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Women and the Word in the Earlier Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Janet L. Nelson*
Affiliation:
King’s College London
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It is a characteristic merit of Richard Southern—recently voted the historians’ historian in The Observer—that as long ago as 1970, in Western Society and the Church, he devoted some luminous pages to ‘the influence of women in religious life’. Though these pages nestle in a chapter called ‘Fringe orders and anti-orders’, twenty years ago such labels were not pejorative. Southern made women emblematic of what could be called a pendulum-swing theory of medieval religious history. First came a primitive, earlier medieval age of improvization and individual effort, of spiritual warriors and local initiatives; the central medieval period saw ‘a drive towards increasingly well-defined and universal forms of organization’ in an age of hierarchy and order; then, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, back swung the pendulum towards complexity and confusion, individual experiment, and ‘small, humble, shadowy organizations’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990

References

1 R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 309–18. The phrases quoted below, and Southern’s exposition of the three phases in the history of medieval Christendom, are at pp. 300–1. For other historians’ appreciations of Southern, see The Observer Colour Supplement, 9 (July 1989).

2 Southern, Western Society, p. 310.

3 Michelet’s view is examined, and rebutted, by D. Iogna-Prat, ‘La femme dans la perspective pénitentielle des ermites du Bas-Maine (fin Xlme début Xllme siècle)’, Revue d’Histoire de la Spiritualité, 53 (1977), pp. 47-64.

4 Southern, Western Society, p. 317.

5 Ibid., p. 356.

6 Kelly, J., Women, History and Theory (Chicago, 1984), pp. 24, 1920 Google Scholar.

7 Wemple, S., Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500-900 (Philadelphia, 1981), pp. 12788 Google Scholar; M. Skinner, ‘Benedictine life for women in Central France, 850-1100: a feminist revival’, in J. A. Nichols and L. T. Shank, eds, Medieval Religious Women, 2 vols (Kalamazoo, 1984 and 1987), 1, Distant Echoes, pp. 87-113. See further J. T. Schulenburg, ‘Strict active enclosure and its effects on the female monastic experience (500–1100)’, in Nichols and Shank, i, pp. 51-86; idem, ‘Female sanctity: public and private roles, ca. 500–1100’, in M. Erler and M. Kowaleski, eds, Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Athens, Georgia, 1988), pp. 102-25; idem, ‘Women’s monastic communities, 500-1100: patterns of expansion and decline’, Signs, 14 (1989), pp. 261-92; D. Herlihy, ‘Did women have a renaissance?: a reconsideration’, Medievalia el Humanistica, 13 (1985), pp. 1-22. For criticisms of the general approach of much recent American historiography, see the review of Nichols and Shank by J. McClure in EHR, 102 (1988), p. 1005.

8 See Erler and Kowaleski, eds, Women and Power.

9 S. Farmer, ‘Persuasive voices: clerical images of medieval wives’, Speculum, 61 (1986), pp. 517-43.

10 See, for instance, S. G. Bell, ‘Medieval women book owners’, Signs, 7 (1982), pp. 742-68 (reprinted in Erler and Kowaleski, eds, Women and Power, pp. 149–87); Dresen-Coenders, L., ed., Saints and She-Devils. Images of Women in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

11 Bynum, C. W., Holy Feast and Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar.

12 Leyser, K., Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottoman Saxony (London, 1979), pp. 6373 Google Scholar.

13 The particularities of Leyser’s account of tenth-century Saxony are not sufficiently allowed for by Schulenburg, ‘Female sanctity’. See also the remarks of M. Lauwers, ‘Sainteté royale et sainteté féminine dans l’Occident médiéval’, RHEt 83 (1988), pp. 58-69.

14 Bennett, J.M., ‘Feminism and History’, Gender and History, 1 (1989), pp. 25172 Google Scholar.

15 Mansi, 18, cols 171-2. See Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 105-6; J. L. Nelson, ‘Dispute settlement in Carolingian West Francia’, in W. Davies and fouracre, P., eds, The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge 1986), pp. 4564 Google Scholar, at p. 58, n. 49; J. A. McNamara and S. Wemple, ‘The power of women through the family’, in Erler and Kowaleski, eds, Women and Power, pp. 83-101, at p. 93; Schulenburg, ‘Female sanctity’, p. 116.

16 Schulenburg, ibid.

17 Regino, De ecclesiasticis disciplinis, ii, cap. 175, PL 132, cols 317-18: ‘Ne sancdmoniales palatium et publicos conventus adeant’. Muliercula is used in a pejorative sense, regardless of class, in Jerome, Lettres, ed. J. Labourt (Paris, 1949), pp. 124, 140. (J. W. Drijvers kindly supplied these references.) In early medieval Latin, however, the term generally seems to imply lowly social status.

18 The date is given in Mansi, 18, at cols 165-6. J. Sirmond’s note at the bottom of col. 172 considers the dating problem. I am grateful to Julia Smith for help and correction on this point. See O. Pontal, Die Synoden der Merowingerreich (Paderborn, 1986), pp. 202-3, for references on the disputed date, and authenticity, of the alleged canons of Nantes.

19 Regino, Chronkon, sa 900, ed. F. Kurze, MGH. SRG (Hanover, 1890), p. 148, mentions conflict between King Zwentibold and his magnates, ‘quia cum mulieribus et ignobilioribus regni negotia disponens, honesriores… deiciebat’.

20 P. Brown, The Body and Society (California, 1989), p. 153, draws explicitly on C. Levi-Strauss (and the French ‘bonnes à penser’ is of course ambiguous: ‘good to think’/‘goods to think’). But note the latter’s defensive tone in The Elementary Structures of Kinship (London, 1968), p. 496: ‘Woman could never become just a sign and nothing more, since even in a man’s world she is still a person In contrast to words which have wholly become signs, woman has remained at once a sign and a value’; and idem, Structural Anthropology (Harmondsworth, 1977), p. 61: ‘It may be disturbing to some to have women conceived as mere parts of a meaningful system. However, one should keep in mind that… words do not speak, while women do; as producers of signs, women can never be reduced to die status of symbols or tokens’. Cf. S.J. Tambiah, ‘Animals are good to think and good to prohibit’, Ethnology, 8 (1969), pp. 424–59. For alternative views to Levi-Strauss’s, see S. B. Ortner, ‘Is female to male as nature is to culture?’ in M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds, Woman, Culture and Society (Stanford, 1974), pp. 67–87, and M. Z. Rosaldo, The use and abuse of anthropology’, Signs, 5 (1980), pp. 389-417.

21 F. Lifshitz, ‘Les femmes missionnaires: l’exemple de la Gaule franque’, RHE, 83 (1988), pp. 5-33.

22 Collationes, ii, cap. 9, PL 13, col. 556: ‘Nam si vidèrent homines hoc quod subtus pellem est … mulieres videre nauserent… Si quis enim considerent quae intra nares, et quae inter fauces, et quae intra ventrem lateant, sordes utique reperiet. Et si nee extremis digitis flegma vel stercus tangere patimur, quomodo ipsum stercoris saccum amplecti desiderarnus?’

23 D. Iogna-Prat, ‘“Bienheureuse polysémie”. La Madeleine du Sermo in venerationesanctae Marine Magdalenae attribué à Odön de Cluny’, in Marie Madeleine dans la Mystique, les Arts et les Lettres” Actesdu Colloque organisé par le Musée Pétrarque à Avignon, juillet 1988 (Paris, 1989), pp. 21–31.

24 For the text, with an English translation, of Notier’s poem, In natale sanctarum feminarum, see Godman, P., Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London, 1985), pp. 31821 Google Scholar. Against the reading of Dronke, P., The Medieval Lyric (London, 1968), pp. 414 Google Scholar, Godman, pp. 65–7, argues that Notker wrote this sequence in praise of ‘Everyman’. My view is that Notker was using various female types, and the liturgical setting of the feasts of female saints and martyrs, ‘to think’ themes relevant to his fellow monks.

25 Dhuoda, Manuel pour mon fils, ed. P. Riché (Paris, 1975), ii, 3, lines 18-19, p. 126, makes no use whatsoever of any positive feminine stereotypes, biblical or otherwise.

26 Gesta Ononis, in Hrotsvithae Opera, ed. P. von Winterfeld, MGH. SRG (Berlin, 1902), p. 202. See Dronke, P., Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 5583 Google Scholar, at pp. 76-7; J. L. Nelson, ‘Perceptions du pouvoir chez les historiennes du Haut Moyen Age’, in M. Rouche, ed., Les Femmes au Moyen Age (Maubeuge, 1990), pp. 77-87.

27 ‘Gender and genre: women as historical writers, 1400–1820’, in P. Labalme, ed., Beyond their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York, 1980), pp. 153-82, at p. 165.

28 P. Riché, in the Introduction to his edition of Dhuoda’s Manuel, pp. 28-9.

29 Hrotsvitha, Opera, p. 106. See Dronke, Women Writers, pp. 69-70.

30 Dhuoda, Manuel, p. 80, line 6.

31 Ibid., p. 72. Cf. p. 114, line 15, where Dhuoda calls herself her son’s ortatrix.

32 For the scold in later medieval literature, see R. H. Bloch, ‘Medieval misogyny’, Representations, 20 (1987), pp. 1-27. Rare early medieval imputations of excessive wordiness to women in general may be found in the Sermons of Caesarius of Arles, ed. G. Morin, CChr.SL, 103 (‘953). pp. 243, 323. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, II, 23, 2–5, pp. 206-8, and IV, 53, 1-2, p. 178, ed. A. de Vogüé, SC, 260,265 (Paris, 1979,1980), pp. 206-8,178, tells stories of wordy women, but draws lessons that are not gender-specific. Aimoin, Historia translations S. Vincentii ex Hispania in Castrense Galliae monasterium, PL 126, cols 1011-12, describes a monk and a bishop fighting muliebriter for the saint’s relics, implying general lack of proper control rather than wordiness.

33 MGH. Cap, I, ed. A. Boretius (Hanover, 1883), no 23, cap. 19, p. 63. See Nelson,’Perceptions du pouvoir’, p. 78.

34 MGH. Cap, II, no 271, p. 302. For a modern historian’s misrendering, see R. Doehaerdt, The Early Middle Ages in the West, Economy and Society (Amsterdam and New York, 1978), p. 228. Cf. Grierson, P., ‘The Gratia Dei Rex coinage of Charles the Bald’, in Gibson, M. T. and Nelson, J. L., eds, Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, 2nd edn revd (London, 1990), pp. 5264 Google Scholar, at p. 64: ‘since women in particular were accustomed to bargaining before making purchases’.

35 See below, p. 75, For the persisting interests of men in claims vested in female kin or transmitted through female benefactors, see my ‘Commentary’, in W. Affeldt, ed., Frauen in Spãtantike mid Friihmittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1990). Since such interests so often lie behind affirmations of the rights of particular women in early medieval legal documents, it seems questionable to infer that women (even among the landholding classes) could ‘dispose freely of their property’ and enjoyed ‘economic independence’: so, McNamara and Wemple, ‘The power of women through the family’, p. 93, but without a critical re-examination of any of the evidence. 1 hope to deal with this subject elsewhere. Meanwhile, to forestall too-ready acceptance of the general proposition of women’s ‘independent’ control of property, it is worth signalling E. Magnou-Nortier, ‘Ombres féminines dans l’histoire de Languedoc aux Xème et Xlème siècles’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale (1990, forthcoming) (‘Même dans la haute aristocratie, les femmes donnent l’impression d’avoir été utilisées et absorbées par leurs lignages d’origine ou d’adoption. Leurs initiatives sont contrôlées; la part d’héritage dont elles disposent semble exiguë’); P. Stafford, ‘Women in Domesday’, in Medieval Women in Southern England — Reading Medieval Studies, 15 (Reading, 1989), pp. 75-94; and, from the perspective of a rather later period, when the practices of aristocrats and humbler folk can be compared, D. O. Hughes, ‘From brideprice to dowry’, journal of Family History, 3 (1978), pp. 262-96, and Roper, L., The Holy Household, Women and Moralsin Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989), pp. 409 Google Scholar.

36 Thegan, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, cap. 52, ed. G. Pertz, MGH. SS, II, p. 601; Hemingi Cartularium, ed. T. Hearne (Oxford, 1737), pp. 275-6. (My thanks are due to Ann Williams for this reference.)

37 Davies, W., Small Worlds (London, 1988), p. 78 Google Scholar.

38 MGH. Cap, I, p. 12-14 (Brunhild); Bede, Hist, ecc., iii, cap. 25, Plummer, Bede, 1, p. 183 (Hild); Annales Metlenses Priores, sa 804, ed. B. Simson, MGH. SRG (Hanover, 1905), p. 92 (Gisèle). The first two examples are well known; for the third, see below, pp. 64-5.

39 Gregory of Tours, Libri Historiarum, vi, cap. 4, ed.B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH.SRM, I, i, 2nd edn (Berlin, 1937–51), p. 268.

40 Annales Laureshamenses, sa 801, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH. SS, I, p. 38: the decision to crown Charlemagne was made ‘quia iam tunc cessabat a parte Graecorum nomen imperatoris, et femineum imperium apud se abebant’. See J. Herrin, The Formalion of Christendom (Princeton, 1987), pp. 454-7.

41 Annales Méllenles Priores, sa 693, p. 16. See further Gerberding, R. A., The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar, cap. 7.

42 MGH. Ep, IV, ed. E. Dümmler (Hanover, 1895), pp. 528-9. On liturgical innovations, see McCormick, M., Eternal Victory (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 3523 Google Scholar. For Fastrada’s later reputation, see Annales Regni Francorum, revised version, sa 792, ed. F. Kurze, MGH. SRG (Hanover, 1895), p. 91; Einbard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. G. Waitz, MGH. SRG (Hanover, 1911), cap. 20, p. 26.

43 MGH. Cap II, no 218, cap. 4, p. 96. Cf. MGH. Cap, I, no 74, cap. 10, p. 167; MGH. Cap, II, no 274, cap. 13, p. 331; Annales de Saint Benin, sa 869, ed. F. Grat et al. (Paris, 1964), 153.

44 Pace the implication of J. Verdon, ‘Note sur le rôle économique des monastères féminins en France dans la seconde moitié du IXe et au debut du Xe siècle’, Revue Mahillon, 58 (1975), pp. 329-43, at p. 332 with n. 40. The letters of Archbishop Fulk of Rheims (not Hincmar) summarized in Flodoard, Historia Remensis Ecclesiae, IV, cap. 6, ed. J. Heller and G. Waitz, MGH. SS, XIII, pp. 568-9, refer to a particular dispute arising from a murderous attack on a priest. Abbess Hildegard is told to attend an episcopal court hearing (conventus). Nothing can be inferred about a general obligation of abbesses to attend assemblies in the wider, political sense.

45 Bede, Hist, ecc., iii, cap. 24, p. 179; Stephanus, Eddius, Vita Wilfridi, ed. Colgrave, B. (Cambridge, 1927), cap. 60, p. 128 Google Scholar.

46 See Nelson, ‘Perceptions du pouvoir’.

47 Vita Leobae, ed. G. Waitz, MGH. SS, XV, pp. 118-31. The quotations here are from cap. 18, p. 129 [my translation; cf. that of Talbot, C. H., The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (London, 1954), pp. 205267 Google Scholar.

48 Plummer, Bede, 2, notes to Hist. ecc., v, cap. 19, p. 322.

49 F. Prinz, ‘Heiligenkult und Adelsherrschaft im Spiegel merowingischer Hagiographie’, HZ, 204(1967), pp. 529-44.

50 Vita Leobae, cap. 10, p. 126.

51 Ibid., cap. 1, p. 122.

52 Ibid., cap. 8, p. 125.

53 Leyser, Rule and Conflict, cap. 6.

54 Liber Memorialis of Remiremont, ed. E. Hlawitschka, K. Schmid, and Tellenbach, G., MGH. Libri memoriales, 1 (Dublin-Zurich, 1970)Google Scholar. The details below are taken from the Introduction. See further the review article of G. Constable in Speculum, 47 (1972), pp. 261-77.

55 For a rare exception, see R. H. Bautier, ed., Les Origines de l’Abbaye de Bouxières-aux-Dames au Diocèse de Tout (Nancy, 1987). The Oxford D. Phil, dissertation of J. B. W. Nightingale, Monasteries and their patrons in the Dioceses of Trier, Metz and Toul, 850-1000 (1988), throws new light on the networks of local aristocratic patronage around this and other houses.

56 A.Bauch, ed, Bin bayerisches Mirakelbuch aus der Karolingerzeit. Die Monheimerl Valpurgis-Wunder des Priesters Wolfhard (Regensburg, 1979). For what follows, see J. L. Nelson, ‘Les femmes et l’évangelisarion’, Revue du Nord, 68 (1986), pp. 471–85, at pp. 479–80.

57 Adrevald, Miracula S. Benedicti, cap. 28, PL 124, col. 933.

58 S. Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 175-81.

59 J. H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, 1986), part IV.

60 Jonas of Orleans, De institutione laicali, ii, cap. 16, PL io6, col. 197.

61 Dhuoda, Manuel, p. 70 (here Dhuoda goes on to quote St Paul) and pp. 80, 82.

62 The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 211-27.

63 Asser, De rebus gestis Ælfredi, ed. W. Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), cap. 23, p. 20.

64 C. 77, MGH. Concilia, III, ed. W. Hartmann (Hanover, 1984), p. 124.

65 P.Brown, The Body and Society, pp. 263-5.

66 Gregory of Tours, Liber Vitae Patrum, ed. B. Krusch, MCH. SRM, I, ii, de Sancto Lupicino, pp. 266-7 [trans. E. James, The Life of the Fathers (Liverpool, 1985), 97].

67 Vita Gangulfi, cap. 13, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH. SRM, VII, pp. 142-70, at pp. 166-7. For the Vita’s date, see Krusch’s comments at p. 145.

68 Hrotsvitha, Passio Sancti Congolft Martins, lines 563-82, Opera, pp. 50-1. See Dronke, Women Writers, p. 61, for a stylish translation of this passage.

69 Vita Gangulfi, p. 166, at note **.

70 C. 32, ed. J. Semmler, in Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum, 1 (Siegburg, 1963), pp. 524-5. For la grande bourre as a consequence of ninth-century monastic diets, see M. Rouche, ‘La faim a l’époque carolingienne’, RH, 250 (1973), pp. 295-320, at p. 317.

71 Asser, De rebus gestis Ælfredi, cap. 15, pp. 13-14. (The story continues: ‘Dedit tamen illi unum magnum sancrimonialium monasterium…’.)

72 Cf. I. Wood, ‘Christians and pagans in ninth-century Scandinavia’, in B. Sawyer.P. Sawyer, and I. Wood, eds, The Chrislianization of Scandinavia (Alingsas, 1987), pp. 36-67, at pp. 64-7.

73 H. J. Schmitz, Die Bussbucher und das kanonische Bussverfahren, 2 vols (Düsseldorf, 1898), pp. 451-2.

74 C. Vogel, ‘Pratiques superstitieuses au début du Xle siècle d’après le Correctorsive Medicus de Burchard’, Études de civilisation médiévale Die—XIle siècle. Mélanges offerts à E.-R. Labande (Poitiers, 1974), pp. 751-61.

75 Asser, De rebus gestis Ælfredi, cap. 74, pp. 54-5.

76 Einhard, Translatio S.S. Marcellini et Petri, PL 104, cols 567-8.

77 Knox, R., Enthusiasm. A Chapter in the History of Religion (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholar, cited in I. N. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion (Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 31.

78 Vita et miracula S. Opporcunae, Acta SS, April. III, pp. 61-72, at cc. 3 and 21, pp. 6 3,67. This Vita was written c. 890 by Bishop Adalhelm of Sees.

79 Compare Warner, M., Joan of Arc. The Image of Female Heroism (London, 1981), pp. 8695 Google Scholar; Brown, The Body and Society, pp. 150-1.

80 Libri Historiaram, V, cap. 14, p. 210; VII, cap. 44, pp. 364-5; VIII, cap. 33, pp. 401-2.

81 Vita Genovefae, cc. 12-13, ed. B. Krusch, MGH. SRM, HI, pp. 219-20. (For the biblical male ‘pseudoprophet’, see Acts 13.6; cf. Matt. 24.11, 23.) The most recent discussion of the Vita’s date is by I. N. Wood, ‘Forgery in Merovingian hagiography’, in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, MGH. SRJ, 33, pt V (Hanover, 1988), pp. 369-84, at pp. 376-9. Wood plausibly suggests a sixth-century, rather than fifth-century, date, but rightly adds that a non-monastic female saint is an oddity at any date in the early Middle Ages.

82 Annales Fuldenses, sa 848, ed. F. Kurze, MGH, SRC, (Hanover, 1891), pp. 36-7.

83 Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, p. 145; Schulenburg, ‘Female sanctity’, p. 116.

84 Annales Fuldenses, sa 848, p. 38. On this case, see D. E. Nineham, ‘Gottschalk of Orbais’, JEH, 40 (1989), pp. 1-18.

85 Nelson, ‘Dispute settlement’, pp. 56-9, 248-50.

86 MGH. Cap, II, no 306, p. 467.

87 For Vézelay’s ninth-century fate, see Nelson, ‘Commentary’, [against Schulenburg, ‘Women’s monastic communities’, p. 281, n. 49: ‘destroyed by the Vikings’]. Cf.J. Martindale, ‘The nun lmmena and the foundation of the Abbey of Beaulieu: a woman’s prospects in the Carolingian Church’, above, pp. 27–42.

88 J. B. Gillingham, ‘Love, marriage and politics in the twelfth century’, Modern Language Studies, 25 (1989), pp. 292-303.

89 Sermo de Sancta Maria Magdalenae, ed. B. de Gaiffier, ‘Hagiographie bourguignonne’, AnBoIl, 69 (1951), pp. 131-47, at p. 146. See Lifshitz, ‘Femmes missionaires’, pp. 20-1.

90 Vita B. Mariae Magdalenae et sororis etus S. Marthae, falsely attributed to Hrabanus Maurus, PL 112, col. 1496.

91 G. Gonnet,’Le cheminement des vaudois vers le schisme et l’hérésie (1174-1218)’, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale (1976), pp. 309–45, at pp. 311, 315, 317–18.

92 See J. L. Nelson, ‘The problematic in the private’. Social History (1990) pp. 355-64.

93 As observed by Lifshitz, ‘Les femmes missionaires’.

94 Nelson, ‘Les femmes’, p. 473; J. Verdon, ‘La femme vers le milieu du IXe siècle d’après le polyptyque de l’abbaye de Saint-Rémi de Reims’, Mémoires de la Société d’Agriculture, Commerce, Sciences et Arts du département de la Marne, 91 (1976), pp. 111-34, at pp. 117-27; Goetz, H.-W., Leben im Miltelaller (Munich, 1986), pp. 378 Google Scholar.