdotes in the registers which parallel the precautions taken by male perfects.

108 Moneta of Cremona, Adversus Catharoset Valdenses, IV. 7.1-2 (pp. 315 ff.): p. 316: ‘desiderium propriae mulieris non est peccatum’; p. 319: ‘Si autem dicat, quod iste carnalis affectus ad uxorem malus est; dico ei, proba hoc’; p. 324: ‘non taraen esse cum uxore malum est, sed minus bonum’; p. 325: ‘diligere mundum, vel uxorem: dico, quod istud malum non est, dummodo non diligatur mundus, vel uxor supra Deum;… haereticus falsum ponit, cum ait, quod actus viri cum uxore sit fornicano … dico quod non est immunditia, vel impudicitia, vel luxuria’; p. 326 (interpreting I Tim. 2. 15): ‘dicit illud ad notandum firmitatem, & vehementiam dilectionis inter conjugalos … dico quod vir, si opus esset, deberet se tradere morti pro salvanda uxore’; p. 335: ‘Quare ergo dicis praegnantem doemoniacam esse, cum testetur Lucas ipsam plenam Spiriru Sancto? Quare etiam dicis doemonem puerum in se habere, cum iste puer in utero plenum fuerit Spiriru Sancto?’ p. 336: ‘bonum est ergo eam tangere’; p. 345: ‘Honor iste, quem viri debent impendere uxoribus, est honesta provisio in vestibus, & aliis necessariis… sine macula adulterii’.

109 One of the chapters in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra gentiles, cap. 88, was written to show, ‘Non est tamen aestimandum quod in corporibus resurgenrium desit sexus femineus, ut aliqui putaverunt’. Though St Thomas’s characteristically Olympian style does not bring him to identify the aliqui, one should remember that the work was written to combat contemporary problems, whether Moslems, Jews, or heretical Christians—see Weisheipl, J. A., Friar Thomas d’Aquino, His Life, Thought, and Works (Oxford, 1974), pp. 1303 Google Scholar. St Augustine’s and St Thomas’s discussions of the question are studied in K. E. Borresen, Subordination et equivalence. Nature et Rôle de la femme d’après Augustin et Thomas d’Aquin (Oslo and Paris, 1968), pp. 77-8,193-4,252. Study of commentaries on Peter Lombard’s fourth book of the Sentences, distinction 44, would reveal more of thirteenth-century theological thought on the issue.

110 For examples of Berthold’s statements in this area, see Berthold of Regensburg, i, p. 414, lines 4-6, and, among his Latin sermons, A. Schönbach, ‘Studien zur Geschichte der altdeutschen Predigt. Fünftes Stuck: Die überlieferung der Werke Bertholds von Regensburg, I’, Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaft, 151 (1906), p. 108: ‘… quia diabolus raro aliter quam per superbiam vos mulieres decipere potest’. A later Franciscan, perhaps a Saxon, called Frater Ludovicus, emphasised the point about numbers in heaven: ‘O felices mulieres, sitis humiles et multo plures de uobis saluabuntur quam de uiris’: A. Franz, Dret deutsche Minoritenprediger aus dem xiii. undxiv. Jahrhundert (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1907), p. 92. D’Avray, Preaching of the Friars, p. 153 n. 1, suggests the early fourteenth century as a possible date for Frater Ludovicus.

111 Doat 25, fol. 40r: ‘quadam die dicta Fabrissa dixit ipsi testi praegnanti, quod rogaret Deum ut liberaret earn a demone quem habebat in uentre’.

112 Doat 21, fols 296r-v: ‘Guillelma de bono loco vidit haereticam, et quaedam docebat earn quando [recle: quomodo] adoraret haereticos, et non potuit adorare quia erat praegnans’.

113 Liber Sententiarum, p. 115: ‘dicta Raymunda dixit eidem Grazidae … quod erat multum bonus homo & quod pro toto mundo non tangat mulierem’.

114 Quoted by Guiraud, 1, p. 92, n. 4: ‘Guillelmus Vicarius, vir ejus, monuerat ipsam multoties quod diligeret hereticos, sicut ipse faciebat et alios de villa, sed ipsa noluit diligere, postquam dixerunt sibi heretice quod pregnans erat de demonio; et idcirco vir suus vibravit earn multoties et dixit multa convitia, quia non diligebat hereticos’. See on this Abels and Harrison, p. 218, n. 16.

115 Fournier, 2, pp. 414-15 (and Corrections, p. 28). A similar story is given Ibid., 1, p. 499: a woman stated that she was told that after the heretication of her two- or three-month-old baby boy, she should not breast-feed him but let him die, and that she said she would not do this; barring this, she would have liked him to have been hereticated, p. 504. See also Ibid., 3, p. 364.

116 Doat 23, fol. 299V: ‘cum praedicti haeretici venissent ante dictum infirmum quaesiverunt a Tholosana uxore dicti infirmi utrum vellet absolvere dictum infirmum maritum suum Deo, Evangelio, et bonis hominibus scilicet haereticis quae respondit quod non, et incepit clamare’.

117 Abels and Harrison, The participation of women’. Part 3, pp. 240-50, deals with ‘female lay participation’.

118 Ibid., p. 250.

119 S. Harksen, Women in the Middle Ages, trans. M. Herzfeld (New York, 197s), p. 38.